by Adrian Levy
Tikoo approached Saklani and asked if Ramm could be present, as a coach, during the phone calls with al Faran, but his request was turned down: ‘This seemed a bit too much like a Western takeover bid,’ Ramm wrote in his journal. But he got another call, and another, with Tikoo feeding him anodyne titbits, as he clearly hinted that their conversations were being listened in to, and that he was limited in what he could reveal. ‘We gave him quicker and better-prepared analyses than his own people could produce,’ Ramm recalled. ‘We were good at this. We had resources in New Delhi, London and Washington all working hard to corroborate the information provided by Tikoo. We wanted to help, if only they would let us help.’
Eventually General Saklani seemed to ease up, as Ramm and Tikoo talked regularly. Ramm formulated a strategy. ‘Go for proof of life,’ he advised Tikoo. The killing of Hans Christian Ostrø had put an end to the dialogue, and there was no proof that the other hostages had not been killed. One way to revive the talks and get away from the kidnappers’ demands would be for the Indian side to make some demands of its own: ‘Prove the captives are still alive, with the ultimate goal being something groundbreaking – like a live conversation with the hostages.’
Tikoo loved this idea. He felt isolated, even hated, dismissed in the Indian media after Ostrø’s death as an ‘incompetent unnamed Indian negotiator’. Ramm could see the stress Tikoo was under: ‘Sometimes, late in the night when he had been pleading with the rebels on the telephone or having a clandestine meeting with an emissary, he would call me and we would chat on the telephone.’ The Commander would sit with his sleeping bag wrapped around him, listening to Tikoo’s worries. On 19 August Tikoo called in a panic after Jehangir, the al Faran caller, had rung to tell him he should say farewell to the hostages, as they were about to be killed. ‘I felt sorry for Tikoo. He was too often having to absorb the stress and horror on his own, and he badly needed support. He was under very considerable personal pressure. “Oh well,” Tikoo would say, yawning down the telephone line to me at three in the morning, “I have Mr Johnnie Walker to give me a hand. Good night, my friend.”’
Finally, after many days and weeks of asking, Ramm and Tikoo met face to face at Saklani’s office. Each was pleasantly surprised by the other. ‘Although deferential to Saklani, Tikoo held his ground when he felt he had a point,’ Ramm wrote in his journal. ‘He would make his point forcefully, nodding, smiling, stabbing at the air with the end of his good English briar pipe – of which he had a collection.’ Tikoo was quick to open up. ‘When we were alone with him, in a side room of Saklani’s house, he whispered, “Fucking soldiers don’t understand coppers. They think differently to us.” I found this a very Anglo-Saxon comment, in one way so absolutely typical of police-canteen language and culture, but so incredibly out of place in the foothills of the Himalayas. I laughed out loud, too loudly for Tikoo’s comfort, and he quickly “shushed” at me.’ Tikoo, Ramm felt, ‘could have been dropped into most Met police stations and would have blended in’.
In the early hours of 22 August, the day before Jane Schelly and Don Hutchings’ tenth wedding anniversary, IG Tikoo received an unexpected call at his home in Transport Lane. The Movement was making a drop, and he was requested to pick it up personally, in an elaborate and potentially deadly piece of theatre. ‘Where?’ he asked. ‘Khanyar,’ replied his contact – the downtown neighbourhood of Srinagar where the previous month the Border Security Force had stormed the house from which al Faran had been making the calls, causing the negotiations to become fraught. ‘The crossroads near the Tomb of Jesus.’
The location was a busy intersection in the middle of Srinagar’s old city. It had been given its name because it lay near Roza Bal, an ancient shrine to a Kashmiri saint that some ardent, creative Christians believed also to be the final resting place of Jesus, said by them to have gone there after surviving the crucifixion. The small, single-storey shrine building and the nearby Jamia Masjid mosque, Srinagar’s largest, were surrounded by traffic, the Iqbal market and traditional wooden shop-houses. The area was always thronged with people, making it, in Tikoo’s mind, the perfect location for an ambush. But he came as instructed, in an unmarked white Ambassador, and casually retrieved a dropped envelope, ripping it open as the car made its way back towards Lal Chowk and safer ground.
Inside was a photo: four familiar faces, although they were now visibly tense and numb, skeletal but alive. Of course there was no Hans Christian. When Ramm saw them he felt chastened. Don and Dirk sat in the middle, holding a newspaper dated 18 August, their beards visibly longer than before, although they were still wearing the same, now ragged clothes. Keith was at Don’s side, dressed in the warm woollen waistcoat he had bought from the shikara salesman on Dal Lake. Paul, dressed in a heavy tartan shirt, was hugging his knees despondently. They all wore identical expressions of hopelessness. There was a cassette tape, too. ‘My name is Paul Wells. Today is 18 August 1995. I am fit and healthy. I have no problems. Catherine, I love you. See you soon.’ He sounded better than he looked. There were similar messages from Don, Keith and Dirk. ‘Julie, I love you very much,’ said Keith. ‘Please pass on my love to my family.’
Prompted by Ramm, Tikoo knew what to do. He would thank Jehangir for the package, but tell him that all it proved was that the hostages had been alive the previous Friday. He would then ask him to provide concrete proof they were alive today. After that, things might get going once more.
Six days later, on 28 August, Tikoo sat down in Transport Lane and checked that the tape recorder was working. A few minutes later his VHF set burst into life, and a hesitant voice enquired, ‘Hello?’ The accent was unmistakably American. Tikoo closed his eyes to immerse himself in it. That one word made him ‘thank the gods’ and punch the air. It was Don Hutchings. This was the first direct contact anyone had had with the hostages since they were taken, in Don’s case fifty-six days before. There was so much to say that Tikoo barely knew where to start, but the most important thing was to reassure the captives that his side was working hard. Their families were missing them, but were bearing up well, Tikoo said. They wanted them to ‘be as strong as they were being’. Were the hostages all in good health? ‘Yes, we have no problems,’ Don replied, keeping his words to a minimum, talking precisely and without emotion. No doubt someone armed was sitting beside him, listening closely.
They went through a prearranged ritual, Tikoo asking obscure personal questions. ‘What are the names of your cats?’ ‘Homer and Bodie,’ came the almost inaudible reply. ‘What happened to your twin brother?’ ‘He died when he was three days old.’ It was definitely Don Hutchings. Tikoo read out some questions for the other hostages, and two days later Don spoke to him again, giving all the correct answers. For Keith: ‘What is the name of the school that you and Julie went to, and who was Septimus?’ Bertram Ramsey School, and Septimus was Keith’s grandfather. For Paul: ‘Where and when did you first meet Catherine Moseley?’ 1 October 1992, at Rock City, Nottingham. And for Dirk: ‘Where did you first meet Anne Katrin, and what is the name of your cat?’ Anger Kino cinema in Erfurt. The cat’s name was Mayer. Tikoo smiled. He felt they were back on track. He was going to win this. He was. Come what may.
FOURTEEN
Ordinary People
Trapped, with darkness all around, Jane Schelly tried to quell the rising sensations of panic. She was sure this was a dream, but leaving it was proving difficult. Her sleep felt treacly and deep. Try as she might, she felt as if she could not wake up. ‘We’re in a building, in a hallway with these metal steps, ones you can see through,’ she recalled. ‘The terrorists are in there, and so is Don, somewhere.’ She didn’t know how she knew it, she just did. But this place disoriented her, the stairs disappearing into a yawning void above. It took a few seconds to realise what the gnawing in her stomach was, but then she did: dread. She heard boots clank on metal. ‘What I remember so clearly was that one of the terrorists was sitting on the step above me … and he had his arm round my neck and
was holding a knife to my throat.’ She felt the cold, gliding motion of a sharp blade slicing across her neck. ‘If I moved at all, the knife started to cut in, and the blood was starting to drip down my neck onto my clothes.’ Her nostrils filled with the ferrous smell of blood. Was this what Hans Christian had felt?
She heard voices. ‘The terrorists were yelling and threatening to kill.’ Looking down she saw Julie Mangan, ‘a little farther on the steps, just kind of frozen’. Julie was looking up at her, horrified. ‘Then suddenly I was facing a guy who had just appeared, dressed completely in black; he was a commando, a rescue guy. Just as quickly there was a shot, and the guy’s head went flying through the air. I kept watching it, as the knife dug deeper into my throat and as I looked all around hoping to see Don.’
Jane’s eyes flickered open, her trembling hands feeling the soft fret of cotton sheets, not steel banisters or concrete walls. After a few seconds of confusion she realised she was in New Delhi, in the two-storey apartment at the British High Commission that she, Julie, Anne and Cath had been staying in for the past few weeks. Since the horrific death of Hans Christian Ostrø on 13 August, nightmares like this had been plaguing her and the others. For nine days after his murder, they hadn’t even known if the hostages were still alive. Then, after six weeks of nothing, hearing Don’s voice just a few days after their wedding anniversary had made Jane feel more hopeful than she had in a long time. It had been such a gift to listen to him. The tape recordings of Tikoo’s two conversations with Don were the first pieces from the negotiation process to be shared with the four women. There were also now some positive rumours.
After Don had answered the second set of proof-of-life questions on 30 August – the tape was played to the women a few days later – there had been a suggestion that al Faran might even release him as a sign of good will. But the G4 had resisted, sticking to its ‘one-for-all’ policy, and the opportunity passed. Jane had felt sick to her stomach, knowing she couldn’t object, although she thought it unfair. Now she felt as if she was back in limbo: trapped between negotiations about which they were told almost nothing, and the Indian military’s refusal to countenance a rescue attempt ‘for fear of endangering the hostages’ lives’. Every day, diplomatic liaison officers came to brief them just before lunch, reassuring them that ‘strenuous efforts’ were still being made in Srinagar. Jane did her best to remain positive, but she was struggling. She rolled over and stared, red-eyed, at the bedside clock. It was 4 a.m. The early hours were the hardest. Beside the clock, her journal lay open at the last entry: ‘They are going through every possible strategy …’
In Transport Lane, IG Rajinder Tikoo was staring at the bricked-up view from his window. He had had too much time to think in the past few weeks, contemplating his own state of mind, frustrated by the limitations of what he had been ordered to do and by the physical confines of his quarters. Sometimes he had thought he would go mad. Tikoo was an explorer who had not yet travelled, a philosopher who had been ordered to stop thinking. He felt trapped. As the head of Crime Branch he had known instinctively how to handle most situations that presented themselves, being a master of diplomacy and officialese who could write up a storm when it came to requisitioning men and equipment. But, trying to find the word to describe his feelings right now, a mixture of fear, disgust, suspicion and cynicism, he kept coming up short.
Hearing Don’s voice had revived him. Roy Ramm and his FBI partners had encouraged him down the route of obtaining proof of life, and it had paid off wonderfully. The foreign negotiators had wanted to press for victory, and there had been a real sense from Jehangir that al Faran was ready to make concessions. But after the great breakthrough, the ‘higher-ups’ had ordered him back to the starting blocks: ‘prevaricate, give away nothing, no prisoner releases, or anything else’.
For the past couple of days it had just been him and his clunky computer, with his golf clubs sitting in the corner, enticing him away. Battleships booming. Clive Cussler occasionally. He wished Commander Ramm were here, to discuss anything, even to chat about the differences between policing in Kashmir and London. But Tikoo was still forbidden from freely mixing with Scotland Yard and the FBI’s representatives on the ground, and unbeknown to Ramm the time he spent on the phone with the IG was more closely observed than ever, his input tightly scripted by Saklani and other officials. Although he understood New Delhi’s determination to remain in the driving seat, and the higher-ups’ desire not to give foreigners access to raw intelligence, Tikoo could not help feeling that genuine British and American efforts to help were being throttled for reasons no one was sharing with him.
Cold-shouldered by the Indians, the outsiders pounced on any detail they could get, milking it for inflections, analysing every word that came from Jehangir (whose code-name had even been withheld from them in one of the many acts of petty control), refining their ever more detailed knowledge of the hostage-takers. Tikoo was impressed with what they had put together: remarkably detailed psychological profiles of both the kidnappers and the hostages, as well as several box files’ worth of material on the previous kidnappings. Ramm and co. ceaselessly combed these records for links between the earlier crimes and the present one, expanding, too, their understanding of the jailed jihad leaders that this was all about: Masood Azhar, the Afghani and Langrial.
By contrast, Tikoo’s bosses knew little about al Faran. They cared not a jot for creating character profiles of the gunmen in the mountains, regarding them as nothing more than a gathering of pseudonyms, hung on unwashed bodies that would eventually be culled and replaced by yet more photofit jihadis from over the Line of Control. For the past few years it had been rumoured that those killed crossing the LoC were not even buried, but were left to rot by the thousand in the fields beside the Indian Army camps strung along the border, a carpet of cadavers that served as a constant reminder of what was at stake for those looking over with binoculars from the Pakistani side.
What was the endgame New Delhi had in mind, Tikoo wondered. Even though he had been told many times that India would not release all of the prisoners demanded by al Faran, his previous experience suggested that some might be freed. There was always room for manoeuvre. He had had a hand in several kidnapping cases in Kashmir, and access to the files of many others, and knew that virtually all of them had ended with some kind of compromise. When Rubaiya Sayeed, the daughter of New Delhi’s Home Minister, was kidnapped in 1989, five prisoners had been released, including a Pakistani militant. When Nahida Imtiaz, the daughter of a prominent Kashmiri MP, had been abducted in 1991, a Pakistan-trained militant was freed. Later that year a well-connected executive director of Indian Oil, K. Doraiswamy, was snatched in Kashmir, and even though only five prisoner releases had initially been demanded, New Delhi ended up secretly handing over twelve, against the wishes of hardline Kashmir Governor Girish Saxena. During the 1993 siege of the Hazratbal mosque in Srinagar, Tikoo had watched as safe passage was granted to at least seven Pakistan-trained gunmen, and he had personally secured the release of the former politician from Bihar, P.K. Sinha, by secretly acceding to some of his kidnappers’ demands.
At the start of the current crisis, al Faran had demanded that twenty-one prisoners be set free. Even Tikoo could see this was far too many for New Delhi to stomach, and was merely a negotiating stance. He had whittled it down to fifteen, and in recent days, through a combination of cajoling and persistence, had further reduced it to four: Masood, the Afghani, Langrial and Omar Sheikh, the British Pakistani who had kidnapped Paul Rideout and three others in October 1994. Tikoo had been jubilant when Jehangir had agreed to this latest, significant concession, and had dashed round to Saklani’s office to inform him, expecting the Security Advisor to be just as pleased. But Saklani had sent him away with the instruction ‘Just keep talking.’
On 1 September, Day Fifty-Nine, Tikoo’s radio set buzzed into life. He was supposed to be the government’s guide in all this, but he was no longer sure he knew the way himse
lf. He put on the headphones and greeted Jehangir with his most frequent opening gambit. ‘How are you, my friend? I hope you are looking after the tourists.’
‘What have you done about our demands?’ Jehangir snapped, according to an official transcript of the tapes that would be made by the Intelligence Bureau that afternoon, and obtained by British intelligence through back channels. Tikoo was pitched straight back to the one subject about which he had nothing to say. Clearly the intermediary was in no mood for small talk.
The IG tried to distract him, knowing that today, for once, he had a solid excuse as to why there was nothing to report. ‘It was proceeding really fast, but what to do? Beant Singh was killed yesterday.’ The previous afternoon, Singh, the Chief Minister of Punjab state, had been assassinated along with at least fourteen others when militants had set off a car bomb in the secretariat complex in Chandigarh, the capital of Punjab, just as Singh was leaving his office. A crucial ally of Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, Singh had been responsible for helping to crush the insurgency by Sikh separatists in Punjab and restore peace to the bloodied state. The audacious assassination had rocked the government in New Delhi, which was now on high alert.
‘What are we supposed to do about that?’ said Jehangir dismissively.