Authors: Mukul Deva
NONE OF THEM NOTICED THE FIT LOOKING MAN IN HIS
thirties enter the suite occupied by Salim. Mai's flight for Beijing had already taken off from Colombo and most of the others were in various stages of checking out, or were on their way to Male Airport. Cheema had jumped at the opportunity graciously granted to him by Salim to take a tour of the neighbouring islands on a catamaran.
Cheema took a deep breath as the wind caught the catamaran and sent it skimming away from the shores of the Blue Moon over the electric blue waters. There were several other cats surfing the waves. Perhaps that was why he did not notice the bright yellow catamaran with the name of the neighbouring island resort emblazoned on it. Nor did he notice the man who jumped off it and dragged the cat onto the beach. The man's muscular build, walk and general demeanour gave away his military background as clearly as a crew cut would have. Beaching the catamaran, the man strode confidently towards Salim's suite.
‘Salaam waleikum.’ A big smile wreathed Salim's face as he greeted his guest and gave him a warm, comradely hug. For a change, the smile seemed genuine. In fact, it was the first time in all these days that Salim had showed any trace of genuine emotion. ‘It is good to see you again.’
‘Waleikum salaam, janaab.’ The man was clearly deferential. ‘The honour is mine.’
The two men spoke quietly for a while. Whatever Salim had to say to him did not take long. In fact, they spent the better part of their meeting talking about old times and going over the details of a bank account in Switzerland. Finally, Salim said, ‘I think it is time you left, my friend. Cheema should be back any time now. I don't want anyone to see you. And remember, there must be no further contact between us.’
‘Don't worry, sir. There will be no need for any.’ The man hesitated slightly. ‘Please do take care of my wife and children after….’ He broke off.
‘Do you trust me?’ Salim gave the man a deep, penetrating look.
‘Of course, sir,’ the man replied instantly. ‘With my life.’
‘Then rest assured that I will take good care of them. You have my word.’ The man nodded silently. ‘Just get them out of the country as soon as possible. Their travel documents and details of all the arrangements are in the packet I have given you. I will ensure the wire transfer to your bank is done before you leave the island today.’ Salim clasped the man's shoulder in a reassuring grip. ‘I want you to stay completely focused on the task; it is of the utmost importance. And please remember that timing is very crucial in this mission.’
‘Rest assured, janaab, I will not let you down.’ The man saluted as he left. ‘I will await your call.’
‘Khuda hafiz.’ Salim watched his trump card walk out and away from his suite. He knew this was the last time he was seeing him alive.
If he succeeds in his task he will definitely die. If he doesn't, we will both be dead.
T
HE
D
AY
A
FTER
. I
SLAMABAD
THE SLEEK, UNMARKED BLACK CAR WAS WAITING OUTSIDE THE
airport when the flight from Dubai landed. It took Salim and Cheema straight to the tiny but exclusive restaurant where General Ehsan Haque, the ISI Director, was waiting for them. The top floor of the restaurant had been kept vacant by the owner, an exISI agent provocateur who had been unlucky during the Afghan misadventure and lost a leg when he strayed into an unmarked minefield.
Haque and Salim greeted each other with the warmth and bonhomie of old comrades. Cheema hung around on the fringes of the meeting, absorbing everything but saying little.
Two hours later, Salim left for Murree while Cheema stayed on at the safe house in the suburbs that Haque had arranged for him. Over the next few days, a variety of people streamed in to meet him. The rest of the time, Cheema was busy on the phone. When he finally left Islamabad a week later to rejoin Salim at Murree, he had about him the unmistakable air of a man who had done his duty and done it well. The manpower, money, equipment and documentation required to execute the next part of the mission were all firmly in place.
‘Everything that we need is absolutely ready, sir. I just need to make one call to activate it.’
‘Excellent!’ Salim beamed proudly. ‘You've done a fine job.’
Phase One was complete.
U
RUMQI
S
PECIAL
W
EAPONS
F
ACILITY
, C
HINA
CHEEMA WAS IN THE MIDST OF HIS HECTIC PARLEY AT
Islamabad when Mai walked into his office. There was a noticeable spring in his step and despite the early hour, he looked fully charged.
‘You are bright and early today, sir,’ the security guard greeted him as he checked Mai into the secure facility, but there was no surprise in his voice since they were all quite used to the erratic and eccentric working habits of the scientists. In any case, the guard, like most of the facility staff, was quite fond of the usually cheerful Mai.
Fobbing him off with the required polite noises, Mai headed to his office. Controlling his impatience with some difficulty, he first cleared the backlog of paperwork and emails that had accumulated in his absence. Then he moved to the tiny, secluded but well-equipped personal lab that he merited as the director of the facility.
It took him a few hours to work out the precise material requirements and place a requisition for them. He made sure he added several more items to the list to camouflage its real purpose, just in case someone was keeping tabs on him.
With a feeling of deep satisfaction, he returned to his office and went back to the grind of routine work. He knew it would take at least two days for the materials to reach him.
THE REQUIRED MATERIALS REACHED MAI ON THE MORNING
of the third day. Their arrival triggered a sharp wave of impatient energy in him. In the days that followed, Mai had to struggle with himself to stay away from his lab. Despite his excitement, he did not forget Salim's warning. ‘You must not say or do anything that will set off an alarm in anyone's head. Remember, this is the most critical phase of our operation; if you fail, we all fail.’
‘Don't worry,’ Mai had reassured him. ‘I will stick to my regular routine and ensure none of my work is pending.’
Twelve days later, he was more than satisfied: he had finished making the tiny round glass vials, and redesigned the caps for the bottles of aftershave and eau de cologne, and the room-freshener spray cans. All the items required tremendous precision and taxed his skills to the fullest. Over the next two days, he carefully and repeatedly tested each one of them.
‘Zero tolerance!’ Mai told Fatima. ‘There is simply no room for even the minutest error. Even the tiniest leak will be fatal.’
‘I can imagine,’ Fatima sympathized. ‘When are you going to get hold of the….’ She hesitated.
‘Tomorrow,’ Mai cut in. ‘I have to do it tomorrow. We're running out of time now.’
AS THE DIRECTOR OF THE BIOCHEM FACILITY, ONE OF MAI'S
key responsibilities was to audit all controlled materials held at Urumqui every month and ensure it was all accounted for. This audit was critical since some of these materials were so lethal that even a few droplets were more than adequate to trigger off an epidemic of unimaginable proportions. The audit was supposed to be done without warning and not on any fixed or scheduled date, to ensure that no detectable (and thus breachable) pattern existed. So no eyebrows were raised when Mai began the audit early the next morning.
The audit confirmed that none of the lethal germs, viruses and chemicals that the facility dabbled in was unaccounted for. No one even missed the two tiny vials of Variola Major virus and the five larger vials of VX Gas that Mai removed from the specimen bank during the audit. And this, again, was not surprising since Mai had replaced both with similar looking vials.
It's not as though someone is going to open them and check the contents
. Mai gave a wry smile as he surveyed the booty safely hidden in hermetically sealed containers in his personal mini-laboratory. Both items looked harmless and insignificant, but Mai knew just how lethal they were. He suppressed a shudder at the thought of what he had to do next.
Let me begin with the Variola, so that even if I make a mistake I will at least live long enough to complete the mission.
Stiffening his resolve, he donned his protective suit and reached for the glass vial containing the deadly virus.
VARIOLA MAJOR IS THE MOST COMMON FORM OF SMALLPOX,
a contagious and sometimes fatal disease. The pox part of the word smallpox is derived from the Latin word for
spotted
and refers to the small raised bumps that appear on the face and hands of an infected person. There is no specific cure or treatment for smallpox, and the only prevention is vaccination. There are basically two clinical forms of smallpox and Variola Major is the severe and more common form, which causes extensive rashes and a high fever.
‘The Variola virus emerged in human populations hundreds of years ago. It is unique to humans and in the twentieth century alone caused 300–500 million deaths worldwide,’ Mai had told Salim and Cheema when he first met them. ‘There are four types of Variola Major smallpox: Ordinary, which is the most frequent type and accounts for almost ninety per cent of the cases; Modified, the second type, which is also mild and occurs in previously vaccinated persons; and Flat and Haemorrhagic, both of which are rare and extremely severe. In general, Variola Major has an overall fatality rate of about thirty per cent. However, the Flat and Haemorrhagic forms are extremely virulent and have a mortality rate of close to ninety-six per cent.’
‘Really? But hasn't smallpox been eradicated?’
‘Of course it has,’ Mai replied. ‘After a long but successful vaccination campaign, it was eradicated globally, and no cases have been reported since the last one in Somalia in 1977. Today the Variola virus exists only in rare and heavily guarded laboratory stockpiles in just a handful of countries.’
‘That is why it is the perfect weapon.’ Salim had smiled softly. ‘No one will be prepared to handle it. There will be total panic and chaos. As for the death toll,’ Salim shrugged, ‘one cannot even imagine how many kafirs will die.’
‘That's right!’ Mai replied softly. ‘But it is not just the kafirs who will die. Once the virus spreads, it will kill almost anyone it comes in contact with.’
‘True.’ Salim met Mai's gaze levelly. ‘Sometimes sacrifices are necessary. We cannot win the jihad if we are going to be so squeamish.’
THE VARIOLA MAJOR VIRUS REMOVED BY MAI FROM THE URUMQI
specimen bank was the type that caused Hemorrhagic smallpox, the most lethal and infectious of the lot. The virus has an incubation period of seven to twelve days and its initial symptoms of fever, muscle ache and vomiting are quite similar to influenza and the common cold. The skin does not blister; instead, bleeding occurs under the skin, making it appear charred and black. It is the bleeding and the loss of fluids and electrolytes that cause death.
‘The particular strain I propose to use was stolen from Soviet stockpiles in those tumultuous days following the disintegration of the USSR. It had been developed and produced in the Siberian town of Koltsovo in 1990 when the Soviets were looking to use genetically altered strains of smallpox as a biological weapon.’
‘If that's true, how come such weapons have not been used in any war so far?’ Cheema had asked Mai.
‘Of course they have been used,’ Salim cut in with an unpleasant laugh. ‘Do you think humans will ever leave any stone unturned to kill their enemies?’
‘He's right!’ Mai nodded vigorously. ‘Almost as soon as humans had figured out how to make arrows, they were dipping them in excreta to make them poisonous.’
‘In shit?’ Cheema couldn't contain his surprise.
‘Absolutely! In shit,’ Mai replied with a grimace, not overly enthused by Cheema's choice of words. ‘You have no idea how effective it was, especially in those days when there were no antibiotics.’
Cheema gave an exaggerated shudder.
‘The Romans went a step further. They used to throw dead animals into wells to poison the enemy's water supply. In 184 BC, Hannibal used live snakes and in 1346 the Tartar, Khan Janibeg, had plague-infested dead bodies of his own men catapulted into Kaffa… in fact, this was also done by the Russians troops fighting the Swedes in the eighteenth century. The Spanish conquistador Pizarro gave clothing contaminated with the smallpox virus to South American natives just as Britain's Lord Jeffrey Amherst handed over blankets that had been used by smallpox patients to Native Americans during the French and Indian wars.’
Mai saw the look of revulsion on the faces of the two men sitting opposite him.
‘Precisely! They are lethal beyond imagination. That's why the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972 prohibits their use. However, the primary reason that most nations hesitate to use them is simply because containing the effects of a biological agent is a nightmarish proposition… in terms of both time and space. After all, one would want to eventually occupy the ground after destroying the enemy, right?’
‘Go on… tell us more about its properties,’ Salim said, ignoring the question.
So Mai had.
The conversation came back to him now, as he reached for the container of Variola Major.
The deadly virus had originally been developed for delivery as an aerosol. Now Mai carefully repackaged it into the bottles of aftershave lotion and the two cans of room-freshener. Working in the heavy protective suit was hard, tedious work but there was no alternative. It took Mai six days to finish the task. Then he moved on to the next phase of the operation, and began to repackage the VX Gas he had stolen.
PRODUCED VIA THE TRANSESTER PROCESS, VX GAS IS ONE OF
the most lethal chemicals created by man. Developed in England in 1952 by the Porton Down Chemical Weapons Research Centre at Wiltshire, its chemical formula is CH3CH20-P(o)(CH3)-SCH2CH2N (C3H7)2 and the unwieldy formal chemical name given to it is S-2 (diisopropylamino)ethyl O-ethyl methylphosphonothioate. Some time later, the British traded VX technology to the Americans in return for thermonuclear weapons technology. From that day onwards, the human race has expended considerable effort to make VX Gas even more lethal and virulent.
‘Despite its name, VX Gas is actually an oily yellow, odourless liquid with a low volatility,’ Mai Hu had briefed Salim and Cheema. ‘The “V” in its name signifies its extreme persistence, unlike its cousins of the “G” variety, like GA (Tabun) and GB (Sarin). VX is an excellent adhesive. In fact, a special form has been developed that is so adhesive that it is virtually impossible to remove it from any surface it comes in contact with.’
‘How exactly does it work?’ Cheema had asked.
‘Well, in the liquid form, VX gets absorbed into the human body through the eyes or the skin, and takes effect in about an hour. However, in the aerosol form, it has
immediate
effect. In both cases, the lethal dose for humans is a mere 10 milligrams and the end result is painful death preceded by violent tremors, incontinence and failure of the heart and lungs.’
‘Damn!’ Cheema raised an eyebrow in surprise. ‘It takes that little, huh?’
‘Yes, it's absolutely lethal.’
‘Where in the past has it been weaponized?’
‘Oh, in several countries. It is a well established, though little publicized fact that there are approximately 1.9 million artillery shells filled with VX Gas stored at the Shchuchye Military Base, near the Siberian city of Chelyabinsk, in South-Central Russia. Each shell is capable of delivering an instant and deeply painful death to 85,000 people. Most of them have been developed as tactical weapons….’ Mai noted the questioning look on Cheema's face and clarified, ‘Tactical weapons have a shorter lethality time, to ensure that one's own forces can move in safely and secure the ground once enemy troops in the target area have been destroyed.’ Cheema nodded as he got the drift, and Mai resumed, ‘The destruction of these shells has been put off till 2012 due to paucity of funds.’
Both the rogue intelligence officers were listening to Mai with rapt attention. They were fully aware of the awesome credentials of the man sitting before them.
‘Not that America, Russia's Cold War foe, is lagging behind in the field of chemical weapons. During the 1950s, America conducted an ambitious nerve gas program during which 400,000 M-55 rockets were manufactured. Each rocket was capable of delivering a
five kilogram
load of Sarin. Many of these were found to have a serious manufacturing defect, hence in 1967 and 1968, all of them were sunk in about 2000 metres of water barely 240 kilometres off the New York coastline.’
Mai noticed the rapid exchange of glances between the two men sitting before him. ‘No!’ He pre-empted the thought. ‘Don't even think about it. Getting them out of such deep water is simply too gigantic a task. In any case, it's hard to tell whether they would still be of any use. The entire effort is more than likely to be a sheer waste of time and money. Not to mention the fact that it would alert the Yanks for sure.’
The Brigadier had shrugged. Cheema had not bothered to respond.
As he worked, Mai's movements were deliberate and extra cautious. Unlike with the Variola virus, he would not get even a moment's reprieve if he made a mistake with the VX Gas.
Death will be instantaneous and it will be excruciatingly painful.
He suppressed the shudder that accompanied this thought as he went to work on the deadly chemical.
THE VIALS OF VX GAS MISAPPROPRIATED BY MAI CONTAINED
the most virulent form of the lethal nerve gas. Handling the aerosol and avoiding detection by any of his colleagues while doing so was not easy, but the resourceful Mai proved more than equal to the task.
On the night of 18 April, when Mai returned home, he had with him several dozen glass vials, each one not bigger than a large marble. Frangible glass, three millimetres thick, had been used to make the vials. Every vial was filled with an almost clear vapour that was barely discernible to the naked eye. The glass was thick enough to withstand transportation, yet thin enough to shatter on impact against any reasonably hard surface.
Mai carefully placed the deadly vials in the huge locker in the basement of his house, along with the cans of Variola Major that were already stored there. With a sense of deep satisfaction he turned the key in the lock and went up to inform his wife that finally, he was done.