by Unknown
'General,' he heard the voice of a scientist begin in his earpiece. 'Please turn to your right and follow me.' He followed, walking between a row of lights, each bulb covering a cluster of eggs in a tray. They were in a sort of atrium. Far above was a ceiling. Five different levels of the laboratory ringed the outer wall. The first two were open. The upper levels were sealed with reinforced glass. Every twenty metres gauges told the temperature, humidity, air pressure and content of the atmosphere, including the level of hazardous materials.
Right at the top, he knew, was the lethal zone, where skin or lung contact with a virus, such as Ebola, or a chemical, like sarin, would lead to instant death. Below that were killer bacteria - anthrax, tularaemia, Rift Valley Fever and others. For years, his scientists had tried but failed to design an effective delivery system to carry the weapons on an intercontinental ballistic missile.
Park was led further into an area freshly hewn out of the underground chamber. The scientist stopped at a door and showed Park into another airlock. Once through, they entered an office. It was a practical room with two telephones, newspapers left on the top of a desk, a notice board with work rotas, political slogans and instructions for escape in case of fire. Four empty cups stood unwashed in a sink and cigarette butts filled an ashtray. The wall to the left showed a picture of Kim Il-sung. Faint martial music played through a speaker in the ceiling.
'You can take off your helmet now,' said the scientist. He removed his own, took off his spectacles and wiped them on a paper towel. 'General Park,' he said holding out his hand. 'My name is Li Pak. I am the senior virologist. It is a privilege to show you around.'
'So the deliveries from Australia and Russia were successful?' asked Park. He handed Li his helmet and let him unplug the headset from his shoulder.
'Indeed,' said Li enthusiastically. He pulled down a wall chart and switched on a laser torch, which he pointed at scientific symbols running along the top line of the chart. 'Now, if we start here--'
'Forget this stuff,' snapped Park. 'Tell me as if I'm a child. I will have to explain this to our enemies in simple terms. You must inform me in the same words.'
His hand shaking, Li turned off the laser and put it on a tray under the chart. 'We have just passed through the area where we are keeping eggs which carry the smallpox virus,' he began hesitantly. 'As you know, the Americans, British and others have mass-stocked a smallpox vaccine. Once infected, a patient takes two or three days to contract the disease, and several weeks to die. Within that time, the patient can be vaccinated and make a full recovery.'
Park began pulling out a chair. Li broke off to help him. He brushed his hand sycophantically across the seat as if to clean it before Park sat down, then took a seat himself on the other side of the table. 'From Australia we procured mice which had been vaccinated with an agent called interleukin-4 or IL-4. Originally, IL-4 had been part of an experiment to sterilize mice. Of course, it was impossible to vaccinate every mouse. So the idea had been to spread IL-4 through the mouse population on a relatively harmless virus known as mousepox. But IL-4 was far more active than had been anticipated--'
Park slammed his hand down on the table. 'I don't need every detail,' he threatened. 'What I want to know is, does it work?'
Li glanced straight at Park, but didn't hold his gaze. To do so would have been insubordinate.
'We did try using IL-4 with mousepox on humans. But it had no impact. From the agent, we designed another sterilizing substance which is specific to the human ovaries. But again, it did not work on humans when we used mousepox.'
'That is when you asked me to procure smallpox from Pokrov?' said Park, staring directly at the virologist.
'Correct,' answered Li, softly. He lowered his head. 'I believe our redesigned IL-4 and smallpox will have the same impact on humans as IL-4 and mousepox did on mice. Once contracted, death will take place within a matter of hours.'
Park put both hands evenly on the table. 'You haven't tested?'
Li shook his head. 'I am waiting for your instructions.'
Park stood up. 'Very well. Show me.'
Li pulled up the chart and drew back a curtain behind, revealing a panel of thick glass. He turned on a lamp on the other side, lighting up raw mountain rock, with water dripping in dark rivulets from the roof. Below were six metal cages. Inside each one was a woman, her hands tied and hauled up by a chain locked on to a ring embedded in the wall. Because of the uneven surface of the floor, the women lay mostly in puddles, their damp clothes clinging to their skeletal bodies. Two of them reacted to the light, looking up towards it, then looking away. They looked healthier than the other four, who hung limply, apparently unaware that anything had changed at all.
Park turned round angrily. 'Where are they from?' he snapped.
'Khechen,' muttered Li, referring to North Korea's most notorious women's labour camp.
'How dare you?' Park whispered, tapping the glass. 'In there? Is it contaminated?'
'No, General. Except for any diseases they themselves are carrying,' answered Li, taken aback.
'Then let me inside.'
'But, General--'
'Let me inside, damn you,' shouted Park. Li picked up a telephone and called through to the guards. To the left of the glass a door slid open. Park stormed through. He was immediately hit by the cold, dank airlessness. Two guards saluted him. He returned the salute. 'Unlock this door,' he ordered, pointing to the cage furthest to the left.
Park stalked in and knelt down next to the woman. 'Free her hands,' he instructed. The guard undid the padlock which chained her to the wall. The woman dropped to the floor, but strangely, her arms stayed outstretched just as when they were bound. They had been forced into that position for so long. Park held her head in his arms.
'Get me some water,' he said. The guard brought a cup. Park put it to the woman's scarred lips. He poured a few drops into her mouth and she was able to swallow it. Park checked her pulse and the reaction from her eyes. They flickered, but took little in. Park dropped her to the ground, stood up and walked out.
'You idiot,' he shouted at Li. 'These women are dying. Do you think a test with them would give us an accurate result?'
Li lowered his head and scraped his shoes on the damp rock. Park continued: 'Americans and Europeans have the best health care in the world. Their immune systems are first rate. How can you match that with these sick, pathetic animals. In these cells, I want to see six healthy human beings. Only then, doctor, will I give you permission to begin your tests.'
Behind his thick spectacles, Li was both delighted and crestfallen. Park's predecessor would never have allowed such an audacious experiment. He cleared his throat. 'General, then with your permission, we will have to use Caucasian subjects.'
Park appeared to sink into deep thought. 'Of course,' he muttered. 'Of course you will.'
'Negroes, too?'
'Not necessary,' said Park, holding up his hand. 'The repressed American blacks will be on our side. But, a vaccine. There is no good having the weapon without an antidote.'
'And these?' Li asked, indicating towards the women.
'Get rid of them,' snapped Park.
Back in the guardroom, the phone was ringing. Li answered it and passed it to Park. The call was on a secure military line from Pyongyang. 'General,' said Park's aide-de-camp. 'Professor Memed escaped the Philippines. He is due in Pyongyang tomorrow morning.'
On the other side of the glass, porters lifted the women on to stretchers and took them away for execution.
****
Delhi, India*
'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.