Dragonfire (9 page)

National Security Council, Washington, DC

Local time: 2300 Wednesday 2 May 2007
GMT: 0400 Thursday 3 May 2007

‘These have come
in in the past hour, sir.’

Tom Bloodworth, the National Security Advisor, was working alone under a single desk light when his office door was pushed open with a light knock by his second-shift secretary, who was on duty
from 1800 until midnight. His office was in a building in the White House grounds, connected by a passageway to the West Wing, where most of the presidential business was conducted.

He opened the folder of photographs which Judy Lewis put on his desk. ‘Give me half an hour undisturbed, will you, Judy,’ he said, meaning no calls from Asia, which was beginning to
buzz at this time. The prints had been processed by the Directorate of the National Photographic Interpretation Center and delivered to his office through a high-capacity fibre-optic cable link.
Bloodworth spread out the photographs on his desk just like he had in his early days as one of the twelve hundred specialists at the Office of Imagery Analysis. Now it had become part of the
National Imagery and Mapping Agency, jointly run by the Pentagon and the CIA and operated from the Washington Navy Yard.

He had sworn by IMINT (imagery satellite intelligence) for most of his career as an intelligence officer, until May 1998 when India surprised the world by conducting five underground nuclear
tests. Four satellites had been deployed full time on India, with cameras powerful enough to read the time on a soldier’s wristwatch. Analysts had previously picked out bursts of activity at
the Pokharan testing range in 1982, 1995 and 1997, which had led to American questions about the nuclear weapons programme. But they failed to detect India’s entry onto the nuclear stage. The
CIA was guilty of one of the biggest failures in its history.

Admittedly, the Indians had carried out most of their work at night and under cloud cover when satellite vision was poor. They also knew the time the satellites would be overhead and avoided
activity during that time. They used intricate communication codes. Scientists dressed in camouflage uniforms to make them look like soldiers in training. But none of that was an excuse. At the
nearby village of Khetolai, a stone and sand Rajasthani settlement with a population of twelve hundred just three miles from Pokharan, even farmers knew. An Indian army major drove there shortly
before the tests, warning the villagers that there would be some heightened activity. One villager, who remembered the shuddering of the ground during the 1974 nuclear tests, replied:
‘Don’t worry. We know you’re going to do another test.’

Bloodworth, who then headed the CIA’s South Asia desk, called for a list of consumer products used in Khetolai. He found it was among the poorest and most basic communities in India. The
villagers used the Parachute brand of coconut oil, made by Marico Industries, and detergents such as Surf, a product of Hindustan Lever; the only luxury of any kind was the Hero bicycle, made in
Jalandhar City in Punjab. If these goods were in Khetolai, they would be all over India. Bloodworth set about creating a network of low-level agents, known as HUMINT or human intelligence. Truck
drivers and sales representatives would be debriefed on a regular basis to get first-hand intelligence.

Bloodworth used the cover of multinationals such as Motorola, Coca-Cola and Hewlett Packard, together with the more grass-roots retailers such as Hindustan Lever, to ensure that America would
know as soon as India conducted unusual military operations anywhere again.

Now, many years later, he was the National Security Advisor, a friend of the President, with an eye automatically glancing towards the sub-continent. The media, and therefore the American
public, might ignore it, but Bloodworth knew it was the most explosive place on earth. The photographs in front of him confirmed reports he had been getting from the ground. India was moving a
formidable force of armoured vehicles and artillery towards the border with Pakistan. The operation was being run from the Southern Command Headquarters at Pune near Bombay, or Mumbai, as
India’s financial capital was now called.

The analysts had identified Soviet-made 130mm and 152mm guns mounted on Vijayanta chassis, British-made 140mm guns, together with the British 105mm self-propelled Abbot gun and the Indian Pinaka
multi-barrel rocket-launchers. The network of Soviet surface-to-air missile systems was being increased with extra batteries installed in camouflaged positions throughout Jammu and Kashmir,
Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and the Punjab – the 2S6 Tungushka air-defence systems working with the Indian Akash missiles. Twenty SA-316B Chetak observation and liaison helicopters had been
identified off-base, together with five Mi-25 and six Mi-35 Hind attack helicopters. Two extra mountain infantry battalions had been moved from the Northern Headquarters at Udhampur and were taking
up position close to the LoC at Kargil. Columns of regular troops, travelling mostly at night, were pouring into Kashmir. But what worried Bloodworth more than anything was the activity much
further south in Rajasthan, with tanks moving out from bases in Jaisalmer and Bikaner, mainly the older Soviet-made T-55s and T-72s. But north of there around the city of Amritsar several of the
new T-90s had been spotted, together with the updated version of the indigenous Arjun main battle tank.

Bloodworth’s analysts had not found any unusual movements of the nuclear-warhead-carrying Prithvi or Agni missiles, something which would worry him even more. As with all intelligence, the
pictures on his desk might only be what the Indians wanted him to see. He assumed that both nuclear and conventional versions of the Prithvi were deployed securely with XI Corps at Jalandhar and
further south in the Jaisalmer and Barmer areas. If that was only a quarter of the preparations actually going on, it would mean that India could push across the border from Amritsar at any time
and be on the outskirts of Lahore in Pakistan in a matter of hours. She had done it before in 1965, except then neither country was a nuclear power.

Bloodworth pressed his intercom to speak to Judy Lewis. ‘Could you get Chandra Reddy in Delhi for me,’ he said. ‘He’s the head of India’s Research and Analysis
Wing, but tell them the call’s both urgent and personal.’

Briefing

Xinjiang

Xinjiang, on China’s western border, is the size of Alaska and home to about sixteen million Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim ethnic group distinct from the Han Chinese. Officially
it is a semi-autonomous region of China, but Beijing is very much in control and Uighur nationalists want to establish their own independent state called East Turkestan. Since the 1980s there has
been an increasing number of bomb attacks and disturbances. Beijing has reacted by flooding the region with soldiers and armed police and encouraging more and more Han Chinese to migrate to the
area. Like Tibet, Xinjiang is a problematic area for the Chinese, who are afraid of a creeping Islamization from Central Asia.

Zhongnanhai, Beijing, China

Local time: 1500 Thursday 3 May 2007
GMT: 0700 Thursday 3 May 2007

The car number
plates of the Pakistani Ambassador to Beijing, 188 001, were immediately recognized by the guards on the gate of Zhongnanhai, just a few hundred metres
west of the monuments of Tiananmen Square. The car’s journey past the entrance to the Forbidden City had been tracked by the camera on the corner of the south-west wall of the compound. As it
slowed two cameras over the Zhongnanhai gate itself picked it up. Its invitation into the compound was highly unusual. Hardly ever were diplomats allowed into the compound unless accompanying a
visiting dignitary.

Despite China’s thrust towards modernization, it remained uncompromisingly entrenched in its revolutionary past, reminding its citizens that without the Communist Party they wouldn’t
enjoy the home ownership, the well-paid jobs, the US dollar bank accounts and the other trappings of wealth. For twenty years since the collapse of European Communism and the Balkan wars, the
Communist Party had reaffirmed its view that democracy would only hamper development and heighten the risk of civil war.

Statues of Mao Zedong remained in city squares, and his portrait hung over Tiananmen Gate outside the Forbidden City. There was no debunking of the Monument to the Martyrs of the People, the
Great Hall of the People, the museums of Chinese Revolution and History. These were the symbolic institutions which had given China the strength to face down the great twentieth-century powers such
as Russia, Europe and the United States.

Javed Jabbar, urbane and cosmopolitan, was Pakistan’s Ambassador to Beijing and a graduate of Balliol College, Oxford. His colleague General Sadek Hussein was a veteran of two wars against
India, and his government’s special military attaché in China. He was a former Chief of Army Staff responsible for building up the close military relationship with China.
Jabbar’s call directly from Hamid Khan had been unusual, and for a moment he had considered disobeying the instruction. Then Hussein informed him that they had both been invited personally to
Zhongnanhai. Jabbar had no choice but to accept.

Jabbar read the Chinese characters painted on the maroon wall as they turned into the gate.
Long live the Great Communist Party
, said one slogan.
Long live the unbeatable thoughts of
Chairman Mao
, said the other. Once they were inside, they were joined by two motorcycle escorts, the riders bearing the mark of the personal guard unit of Tang Siju, the powerful Chinese
security chief. They were escorted along the broad, uncluttered roads, past the drooping willows and lakes, to a villa at the northern end nestling in its own grounds.

Jabbar was relieved to see the relaxed Chinese Foreign Minister, Jamie Song, on the steps to meet them. By his side was Tang. Jabbar knew the two men did not get along.

Jabbar got out of the car. ‘So I finally get an invitation to your inner sanctum,’ he said, shaking Song’s hand.

‘A prime minister or a president would suffice,’ said Song. ‘Although I gather they spend much of their time hunkered down in Islamabad nowadays, waiting for orders from a
general.’

Jabbar cast him a sideways glance, showing an understanding between diplomats, both of them fiercely patriotic and both uneasy about serving autocratic masters.

Song’s Harvard education and understanding of the Western media had made him the most famous Chinese politician abroad. At fifty-eight, he was frequently tipped by international analysts
as China’s next president, but they were predictions which only underscored their ignorance. It had taken Song years to gain the trust of the Chinese Communist Party’s inner circle,
which was deeply suspicious of his friendship with Western leaders and his flitting back and forth between the government and the private sector. His company Oriental Software had recently been
listed in New York and was already a blue chip in Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore.

This was Song’s second stint as Foreign Minister, a job he had left after his convincing performance during the brief Dragon Strike war. His resignation had been a tactic in order to be
asked back and gain political acceptance at the highest level. The Communist Party realized it needed at its centre a man who could count international businessmen and political leaders among his
friends. Song was called upon to give advice not only on foreign policy, but also on how to coax in more Western investors. His refrain was that China’s economy was on track and its lack of
democratic reform was one of the great stabilizing factors in global development. Since the Balkan wars and the collapse of the Russian economy, the Chinese Foreign Minister’s views had
prevailed.

Song ushered the two Pakistani diplomats into a reception room, dully decorated with calligraphic scrolls hanging from the wall and armchairs positioned next to spittoons, ashtrays and writing
tables with pencils and notepaper.

‘Let’s pull a couple of these round so we can talk properly,’ said Song, trying to instil informality into the austere room. He shifted a chair himself while Tang’s
interpreter ran over to help him.

‘Did you guys down the Indian helicopter?’ Song went on, dropping the question in casually. The interpreter translated for Tang.

‘Out of my theatre,’ said Hussein.

‘Hamid Khan is both brave and dangerous, if he did,’ said Song.

‘General Hamid Khan is a very great friend of China,’ said Tang, speaking in Chinese with simultaneous translation from the interpreter. He took a seat on the left-hand side of the
two main chairs at the end of the room. The others arranged themselves around him while Hussein took out two sheets of paper, one in English and one in Chinese. He gave them to Song and Tang.

‘These are the details of the death of a man called Yahya,’ explained Jabbar. ‘He was a Saudi Arabian, living in Egypt, responsible for some of the worst attacks against
Western and Asian tourists there. For the past six months he has been training
fedayeen
– that’s Arabic for commandos – to intensify the insurgency in Xinjiang. He was due
in Central Asia himself next month. Four days ago, Yahya was killed by a single gunshot wound to the head at the entrance to his apartment block in the city of Asyut on the upper Nile.’
Jabbar paused, allowing his Chinese hosts to read the document. ‘As you know, the slums of Asyut are a breeding ground for this type of terrorist. Pakistani intelligence agents can infiltrate
them.’

Hussein took up the explanation. ‘Our Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate has an influence far beyond our borders. Our reputation in some areas is comparable to that of Mossad –
even more when it comes to the infiltration of extremist Islamic groups operating from Afghanistan and the Middle East. General Khan asked us to tell you personally and in the greatest confidence
how Yahya was killed.’

The double doors at the end of the room opened and a woman appeared with a tray of tea. Hussein stopped talking and the room was silent apart from the rattling of the cups, until Tang barked an
order that she should leave.