The Third World War: A Terrifying Novel of Global Conflict

9

'They're still not answering,' said the Chief of Defence Staff, Deepak Suri. 'The hotlines are ringing. No one is picking up.'

Mehta leaned forward in his chair, rubbed his eyes and pressed the intercom on his desk. 'Ashish, have you sent the flower?' He had instructed that a pressed flower be sent to the Khans in Pakistan. The flower had been grown in the garden of Mehta's family home in Bombay from seed taken from the garden of the Karachi home they had left behind at Partition.

'About to, sir,' replied his private secretary.

'Make sure it's from family to family, that means from myself, Meenakshi, Romila and, of course, Geeta.'

'It'll be done,' said Uddin.

Mehta drew his finger down the edge of the telephone. He had asked to attend the funeral but the message back from Pakistan was to stay away. He had tried asking again through the hotlines, but no one was answering. It ran in the face of his conversation with Jim West in Washington a few minutes earlier.

'West believes it is under control and has asked us to do nothing to raise tension,' he said to Suri. 'I just pray to God he is right.'

'He's not,' said Suri. 'There's a power vacuum. And even when there isn't, Pakistan isn't stable.'

'But is it a hostile or a friendly vacuum, Deepak? That is the question.'

If the hotlines had been working, Vice-President Javed Bashir Zafar should have been on the other end. Zafar was a professor of Islamic studies, who had been named in several corruption scandals over the past decade. After Khan's overwhelming election victory, he recreated the post of vice-president and appointed Zafar as an olive branch to the fundamentalist movement. Mehta was determined to deal with Pakistan's constitutional leader, even though Zafar would probably serve only a short time.

Suri stepped forward, moved a newspaper from the corner of Mehta's desk, perched on the edge of it and handed Mehta a sheet of paper torn off from a printer. It bore the hallmark of a highly classified document from India's foreign intelligence service, the Research and Analysis Wing. 'Shortly after the assassination of President Khan, there was a shoot-out at the military airfield in Multan,' explained Suri while Mehta read the report. 'A Pakistan International Airlines Boeing 757 was fired on from the tarmac. Personnel on board the aircraft returned fire while it was taxiing for take-off — which it successfully achieved. No flight plan had been filed. Pakistani fighters were scrambled from Sargodha and Rawalpindi, but were called back immediately. Under whose command, we don't know. The 757 headed due north into Chinese airspace. Chinese fighters were scrambled to intercept it. They did not force it down, but escorted it. After that we lost contact. No radio traffic took place from the airliner at all.'

'Destination?' asked Mehta, handing the report back to Suri.

'Not known. The Russians had no contact with the aircraft, so it could have landed in only two countries — China or North Korea.'

He reached for the newspaper Suri had moved, flipped it open and glanced at the page. The gossip column showed a picture of Geeta looking brilliant on the ski slopes of St Moritz and kissing a man who could probably buy all Mehta owned with small change. He was an Australian racehorse owner. Mehta turned the page towards Suri. 'What do you think, Deepak? How does an Indian prime minister take on a man like that?'

'I think your wife is not worthy of you,' said Suri. He took the newspaper and dropped it in the bin by his foot. 'And the nation agrees with me,' he added with a smile.

'The stories Meenakshi tells me of the poverty in our country make me so ashamed, you know.' Mehta spoke about his younger daughter's work as a doctor with pride in his voice. Romila, older by two years, with more of her mother's flightiness, was in New York, managing investment funds for Goldman Sachs.

'She walked for two days to get to one village. There is no government there at all. No school. No medicine. No crops. No water supply. She stayed for a week, living among them. Little wonder young men blow up parliaments and assassinate presidents.'

Suri shook his head. To him, his Prime Minister was a complex and brilliant man. But his mind was full of too many unattainable visions. 'Let's concentrate on Pakistan,' he replied. 'Once that's settled, we'll move onto Bihar.'

'Yes. Of course.' Mehta smiled apologetically. 'All this gossip about Geeta distracts me. The PIA airliner? It took off after the assassination?'

'One hour afterwards. From Multan. Whoever was on board had no intention of being in Pakistan for the funeral.'

Mehta poured himself tea from the pot left on his desk. He brushed his finger against the cup to find it was lukewarm, but drank it anyway. 'You know, Deepak, old friend, I am frightened,' said Mehta, putting down the cup. 'Maybe it's because I am too used to violence. Maybe it is because I have been in the low-trust trade for too long. Our Parliament has been attacked before. Pakistani leaders die violently as a matter of routine. There are shoot-outs there all the time. Strange planes fly through the night.'

'But this time you are afraid,' said Suri, testing the temperature of the teapot himself and deciding against a cup.

'All I know is that my bones are chilled, but I don't know why.' Mehta glanced across at a computer screen which was scrolling down stories from the Press Trust of India wire. 'Kashmir is quiet,' he muttered, reading a story datelined Srinagar. 'Pakistan is in mourning, and Kashmir does not erupt. That is a good sign.'

'Seems so,' said Suri. 'The peace process holds. Pakistan is keeping its word over our troubled and bloodied territory.'

'So why does it kill its president?' Mehta whispered. 'What's it up to?'

He got up, walked over to a map on the wall of his office and ran his finger down the border between Pakistan and India. 'If you live on an idea and you have a generation of young men trained to spread that idea violently; if you close one front as happened in Afghanistan, then in Kashmir, you have to open another through which they can channel their energy.'

The door opened and a messenger stepped in. He gave an envelope to Suri, then slipped away, closing the door.

The two men were silent, Suri reading, Mehta studying the screen. 'We have fires in our own land,' said Suri meditatively. 'Gujarat is alight with funeral pyres.' He read on. 'Not only Gujarat. Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh as well. Twenty-seven regions are under police curfew. Dozens are dead.'

Mehta turned, hands on his hips. 'Is India being bloody India?'

'Impossible to say,' shrugged Suri. 'Give me a second to read this through.'

Mehta moved over to the window. Unusually, it was a clear, smogless day with the sun's evening shadows casting a yellow light on the sandstone of the government buildings. It created a glow that was carried across the undulating and open landscape towards India Gate, but didn't show the charred remains of the parliament building.

Suri shook his head. 'I think it may have been,' he said.

'May have been what?' asked Mehta, returning to his desk.

'Orchestrated. In Gujarat at least. The first reported violence was in the coastal town of Navibandar.' Suri sat down opposite Mehta and continued to paraphrase. 'Navibandar is ten, fifteen miles down the coast from Porbandar. The attackers were Muslim, or claiming to be. They were from out of town. No one knew them. They rounded up Hindu villagers, including women and children, loaded them on to two fishing trawlers, and towed them out to sea. Those who jumped off were shot in the water. So the rest stayed on board. The boats had been booby-trapped with explosives. The attackers detonated them. The trawlers turned into fireballs and sank. The attackers ringed the area in speedboats, shooting survivors. When a police patrol boat arrived, the attackers took off and quickly outpaced them. This happened five hours ago. But word spread. A bus was intercepted between Navibandar and Madhavpur. It happened to be owned by a Muslim bus company, but mostly there were Hindus on board. The hijackers were Hindu fundamentalists. There were two local policemen among them. The Muslims were ordered off the bus, lined up by the road and shot dead.'

'Including women and children?' asked Mehta softly.

'Including women and children,' affirmed Suri. 'The driver, who happened to be a Muslim, was spared, so he could continue his journey.'

'How many?'

'Twenty-three. Nine men, ten women and four children. Right now, we're getting in more reports of killings all over India. But the key is here in the last paragraph. The attackers on the speedboat spray-painted the slogan Daulah Islamiah Nusantara on the hull of one of the fishing boats. I'll check out what that means.'

Mehta pushed himself back into his chair and stretched his arms behind his head. 'Fly the army into every affected area,' he said. 'Flag marches at company strength down every street. Troops will stand by in all places that are vulnerable. Curfew will be imposed. If no suitable troops are in the area, helicopter them in. If they are attacked, they will shoot to kill.'

'Yes, sir,' said Suri, picking up a telephone to forward the order. But before he got through, the light on another telephone flashed, the direct line to the head of external intelligence. Suri picked it up and spoke for only a few seconds.

'The PIA 757 landed in Pyongyang,' he said, replacing the receiver. 'Air Vice-Marshal Qureshi was on board.'

'Dear God,' Mehta whispered, mostly to himself.

Unlike previous prime ministers, Vasant Mehta had come to political life late after a career in the army and the intelligence services.

His career would have remained behind the scenes had his wife, Geeta, not embarked on a very public affair with a Bombay film star. For two months the press loved it, and as the story ran, so did details of Mehta's remarkable professional life. Not all of it was correct, but it was enough to propel him into that rare category of being an Indian hero. In the public eye, Geeta was transformed from a sophisticated and beautiful intellectual into a destructive hedonist, addicted to drugs and high-rolling parties. Mehta, on the other hand, was portrayed as a man of principle and a solitary figure, working alone late into the night in his South Block office to secure India against her enemies.

Mehta had loathed the press coverage against Geeta, but was grateful that the great nation he led could have open debate, even on his private life. He had understood that complexities and contradictions were what created literature, music, art, science and great civilizations. Yet never did he stop yearning for simplicity.

At the height of the scandal, Mehta had been persuaded to run for Parliament. His decisiveness and pragmatism soon led him to high office — particularly when American reliability was again questioned after the start of the 2001 War against Terror.

Single-mindedly, Mehta had pushed forward India's plans for a streamlined and independent defence system. Then he had announced in Parliament that India would not — under any circumstances — make a first nuclear strike against any nation, not even if it detected a launch from a hostile power, because such detections could be in error. In a nutshell, India would be prepared to sacrifice at least one city before it retaliated.

Almost unprecedented for any Indian leader, Mehta reinforced India's position in an essay in the prestigious Washington-based Foreign Affairs magazine. 'Should the tragedy of a nuclear attack on India or Indian interests occur anywhere in the world,' he had written, 'then my government would obliterate the nation responsible, whether the attack came from the government itself or from rogue elements being nurtured by that government. On this there will never be any negotiation. By stating this policy now unequivocally and with the widest distribution possible, we hope to avoid any confusion. No one will be able to claim misunderstanding.'