Let Bhutto Eat Grass 2

by Shaunak Agarkhedkar

  ‘We find ourselves in need of your advice once more, doctor,’ Sablok began.

  Saha eyed Sablok warily. Sablok’s voice brought back memories of Saha’s last encounter with the Wing. He swallowed to rid himself of the coppery tang that had suddenly filled his mouth. The ambiguity of vague and incomplete information, whether deliberate or unwitting, coupled with the fact that the Wing’s understanding of nuclear weapons was approximate at best, had troubled Saha. Stressful meetings hadn’t help, nor had knowledge of the far-reaching consequences of any error he might make. He still cringed at the memory of failing to consider, initially, the possibility of the Pakistanis opting for a gun-type weapon instead of following in the footsteps of their Indian counterparts. Equations and calculations were much more reasonable, and forgiving too. But through some cosmic chain of cause and effect, Sablok’s team had fixated on him and he had no choice but to indulge them, answering question after question, solving one conundrum after another until finally the ghouls tired and flew off. So when Sablok spoke about the predicament they were in, about needing to understand what went into deciding where a nuclear facility should be located, a slow smile lit up Saha’s face.

  ‘That’s entirely outside my area of expertise, Captain.’

  Sablok had, evidently, expected just such a response.

  ‘Last time you consulted with a colleague over the phone. Perhaps he could help clarify things for us once more,’ he replied.

  Betaal would not be assuaged easily.

  Twenty minutes later Saha returned with a man of average dimensions. Forty if not older, with sartorial preferences frozen in time around Independence. A detour to the Director’s office, where the riot act had been read out to him, had tempered Saha’s colleague’s fury at being dragged away from whatever it was he was working on. After Sablok briefly explained the Official Secrets Act, the scientist signed documents certifying that he understood the consequences of violating it and that the entirety of the discussion to follow—including the fact that the discussion had taken place at all—was covered by that brutally efficient law.

  ‘We are concerned with the use of gas centrifuges for enriching uranium. I’m told by multiple sources that you are an expert,’ Sablok said.

  The man who answered to the name Ram, even though his actual name wielded many more syllables, closed his eyes and shook his head. Sablok couldn’t tell if it was annoyance or if he was flattered.

  ‘I work in enrichment,’ Ram said, squinting, his cadence rapid. ‘But I am not an expert on centrifuges. I haven’t even seen one in person.’

  Sablok forced himself to smile.

  ‘That is okay, sir. I’ll try to absorb all that you can tell me. Dr Saha here tried, once, to explain the different methods of uranium enrichment to me. Which one is yours?’

  Ram began slowly this time, in the manner of a professor who hated having to repeat himself, by explaining the composition of naturally occurring uranium and why it needs to be enriched to be useful.

  He described gas diffusion and the challenges of handling a gas as corrosive as Uranium Hexafluoride, or Hex, in terms simple enough, he felt, for a school child. Sablok paused his frantic note-taking, smiled unctuously and held up his hand.

  ‘Would these limitations also apply to the centrifuge process?’ he asked. ‘I mean, if someone wanted to use gas centrifuges to enrich uranium by separating its isotopes?’

  ‘Obviously! That process uses Hex too,’ Ram replied, his tone sharp. He was already losing patience.

  ‘I think he is trying to extrapolate from diffusion to the centrifuge process, sir,’ Saha interjected in an attempt to mollify Ram. Sablok nodded.

  ‘Well, that’s absurd ... they are entirely different processes. Why would you even think ... are you from the ministry?’ he asked, wrinkling his nose at the thought.

  The disdain was a common refrain, a sentiment often shared by professionals who were privileged to interact with India’s steel frame. Sablok recognised it. He had heard it voiced by a senior officer who, over a drink at the mess, had been coaxed by the Colonel into speaking about his time at the Ministry of Defence. The last thing the interview needed was for Sablok to be mistaken for some Under Secretary or the other.

  ‘I work in intelligence, sir,’ he murmured.

  Ram lowered his face and stared for a moment at Sablok from above the rims of his thick, rectangular spectacles. Then he glanced at Saha, who nodded.

  ‘One of the nations in our neighbourhood is building a gas centrifuge-based uranium enrichment facility. My job is to try and determine the exact location,’ Sablok added in a matter-of-fact way as if such eventualities were a daily occurrence for him.

  ‘Pakistan?’ The whisper was accompanied by a widening of Ram’s eyes behind a quarter-inch of glass.

  Sablok smiled again. There was no real reason he couldn’t just nod and confirm the obvious, but one of the things he had picked up during training was the belief that people responded well to intrigue if they were made to feel part of the inner circle. The friendly gossip who pulls people close and whispers in their ear, as if they are the only people he trusts with that salacious bit of news, often receives equally juicy titbits in return.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me earlier?’ Ram lamented. He now felt an obligation to help the crisp but unctuous spy succeed. ‘Enrichment facilities are colossal and difficult to conceal. You have already thought of that, I suppose.’ The cadence had gone up even higher. Sablok’s pen flew across the page, struggling to keep up. ‘These facilities are complex, with many stages. The number depends on the desired level of enrichment, of course—’

  ‘Ninety percent, sir,’ Saha said.

  ‘Ah! Weapons grade,’ Ram exclaimed. ‘That’s going to need a hell of a lot of stages. The naturally occurring isotopes of uranium—and therefore their corresponding molecules in Hex—are very similar in mass; just one percent separates their masses. In diffusion, what you’re trying to do is pass the gas—Hex in this case—through a membrane with tiny holes, and molecules with different masses pass through the membrane at different rates. In case of Hex, molecules containing the isotope we need—uranium-235—pass through at a rate that is 0.4% faster. That’s it. So you can imagine how many such stages are necessary to take natural uranium, which can be assumed to be only 0.7% enriched, and make it 90% enriched. Miles of piping and hundreds of membranes.’

  Noticing Sablok’s harried and slightly bewildered expression, Ram paused to let it all sink in.

  ‘At each stage, Hex’s temperature and pressure have to be maintained in an acceptable range. Outside that range, Hex exhibits undesirable behaviour: like solidifying, for example. Keeping it in the Goldilocks zone—not too hot, not too cold—requires a lot of compressors and heat exchangers. The resources consumed are mind boggling, really. Especially when you compare them to the tiny amount of enriched uranium that they produce.’

  ‘What kind of resources?’

  ‘Labour, components, electricity, water,’ Ram replied. ‘Keeping such a facility running requires constant maintenance, and an army of technicians to perform it. Then there’s the electricity needed to keep the compressors and heat exchangers going, and water to keep them at operational temperature. Remember, compressing a gas causes it to heat up, and that excess heat has to be managed or removed.’

  ‘Could you estimate how much water such a facility would consume?’ Sablok wondered. He saw the glimmer of promise in water and electricity; everything else could be masked, including technicians and components. But hiding the consumption of vast quantities of water and power was far trickier.

  ‘I’m sorry, that depends on a hundred different variables like ambient temperature, the temperature of the water source, materials used—’

  ‘How about electricity?’

  Ram lapsed into silence. He had never had to quantify energy requirements this way, nor had a
ny of the journals he read ever contained such an audit.

  ‘We might be able to give you a rough estimate,’ Saha replied. ‘Would that work?’

  That suited Sablok’s purpose just fine. While the two scientists began feverish discussions amongst themselves, he excused himself and stepped out to stretch his legs. A cigarette and a cup of steaming hot chai were on his mind, but the thought of striking a match in that facility scared him; he didn’t feel comfortable wandering about in search of a cup either. After pacing back and forth in the corridor outside for a while, he went back in. Ram and Saha were both scribbling on sheets of paper that quickly filled up with spidery equations. Saha finished first, a quarter hour after Sablok’s return, and sat back in his chair. A few minutes later, Ram looked over, read a few numbers from Saha’s calculations, and began incorporating them into his own work. Half an hour after that, capping an expensive-looking fountain pen and clipping it to his shirt pocket with finality, he collected the sheets of paper and handed them to a bewildered Sablok with a satisfied smile.

  ‘For producing a single nuclear weapon’s worth of enriched uranium, they will need at least 4.5 gigawatt hours of electricity,’ Ram said, seeing Sablok flail helplessly in the ocean of numbers and variables. ‘Of course, nobody in their right minds builds a facility capable of manufacturing just one bomb a year; twenty a year seems more reasonable to us. That needs 90 gigawatt hours ... per year, obviously.’

  He had thrown Sablok a lifeline, and it made no difference.

  ‘Can you give me a reference? Something I can relate to and compare this number with? Purely for my own understanding ... this figure doesn’t speak to me.’

  Ram sighed dejectedly and shook his head.

  ‘That is just under a third of the electricity we produce here in a year, Captain,’ Saha quickly added, trying to head off Ram’s response.

  ‘Anything else?’ Ram asked. The exercise had left him famished.

  ***

  After lunch Saha left Sablok alone in the meeting room. He returned half an hour later with a wizened old man dressed impeccably in a dark suit that seemed, to Sablok, completely unsuited to Bombay weather. His beard was the colour of winter in Gulmarg and traced its lineage to ancient Persia. Saha introduced Dr Amin as the engineer involved in planning each and every BARC facility till date, including the CIRUS reactor. Sablok quickly retrieved another set of Official Secrets Act documents and read the old man in. Dr Amin watched with amusement as Sablok explained, with the diligence of a bank cashier counting notes, the consequences of revealing to a third party the discussion they were about to engage in. The old man signed his name on each one with a flourish.

  ‘We evaluate a lot of parameters when siting a nuclear facility,’ Dr Amin said while Sablok returned the documents to his briefcase.

  ‘Siting?’

  ‘When choosing where to build it. Most of those parameters are useless as far as your purpose is concerned.’

  Sablok raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t spoken about the purpose of the interview yet. He glanced at Saha, a questioning look that Saha rejected with a shake of his head and a shrug of the shoulders. Amin noticed the exchange.

  ‘You are looking for a Pakistani facility, are you not?’ he asked. ‘Oh! Do not look so surprised, young man. It is painfully obvious. You are not an employee here—the way you carry yourself makes it clear that you are a man of action, unlike the rest of us here. You carry OSA documents in your briefcase, and you even have that infernal piece of legislation memorised. And the Director has given you carte blanche for interviewing his employees. Why would such a person want to pick at my mind if not to find a Pakistani reactor? Look, at my age time is a luxury. Would you rather waste what little I have left, or may I go ahead and tell you where not to look?’

  Recovering quickly, Sablok politely motioned for him to continue, adding, ‘We’re looking for an enrichment plant, sir, not a reactor.’

  ‘Earthquakes, tsunamis, and cyclones are some of your biggest worries. Within Pakistan, that practically eliminates Balochistan, Occupied Kashmir, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa: the Herat and Chaman faults make these regions prone to massive earthquakes. Sand is another factor that works against a site’s suitability, so those parts of Sindh covered by the Thar are out of the question too.’

  Amin then waited for Sablok’s pen to bleed each detail onto paper. Worried about the sudden silence, Sablok glanced up to see Amin pinching the bridge of his nose and staring at him. Saha chuckled at the sight of the spy squirming under pressure for once.

  ‘The facility will be located far from major military installations, especially ammunition dumps for obvious reasons. Airports are equally dangerous: A lost airliner crashing into the installation would quickly make a large chunk of Pakistan very, very impure.’

  Saha laughed at the pun.

  ‘At the same time, you cannot place it in the middle of nowhere, can you? Employees and equipment need access to get to it. Would you work in a facility so far from civilisation that your family has nowhere to go and nothing to do? Well, from the looks of it you probably would. But most technicians and scientists would think twice about it. Then you have water. Look for a large source nearby, like a river or lake, or even the ocean. And finally, look for massive transmission infrastructure, especially cables going deep into hitherto underserved areas.’

  Sablok had questions. Amin answered them all with what little patience he could muster. His answers spawned further questions. Finally, he gruffly remarked that further refinement was inadvisable because engineering measures could mitigate many of the risks that Sablok was asking about, especially those less severe. Then, just as abruptly as he had appeared with Saha, he left. Saha had a bemused grin on his face. Sablok struggled to cope with the avalanche of knowledge that had been distilled over a lifetime of work into dense wisdom, before being evacuated on him. Taking pity on him, and regretting his intemperate laughter, Saha suggested heading to the cafeteria for tea.

  ‘Is it safe to smoke somewhere nearby?’ Sablok asked as they stepped out of the room and Saha locked up. A balcony at the end of the corridor opened out to a hazy view of the creek. The reactor building loomed ominously in the distance. Sablok savoured that first puff of the day, exhaling slowly after holding it in for as long as he could.

  ‘The shadows we operate in—,’ Sablok began, then shook his head. ‘That sounds so pompous. Never mind the phrase—the shadows aren’t conducive to expressing appreciation, doctor. Agents have to be rewarded, of course. But that’s different, isn’t it? Appreciation is either heaped falsely, or it is left unspoken. The secret nature, the compartmentalisation—they all make it difficult for an outsider to truly comprehend the value of their own contribution. The efforts you have taken to help us will, beyond your work on our own bomb, be your most significant contribution to the nation. You could win the Nobel tomorrow, and it wouldn’t matter as much as this. Those of us who know the value of your inputs are grateful for it.’

  Saha’s ears turned red.

  ‘Would you tell me if this—all of it—ultimately helps you stop them?’ he asked, eager to move the conversation along.

  Sablok smiled, but said nothing for a while. Then, crushing the expended cigarette under his shoe, he said in a sombre tone, ‘You’ll find out eventually...if we fail.’

  For the rest of the day, Sablok banged out his findings on a typewriter borrowed from Saha’s department. Every glance at the calculations left him in awe of the elegance with which Pakistan’s nuclear agenda had been reduced to a few numbers. Tiresias to his Odysseus, Saha walked him through it, explaining the methodology they had used, and even helping him recall what Amin had said. As Sablok finished typing each page, Saha even helped review it for errors. The document was ready a little after 8 pm. While Sablok was gathering each and every scrap of paper and securing them all in his briefcase, wondering if rushing to the airport at that hour made se
nse, Saha asked him if he wanted to see the inside of a reactor.

  ‘The birthplace of our bomb,’ he added.

  ‘Will I glow in the dark afterwards?’ Sablok was grinning like a schoolboy. The day had already exceeded his expectations: their chances of interrupting Khan’s machinations now seemed better than futile. He could afford a little indulgence.

  ***

  Amit Kumar took a few days to gather all the information on Abdul Qadeer Khan’s short trip to the Netherlands. Then he wrote a long and detailed report. After he had revised it twice, the report was ready for transmission. Ordinarily he would have typed it into his Teletext and left the encoding to it. Each one of these machines used by the Wing—and indeed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs—came with its own encryption module. The machine would accept text from the user and the module would encode it to the standards required by the Ministry. But this was no ordinary report. Almeida had insisted on additional security protocols for the operation. Which meant that Amit Kumar now faced the painful task of manually encoding thirty-seven pages of dense text using one-time pads. He retrieved the appropriate pad from his safe and sat down at his desk. After a few painstaking sentences, he thought better of it and sent the whole report in the overnight diplomatic bag from the embassy to New Delhi.

  His findings reached Arora’s desk on the morning of Sablok’s visit to Trombay. It took the has-been spymaster in New Delhi all of four minutes to skim through it and realise its import. He rushed to Almeida’s office, arriving at the secretary’s desk a sweaty, panting wreck.

  ‘Urgent matters?’ the secretary said, giving him a pitying look. She had herself begun packing on pounds recently at the age of forty-three, and sympathised. He nodded, belly heaving, and she rang the Chief on the intercom, then waved him through.

  The smell that hit him as he stepped inside reminded him of the weeks he had spent at Hailey National Park. The park was now named after Jim Corbett, but the aroma of pine trees remained the same. The smell had recently become a permanent feature of Almeida’s office. On some days it was faint. That day wasn’t one of those. The Chief had poured himself quite a few gin and tonics that morning, Arora concluded. Perhaps even spilt a few.