SALIM MUST DIE (18 page)

BEN ASHTON ARRIVED AT ALMOST THE SAME TIME THAT MAI
returned to his room after a rushed dinner. His face was marred by the same anal-retentive scowl that Mai remembered so clearly from their meeting in the Maldives.

‘Are you still clear on how to handle this in transit and how to use it?’ Mai asked as he handed over the family-sized jars of cream to him. There was nothing unusual about their appearance; only their weight gave away the difference. Camouflaged and cocooned in the jars of assorted cream were almost a hundred glass vials. Each of these was more than adequate to deliver a torturously agonizing death to at least three or four people and, in the worst case, inflict severe damage on twice as many.

‘I'm clear,’ Ben replied gruffly. He did not like the Chinaman. But then, Ben disliked almost everyone he met. ‘It's simple enough. Any fool can handle it.’

‘Fine then. All the best.’ Mai showed him to the door, glad to see him go.

That brings my part of the job to an end. Now I just have to get through the conference and go back home
…. For a moment, he idly contemplated the mayhem that would be waiting for him at Urumqi, then shut the door and went straight to his laptop. He had set it up on the study table in the far corner of the hotel room, near the huge glass windows overlooking the new, still-under-construction expressway between Delhi and Jaipur. A constant stream of traffic flowed incessantly over the flyover straddling the expressway. Mai watched it with unseeing eyes as he waited for the laptop to boot up. Soon he was logged onto the meetyourmatch website. A moment later, he had keyed in a message to the smurad234 profile. He knew that Salim would be awaiting the message eagerly.

I have given the matter due thought and I feel we have lots in common. Don't you think we should take this matter forward?

Then, as he had been instructed to do for this particular message, Mai used his mobile phone to send a brief, innocuous text message.

M
URREE

SALIM FELT HIS HEART SKIP A BEAT AS HE HEARD HIS PHONE
signal the arrival of a text message. Reading it quickly, he turned towards his computer and clicked on the mouse. The screensaver vanished and Salim's profile on the meetyourmatch site appeared.

Salim was already logged in. He had been logged in almost continually ever since he had received confirmation from Mai about the weapons being ready. The mission was about to attain critical mass and this matchmaking site was the umbilical cord that tied Salim to his lashkar. When he read Mai's message in his mailbox, Salim could not hold back an exclamation of pure joy.

‘What happened, sir?’ Cheema looked up from the map he was poring over at the other end of the room. A heap of flight schedules of various airlines lay strewn all around him.

‘That Mai is a bloody gem! He has just confirmed that everyone has collected the weapons from him in Delhi,’ Salim said, rubbing his hands gleefully as he looked up from his computer. ‘I have a really good feeling about this operation, Cheema.’

‘Allah be praised!’ Cheema thumped the table excitedly. ‘So, we're all set for the next phase?’

‘Of course we are, man.’ Salim pumped his arm in the air. ‘Let's hope and pray that the teams reach their target areas safely. Now the security checks at the airports where they land are the only barriers that stand between them and their targets.’ Turning back to his computer excitedly, Salim began to type out a reply to Mai.

N
EW
D
ELHI

MAI HU SAW SALIM'S REPLY A MOMENT LATER.

Thank you very much. I think you are heaven sent. I am sure Allah's blessings are with us.

A surge of pride went through him as he read Salim's congratulatory note. Despite the migraine now pounding in his head, Mai sat back and allowed himself to relive the past few momentous weeks. Despite the fact that he had not eaten properly for several hours, he felt no pangs of hunger. If anything, he was tired. Elated, but tired.
And no wonder
, he told himself as he checked his watch.
It's way past midnight. Where did the whole day vanish
?

He began to walk across the room towards his bed, when he stopped, returned to the study table, picked up the hotel phone and punched in a solitary key. ‘Good evening, Dr Mai,’ answered a cheerful voice. ‘How may we help you, sir?’

‘I would like to be woken up at six o'clock tomorrow morning, please.’

‘Wake-up call for six tomorrow morning, sir. Will there be anything else, Dr Mai?’

‘No, but listen, this wake-up call is very important. I cannot be late for my conference tomorrow morning.’

‘Don't worry sir, you will be called at six sharp.’

‘But that's an automated call. What if I don't respond to it? I'm really tired and may oversleep. Will you make sure I'm woken up?’

‘Fine, sir. I'll ensure that personally.’

‘Please don't forget. Thank you.’ Mai replaced the phone and walked back towards the bed. He was just a few feet away from it when he tripped over his perennially undone shoelaces. As he tumbled forward, his hands came up instinctively to break the fall and protect his face. The left hand managed to do that successfully as he struck the floor rather hard. But his right hand landed squarely on the tiny, marblesized glass vial loaded with VX Gas that was lying forgotten on the carpet just beside the bed. The vial was tough, but not tough enough to withstand the impact. It shattered instantly, unleashing the deadly aerosol into the air, inches from his face.

The sharp choking feeling and violent tremors came almost instantly. Death was not too far behind. It came just as he lost control over his bowels. A moment later, his heart died, Mai was screaming as he went, but no sound emerged from his starved lungs.

As life left him, he could hear his mother yelling at him from a distance.
Why can't you keep them tied properly, Mai? Those shoelaces will be the death of you
….

MAI WAS SUFFERING THE AGONY OF A PAINFUL DEATH WHEN,
barely two miles away, American Airlines flight 293 lifted off from the runway of Delhi airport and began its long haul to Chicago. Seated in the middle of the aircraft was Erik Segan. Tucked away in the safety of his checked-in baggage were the aerosol cans of room-freshener with Variola Major in them. The baggage had sailed through the airport's security net without any problem. Now Eric huddled in his seat, sweating profusely. Not because his conscience was bothering him, but because he was terrified of flying. The killer cargo he was carrying only added to his discomfort.

THE WARMTH HAD BEGUN TO DESERT MAI'S BODY WHEN, AN
hour and a half later, from the same runway of Delhi airport, Austrian Airlines flight 34 took off for Vienna with Karl Gunther and his lethal cargo of VX Gas on board. The second killer and his well-camouflaged cargo had also sailed unscathed through the security barrier. Luck was still with Salim's lashkar.

MAI'S BODY HAD STARTED TO STIFFEN WHEN TWO HOURS
and ten minutes later, the Khan sisters departed from Delhi on board Air France flight 147 for Paris. Thanks to Mai's ingenuity, they too breached the security barriers undetected. Their flight had almost cleared Indian airspace when, back in Delhi, there was another tentative knock on Mai's door.

IT IS ALMOST CERTAIN THAT IF MAI HAD NOT BEEN SO
insistent about his wake-up call, his body would not have been found in a hurry. When he continuously failed to get any response from Mai, the conscientious operator spoke to the housekeeping supervisor.

‘The guest in 517 had placed a wake-up call for six, but I'm not getting any response from him.’

‘So what's new?’

‘It's just that he was very insistent on being woken up for some important conference.’

‘Uh huh.’

‘I wonder if you could ask your person on the fourth floor to check on him and wake him up.’

‘Okay, let me see what I can do,’ she said and put down the phone.

Barring the electric blue stripes of the screensaver on the open laptop in the corner, Mai's room was shrouded in darkness when the housemaid who had been working on the fourth floor let herself in. She squinted in the near darkness, trying to spot the guest who was not responding to his wake-up call. Even in the dim light she could sense that the bed was empty. She was about to call out when a strange, foul smell assaulted her senses. Puzzled, but at this point still not alarmed, she clicked on the room lights. That was when she saw Mai lying on the floor. His face was contorted in a dark, hideous death mask. The mouth was still open in a pain-racked scream. Foamy flecks of vomit crusted the mouth. Visually reinforced, the stench of death, vomit and excreta surged towards her with horrifying force.

She screamed and began to back away. She was still screaming when the hotel security guard patrolling the fourth floor heard her and came rushing in. He took one look at the dead man on the floor and his stomach revolted. Controlling the rush of bile, he hustled her out of the room and slammed the door shut behind them. Even through the shock and horror that flailed him, he knew that he had to leave the room undisturbed for the police. Neither of them realized how lucky they were that the VX was a tactical variant with a short shelf life.

IT IS ALSO CERTAIN THAT THE MYSTERY OF MAI'S DEATH
would have taken much longer to solve if it had not been for the fact that the hotel doctor who responded to the frantic call for help and took charge of the body had just donned civvies after a long innings in the Indian Army Medical Corps. Though lacking any practical experience of chemical attacks, he had enough theoretical knowledge to suspect that the death was due to reasons beyond the ordinary. Immediately, the National Emergency Management Authority (NEMA) was brought into the picture. They came. They saw. They freaked.

Consequently, not even half an hour had elapsed before the Chemical Warfare Detachment (CW Det) personnel seconded for duty at the nearby airport moved in and threw a cordon sanitaire around the room. It took the two men in protective suits a little longer to ascertain the precise cause of death. The minute
that
happened, the security cordon was extended to cover the entire floor and phones began to ring with electrifying urgency. In another ten minutes, the ATTF had also moved in.

‘Do we really need to do this?’ the panic-stricken General Manager of the hotel asked, horrified at the public relations disaster that loomed large.

‘We do,’ the CW Det commander replied curtly. ‘We're still in the process of evaluating the situation and will let you know soon if the hotel needs to be shut down. Right now I suggest you let us have full details of all hotel occupants, including those who checked out during the last forty-eight hours. And we want full details… and I mean
full
details of the dead man.’ He gestured towards the room where Mai's body still lay undisturbed.

‘But what has happened?’ the perplexed GM asked in an anguished tone. The mere thought of the hotel being sealed had him reeling.

‘I can say nothing more at this stage, sir,’ the CW Det commander replied a little more gently.
Poor bloke! He'll mess himself if he comes to know what's really happened.

On realizing that VX Gas was involved and the dead Chinese was a leading chemical and biological warfare expert, the CW Det commander had taken a spot decision to tamp down on all news pertaining to Mai's death.
Let the brass decide how to handle it
.

‘Now, if you will excuse me, I need to take care of this. Please ensure that
no one
, and I mean no one, comes to this floor for any reason whatsoever.’

‘Why? How can….’

‘Just pass on the word that there has been a bomb scare and the hotel is being searched as a precaution.’

That eventually became the story for the media. After an initial short-lived spurt of enthusiasm, the news was buried under an avalanche of more gossipy, scandalous and TRP-enhancing news items.
After all, how much interest can a bomb in some hotel on the fringes of the city evoke? Unless it goes off, of course
.

Mai's death did not make it to the television news channels. Had that happened, almost certainly Salim or Cheema, who were continuously surfing the airwaves, would have picked it up.

Within minutes of the CW Det commander's confirmatory call that VX Gas was on the loose, the brass was jolted awake. So was the External Affairs Ministry (MEA), since the dead man was a foreigner. The MEA Joint Secretary was confused and upset as he picked up the phone to call the Chinese embassy.

L
AHORE

THE CW DET COMMANDER WAS TALKING WITH THE MANAGER
of Delhi's Radisson Hotel when a truck belonging to Al-Mohsin Worldwide, one of the several packers and movers in the city of Lahore, pulled up outside the warehouse being used by Cheema's cohorts. The truck was loaded with an assortment of carefully packaged and labelled items. The men who took away two of the three remaining suitcase nukes were dressed in the off-colour khakis worn by all AlMohsin personnel. Before they took away the nukes, they slapped a series of stickers and packing slips on them. Both nukes now resembled suitcases that might be used by any average American household. The kiddie stickers on both suitcases clearly indicated that they belonged to a young boy or boys still struggling to throw off the influence of Pokemon, Power Rangers and Dragon Ball Z.

Half an hour later, when the truck pulled away from the warehouse, both nukes were comfortably mixed up with the rest of the luggage of the Consular Officer of the US Consulate at Lahore. He was returning home after a tumultuous two years in Pakistan. In the press of the million things to be done just before departure, the harried man had not recounted the total number of pieces listed in the inventory of goods he was carrying back as he returned to a more staid life on home turf. Both the Chote Miyan were now part of his household baggage.

A little later, the baggage was safely tucked away in the cargo hold of PIA flight 711 which took off from Lahore. Its destination was JFK airport in New York.