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
‘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
‘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
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
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.