RESONANCE (8 page)

New York

Siddhartha packed his gear and headed straight to the Indira Gandhi International Airport. He checked into the Executive Class of the non-stop Air India flight, which was long, but smooth. It landed at JFK in the morning. After immigration clearance, he briskly walked out of the lounge and went to the Residency office of the FBI.

"What can I do for you, Sid?"asked Robert McLean.

"Bob, I'm here for Aban."

"What could the Indian Government want with a Pakistani national?"

"What if I tell you that I have the password, which you have been trying to crack for many days?"

"Not a big deal, Siddhartha. We'll unravel it eventually."

"Then you will be able to enter the MacBook, but will never gain access to an all-important file. No one in this world can break this uniquely protected password."Siddhartha explained to Robert McLean everything about the image password and salting method.

Robert McLean's eyes widened in awe, "So, you think there could be a lead in that file."

"Indeed, Bob. We've analysed all other folders and documents and there is nothing much to show except thousands of files."

"There may be hidden files too."

"True, but all hidden files are system files. There are no email exchanges either. A few of them may interest the Pakistani government, but not us. What is important is just one file."

"So, Mr. Aban Malik must be aware of the contents of this file?"

"Let's see how much he knows,"Siddhartha responded.

"Let's go, Sid."

"Where?"

"To 26 Federal Plaza, our downtown Field Office."

Ravi Road

Today where a
bustling timber market stands on Ravi Road in the majestic city of Lahore, a few film studios stood in the late '20s. One of these released the first Indian talkie 'Alam Ara'.

However, the partition of India and Pakistan left the Lahore film industry in a complete shambles as most of the actors and artistes left Lahore for better pastures in . Today, not even a single film-related signboard finds a place on this road. However, a few descendants of the artistes and performers of yore have lived to tell their tale. They have tried their best to carry on the time-honoured traditions of myths, rituals of legends and the saga of folklore.

One of them happened to be a master of mixing and combining audio and video clips in such a way that even the best professionals of Hollywood would have envied him. Everyone called him Master-Mixer. Yet he had to fight for a living as he hardly got any work from the dying Pakistani film industry. Qualms of conscience did not let him leave his motherland, but this only added more misery to his already arduous life. He dubbed a few English documentaries in Urdu, but did not find a single taker since what interested liberal and the so called progressive people were pirated Hindi Bollywood movies and xxx rated Russian blue films!

He then decided that the time had come to down the shutters of his office once and for all and try his
kismet
in some other business venture. However, he was soon forced to reconsider his decision since a few days later, a person visited him with a proposal worth five lakh rupees.

He looked with a lot of interest to what was handed over to him. The first video clip was about the joint aerial operation, codenamed 'Indus Viper 2008' by the Pakistani Air Force and the Turkish Air Force. The clippings showed F-16 fighter aircrafts of PAF and TuAF taking off from Sargodha Air Force Base in the Punjab province and flying in combat formation towards Tarbela Dam to the north east of Lahore.

In the second scene and setting, the Indian Sukhoi-30 and Jaguar took off from Dehradun AFB and soared towards the mountainous region of the Great Himalayas.

A thirty-one minute documentary of History Channel was the third part. It was about the calamitous collapse of South Fork Dam near Johnstown, Pennsylvania, which had drowned thousands.

The Master-Mixer grinned, "These moving pictures must be protected under copyright. Won't that create a problem?"

"Don't lose sleep. We'll take care of it."

"What the hell should I do with these?"

"Sequence it and mix it all up the way I tell you."

The agent explained everything to him. When he had finished, the Master-Mixer asked, "What should be the length of the movie?"

"Not more than ten minutes."

"Do you want this to appear absolutely real?"

"Beyond a shadow of a doubt."

"I'll charge ten lakhs."

"What if someone still claims that it is not authentic?"

"If you want that even the best professionals of Hollywood should not be able to point out even a single frame as
faux
, I'll charge twenty."

"Done. How much time will you take?"

"One year."

"That's too much."

"In this real world, this time is less, my dear brother. I have to work for hours and sometimes for days on each frame. And there are thirty frames per second."

Both men shook hands. The deal was on.

Forget

Juhi went to
sleep, but woke up in the hush of the night when she had a bad dream.

In her dream, she was with a few friends and Aban, visiting a picturesque fjord, surrounded by steep hills and a dense forest. One of Aban's friends dared him to swim across the water. Others rode a boat to cheer the duo. Suddenly, a surging oceanic wave unbalanced the vessel carrying Juhi, plunging her into the icy water below. Since Juhi did not know how to swim, she started to drown, occasionally thrown up by the force of buoyancy. Spotting this, Aban turned back, pulled her out and pitched her safely into the craft before resuming the race. As soon as he began catching up with the contestant, he found himself trapped in a swirling whirlpool that kept sucking him down. He lashed around, trying to get out of the vortex; but the more he struggled, the deeper he sank.

Juhi watched in horror. She wanted to save him, but could not. She tried to move and jump into the water, but her limbs refused to budge and her hand gripped tightly on to the balustrade. Her friends watched petrified, but unable to move as though transfixed by some invisible force.

Suddenly the merry-makers seemed to forget the present and moved onto a different time, laughing and singing, sailing their boat to the shore.

Juhi was left all alone in the middle of the lake, stuck in the roots of the mangrove trees that looked like long-limbed apparitions of ancient origin.

She woke up in cold sweat. The moonlight streamed through the window and lit up her beautiful face. She quickly made tea in her kitchen, hoping that it would steady her nerves. When it did not, she knocked at the door of her father's bedroom, hesitantly.

"Are you still awake?"The Ambassador was mildly surprised.

"I had a terrible nightmare."

"Relax, my sweet doll."

"I'm worried about him. It has been almost a week and there is no news of Aban."

"I'm concerned about you, my darling. I can't do much for Aban. We cannot even provide consular access to him since he is not an Indian citizen."

"Can't you talk to the Ambassador of Pakistan?"

"That will make matters worse. There is a procedure for consular access. The Ambassador will have to send a written official communication to the office of the US Attorney General in the Department of Justice. Depending upon the sensitivity of the matter, they may or may not grant consular access. The request will travel over many official desks before reaching the highest up. Worst of all, Aban may get exposed to the media and the outside world and that will compound his difficulty. If the Government of Pakistan has forgotten about the son of a very high-ranking officer, then I see a major problem."

"What problem, dad?"

"Someone has chosen not to set the young boy free."

"Why?"

"Maybe his father was the reason. However, I can't say this with certainty. In fact, I don't know. Only time will unravel the mystery."

"Don't scare me, please."

"This is the way the opaque world works, young girl."

"I don't agree. There has to be someone, who would want to see Aban walk free."

"Let's see."

"What should I do then?"

"Forget him."

26, Federal Plaza

Siddhartha Rana and
Robert McLean reached the Field Office of the FBI at 26, Federal Plaza. The elevator zipped to the 23
rd
Floor and both walked to the Criminal Division. A special agent, who was handling Aban's matter, brought out the case record.

Robert McLean went through the document. "Has he been photographed and his fingerprints taken?"

"Yes."

"Was he ever involved in any crime as per our database of Information Service Division?"

"No."

"Any lead on his MacBook."

"The Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit gave it their best shot, but without any success. We then sent a cloned copy of his hard disk drive to NSA. We still have to hear from them."

"That won't be needed. I have the key,"Siddhartha joined in, and explained how the IB could gain access to Imran Shah Malik's computer.

Robert asked the special agent to bring the MacBook. Siddhartha entered the password and the laptop accepted the credential."

"Which is the file that is protected by an image password?"

"Surprisingly it's not like a normal file, but a morphed image of Túpac Amaru II, a descendant of the Incas of Peru. He is a mythical figure, who rose against the Spanish rule. Peruvians still adore him for his valour."Siddhartha clicked on the image, and a 2X2 grid opened. "This grid is the password. We need to place four images in the grid such that they represent a single theme."

"We can have a go with the images in the computer file."

"Our systems expert has already tried using the decoder. It seems the four images are not in this computer. I believe that they are stored in some removable-media like a pen drive or scandisk. Mr. Malik must have been dragging the image from them into the grid."

"That should leave traces on the hard disk."

"It won't since these images get temporarily loaded into the flash-memory and disappear when the computer shuts down."

"We can still try since the password image files are nothing, but bytes of 0 and 1 in computer machine language."

"True. But each image file has millions of bytes. Even if we try different combinations, the best of the supercomputers in NSA will take thousands of years to decode this image-password."

"What's the solution then?"

"Magical words."Siddhartha smiled, "Open sesame!"

"What?"

"What a computer cannot do, a man can. Free Aban."

Divers

Contrary to popular
belief, the Pakistani community living in Britain are not very well off. In fact, they rank second poorest after the Bangladeshis. They have not fully assimilated into British society and the Brits don't fancy them either.

A majority of the Pakistani emigrants to the United Kingdom are from the Punjab province and the Kashmir region under Pakistani occupation. Half of them come from Mirpur in Kashmir, where the Mangla Dam stands today. Their social customs are orthodox even by Pakistani standards and they do not mix with white men and women. In spite of the British Government's efforts to enrol their children into 'white schools', only a handful of them send their children to school. A low standard of education compels them to work as manual labourers. They live in ghettoes and can barely support their families. Such an appalling situation has given rise to a perpetual hostility against the United Kingdom, the United States and their allies especially after their troops marched into Iraq and Afghanistan. That there is no love lost between these '
Pardeshi Britons'
and India is no secret. Pro-
Azadi
slogans for the liberation of Kashmir echo in their ghettoes and resonate in other Islamic countries.

The Jihadists always look for such men to carry out their nefarious plans in Europe, America and India. The British government also holds a view that half the terrorists in Britain have their roots in Pakistan.

The architect of Project Tupac-II knew that he would find many disgruntled youth, willing to take up Jihad with a little bit of indoctrination and oodles of dough. The city of Plymouth is one of the recruiting hubs.

Shalim Amār Khan found a diver working for Her Majesty's Naval Base of Davenport in Plymouth. An expert in retrofitting of operational submarines and a trained hydrographer, he was the only one who could dive more than two hundred and fifty meters with SCUBA.

As luck would have it, the diver was a dissatisfied man too. Compared to the lesser skilled
'white diver'
, he was paid much less.

A hundred thousand pound bait was enough for the diver to shift loyalty from 'Her Majesty' to an anonymous man. With half of the money paid as advance, he fancied starting a diving school and employing his childhood buddies, who were fighting abject poverty. He would then make sure that all his acquaintances would be reasonably rich enough to take care of their progeny and next of kin.

He needed to apply for a month's leave from his work, but had to wait for the right opportunity. First, he had to visit Interdive Services Ltd. in Plymouth and enrol in a training program on the use of underwater explosives. Though the training course was offered all around the year, the month of July, when the sea would be stormy, was the perfect period to get trained for the deadliest operation designed in the chronicles of man.

Shalim Amār Khan assured him that an appropriate and well-timed arrangement with a famous Mumbai Scuba Diving Club would be made. All he had to do was to dive and dive deep when the time came.