Ansari got up to his feet and nodded to the major and walked towards the exit. Stepping out into the corridor, Ansari turned to Basu’s men as they piled out: “just tell me you have the names we want from that bastard.”
“We do,” the major replied.
“That simple?” Ansari asked as he removed his handkerchief and wiped the blood off his knuckles.
“That simple,” the major continued. “What you need to understand here is that it is the same story with all these so-called holy-warriors. When they fall into our hands, they sing like canaries. All of their courage melts away when they realize that they will spend their life in a coffin-sized room unless they cooperate. This one, was no different.”
“And what did you find out?” Ansari asked, impressed with the routine way the MI personnel were treating this case.
“Lt-general Haider is Muzammil’s contact man in the ISI,” the senior RAW man noted. “Our captive met with him repeatedly during the past months while they put together the strike on Mumbai.”
“So Haider’s our man,” Ansari noted. “What about the warhead itself?”
“They received the warhead through Haider’s men. A Brigadier Minhas was in charge of that. Mihas belongs to Hussein’s operations staff but works closely with the ISI and Haider.”
“If Haider and Minhas are involved,” Ansari noted, “then rest-assured, so is the higher offices at Rawalpindi. If your captive sang like a canary, why is he almost on the verge of dying in there?” Ansari asked as the noise of beating and moans from room started again. The major waved Ansari down the corridor as they left the room behind.
“Mumbai is a big city, sir,” the major explained. “A lot of us lost a lot of friends and relatives. Many had to be evacuated. Others are still missing in that mass exodus following the detonation off the coast. Once my men here realized who they had on their hands, well…”
Ansari nodded. He understood the sentiment. He started to climb up the stairs that would take them out of the underground facility. “Which is why it is important that you keep a close eye on the captive and make sure he stays alive. At least until our work is done. Can you do that?”
The major smiled to himself. “Yes sir. But I make no guarantees that he won’t just flop over and die on his own.”
Ansari stopped midway on the stairs and turned to face the military-intelligence officer: “now you listen to me! We went to a lot of effort and risk to get that bastard alive. You keep him that way. If I hear that you let him die, I will make it my personal mission to make sure you are busted down to lieutenant and posted to the freezing Siachen glacier the rest of your career. Is that understood?”
“Sir! Understood.” The major had lost his earlier smirk.
Ansari vented his anger in a sigh and then made his way up the stairs again. He understood the emotions running within the services at the savage attack on Mumbai. With all-out war just around the corner, fear was in the air as well. People under these stressful conditions could and would make mistakes. But the mistakes tended to be costlier when the people making them were in positions of responsibility. He knew he had to keep a short leash on everybody under his command until the situation stabilized to normal again.
If at all it ever did.
19
“Where are they headed?” the prime-minister asked as he glanced through the images in front of him. Ravoof turned to General Potgam who responded sharply:
“Pasrur.”
“And where the hell is that?” the PM said as he looked at Potgaml. The latter kept a remarkably neutral face, Ravoof thought as he watched this play out.
“A short distance west of Shakar-Garh. Which itself is across the border from Pathankot.” Potgam replied. The room filled with silence. The images were unanimous in their clarity. Columns of tanks and vehicles on the road were headed east to the border with India. The Pakistani army was on the move.
“What the hell are they playing at?” Bafna asked as he passed the PM more images from the file. “They know they can’t win this, right?”
“By the looks of it,” Ravoof noted, “it looks like they don’t agree with you on that.”
“This,” the PM noted, “goes against everything that their government and the foreign office have given assurances against! It doesn’t make any sense!”
“Unless the analysis model is itself flawed,” Basu noted chillingly.
The PM put down the images and removed his glasses as he looked at the intelligence-chief: “What are you saying? That the civilian government in Islamabad is unaware of all this military mobilization? I know their prime-minister personally. He would never authorize this!”
Ravoof muttered an expletive just a tad bit more loudly than he had anticipated and the PM caught it: “Oh, and you concur with Basu, I take it?”
“I do.” Ravoof replied. He understood that now was not the time to be subtle. His country was being threatened by war by its nuclear-armed neighbor. If what Basu had revealed to him about General Hussein and Haider’s involvement in the Mumbai strike was true, even this assessment was untrue. The country was not being threatened. It was already at war…
“The facts are straightforward,” Ravoof continued, “but the choice is for us to either see them or ignore them. The strike on Mumbai was not a deranged act of a lunatic. It was planned. It was considered. It was analyzed. And Rawalpindi chose to act on it. Why? Is it because they are stupid? No. Nothing that we know about Generals Haider and Hussein over the past two decades show us that they are stupid. In fact, they are anything but. So their decision to allow the terrorists to strike with a borrowed nuclear warhead reveals their inner thoughts and conclusions. Much more so, in fact, than anything their civilian leaders have put out over the past few weeks.”
“They are convinced that we are weak.” Potgam added in a voice teeming with authority that he was known to wield. “They think we are on our knees militarily after the Tibet war and more so psychologically. They think the nuclear fallout from the attacks in Bhutan have left us without the stomach to absorb another such war. A war where the nuclear options are on the table from the get go. They are not convinced they are going to lose, sir. In fact, they think they can win!”
“Of course,” Ravoof added, “our massive strikes against the terrorist camps and commanders was unexpected both to the ISI as well as the terrorist commanders themselves. That was why it caught them flat-footed. The senior terrorists are dead. And the street-jihadists in Pakistan are outraged and rabidly asking for war. I don’t think Islamabad is convinced that they will win. I just think that they see no other alternative at this point. From their perspective, they can wage a popular jihad against us or the same Islamic extremism will topple their precious hold on their country!”
The PM rubbed his eyes and shared a look at Bafna: “everything we have done for peace. All our efforts. And this is what it is coming down to. Is there no alternative for peace at this point?”