by S Venkatesh
Damini cursed in exclamation.
‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ Bob continued. ‘In five minutes’ time, you can download it off an encrypted online storage box.’
Bob continued: ‘I have a few sketchy details on the Maestro’s background. Nobody knows his real name. He apparently hails from a princely family in eastern Europe. He seems to have had an alcoholic father whose misadventures came to an abrupt end when our boy, who went on to become the Maestro, impaled him with a dagger.’
‘Wow,’ Damini said. ‘How old was the Maestro then?’
‘He was a young boy of ten or eleven,’ Bob said, eliciting an exclamation from Sam.
He continued: ‘He was brought up in the Soviet Union, probably by a relative. He seems to have been a brilliant student who, after graduation, joined the Soviet government’s bio weapons’ programme—Biopreparat. His prowess at what he did earned him the moniker “Maestro”. But over the years, he gradually got disillusioned with communism, especially when government officials back in his country colluded with his cousin to control his family estate. Incidentally, the cousin was subsequently found dead, also impaled on a dagger.’
Sam’s face went pale. Deep within, his mind’s eye conjured up an image—of Ananya, falling deeper and deeper into an abyss, dragged irreversibly down by the stuff of his deepest nightmares.
Bob continued: ‘Post the fall of communism, the Doc, as he was known by then, was hired formally by the CIA. His vast experience with bio weapons was unparalleled in the US, and he quickly attracted the attention of officials at Langley. Meanwhile, he was apparently quite the connoisseur: he had exquisite taste, and was an aficionado of single malts, Cuban cigars and the like.’
‘Seems to have been quite a character,’ Damini mused.
‘There is one more thing. There are allegations that he conducted experiments on human subjects in the Soviet Union, and there were hushed whispers about human experiments in Project Darkworm, too.’
***
Damini downloaded the Maestro’s photograph from the online storage box whose codes Bob had given her.
She could send the picture to Kunal for comparing with the ACG’s databases, but she decided against it. She did not want to answer questions about the source of the photograph.
She decided to grab a coffee. Bani and Sam, meanwhile, were both in adjoining rooms, continuously being monitored on CCTV by Gautam, the ACG guard at the safe house.
As Damini stirred some sugar into her coffee, she became aware of a knot in her stomach. Something was bothering her about the photograph of the Maestro.
Maybe it was his cold eyes. There was something very dark and evil about them. They reminded her of Bella Lugosi in the movie Dracula.
Or maybe it was the subtle twist of his upper lip, a twist which portended greater horrors, a window into the devious personality of someone who had crossed very far into the dark side.
Damini sunk into a chair. She had not even taken a sip of her coffee when her eyelids started drooping.
***
3.45 a.m.
Damini, asleep on her chair, was dreaming.
She dreamed that a North Korean nuclear bomb expert was having breakfast with her and abruptly his face morphed into the Maestro’s face and then the face of a dragon. Suddenly, the dragon grew bigger and bigger, and was about to engulf and smother her.
Damini woke up in cold sweat.
And then it struck her.
Monday morning, when Ji-hoon Kim was having breakfast at Kyani Bakery.
The man was stockily-built and somewhat short for a Caucasian. He had a sunken face and a thick mop of black hair. But there was another feature that had caught Damini’s attention through the melee of Mumbai’s morning crowd and the anxiety about tailing the North Korean.
It was his eyes. There was a deep, cold and sinister look about them that had made her quiver a bit, even in the bright glare of the morning sun.
The Maestro had been there that morning at Kyani Bakery.
CHAPTER 23
The Mansion, Tuesday, 4 a.m.
The man with the dark, sinister eyes and eerily calm voice took a sip of tea from his cup and savoured it lightly with his tongue.
The loud Americans were responsible for the appellation ‘Doc’, but he personally preferred the more sophisticated moniker from his days in Europe: the Maestro. For he regarded his work and passion no less profound than that of an artiste, musician or philosopher. Just as he preferred the mythological rich Indian name ‘KaalKoot’ to the drab name ‘Toxin Z’ given by the Americans.
The tea was Darjeeling’s finest, personally sourced for him by one of his minions who had spent two days scouring tea estates across the length and breadth of Darjeeling. The minion in question was standing in a corner of the room, trembling as the Maestro took his first sip.
He let out an audible sigh of relief as the Maestro nodded slowly and took another sip.
‘Update?’ the Maestro asked a deeply tanned man who was standing in the centre of the room.
‘All on schedule, sir. The kick-off will happen this evening. The midfielders have already got the balls from the defenders, and they in turn will set it up and pass it on to Sylvan.’
The tanned man was shaking slightly as he spoke. The Maestro was not physically imposing; he was around 5’ 6” and a little stocky. But there was something about the effect he had on people. Just one look at his deep eyes, one word of his eerily calm voice, and the other person knew that he was dealing with an evil force.
The soccer euphemisms ‘midfielder’, ‘ball’ and ‘defender’ were at odds with the Maestro’s suave, rather refined exterior, but they gelled well with the beast within him. A beast that was finally about to be unleashed.
CHAPTER 24
A missing scientist who was sticking his nose into secret bio weapons’ research. A crackpot professor with a fantasy tale. A pathologically dangerous bio weapons’ expert who had faked his death, was now in India, and was socialising with the choicest pick of the world’s most dangerous people.
Damini rubbed her hands in anticipation.
She loved her job.
Along with the euphoria came the same strange feeling of unease that she had experienced when giving career advice to Sam a couple of hours earlier.
We become what we repeatedly do.
What about that was so disturbing?
***
Sam had been let into Damini’s room by Gautam, the guard at the safe house. She was reading from a series of documents and papers that Mini had sent her, including the 2001 paper by Stephen S. Arnon, Robert Schechter, et al, that Bavdekar had referred to in his notes.
‘Botulinum toxin seems to be a credible threat,’ she said. ‘During World War II, the US apparently produced botulinum toxin, and there were reports that Germany, too, had weaponised the toxin. The Soviets, too, tested the toxin on Vozrozhdeniye Island in the Aral Sea. After the 1991 war, Iraq admitted to the United Nations inspection team that they had produced over 10,000 litres of concentrated botulinum toxin. That is many times the amount needed to kill the entire human population by inhalation.’
‘Phew,’ Sam said. ‘Why then was it not used in the war?’
‘Looks like most countries encountered technical problems in weaponising and disseminating it,’ Damini said. ‘The Aum Shinrikyo cult actually dispersed the toxin in Japan thrice during the 1990s, but the attacks failed.’
Sam exhaled. ‘And somehow, the Maestro and his gang may have synthesised a version that can be more effectively weaponised. That does not seem like good news.’
***
Goa, Tuesday, 4 a.m.
‘What the hell is this bio weapons’ expert doing with the North Koreans?’ Sam was saying as he paced around the room. ‘More importantly, what is he doing in India?’
Damini offered Sam some coffee from the safe house espresso machine. She did not extend any such courtesy to Bani. His room was locked from the outside, a fact t
hat Bani discovered when he tried to visit the restroom.
‘I’m sure whatever Steve was mumbling in the hospital has something to do with this. He said something about a Demo,’ Sam was saying. ‘Possibly of KaalKoot?’
Damini hesitated. She had not told Sam about the Demo. ‘I’ll let you in on some classified stuff, Sam,’ she said, haltingly.
‘You’d better,’ Sam said, his voice cracking a little. ‘I have to find my girlfriend.’
Damini carried on: ‘We intercepted some communication between North Korean agents on coded channels, about an event called the “Demo”, scheduled for this week. Meanwhile, a whole bunch of questionable characters—representing syndicates ranging from a Colombian drug cartel to the Slav Gang to a North African dictatorship—have been spotted in Mumbai over the last couple of months.’
Sam was pacing up and down. ‘Maybe the Demo is some sort of demonstration of this bio bomb, based on KaalKoot, or Toxin Z. And based on this Demo, maybe the North Koreans will decide whether to sponsor and support this Maestro guy in developing bio weapons. And maybe the other members of this cast of baddies are people that he is negotiating with.’
Damini nodded. Sam was making sense.
‘So the Demo has to be big enough to demonstrate how lethal this bio bomb is,’ Damini said. ‘Going by what we heard from Bob, even a Demo could be as lethal as a nuclear bomb.’
Sam exhaled perceptibly, and said, ‘That’s scary. Especially since you said it’s supposed to happen this week.’
***
Damini was thinking aloud. ‘Why is this Maestro guy’s base in India?’
Sam snapped his fingers as he had a burst of realisation. ‘The Global Security Summit—GSS—in Delhi on Wednesday. The heads of state of the US, UK, France, Germany, Australia, Japan and India will all be in one place. If I was the Maestro and I wanted to give a “Demo”, that’s where I’d look.’
‘Bingo,’ Damini nodded appreciatively. ‘But then, how about all of the above plus forty-five thousand other people?’
Sam’s eyes widened as he slowly comprehended. ‘You mean the T-20 cricket match—the match of the century—immediately after the GSS that same evening?’
Damini nodded.
‘All the heads of states are planning to attend the match as a goodwill gesture,’ Sam said, letting out a low whistle. ‘The leaders of the free world, besides forty-five thousand people, dead in one single swoop.’
Damini nodded again. ‘That’s what I’m talking about.’
CHAPTER 25
The Mansion, 4.30 a.m.
The Maestro allowed himself the luxury of a mild smile. It had been a long, frustrating, multi-year wait since that evening in 2008 when he got to know that Project Darkworm was being shut down by the CIA. If things went according to design, he would be back on the map soon.
And the Demo would be just the first step of his larger plan.
The Maestro found himself reminiscing.
It had been an eventful journey.
He had always known that Botulinum toxin would be a good place to start his quest for the most powerful bio weapon. The toxin acted very effectively. By blocking the release of acetylcholine, a crucial neurotransmitter that is responsible for muscle activation, it rapidly led to paralysis of muscles, eventually culminating in respiratory failure and death.
But there were issues. Botulism as a disease has been around for centuries, and results from eating contaminated food, from wounds, or from direct inhalation. There exist antitoxins which would be effective in treating it if administered at the right time. The toxin itself could be destroyed at high temperatures. The spores, dormant versions of the bacteria Clostridium botulinum, are harmless in themselves and are fairly common in soil and sediments.
By modifying the genetic structure of various bacteria by using a combination of techniques including gene splicing, a process by which genetic information from one organism is introduced in another, the Maestro had developed a variant, called Clostridium dystolinum, as part of Project Darkworm.
Clostridium dystolinum produced the dystolinum toxin, an even more lethal variant of botulinum toxin. Unlike in the case of C. botulinum, the spores of C. dystolinum were not harmless. They would rapidly germinate into bacteria once in the human body, and the bacteria would then produce the toxin. The ease with which the pathogen could be aerosolized into extremely tiny particles gave it a powerful edge. And so did the fact that exposure to even the tiniest amount was enough to cause an infection. These traits enabled it to be more effectively dispersed over a large area through the airborne route. The pathogen would form spores easily, which could stay in air for long periods and infect human hosts. Compared to botulinum toxin, dystolinum toxin had a lower incubation period, and harsher symptoms, including disruption of mental faculties.
The Americans had insisted on giving the code-name Toxin Z to the dystolinum toxin, though he would have preferred a name like Ragnarok, the destruction of the world in Norse mythology, or Pralay, the final apocalyptic end of the world in Indian mythology. Free from the clutches of the Americans now, he could call it KaalKoot, after the identical toxin found in the upper Himalayas.
***
He still remembered the euphoria of those days.
Toxin Z always killed. In the absence of an antidote, every single person infected by it would die.
It acted fast. People exposed to it would start showing symptoms within an hour. It would kill some of its victims in an hour and all within sixty hours, much quicker than other biological weapons.
It could be produced and stored easily, making it scalable. It could be delivered effectively, making it easy to weaponise.
It was more infectious than other biological agents, and could be transmitted lethally through the airborne route. Through air currents, it could infect people over a wide area.
The Maestro still remembered the triumphant jubilation with which he had presented his findings to his benefactors. Even today, his hair stood on end as the memory overtook him.
***
The Maestro went over the details of the plan in his head.
The euphemisms of ‘midfielder’, ‘ball’ and ‘defender’ fitted the context well. The ‘balls’ were containers holding spores, dormant forms of the bacterium Clostridim dystolinum, which produced the toxin KaalKoot. The ‘defenders’ were the ones who had kickstarted the Demo by carrying the ‘balls’ into Delhi as part of a large food products shipment. The ‘midfielders’ had the job of setting it up—putting the ‘balls’ together into the final three pairs of two cylinders each that would be passed on to Sylvan, the person who was supervising the operation.
KaalKoot would kill those directly affected by the primary airborne infection in the stadium, some in an hour, and all within sixty hours. By then, through interpersonal contact—especially breath and sneezing, which would result in aerosolization into very tiny particles—it would spread to others and kill them, too. But the potency would be lower in secondary infected people, so rather than becoming a chain reaction, it would gradually die out by the time it reached the seventh or eighth degree host. By then, tens of thousands would be dead.
The International Cricket Stadium could seat forty-five thousand people. Many of these people would infect others outside the stadium. The Maestro’s statisticians had estimated the death toll at eighty thousand.
But it would be a potent eighty thousand, including as it would the heads of state of the seven most powerful countries of the world who had gotten together to censure China and Russia.
Enough to point giant needles of suspicion at China and Russia. Enough to bring the world powers to the brink of a war, possibly the worst confrontation since World War II.
Good enough for a start, and to put him back on the map. Before he could execute his grander plan.
CHAPTER 26
ACG safe house, Goa, Tuesday, 4.30 a.m.
‘Dammit. This is serious business. Can’t you alert your agency?’ Sam aske
d.
Damini shook her head. ‘This is still just a hunch. Without tangible proof or at least strong pointers, the information will lack credibility.’
Sam’s mind was racing. ‘Assuming that the Maestro is planning something for Wednesday, there’s one thing that does not make any sense. Why would he kidnap Bavdekar and go after Bani? What do they have that he wants?’
Damini wondered. ‘It can’t be to find KaalKoot; he has probably synthesised the bacterium which produces the toxin in the laboratory anyway.’
And then it hit Sam.
There was one common thread between Bavdekar’s notes on the meeting with Professor Hudson and Bob’s account of Project Darkworm.
‘The antidote,’ he blurted out. ‘The goddamn antidote. That’s the one thing Project Darkworm failed to develop.’
Damini let out an exclamation. ‘Wow!’
Sam continued: ‘Bavdekar said in his notes that without an antidote, the bio weapon could not be used at a global scale because it could spin out of control and annihilate not only the enemy, but also the person who unleashed it.’
Damini nodded. ‘And Bob, too, mentioned that the Project Darkworm gang could not find the antidote to the toxin.’
‘Somehow, these two madcap professors have some way to get to the antidote, and that’s the one thing the Maestro—and probably his friends, the North Koreans—don’t have.’
Damini continued the train of thought. ‘Maybe that’s why a Demo is needed. It is more like a proof of the concept. Not the full thing.’
Sam nodded. ‘The Maestro is probably seeking state sponsorship, maybe from the North Koreans, so that he can develop an antidote and commercialise KaalKoot to unleash destruction at a much larger scale.’
Damini frowned. ‘How exactly would two senile professors have some way to get to the antidote?’
Sam spoke animatedly. ‘The Yogyaveer. The Gupt-Kandara. Maybe Manohar and the Yogyaveer somehow came across the antidote. And maybe the secret to it is contained in the Gupt-Kandara.’
Damini’s eyes widened as Sam continued: ‘So, maybe this Hidden Cave really exists. Maybe this villain is after Bavdekar and Bani to be able to lead them to it. To find the goddamn antidote; because that’s the only thing that stands between KaalKoot and being able to unleash worldwide destruction with it.’