SALIM MUST DIE

by Deva, Mukul

  MURREE

  SALIM FELT HIS HEART SKIP A BEAT AS HE HEARD HIS PHONE signal the arrival of a text message. Reading it quickly, he turned towards his computer and clicked on the mouse. The screensaver vanished and Salim's profile on the meetyourmatch site appeared.

  Salim was already logged in. He had been logged in almost continually ever since he had received confirmation from Mai about the weapons being ready. The mission was about to attain critical mass and this matchmaking site was the umbilical cord that tied Salim to his lashkar. When he read Mai's message in his mailbox, Salim could not hold back an exclamation of pure joy.

  ‘What happened, sir?’ Cheema looked up from the map he was poring over at the other end of the room. A heap of flight schedules of various airlines lay strewn all around him.

  ‘That Mai is a bloody gem! He has just confirmed that everyone has collected the weapons from him in Delhi,’ Salim said, rubbing his hands gleefully as he looked up from his computer. ‘I have a really good feeling about this operation, Cheema.’

  ‘Allah be praised!’ Cheema thumped the table excitedly. ‘So, we're all set for the next phase?’

  ‘Of course we are, man.’ Salim pumped his arm in the air. ‘Let's hope and pray that the teams reach their target areas safely. Now the security checks at the airports where they land are the only barriers that stand between them and their targets.’ Turning back to his computer excitedly, Salim began to type out a reply to Mai.

  NEW DELHI

  MAI HU SAW SALIM'S REPLY A MOMENT LATER.

  Thank you very much. I think you are heaven sent. I am sure Allah's blessings are with us.

  A surge of pride went through him as he read Salim's congratulatory note. Despite the migraine now pounding in his head, Mai sat back and allowed himself to relive the past few momentous weeks. Despite the fact that he had not eaten properly for several hours, he felt no pangs of hunger. If anything, he was tired. Elated, but tired. And no wonder, he told himself as he checked his watch. It's way past midnight. Where did the whole day vanish?

  He began to walk across the room towards his bed, when he stopped, returned to the study table, picked up the hotel phone and punched in a solitary key. ‘Good evening, Dr Mai,’ answered a cheerful voice. ‘How may we help you, sir?’

  ‘I would like to be woken up at six o'clock tomorrow morning, please.’

  ‘Wake-up call for six tomorrow morning, sir. Will there be anything else, Dr Mai?’

  ‘No, but listen, this wake-up call is very important. I cannot be late for my conference tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Don't worry sir, you will be called at six sharp.’

  ‘But that's an automated call. What if I don't respond to it? I'm really tired and may oversleep. Will you make sure I'm woken up?’

  ‘Fine, sir. I'll ensure that personally.’

  ‘Please don't forget. Thank you.’ Mai replaced the phone and walked back towards the bed. He was just a few feet away from it when he tripped over his perennially undone shoelaces. As he tumbled forward, his hands came up instinctively to break the fall and protect his face. The left hand managed to do that successfully as he struck the floor rather hard. But his right hand landed squarely on the tiny, marblesized glass vial loaded with VX Gas that was lying forgotten on the carpet just beside the bed. The vial was tough, but not tough enough to withstand the impact. It shattered instantly, unleashing the deadly aerosol into the air, inches from his face.

  The sharp choking feeling and violent tremors came almost instantly. Death was not too far behind. It came just as he lost control over his bowels. A moment later, his heart died, Mai was screaming as he went, but no sound emerged from his starved lungs.

  As life left him, he could hear his mother yelling at him from a distance. Why can't you keep them tied properly, Mai? Those shoelaces will be the death of you….

  MAI WAS SUFFERING THE AGONY OF A PAINFUL DEATH WHEN, barely two miles away, American Airlines flight 293 lifted off from the runway of Delhi airport and began its long haul to Chicago. Seated in the middle of the aircraft was Erik Segan. Tucked away in the safety of his checked-in baggage were the aerosol cans of room-freshener with Variola Major in them. The baggage had sailed through the airport's security net without any problem. Now Eric huddled in his seat, sweating profusely. Not because his conscience was bothering him, but because he was terrified of flying. The killer cargo he was carrying only added to his discomfort.

  THE WARMTH HAD BEGUN TO DESERT MAI'S BODY WHEN, AN hour and a half later, from the same runway of Delhi airport, Austrian Airlines flight 34 took off for Vienna with Karl Gunther and his lethal cargo of VX Gas on board. The second killer and his well-camouflaged cargo had also sailed unscathed through the security barrier. Luck was still with Salim's lashkar.

  MAI'S BODY HAD STARTED TO STIFFEN WHEN TWO HOURS and ten minutes later, the Khan sisters departed from Delhi on board Air France flight 147 for Paris. Thanks to Mai's ingenuity, they too breached the security barriers undetected. Their flight had almost cleared Indian airspace when, back in Delhi, there was another tentative knock on Mai's door.

  IT IS ALMOST CERTAIN THAT IF MAI HAD NOT BEEN SO insistent about his wake-up call, his body would not have been found in a hurry. When he continuously failed to get any response from Mai, the conscientious operator spoke to the housekeeping supervisor.

  ‘The guest in 517 had placed a wake-up call for six, but I'm not getting any response from him.’

  ‘So what's new?’

  ‘It's just that he was very insistent on being woken up for some important conference.’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘I wonder if you could ask your person on the fourth floor to check on him and wake him up.’

  ‘Okay, let me see what I can do,’ she said and put down the phone.

  Barring the electric blue stripes of the screensaver on the open laptop in the corner, Mai's room was shrouded in darkness when the housemaid who had been working on the fourth floor let herself in. She squinted in the near darkness, trying to spot the guest who was not responding to his wake-up call. Even in the dim light she could sense that the bed was empty. She was about to call out when a strange, foul smell assaulted her senses. Puzzled, but at this point still not alarmed, she clicked on the room lights. That was when she saw Mai lying on the floor. His face was contorted in a dark, hideous death mask. The mouth was still open in a pain-racked scream. Foamy flecks of vomit crusted the mouth. Visually reinforced, the stench of death, vomit and excreta surged towards her with horrifying force.

  She screamed and began to back away. She was still screaming when the hotel security guard patrolling the fourth floor heard her and came rushing in. He took one look at the dead man on the floor and his stomach revolted. Controlling the rush of bile, he hustled her out of the room and slammed the door shut behind them. Even through the shock and horror that flailed him, he knew that he had to leave the room undisturbed for the police. Neither of them realized how lucky they were that the VX was a tactical variant with a short shelf life.

  IT IS ALSO CERTAIN THAT THE MYSTERY OF MAI'S DEATH would have taken much longer to solve if it had not been for the fact that the hotel doctor who responded to the frantic call for help and took charge of the body had just donned civvies after a long innings in the Indian Army Medical Corps. Though lacking any practical experience of chemical attacks, he had enough theoretical knowledge to suspect that the death was due to reasons beyond the ordinary. Immediately, the National Emergency Management Authority (NEMA) was brought into the picture. They came. They saw. They freaked.

  Consequently, not even half an hour had elapsed before the Chemical Warfare Detachment (CW Det) personnel seconded for duty at the nearby airport moved in and threw a cordon sanitaire around the room. It took the two men in protective suits a little longer to ascertain the precise cause of death. The minute that happened, the security cordon was extended to cover the entire floor and phones began to ring with electrifying urgency. In another ten minutes, the AT
TF had also moved in.

  ‘Do we really need to do this?’ the panic-stricken General Manager of the hotel asked, horrified at the public relations disaster that loomed large.

  ‘We do,’ the CW Det commander replied curtly. ‘We're still in the process of evaluating the situation and will let you know soon if the hotel needs to be shut down. Right now I suggest you let us have full details of all hotel occupants, including those who checked out during the last forty-eight hours. And we want full details… and I mean full details of the dead man.’ He gestured towards the room where Mai's body still lay undisturbed.

  ‘But what has happened?’ the perplexed GM asked in an anguished tone. The mere thought of the hotel being sealed had him reeling.

  ‘I can say nothing more at this stage, sir,’ the CW Det commander replied a little more gently. Poor bloke! He'll mess himself if he comes to know what's really happened.

  On realizing that VX Gas was involved and the dead Chinese was a leading chemical and biological warfare expert, the CW Det commander had taken a spot decision to tamp down on all news pertaining to Mai's death. Let the brass decide how to handle it.

  ‘Now, if you will excuse me, I need to take care of this. Please ensure that no one, and I mean no one, comes to this floor for any reason whatsoever.’

  ‘Why? How can….’

  ‘Just pass on the word that there has been a bomb scare and the hotel is being searched as a precaution.’

  That eventually became the story for the media. After an initial short-lived spurt of enthusiasm, the news was buried under an avalanche of more gossipy, scandalous and TRP-enhancing news items. After all, how much interest can a bomb in some hotel on the fringes of the city evoke? Unless it goes off, of course.

  Mai's death did not make it to the television news channels. Had that happened, almost certainly Salim or Cheema, who were continuously surfing the airwaves, would have picked it up.

  Within minutes of the CW Det commander's confirmatory call that VX Gas was on the loose, the brass was jolted awake. So was the External Affairs Ministry (MEA), since the dead man was a foreigner. The MEA Joint Secretary was confused and upset as he picked up the phone to call the Chinese embassy.

  LAHORE

  THE CW DET COMMANDER WAS TALKING WITH THE MANAGER of Delhi's Radisson Hotel when a truck belonging to Al-Mohsin Worldwide, one of the several packers and movers in the city of Lahore, pulled up outside the warehouse being used by Cheema's cohorts. The truck was loaded with an assortment of carefully packaged and labelled items. The men who took away two of the three remaining suitcase nukes were dressed in the off-colour khakis worn by all AlMohsin personnel. Before they took away the nukes, they slapped a series of stickers and packing slips on them. Both nukes now resembled suitcases that might be used by any average American household. The kiddie stickers on both suitcases clearly indicated that they belonged to a young boy or boys still struggling to throw off the influence of Pokemon, Power Rangers and Dragon Ball Z.

  Half an hour later, when the truck pulled away from the warehouse, both nukes were comfortably mixed up with the rest of the luggage of the Consular Officer of the US Consulate at Lahore. He was returning home after a tumultuous two years in Pakistan. In the press of the million things to be done just before departure, the harried man had not recounted the total number of pieces listed in the inventory of goods he was carrying back as he returned to a more staid life on home turf. Both the Chote Miyan were now part of his household baggage.

  A little later, the baggage was safely tucked away in the cargo hold of PIA flight 711 which took off from Lahore. Its destination was JFK airport in New York.

  THE CW DET COMMANDER WAS PUTTING DOWN THE PHONE after talking to the ATTF chief when Air India flight 187 headed for Toronto via Amritsar and Birmingham, departed from Delhi. The ever so polite Abraham Reis was on board. The fourth killer had also walked through the first lot of security barriers that he had to negotiate. Now only the security check upon arrival at Toronto and the final one at the target itself stood between him and his unsuspecting targets.

  IT WAS AN OPEN SECRET THAT LIANG DESHENG, POSTED AS the Charge d'Affaires at the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in New Delhi was also a highly respected intelligence officer and a rising star in China's Ministry of State Security (MSS). A tiny, tidy, technically inclined man, Liang was an asset to the MSS. He was informed of Mai's curious death within minutes of the information being given to the embassy by the MEA Joint Secretary. Liang was fully aware of Dr Mai's critical role in the Chinese special weapons program and his presence in Delhi. In fact, the previous evening he had been alerted of Mai's arrival in Delhi – standard procedure whenever people in sensitive posts travelled out of China.

  ‘May I request you to please keep his death under wraps,’ Liang told the MEA Joint Secretary. ‘At least until such time as we have a clearer picture.’ The request did not meet with any resistance, especially in light of the vastly improved relationship between India and China. ‘I'm sure you understand… keeping in view the suspicious manner of his death.’ Despite the fact that they were talking on a secure line, both men were reluctant to say too much.

  ‘That should not be a problem,’ the MEA man replied. ‘But I do hope you appreciate our grave concern about the presence of such an item on our soil. We certainly hope that we will be kept informed about whatever you people find.’

  ‘But of course,’ Liang assured him, his tone betraying the embarrassment he was suffering. No country likes to admit that its senior scientists are running around all over the globe with lethal items like VX on their person.

  Liang sighed to himself as he logged onto the MSS site and accessed the secure database. It is a loosely guarded secret that the MSS maintains a dossier on almost everybody who is anybody in the People's Republic of China. Liang pulled Mai's file up on the screen. A sharp, sinking feeling assailed him as he read through it. Shit! He's an Uighur! I just hope…. It was with a marked sense of urgency that Liang reached for the secure phone lying on the table in front of him and speed-dialled his boss in Beijing.

  URUMQUI

  INITIALLY, WHEN THE TWO BLACK MG TF CARS PULLED UP ON the street in front of the house, Fatima was not perturbed. Both cars were black-coloured civilian variants and not the standard type used by the local police. She recognized the cars as those used by the facility and was aware that at least five of Mai's senior colleagues also lived on the same street. It was only when she happened to look out of the kitchen window and noticed two more of them come to a halt at the rear of the house that she knew something untoward had happened. Then she saw the small knots of hard looking men with drawn handguns racing towards her house from both sides and she knew the game was up.

  Somehow Mai has been blown. So be it. Inshallah…. Snatching a sharp, wicked looking knife from the fruit bowl, she ran towards the bathroom.

  When the take-down teams slammed open the doors and swept through the house, they did not spot her immediately. Even the man who put his head in through the bathroom door would have missed the diminutive Fatima if it hadn't been for the blood that had sprayed onto the shower curtain.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ He recoiled in horror as he pulled back the curtain gingerly.

  The knife stuck deep in her belly told the rest of the story. Fatima was still alive, but her face was contorted in agony as she struggled to keep herself from screaming.

  ‘She is not going to make it,’ the doctor who attended to her at the nearby hospital told the MSS team leader. ‘In fact, I don't think she wants to live.’

  ‘We figured that out, you moron’ – the team leader threw him an irate look – ‘considering that it was she who stuck the knife in her stomach. Anyway, stand aside, we need to question her.’

  The doctor gave him a shocked look and then decided that it was futile to try and dissuade him. Why the hell should I be the one to be earmarked by this MSS pig as the one who obstructed him, especially for some wacko woman who is going to die
in any case? With a resigned shrug, he stood back.

  Not that it did any good to the interrogator. Fatima said nothing. There were a few snatched moments of lucidity, when she surfaced sporadically through the shroud of pain that had settled upon her. Even then, she just glared hatefully at the MSS men surrounding her like vultures. All the time, her lips moved in ceaseless prayer.

  The MSS man was not able to make out much of what she was mumbling, but decided to record it anyway. Just before she went, in her final moments of pain, Fatima beseeched Allah to grant success to her husband in his strikes against the kafir.

  ‘May the kafirs suffer as our people have suffered’ were her last words to her God.

  PARIS

  WHILE FATIMA WAS MAKING HER LAST WISH, THE AIR FRANCE flight with Sahiba and Kismat Khan on board landed uneventfully at Paris. The twins would spend a miserable, stress-filled four hours in the transit lounge before their connecting flight to St Martin in Netherlands Antilles, the second leg of their tediously long journey. However, they had far more important things to worry about than a long layover. The growing fear of the airport security check at their final destination kept them tense and silent. The suspense would have tested their nerves even more severely if they hadn't had each other for company and comfort.

  VIENNA

  THE KILLER KHANS WERE ON THEIR WAY TO THE TRANSIT lounge at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris when Karl Gunther's flight landed at Vienna. He too had a stopover to suffer through before his onward connecting flight to Berlin. Luckily, the layover was only an hour long and since Karl did not have to change planes, he simply slept through the halt undisturbed. He was still fast asleep when the aircraft took off from Vienna for the final short hop to Berlin.

  NEW DELHI

  ‘ARE YOU SURE?’ LIANG ASKED HIS BOSS AGAIN. ‘ARE YOU sure she said strikes and not strike?’