Dragonfire

by Humphrey Hawksley

  Tashi was a Tibetan, who had spent a year at Johns Hopkins University in the States. He was a member of the Chinese Communist Party and an employee of the Second Department of the General Staff Department, responsible for training agents in intelligence-gathering abroad. Largely unknown, however, was its added role in carrying out covert military operations on foreign soil.

  Tashi was a sleeper agent. His controller used just two Hindi words to alert him to the mission. Tashi exercised for fifteen minutes, showered in cold water, which spluttered and dribbled. He lathered his scalp, then stepped out of the shower to shave it in front of the mirror, watching the contours of his skull as clumps of hair fell into the basin.

  The orange and maroon saffron robe was folded in his bag, and he shook it out, watching the dust fly out around the room. He wrapped it round him, checking the pockets he had sewn on inside. A driver was waiting when he walked outside his building, and he followed him to a red Maruti jeep. If they talked Tashi had been told to address the driver as Sattar, but they travelled in silence.

  At Una, the road forked into little more than two country tracks, and Sattar had to ask the way. Tashi wound down his window to let in the fresh morning air. As they climbed the mountain, the countryside became emblazoned with orange and blue spring flowers, sometimes beautiful, sometimes wrecked by the poverty of the villages. After the first bridge across the Dehra River, when the pine trees began, Tashi slipped the grenades into the pockets of his robe, two on each side.

  After Lower Dharamsala, which was still a predominantly Indian town, Sattar took the longer but better route to Upper Dharamsala or MacLeod Ganj, driving round by the Gorkha Army Cantonment at Forsyth Ganj. As they climbed and wound round the mountain the view became more and more spectacular, stretching right down the Kangra Valley on one side and up to the mountains, heavily covered in snow, on the other. The Gorkha battalion was fighting in Kashmir and only a skeleton staff looked after the building. But Tashi wanted to see it for himself, to check how quickly professional troops would arrive after the operation. The sentry boxes were mostly deserted and rusted padlocks hung on many of the gates. The windows of the officers’ mess were even boarded up.

  Kashmir was sucking in the Indian troops. There were almost three-quarters of a million men there now and still the war went on, funded and fuelled by Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and a dozen other Islamic countries wanting to cause trouble. Tashi wondered why India had allowed the Tibetans to open up a second front in China. It just seemed crazy to him. He checked his watch. The journey had taken just over five hours. In half an hour his job would be over. They left the cantonment area and passed the church of St John’s in the Wilderness, where Lord Elgin, the Earl of Kincardine, was buried. The road was busy, half-blocked with three-wheelers and monks walking slowly in clusters.

  Sattar drew up just before the bus stop. European backpackers, in loose, grubby clothing, some with Tibetan beads hanging off them, unloaded their luggage. The stench of the streets was dreadful, with open drains and rubbish piled up everywhere. No one seemed to be cleaning it up. Filthy water ran through rivulets in the road and gathered in potholes. A sign said Welcome to the Little Lhasa in India. If this is what Lhasa would be like under Tibetan rule, thank heavens the Chinese have it, thought Tashi.

  It was just after 0915. Question Time in the Parliament-in-exile started at 0930. They called it Question Time to satisfy the Western democracies, but it was nothing more than a recitation about waging war against China. Tashi would wait five minutes and then go in. Sattar manoeuvred through the squalid little town and headed down Nawrojee Road towards Lower Dharamsala.

  He stopped just outside the compound which housed the small Parliament building. Tashi got out of the car. The pockets held the weight of the grenades well and he felt for the pistol with his right hand. He pulled the robe around him against the morning mountain wind, waiting while Sattar turned the car, then he walked briskly, his head lowered to avoid eye contact with other monks.

  He walked under the arch of the compound, looking right towards the offices of the Tibetan security, which he didn’t consider a threat – the .38 would see them off if they suspected him. He kept his pace as he took the two steps leading to the Parliament building, ignoring the office marked Dept of Religious Affairs on the right. Directly in front of him were wooden pigeonholes, each stuffed full of memos and newsletters.

  He went to the left, taking his bearings from the faded sepia pictures of Mahatma Gandhi and the Dalai Lama.

  His left hand moved to a grenade and his right opened the double doors inwards. A wooden screen blocked his view and he stopped. There were no voices behind him. No one chasing or suspecting him. There was no hurry. Hardly a face turned to look at him. A naked light bulb hung from the ceiling over a centre desk where clerks took notes. The room couldn’t have been more than 550 square metres, and there were two rows of seats on each side, each with shared microphones which could deflect the grenade throw. A deputy on the right was speaking, leaning across the microphone, and the room was a mixture of saffron robes, business suits and women in striped Tibetan aprons. The red light of a cheap Panasonic camera showed that it was recording the proceedings.

  Tashi moved to the left, so that he had a clear line to the Speaker. He drew the pistol, taking the safety catch off and used his left hand to clear the robe. He fired at the Speaker’s head, hitting him twice, and as the first scream of panic reverberated around the chamber he threw a grenade towards the last bench by the window. A second grenade he rolled on the floor straight down to the Speaker’s chair and the third he tossed to his right, the pins coming out smoothly just like they had when he practised, and he kept the fourth as he backed out of the door.

  The grenade in one hand, the pistol in the other, he ran until he was out of the building, then slowed to a fast walk. Three explosions tore through the small room, and Tashi turned, like an onlooker, watching as the victims stumbled out.

  Sattar was waiting, the car door open, engine running, and drove off as soon as his passenger got in. Tashi pulled off the robe and struggled into a shirt and trousers. They edged painfully down through Lower Dharamsala, passing an ambulance and a police car before they got to the bottom. An army helicopter hovered over the Dalai Lama’s compound. Sattar kept going. Neither man spoke and eventually they were clear. An hour later, just before Palampur, Sattar pulled up past an Ambassador car parked on the left side of the road. This was where they parted company. Tashi left his weapons and robe with Sattar. The Ambassador driver gave Tashi an envelope with his new identity.

  The second driver was called Sadek. Like Sattar, he had been trained for Kashmir and was part of the Lashkar-e-Jhangar, the people who had tried to assassinate the Prime Minister of India.

  Zhongnanhai, Beijing, China

  Local time: 1430 Friday 4 May 2007

  GMT: 0630 Friday 4 May 2007

  ‘It was a complete success,’ said Tang Siju, the intelligence and strategic planning specialist for the Chinese military.

  ‘We deny involvement and in private negotiations stress that it was purely defensive,’ said President Tao Jian. ‘We do not want it to become a wider issue.’

  They walked in silence past two Zhongnanhai guards. The President had insisted they meet in the grounds, to ensure that the conversation remained completely secret. No Chinese President had survived in office by trusting confidentiality to the walls of his own offices.

  Tao stopped walking and stood on the shore of one of the man-made lakes in Zhongnanhai. He brushed away blossom which had fallen on the shoulders of his overcoat. ‘China successfully reasserted its regional strength with Operation Dragon Strike, and before he died I promised Comrade President Wang Feng that our stability and prosperity would be safe in my hands. We have an understanding with Japan, and America now knows its limited role in regional affairs. The governments of South-East Asia look to us for advice.’

  ‘Particularly when it comes to handling the West over
accusations about human rights abuses and democratic reform,’ agreed Tang.

  The Chinese President turned to him and smiled. ‘Exactly. The status quo in Taiwan and Hong Kong is acceptable to everyone. Only India is the problem and its emerging ambition to compete with us as a regional power. The sub-continent is an area of unpredictable madness. It worries me.’

  ‘We may have an opportunity to control India before it gets out of hand,’ said Tang.

  ‘He who excels in resolving difficulties does so before they arise,’ responded Tao, quoting from Sun Tzu’s essays on The Art of War written in 500 BC. ‘I am interested to hear what my strategic planner has to say about it.’

  ‘I was telephoned this morning by General Hamid Khan, Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff,’ said Tang. ‘He has offered to open a second front again in Kashmir, should we need it.’

  ‘I would like to think we can handle India without Pakistan’s help,’ said Tao.

  ‘Pakistan is our oldest military ally,’ said Tang. ‘It would be a quicker solution.’

  Prime Minister’s Office, South Block, New Delhi, India

  Local time: 1200 Friday 4 May 2007

  GMT: 0630 Friday 4 May 2007

  ‘Is the Dalai Lama safe?’ snapped Hari Dixit.

  The Home Minister, Indrajit Bagchi, answered Dixit’s question. ‘He was in his complex and was not a target, sir.’

  ‘Casualties?’ said Dixit to the table at large

  ‘Twelve dead,’ said Bagchi. ‘The Speaker of the Parliament was shot with a pistol. The others died of shrapnel wounds. Seventeen wounded. Three are expected to die.’

  ‘Responsibility?’

  Bagchi referred to Mani Naidu, the head of the Intelligence Bureau. Naidu glanced down at the e-mail printout in front of him. ‘Witnesses say it was a single monk, a very cool operator by the sounds of it, who let off two shots at the Speaker before throwing the grenades. He escaped during the mayhem that followed. We may have picked up one of his team near Palampur after the Bhat Vihan Bridge was blown—’

  ‘Blown?’ said Dixit.

  ‘A bridge across the Dehra River on the main route down from Dharamsala was destroyed by terrorism, exactly one hour and forty minutes after the attack on the Tibetan Parliament.’

  ‘And your suspect?’

  ‘He was alone in a Maruti jeep,’ said Naidu. ‘We found a .38 pistol – we are checking it against the rounds which hit the Speaker – with plastic explosives and a Pakistani-made hand grenade. He is a known member of the Lashkare-Jhangvi, the most extreme of the Islamic groups operating in Kashmir and Pakistan.’

  ‘They were responsible for the attempt on your life, Prime Minister,’ said Chandra Reddy, head of the Research and Analysis Wing.

  ‘I know who they are,’ said the Prime Minister impatiently. ‘What I don’t know is why Pakistan would want to take the Kashmir war into Tibet.’

  Briefing

  Kashmir

  The disputed territory of Kashmir is a legacy of the violent partition between India and Pakistan. It has never known peace. India and Pakistan fought wars over it in 1947, 1965, 1971 and 1999. Since 1949, UN monitors have been posted along a Line of Control (LoC), which has become the border between Indian and Pakistan in the disputed territory. But Kashmiri fighters have continued to go back and forth across it. In 1989, Pakistan organized a new armed insurgency in Kashmir which is continuing today. After more than fifty years the ghost of Kashmir continues to threaten peace in South Asia.

  Srinagar, the Kashmir Valley, India

  Local time: 1530 Friday 4 May 2007

  GMT: 1000 Friday 4 May 2007

  He was fifty years old, too old and out of shape to have trekked through the mountains for three days and nights, through the LoC, into the Vale of Kashmir and hiding out, protected by men young enough to be his sons. He wasn’t a member of any of the groups. He had been for a short while part of Jamaat-e-Islam, but after Afghanistan he had lost his fire.

  He had fought the Russians for five years and had been trained with the Stinger hand-held missiles sent in by the CIA. He was good with the Stinger, understanding how it homed in on heat emissions from the aircraft – helicopter or fixed-wing, it didn’t matter – and he was better than most at working a way around the decoy flares which easily seduced the missile away. The Stingers had given the Afghan war a new life, then suddenly it was over. The Soviet forces withdrew and the Stingers were packed up in their boxes. Saeed Khalid retired to a smallholding just across the border in Pakistan.

  He heard that the Taleban government in Afghanistan had kept some of the Stingers and that Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence Directorate had others. The CIA didn’t get any back, that was for sure. The politicians said the Soviets had withdrawn because of Gorbachev and glasnost. But men like Saeed who had lived in the mountains and seen friends die in the war didn’t like that explanation. When they shot down the helicopters, the Mi-28 Havoc gunships with their 30mm cannon on the nose and AT-6 spiral missile pods on their pylons, and the Mi-24s which came in like death on the villages, Saeed knew the Stingers had made the difference. Without airpower, the Russians were nothing. Altogether mujahedin fighters like Saeed brought down 270 Soviet aircraft, a success rate of almost 80 per cent.

  He opened the box and saw the launcher, all in pieces. He lifted it out carefully, feeling the same rush of excitement as when he had assembled his first weapon after training all those years ago.

  When the phone rang in his house outside Quetta near the border, Saeed had recognized the voice, quiet, persuasive and commanding. He knew he would have no choice but to obey the Chief of Army Staff of Pakistan, General Hamid Khan, his friend and tutor, who had trained him with the weapon which defeated the Soviets in Afghanistan.

  ‘You are the only one I trust and the only one I know who can use them,’ said Hamid Khan.

  They had strapped the metal cases to the sides of mules and walked them over the hills like they had done twenty-five years before. They travelled by night and hid out during the day and they reached the rendezvous near Srinagar with two hours of darkness left. He was protected by members of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, the group he heard had tried to kill the Prime Minister. The rumour was that Hamid Khan had ordered the bomb attack on the car and chosen the place and time.

  Saeed had kept track of the groups as they became more and more extreme, the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind, the Sunni group, Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam, who took on the minority Shias, then the more extreme Sipah-e-Sahaba who wanted to go to war against Iran, and the Harkat-ul-Ansar, the first group into Kashmir, and finally Hamid’s very own terrorist group, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, the fighters who would win back Kashmir.

  The door of the hut opened slightly, just wide enough for two scouts to slip in. They couldn’t have been more than eighteen and they didn’t carry weapons, because it was safer for them. Their training was in aircraft recognition and they told him exactly which aircraft had just landed in Srinagar and how he should shoot it down. Saeed knew the aircraft well. It was a Russian-made Mi-26, known as the Halo and the world’s most powerful helicopter. Saeed listened to the boys talking, about its position on helipad, the flight route they thought it would take out, the minefield around the perimeter fence and the gap in the Indian defences where they could fire, and run with a chance to save their own lives.

  It would be safer than the barren land of Afghanistan, where even in the mountains there was barely a tree to give cover. Even though they had trekked through Kashmir at night, he had seen the deepest green ricefields and a landscape marked by tall poplar trees. They had walked along paths which took them through orchards of apple and plum trees, villages of tall, walled farmhouses made of wood and brick and showing off a wealth he had never seen in Afghanistan.

  ‘We just want to let them know that the Stingers are out of the boxes again,’ Hamid Khan had told him. ‘Let them know their airspace is no longer safe and that we are in the heart of the valley.’

  Indian Army Headquart
ers, Srinagar, India

  Local time: 1600 Friday 4 May 2007

  GMT: 1030 Friday 4 May 2007

  The Indian Home Minister, Indrajit Bagchi, ushered the three community leaders out of his temporary office in a suite at what used to be the Maharajah’s palace, overlooking Dal Lake. It had been a tiring afternoon. From the crisis meeting at South Block he flew by military aircraft to Srinagar. The Prime Minister had wanted Bagchi to go up, rather than the National Security Advisor, to stress a civilian rather than a military future for Kashmir. After twenty years of insurgency, it was time to stop talking about war and start discussing investment.

  The meeting with the multi-ethnic Kashmir Chamber of Commerce was to discuss bringing back investment to the Valley. The army had wanted to hold it at the secure civilian complex inside the Badami Bagh Cantonment. But Bagchi was adamant that it should be somewhere with less of a direct link to the war. They compromised on the barracks at the former Maharajah’s palace. It had, after all, been the luxury Oberoi Palace Hotel until the insurgency began.

  Bagchi preferred to maintain a casual approach, a brightly coloured open-neck shirt, faded denim jeans and soft shoes whenever possible. Bagchi preferred the neutrality of Western dress in a place as culturally and religiously sensitive as Kashmir. Waiting for him in the foyer was General Prabhu Ninan, the Northern army commander, who had been credited making substantive inroads against the insurgency in the past eighteen months. The armoured personnel carrier was parked right up against the palace doors for the five-minute drive to the Badami Bagh helipad, next to the Corps Headquarters. Bodyguards, known as Black Cats because of their black dungaree uniform, fanned out on either side. They were part of the seven-thousand-strong National Security Guard (NSG), created in 1984 after the assassination of Indira Gandhi to meet the emerging threats of terrorism in India. Normally, Bagchi would only have been given local police protection. But with the Dharamsala attack only hours old, the Prime Minister had insisted the more highly trained NSG be used. A high brick wall topped with razor wire protected the palace, which with its panoramic views of the Dal Lake had once been internationally famous as a venue for afternoon tea. At the gates, concrete tank traps had been built to prevent suicide car bombers ramming themselves into the palace grounds.