SALIM MUST DIE

by Deva, Mukul

  NEW ORLEANS

  DESPITE THAT, ERIK SEGAN WAS NOT PARTICULARLY HAPPY AS he left the aircraft at the Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans. Most of the excitement and euphoria of his glorious role in the jihad had worn off after the incredibly long flight from Delhi. He was decidedly nervous about the lethal aerosol containers kept in his baggage and his anxiety was mounting at an alarming pace at the thought of the dreaded security check ahead of him.

  These days the Homeland Security people are anything but casual. They'll tear me a new arsehole if they so much as get a whiff of what is in my bags.

  ‘Remember, it will look rather strange for you to have room-freshener in your hand baggage, so check that in. The eau de cologne and the aftershave lotion shouldn't be a problem… so long as no one decides to try them out,’ Mai had added with a laugh when he'd briefed him in Delhi, clearly enjoying the long-haired musician's discomfiture. ‘What I suggest is that you check it all in. That's the best thing to do.’

  That was precisely what Segan had done. But it wasn't making him feel any better as he retrieved his bags from the baggage carousel and began the long trek towards the exit.

  Mopping his face and neck clean of all traces of perspiration, Erik Segan took a couple of deep breaths and forced himself to calm down as he walked up to the exit gates. Up ahead he could see a huge Amazon type Homeland Security female gesture towards one of the passengers moving in front of him. She had huge breasts, which under normal circumstances would have ensured Erik's undivided attention. Right now, the only emotion she evoked in him was dread.

  ‘This way please, sir,’ she said as she pointed towards the security enclosure where several other passengers had been stopped and were opening their bags for checking. ‘Please remove all locks and stand back, sir,’ Erik heard her say to the man in front of him. Her tone was sharp and stopped short of being rude.

  Erik felt his breath almost wheeze to a halt as he reached the point where a couple of her equally forbidding colleagues were scrutinizing the passing crowds with eagle eyes. He felt one of them rest his gimlet gaze on him. He even felt the gaze linger for a long moment. A silent, frantic prayer shot out from him unbidden. Perhaps Allah heard it. The gaze lifted and he was through.

  Gradually, his breathing picked up again. Forcing himself to retain his slow deliberate walk, he crossed the security gate. By the time he was through, his legs felt weak with stress and he had to stop himself from running to the washrooms that lay just beyond the security barrier. Throwing himself into the first empty cubicle, he collapsed on the toilet seat. It took all of fifteen minutes for his breathing to return to normal and the foul taste of fear to recede from his mouth.

  Finally, leaving the safe sanctuary of the toilet, he took a cab to the Best Western French Quarter Landmark Hotel where he had booked a room, the previous month, on the very day he had returned from the Maldives. Even then it had been fairly difficult since hotel rooms were at a premium due to the Jazz Fest. Located barely a mile from his target, the hotel was perfect for his purpose. Immediately after checking in, he logged onto meetyourmatch.com and reported his arrival to Salim.

  I need to know the minute you are through. Remember that. Salim's voice echoed in his memory. A lot of things hinge on your doing things as per schedule.

  Having done that, Erik threw himself on the bed without bothering to change. He felt exhausted and suddenly unsure of everything.

  COPENHAGEN

  LARS BORGE HAD BEEN ON DUTY FOR ABOUT TWO HOURS when PIA flight PK 771 landed at Copenhagen's Kastrup Airport. He had already moved all the pieces required for this part of the operation into place. Standing in the shadow of the building, he watched the passengers disembark. A short while later, the crew followed, barring the man who had placed the Chote Miyan on the aircraft at Lahore. He hung around as the baggage handlers arrived to unload the aircraft.

  Lars watched patiently, allowing things to settle into the monotony of a task routinely performed every day. Then he moved in. A few minutes later, one of the baggage handlers noticed smoke pouring out from the tow vehicle standing near the bay adjacent to the one in which the PIA jet was parked.

  As fire alarms began to wail, Lars raced out to the baggage handlers unloading the aircraft and began to herd them out and away from the aircraft. They all responded instinctively to a man in uniform and stepped away. In all this confusion, no one noticed the PIA crewman slip into the aircraft and emerge a few minutes later with the Chote Miyan. Nor did anyone notice him slip it to Lars in the shadow of a building a little distance away. Afterwards, the man simply joined the crowd that had gathered to watch the confusion. Lars, of course, faded away in the confusion.

  Within minutes, a rash of fire fighters and security personnel had cordoned off the area and fought the flames into submission. It did not take long for the unloading to resume. The PIA crewman waited till it was over before he left to rejoin the rest of the crew at the hotel.

  LONG BEFORE THE FIRE COULD BE PUT OUT, LARS WAS OUT OF the airport and halfway to the Palace Hotel at Raadhuspladsen.

  With Tivoli Gardens and Ströget, the main shopping area, at its doorstep, the Palace Hotel was as close as he could get to ground zero. In fact, the balcony of Room 402, which Lars had checked into the previous day, directly overlooked the Town Hall square. He went straight to his room, secured the precious suitcase in the cupboard, placed a Do Not Disturb tag on the door, and returned to the airport. No one had even noticed his absence.

  A short while later, he used a temporary lull at work to grab a coffee from the machine in one corner of the airport terminal. Just across from the coffee shop was the computer corner where four machines were available for passengers to use. It was from one of these that Lars logged onto the meetyourmatch website to send a message to Salim confirming the arrival of the Chote Miyan in Copenhagen.

  LONDON

  AROUND THE TIME THAT LARS STARTED THE FIRE NEAR THE PIA plane at Copenhagen airport, the Jet Airways flight from Delhi with Ben Ashton on board began its descent towards Heathrow.

  Ben had no problems in going through security either. He had to spend a few moments in line before he could get a taxi but then, getting a cab in London is always a bitch.

  ‘The Royal Horse Guards Hotel in Whitehall Court,’ he told the large black cabbie as he got in. ‘It's SW1A 2EJ,’ he added as he saw the driver reach for his TomTom GPS car navigation system. The driver, who was obviously not too old on the beat, patiently keyed the coordinates of the destination into the TomTom before he drove out. Thank God he's not the talkative type. Ben leaned back and dozed as the taxi began its long crawl to the hotel. Barring the periodic instructions from the monotonous female voice of the TomTom, silence ruled as the cab made its way towards the hotel.

  At a stone's throw from Trafalgar Square and the Houses of Parliament, the Royal Horse Guards Hotel overlooks the Thames. Damned if I can get any closer to the target than this, Ben thought as he walked up to the reception desk.

  Like the others, he signed in under a false name and paid for two nights in cash. Then, again like the others, he secured the killer cargo in the room before he logged into the matchmaking site and sent off his arrival report to Salim.

  NEW DELHI

  ‘WASN'T THE DUDE MARRIED?’ ANKITA ASKED, LOOKING UP from Mai's laptop.

  ‘Who?’ Manoj asked nonplussed, eyes still fixed on his computer screen. He was deep inside the Thuraya website.

  ‘The dead chink. Wasn't he married?’

  ‘He was. His wife killed herself yesterday when they went to take her in. Why?’

  ‘Precisely. So how come he'd already started seeking a replacement some weeks ago?’ Ankita saw Manoj's quizzical look and clarified, ‘I'm checking his internet history and this guy has been logging onto this matchmaking site almost a dozen times every day. It's crazy….’

  ‘Are you sure it's a matchmaking site? Not some porn site?’

  ‘Nope! It's right here in front of me: meet
yourmatch.com. Hey!’ She stopped suddenly. ‘Where is the copy of his diary? I had it right here.’ She rummaged on the table, which was by now littered with sheaves of paper and coffee cups.

  ‘Here!’ Manoj tossed a stapled bundle to her. ‘Take my copy.’

  Catching it expertly, Ankita began to flip through the pages. ‘I knew it! Here it is.’ She jabbed her finger at the page where the two phone numbers were written. Scribbled amidst the notes on the facing page, in a small but neat hand, were the words fatima234/ fat2ima34. She silently mouthed the words as she turned back to her laptop. Clicking on the log-in option on meetyourmatch.com, she keyed in fatima234 as the user name, fat2ima34 as the password, and then hit the enter key.

  ‘Bingo!’ She smiled triumphantly as the log-in process was completed and Mai's profile began to emerge on the screen. ‘I knew it!’

  Working as though inspired, Ankita clicked on the mailbox icon. A long list of messages appeared on the screen. Slightly deflated by the number of messages, she gave a weary sigh and went to work on them.

  It did not take her long to sift through the chaff and weed out the messages that seemed to have some meaning. Those that seemed to lead somewhere all had one thing in common – they were either written to or were from someone called smurad234. Smurad234… S. Murad. She sat up with a start. ‘Holy cow! Manoj, you need to see this. That S. Murad bugger who owns Desert Apparels also features here.’

  Manoj joined her and they began to scan through the messages one by one. A moment later, he thumped the table. ‘I think you've hit the mother lode. This seems to be their primary comm channel for this op, Ankita. Look at these messages. All of them are to or from profiles that end with 234, almost as though all the profiles were created by the same person.’

  ‘And not a very imaginative one at that,’ Ankita added.

  ‘True, but do you see the pattern?’

  ‘Sure, it's pretty obvious.’

  ‘Listen, you focus on this. Get into the smurad profile and see who else is in the communication loop with him. Meanwhile, let me just finish the trace on the satellite phones and I'll help track this Murad bugger down.’

  ‘I have a feeling we're pretty close to cracking this wide open.’

  ‘Amen!’ Manoj threw a grateful glance heaven-wards. ‘Let's just hope we're in time.’

  They went to work again, this time with a renewed sense of energy. Ankita began the tedious job of hacking through the site's security system. Somewhere in its bowels lay the password that she sought, the password to the profile named smurad234. Across the room, Manoj Khare bored into the Thuraya website.

  ST MARTIN

  AT PRECISELY THE SAME TIME AS BEN ASHTON'S PLANE WAS lining up for the landing at London, some 3,500 miles to the west, the Air France jet carrying Sahiba and Kismat was preparing to touch down at the airport in St Martin. In fact, the wheels of both aircraft touched down almost simultaneously. The Khan twins disembarked and slowly made their way towards the transit lounge. This time their layover was going to be much longer; their final flight to the target destination was due to depart in four and a half hours.

  By now the stress levels were peaking rapidly for both sisters. Their target was just a short hop away. So was the final security barrier that had to be breached. They clasped hands every so often to keep themselves going.

  MALDIVE ISLANDS

  THEY HAD JUST BEGUN THEIR RESTLESS WAIT AT ST MARTIN when a speedboat raced up to the Blue Moon Resort and slid to a halt at the jetty. Leaping out gracefully, Abdul Rashid jogged across to the tall, birdlike hut in the middle of the resort, which housed the reception and the offices.

  ‘I need to see the manager.’ The identity card he thumped down on the reception counter got him the undivided attention of the pretty young girl manning it.

  An hour later, Rashid was back in his boat, but this time he had in his hand a thick file containing a copy of the passport of each person who had stayed at the resort during that fateful week. To be on the safe side, he'd also taken details of everyone who'd been there three days before and after. For once the scenic beauty of the ocean failed to grab Rashid's attention as he raced back towards Male.

  An hour or so later, scanned copies of all the passports were crowding the mailbox of Khare's computer. Soon the printer attached to it began to spew out copies.

  NEW YORK

  THE KHAN SISTERS WERE ON THEIR SECOND CUP OF INSIPID airport coffee when, thousands of miles away, PIA flight 711 from Lahore landed at JKF airport in New York. The cargo on the plane went through the stringent airport security procedures that had been in vogue since 9/11. The SynOdys Radiation Monitoring System installed in the cargo area watched impassively as the assortment of items streamed past. Cheema's now dead crew had done their work well. Neither of the Chote Miyan uttered a peep as they slid past the ever alert monitors.

  Despite the thoroughness of the check, everything came out clean and the diplomat's luggage was handed over to the crew from the A&M Moving Company that was waiting to collect it.

  NEW DELHI

  ANKITA LEANED BACK AND FLEXED HER SHOULDERS. ‘ACCORDING to this profile, S. Murad is in communication with nearly three dozen people, but only ten of these appear to be relevant profiles.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Khare asked.

  ‘All ten have similar profiles… they end with 234. Also, the messages exchanged between these profiles are the same as far as timing and content go, whereas messages to other profiles are quite different in tone and content… and much more random.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Manoj came across and read through the messages. ‘I see your point. They must have done it to throw up a smoke screen… anyway, go on.’

  ‘Well, with the Chinese scientist dead, we're left with nine profiles.’

  ‘And of course, S. Murad.’

  ‘Of course! Thankfully we have photos on all the profiles except the smurad profile. I'm going to assume that the photos are real since the one on Mai Hu's profile definitely is.’

  ‘True,’ Khare concurred as he crossed the room to where his printer was churning out reams of paper. Picking up the pages that had come out, he glanced through them with a practiced eye. ‘Hey! Rashid has delivered… this is the stuff from the Maldives, the data on all those who stayed at the resort.’ He began to scrutinize each page as it came in. ‘Damn! Look at this.’ He waved the page in his hand, his voice taut with excitement. ‘Here's Mai. And this photo tallies with the one on your screen right now.’ Picking up the sheaf of pages, he returned to Ankita's computer and they began to scan through each profile in turn. Their excitement grew as more and more matches were confirmed.

  ‘Goddamn it! So far they all tally with the people who occupied the suites booked by Desert Apparels at the Blue Moon resort.’

  ‘Absolutely! So now we even have names and cities to which these guys belong,’ Ankita replied, controlling herself with an effort. ‘I think we need to pass on this list to the ATTF and the NIA. They can push them out to Interpol and to the concerned governments so that we can at least start tracing them and confirming identities… and checking to see which of them has been visiting India. That should help us find the missing biochems.’

  ‘True.’ Manoj nodded. ‘Go ahead and do that. Then take a look at what I've found.’ He tapped the screen of his laptop. ‘I've tracked down the billing details of all four satellite phones. You're going to love this,’ he added as he gave the print command and his printer began to spit out more paper.

  The trail was fast thickening.

  ST MARTIN

  THE US DIPLOMAT'S LUGGAGE WAS BEING LOADED ON TO the A&M truck when Air France flight WM 755 for St Kitts took off from St Martin with Sahiba and Kismat on board. The twins were now on the last leg of their long journey. They began to mentally prepare themselves for the customs and security check that lay ahead. Things were normally quite relaxed on the easygoing island, but in view of the mega event in progress these days, security was greatly heightened.


  Breaching the final barrier will not be easy.

  Allah will protect us.

  BARBADOS

  AIR FRANCE FLIGHT WM 755 LANDED AT ST KITTS AIRPORT AT 1833 hours local time, just three minutes behind its scheduled time of arrival. Both the customs and immigration officers who logged the two physically challenged young women took note of the exotic beaded jewellery they were wearing. The loud conspicuous pieces literally clamoured for attention. Maybe that was why they rang no alarm bells in either of their minds and they waved the two women through. A few minutes later, the twins were out of the airport.

  Fighting to control their exuberance, the two sisters headed straight for the tiny bed-and-breakfast place they had managed to locate at a stone's throw from the target. An hour later, Kismat keyed in their arrival message to Salim.

  Now there was only one man left to breach the security barrier.

  NEW DELHI

  THE RINGING OF THE PHONE JOLTED THEM BOTH OUT OF their seats. Khare got to it before Ankita did. He listened in silence for a long moment. ‘Of course, please send it immediately. We'll dovetail it with the rest and call you. Yes, immediately,’ he promised as he put the phone down and turned to Ankita. ‘That was Chauhan from the ATTF. They've gotten tracks of all the people you sent them profiles of,’ he said as the fax machine reeled to life. ‘Those should be the details coming in now.’ He headed for the fax. ‘Bloody hell!’ he muttered as he scanned the first page. ‘This bugger was right here in Delhi… we missed him by a few hours.’ He snatched up the next page, more urgently this time. ‘So was she… and this one… and….’