Open Arms

by Vince Cable

  ‘I have come to discuss the progress of the investigation into the death of Mr Patel.’

  ‘We are making good progress. Arrests made. You will have seen in the newspapers.’

  ‘Yes, I have. I see that the alleged killers are dead or have disappeared.’

  ‘Yes, unfortunately. But we have arrested some people who were behind it.’

  ‘Perhaps I have some useful information.’ Deepak proceeded to pass on the account of his father’s visit to the Sheikh.

  ‘Your father is not here. Why?’

  ‘He is not well. And badly affected by recent events.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that. Your father made a bad mistake in dealing with this Sheikh. He is responsible for much trouble.’

  ‘But you have never arrested him… Anyway, what about this “Trishul”?’

  ‘I have heard of it. It’s a new gang.’

  ‘Is that all? Why would a serious mafioso like the Sheikh be frightened of them?’

  ‘That is what my current enquiries are about.’

  ‘Let me put a theory to you.’

  ‘I prefer facts if you have any.’

  ‘Please hear me out,’ Deepak said patiently. ‘My father and I believe that the Sheikh is just a pawn in a much bigger game. Ever since the Pakistani-inspired terrorist raid a decade ago and the Dawood gang involvement with the Sheikh’s brothers, he has been something of a pariah. Other criminals are reluctant to work with his people. Although he stayed here rather than flee to the Gulf, he is weakened and struggles to hold on to his territory. Perhaps this new group – Trishul – exploited his weakness. Used threats to make him do what they wanted including the pressure on my father.’

  ‘Theory. Short of facts. But it makes sense. It fits with the facts I have. Anything else?’

  ‘No. Well, perhaps I should tell you what I have already told the country’s security services.’ He described the request to place a ‘nephew’ in his factory. ‘As long as the Sheikh was running his own operation it made sense to imagine that he might have had some pressure through his family and its connections with Pakistan to facilitate some infiltration into the country. But how does that fit into this Trishul organisation running the show?’

  ‘I have no idea and it is the role of our very able security services to investigate. You have told them. Not a police matter.’

  Deepak struggled to extract a little more from this one-way conversation with the taciturn policeman. Perhaps he wanted money? But Mankad hadn’t hinted at it and if he proved to be one of the puritanical minority of honest police officers, Deepak would be most unwise to proposition him. And, anyway, Deepak had scruples of his own about corruption. Perhaps he needed encouragement from further up the police hierarchy, but pulling rank was also a risky business and Deepak didn’t know who to go to in any event.

  ‘Thank you, Inspector. You have been very helpful. I hope you can use my information.’

  ‘No problem. It’s useful.’

  ‘Before I go, can you give me some advice? What do I do to protect my family, my business?’

  Mankad thought for some time. He was used to being patronised by people like Parrikar, but humility threw him. ‘This is more than usual goonda trouble. The Trishul gang has big political friends. Maybe very big. You don’t. So they squeeze your family, your company. They will keep squeezing until you join them. Or you get your own friends. It’s up to you. Politics is not my business.’

  Deepak did not have long to wait before the next move. As dusk settled over Mumbai harbour and with the cicadas in full voice, a group of men slipped along the lane to the Parrikar Chemicals complex. The workforce had gone for the day and the only human presence on the site was a small security detail and the skeletal staff required to keep some of the machinery in twenty-four-hour operation. The men knew their way around – they had worked in the factory until the recent cutbacks – and they headed for a shed close to the water’s edge. There was a storage tank with a sign warning of the dangers of extremely hazardous substances within. But the men knew how to avoid hazards to themselves and carefully loosened a series of valves that released the contents of the tank into the sea. The liquids mixed silently and invisibly, creating a lethal cocktail that would kill any living object that imbibed it over a wide area. The men then tightened the valves, cleaned them of fingerprints and quietly disappeared into the Indian night.

  Several miles away in another part of the Mumbai suburbs, Iqbal Aziz waited until the evening activity in the local bazaar had started to die down. He slipped quietly along the lanes behind the main shopping street until he came to the yard marked on a map that was now being slowly digested inside him. The gate, as he had been told, was unlocked and he picked his way through piles of building materials until he reached the door of a shed, which opened, with some difficulty, as he pushed. There was a dim light inside from a low-powered naked bulb and just beyond the sparse illumination he saw, half hidden, the outline of the man he had come to meet.

  His short stay at Parrikar Avionics had been almost too straightforward. Security had been lax to the point of negligence. No one had taken any particular interest in him. The Indian staff where he was carrying out induction training were friendly and welcoming without being too inquisitive. His mission was to find out what he could about the factory’s activities and to report back via coded messages left under a loose brick in a wall at the Muslim cemetery. He had so far managed to construct a detailed map of the layout of the plant, an organogram of the management hierarchy and description supported by photographs of new machine tools that were being installed. He had blended into the local scene very easily.

  His Indian collaborators, part of the Sheikh’s network, had organised for him a nondescript flat in a township a short bus ride from the plant. He aroused little interest as he commuted back and forth and, at night, surfed the dozens of channels on Indian TV. He felt comfortable and there was enough familiarity in language, food smells and sounds to remind him of life in the spreading suburbs of big cities back home, like Lahore. There was even a mosque nearby whose calls to prayer reassured him and which he occasionally answered. The one cultural divide he struggled to deal with was the presence of Indian women: much more visible, colourful and confident than back home. In the smarter shops and restaurants, they dressed in Western clothes, some disporting themselves in what he regarded as semi-nudity. He had been to Western cities and wasn’t a stranger to the adult channels on hotel TVs. But this outward sign of secular values and female independence in an Asian society very like his own he found simultaneously repulsive and exciting.

  Tonight, the routine was interrupted by the message at his drop: to meet the contact who, he had been advised, would meet him in an emergency or if there were a change of plan. There was a change of plan. No need for further intelligence gathering. He was to disable a key piece of equipment and then make a quick exit. He would be helped to escape and the network would organise his safe transport back to Pakistan.

  The man who passed on these instructions remained well out of sight. He was not there, in any event, to hold a conversation but to transmit orders. Iqbal Aziz had many questions but couldn’t ask them. Why abort a successful intelligence gathering operation that was just getting into its stride? Why was he to be involved in explosives, an area where he had minimal expertise? Were his activities being seen, back home, as a ‘success’ or ‘failure’ (since he was banking on this final piece of field work giving him a crucial promotion to the upper echelons of Inter-Services Intelligence)?

  At the conclusion of the briefing the man handed him the ‘kit’ with some minimal instructions. The following night he was to carry out the operation. A bicycle would be waiting for him afterwards to bring him back to this place after which he would be sent on to a safe house before returning to Pakistan. He left the way he had come and returned, unseen, to his flat.

  CHAPTER 12

  ESCALATION

  Reuters, 14 July 2019:

 
Following a massive explosion on the Delhi metro unofficial estimates of casualties are as many as 200 dead and many more injured. Leading Indian ministers have blamed the terrorist attack on Islamic militants infiltrated from Pakistan with the connivance of the Pakistani authorities. The Home Minister, normally regarded as a ‘moderate’ in the BJP government, has spoken of a Muslim ‘fifth column’ aiding and abetting terrorists. As news of the explosion spread through social media, mosques were attacked in Ahmedabad and Indore and there are unconfirmed reports of mobs attacking predominantly Muslim districts with retaliation in Hindu minority areas. The Pakistani Prime Minister, Imran Khan, has put out a statement condemning the terrorist attack, disclaiming any responsibility and expressing sorrow for the victims – noting that similar attacks have also recently occurred in Pakistan, allegedly with Indian government connivance.

  It was after dark, next evening, in the factory on the outskirts of Mumbai. Iqbal Aziz (aka Hussein Malik) had stayed behind after work, hiding in the men’s lavatories. His mission tonight represented a dramatic escalation of activities. He was equipped with plastic explosives and had been given instructions about where to put the packages through the perimeter fence for collection, unobtrusively, later – thereby avoiding the risk of a routine check on his bag when coming into the factory for the day. He had now retrieved them. He had also memorised the exact spot where he was required to place the explosive before detonation. This was his first mission involving violence but he was told by his Indian contact that what was being asked of him was easy and his controllers back in Islamabad considered it an essential part of his task.

  He secured the explosive, as instructed, in a vent from the factory power unit and prepared the timing device. There was silence in the pitch black night. Then he heard a click behind him and turned towards a gun a few inches away from his face. Floodlights were switched on around the factory and he was suddenly illuminated like an actor on a stage. He could see that he was very far from alone. The audience was a small army of black-jacketed Indian anti-terrorist troops who had been waiting for him.

  In the minutes that followed as he was spread-eagled on the ground, then strip searched, he realised that he should have seen the signs of a sting operation. Now he had to brace himself for an uncomfortable interrogation and to discipline himself to follow the instructions he had been given, even when in great pain.

  General Rashid wasn’t totally surprised when he saw, on the CNN newsfeed in his office, his bright young protégé Aziz being paraded across the screen by his Indian captors. He felt for Aziz, who could anticipate some very rough questioning from interrogators who may well have learnt their trade from the Russians, just as his own had benefited from US expertise. He noted that the Indians had been smart enough to equip Aziz with explosives – even though he had no clue how to use them – qualifying him to be a ‘terrorist’ rather than a mere agent. This enhanced status carried the prospect of hanging or, more likely, a higher price if he was exchanged.

  But the risks had been explained to Aziz. And since General Rashid suspected that his networks were compromised, he had prepared Aziz for what would follow. Not to be too courageous. Hold out for a while and then talk. Give the Indians lots of information. Ninety per cent of it correct, which the Indians already had; the other ten per cent new, plausible and wrong. That ten per cent could prove very useful if the current skirmishing and sabre-rattling got out of control and a fourth war broke out between the two neighbours.

  Aziz hadn’t picked up anything useful in his brief snooping expedition. But something more valuable perhaps? The group on the TV screen clustered around the hapless, bound Aziz contained some interesting faces. One he recognised. Sanjay? Sanjivi? Desai. What was he doing there? Some research for the boys.

  With this, and the bomb in Delhi, there would be a busy day ahead.

  Steve had a very difficult two days as the redundancies were trailed and he urged moderation. The company needed time to work out the various options. Nothing was gained by rushing into industrial action. Even those who bought the arguments for a measured approach were surly and resentful, since his indiscreet behaviour was generally believed to have contributed to the company’s problems and the (apparently) lost order. At a time when unemployment was rising to levels last seen a decade earlier in the wake of the banking crisis, there was little tolerance for carelessness with people’s jobs.

  His reputation in the local party, and the council, had also taken a nosedive: no longer the unblemished hero and hope for the future. In any event, the leftist move of the party’s national leadership and the influence of new members meant that the brand of politics that Steve represented was no longer fashionable.

  He received an abruptly phrased summons to the office of the council leader, Councillor John Gray. John was a retired lecturer from the town’s further education college: liked, if not respected, by his colleagues as a decent, safe, uncontroversial man who kept the peace between the endlessly feuding factions and over-sized egos. The borough council had several longstanding Lib Dem wards. Another, which had once been represented by the BNP, now had a trio of community independents, who maintained the tradition of white, working class hostility to the town’s Asian population. But, these apart, the council was overwhelmingly Labour.

  Maintaining discipline required keeping two of the big beasts of the council tolerably happy. One was Les Harking, the regional organiser of Steve’s union, Unite, who had a hard left background on Merseyside and whose permanent sense of grievance was only partly appeased by being put in charge of the town’s planning, as well as a seat on the union national executive. Councillor Mirza made sure that the three wards with a large Asian vote delivered the right result, without too many questions being asked about the size of the postal vote. He had responsibility for social services and there were growing mutterings in the town about the abysmal standards in several residential care homes owned by various members of the Mirza extended family. Steve’s political career had flourished thanks to the patronage of John Gray and the grudging acquiescence of the others he had managed, so far, not to alienate.

  The final member of the panel worried Steve the most. Bill Daniels was the Labour group’s oldest and longest serving councillor. He had been first elected in the dawn of political pre-history when Harold Wilson was Prime Minister and sometime before Steve was even born. His political contribution was negligible. He never spoke in the council or council committees and he performed no obviously useful function. But his very antiquity gave him status. Like a long surviving veteran of the Battle of Britain he regaled his colleagues with accounts of his dog-fights in the class struggle over Bedfordshire. Until recently his reputation had been sustained by the belief that ‘old Bill’ knew everyone in his ward and solved all their problems through assiduous casework.

  This reputation had taken a severe beating in the last municipal elections. The Lib Dems had decided to fight the ward seriously – the first real contest for decades. Their simple weapon was a voters’ questionnaire. The answers told them that hardly anyone in the ward knew who ‘old Bill’ actually was and no one could recall anything he had done. The Lib Dems buried the ward in campaigning Comments and came within two votes of unseating Bill when there was a swing from Lib Dems to Labour elsewhere in the town. Since his near humiliation, Bill had launched his own personal crusade against the Lib Dems, generating a degree of tribal passion never previously seen in his almost forty-five years on the council. One of Steve’s biggest political mistakes had been to let slip in a group meeting that he felt there was quite a lot of common ground with the Lib Dems and that the party’s interests might be served by letting the Lib Dems have a clear run in the leafier suburbs and rural areas where Labour stood no chance. For this terrible heresy, in the eyes of Bill Daniels, mere burning at the stake would be compassionate.

  As a senior figure in the Labour group, Steve would normally be at the top table, setting the agenda. On this occasion he was placed at the
end of a long table, which required him to look deferentially at his interrogators: his four senior colleagues. He saw that on the wall behind them were photographs of party leaders going back to Kier Hardie but, he noticed, excluding the traitor Blair.

  Gray clearly had little appetite for the proceedings and looked, embarrassed, into the middle distance. Les Harking, however, was keen to get down to business. He had spent a lifetime intimidating college-educated managers and making an example of union ‘scabs’. Cutting down tall poppies in the party was another speciality and here was one in front of him. ‘Comrade,’ he began, ‘the party’s regional executive has asked us to investigate your conduct. We have been informed that there are to be substantial redundancies at your company. We want to know about your role in this disastrous state of affairs. Some of our Brothers are not sure whether you are acting in their interest, the bosses’, those of a group of pacifists or religious fundamentalists. They say you were a good rep but have fallen into bad company. They say you encouraged a demonstration against your own industry. And now you are telling our members that they have to accept redundancies imposed by the people who control your firm: private equity barons and hedge funds in America. The suggestion is being made that you are bringing the Labour Movement into disrepute.’ Bill Daniels grunted his agreement.

  Before Steve could answer, Councillor Mirza wanted to have his say. ‘Steve, my people are angry. They are good, loyal people. They work. They pray. They give no trouble. They support our party. Now they say you are making friends with some dangerous people; troublemakers, militants. I speak for the community. They say to me: “Why does this councillor interfere and not respect you?”’

  By this time Steve had woken up to the fact that he was on trial in a kangaroo court. He realised that he was sweating uncomfortably, and his heart started to race. His union experience told him, however, not to get into a brawl when he was outnumbered but to insist on due process. His prosecutors clearly didn’t like him and had their own agendas. They almost certainly resented his reputation as a moderniser in the workplace and in the party. No point arguing the toss with them.