Dragonfire (5 page)

‘China could lose it,’ Overhalt insisted, ‘become uncontrollable.’

‘Well, let them lose it in the morning – Eastern Standard Time.’

Briefing

Dharamsala

In 1959, after the Dalai Lama fled Tibet, the Indian government allocated the town of Dharamsala, nestled in the mountains of northern India, for him to use as his headquarters.
The Dalai Lama lived there in a modern compound, while buildings off the steep little streets housed the institutions of the Tibetan government-in-exile. One of those buildings was the Tibetan
Parliament.

Chandigarh, India

Local time: 0300 Friday 4 May 2007
GMT: 2130 Thursday 3 May 2007

The call from
his controller interrupted his light sleep. Chandigarh was never quiet, with the blaring of a horn or the crunching of gears on the busy road outside his
room. It was only a week since he had been rotated, the beginning of his second tour of duty in Chandigarh, the city chosen many years ago from which to launch an attack on Dharamsala. His
operational name was Tashi and he was a graduate from the People’s Liberation Army Foreign Affairs College in Nanjing. Unlike most educational institutions specializing in international
issues, the Foreign Affairs College avoided employing foreign teachers, to try to ensure that its graduates were not recognized when they were sent overseas.

Tashi was a Tibetan, who had spent a year at Johns Hopkins University in the States. He was a member of the Chinese Communist Party and an employee of the Second Department of the General Staff
Department, responsible for training agents in intelligence-gathering abroad. Largely unknown, however, was its added role in carrying out covert military operations on foreign soil.

Tashi was a sleeper agent. His controller used just two Hindi words to alert him to the mission. Tashi exercised for fifteen minutes, showered in cold water, which spluttered and dribbled. He
lathered his scalp, then stepped out of the shower to shave it in front of the mirror, watching the contours of his skull as clumps of hair fell into the basin.

The orange and maroon saffron robe was folded in his bag, and he shook it out, watching the dust fly out around the room. He wrapped it round him, checking the pockets he had sewn on inside. A
driver was waiting when he walked outside his building, and he followed him to a red Maruti jeep. If they talked Tashi had been told to address the driver as Sattar, but they travelled in
silence.

At Una, the road forked into little more than two country tracks, and Sattar had to ask the way. Tashi wound down his window to let in the fresh morning air. As they climbed the mountain, the
countryside became emblazoned with orange and blue spring flowers, sometimes beautiful, sometimes wrecked by the poverty of the villages. After the first bridge across the Dehra River, when the
pine trees began, Tashi slipped the grenades into the pockets of his robe, two on each side.

After Lower Dharamsala, which was still a predominantly Indian town, Sattar took the longer but better route to Upper Dharamsala or MacLeod Ganj, driving round by the Gorkha Army Cantonment at
Forsyth Ganj. As they climbed and wound round the mountain the view became more and more spectacular, stretching right down the Kangra Valley on one side and up to the mountains, heavily covered in
snow, on the other. The Gorkha battalion was fighting in Kashmir and only a skeleton staff looked after the building. But Tashi wanted to see it for himself, to check how quickly professional
troops would arrive after the operation. The sentry boxes were mostly deserted and rusted padlocks hung on many of the gates. The windows of the officers’ mess were even boarded up.

Kashmir was sucking in the Indian troops. There were almost three-quarters of a million men there now and still the war went on, funded and fuelled by Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and a dozen
other Islamic countries wanting to cause trouble. Tashi wondered why India had allowed the Tibetans to open up a second front in China. It just seemed crazy to him. He checked his watch. The
journey had taken just over five hours. In half an hour his job would be over. They left the cantonment area and passed the church of St John’s in the Wilderness, where Lord Elgin, the Earl
of Kincardine, was buried. The road was busy, half-blocked with three-wheelers and monks walking slowly in clusters.

Sattar drew up just before the bus stop. European backpackers, in loose, grubby clothing, some with Tibetan beads hanging off them, unloaded their luggage. The stench of the streets was
dreadful, with open drains and rubbish piled up everywhere. No one seemed to be cleaning it up. Filthy water ran through rivulets in the road and gathered in potholes. A sign said
Welcome to the
Little Lhasa in India
. If this is what Lhasa would be like under Tibetan rule, thank heavens the Chinese have it, thought Tashi.

It was just after 0915. Question Time in the Parliament-in-exile started at 0930. They called it Question Time to satisfy the Western democracies, but it was nothing more than a recitation about
waging war against China. Tashi would wait five minutes and then go in. Sattar manoeuvred through the squalid little town and headed down Nawrojee Road towards Lower Dharamsala.

He stopped just outside the compound which housed the small Parliament building. Tashi got out of the car. The pockets held the weight of the grenades well and he felt for the pistol with his
right hand. He pulled the robe around him against the morning mountain wind, waiting while Sattar turned the car, then he walked briskly, his head lowered to avoid eye contact with other monks.

He walked under the arch of the compound, looking right towards the offices of the Tibetan security, which he didn’t consider a threat – the .38 would see them off if they suspected
him. He kept his pace as he took the two steps leading to the Parliament building, ignoring the office marked Dept of Religious Affairs on the right. Directly in front of him were wooden
pigeonholes, each stuffed full of memos and newsletters.

He went to the left, taking his bearings from the faded sepia pictures of Mahatma Gandhi and the Dalai Lama.

His left hand moved to a grenade and his right opened the double doors inwards. A wooden screen blocked his view and he stopped. There were no voices behind him. No one chasing or suspecting
him. There was no hurry. Hardly a face turned to look at him. A naked light bulb hung from the ceiling over a centre desk where clerks took notes. The room couldn’t have been more than 550
square metres, and there were two rows of seats on each side, each with shared microphones which could deflect the grenade throw. A deputy on the right was speaking, leaning across the microphone,
and the room was a mixture of saffron robes, business suits and women in striped Tibetan aprons. The red light of a cheap Panasonic camera showed that it was recording the proceedings.

Tashi moved to the left, so that he had a clear line to the Speaker. He drew the pistol, taking the safety catch off and used his left hand to clear the robe. He fired at the Speaker’s
head, hitting him twice, and as the first scream of panic reverberated around the chamber he threw a grenade towards the last bench by the window. A second grenade he rolled on the floor straight
down to the Speaker’s chair and the third he tossed to his right, the pins coming out smoothly just like they had when he practised, and he kept the fourth as he backed out of the door.

The grenade in one hand, the pistol in the other, he ran until he was out of the building, then slowed to a fast walk. Three explosions tore through the small room, and Tashi turned, like an
onlooker, watching as the victims stumbled out.

Sattar was waiting, the car door open, engine running, and drove off as soon as his passenger got in. Tashi pulled off the robe and struggled into a shirt and trousers. They edged painfully down
through Lower Dharamsala, passing an ambulance and a police car before they got to the bottom. An army helicopter hovered over the Dalai Lama’s compound. Sattar kept going. Neither man spoke
and eventually they were clear. An hour later, just before Palampur, Sattar pulled up past an Ambassador car parked on the left side of the road. This was where they parted company. Tashi left his
weapons and robe with Sattar. The Ambassador driver gave Tashi an envelope with his new identity.

The second driver was called Sadek. Like Sattar, he had been trained for Kashmir and was part of the Lashkar-e-Jhangar, the people who had tried to assassinate the Prime Minister of India.

Zhongnanhai, Beijing, China

Local time: 1430 Friday 4 May 2007
GMT: 0630 Friday 4 May 2007

‘It was a
complete success,’ said Tang Siju, the intelligence and strategic planning specialist for the Chinese military.

‘We deny involvement and in private negotiations stress that it was purely defensive,’ said President Tao Jian. ‘We do not want it to become a wider issue.’

They walked in silence past two Zhongnanhai guards. The President had insisted they meet in the grounds, to ensure that the conversation remained completely secret. No Chinese President had
survived in office by trusting confidentiality to the walls of his own offices.

Tao stopped walking and stood on the shore of one of the man-made lakes in Zhongnanhai. He brushed away blossom which had fallen on the shoulders of his overcoat. ‘China successfully
reasserted its regional strength with Operation Dragon Strike, and before he died I promised Comrade President Wang Feng that our stability and prosperity would be safe in my hands. We have an
understanding with Japan, and America now knows its limited role in regional affairs. The governments of South-East Asia look to us for advice.’

‘Particularly when it comes to handling the West over accusations about human rights abuses and democratic reform,’ agreed Tang.

The Chinese President turned to him and smiled. ‘Exactly. The status quo in Taiwan and Hong Kong is acceptable to everyone. Only India is the problem and its emerging ambition to compete
with us as a regional power. The sub-continent is an area of unpredictable madness. It worries me.’

‘We may have an opportunity to control India before it gets out of hand,’ said Tang.

‘He who excels in resolving difficulties does so before they arise,’ responded Tao, quoting from Sun Tzu’s essays on
The Art of War
written in 500
BC
. ‘I am interested to hear what my strategic planner has to say about it.’

‘I was telephoned this morning by General Hamid Khan, Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff,’ said Tang. ‘He has offered to open a second front again in Kashmir, should we need
it.’

‘I would like to think we can handle India without Pakistan’s help,’ said Tao.

‘Pakistan is our oldest military ally,’ said Tang. ‘It would be a quicker solution.’

Prime Minister’s Office, South Block, New Delhi, India

Local time: 1200 Friday 4 May 2007
GMT: 0630 Friday 4 May 2007

‘Is the Dalai Lama
safe?’ snapped Hari Dixit.

The Home Minister, Indrajit Bagchi, answered Dixit’s question. ‘He was in his complex and was not a target, sir.’

‘Casualties?’ said Dixit to the table at large

‘Twelve dead,’ said Bagchi. ‘The Speaker of the Parliament was shot with a pistol. The others died of shrapnel wounds. Seventeen wounded. Three are expected to die.’

‘Responsibility?’

Bagchi referred to Mani Naidu, the head of the Intelligence Bureau. Naidu glanced down at the e-mail printout in front of him. ‘Witnesses say it was a single monk, a very cool operator by
the sounds of it, who let off two shots at the Speaker before throwing the grenades. He escaped during the mayhem that followed. We may have picked up one of his team near Palampur after the Bhat
Vihan Bridge was blown—’

‘Blown?’ said Dixit.

‘A bridge across the Dehra River on the main route down from Dharamsala was destroyed by terrorism, exactly one hour and forty minutes after the attack on the Tibetan
Parliament.’

‘And your suspect?’

‘He was alone in a Maruti jeep,’ said Naidu. ‘We found a .38 pistol – we are checking it against the rounds which hit the Speaker – with plastic explosives and a
Pakistani-made hand grenade. He is a known member of the Lashkare-Jhangvi, the most extreme of the Islamic groups operating in Kashmir and Pakistan.’

‘They were responsible for the attempt on your life, Prime Minister,’ said Chandra Reddy, head of the Research and Analysis Wing.

‘I know who they are,’ said the Prime Minister impatiently. ‘What I don’t know is why Pakistan would want to take the Kashmir war into Tibet.’

Briefing

Kashmir

The disputed territory of Kashmir is a legacy of the violent partition between India and Pakistan. It has never known peace. India and Pakistan fought wars over it in 1947, 1965,
1971 and 1999. Since 1949, UN monitors have been posted along a Line of Control (LoC), which has become the border between Indian and Pakistan in the disputed territory. But Kashmiri fighters have
continued to go back and forth across it. In 1989, Pakistan organized a new armed insurgency in Kashmir which is continuing today. After more than fifty years the ghost of Kashmir continues to
threaten peace in South Asia.

Srinagar, the Kashmir Valley, India

Local time: 1530 Friday 4 May 2007
GMT: 1000 Friday 4 May 2007

He was fifty
years old, too old and out of shape to have trekked through the mountains for three days and nights, through the LoC, into the Vale of Kashmir and hiding
out, protected by men young enough to be his sons. He wasn’t a member of any of the groups. He had been for a short while part of Jamaat-e-Islam, but after Afghanistan he had lost his
fire.

He had fought the Russians for five years and had been trained with the Stinger hand-held missiles sent in by the CIA. He was good with the Stinger, understanding how it homed in on heat
emissions from the aircraft – helicopter or fixed-wing, it didn’t matter – and he was better than most at working a way around the decoy flares which easily seduced the missile
away. The Stingers had given the Afghan war a new life, then suddenly it was over. The Soviet forces withdrew and the Stingers were packed up in their boxes. Saeed Khalid retired to a smallholding
just across the border in Pakistan.