Let Bhutto Eat Grass 2

by Shaunak Agarkhedkar

  ‘I have performed the technique hundreds of times, and so have many of the students I taught it to. If there is uranium there, I’ll find it and its enrichment level. But I need you to decide.’ Then, sensing hesitation, he added, ‘Now! Would you rather hold onto a lock of some stranger’s hair, or let me perform the tests that are needed. There is no other way to get the data you need, that much I can assure you.’

  They ran into Sablok in the corridor on their way to the lab. He fell in step behind them.

  ‘The technique is called gas chromatography mass spectroscopy,’ the chemist began. ‘Once it begins, we’ll have a long night ahead of us. I’ll brew another batch of tea for us then. Without opium, of course.’

  ‘In the lab?’

  ‘Of course. That’s where I keep the equipment.’

  It took the professor nearly an hour to complete preparations for the experiment.

  ‘We will run the sample thrice. The quantity of hair you have is sufficient for that much. It should give us a clear idea of how far your adversaries are in enriching uranium. Let me explain, briefly, what is going to happen now. The instrument you see is made up of two parts. This is the gas chromatograph: if I had to explain—in layman’s terms—what it does, well, it vaporises the sample. Transforms it into a gas. Then that gas is passed through the second part of this instrument. It’s called a mass spectrometer. The mass spectrometer will fire the sample as a beam through an electromagnetic field. The different components will deviate because of the electromagnetic field in proportion to their mass. Now,’ he paused, ‘are you quite sure you only care about the two isotopes of uranium?’

  Arora turned to Sablok.

  ‘Absolutely certain, professor,’ Sablok replied.

  ‘Good. Then I will adjust the detector—this last bit here—to selective monitor for the non-fissile Uranium 238 and the fissile—and much harder to find—Uranium 235.’

  He then returned to the instrument, making minute adjustments on various dials. By then Sablok and Arora had put their trust and fate in his hands and switched off.

  When the procedure began, the professor turned his attention to making tea.

  ‘Are you sure the instrument can be left unattended?’ Arora asked.

  ‘Of course. When the instrument is finished analysing the components it will tell us.’

  And tell them it did. The machine beeped loudly a few minutes later.

  ‘Do you gentlemen, perchance, need a printed report?’ he asked sheepishly.

  ‘No written records, professor,’ Arora replied, draining his cup.

  ‘Ah! Excellent. Saves me a headache. Now,’ he said, switching on what looked like a small television screen and fine-tuning the picture by turning a few dials, ‘If the hair contains uranium you will see one or two peaks here. The relative sizes of the two peaks will tell us how far they’ve progressed in terms of enrichment. Everything clear?’

  ‘Just give us the answer, professor,’ Arora replied.

  ‘See for yourself.’

  The screen refreshed and began tracing a fluorescent green line from left to right. It was mostly flat.

  ‘Approaching the spot for two-thirty-five,’ the professor said.

  The line remained flat, passing the part where the professor expected a peak.

  ‘So that’s it, then? No enrichment?’ Sablok asked, a trace of dejection evident in his voice.

  The line rose slowly to form a very shallow peak.

  ‘God damn it!’ the professor exclaimed, grabbing at and twisting a few more dials. ‘Who the hell changed the scaling?’ he asked nobody in particular. ‘Wait for it to refresh,’ he added.

  Presently the screen cleared and began tracing the line again from left to right. As it approached the two-thirty-five spot it began rising steeply, levelled off, then fell. Then, after a brief duration while it hugged the horizontal axis, it rose again, steeper this time. It climbed all the way up to the top of the screen, made a jagged peak, and then dropped.

  ‘There we have it gentlemen. Uranium two-thirty-eight and Uranium two-thirty-five, both,’ the professor said in triumph.

  The peaks had values labelled on top of them.

  ‘And I would say they have achieved fifteen percent enrichment already. But just to be certain, let us repeat the whole thing with a fresh sample. Who wants more tea?’

  ***

  One evening, about a week after Sablok and Arora returned with the test results, Almeida sent word to Mishra requesting a meeting that same day. Mishra dropped by his office just after 9 p.m. It had been a long and brutal day, and he was glad to be out of the stifling confines of his own office, away from a telephone that never stopped ringing. Almeida’s office was brighter that evening. Mishra noticed that the older man had lost a lot of weight. He was about to mention it when Almeida handed him papers authorising Sablok’s repatriation to Mishra’s section. Moments later, he gave him another set, this one recommending Arora’s secondment to work for a year under Mishra’s command. Holding them between arthritic fingers, Mishra read carefully.

  ‘Is this your way of working around budget cuts?’ he asked.

  When the Emergency was revoked in ‘77 after twenty-one months of authoritarian rule a coalition of disparate unequals, emulsified only by their shared hatred of the Iron Lady, was elected to govern in her place. One of their first acts, fuelled by a paranoia intensified by their long incarceration, was to humiliate the Secretary (R). The man who founded the Wing, built up its capabilities, led it through the highs of liberating Bangladesh and keeping the Pokhran test under wraps, and the lows of seeing Bangabandhu assassinated by his own armed forces, was accused of gross improprieties including helping the Iron Lady crush dissent within India during the Emergency. He was to pay the price for his proximity to the former prime minister.

  Growing the Wing into a formidable organisation, he had made enemies within and outside the bureaucracy, and in this crisis many of them found the perfect opportunity to take aim. Faced with naked hostility from the people he was supposed to serve, he did the decent thing and resigned, hoping to draw their malice towards himself and away from his creation.

  It didn’t work.

  His right-hand man, a distinguished intelligence officer who, while overseeing and directing the Wing’s operations during ‘71, had become something of a legend, took over for all of three months before the government’s unquenched thirst for revenge—or its desire to clean house, depending on which side of the political aisle one belonged to—became too much for him to put up with. He resigned too. But the coalition wasn’t satisfied with token sacrifices. Running out of individuals to punish, the PMO ordered deep budget cuts and decided that since “Secretary (R)” was too fancy a title, and carried with it too much power, the head of the Wing would henceforth be a mere “Director”.

  The incumbent now scrambled to keep the organisation alive even as the PMO sought to starve it to death. He halted recruitment, then eliminated positions that had fallen vacant. Without the means to sustain itself, parts of the Wing began to atrophy and shut down. Insiders like Section Chiefs and Division Heads looked on in horror as the government, blinded by rage, placed its own eyes and ears on an anvil and hammered away. When the full extent of its wrath became apparent, they rushed to do whatever had to be done to keep the lights on. Exactly like a body struggling to keep itself warm, it pulled resources back from the extremities to sustain the core: Pakistan.

  ‘This isn’t entirely on account of the cuts,’ Almeida replied. Despite the cool air of the office, a fine sheen of sweat appeared permanently anchored to his face. ‘Enquiries are being opened into all manner of operations.’

  Mishra nodded in empathy, his expression grave. ‘I had heard rumours that any and all actions of Ramjee were going to be investigated. There’s talk of inquisitions that will soon be launched, broadening the scope to cover the
entirety of the Wing,’ he said, referring to the founder of the Wing by the name his friends and subordinates called him.

  ‘My friends in the steel frame tell me that the government is eager to find dirt under the Wing’s fingernails. And they do not mind how many fingernails they have to rip out before they find it,’ Almeida replied.

  ‘If you ask me, it’s a bit of a stretch,’ Mishra replied, his words of consolation meant as much for himself as for Almeida. ‘Peeling so many layers deep would take the entire Bureau the entire term of this government.’

  Almeida cocked his head to one side and considered Mishra’s words. He was breathing heavily.

  ‘We all have skeletons buried here and there,’ he said a few moments later. ‘Perhaps if the caretaker they detested is no more, they may lose interest in his patch of land and leave those particular corpses to rest in peace.’

  ‘That didn’t work for Ramjee,’ Mishra replied, alluding to the founder’s resignation.

  A wistful smile appeared on Almeida’s face. To those who had worked with the founder, his downfall had been like watching Bheeshma’s death from the Kaurava camp.

  ‘Did I ever tell you about a beautiful stone house on the southern bank of the Chapora? There is an island in the middle of the river, about half a mile upstream from the house. I would row to it almost every day when I was young. Early in the morning. Every day. The river swells around it in a gentle way and all sorts of fish find shelter and food among the reeds near its banks. I find myself dreaming about that island every night now. I know you have no reason to do me any favours. We never were on familiar terms, you and I, and I consider that my loss. But there are times when one must abandon one’s last shred of dignity. Take these two on. They don’t deserve to be orphaned, not after three dogged years. Neither has much to look forward to outside of the job. Not for them the calm delights of the Chapora.’

  Mishra had his doubts about Arora’s utility in a section so far removed from Europe, but something about the older man’s request—its manner, the voice it was made in, the expression on the emaciated face—made it clear to Mishra that it wasn’t one he could refuse while still keeping his conscience clear.

  ‘I will keep them safe for as long as I can,’ Mishra said. ‘The plump spy-master should be easy to hide in some line item or the other on the Pakistan Section’s budget.’ Then, after a moment’s pause, Mishra continued, ‘they might dig into Paris even in your absence,’ he cautioned. ‘And if they decide a scapegoat is needed, they will finger Sablok and Arora.’

  Almeida did his best to smile through an inner dialogue of doubt, the sallow skin stretched taut across prominent bones, ageing half a decade in the span of a second.

  ‘Sablok will not be harmed. I have seen to it. There are enough breadcrumbs for a half-competent inquisitor to conclude that Hussain defected to that democracy on the Levant,’ he replied.

  ‘Do you believe the government is choosing its inquisitors on competence?’

  Almeida winced. Mishra realised it was pain and not his question that had triggered it.

  ‘There are safeguards in place to absolve Captain Sablok and Jagjit Arora. And if the goddamned inquisitors insist on placing blame, they can always find me on the banks of the Chapora.’

  But Mishra knew, at that moment, that when the time came, they wouldn’t find him on any riverbank.

  ***

  The hair sample had yielded what they had all hoped for, showing conclusively that Pakistan had, in that facility on the outskirts of Kahuta, achieved uranium enrichment up to 15%. They would need to go a lot further to have a viable weapon, but the sample showed that they were well on their way. More importantly, the Wing now had confirmation: they knew where and how Pakistan was enriching Uranium, and they had assets in place at that location.

  Mishra’s first instinct was to take the confirmation up the chain of command. After all, any action to interfere with the facility at Kahuta would need approval from the very top, not to mention the additional resources without which any mission would exist only on paper. But he checked himself, remembering the ambiguous response Almeida had received when he had proposed assassinating Khan in Amsterdam. The leadership was radically different now, at least in terms of political opinions, but the institutions that they would turn to for counsel were the same ones that, he was certain, had cautioned against precipitous action back then.

  It was a conundrum faced by many senior intelligence operatives at least once in their career: their need for taking calculated risks coming up against the brick wall of the pathological risk aversion of bureaucracies. Bureaucrats operated under the constant assumption that although things weren’t very good at the moment they could easily become quite a bit worse with the slightest action. The only effective means of overcoming this inertia was to convince political masters to overcome bureaucratic arguments, but that presumed a decent working relationship.

  The alternative was for him to evolve a set of scenarios in collaboration with the three services. As far as he knew, they weren’t on the government’s hit list yet, and if the Generals and Air Marshals briefed the Prime Minister on the government’s options, resistance was likely to be less severe. Doing that, however, would need the backing of his own superiors in the Wing. The men in olive green with gold on their epaulettes, and their counterparts in sky blue wouldn’t give credence to an arthritic Section Chief acting on his own initiative.

  He approached the Head of his Division, a quiet professional who avoided politics like the plague and, despite that, found himself third-in-command at the Wing. After briefing him on the operation, Mishra floated the idea.

  ‘Two years ago Almeida went to the PMO with a clever little plan to eliminate Khan in Amsterdam and rid us all of this headache. The babus at the PMO stonewalled his request and Khan escaped. We cannot take that risk again. I’d like to work out a few options in collaboration with the services. The PMO is less likely to stonewall a coalition that includes the services.’

  His superior recoiled in horror. ‘You will not mention that plan outside this room, Mishra. And you will certainly not put it into action. We no longer enjoy the kind of relationships Ramjee wielded. Damage control would be impossible if word got out,’ he replied.

  Mishra argued his case, pleading for action: the Wing had been denied the opportunity to set Pakistan back once before; if they bungled this, they might not have the luxury of a third attempt. After much back and forth between two professionals who held similar beliefs, the Head of the Division enunciated his decision.

  ‘We will take this up the regular channels, and we will fight all the way to make sure we are heard. The leadership views us with intense suspicion and a dislike that borders on hatred, but the message we carry concerns the nation’s interests, not our own. If we sneak behind their backs and then present a fait accompli, we risk feeding their delusions of persecution. What’s more, we may drag the services down with us. That would render ineffective three other institutions, arguably the most important. No, we cannot risk that. Don’t sigh in dejection, Mishra. We follow procedure, however odious and ineffective it may turn out to be, not because it is how things have always been done—I’m the last person to go blindly by the book, forgive the mangled metaphor—but because not doing so leaves the nation vulnerable.’

  He ordered Mishra to prepare a comprehensive brief for the PMO.

  ‘Will you accompany the Secretary (R) to present it, sir?’

  ‘He is no longer Secretary, Mishra. Get used to calling him Director, at least so long as the present dispensation thrives. And yes, I will go along. You will be needed too.’

  ‘May I offer some unsolicited advice, then, sir?’ Mishra asked. His boss nodded, so he continued, ‘if the Prime Minister offers you what appears to be a peg of Scotch, sir, do decline.’

  The task of preparing the briefing fell to Sablok and Arora with the rider that as
far as possible, mention of operational details should be avoided.

  ‘They don’t need to know exactly how we did it,’ Mishra told them.

  The he drafted a cable to Islamabad.

  ‘Congratulations. Job well done. Redouble efforts to recruit assets with access to facility. Objective: sabotage. Do not repeat not initiate sabotage without explicit orders from HQ. Prepare to go at short notice.’

  Mishra contemplated adding a warning about keeping the operation from the Foreign Service staff, but decided that it would be patronising and redundant. if Islamabad couldn’t maintain the metaphorical Chinese Wall between his actions on behalf of the Wing and the diplomatic staff he worked with, something had already gone wrong, badly.

  ELEVEN

  The letter from the Islamabad Resident, written under a pseudonym and sent from a post box in Islamabad by a middle-aged lady in niqab, reached Faisal Baig’s rented accommodations in Kahuta a week later.

  He had established himself among the small traders of the market as a moderately wealthy refugee, someone who had toiled in East Africa, first as a labourer and then as a construction contractor, before tragedy struck in the form of Idi Amin’s dream. After he had hinted, during the odd conversation, about being on the lookout to invest a small sum of Pounds Sterling, part of whatever he had managed to flee Uganda with, he found himself being courted by a few shopkeepers. It helped that he had no family, having claimed that his wife and sons were lost to the turmoil in Uganda.

  The owner of a hardware store—possibly the only one within an hour of travel—introduced Baig to his own son, the star of his eyes, a piece of his mother’s moon, an electrician working for the big sahibs at the “factory” just outside town. Feroze Akmal was twenty-two, unmarried, and curious. Baig struck up a friendship of sorts with him, fuelling the young man’s fascination with the world outside Punjab. Unlike the father, who seemed content to count his blessings in the town of his ancestors, Feroze confessed to experiencing an almost pathological desire to travel. He had heard stories from friends who were friends with people whose uncle’s cousin’s wife’s son-in-law lived abroad in England, and dreamt of settling in London himself, of marrying a beautiful girl, and of earning enough to travel to his heart’s content. But here he was, stuck in this backwater, living twenty feet from his birthplace. The farthest he had ever been was Rawalpindi, he claimed with pride, shame, and awe. The size of the city had deeply impressed him, as had the scandalous habit of the women there to wear western clothes and drive cars.