by Rahul Badami
“Will do.”
The timer had gone below twenty seconds now. He glanced at Hitesh. “You done?”
“Almost there.” Hitesh tapped a few keys. “Execute command.”
But the countdown timer kept going.
“Impossible, let me try again.” Hitesh executed the command again.
0:00:00:08
Armaan’s breath caught in his throat as he looked at the timer menacingly counting down to zero.
Roshan shouted in his ear. “One, the men are headed your way. You need to escape. Take the stairwell ASAP.”
0:00:00:02
“Nothing!” yelled Hitesh. “Nothing is working!”
0:00:00:00
The clock ran down the countdown and stopped. A moment later the screen turned blank. Everyone just stared at it in silence.
“W-what happened?” Armaan shrieked.
Hitesh blurted, “I-I think the database was erased.”
Majid cackled like a hyena breaking their stupor. Armaan’s blood boiled. He sprinted towards him and smashed his Glock’s butt into Majid’s head. Majid fell unconscious.
“What do we do with him?” Baldev asked.
“Just leave him. Pakistan will find their ISI rogue bound and handcuffed in his own building. We need to send an unambiguous message that we can go anywhere in Pakistan and do anything we want with impunity.”
Roshan screeched, “The men are almost at the door to your side of the floor. You need to go. Now!”
“Baldev, grab Hitesh’s stuff, and let’s get out.” They immediately bolted out from the cubicles to the safety of the stairs. They swiftly descended the same way they came in. Three minutes later, they met up with Roshan.
Roshan nodded sombrely at them. “There was never a decryption code.”
Armaan growled in impotent rage. All their work had been for nothing. “No, there wasn’t. We were duped into believing there was one.”
Baldev hung his head, “I have failed. We just lost the data of 1.2 billion Indians. What will I now tell General Singh?”
Armaan cringed at hearing the General’s name. The General was behind this. He was the puppet-master holding the strings. And they had been shuttled from here to there without actually knowing what was happening. It had been a massive deception orchestrated by Singh. If it hadn’t been for Venera, Armaan would have never found out the truth about Singh. The man was a traitor to the country. He would pay for this.
Armaan gripped his gun. “There’s only one thing left to do. We get home and put a bullet in Singh’s skull.”
CHAPTER 35
“Raise the sub to periscope depth,” Captain Khurana gave the command.
They were ten kilometres from their destination. The Singapore Strait. The narrowest point on the Straits of Malacca that separated Singapore from Indonesia. And already the contacts shown on their screen was quite dense with hundreds of ships plying every day through this crucial route.
Khurana looked at his watch. The orders should have been transmitted. But he wouldn’t receive it till he surfaced his submarine to periscope depth which would allow the communications antenna to receive the messages from Naval HQ.
“We are now approaching periscope depth. Immediate vicinity is clear.” The Navigator said.
Khurana peered through the periscope and rotated it through a three-hundred-and-sixty degree arc. There were no hostile threats nearby. He waited for the Comms tech to give an update. The message from Naval HQ would come through in a few moments. A cold shiver passed through him. It would be an order to fire the first shot in a long and fatal war. He had no idea how the future would play out. There was no doubt there would be serious repercussions of what he was about to do. He had been longing to go home. Now, if he carried out his orders, he would not be returning home soon. Both India and China had a million plus soldiers, not to mention nuclear powered subs and long range missiles.
Maybe there would be no home to return to.
A few seconds later, the tech looked at him. “We have a message, Captain.”
Khurana strode over to the Comms tech. He was anxious and hoped they could still pull back from the impending crisis. He looked at the message. It simply said to rendezvous to a specific coordinate. No additional explanation was provided.
Khurana plotted the location in his mind’s eye. He immediately exhaled. It was in the Bay of Bengal. It meant he no longer had to carry out the order that had been gnawing at him.
The situation had been defused.
CHAPTER 36
Baldev said, “We should at least hear him out.”
Armaan shook his head. “What should we hear? More lies. He masterminded the op. He sent you guys to your death. He's a traitor and death would be too kind a punishment for him.”
Armaan stood in front of General Singh's mansion. The night wind swept through his jacket. It was bitter cold. But nothing was colder than Armaan's heart. He had trusted this man. And the General had betrayed him, his team, everyone. He looked at Baldev, Roshan and Hitesh. Their faces were morose, yet determined. They had heard what Singh had told Venera. They were present when the Aadhaar database had been wiped out. They knew this had to be done.
Armaan had decided in Venera’s villa itself what he would do. Singh had lied to him in Turkey that Baldev and the others would be alright. But the truth had been that he had consorted with the enemy and planned to capture them in Urumqi. If it hadn’t been for Armaan’s decision to go to Urumqi, his team would have been in severe jeopardy.
And that was just the tip of the iceberg of lies. Singh had collaborated with the hackers and had involved himself in the theft of data of one billion Indians. The entire Aadhaar database that took them almost a decade to collate was gone in a flash.
It was time to settle the score.
“Please Armaan. I'm not too happy about this but at least, we should give him a chance to explain. He's been our mentor for so long.”
Armaan frowned. Singh was a wily man and he didn’t want to give him a way to divert their attention and escape. But nevertheless, he would stand there and hear the General peddle more lies before he killed him. “All right. But be careful. If he pulls any tricks on us, I'll be ready.”
Armaan would kill him. But first, he needed some answers. The foremost among them was why.
Armaan pulled out his binoculars and peered at the mansion. The place was quiet. All the windows and doors were shuttered. There was a solitary light coming from the General's bedroom on the first floor.
He looked at his watch. It was midnight. Probably Singh was doing some overtime work.
“I’ll take the lead. You boys follow me.”
Armaan walked over to one side of the compound. He saw a tree that rose close to the General's bedroom on the first floor.
Perfect.
He climbed up the tree like a cat and manoeuvred his way over to a branch that was parallel to the bedroom's balcony. A short hop and he found himself on the balcony. He waited as his team climbed up the tree with equal dexterity. In a moment, they joined him.
He tugged on the door. It was locked.
No problem.
Armaan pulled out his Glock 17 that was fitted with a silencer. Two spits and the door unlocked. He pushed the door and entered the room.
The General was sitting in a high-backed leather chair. He was in the middle of typing something on his laptop. He heard the commotion and half-swivelled in his chair.
Armaan pointed his Glock at him.
The General’s eyes widened in bewilderment. “What are you doing here? I thought you were in Turkey. And what is the meaning of training that gun at me? Put it down.”
But Armaan kept the Glock pointed squarely at Singh’s head. A moment later, Baldev, Roshan and Hitesh poured in the room. Singh’s mouth was agape.
“I need some answers right now.” Armaan’s brusque tone cut like steel.
A shadow of anger crossed the General’s face. “What answers? What are you talking
about? And why didn’t you report to Manohar?”
“I'm talking about the Aadhaar database. Why did you sabotage it? I know all about it. You ordered Venera to sabotage it. Why? How could you destroy such a valuable asset of the nation?”
“You insufferable fool.” The General cursed. “You think I would sabotage a billion-dollar program?”
Baldev stared at General Singh. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that the Aadhaar database is intact. Nothing has happened to it.”
Armaan knew it. This man would manufacture all kinds of lies to save himself. “Stop lying. I saw it myself. The countdown timer ran out and wiped out the database.”
“And that’s the reason the mission was a success.”
What nonsense. The Aadhaar database had been erased in front of them. And yet, the General was claiming their mission was a success. “How?”
“Because that is what we wanted to show to the perpetuators. The database you saw was a fake. The security loophole they exploited directed them to a bogus database that was designed to look like the real one. And that is what you boys also saw. The actual server and database weren’t affected.”
“What!” Baldev exclaimed.
“Yes. Our Aadhaar database is perfectly fine. The hackers got a database full of dummy accounts.”
Armaan wasn’t convinced. This was getting ridiculous. “Don’t believe him, boys. He is spinning a web of lies to lower your defences. Remember, he sent you to your deaths.”
General Singh glowered at him. Baldev raised a palm to quieten Armaan and turned to Singh. “Sir, please explain.”
“A year ago, CERT was taken down by some unknown hackers. It resulted in the loss of some of our classified data. We traced the hack to China. Initially, we thought this was the doing of the MSS Cyber team, but some of us were unconvinced.”
“Why's that?”
“A state-sponsored cyber team will never reveal its capability. Only during a war will they unleash their true power. It was quite unlike China to demonstrate they could take down CERT's systems during peacetime, so we assumed someone else was behind this. But there was one aspect that everyone kept a tight lid upon. A week before the incident, a security alert had been raised about a specific loophole that had been detected in one of our firewalls. A patch had been created for that loophole and was to be applied soon. But before we could do that, the hackers used that exact loophole to breach the CERT system. Do you understand what that meant?”
Hitesh replied, “Someone leaked the information about the security vulnerability to the hackers.”
General Singh nodded. “I don't believe in coincidences. It could only mean someone had leaked about the security loophole to the hackers. We hushed the matter up before it could get public. But the questions remained. Who leaked our secrets? And it could only have been someone at the top. Only the NSC, NTRO and few of the techs knew about the vulnerability. And this wasn’t the only incident. There was a sustained pattern at work where we saw our information going to our adversaries. I created a top-secret team of a handful of my most trusted people in various departments and we started digging. Soon we realized we had a mole in our midst. And when we saw unrelated departments having their secrets stolen, we understood it couldn’t be from a person within a specific department but a person who oversees multiple departments. The leak was at the very top.”
Armaan didn’t know where Singh was going with this. He really wanted to believe what Singh was saying but somehow couldn’t bring himself to trust the man. “But why the Aadhaar database? What was the need for that charade?”
“This mission was never about recovering encryption keys for the Aadhaar database. It had one and only one goal. To rat out a mole from our midst.”
A mole! Armaan’s mind immediately went back to what Mastaan had said. He had smugly declared that their informers were everywhere. Could it be true the General wasn’t the traitor?
The General kept talking. “Not only were we trying to find out who the mole was, we were also trying to pin-point the hackers. It took us months of scouring through the dark web, but finally we discovered the identity of one of the hackers, Venera Hoshur. I contacted her without revealing who I was. For money she would do anything I wanted and ask no questions. She thus became my asset in Urumqi. She led me to Zontai and eventually I came to know the CERT cyber attack was planned from Rawalpindi.”
“You already knew all this!” Armaan yelled. “And yet you sent us in blind.”
Baldev put an arm on Armaan’s shoulder. “Please let him finish.”
Singh glared at Armaan but didn’t say anything. He looked at Baldev. “I still didn’t know who was feeding the information to ISI. It was a dead end. After giving it a lot of thought, I realized that the only way to find out who the mole was to dangle a carrot so large, it would be irresistible. The CEO of UIDAI is an old friend. He and I came up with this plan. We purposely put out a critical vulnerability alert around the Aadhaar database and sent it to the NSC, NTRO and other routine channels. It was time to sit back and see who took up the bait.”
“But why this overt gesture. Why bring the PM, NSA and the tri-services chiefs in all of this?”
“This overt gesture – as you call it – was necessary. To catch a big fish, you need a bigger bait. He would have been suspicious if we didn’t do exactly what we did in the aftermath of the event. Anyone and everyone that could be connected to the previous leaks were informed about what happened. One of them would give the information to the enemy. We got our break in Istanbul where we found an Indian number on the phone of Jin Wang’s handler.”
“I discovered that.” Armaan said.
The General smirked. “Really? Why does it say on Manohar’s report that his men found it?”
Armaan kept silent. General Singh continued. “We traced the owner of the phone. It turned out to be someone at the very top. I’m shocked at his duplicity. The authorities are on their way to his home.”
“Who was the mole?” Baldev asked.
“Suraj Shrivastava.”
“What! The Deputy Director of NTRO?”
General Singh nodded. “For a long time, I wondered if the leak was coming from DIA, but then there are a few other agencies that have overlapping oversight over our cyber and security reports. The NTRO is one of them. His arrest will either make national headlines or it will be hushed up.”
Armaan said, “You still haven’t explained why you told Venera to capture the team?”
General Singh bristled with rage. “You brainless dimwit, you still don’t get it, do you? It was a forced decision. Shrivastava was present at the meeting where we decided to send a team to China. He leaked the news to Mastaan. Mastaan in turn informed Zontai. Zontai ordered Venera to lure the boys. She asked me what to do and I told her to go ahead with what Zontai wanted. Keeping the façade was the top priority. Once we figured out who the mole was, Venera would have helped Baldev escape. But no, you had to almost screw up my entire plan. Your insubordination and insolence is deplorable.”
“My insolence! You were the one who kept this stuff away from me. I understand some things could be a need-to-know basis, but this is ridiculous. You sent me to do stupid truck escorts in Iran.”
“And did you ever bother to think why I would send you to be a truck escort? The traitor was in our midst, knowing our every move. I had to be discreet. Once I came to know the Chinese hacker was going to Turkey, I wanted to launch an op to nab him. But what if the traitor warned him? Your mission to Iran to escort trucks was just a deception. The real mission was to go to Turkey and nab the Chinese hacker. He was our only lead. And I wanted my best man to do it.” The General paused for a moment. “You.”
Armaan couldn’t believe what the General was saying. He’d thought the General considered him incompetent for so long. Now he called him his best man. It was too much to swallow. Anger surged inside him. If he was indeed General Singh’s best soldier, the General should have at least expl
ained to him the reason behind going to Iran.
“You should have put more faith in me. I have run so many operations for you.”
“It's not a question of faith. It's a question of what to do if you had been caught. No man is unbreakable. I didn't want anyone to know about my plans. And that's why I didn't tell you.”
Armaan couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The wound in his shoulder throbbed reminding him that he’d been nearly killed in Iran. And almost shot at in Turkey. And of course, he had faced off dozens of armed guards in Urumqi. He’d trusted the General and accomplished his missions with professionalism, but trust was a two-way street. If he was placing his faith in Singh, Singh too should have trusted him enough to explain what he was risking his life for. “So we were sent on a wild goose chase?”
The General frowned, “Our main motive was to catch the culprit responsible. The ends determine the means. Sometimes one has to place a pawn in the middle of a chess board to distract the opponent from the real attack. It’s called a feint.”
“So I'm just an expendable pawn in your great game?”
“Yes. You work for me. You will follow my orders, and you will do whatever I ask. Without questions.”
“No, I won't.”
“What?”
“The hell with you.” Armaan stomped out of the door.
CHAPTER 37
The man with the scar looked out at the night view from his window. The India Gate monument was lit up by lights.
He would miss the view.
He focused back on his computer screen. It was an email from the Government in Vanuatu. His application for permanent citizenship to Vanuatu had been approved. He chuckled. A mere amount of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars had been enough to become a citizen of another country and escape extradition and prosecution if his unlawful activities ever came to light.
Vanuatu was a small island country in South Pacific that had a quite generous citizenship program where they allowed individuals from any country to gain citizenship in exchange for money. It was the golden ticket for economic offenders, asylum seekers and political refugees.