by AJAY
"So you went to Lahore to make your mother happy."
"Yes."
"Tell me the password."
"I don't know."
"Mr. Malik, your story is complete trash. You say you bought this MacBook through eBay and logically you must have the data of your research paper in it. And you say you don't know the password."
Aban kept absolutely mum, as he saw no point in arguing with the officer. The officer continued, "You have to submit your research paper before Christmas and your school is not closed for vacation. Still you are jockeying around in Lahore. You don't inspire any confidence, Mr. Malik."
Robert McLean recorded Aban's statement and declared, "You are under arrest."
When Robert McLean came out of his room, Juhi hurried up to him, "Sir, can you tell me what's going on?"
"The matter is serious. I'm afraid I can't tell you anything right now."
"I know Aban. He is a simple guy."
"This is a matter of national security and I suggest you leave this place now."
Juhi came out, but decided to wait around the Residency office instead of leaving the terminal. After a while, Aban, handcuffed, and accompanied by Robert McLean and two other officers came out of the room. His eyes met Juhi's fleetingly. Juhi's blue eyes remained fixed on Aban, who walked slowly as the officer exited the JFK terminal.
Juhi could barely hold back her tears when she dialled her father's number.
"Where are you, my little doll?"The delighted Ambassador was quite over the moon.
"At the airport."
"Why? Your flight landed four hours back."
"I'm in love with a boy, dad."
"Great! That's wonderful, my little bird. Is he the reason for you being tied down at the airport?"
"Yes."
"Oh! Come home quickly and bring him along, so that your mind is not stuck with him while you are here."
"Dad…"
"Is the boy with you?"
"The FBI has arrested him."
The Intelligence Bureau
Operation Black Tornado finished when the last terrorist was shot down at the Taj Mahal Hotel, Mumbai. The terrorists had massacred one hundred and seventy three people, ruthlessly bumped off three senior police officers of the Mumbai ATS, cold-bloodedly shot dead a Major of the NSG and liquidated dozens of cops and commandos. More than three hundred people were grievously injured. Many battled for life while a few became incapacitated for life. A few lucky ones got away with simple first aid.
They had inflicted an eternal everlasting wound on the vibrant city, something that would bleed for a long, long time.
Siddhartha Rana went to Delhi to brief the Director of IB about all the leads pertaining to the Mumbai attack. When he mentioned that the FBI wanted to interrogate Juhi, the Director became uncomfortable. "You shouldn't have got the daughter of our Ambassador involved."
"I agree, sir. I told Robert to leave her alone. But he doesn't seem to have ears."
"What is making him so hard-nosed?"
"He says Juhi claims to be the girlfriend of Aban. On the day of the Mumbai attack, she was in the rooftop restaurant of the Hotel Taj Mahal. She managed to escape without so much as a scratch, when others even from the second and third floor, could not make it. As soon as she came out of the hotel, a Pakistani national called her on her cell phone. They have arrested the same caller, Aban Malik. According to Robert, the whole series of events is like smoke and mirror, raising sufficient suspicion in the minds of the FBI."Siddhartha went on to explain everything he had heard from Robert McLean.
"Any lead on his father, Imran Shah Malik?"
"He's disappeared."
"How could he?"The Director appeared upset with the recent setbacks. "We asked R&AW to provide us with his complete profile. Have we managed to get hold of his computer ip addresses? Didn't their agent in Lahore gather information regarding all his recent activity? What of the bugs planted in his house? I have instructed our agents at Lahore to shadow him all the time. Still he escaped? Quite surprising!"
He instructed Siddhartha Rana, "Get in touch with Sundaram Iyer and ask him if he can throw some light on all this. I know the Director of the CBI had assigned a related case to him two years back. However, the CBI closed the matter. Try to find out the reason."
"I'm sorry sir, but I think the IB should examine the case on its own without attracting the attention of others."
"Why?"
"Luckily, we got a small opening when Mr. Malik talked with his son on his car phone."Siddhartha put in plain words everything he knew and then continued, "However, we still don't know what's in his computer. And, for the time being, I don't want to share the contents of the computer with any other agency."
The Director sighed. He raised his eyebrow and directed, "Then, Mr. Rana, I want you to take up the entire case, bunch everything up and try to get something out of it."
"Sir!"
"I'll have to talk to the Foreign Secretary regarding Juhi and also to Ambassador Shergill. Otherwise, it might escalate into a diplomatic disaster."
"Indeed, sir. I have a nagging feeling that there is more to the Mumbai attack than meets the eye. We need to act, or else we will never know what's brewing in Pakistan."
"What do you suggest?"
"I'll have to go to the US"
"Not now. There is one more puzzle."The Director gave an account of every detail to Siddhartha: about the bumping off of the AIG of the CISF, the indecipherable name of a person's name starting with 'Sun… ' and some bizarre phrase 'To Pak To'.
Siddhartha came out of the Director's office and went to his room. The truth, it appeared was hidden behind several manifestations of falsehood.
Wandering
Imran Shah Malik wandered all over Pakistan and travelled to India a few times. He deliberately steered clear of everyone except his enigmatic brother, who, one day showed up in front of Imran, unannounced.
Imran's brother assured him that the Government of Pakistan or ISI had no role in the shootout. Surprisingly, both LeT and al Qaeda had expressed complete ignorance of any happening of this sort too. So, Imran's enemy still remained a mystery.
His brother also suggested that Imran remain in hiding for a few weeks until the matter settled down. Although Imran's brother was aware of Aban's arrest, he did not disclose it, thinking Imran might end up doing something that would endanger his own life as well as Aban's. He wanted to work out a solution on his own.
Imran Shah Malik was himself preoccupied, as he had to tie up a crucial loose end. He had not instructed Aban to securely erase the file from his computer when he had told him to make a backup of his computer.
Imran wrote a letter to Nausheen, mentioning that it would take a few days more before he could visit home. He mentioned a date and a time late at night, when Nausheen was to power on the computer and connect it to the Internet through Apple Airport Extreme Base Station, which was highly secured by a WPA2 Enterprise wireless security.
Imran's brother, disguised himself as the regular milkman, and visited Nausheen's home in Lahore. He handed over the letter. Both talked briefly and the 'milkman' left.
On the date mentioned in the letter, Nausheen powered on the computer and switched on the Base Station. The computer booted and demanded a password. As soon as she keyed-in the alphanumeric code, the computer screen came alive. She turned on the Wi-Fi connection.
Far away, in the Business Centre of Karachi Sheraton Hotel, Imran Shah Malik remotely accessed the home screen while playing with a computer keyboard. He downloaded a text file containing a few codes and transferred it to a hidden memory chip in his customized watch. He uploaded a few files from his home computer to a cloud account. He then securely erased the files of his home computer and typed the shutdown command.
Hours before the computer had gone into a deathly sleep, it had already transferred the ip address, the password, and the username to the Systems Office of the IB in India. A miniature program silently got embedded in
the OS X Leopard operating system. The program collected data in the background, encoded and zipped the contents, and silently transferred them to the intended destination'the server of the Intelligence Bureau office of India.
Triangulation
Siddhartha Rana requisitioned the telephone numbers of the AIG of the CISF, who was shot dead on the Noida Golf Road. He asked the telecom service operator to provide the details of the movement of the officer on the day of his death.
The telecom company extracted each of the tower positions, which had caught the AIG's cell phone network on the fateful day. The AIG had stayed home for the entire day and then from Noida, driven over the Kalindi Kunj Bridge, turned to Mathura Road and finally arrived somewhere near Connaught Place. At the Connaught place location, his cell phone had caught the signal from three towers at different points of time during his three-hour long stay: a tower on Oriental Bank of Commerce, another near LNJP Park, and the third on Bhagwan Das Road.
"A person on some secret mission needs a secluded place. Restaurants now-a-days are too crowded. Some innocuous apartment could be an option. However, the most probable location would be a hotel room, where the hidden truth may be easily buried,"thought Siddhartha as he spread the map of Delhi and concentrated on the Connaught Place area. He took out a pencil and a scale and joined all three places. A triangle lay bare before him. "What would be the best position for a cell phone to catch the network from three different positions of a triangle?"He was thinking aloud, "The median!"
When he calculated the median, it pointed to one place ' Lalit Intercontinental Hotel.
Nausheen
One afternoon, Nausheen dozed off and dreamt about Aban when he was a toddler. Aban was on his father's back, tapping Imran's shoulder as if Imran were some Arab steed. On the weekend, in their small Rawalpindi apartment, father and son frolicked the entire day until little Aban got tired and slept. In the next sequence, Nausheen was running after Aban to get him to have his milk and a meal, but he was as ever raring to go on with the next game, and the next, and the next. Moreover, his father was ever willing to invent ingenious and imaginative games for his son.
Then Nausheen saw herself pushing a stroller in Ayub Park. Suddenly an old man, with a long flowing beard, lifted Aban from the stroller and sprinted towards the War Hero Monument. She wanted to run after him, but her legs failed her.
Nausheen woke up in a cold sweat, "Where is Aban?"
A mother's instinct told her that something was wrong.
She had already tried to contact him on his cell phone, but it was switched off. She then spoke with Aban's professor and a few students. They confirmed that Aban had not been seen on campus and were unaware of his whereabouts.
Nausheen wanted to get in touch with her husband, but his phones did not respond. She went to her bedroom and opened the drawer, hoping to find some clue. If only she could find the US addresses from where Aban had written the letter to her, then she might be able to trace him.
In one of the letters, Aban had written, "Dear Ammi, I'm fine. I'm sorry I could not drop a line. My friends and I are doing the Dirt Bike Cross-country Race from New York to Duluth and back. Right now, we have just crossed the stunning Delaware Water Gap. The gorgeous sight of the Delaware River cutting through the huge ridge of the Appalachian Mountains is out of this world. The biking is great and we are having a good time. In our next leg of the journey, we will meander all along the Great Lakes and also cross the cities: Cleveland, Detroit, Michigan, Chicago, and hike across the beautiful countryside. We will be back in Cornell after a week. Pray to Allah for my bike-team's victory…"
Nausheen sighed, "Oh Dear! This boy prefers his bike to his Ammi."
She found another email from the Dirt Motorbike Racing Company, inviting Aban to participate in the winter race. The contest was scheduled for two days after Aban had left for the US.
Nausheen called up the company to enquire about her son. The company promised to call her back if and when they had any news.
She waited.
In the meantime, the company received a message from the FBI. Finally, Nausheen received a call from the company, telling her not to lose sleep, stating in the most enigmatic terms that her son was on a great journey.
South Block
The Director of IB went to South Block to see the Foreign Secretary. He explained the situation to the Secretary and how the FBI was dragging Juhi, the daughter of the Indian Ambassador to the USA, into a controversy.
The Secretary was worried. He asked his PA to connect to the Under Secretary for Political Affairs of the US Department of State. After explaining everything to the officer, he hung up.
The Secretary turned his attention to the Director of IB, "The situation seems to be messy. The FBI has already reported the matter to the Secretary of State, stating that they will need to call the daughter of the Ambassador for questioning. They say that Juhi may throw light on the Mumbai attack, since she is in a relationship with Aban."
"Sir, the riddle is full of twists and turns. We still need to join many missing dots: the AIG's murder, Mr. Malik's instruction to his son to take the backup of his computer to the US. Aban's closeness with Juhi seems to be just the tip of the iceberg. There is certainly more underneath. The AIG mentioned something 'bigger' than a certain Project Karachi. However, we still don't know what it is and what could be bigger. Then, there is this 'To Pak To", which we have not been able to decipher.
"What do you propose then?"
"I think our Foreign Minister should talk to the US Secretary of State. He should talk to the Director of the FBI to keep us in the loop. I'm sending my Joint Director, Siddhartha Rana, to New York in order to coordinate the investigation."The Director went on to explain every lead in the case.
"The Foreign Minister is in the meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security. Once he is back, I'll ask him to work out the nitty-gritties."
Lalit Intercontinental Hotel
Siddhartha Rana reached the Lalit Intercontinental Hotel and went to the front desk. The reception staff escorted him to the spacious chamber of the General Manager.
Siddhartha showed the photograph of the AIG to the General Manager and wanted to confirm whether any staff member had seen him. The GM called the Concierge and asked him to help Siddhartha.
The Concierge took him to the Maître d'hôtel and asked him the name of the servitors and butler, who were on duty on 26/11. The list was more than one hundred names long. The manager called up each of them, one by one, in his chamber and showed them the photograph.
One of the butlers recognized the AIG as he had attended the visitors and was rewarded with a handsome tip. "Yes sir, there were four people in the Presidential suite."
"What time did they leave?"
"Just before midnight."
"On the same day."
"Yes."
"Did anyone stay the night?"
"No. All of them left."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes sir. I went for clearance to the room the minute they left since the next guest was to arrive in half an hour."
"Can you describe what they looked like?"
The butler recalled everything that he could. Siddhartha noted down each description and then asked the butler to report to his office the next day so that the graphic experts could draw a fairly accurate sketch of the three remaining people.
Siddhartha went back to the office of the GM and asked him to get the video footage captured by roof-mounted cameras at: the Lalit Luxury Lounge, near the Presidential Suite, elevators, along with any other place from where the guests might have entered or left the hotel between nine pm and midnight on that day.
Siddhartha once again called the butler and asked him to go through each of the images and try to recognize the people. The Butler concentrated on each footage, frame by frame, while Siddhartha wondered if he should have caught a flight to New York, instead of solving a murder mystery and dwelling upon some unknown Project Karachi.
The GM extracted the details from his computer terminal, "Hussein Pharma Ltd. of Dubai."
"Who are they?"
"They are our corporate clients."
"Any telephone number or business card of the company?"
"Oh yes,"the GM printed out the details and handed it over to Siddhartha.
"Can I use your computer?"
"My pleasure, sir."
Siddhartha typed the web address of the company. The site mentioned that it was an export company that specialized in bulk drugs. Siddhartha visited the 'contact us' web-link and found telephone numbers, names of executives and email ids and a Post Box Number in Dubai. There were links for placing export orders. Nothing looked unusual.
Siddhartha Rana rang up the registered number of the company. "Sir, I'm calling from Lalit Intercontinental Hotel, Delhi. There is excess payment of bill by your company. Please let me know where the hotel management should send you the cheque."
"That's not needed. Please charge it to your staff welfare fund."
"We don't do such a thing, sir. It's against the policy of our company."
"Let it remain as a credit in our company's ledger account."The line went dead.
Siddhartha seemed to have hit a dead end. Except the AIG of the CISF, who had been captured by the camera, the butler could not find any of the other three persons in the video footage.
Siddhartha asked the GM, "Are there any other exit points, where you don't have any video camera?"
"No, sir. As per the new government guidelines we have to monitor every visitor and guard each point."
"Oh!"Siddhartha sighed.
The Butler cut in, "If someone uses the fire exit, we don't have cameras there."
"Isn't the exit guarded?"
"It is. But an inferno doesn't strike every day. So, that is an excellent place for the security guys to doze off."
"Who knows,"thought Siddhartha, "India may have to pay a big price because someone chose to snooze!"