Weapon of Vengeance

by Mukul Deva

  “Did you notice this, sir?” Mohite tapped the file in his hands a few minutes later.

  “What about it?”

  “Look at the delegates list; the Israelis are sending Ziv Gellner, Yossi Gerstmann, and Shahar Goldstein. From the Palestinian side, we have Hisham Gheisari from Hamas; Mullah Ghassan Ahmed Hussein, the head imam of the Al-Aqsa Mosque; and Ghazi Baraguti from Fatah.”

  “Interesting,” Ravinder commented as he ran through their profiles.

  Thirteen delegates! Again that bloody unlucky number. But he shrugged off the foreboding that snaked through him and nudged his mind back to the profiles.

  Ziv Gellner, a former aide of Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli premier, was now a staunch Kadima man and one of the chief proponents for a peaceful solution. Originally a hardliner, he’d lost his wife to cancer and later his firstborn son, David, in an Arab attack on the Yitzhar settlement. Mourning his son, he’d adopted Ean, a boy who survived the raid but lost both his parents during it.

  When Rabin was gunned down, Ziv’s feelings had converted him into a staunch pacifist. Ziv had been right there, a dozen feet from Rabin. Right in front of his eyes he had seen all hopes for peace disappear, blown away by an assasin’s bullets. All the euphoria and hope that the Oslo talks had generated evaporated.

  “Damn! Did you read this?” Ravinder pointed at Gellner’s profile. “He also lost his adopted son, Ean, in the recent terror attack on Jerusalem?”

  “Really?” Mohite perused the profile. “Hmm … I wonder how he will handle this summit.” Both men pondered that. “Strange! Another coincidence,” Mohite pointed out a moment later. “Like Gellner, Yossi Gerstmann also lost his son and wife during the same Arab raid on Yitzhar.”

  Ravinder found Gerstmann’s résumé fascinating. A hotshot intelligence professional, he’d been earmarked to head up the Mossad one day. But a counterterrorist operation led by him went wrong, resulting in a bloodbath; putting paid to a promising career. Now a political advisor, Gerstmann was a staunch right-winger who strongly believed that Israel should not part with an inch of land. He was obviously a logical choice for the hardliners and a counterbalancing foil for the pacifist Gellner.

  The third Israeli, Shahar Goldstein, often known as the Prince, the son of a former Israeli premier, was a respected Likud man. Due to his legacy, Goldstein carried weight in most sections of Israeli society and could be expected to maintain a balance between the opposing viewpoints of Gellner and Gerstmann. His presence would ensure that whatever solution was recommended might well be acceptable to the Israeli public, which still held his late father in awe.

  Of the Palestinian delegates, Hisham Gheisari, a Hamas man based in Gaza, had done a lot of community-development work and made life easier for the Palestinians. He was reputed to be above corruption, and a dozen schools and hospitals in Gaza owed their existence to him. It was men like him who had helped put an end to the corrupt Fatah regime. Though a staunch Hamas man, Gheisari was also a known dove.

  Mullah Ghassan Ahmed Hussein, the Head Mufti of Jerusalem, respected in all circles Islamic, Jewish, and Christian, would also be able to play a pivotal role with the Palestinians, especially in light of the recent terror attacks on Jerusalem. In a way, he was Shahar Goldstein’s equivalent, whose presence might make a solution palatable to his people.

  However, the third Palestinian, Ghazi Baraguti, a Fatah man until now languishing in an Israeli jail, was a surprise. For several months, there had been debate in Israel about setting him free as a goodwill gesture. But it had ended abruptly when Fatah terrorists made the mistake of capturing some Israeli soldiers and demanding his release. All talks of release had died away.

  “Do you see the point I was making?” Mohite asked again. “From Egypt we have Atef Aboul Gheit, a retired diplomat. Jordan is sending Ghafar al-Issa, an advisor to their ministry of Foreign Affairs. Ghada al-Utri, another senior diplomat, is representing Syria, and from Saudi Arabia we have his Royal Highness Prince Ghanim Abdul Rahman al-Saud.”

  “And from America we have Senator George Polk,” Ravinder added, flipping the page.

  “Isn’t he known as a loner and prone to marching to his own drumbeat?”

  “The very man,” Ravinder replied, double-checking the senator’s profile. “No one can be sure what his stance is, though odds are that he’d be biased against the Israelis.”

  “Surprising. Very surprising.” Mohite made a clicking sound with his tongue. “Right. And from Britain it’s MP Sir Geoffrey Tang, and lastly we have the Norwegian, Sigurd Gaarder.”

  “Like Polk, Tang too is a wild card, though he’s more likely to be sitting in the middle. As for Gaarder … he was one of the original Oslo negotiators and could bring in invaluable expertise.”

  “Well, yes, but did you notice this?” Mohite grinned. “Each of the delegates has a name starting with G … either the first name or the family name.” He looked up. “Even both of us.” The grin broadened. “We should code name this the G-string Summit.”

  Ravinder could not help smiling. He had to admit; this was a good one … even for Mohite … especially from Mohite.

  “Nice, Govind! Now, let’s work on keeping that damn G-string intact. We’ve got a lot to protect and not much to do it with. Every damn terror group in the world must be panting to take a shot at us.”

  “True.” Mohite’s face turned grave. “Like you said, bringing peace to the Promised Land will take away a major raison d’être for the jihad.” He may be an ass-licking busybody, Ravinder thought, but he was no fool.

  The two-car mini-convoy slowed as they turned onto the road leading to the MSO Building, which housed Delhi Police HQ. The traffic was awful, and despite the siren, they were barely crawling.

  That was when Ravinder saw the man. Medium height. Clean-shaven. Mid-twenties. Perhaps it was the purposeful manner of his approaching Mohite’s car that caught Ravinder’s attention. Or perhaps … Yes, that’s it, why is he wearing such a bulky overcoat? It’s not that cold.

  An alarm clamored in Ravinder’s head. Tersely ordering his driver to stop, he pulled out his 9mm Browning. Leaping out, Ravinder headed straight for the man. Mohite and the driver were gazing at him, perplexed.

  The man was now fifteen feet away. Perhaps his instincts too were working overtime or he had spotted the blur of movement. He swiveled and saw Ravinder rushing toward him. For a nanosecond, he froze, then threw open his overcoat and began to reach inside.

  Ravinder saw the coat fly open; saw the bomb strapped around the man’s waist. Instantly his right hand rose up, but mindful of the crowd, he took aim and fired. Just once. It was enough.

  The man came to an abrupt halt, as though he’d run into a brick wall. For a second he was upright, and then flung backward, his head a mass of blood.

  Ravinder had gone for the headshot. He could not have let the man detonate the bomb; the casualties on the crowded road would have been horrendous.

  It was over as swiftly as it had begun.

  It took but an hour to sort out.

  “He was Mir Kasab, from the Jaish-e-Mohammed. A known terrorist … we have a thick file on him. Came in from POK last week,” Mohite reported to Ravinder. “We found a map of this area in his pocket and the numbers of three cars: yours, Ashish’s, and mine. Apparently, he’d been tasked to take out senior ATTF cops.”

  “Looks like the terrorists want us out of the picture at this juncture.”

  “I guess so.” Mohite’s tone was grim; he was still sweating. Ravinder could see that he had been badly shaken. He himself wasn’t feeling so bright either.

  “Don’t think too much about it, Govind. It could well have been my car. Or Ashish’s … He would have gone for whoever he reached first.” There was a silence. A shitty feeling. “The luck of the draw, my friend.… Who knows when one’s time is up.” Ravinder had to lift the mood, Mohite’s and his own. “Look at the bright side; we got the bugger before he got us.”

  But the words had little effect.
On either of them. Both knew that the next time the tides might well favor the other side.

  “There is more, sir. He was not alone,” Mohite almost stammered. “He was part of a cell of three men.”

  “Who are the other two? Find any clues on him?”

  “Yes, most probably Javed Khan—we already have a file on him—and an unknown called Aslam. They came from POK together. Most likely the other two are out there”—Mohite stared out the window—“somewhere in Delhi.”

  “We have to find them.” Ravinder controlled a tremor.

  “I have already issued an APB and also alerted the int agencies.”

  “We’d better find them … before they find us.” Ravinder thought for a moment. “Have the guards doubled. At the office and all three residences.”

  Mohite ran to the phone.

  Ravinder knew there was nothing more they could do. Not right now. “Now let’s focus.” He knew that work was the best distraction. “We have a summit to secure, Govind. The PM’s office is waiting for our security plans.”

  * * *

  Had it not been for their car’s air-conditioning, the seven-hour drive to Vavuniya would have been miserable. The dust from the potholed road added to their misery. Though tougher, Mark was not handling the heat and dust well. He took every opportunity to sleep it off. Ten minutes into the drive, and he was sprawled against the car door, tucked away in dreamland, snoring lightly. Every so often, Ruby saw him smile; obviously having pleasant dreams.

  Oh well … at least someone is. A mirthless smile creased her face. He was looking good, if a trifle uncomfortable with his head knocking against the window every time they hit a bump. Pity he is gay! All the good ones … either gay or married. Ruby sighed; she could do with some comforting. It had been a while since she had enjoyed being held … not since Chance had gone. Wondering where he was right now, Ruby felt a tug. She missed him.

  For a moment she dwelled on the contrast between Chance and Mark; it was huge. Physically they had a lot in common; both tall, well built, and fair, with similar close-cropped hair. But that’s where it ended. Chance was so much more sensitive and caring … and his sense of humor … Ruby smiled. Whereas Mark was not cerebral, liked to plunge into action without much thought. Well, that is what I need right now … someone who will simply follow orders.

  Ruby couldn’t sleep; she felt hyped up, as though pumped with pure oxygen. She sat on the edge of her seat, watching the countryside fleeing by.

  Barring small, occasional green patches of cultivation, she saw only bleakness. The color brown predominated. Like the narrow potholed road, the bleakness got worse the farther north they moved from Colombo. So did the presence of soldiers and small army camps surrounded with barbed wire, grim reminders of the recently ended insurgency.

  The driver stepped on the gas now, going as fast as the road would allow. Enjoying the speed. Ruby was about to try to catch some shut-eye when they hit another checkpoint. A long line of vehicles waited to cross it. The soldiers were in no hurry; they searched each vehicle thoroughly, with the trucks, of which there were several, taking a lot of time.

  Sleep forgotten, Ruby sat back, exasperated, watching the vehicles inch forward. Her mind wandered away, to Palestine, to another such checkpoint.

  “That day too the line had been long.” Rehana’s oft-told story echoed in her memory. Her voice, clear as a bell; as though it were she, and not Mark, sitting beside Ruby in the car.

  * * *

  The Israel Defense Forces checkpoint at Huwwara, one of the main “Inner Checkpoints” of the West Bank, lay deep within Palestinian territory, just south of Nablus, at the junction of Routes 57 and 557, between the settlements of Bracha and Itamar, standing between Nablus and the satellite communities that depend on it.

  “About six thousand people pass through Huwwara every day,” Rehana narrated, “some to work, go to hospital, visit relatives, or to do their shopping.”

  Like all such checkpoints, passing through Huwwara involved a meticulous process. It was not uncommon to take up to two hours to get through. And the rules were never predictable, adding further to the confusion and delay.

  Men line up in a closed waiting area, while women and children go through a separate pathway. The area for men was an open shed with a corrugated roof. Waist-high walls demarcate the area into aisles. The roof trapped the sweltering heat.

  “Wuakef!” (Stop!) “Jubil aweah!” (Show me your identification papers!)

  One by one, the men trudged up to the barred window and handed over their papers. They lifted their shirts and rolled up trouser legs to confirm no weapons or bombs. The women and children were also frisked. And arrays of scanners were also at work.

  The procedure for cars was more tedious, with all passengers getting out and standing clear while a search was carried out using undercarriage mirrors, detectors, and sniffer dogs.

  Bilal, Rehana’s brother, thumped the steering wheel, his frustration evident. Half an hour had passed, and only two cars had been cleared—with three more still ahead of them. Bilal, the eldest and usually the calmest of the three siblings, was getting jumpy; perhaps his diabetes was acting up. In their hurry to rush their mother, Salima, to hospital he had not eaten. Eventually, driven by his anxiety, he got out and went to speak to the IDF soldiers.

  “You! Wuakef! Stop right there!” The Galil AR multipurpose rifle in the hands of the soldier yelling came up. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Soldier, my mother is ill,” Bilal replied.

  “I don’t fucking care.” The beardless twenty-year-old yelled, “Get back to your car and wait your turn. Now!” His rifle pointed straight at Bilal, rock-steady, confirming his willingness to use it. “Don’t come any closer.” He pointed at the security line painted on the road, meant to keep the soldiers safe from suicide bombers.

  The neatly painted BORN TO KILL shining whitely across the front of his helmet and his badly accented Arabic added to the menace.

  Cursing under his breath, Bilal returned. Another fifteen minutes slithered by; only one more car got cleared. Then another bout of coughing shook Salima. More blood sprayed out; by now the sheet covering her was splattered with red dots.

  “Mother had been terribly ill when she woke up that morning and had started coughing blood. She was so bad that your uncles Bilal and Yusuf immediately decided to rush her to hospital. I too went with them.” Rehana began to cry as she told the story to Ruby. “By now, mother was barely conscious. The fever had skyrocketed. I could feel her body burning.”

  Sitting in the front passenger seat, the more hotheaded Yusuf looked explosive, but also on the verge of tears.

  Bilal could not take it anymore. His breath was short, and his hands had begun to shake as the level of glucose in his body plummeted and hypoglycemia began to take hold. That, coupled with his mother’s increasing distress, shattered his control. He jumped out of the car again.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” BORN TO KILL screamed. “Get back inside your car.”

  “Come on, soldier,” Bilal yelled back. “Look! She is losing so much blood. Let us through.”

  “Yeah right!” The anger in BORN TO KILL’s voice matched his raised weapon. “Get back to your car and wait for your turn.”

  “Please, soldier!” Bilal was begging.

  It had no effect on BORN TO KILL. “Back in line.”

  “She seems to be really sick.” A younger soldier standing beside BORN TO KILL whispered. He had peered inside the car while the heated exchange was taking place. “Why don’t we let them through first?”

  “You shut your fucking mouth, wimp.” BORN TO KILL hissed, “You don’t know these bastards. That is exactly what a pregnant woman said to my father. They were about to let her through when she blew herself up … taking my father and four others with her.”

  The recruit, Ean Gellner, subsided. This was only his fifth week in uniform and his first day on checkpoint duty.

  The other
soldiers snickered.

  Their words meant nothing to Bilal, since he did not understand Hebrew, but those snickers jump-started him. Hot anger enveloped him. Shaking an angry fist, he leaped forward.

  “Stay back!” BORN TO KILL’s strident yell fell on deaf ears. “Stand back, you moron!” Another yell went unheeded. “Do not cross the line!”

  Tension suddenly escalated.

  To Yusuf and Rehana, watching from the car, everything speeded up and slowed down; too fast for them to do anything yet slow enough to see every nuance.

  As Bilal crossed the line, the rifle in BORN TO KILL’s hands emitted a sharp flat report. Then, a second later, another shot exploded out.

  The gunshots echoed bleakly in the silence. Jews and Arabs alike, not one could believe shots had been fired. The disbelief was shattered by Bilal’s howl of pain. The first bullet gutted him. He was falling when the second hit him. He swayed, and then slumped to the ground. A shocked Yusuf jumped out and rushed to his brother’s side.

  Yusuf’s move broke the frozen tableau; people scattered frantically, racing to get out of the line of fire.

  BORN TO KILL stood, still as a statue, with his rifle pointed at Bilal, a confused expression frozen on his face. Like the others, even he was shocked.

  Ean Gellner, the recruit, looked as though he was about to burst into tears.

  Life paused, breathless.

  “What the hell have you done?” a soldier on BORN TO KILL’s right yelled, dismay plastered on his face.

  “What could I do? Didn’t you see he was rushing me?” There was a sick smile on his face.

  At that moment Yusuf, kneeling beside his dying brother, looked up. He saw BORN TO KILL’s smile. He did not see the fear that went with it. To him it looked as though the murderous bastard were smirking. An animal-like howl of rage burst out. Yusuf leaped up and ran toward BORN TO KILL, needing to wipe that ghastly smile off his face. From the rear of the car, Rehana saw Yusuf lunge forward. She screamed, a long futile scream; Yusuf had already broken past the line.