RESONANCE (3 page)

The meeting was adjourned. Still unaware of the Mumbai attack, while going back to Connaught Place to pick his car, Sundaram was worried. "Why should one close the barn after the horse has already bolted?"he said cryptically.

As Sundaram walked out, two things haunted him: 'Resonance' and 'Not to count me in'.

A waiter of a well-known restaurant
Kake da Dhaba
and his
paanwala
friend, who were engrossed in late night chatter, casually watched a man entering a swanky Internet café.

The neon signboard of the café boasted, "Open 24 X 7".

Backup

A car followed
Imran Shah Malik's glossy black Mercedes Benz. The minute Imran turned right on PMG
chowk
, bullets started to spew forth from the car that was following him.

The bulletproof car of Imran Shah Malik bore the brunt of a few shots. However, the rear glass shattered completely when a grenade landed near it and exploded. His highly secured cell phone which was on the dashboard fell on the floor and was beyond anyone's reach under the front passenger seat. Imran fumbled, trying to pull it out, but could not. He stepped hard on the pedal, speeding down on N-5 or the New Grand Trunk Road towards Shahdara. Left with no choice, Imran activated his car phone and called his son, "Listen carefully, Aban. Go to my study and create a backup of my computer data right now. Leave for the US by the earliest flight. Once you reach the US, I will tell you what you need to do next."

Imran Shah Malik's car veered sharply to its left, as a bullet burst the rear tyre. Although it sustained the impact, it was enough to send it off balance. Riding the wave, Imran allowed the vehicle to enter a narrow by lane.

"What was that sound,
Abba
?"Aban's voice hollered into the instrument.

"The boys are lighting up fireworks."Imran laughed.

"I think…"

"Stop sweating the small stuff, son. I have been hearing these noises since I was as young as you."

"I'm worried,
Abba
…"

"Take it easy, son. Never ever mention this to
Ammi
. She will panic unnecessarily. "

Aban kept quiet.

"Someday, I will explain everything."The father disconnected the line.

He turned his car towards Landa Bazar. After crossing two blocks, Imran Shah Malik steered his car to a backstreet and swiftly killed the engine. He walked leisurely on to an adjacent alley, crossed a Hindu Temple and vanished into the darkness.

Aban tried to log onto his father's Mac Pro, but it was well protected by a 256-bit random cipher text password, cleverly hidden in the shadow hash function generator. He immediately understood that it was a kind of one-time pad cryptograph. So, even if he succeeded in deciphering it, the merciless machine would present millions of possible password permutations. He knew that if he keyed in even one wrong password out of the million possibilities, the key generator would deliver another million combinations.

As if mocking at a helpless man, the emotionless machine seemingly waited for an input.

Aban just sat there, staring at it. He remembered what his father had warned him about when he was to leave for the US for the first time. "Life is not a gamble. So, never opt for a shortcut to make decisions. Gambling machines churn out all possible combinations, except the jackpot integer. Casinos around the world have perfected a fail-proof-system, ensuring that only the house wins."

"Ever since man learnt how to count numbers, the old and the wise have been warning the younger generation that no one can ever win a bet based on the numeral digit. A game of dice,
teen patti
,
matka
, video poker lottery tickets, Russian roulette are the means of the devil to lead men astray."

Pointing towards the racecourse, he had continued, "The fate of Greyhound racing, sports betting, match fixing, arbitrage betting, lay-bet, options and futures, although not strictly based on numbers, are still decided by the devil and the demon."

"Right from the time of the primates and primitives, man knew how to design codes and ciphers, perfecting both for encryption and decryption. A tool for both man and machine, the skill became just another ritual of gambling, capable of forcing the world to teeter on the brink of extinction,"he had concluded.

Aban recalled everything that his Abba had said that day. However, the situation was completely different now.
Abba
had
asked him to take a backup of his computer.

"Could it be possible that trying out all the different combinations to find the password to his father's computer was nothing more than a game of dice?", wondered Aban. "Ought he to look elsewhere to find the key?"He tried to call his father, but the phone went unanswered. He tried calling up the car phone but in vain.

Aban brought out his MacBook and backed-up all his important data in a zip drive. After partitioning his hard disk, he connected both Macs. He rebooted his father's computer and executed a carbon copy cloner program to replicate the entire hard disk into the hard disk of his own MacBook.

Little Hog Can

Back from the
Intercontinental Hotel, Sundaram Iyer watched the television coverage of the Mumbai attacks with eyes wide open. His admiration for his mentors in Pakistan grew by leaps and bounds. After all, they had pulled off a near impossible feat.

He sipped his scotch and closed his eyes. If the grand strategy of Tupac-II worked out entirely, he was going to retire and live peacefully in a private barrier island, Little Hog Cay, in the North Bahamas. Once relieved from the humdrum of a boring life in office and an unexciting wife at home, he would do nothing but sip exquisite wine with half closed eyes and play golf every now and then.

Iyer already had a Pakistani passport and a top plastic surgeon of Dubai had promised to change his looks forever. The front company of Hussein Pharma was to deposit a princely sum of money, which would be abundant for a luxurious and indulgent life.

Sundaram Iyer sipped his scotch again and closed his eyes as his mind wandered off to replay his wild sensual fantasies.

Eyes shut, he found himself in his private massage parlour of his palatial home in Little Hog Cay Island. The gorgeous Venezuelan concierge helped him out of his clothes and ushered him into the sanctum sanctorum of the parlour. The most beautiful women from Sweden and sugar girls from Puerto Rico took over, gently and softly. However, he could not waste time, since he had invited a few princesses to his island. The reverie continued with uninterrupted fervour and the story continued to grow in his mind. The guests arrived in the afternoon. He imagined gesturing his men to escort his guests to their exclusive suites. After a while, handsome young men knocked at the doors of the suites. These able-bodied men then performed the ritual of gently lowering the young women into a bubbly bathtub.

The beautiful nymphs stepped out of the liquid, their bodies dripping wet. Their friends helped them out and wiped the 'mermaids' with large silk kerchiefs. The ensuing fire baptized the damsels, making them ready for more rituals.

The sexy sommeliers played gracious hosts to the hilt. They enticed the ladies with their extensive knowledge of wine and food combinations, played seductive tricks and entertained them with erogenous tickles, teasing and titillating them to keep the fire alive. When evening fell, lilting Persian music filled the air. The chilled wine tingled the nerves of all present, but then the warm glow of the candlelight immediately arrested the sensation, inflaming passions to unthinkable heights.

Sundaram Iyer came out of his psychedelic world and abruptly spoke in cold calculating tones. "I will handpick my personal secretary. How can I forget that this woman spurned my advances when I went to Europe the first time? My bunny girl from the Mediterranean may be piping hot, tingly and spicy, but I have all the money in the world to shower on this Miss High and Mighty."

Iyer planned to lie low for a decade and then, in his new avatar, pursue his long-standing hobby of lobbying for big business houses, arbitration of big stakes on money, politicking on sensitive issues and occasional liaising with government officers. Even though these activities were fraught with danger, he just could not live without those old habits.

Taj Mahal Hotel

Aban came back
to the living room and found Nausheen still watching television. The media was airing minute-by-minute accounts of death and destruction. A television commentator was reporting from Hotel Taj Mahal at the Gateway of India, Mumbai. His camera operator panned on to a window from where the NSG commandos were rescuing many guests using a ladder.

The camera zoomed in and Aban's face lit up, but soon became anxious when he spotted a young girl who showed up at the window. "Oh God! What the hell is she doing there?"

"Who is she?"Nausheen looked surprise.

"She is Juhi. She studies at Cornell. We know each other."

"How much?"Nausheen's interest spiked up.

"Not much. A bit."Aban turned his gaze away. "I need to talk to her. She must be feeling terrible."

"Hold on, Aban. It is not a good idea to dial Mumbai at this time. The Indian intelligence agencies must be monitoring each call from Pakistan."

"To hell with them! I'm concerned about her. I don't care what they think."Nausheen wanted Aban to understand the danger, but he would not listen. "Her father is the Indian Ambassador to the US. Nothing will happen,
Ammi
."

"I'm really worried for you, my son. The situation is quite messy. You may be inviting big, big trouble."

Aban found himself trapped in a tight spot. He had to heed his father's warning and conceal the fact from Nausheen that he had heard gunshots in his father's car. He was also worried sick because his father's phone went unanswered and Juhi was caught up in a life and death situation.

"
The sweetest joy, wildest woe is love."
Aban struggled to avoid his mother's prying eyes while he called Juhi several times. However, it seemed the cell phone networks were clogged.

Nausheen could clearly see the fretfulness in her son's eyes. She drew closer to Aban. "Don't do anything that your father would disapprove of."

"Someday, I will explain everything to
Abba
."Aban turned his gaze away from his mother. Fervently, he tried one more time and the line connected. Aban ran to his room, escaping his mother's probing eyes and cocked ears.

However, Nausheen heard a few sentences, "Hi sweetie. I was scared to death when I saw you on television…"

Nausheen stood in silence in the living room, feeling shut out of her husband's and son's lives. The disquieting sound and the gory pictures on TV did not interest her anymore. Exhausted, Nausheen opened the window and stared blankly into the darkness that had spread outside.

Bugged

The Intelligence Bureau
of India (IB) had mounted surveillance on the elusive Imran Shah Malik for the last two years. To their utter frustration, he was too hard to pin down because he never left a trail of his movements, not even accidentally. There were no lapses on his part.

Although a few laptops and an iMac at home were connected with Airport Extreme Base Station, the Mac Pro of Imran Shah Malik's study room was entirely isolated from the outside world. It was never connected to the Internet and so was not accessible to anyone intending to ping into that computer. He had taken extreme care to turn off any sharing: file, printer, Xgrid, screen, web, remote login, everything. He preferred to use USB keyboard and mouse, instead of the latest Bluetooth version. The Bluetooth was always turned off. The Ethernet port was never wired. He loved to work on an ultramodern machine in the most archaic way. Perhaps, one could say, the most modern way!

Imran Shah's cell phones and landline phones were highly encrypted and therefore completely inaccessible. The IB personnel could eavesdrop only on the droning hum of the phones that were kept on constant tap or wiretap. They had planted the most sophisticated bugs in his home, but nothing was of any use.

The Indian agents were even more frustrated because whenever Imran Shah Malik drew close to the bugs they had planted, he would recite divine Pashto poetry or hum melodious classical music with a perfect blend of
raag
and
taal
. Clearly, he found it amusing to mock his Indian 'friends'.

Though he was fond of Ghazals, which spoke of idealistic lovers pining for each other unto death, he would sing old Punjabi songs with soothing tunes; spanning over a wide range of moods: the joy of living, the rains, sowing, harvesting seasons and what not? He hummed the love legends of Heer Ranjha, Sohni Mahenwal, Saifu Mulk and the many tragic tales told in those folklores, all aimed at misleading the Indians, who sat listening with wide earphones, hoping to catch even a minor aberration on Imran Shah Malik's part.

However, the story of the car phone was entirely different.

Imran Shah Malik's young driver constantly chatted with his fiancé over the car phone. It was also a free means of communication for the driver's friends: the gardener, the cook, the
dhobi
, the milkman and the fruit seller who frequented Imran's house on a daily basis.

The Indian officer, who was deputed in New Delhi, to listen to conversations on Imran Shah Malik's phone, cursed the day he had joined the IB. He often begged his seniors for a transfer from the post because all that he got to hear day in and day out were the driver's sleazy words, his fiancé's coy giggles and the gardener's constant bickering with his wife - a mother to eight children, whose voices were forever present in the background.

The overriding concern of the
paan
-chewing cook was to open a tea, samosa and boiled egg stall and then later on construct a small roadside
dhaba
of his own and to hire cooks and waiters. He would then sit at the cash counter and watch sitcoms through the day and occasionally scold the waiters, even if they worked well. At night, he would take home a few rupees to please his pesky wife. Most of the money would be spent on the maid, with whom he was madly in love. He would shower the
Mohtarma
with red lipstick, snow powder, talcum,
alta
, glass bangles and most importantly, slip a gold ring on her finger. This had been on his mind from the very first day he had seen her in Imran's house. He instantly knew that she would never refuse his advances. Oh! That night would be a different night. But he had no money to fulfil his dream. For this, he would have to keep abreast of the loan and the interest rates that were made available from the local
sahukars
, the moneylenders.

The
dhobi
nursed a childhood dream of washing the silvery glad rags of the Sheikhs and Shaykhahs of Dubai in the basement of their stunning castles.
Insha Allah
, after serving those 'dumdum nobles', and 'gorgeous czarinas', the day would not be very far off, when he would be back to his fatherland, wearing his best bib and tucker! He would then employ another dhobi to wash his spotless white togs and black ties!

And since he was a washerman
,
he had a very sound idea of the kind of clothes that the rich and famous wear. However, his imagination could not travel beyond wearing pants. And since
hawai chappals
or rubber flip flops had always adorned his flaky feet, the idea of slipping shiny shoes over his scaly feet had never ever crossed his fuzzy mind. So he would end up in his imagination, wearing designer clothing, paired with
hawaiis
and stepping out in style from an Air Emirates flight from Dubai to Lahore.

But entry into Dubai was only through 'pushing', the term used for illegal immigration and for this constant networking over the phone with illegal immigration agents, their cronies and his Dubai-based cousins was crucial. Moreover, what could be better than the free car phone that lay idle all day long and when any ISD call was beyond his means. Hence, the compelling need to use the neglected car phone!

The milkman was the occasional Hindu that one found in Pakistan. Since all his relatives lived beyond the borders, he
was ever on the lookout to get in telephonic touch with them. His most recent fad was to buy a
Kajri
cow from the Sonepur
Mela
with a row of bells tied around its neck and hot pink and crimson tassels around its horns. Along with this, he was also consumed by a heart-rending desire to offer its milk at the
Jyotirlinga
in Baidyanathdham before coming back to Pakistan. The IB Officer was occasionally rewarded with the fruit seller's enquiries regarding price fluctuations at the Mughalpura Fruit Mandi of Lahore.

The reason why all these people risked their necks to use the master's car phone was the fear of fat bills, that the infidels or the personnel of billing department of those 'morons', the telecom companies, slapped on these '
Allah ke bande',
the chosen men of God. Allah, who had created all men equal, had also created the cell phone. Then, why the bills!

How the beleaguered IB officer wished Imran Shah Malik had secured this car phone line too!

But for once, on that fateful night, the IB officer was excited. His eyes lit up as he heard Imran give instructions to Aban. He noted down Aban Malik's number and flagged it immediately. Euphoric, he emailed the relevant information to Siddhartha Rana, the Joint Director of IB.

"Imran Shah Malik has asked his son Aban to backup his computer and leave for USA tomorrow. The cell phone number of Aban Malik is +1…"

He got an instant reply, "Send in the entire transcript and voice file."