by R. SREERAM
Jagannath cleared his throat and drew our attention. ‘You need to address the crowd in Ghaziabad,’ he told GK.
GK nodded, but the enthusiasm had lessened a little. I guess it is one thing to drop a bombshell on an unsuspecting American president, but a much scarier prospect to face a bunch of angry contemporaries. It occurred to me that perhaps GK had been, or at least could be compromised. It was even possible that some of his own party comrades were privy to information that could be used to control him. Glancing at Nelson and Jagannath, and remembering the way in which Nelson had palmed me off on the latter while he continued his discussion with GK, it was not a stretch for me to believe that some pressure must have been applied.
I found myself taking a second look at GK’s enthusiasm. Granted, the lure of the power he had run after and been denied for so long must have been a temptation impossible to resist. But even then, at least at some point in the last hour or so that we had been here, he must have had second thoughts. The responsibility was enormous, and the pitfalls, while misted over in the fog of desire and ego, not completely obscured. The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that Nelson had tipped the scales somehow. Some hidden scandal that would continue to remain hidden . . .
‘Sir?’ I said urgently before I could stop myself. The three of them turned towards me. I ignored Nelson’s questioning glance at Jagannath as I took a step towards GK.
‘You can still call it off. What these guys are suggesting – controlling the fallout with the Army and the police – that’s not going to work. A single riot is all it will take to tear this country apart – and believe me, that riot will happen against your Emergency.’
‘We’ve had riots before,’ Nelson interrupted dismissively.
‘Those were communal riots,’ I cut him off. ‘One section against another. Largely localized. What we are looking at here is a possible civil war, like what’s happening in Africa or the Middle East.’
‘You’re an alarmist,’ Nelson said. ‘What we are doing today is avoiding that civil war you are talking about. Or, if you want me to look at it your way, we’re already living in the middle of one. You’ve got Maoists who’ve cut a swath across the eastern belt. You’ve got terrorists setting the law in Kashmir. You’ve got terror camps in Kerala, training youngsters to infiltrate and annihilate. If those can’t rip us apart, nothing else will.’
Jagannath laid a restraining arm on my shoulder. I tried to shrug it off, only to realize that his grip was firmer than I’d sensed. As I raised my hand to pull his off, he leaned in closer and said, ‘Relax, Selvam. We don’t want bloodshed any more than you do. We know what we are doing.’ His next words were addressed to GK. ‘That is why we need you to talk to everyone at the conference in Ghaziabad. The first ingredient for good governance is always a responsible opposition.’
16th September, 2012. New Delhi.
The air outside the gray building was absolutely still, hanging like a stifling curtain, heavy and humid. Even the birds stayed in the shadows, finding it too difficult to flap their wings and gain ascendancy in the search for food, preferring to save their energy for a less resistive atmosphere.
The air inside was electric, abuzz with barely contained excitement. The ten operatives manning the phones were restless, their attention drawn every few seconds from the console in front of them to the LED-lit countdown timer in the middle of the room. Their room was in full-lockdown mode and would remain so until the next phase of the operation was done. Except for an occasional beep from one of the electronic devices scattered around the room, it was so silent one could have heard sweat drop to the floor.
Abruptly, a buzzer sounded – and the countdown started.
All ten operatives swung into action at once, tapping their keyboards and calling out whispered commands into their headsets. In the blink of an eye, the instructions were transmitted to their recipients through SMS, email, pre-recorded phone calls, starting an avalanche of information whose sole objective was very simple.
Spread the news of the Emergency in thirty minutes across the whole country.
The operative who was in charge of activating all the emergency response teams triggered a burst of SMSes that would reach all the top officers in a hundred and twenty locations, covering most of the major cities and towns. The second wave would cover the remaining officers, and a third and final wave of messages would be sent out once again to the alternative numbers of all the officers.
The SMSes were routed through the National Disaster Management System, a multi-crore initiative that the government had rolled out with a lot of fanfare in 2004, right after the tsunami – and which had been, until recently, little more than a database of outdated contacts and escalation matrices. In the past few months, however, INSAF had silently patched up the system, building in a mobile communications framework that bypassed the regulator’s restrictions – particularly when it came to bulk SMSes – and updated the personnel database.
The system took less than a minute to process and dispatch the entire lot of messages. Built into the SMS was a request to the handset to acknowledge receipt. Within three minutes of the timer starting to count down, the screen in front of the operator was showing the statistics: 120 sent, 87 received, 33 switched off/outside service range. For the next twenty-seven minutes, the system would continue to ping for the 33 numbers it could not reach, even as the next round of messages were sent out.
The message was identical in every case:
Article 356 imposed. Assemble your team. Await orders from command. Pres on DD at 3 p.m. to announce officially.
Even as the emergency response teams were being activated, another operative started a program that hacked into all the ministerial email accounts in the country, including the prime minister’s and chief ministers’. The process was actually simpler than it sounded, since these passwords were rarely changed from the time they were set, and a bit of social engineering of the right person at the office yielded results where computer engineering had failed. From these accounts, emails were sent out to all the major media houses, although no particular recipient ever received more than one email from a source and certainly not more than two in total.
The email itself had been generated to look like an official press release from the Prime Minister’s Office, forwarded straightaway from the concerned ministry to their contact in the news industry, including typical errors of bureaucratic oversight that ironically enhanced the authenticity of those emails. Like the SMSes, the mails were brief and to the point – Article 356 (President’s Rule) imposed, State of Emergency declared, President to address the country on national television at exactly 3 p.m.
All the emails carried the phone numbers for the PMO.
‘Time for some social marketing!’ mumbled the third operative as he typed into his console. His program instantly logged on to accounts on social networks like Twitter and Facebook, simultaneously running at least twenty to twenty-five different identities. Each identity had been given a particular persona and had been created weeks in advance, the intervening time put to use by joining as many groups and forums as possible, all in preparation for a slew of updates within the next half hour.
Given the complexity of connecting to different websites, each with its own authentication system and safeguards, his work took longer than the others. This did not worry him, for his own milestones had been set accordingly. His sole concern was the online space, and every time he glanced at the timer, it reassured him that he was just marginally ahead of his schedule.
Within minutes, he had posted messages that would be seen by thousands of people over the next few minutes. The aim was not to tap the entire online crowd, but just enough to create a critical mass of attention for the topic. As the number of searches and hash-tags increased, the visibility for the topic would increase and in turn drive even more searches and tagged posts. A viral campaign with a purpose.
Complementing him on this was the fourth operative, who was
tasked with submitting anonymous news reports to various outlets. Despite the lack of credentials, it was a certainty that most of the articles would get published – at least, by the more sensational, and by extension, less discerning, publishers. During her first pilot run when she had circulated stories about a Cabinet reshuffle, the operative had seen irony defined. It was the more sensational and less accurate outlets that tended to have the maximum visitors.
Her output was more varied and more creative than the others’, and she was proud of the fact that she had written them herself. The principal submissions were different themes and rumours on the imposition of Emergency, ranging in cause from a tiff with the ruling party to a conspiracy by a foreign hand planning a series of devastating attacks; where all submissions converged on was the imminent imposition of Emergency and a possible explanation by the president himself on Doordarshan.
Other stories, no less sensational, ranged from the prime minister’s abrupt disappearance – hinting at everything from going underground to a plane crash in the Himalayas – to Mrs Pandit’s sudden medical trip to Japan, allegedly to avoid an arrest on charges of corruption; even the leader of the Opposition Mr Patel’s restraint in taking the government to task on the recent scandals was attributed to sinister back-office dealings.
Over the course of the next few days, if events occurred the way they had been planned, the first story would recede into the background while the other stories would slowly gain prominence, aided by appropriate noises from the new government’s machinery. Other reporters – genuine reporters – forever on the lookout for the next-big-story, would follow up on the theories and facts mentioned, frame their own discoveries and continue the discrediting of the biggest threats to the coup.
The task for the fifth operative was to activate the public-address vehicles – trucks and auto-rickshaws fitted with loudspeakers – across the country. The actual people executing this on the ground had already been retained weeks in advance, had been guaranteed amounts that ensured their dropping every other assignment at a moment’s notice, and had no idea what they had been hired for. Given the obvious security concerns over giving them the script in advance, INSAF had put in place a different – and much more efficient – system.
The first step was an SMS that alerted all the PAVs’ crew chiefs that they were required to dial a toll-free number immediately. As with the PAVs, hundreds of lines had been hired anonymously and through untraceable payments. A cloud of powerful computers controlled the incoming lines, noting the incoming numbers and comparing that with a pre-approved list; once a match was made, a recording would play continuously. The PAVs’ crews could either save the recording and then play it back on a loop, or keep the line open and play it over the speakers. It was the trickiest phase of the operation, when the PAVs realized that it was not a new nation-wide product launch that they had been signed up for but a startling pronouncement about the government. INSAF was prepared for the leakage that would happen due to some of the PAVs getting cold feet, but it was still the fastest way to get the message out to the people who were neither online nor glued to their television sets.
The timer continued its countdown . . .
16th September, 2012. Washington D.C.
President Timothy Jackson took the situation report that his chief-of-staff was holding out. He scanned it quickly before throwing it down on the table in front of him with a grunt. ‘That’s it? That’s all about what’s happening there right now?’
Winston Haywood shuffled his feet uncomfortably. The SitRep – rather, a poor excuse of a report unworthy of the effort – reflected badly on him as well, for he was the one who had lobbied for the current incumbent. The information contained within was not only sparse but also outdated, the latter the more serious crime.
‘Fuck it, Win,’ said the president. ‘Something’s gotta have leaked somewhere and our people should have been there to catch it. How the hell can he declare an Emergency without sounding out anyone about it?’
Winston shrugged, knowing he was not really required to give an answer immediately. The POTUS needed to vent because he had just been sandbagged, and that was not a normal state of existence for the most powerful man in the world. Winston understood the angst. It was election time in a few months and the Republican nominee for the White House would certainly use this surprise to drive home his argument that it was an inept and clueless administration under Jackson.
‘Do you realize the seriousness of this, Win?’
‘What?’ asked Winston, momentarily sidetracked by thoughts on strategies to combat the Republican opponent. ‘No, I missed it. What did you say?’
The other man shot him an exasperated look. ‘For God’s sake, Win, focus! I was asking you – because you don’t seem to have a clue why this is such a big deal – whether you understand why this is a big deal.’
‘He declares a state of Emergency – so what? What’s the worst he can do? He can’t do much worse than what they are doing now, right?’ Winston swept an arm out aimlessly. ‘The last time they reshuffled the Cabinet, every single minister who’s been accused of corruption recently was promoted to a better ministry. It’s like “Who wants to be a millionaire?” and everyone puts his hand up.’
The President sought to control his irritation. Not for the first time, he wondered how he had been able to work his way into the White House with Winston by his side. Almost as instantly as that thought came, he knew the answer too. Winston was the fixer, an organizer without equal and worth his weight in gold when it came to putting together fundraisers or quashing petty infighting in the camps. President Jackson was the man with the vision, the student of history and the creator of the future. That was why they worked well together. They needed each other, knew how limited they were without the abilities that the other possessed.
‘That’s beside the point,’ President Jackson said, gesturing for Winston to take the seat across the table. As Winston complied, President Jackson continued. ‘Do you remember the analysis our profilers put together on GK? Just before his first visit to the US, shortly after he became the president?’
Winston did not.
‘Well, I do. And it wasn’t a very . . . calming read, let me tell you. His early years – in fact, right till about the first time he was elected into the Parliament – were very quiet. Low profile, a silent worker, yada yada. But then, once he became a minister, things changed. He became more aggressive, more attention-hungry. His rise coincided with a leadership vacuum in the party, which he exploited. What he could not get, he would ensure that no one else did.
‘There were rumours that he burnt down entire slums just to clear the area for his real-estate investments; it’s also suspected that he was behind some of the high-profile assassinations at the time, up-and-coming political threats and activists who opposed him.’
President Jackson paused. Winston nodded, saying, ‘I got it. The guy’s ruthless.’
President Jackson spread his hands, as if to say, there you go. ‘But now, we come to the really interesting part. Despite all his efforts, Mrs Pandit came in to reclaim her family’s legacy. For all his ruthlessness, he couldn’t match her cunning. Before he knew it, she was holding the reins to control him. He wisely chose to give in, rather than fight it out . . . but he’s been biding his time, waiting for the moment when everything could be his.’
‘And you think that’s why he could be doing this?’
‘Would I bet on it? No. But would I bet against it? Hell no! If our profilers got at least half that shit right, we are looking at an Indian equivalent of Idi Amin or Gaddafi – and that’s being optimistic. What worries me even more is that he’s been known to be anti-American in his earlier years.’
‘Oh,’ said Winston, realization finally dawning.
‘Yes,’ said President Jackson. ‘And so far, we’ve had Kuldip and Pandit to take our policies across. If they are gone and this guy comes in . . . I don’t know. We’re going to have our work cut o
ut for us.’
‘You want me to take care of it?’ asked Winston after a few seconds of silence. President Jackson looked away, unable to answer immediately. The question was a euphemism for unauthorized and unacceptable actions – where the ends were important enough to want to be ignorant of the means. Even if it was the White House, precautions were always taken against an admission of guilt. This was not for the president’s benefit but for those below him. If the president is not impeached, then he can always offer a presidential pardon to those who carried out his silent intents. It was part of the standard welcome-home briefing for every tenant of the White House and his chief-of-staff.
His eyes settled on the black screen. He stared hard at it, imagining that he could still see GK, that he could still hear the superiority in the other’s voice.
‘No,’ he said finally. ‘Not yet.’
24th April, 2012. New Delhi.
The seconds were few, but the wait was nerve-wracking. Inside the steel confines of a cavernous elevator built for capacity instead of speed, Richa Naik kept flicking her eyes between her phone, hoping to see the no-signal icon change, and the floor-indicator, which seemed to have an almost-human reluctance in counting down the floors. She could imagine the cops rushing down the stairs, overtaking the slowest elevator in the world with ease and waiting for her with handcuffs ready to be slapped on.
As the doors opened, she heaved a cautious sigh of relief. There was no one in sight, and for just a brief moment, she felt stupid at having panicked over a phone call. True, the cops were probably looking for her – but that could have been just a routine enquiry or maybe even a lazy attempt to piggyback on her investigation and claim some credit at the end. Still, she stepped out gingerly, peering around the edge and at the stairs, ears searching for the sound of boots rushing down. Nothing. The muted strains of the hustle and bustle within the building mixed with the distant noises of the traffic were all that she could hear.