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  ‘It better not!’ Asif said sharply. ‘There’s no margin for error, and remember, if even one of us slips up, we all go down.’ His remark ensured that the mood was sombre as he wound up: ‘Okay everyone, I want you to eat and get some rest. We move out at five o’clock sharp.’

  The first man left precisely at five. The others followed at two to three minute intervals. Each of them carried a large steel tiffin-box. Only Asif appeared with a large hard-shell suitcase. And he was the only one who didn’t have a bicycle waiting for him below. Hefting the suitcase, he began to walk briskly towards the Civil Hospital.

  Meanwhile, the others had fastened their tiffin-boxes securely to the rear carriers of their bicycles and pedalled away towards their different destinations.

  The man in the lead stopped at Maninagar and parked his bicycle among the others that crowded the side of the road. He padlocked it carefully and hailed an autorickshaw to make his way back to the apartment.

  As he got into the autorickshaw, Asif opened the boot of a stolen Ambassador car that had been left in the parking lot of the Civil Hospital the previous day. He put the suitcase in, relocked the boot and made his way back to the apartment. He was halfway across the hospital compound when his mobile phone beeped.

  Item delivered.

  The message was short and cryptic, as were the ones that followed. One by one, as Asif walked back to the apartment, they all checked in.

  With a quiet gesture of satisfaction, Asif dialled a number from memory.

  Far away in Mumbai, the call was answered by a slim young man in the backseat of a maroon Ford Endeavour SUV which was snaking its way through the evening traffic. The laptop on the seat beside him radiated a soft white glow. He watched the screen intently as the NetStumbler software installed on the laptop reached out in the gathering gloom of the evening, searching for an unsecured wireless Wi-Fi network to latch on to.

  ‘There! That’s it!’ he exclaimed suddenly. ‘Stop somewhere here. The signal strength is good.’ Even before the vehicle had pulled over to the side of the road, his fingers were flying across the keyboard. He logged into a newly created email account on yahoo, clicked on the drafts folder and eight seconds later, a two-page long mail was on its way. It was addressed to over a dozen recipients, most of them senior managers in various media houses. A copy was also marked to the police commissioner of Ahmedabad. The minute the emails left his account, the man logged out, shut down the laptop and barked urgently at his driver, ‘Let’s go!’

  Pulling into the traffic again, the Endeavour sped away as fast as it could. It was soon zipping down the expressway towards Pune, from where it had driven up earlier that afternoon.

  The first of the addressees stared in shock at the email on his computer screen. By the time he finished reading it, his hands were trembling and his breathing was uneven. He reached for the phone lying next to him but it was already too late.

  The bombs had begun to explode.

  Eight of the ten men had returned to the apartment and were seated in front of the television when the first tiffin bomb kept on the cycle at Maninagar exploded. Almost immediately, a second one exploded at Saraspur. By the time the third bomb went off at Hirabazar, television crews had descended. Like vultures circling their prey, the perpetually news-starved media swung into action, beaming the carnage across the country.

  ‘You only got three!’ Ashraf crowed at the man who had planted the bomb at Maninagar. Some of the others laughed. ‘I keep telling you that you don’t know how to…’

  ‘Shut up, Ashraf!’ Asif hissed. ‘Leave Sajid alone and let’s hear what they are saying.’

  Ashraf subsided sheepishly and they went back to watching the screen.

  By now the eighth bomb had gone off and the city was bleeding.

  ‘I want to see what happens at the last one.’ Asif checked his wristwatch and got up.

  ‘May I come with you?’ The ever excited Ashraf jumped up. ‘Please?’ He pleaded like a schoolboy, shifting eagerly from one foot to the other.

  ‘Okay, but wipe that silly grin off your face,’ Asif said roughly. ‘And keep your mouth shut.’

  The two men walked back to the Civil Hospital at a brisk pace. All around them people were elbowing their way through the crowds, most heading away from the hospital. As they reached the hospital, the duo was met by the collective wail of a long line of ambulances that off-loaded casualties and then screamed off to bring more. The compound in front of the hospital was packed with people.

  Asif and Ashraf leaned casually against the closed shutters of a shop across the street and watched the hospital from a distance. There were several other morbid souls like them scattered around, watching the drama unfold.

  It didn’t take long.

  Asif was glancing at his watch for the third time when a black cloud billowed up from the Ambassador. A split second later, a giant roar shattered the air. Even from a distance, the explosion shocked them into a stunned silence.

  Though they were well out of range, both ducked instinctively as metal shrapnel burst out of the now decimated car and scythed into the people around. A cloud of dust swept through the hospital compound, enveloping everything it touched. For a moment, there was a stunned silence. And then the screams began.

  Asif saw the smirk on Ashraf’s face. He nudged him sharply and the two of them peeled away from the crowd that was growing with every passing moment.

  Ashraf gave a gleeful shout of laughter as soon as they entered the apartment. ‘You all should have seen…’

  Asif cut him off with a thump on his back. ‘Shut up, you fool!’ he hissed venomously. ‘If someone hears you, we’re all dead. They’ll bloody lynch us. How many times do I have to tell you to control yourself?’

  ‘Sorry, Asif bhai. Very sorry.’ Ashraf gave a weak grin, sobering up immediately. ‘It will not happen again.’

  ‘It had better not! Arsehole!’ As Asif turned to the others, a flash of defiance, almost hatred, blazed across Ashraf’s face. Asif nodded at the men who had come with him by train. ‘Okay, it went off fabulously. I want all of you to leave the city immediately. Leave the house one at a time. I’ll see you in Pune next Monday.

  ‘And you,’ he said to the second group that had met him at the station, ‘head back to your home stations and stand by till you hear from me.’

  One of the men from the second group asked, ‘What’s next on the agenda, bhai?’

  ‘You’ll be told when the time comes, miyan. I’m sure you know the rule by now. No operation is discussed till we are all together and everything is in place to execute it. That way, there is no chance of a leak.’ Asif’s tone was curt and final.

  ‘Come on, bhai!’ the man protested. ‘By now I’m sure you trust us.’

  ‘I do! But that doesn’t mean one of us will not slip up and get caught.’

  No one said anything. By now most of them had become used to Asif’s cagey ways.

  ‘But don’t worry,’ Asif said, trying to ease the atmosphere a little, ‘it won’t be long now. Before they recover from one strike, we’ll be hitting them with another, and another. Remember the promise we made – we will never allow the dust to settle.’

  His words were greeted with smiles and nods.

  ‘And before you leave, remember to collect your cash from me.’

  The grins broadened. Despite being extremely secretive and a very tough leader, Asif was always easy with the money, especially when a job had been done well.

  One by one they collected their share of the money and moved out.

  An hour later, barring the three students who had leased the apartment a few weeks ago, no trace of the bombers remained. These three sat glued to the television, lapping up the details of the deaths they had caused, the long list of people killed or injured – kafirs and non-kafirs.

  It was not for nothing that Asif had been codenamed The Recruiter by his controller.

  NINE

  The National Intelligence Advisor (NIA),
G.K. Rao, was the first to reach the conference hall where the Core Crisis Committee was scheduled to meet that morning. The prime minister had called the meeting late the previous night, barely a few hours after the serial bombings at Ahmedabad. Since only the core group was involved, setting up the meeting took no time.

  He is going to be really worked up, Rao thought. I feel sorry for the home minister… but he’s such an incompetent arsehole. A tired, exasperated sigh escaped him. Most politicians are plain idiots, a large number of them criminals. God alone knows why and how they get elected. Rao shook off the futile thought as he began to look through his notes in preparation for the questions that were likely to come up.

  Rao was one of the first agents to have joined RAW. He was in his mid-fifties, short and portly, and wore round black horn-rimmed spectacles that had gone out of fashion a few decades ago. He was one of the few who understood the true state of Indian Intelligence and had to his credit several daring and critical operations, none of which would ever be publicly acknowledged. His biggest strength was his total lack of political bias or mentors. This, more than anything else, had made him acceptable across the political spectrum when the PM decided to set up the National Intelligence Command (NIC) some months ago and appointed Rao at its head as the NIA.

  The tiny conference room was located just down the corridor from the PM’s offices in South Block. A large U-shaped mahogany table that could seat a dozen people dominated most of the room. At the open end of the U was a wall with a large plasma screen. Every person seated at the table could plug in his laptop and use the screen to project information onto it.

  Rao had just finished hooking up his laptop when the Core Team members began to arrive. As expected, Narayan, the National Security Advisor (NSA), arrived first. He greeted Rao with a grim nod as he moved to the chair on his right.

  Like Rao, Narayan was an old intelligence hand. A die-hard professional, he had survived a tumultuous four-decade long tenure without any political mentors, on the strength of his competence. Tall and elegantly dressed, he was a man of few words. But when he did speak, he chose his words with great care. Except for their capabilities and efficiency, the two men had less than nothing in common.

  The door swung open again and the ministers of defence, home and external affairs entered. For a change, there was no small talk, only muttered greetings. An uneasy silence gripped the room. It only deepened when the doors flew open yet again and the prime minister walked up to his seat at the head of the table with a firm, almost angry gait.

  He got straight to the point as he turned to the home minister with a question: ‘What have you got to say about the terror strikes in Ahmedabad?’

  The home minister was about to respond when the PM cut him off. ‘The way we have bombs exploding all over the country, it’s almost as though we are at war.’

  ‘We are at war, sir!’ Rao’s voice was quietly emphatic. The PM gave him a cold look but Rao continued, unfazed. ‘Sir, we have been at war every single day since partition. In addition to the full-scale wars that have been thrust upon us, the Pakistanis have made sure we are perpetually engaged in endless conflict.’

  ‘Aren’t you overstating it a bit, Rao?’ The home minister seemed relieved as the focus shifted away from him.

  ‘Am I, sir? Why don’t we step back and look at the facts?’ Rao replied in a measured tone. ‘Is there any denying that Pakistan is a laboratory for radical Islam? Or that it’s in cahoots with our other neighbours?’

  ‘Our other neighbours? Aren’t you getting a bit paranoid?’

  ‘Are we?’ Narayan came smoothly to Rao’s rescue. ‘China would love to see a weak, tottering India. It could then retain topdog status in Asia and remain the world’s fastest growing economy and the first choice for foreign investments.’

  ‘And how exactly is China planning to do us in?’

  ‘Planning to?’ Narayan’s grim laugh was neither pleasant nor polite. ‘They’re already doing it. India is possibly the only country with whom they’ve made no real effort to resolve border disputes. They have supported Pakistan with military hardware which they know will be used against us. And they’ve blocked every move within the UN to ban Pakistan-based terror groups like the Jamaat-ul-Dawa... and of course, we all know who has been helping Pakistan with testing and developing nuclear weapons.’

  ‘As for our other neighbours,’ Rao took over again, ‘Nepal is firmly in the grip of the Maoists. They favour China and will follow its dictates since the Maoists receive extensive moral and material support from China. And Bangladesh marches to much the same beat as Pakistan.’

  ‘I fully endorse that,’ Narayan said. ‘All these countries pretend to work in isolation, but the subtle alliance between them has tied up India’s security forces in knots all these years and cost us millions by stunting our economic growth.’

  ‘The Pakistan Army and the ISI are spearheading this battle,’ said Rao. ‘They want to radicalize the Indian Muslims and incite the Hindu majority to lash back at them until there is complete chaos. Our security forces get tied up in meaningless internal duties and soon, war fatigue will set in and completely demoralize them. I’m sure you know that in all these years, there hasn’t been a single day when the Indian Armed Forces have not been engaged in combat.’

  ‘Okay, now if the history lesson is over,’ the external affairs minister cut in impatiently, ‘can you tell us who is responsible for these serial bombings?’

  ‘I think we all know we can safely attribute the terrorist problems we face to Pakistan,’ said Rao gravely. ‘After all these years, despite dozens of accords, treaties and promises, Pakistan has not relented in its efforts to balkanize India. Our problem is not so much the Islamic purists calling for a return to the original practices of Islam, it is the ISI with its subversive tactics, using disgruntled and criminal elements in India to wage a low-intensity conflict against us. This war of a thousand cuts aims to bleed our economy, fragment our society and keep international attention focused on the conflict in Kashmir, which they have always tried to pass off as domestic militancy.’

  ‘Not to mention the fact that this simmering problem with India enables the Pakistani Army to retain control over Pakistan. It also ensures they get unstinted support from countries like China.’

  ‘That’s absolutely correct,’ Rao said. ‘In fact, the terror attacks they sponsor against India are mainly aimed at provoking an armed response from us, a response that will give the Pak Army an excuse to pull out their troops from the NWFP area and thus reduce pressure on the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The army is deeply unhappy about the operations they are being forced to conduct against the Taliban due to American pressure. They would love to have an excuse to get out of that.’

  ‘But isn’t it in their own interest to fight the Taliban? Doesn’t Pakistan suffer from terror attacks too?’

  ‘Yes, but there are many in the army and the ISI who want the Taliban to take over Pakistan. They want the Islamic caliphate to expand and take control of maximum territory. In fact, this lot views everything in terms of a jihad against what they call the Crusader-Zionist-Hindu nexus.’

  ‘All that’s fine, Rao, but who specifically was responsible for these bomb blasts in Ahmedabad – and why are we not able to prevent such attacks?’ The prime minister’s tone was curt.

  ‘The investigations are still on, sir, but it’s almost certainly the handiwork of the YPS.’

  ‘I thought the Indian Mujahideen claimed responsibility for the bombings.’

  ‘They did, sir, but the Indian Mujahideen is merely the action arm of the YPS. The name has been chosen because they want to portray it as a homegrown terror group.’

  ‘They think they can get away with that?’

  ‘Well… ever since the Supreme Court banned the YPS as a terrorist group, they have been trying every trick in the book, including the use of some dubious political patrons, to get the ban lifted. If they manage that, they’ll be able to re-establish their ov
er-theground network and actively promote their brand of extremist Islam, while simultaneously carrying out terror strikes as the Indian Mujahideen. This model – of a legitimate political movement or welfare organization as the front with an underground terrorist arm operating in its shadows – is being used by several terrorist organizations in many democratic countries.’

  ‘You mean, like the Jamaat-ud-Dawah and the Lashkar-e-Toiba in Pakistan?’

  ‘Exactly, sir. It makes it really hard for security agencies to act.’

  ‘Is it true that the founders of the YPS are influenced by Deobandi Islam – just like the Taliban and several other right-wing terrorist groups?’

  ‘It is,’ Rao confirmed.

  ‘How in hell has the YPS suddenly become so organized? They were just a ragtag bunch till recently.’

  ‘Sir, though the YPS started as the student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami, which itself was inspired by Iran’s Islamic Revolution, the JIH distanced itself from the YPS when it started inciting people to wage war on the Indian state. However, by then the YPS had been identified by the ISI as a valuable tool for use against India. They helped it to link up with the Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami and other such groups and this enhanced their resources and strike capabilities considerably.’

  ‘I’m glad you’ve done your homework so thoroughly,’ the PM said brusquely, ‘but what I want to know is why we’ve been unable to prevent these bomb attacks.’

  ‘Sir, no country in the world can be on guard all the time, everywhere. A few attacks will always get through, no matter how strong our defences. There is no single battlefield here, no enemy, and no obvious target to protect.’

  ‘Are you trying to tell me, Rao, that there is nothing we can do? Are you saying that we simply have to live with this, accept it as yet another unpleasant reality?’

  ‘No, sir, I’m not saying that, but there is no simple solution.’