Operation Chaos: A Gripping Action Thriller

by Himanshu Rasam

  जहिं असिवर तोडिय रिउ कवालु,णरणाहु पसिद्धउ अणंगवालु ||

  वलभर कम्पाविउ णायरायु, माणिणियण मणसंजनीय ||

  Then, clearing her throat, she explained the meaning. ''The translation of which would go as- There are countless villages in Haryana country. The villagers there work hard. They don't accept domination of others, and are experts in making the blood of their enemies flow. Indra himself praises this country. The capital of this country is Dhilli. The ruler Anangapal is famous; he can slay his enemies with his sword. The weight of the Iron pillar caused the Nagaraj to shake.''

  ''So what is your point?'' David asked her.

  ''This is a monument of importance. It has been standing there for decades, holding its secrets. If this clues lead to some kind of historic treasure, I wouldn't be surprised. I am guessing the psychopath is after some ancient treasure,'' replied Shonali sarcastically.

  ''I take it that you guys must have decoded the cipher by now.'' Sameer jumped into the discussion. ''Sorry for the delay. You know the traffic.'' Taking out his handkerchief, Sameer wiped the sweat on his forehead. The run from the parking lot had been exhaustive.

  ''Everyone- This is Sameer. Intelligence Bureau's crypto analyst,'' David introduced the 36 year old mathematician to the group. Short and a little obese for a person of his height, Sameer seemed like someone who had dressed in a hurry. His half-sleeved formal shirt and jeans were a complete mismatch and his wrist displayed a light skin patch indicative of a missing wristwatch.

  ''How come we are having a civilian in an army investigation?'' Sameer asked, giving a polite smile to Shonali. Although Sameer had gone bald at a young age, his charming smile always impressed people.

  David introduced him to Shonali and updated him on the situation. He was careful not to give out more information than required. Picking up David's cue, Shonali quickly came to the point. ''So here is what we decoded from the inscription- FROM THE RESTING STUPA OF THE GREAT BUDDHA AT THE OLDEST UNIVERSITY STARTS THE HILL.''

  ''It does seem like the correct decryption. Makes total sense and now we only need to think what it means so that we can act accordingly.'' Sameer was trying to fit meaning into the words. ''I think it is just a marker- a guide to the next clue or marker. If we say we have to climb a hill, we have to start at some place which has been referred to as- RESTING STUPA OF THE GREAT BUDDHA AT THE OLDEST UNIVERSITY.''

  ''It could be the Nalanda University. The oldest known university in the history of our country. Also Lord Mahavir and Gautam Buddha used to teach there around 6th-5th century B.C. Maybe the text points in that direction,'' Shonali inferred.

  ''She might be correct, Commander. This decryption does seem to point towards Nalanda.'' Sameer agreed.

  ''You really think an ancient treasure is what our lunatic is after? Because we have to get this right. We would be wasting a lot of time if we land up finding nothing at Nalanda,'' said David.

  ''I can't think of any other place that fits the description better. If this engraving is supposed to lead us somewhere, then Nalanda would be our best shot,'' Shonali explained.

  David dedicated the next sixty seconds in making arrangements for their transport. About fifteen minutes later, two HAL Dhruv choppers lowered on a clearing near the Qutub Complex.

  David, Shonali, Raghav and Sameer got into one while David's team of commandos got into another. Just as both the choppers were about to take off, David received a text.

  Incoming message: Ranjeet

  Your job description was quite amusing. Looks like my kind of thing. Almost reached the Qutub Complex. Where are you, Sir?

  David chuckled and asked the pilot to hold the chopper down for some more time.

  ''We have got one more passenger aboard,'' he said.

  Chapter 31

  Lalit searched the room of Hotel Sundial where their prime suspect had been staying. That bastard has cleared everything neatly. No computer hard drives, no cell phones, no evidence. All I end up is with some half-burnt papers in the dustbin.

  He began pulling out the burnt papers from the dustbin searching for anything legible. Most of the papers were totally charred while the rest had partial texts making absolutely no sense. A piece of paper which didn't burn up had a description about something called- ASSIGNMENT 6.00

  Lalit read and reread the text. He had no idea what any of that stuff meant.

  We need to figure out what they were planning. I hope they track him down soon.

  The Yellow line at the New Delhi Metro had a mild crowd that night. Muhammad dumped his gun to dodge the metal detector, took out a stolen 'metro entry card', placed it on the reader and entered the platform lobby. Roshan and his team rushed down the stairs with everyone barking orders at the Metro police in-charge. The station lobby was steadily becoming less crowded. A handful of passengers were down on the platforms waiting for the last metros to take them home. It was then that Alok saw a figure wearing a red jacket coming out of the toilet on the extreme corner of the lobby and heading towards the platforms below.

  ''There he is, Sir! The red jacket,'' Alok screamed.

  Roshan caught a glimpse of the mysterious figure just before it started to climb down the stairs leading to the platforms. For a split second he got a clear view of the face of his target.

  ''Did you see the scar on his...?'' Alok said turning towards Roshan.

  ''Left cheek. Yes, I saw it. Stay right behind me,'' said Roshan, dashing towards the stairs like a bullet.

  Muhammad was at the end of the staircase and he had a decision to make- the two trains on his either sides. One heading uptown to Jahangirpuri on his left and the other downtown to Huda City Centre on his right. Losing his heavy backpack and the red jacket, he dashed towards a train and got in.

  By the time Roshan and Alok descended to the platform, their fugitive was nowhere to be seen. There was nobody else on the platform either. The doors of the trains were about to close and Roshan had a little time to decide. He saw a red jacket and a backpack on the ground near platform one.

  He may have dropped it in a hurry to board the train on platform one. OR. It may be a trick to divert us.

  ''Let's Split.'' Roshan made the call. Giving a slight nod as a reply, Alok dashed towards platform 2 into the Huda city centre Metro while Roshan ran along platform 1 and dived into the Jahangirpuri heading Metro. The doors closed in behind him.

  Roshan radioed Alok the further instructions.

  ''Now that he doesn't have his red jacket on, it is going to be difficult to find him. You know the procedure. I will inform the operators and tell them not to open the doors until we are done searching. He is in one of these trains and he is trapped. Ask our men to check the contents of his backpack. Keep me posted. Out.''

  Alok cleared his throat and flashed his badge.

  ''Everyone listen up. This is the police and we are doing an investigation. I need your assistance. Do not panic and just do as you are told and it will soon be over.''

  On the other train Roshan was also announcing something similar.

  ''We are searching for a man and he is somewhere on this train. I request you to remain seated and let us proceed with the investigation.''

  A couple of minutes later when the trains pulled into their respective stations, there was a metro police squad waiting right outside the trains.

  Totally trapped. The bastard is not going anywhere. Roshan thought.

  ''Did you get him yet, Alok?'' Roshan asked impatiently over the radio.

  ''Nope. My checking is not even halfway done. We can't miss him though. Only we both know how he looks like and that scar on his cheek, running from his ear to his chin, is not easy to miss. What's your status?''

  Little did Roshan and Alok know that they were not going to find their target in either of the trains.

  Chapter 32

  Within no time, Ranjeet was
escorted by two NSG guards to the chopper. As opposed to the other geeks he usually hung around with, Ranjeet did care about his attire. He was dressed in a black jacket over a grey t-shirt, wide-wale corduroys, and grey sports shoes. The rimless spectacles and his laptop backpack were in line with his geeky side, but did present him as a guy with etiquette. As soon he got on board, for the first few seconds, his eyes were locked on the beautiful girl in the chopper- Shonali. It required a tap on the shoulder from David to bring back Ranjeet's mind to the reality.

  ''This is Ranjeet. He helps us with ethical hacking.'' David then introduced his team to the hacker. ''Captain Raghav- Deputy Security incharge at the Rashtrapati Bhawan, Sameer- our crypto analyst. That is President Ajaysingh's daughter- Shonali.''

  Someone tell her she is damn hot. Ranjeet shook hands with the team.

  ''So what's this about, Sir? Shouldn't you be at the Rashtrapati Bhawan. I just checked out the news on the net,'' Ranjeet asked, secretly glancing at Shonali between words.

  ''It is a long story....''

  David began explaining things to Ranjeet as the chopper rose rather unsteadily facing the tall stone monument. Shonali decided to spark up a conversation with Sameer, still eyeing the message on the iron pillar she had decrypted.

  ''I always had an interest in cryptography and the codes. I am curious to know how exactly did you know that it was an Ottendorf cipher?'' she asked.

  ''It's a common cipher. Perhaps one of the easiest to crack. Even in the 1993 Mumbai bombings, the local gangs used a type of Ottendorf cipher. They had to deliver the RDX to specific locations so they chose a book and used an Ottendorf cipher such as 45-6-3 referring to the page number, the line number and the word.''

  ''And they passed the book along with the code?''

  ''NO. You never keep the lock and the key together. Every code basically has two parts- one is the cipher and another is the key. The book, in this case, being the key. The key must be easy to obtain, yet hard to identify. So they chose a pretty common book, but only the users of the code knew which book exactly it was. In 1993, since they had to cipher the addresses they used the Mumbai telephone directory. Choosing a location to deliver the explosives from the telephone directory, they used to send the coded numbers to their contemporaries.''

  An expression of awe appeared on Shonali's face. ''Oh! So when did you become interested in cryptography?''

  ''I have been excited about codes since my school days. I used to send coded messages to my school time girlfriend,'' Sameer winked sheepishly. ''You know, cryptography- the science of making and breaking codes has come a long way since the 1st century B.C, when Julius Caesar reportedly used a simple substitution cipher, in which each letter was replaced by a letter that followed it alphabetically by three places. Another cipher found in The Old Testament also uses simple substitution. In Jeremiah (25:26 and 51:41), the prophet wrote wrote She-shach for Babel. The second letter of the Hebrew alphabet (B) was replaced by the second-to-last letter (Sh), and the twelfth letter (L) was replaced by the twelfth-to-last letter (ch). The vowels are of secondary importance in Hebrew. This cipher is called Athbash, an acronym formed from the first Hebrew letter (a), the last letter (th), the second letter (b), and the second-to-last letter (sh).''

  ''Wow. I didn't know that there were codes even in The Old Testament. How do you decode these ciphers? The substitutions could be anything,'' Shonali asked.

  ''Um... there's one loophole in this method. In every language, the letters of a lengthy plaintext exhibit a predictable frequency. For example, E is the most common letter in English, showing up an eighth of the time. It is a good assumption that the most common symbol of a long ciphertext represents the letter E. The letters t, a, o, n, i, r, s and h follow 'e' in the frequency count. This helps crypto analysts to decipher almost 70 percent of the cipher. Many modern code-cracking algorithms use this technique of frequency analysis. Another point of interest would be that almost 40% of the English words start with t, a, o, s and w. These codes were used more often than weapons during wars. You may be surprised to hear that in World War I, the Germans transmitted two million enciphered words a month on the radio while in World War II, the Allied Supreme Headquarters often sent out more than two million enciphered words per day.''

  ''My God! Do you guys still use these kind of ciphers?'' asked Shonali, digesting all the information Sameer was throwing at her.

  ''No way. Today's state of the art technologies and advanced algorithms crack these codes in a matter of seconds. The world of cryptography has totally changed. Even the United States' best crypto analysts couldn't figure out the cipher designed by Bin Laden. Although there are still some old time ciphers which work well on a small scale. In the fifteenth century, an Italian architect Leon Battista Alberti came up with a cipher- polyalphabetic cipher. That can be called the basis of modern cryptography,'' said Sameer.

  ''And what was it?'' Shonali was now more interested in the science of codes.

  Sameer took out his laptop and opened a diagram on it.

  ''Alberti's cipher uses this table for encryption and decryption of messages. The uppercase letters in the table are known as key letters and to the left are also uppercase letters which refer to the plaintext.''

  ''So suppose we choose the keyword as 'shonali' and we have to send a message- 'Bombs Delivery Done', we do this:

  Keyword : S H O N A L I S H O N A L I S H O

  Plain Text : B O M B S D E L I V E R Y D O N E

  Now to design the cipher text, we take the alphabet which lies in the column of S in the Key Letters and the row of B in the Plain text. When we go down the column beginning with 'S' and the row starting with 'B', they intersect at 'U'. So doing the same thing we the entire message, it gets encrypted to:

  Keyword : S H O N A L I S H O N A L I S H O

  Plain Text : B O M B S D E L I V E R Y D O N E

  Cipher text : U W B P T P N E Q K S S K M H V T

  Finally, we send UWBPTPNEQKSSKMHVT as the cipher text and the other party who knows the keyword decodes it just using the opposite process which we used for encoding it.''

  ''A genius invention-'' Shonali words were interrupted when David passed his radio to her. It was her dad on the other side.

  ''Hello, Shonali?'' The voice on the other end sounded worried. But for Shonali, the tone was cold. That was the cold voice she had lived with for her entire childhood. Her mother had passed away when she was three and her father didn't want to be her father.

  ''Yeah, Dad. I am fine. Flying to Nalanda. I suppose Commander David gave you an update of the situation,'' Shonali tried to sound calm.

  ''I am so sorry Shonali to drag you in the middle of this. I didn't know whom to ask for help and I... all these lost objects... these threats- so I asked for your help. This is a nightmare for me, Shonali.''

  ''It is alright, Dad. I think we will get to the bottom of this soon. You stay safe,'' Shonali replied.

  Chapter 33

  Muhammad had cleverly planned his move while descending the stairs to the platforms. He got on the train towards Huda city centre and exited it just as the doors were closing. It was a risky move, but it was his only shot. He turned left and saw a man holding a handgun get into the train and that very second Muhammad knew his trick had worked.

  Keep searching for me where I don't even exist.

  The next part was easy. He emptied his pockets and walked upstairs. Muhammad entered the same toilet he had exited minutes ago. While getting into the toilet earlier, he had memorised the next metro timings and had waited for his chance to rush out. He had ensured to keep the red jacket in his hand and ran fast enough to gain some attention. Once he knew the agents were behind him, he dumped his bag and jacket to trick the agents to board the trains.

  Now that he had thrown the intelligence agents off his trail, getting out of an already panicked metro station was not a difficult job. It was a job he was trained for. Fifteen minutes later, Muhammad walked out of the New Delhi metro station f
ree as a bird.

  Gulped a few pints of fresh air, took out his satellite phone and typed.

  Out of the trouble. Going to the rendezvous point. Where are they now?

  He soon got a reply:

  Exactly where we wanted them to go- They are in a chopper to Nalanda. You know what to do next. Be careful henceforth. You may not get a second chance.

  Muhammad didn't understand how his boss got the location of David's team every time.

  There must be somebody else helping him.

  Chapter 34

  ''We are flying over Patna right now. Should be landing at Nalanda in 15 minutes,'' the pilot announced over his microphone. The night was setting in and the weather was turning unpleasantly cold.

  ''What do you mean, you can't get it from here?'' David asked Ranjeet with a big surprise on his face.

  ''Look, the firewalls on that system are military grade. I could have bypassed them using the old military key codes, but it appears they have changed those too. Moreover, as per your information, the system is on an island and it doesn't have any wires running from the land so probably it has a direct uplink to the satellite, which I can't establish in such a short time frame,'' said Ranjeet.

  ''I get that. So how do you plan on doing it?'' asked David. He was clearly not happy with the turn of events.

  ''I don't have many options. In fact, I only have one, which requires me to be on the island and hardwire into their system to hack it. There must be some way of getting on that island without getting detected.'' Ranjeet looked at David hopefully. ''Or maybe an aerial bombing would solve the entire problem.''

  ''We have grade B sensors and radars monitoring the perimeter 24x7. Also, we can't risk an air-strike. They have some high priority hostages down there. We don't want to lose those scientists. And bombing that place would be equivalent to destroying our own technology. The government has spent billions on this project.'' David took a moment's pause. ''We can't breach in because we are not sure about the exact number of terrorists on the island and what type of artillery they have. If we are delayed even by a few moments, they launch the missile. That is why we chose this third way- roaming around and solving puzzles for that lunatic. Believe me, if I lay hands on that bastard, I will bleed him to death''