by Unknown
The first voice came from the interrogator on the right. His colleague never spoke at all.
'When were you told to carry out the attack?'
'We were never given a date,' Taleb replied. The camera moved closer in to show the synchronization of the voice and the lips.
'You mean you could have attacked any time you wanted,' pressed the interrogator who was now off screen.
'Not any time.'
'What, then?'
'It was to be a certain time before President Khan's visit to Malaysia. That is all we knew.'
'So you knew he was to be murdered?'
'We knew?'
'All of you.'
'No. I knew and Khamis, who has been martyred, knew.'
'Who is Khamis? Is he the one who flew the plane?'
'Yes.'
'Who told you?'
Silence.
'Who told you?'
Silence again. The camera returned to a wide view. A guard stepped in and roughly pulled away the cover on Taleb's eyes. The interrogator leaned over the bed and thrust a photograph in front of Taleb's eyes. 'Do you know this man?'
Taleb didn't answer. His face gave nothing away. The interrogator turned the photograph to the camera. He put another one in front of Taleb, who remained expressionless. Then with a third one, he blinked and swallowed. A fourth, nothing again. On the fifth, his eyes reacted harshly, flaring at the camera with hatred. And on the sixth, whether on purpose or by instinctive reaction, he tilted his head to say he knew the identity of the man being shown to him.
Each picture was also shown to the camera. The third was of a woman with whom Taleb was known to have been in love, kneeling on a bed, naked and kissing another man with her hands draped around his neck. The fifth was of Taleb's father, an elderly man, his head yanked backwards, being marched away by police, and his mother, her hands held helplessly in front of her, standing at the door of his childhood home. The sixth photograph was of Air Vice-Marshal Tassudaq Qureshi, in full uniform, against a backdrop of a line of F-16 fighter aircraft.
'And him?' said the interrogator, showing him another picture. 'Do you know who he is?'
A tilt of the head again.
'Who?' pressed the interrogator.
'Qureshi,' whispered Taleb.
'Have you met him?'
'He talked to us. Yes.'
'When?'
'Before the death of Khan. But I met him before that even, during the Kashmir Jihad. He talked to us then as well.'
Mehta turned off the video. The screen went back to him. He unplugged the laptop and handed it down to Meenakshi.
'Do any of you know these guys?' West asked the senators in the Oval Office. 'Pat, how about you?' he said, looking at Patrick Chase, by far the oldest politician in the room, who had made his career by speaking on security and intelligence issues. 'A bit, Mr President. They're guys we've used and abused over the years, just like Mehta said.'
'Get Peter Brock up here,' said West to Kozerski.
On the screen, Mehta took another drink of water. 'This General Assembly is not a world government and its resolutions are not legally binding. So I am not here to ask for any of that. I am here to use this forum to give a message to the United States of America. You know Najeeb Hussain and Tassudaq Qureshi. Like Pakistan itself, you have helped mould these men into what they are. If you are to retain your position as the only world superpower, you will dismantle the authority of these men and everything they represent. You will do it swiftly, without debate and with whatever means necessary. You have failed to protect our nation, and India is giving you one last chance to prove you are worthy of the great responsibility you volunteered to take on. If you do not act, India will go it alone. If you do not back us, we will consider you to be against us. Mr Secretary-General, thank you for allowing me the floor.'
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33*
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Mount Kanggamchan missile base, North Korea*
Park Ho caught Vasant Mehta's address on BBC World just as he was leaving. He heard the helicopter coming in to land and listened to the throb of its engines from the roof as the Indian Prime Minister flung down the gauntlet to the United States. When Mehta finished a few delegates clapped, but their efforts were soon lost in the confusing silence which followed the end of the speech.
Park watched the transmission, transfixed by the event. He was trying to work out how much Mehta knew and how much America knew. How much would Mehta still be hiding? And how seriously was he challenging Jim West to back him in a war to destroy Pakistan?
On the screen, in the UN Assembly Hall, carefully, using the rostrum for balance, Mehta stepped down and rested his hands on Meenakshi's wheelchair. Someone ran across the stage this time and handed him the fallen cane. And when Mehta and Meenakshi started their slow journey back, a hum of voices began around the hall, getting louder and louder until the presenter cut in, eyes down on her notes to recite the main points of Mehta's speech.
Mehta had exposed Qureshi. He had named China. But North Korea had not been named. Park had just taken his coat from the back of the door when the weathered face of Senator Patrick Chase appeared on screen, his plentiful grey hair blown about in the wind. The shot widened to show the senator standing on a spot just inside the White House grounds reserved for press interviews.
'Yes, I did watch it with the President,' said Chase when asked. 'And it's for the President to give his own reaction. I have just this to say. America feels for the Indian Prime Minister and his family. Both he and his nation have been through a terrible tragedy. But it is wrong to turn on your friends. America is a friend and ally of India. We will do everything we can to help it through this difficult time. But we do not enjoy being threatened by any nation at any time, regardless of what ordeal it is recovering from.'
Park turned off the television, locked the door behind him and took the lift to the roof. Outside, the helicopter rotor blades threw a rush of cool air towards him. Park broke into a jog. As soon as he was on board, the pilot lifted off, turning south and climbing to clear the mountains ahead. The journey did not take long, but it was enough time for Park to change from military uniform into a suit and tie. The helicopter dipped through a cloud which hung between peaks and juddered down to a helipad on top of an octagonally shaped building, next to a fast-running river and flanked by high trees.
He was met by the virologist, Li Pak, who escorted him down to the hotel grounds, with its manicured gardens, tennis courts, a golf course, swimming pool and riding stables. For anyone who didn't know better, it was a remote luxury resort, hidden away in pristine mountains.
Underneath was a vast military complex, completely invisible from above ground.
A line of Mercedes limousines curved round the driveway, together with two coaches displaying a local tourism logo. From a frozen fountain in the centre, craftsmen were sculpturing the image of a missile in the ice. Inside, the foyer was a ten-storey atrium. A statue of Kim Il-sung, dressed in casual slacks and a short-sleeved shirt, was suspended from the ceiling. Mingling with the guests and staff were members of Park's own Reconnaissance Bureau protection unit, trained to such sophisticated levels that they could be infiltrated into almost any society anywhere in the world with little risk of detection.
Park in his suit and Li Pak in his open-neck blue shirt attracted no undue attention. Sitting or wandering between the armchairs, the bar and the coffee shop were some of the passengers from the missing Air Koryo flight - two Chinese, a Pakistani and two Russians, all of them concentrating on a BBC World television interview with the Chinese President Jamie Song.
Park wanted to go into the bar to watch. But the men off the flight were still alive and not in a prison cell precisely because they belonged to the intelligence agencies of friendly governments. If they saw Park, they would recognize him. Park held back in the lobby, the picture distant but clear enough to see the Chinese President speaking against a studio backdrop picture of Tiananmen Square.
> 'Yes, I have spoken to Vasant Mehta about our alliance with Pakistan,' said Song. 'Our conversations have been confidential and - as a matter of detail - I can tell you they are conducted in English without interpreters.'
'But the point surely is, President Song,' interrupted the presenter, 'that the Indian Prime Minister made a direct accusation about China's involvement in terrorism which originates from Pakistan.'
'You have a vivid imagination,' laughed Song, genially. 'Although, in a broad-brush way, you could be partly right. Pakistan is India's enemy. They have been at war on and off for more than sixty years. China is an ally of Pakistan. We supply it with conventional weapons, not, I stress, with nuclear weapons. All this is a matter of record. We are trading partners. And I might add that our trade with India has also grown tenfold in the past decade. Now, India believes that if we stop giving Pakistan military support, its troubles would end. This, I am afraid, is not the case. Indeed, if you follow India's argument to its conclusion, every government-to-government relationship would be determined by the arms trade and that simply is not the case. What must be addressed is not the weapons supply but the causes of conflict.'
The picture turned back to an impatient presenter, now captioned as Susannah Sampson, her blonde hair hooked back behind her ear revealing the earpiece through which she was getting instructions from the studio.
'All right, then,' she said, with an engaging smile that Song could not see. 'To a related subject: do you know either General Najeeb Hussain or Air Vice-Marshal Tassudaq Qureshi?'
'Qureshi, I know,' said Song, his face deadpan and throwing the presenter off balance.
'Er, you said you know him?' she managed.
'He was passing through Beijing recently. It happened after the attack on the Indian Parliament. He had a long-scheduled appointment with our military, and I took the opportunity to call him into my office in Zhongnanhai.'
'Zhongnanhai being the complex of offices at the heart of Chinese government,' Sampson commented to remind her viewers. 'And what did you tell him?'
'We had what you might call a full and frank exchange of views. I sent a recording of the conversation to Vasant Mehta. It is up to him to disclose its contents.'
'Are you saying you have taken measures to help India?'
'I will only say that no nation can take its alliance with any other nation for granted. There are some boundaries which must not be crossed. Prime Minister Mehta has given the United States a similar message in his address today. It is one which China has much empathy with.' Song leant forward in his seat. 'Now, I do apologise to your viewers around the world, but I have a pressing schedule which I must now get back to.'
He was unplugging his earpiece when Sampson threw in one more question. 'Mr President, what about North Korea? What can you tell us about what's happening there?'
Rather than be filmed disentangling himself from earpieces and microphones, Song chose to answer. 'There's been a military takeover in North Korea, Susannah,' he said authoritatively. 'We are not certain who is in charge. Americans are grieving their dead from Yokata. We all feel so much for them. Jim West and his team have done a brilliant job in defusing a world crisis. South Korea has acted in a statesmanlike manner by apologizing for that dreadful shooting at Panmunjom. China is party to the talks going on now at the United Nations in New York to make sure no such tragedy happens again.'
'But if the US strikes North Korea--'
'Susannah,' smiled Song, with visible impatience. 'If you were party to my conversations with Jim West, you would not even be asking that question. There will be no strike.'
Park slipped away before the hotel guests turned their attention away from the television. Li led him downstairs to the basement, and they took a lift two more storeys down. They stepped out on to the top floor of another atrium, carved deep into the ground.
'You've taken them to a different place?' queried Park, as Li ushered him along.
'Yes, General,' said Li. 'This is a totally new series of experiments for us. We have to test contamination areas, which is why the subjects are kept in different areas. For example, at one time in a hospital in Germany the cough from one patient with smallpox contaminated patients on three other floors of the building. So we are looking at that, together with the survivability of the virus in varying temperatures. Whether ethnicity is making a difference in the fatality of the disease. That sort of thing.'
Li Pak, having been left alone with his science, was more relaxed with Park Ho now. He handed the general a white coat from a cupboard, put one on himself, then opened the door into an observation room. Two scientists were working at computers. Another two looked through a floor-to-ceiling glass panel, checking what they saw on high-resolution video monitors at their desks.
'We have conducted one experiment using the variola major virus and IL-4 on a Caucasian,' explained Li, offering Park a chair at the end of the room. 'He died within two days. It was astonishing. Even with haemorrhagic and malignant forms of smallpox death usually takes at least five days after the onset of the rash.'
'What about normal smallpox?' said Park, becoming absorbed with what he saw on the other side of the glass.
'The incubation period is up to fourteen days after infection,' said Li. 'Patients rarely become infectious themselves until the appearance of the rashes. Six days after that neutralizing antibodies are detected. Then--'
'How do we distribute the weapon?' interrupted Park, his back to Li and his head resting on the glass.
'We have a window of only a few weeks to decide. Once summer comes in Europe and the United States, the virus will survive only a few hours. In temperatures of 31 degrees, it will be less than six hours. If we strike in colder temperatures - no more than 10 degrees Celsius, with humidity no more than 20 per cent, the virus will have a lifespan of at least twenty-four hours, more than three times longer.'
'I asked how do we distribute, not how long it would take,' snapped Park.
'We are still experimenting with the aerosol,' replied Li, contritely. 'So far we have been unable to stabilize the virus enough to survive the pressurized delivery. If it did work, it would infect between fifty and a hundred people. The second generation would expand ten or twenty times, say the infection of 2,000 people, and the third generation would infect 40,000 and so on. But with the normal incubation rate, General, I do not believe we would achieve what we want. After the first generation, the whole population would be vaccinated--'
'I thought you said the IL-4 agent would neutralize the antidote,' said Park, turning round and looking Li straight in the eye.
The scientist hesitated: 'They know the IL-4 mousepox agent is missing from the Canberra laboratory. They also know about the theft from the Pokrov laboratories near Moscow. They don't know where it went, but they will be manufacturing new vaccine. Again, the longer we wait, the greater the chances are they will have a vaccine.'
Park glanced sceptically across at Li. 'This is a military offensive, not a scientific experiment.'
'General, I understand it better than most. If we deliver this weapon so that it is neutralized within a few days and if our second or third missile launches fail, then the whole project will fail. We will be conquered and the United States will be stronger than ever. The only way we can win is by using the weapon of fear and by showing we can deliver it. This is your campaign, General. You have others working on the missiles. For my part, I will guarantee you the best and most widespread delivery. But you have to trust me.'
For a second, Park hesitated, enough to let Li know he had broken through the outer membrane of this most impenetrable military leader. Park coughed, brought out a packet of cigarettes, then had second thoughts. 'All right, comrade,' he said slowly. 'What do you propose?'
'We will carry out simultaneous experiments with aerosol and human delivery. Once we know the exact contamination strength of the IL-4/smallpox virus, we will attack. If the aerosol is unreliable, we will have to use a human delivery mechanis
m. It will not be so effective, but with the speed of fatalities from the IL-4 agent we will be able to achieve our objectives.'
Park nodded and turned back to watch what was happening on the other side of the glass. Scientists moved around in biohazard suits. The body of a blonde woman - the Swedish aid worker, Agneta Carlsson - lay on a marble slab. She had been stripped of her clothes. Her skin was covered in scabs and lesions, from which one scientist was taking samples.
To the left, but separated by a wall of reinforced glass, were two middle-aged Caucasian men. The British ambassador to Pyongyang, Bob Robertson, and the Hungarian ambassador, Jozsef Striker, were sitting at a desk, drinking coffee. They glanced up from time to time at the two-way mirror, and it was then that the apprehension showed in their faces. They were confined but not handcuffed or restricted.