Authors: R. SREERAM
Yet, what could
she
do, she wondered aloud? Where did the investigative reporter’s brief end? Was it enough to show the symptoms and allow the system to diagnose, or was it her professional duty to identify every detail of the tumours that were ravaging the system? For all the talk of the might of the pen – or in her case, the mike – she felt powerless, impotent.
She briefly considered calling up the major-general and asking him for his advice, but then rejected the idea. Even Major-General Qureshi was not above suspicion, what with the documents with his own signature on them – though he claimed they were forged – or the pressure of keeping his command amidst the sudden loss of his wife . . . already, there were murmurs within the corridors of the MoD that the he would be eased out soon. Loss of faculty. Her informants within the MoD had snickered with malicious pleasure as they passed her the gossip.
She was so caught up in her own thoughts that her neighbour nudged her, indicating that her phone had been trilling continuously. An unfamiliar number. Was it a fresh lead? She hoped so.
‘Richa Naik?’ asked the caller urgently.
‘Yes, who is this?’
‘You don’t have time. Leave your office right now. They are coming to arrest you – the police. Don’t take the elevators – on second thought, take the service elevator. Come straight down to the loading docks. I’ll be waiting for you.’
‘Who – who are you?’ Richa was sure she had misheard.
‘We don’t have time for this,’ said the male voice even more urgently. ‘They will be at your reception desk in no time. Trust me – get out right now!’
Bloody prank call, as if I did not have enough on my plate already!
Richa considered telling the caller to fuck off, but a commotion near the entrance drew her attention. On the other side of the glass doors, she saw men in khaki gesturing angrily to the security guards; one of her colleagues was rushing towards her, waving her hands and shouting something that she couldn’t hear clearly over the rest of the din.
‘Hello? Hello?’ With each syllable, the caller’s voice rose.
Richa ducked and grabbed her handbag off the table. She pulled the USB memory sticks from their drives and flung them inside. Peeking over the walls of the cubicle farm from time to time, she made her way through the corridor and towards the back of the office where the emergency exits and the service elevators were placed. She brought the phone back to her ear as she saw the cops finally push the door open and invade the inner office.
‘I’m coming,’ she hissed. ‘But who the hell
are
you?’
The line was silent for a moment, at which she thought he had already hung up. But then he answered. ‘My name is Raghav Menon. Major-General Qureshi sent me.’
16th September, 2012. New Delhi.
‘So tell me why this Gyandeep Sharma was so pissed off at me,’ I said as we locked the door to Cr2-E.W.
‘I never said he was pissed at you,’ said Mitra, distracted for a moment as he read a message that he had just received. ‘Come on, we don’t have much time.’
But I refused to be put off. ‘Tell me,’ I insisted, keeping pace with him. ‘Why would he do what he did? What was I to him?’
‘You were a distraction at a time when the government needed distractions,’ Mitra said. ‘Powerhouse – of which Gyandeep is a top leader – wanted a scapegoat to drive attention away from the scams that were breaking out at the time. The Commonwealth Games and the 2G scandals were the most prominent ones, but there were other smaller, less sensational – but equally reprehensible – scams that were threatening to break out. The ruling alliance itself was in disarray, because it was the second term and everyone wanted bigger shares of the pie.
‘Your book came out at a convenient time. It galvanized the press, gave them something else to write about. The cases that were filed against you were never personal – they were all calculated to make front page headlines, relegating everything else to an also-covered. Plus, as you yourself said a few minutes ago, you helped matters by making an enemy of everyone mentioned in your book.
‘The political class, which is divided on everything else except their own salaries, ganged up against a common enemy – you. Members competed with one another to disown you, to stamp you an enemy of the nation. For the fourth estate and the intelligentsia, you were excellent fodder for countless debates and discussions. Was it right of you to use the tone you did? Did you actually support a coup? Would you do it in real life? Did your writing qualify as sedition? Ad nauseum, ad infinitum, they had valuable programming as long as you were newsworthy.
‘And what about your readers? The book was banned – from the legal outlets. So the black market flourished with pirated copies of your book. You lost your royalties; no publisher would touch you ever again. But those who wanted to read your book found enough copies on the streets to keep them satisfied – so the big deal was probably just a publicity stunt for them. The government closed its eyes and said, “We’ve banned the book – so it’s not available”, and left it at that – and every time they said that, the furore kicked up again.’
By the time he reached this point of his narration, I was slightly winded – unlike Mitra, who had barely broken a sweat. It seemed to me, as we followed the long, curving corridor, that we might make shorter time by taking one of the corridors which led towards the centre of the complex, but before I could make the suggestion, Mitra continued. ‘It was Gyandeep who orchestrated the entire campaign against your book. His firm, Infinity, paid off the outlets that reviewed your book and had them condemn you; his team coached the commentators and the politicians about the line to take. Your future, to them, meant nothing in the long-term – you were just the right kind of issue – big enough to get everyone’s attention, yet transient enough that you couldn’t hurt them back even if you wanted to.’
With that, he started to jog. I followed him in silence, wondering how much of the incredible conspiracy he had just told me was actually true. It was fantastic to think that I had been a pawn in Gyandeep’s scheme without ever knowing of his existence – or he, I suppose, of mine before I published my book. At the same time, like a jigsaw puzzle when the last few pieces finally fall into place, a lot of questions seemed to be answered.
I had always wondered why the hullabaloo had started more than a month after my book had been launched – but, caught up in the miasma that followed, it had always been an idle thought, just out of reach of my consciousness. The book had been received with murmurs of approval in the first few weeks – not enough to make me an instant bestseller, but certainly not consigning me to the list of failures as well. Then one fine day, out of nowhere, the law minister had taken centre-stage and condemned my book, threatening to book a charge of sedition against me.
Now, in the light of Mitra’s explanation, it made sense. What had, at the time, seemed like an inspired choice of timing, now looked as if I had timed myself into a trap.
Could things have turned out differently if I had delayed my book? I don’t know. A week, a month, a year . . . anything could have made a difference – or then again, maybe the cosmos would still have conspired to have me realize that destiny of mine.
I shook myself out of such thoughts. It’s never a good idea to lose yourself in the ifs-and-buts.
And just as I finally found my rhythm, just as my body began to enjoy the jog, we arrived.
16th September, 2012. Washington D.C.
The chief-of-staff was the one person who, common sense dictated, should be entrusted with the task of waking up the president of the United States in the middle of the night with bad news.
What was happening in India, the chief-of-staff was told over the phone, qualified for that distinction.
The drive from his Georgetown residence to the White
House took Winston Haywood just a few minutes, even factoring in the time he had taken to rouse his own driver, and he was already running up the steps to the building before the car had pulled to a complete stop. He was waved through most of the security checks until he reached the president’s private quarters. He rocked impatiently on the balls of his feet as the wand was waved, and then virtually ran to the door that separated the private lives of the first family from the public life that they had been elected into.
President Timothy Jackson was already waiting for him in the study, sipping a cup of strong coffee. He welcomed Winston warmly, almost cheerfully, relishing a diplomatic challenge that promised a change from economics, nuke-toting Ayatollahs and trade-mongering premiers. He poured his chief-of-staff and long-time friend a cup of coffee as well.
‘I’ve asked for a SitRep on India,’ said the president. ‘Right after you called to tell me you were on the way over. We should be getting that any moment now.’
Winston nodded. No sooner had the aide-de-camp to the Indian president hung up than he had gotten on the phone with the India desk at Langley to find out if there were any late-breaking developments in the subcontinent. Nothing concrete, he had been told at the time, but there were disturbing rumours that a section of the Army was revolting over the murder of a major-general. The POTUS had been briefed to the same extent on their call when he had been en route.
A few minutes later, the phone rang. President Jackson raised a quizzical eyebrow at his chief-of-staff before he picked up the receiver. ‘Route it here,’ he said when the caller had finished.
‘A video call?’ guessed Winston.
‘Yes.’ Settling himself comfortably into his favourite chair, President Jackson pressed the controls on the remote.
More lights came on in front of him while the lights behind him dimmed, even as the 42-inch television screen mounted into the wall in front of them switched on. A few seconds later, he saw the president of India sitting behind a desk, smiling warmly.
‘Good morning,’ hailed President Jackson as Winston receded to a corner invisible to the camera.
‘Good morning to you too,’ said President Gopi Kishan. ‘I apologize for waking you up so early, but I thought it was better you hear it from me than from . . . anyone else.’
‘That’s okay, President Yadav. And you have our condolences for the attack in Ghaziabad,’ said the US President. Winston gave a thumbs-up – it was a subtle signal that day or night, the US was keeping close tabs on India.
GK smiled patronizingly. ‘Condolences are not needed, Tim. It seems your people may have made a few assumptions about what’s happening in Ghaziabad that’s not exactly . . . accurate. There has been no attack there, but we are having a situation there that will be rectified within the hour.’
‘I am certainly glad to hear that.’ Out of the corner of his eyes, the American President saw Winston wince and pull out his notepad. The president’s embarrassment would be avenged – if not in India, at least by the head of the night detail stateside who had passed on such erroneous information to the White House. ‘Innocent lives must always be valued and protected.’
‘Of course, of course!’ said GK solicitously. ‘That is why I know you will appreciate this step I am taking today.’
‘Splendid! Are you talking about the joint Indo-American Afghan task force that I proposed the last time we spoke?’
The question threw GK off his rhythm for just a beat, but he immediately smiled his most charming smile. ‘No, that will take a little more time, I am afraid. What I am about to tell you, I have not even announced to the rest of the country. You see, in the light of the breakdown in governance, law and order, I have decided to declare a state of Emergency here.’
The news stunned both the listeners in the White House. For a few seconds, neither of them could digest the idea, let alone speak. Tin-pot dictatorships could declare coups or states of emergencies, but to have one of the world’s largest democracies turn into a dictatorship was the kind of scenario that the CIA had always pooh-poohed.
‘You must be joking,’ said the POTUS, finally finding his voice.
‘Mr Jackson, would I wake you up at four in the morning if I weren’t serious? I have no choice, really. We require an Emergency here right now, before things get worse.’
Taking the cue from Winston, who was frantically signalling from his corner, President Jackson asked, ‘What about Mrs Pandit? Is she with you on this? And where is Kuldip Razdan? What’s happened to him? This is a mistake, GK . . .’
His counterpart across the seas smiled mirthlessly, ignoring the other’s breach of protocol. ‘Mrs Pandit is on her way out of the country right now. And as for the PM . . . actually, former PM . . . well, if you are not part of the solution . . .’
The statement hung in the air between them as the video faded to black.
8
16th September, 2012. New Delhi.
We were ushered into the video-conference room just in time to catch a momentary glimpse of the American president before the screen went blank. Both Nelson Katara and GK turned towards us, the latter with the distinct air of someone who’s just pulled off a dare and lived to tell the tale. ‘That takes care of them,’ he said, his voice mingling with Nelson’s, who had spoken at the same time. ‘That was Jackson in Washington. We’ve had to talk to him ahead of schedule.’
I was wondering how they had gotten here ahead of us when I caught sight of a map of the Rashtrapati Bhavan on the wall. Jagannath and I had covered a semi-circle on the outer edge of the building, while Nelson and the President had just had to saunter across a corridor into this room. I glanced at Jagannath, a little intimidated that they had choreographed my involvement so minutely.
‘How did he take it?’ Jagannath asked. GK coughed, though it sounded vaguely like a snort to me. Nelson gave a grim smile.
‘Not sure. He was surprised, definitely, but I doubt he’s understood what exactly is happening. We’ve told him it’s an Emergency, and if his history is any good, he’ll assume that it’s more of a political coup than a military one.’
‘Isn’t it?’ I asked.
‘Of course,’ said Nelson. ‘But we are going to have to flex some muscle to keep the fallout in check. In ’74, her party – and most of the state governments – supported Mrs Gandhi. Today, it’s a different ball-game altogether. You know the methods we’ve chosen to get here, Mr Selvam – so I’m sure you also realize the risks inherent in those means.’
It was the same question that had been lodged at the back of my mind ever since Raghav had told me about the blackmail that was supposed to have compromised anybody who could be an obstacle to this operation. Blackmail is always a tricky proposition. You never know when or how the blackmailed is going to react. The threat of exposure is often the most paramount incentive to put up and shut up, but what if all the victims joined hands and refused to back down?
It was not improbable that the blackmailed would choose to make a stand, claim that every single piece of evidence was fabricated, confuse the public and therefore divide any support for the coup – while, at the same time, on the strength of their claims of innocence and the sycophancy that had been so carefully cultivated over decades, manage to consolidate opposition to the coup. What would happen then?
Nelson’s explanation answered this. The executive arm would have to be called in as a show of strength to intimidate any dissidence within the ranks of those who faced political extinction. The police, the paramilitary wings like the Reserve Corps and Border Forces . . . and the Army. Unlike the tanks that had marched
towards
Yeltsin’s Kremlin, the ones here would rally
around
the president and the Rashtrapati Bhavan. They would protect the coup against . . . what? A bunch of disgruntled politicians, or a mass uprising against the subversion of the Indian democracy?
Jagannath cleared his throat and drew our attention. ‘You need to address the crowd in Ghaziabad,’ he told GK.
GK nodded, but the enthusiasm had lessened a little. I guess it is one thing to drop a bombshell on an unsuspecting American president, but a much scarier prospect to face a bunch of angry contemporaries. It occurred to me that perhaps GK had been, or at least could be compromised. It was even possible that some of his own party comrades were privy to information that could be used to control him. Glancing at Nelson and Jagannath, and remembering the way in which Nelson had palmed me off on the latter while he continued his discussion with GK, it was not a stretch for me to believe that some pressure must have been applied.
I found myself taking a second look at GK’s enthusiasm. Granted, the lure of the power he had run after and been denied for so long must have been a temptation impossible to resist. But even then, at least at some point in the last hour or so that we had been here, he must have had second thoughts. The responsibility was enormous, and the pitfalls, while misted over in the fog of desire and ego, not completely obscured. The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that Nelson had tipped the scales somehow. Some hidden scandal that would continue to remain hidden . . .
‘Sir?’ I said urgently before I could stop myself. The three of them turned towards me. I ignored Nelson’s questioning glance at Jagannath as I took a step towards GK.
‘You can still call it off. What these guys are suggesting – controlling the fallout with the Army and the police – that’s not going to work. A single riot is all it will take to tear this country apart – and believe me, that riot will happen against your Emergency.’
‘We’ve had riots before,’ Nelson interrupted dismissively.
‘Those were communal riots,’ I cut him off. ‘One section against another. Largely localized. What we are looking at here is a possible civil war, like what’s happening in Africa or the Middle East.’
‘You’re an alarmist,’ Nelson said. ‘What we are doing today is avoiding that civil war you are talking about. Or, if you want me to look at it your way, we’re already living in the middle of one. You’ve got Maoists who’ve cut a swath across the eastern belt. You’ve got terrorists setting the law in Kashmir. You’ve got terror camps in Kerala, training youngsters to infiltrate and annihilate. If those can’t rip us apart, nothing else will.’
Jagannath laid a restraining arm on my shoulder. I tried to shrug it off, only to realize that his grip was firmer than I’d sensed. As I raised my hand to pull his off, he leaned in closer and said, ‘Relax, Selvam. We don’t want bloodshed any more than you do. We know what we are doing.’ His next words were addressed to GK. ‘That is why we need you to talk to everyone at the conference in Ghaziabad. The first ingredient for good governance is always a responsible opposition.’
16th September, 2012. New Delhi.
The air outside the gray building was absolutely still, hanging like a stifling curtain, heavy and humid. Even the birds stayed in the shadows, finding it too difficult to flap their wings and gain ascendancy in the search for food, preferring to save their energy for a less resistive atmosphere.
The air inside was electric, abuzz with barely contained excitement. The ten operatives manning the phones were restless, their attention drawn every few seconds from the console in front of them to the LED-lit countdown timer in the middle of the room. Their room was in full-lockdown mode and would remain so until the next phase of the operation was done. Except for an occasional beep from one of the electronic devices scattered around the room, it was so silent one could have heard sweat drop to the floor.
Abruptly, a buzzer sounded – and the countdown started.
All ten operatives swung into action at once, tapping their keyboards and calling out whispered commands into their headsets. In the blink of an eye, the instructions were transmitted to their recipients through SMS, email, pre-recorded phone calls, starting an avalanche of information whose sole objective was very simple.
Spread the news of the Emergency in thirty minutes across the whole country.
The operative who was in charge of activating all the emergency response teams triggered a burst of SMSes that would reach all the top officers in a hundred and twenty locations, covering most of the major cities and towns. The second wave would cover the remaining officers, and a third and final wave of messages would be sent out once again to the alternative numbers of all the officers.
The SMSes were routed through the National Disaster Management System, a multi-crore initiative that the government had rolled out with a lot of fanfare in 2004, right after the tsunami – and which had been, until recently, little more than a database of outdated contacts and escalation matrices. In the past few months, however, INSAF had silently patched up the system, building in a mobile communications framework that bypassed the regulator’s restrictions – particularly when it came to bulk SMSes – and updated the personnel database.
The system took less than a minute to process and dispatch the entire lot of messages. Built into the SMS was a request to the handset to acknowledge receipt. Within three minutes of the timer starting to count down, the screen in front of the operator was showing the statistics:
120 sent, 87 received, 33 switched off/outside service range.
For the next twenty-seven minutes, the system would continue to ping for the 33 numbers it could not reach, even as the next round of messages were sent out.
The message was identical in every case:
Article 356 imposed. Assemble your team. Await orders from command. Pres on DD at 3 p.m. to announce officially.
Even as the emergency response teams were being activated, another operative started a program that hacked into all the ministerial email accounts in the country, including the prime minister’s and chief ministers’. The process was actually simpler than it sounded, since these passwords were rarely changed from the time they were set, and a bit of social engineering of the right person at the office yielded results where computer engineering had failed. From these accounts, emails were sent out to all the major media houses, although no particular recipient ever received more than one email from a source and certainly not more than two in total.
The email itself had been generated to look like an official press release from the Prime Minister’s Office, forwarded straightaway from the concerned ministry to their contact in the news industry, including typical errors of bureaucratic oversight that ironically enhanced the authenticity of those emails. Like the SMSes, the mails were brief and to the point –
Article 356 (President’s Rule) imposed, State of Emergency declared, President to address the country on national television at exactly 3 p.m.
All the emails carried the phone numbers for the PMO.
‘Time for some social marketing!’ mumbled the third operative as he typed into his console. His program instantly logged on to accounts on social networks like Twitter and Facebook, simultaneously running at least twenty to twenty-five different identities. Each identity had been given a particular persona and had been created weeks in advance, the intervening time put to use by joining as many groups and forums as possible, all in preparation for a slew of updates within the next half hour.
Given the complexity of connecting to different websites, each with its own authentication system and safeguards, his work took longer than the others. This did not worry him, for his own milestones had been set accordingly. His sole concern was the online space, and every time he glanced at the timer, it reassured him that he was just marginally ahead of his schedule.
Within minutes, he had posted messages that would be seen by thousands of people over the next few minutes. The aim was not to tap the entire online crowd, but just enough to create a critical mass of attention for the topic. As the number of searches and hash-tags increased, the visibility for the topic would increase and in turn drive even more searches and tagged posts. A viral campaign with a purpose.
Complementing him on this was the fourth operative, who was tasked with submitting anonymous news reports to various outlets. Despite the lack of credentials, it was a certainty that most of the articles would get published – at least, by the more sensational, and by extension, less discerning, publishers. During her first pilot run when she had circulated stories about a Cabinet reshuffle, the operative had seen irony defined. It was the more sensational and less accurate outlets that tended to have the maximum visitors.
Her output was more varied and more creative than the others’, and she was proud of the fact that she had written them herself. The principal submissions were different themes and rumours on the imposition of Emergency, ranging in cause from a tiff with the ruling party to a conspiracy by a foreign hand planning a series of devastating attacks; where all submissions converged on was the imminent imposition of Emergency and a possible explanation by the president himself on Doordarshan.
Other stories, no less sensational, ranged from the prime minister’s abrupt disappearance – hinting at everything from going underground to a plane crash in the Himalayas – to Mrs Pandit’s sudden medical trip to Japan, allegedly to avoid an arrest on charges of corruption; even the leader of the Opposition Mr Patel’s restraint in taking the government to task on the recent scandals was attributed to sinister back-office dealings.
Over the course of the next few days, if events occurred the way they had been planned, the first story would recede into the background while the other stories would slowly gain prominence, aided by appropriate noises from the new government’s machinery. Other reporters – genuine reporters – forever on the lookout for the next-big-story, would follow up on the theories and facts mentioned, frame their own discoveries and continue the discrediting of the biggest threats to the coup.
The task for the fifth operative was to activate the public-address vehicles – trucks and auto-rickshaws fitted with loudspeakers – across the country. The actual people executing this on the ground had already been retained weeks in advance, had been guaranteed amounts that ensured their dropping every other assignment at a moment’s notice, and had no idea what they had been hired for. Given the obvious security concerns over giving them the script in advance, INSAF had put in place a different – and much more efficient – system.
The first step was an SMS that alerted all the PAVs’ crew chiefs that they were required to dial a toll-free number immediately. As with the PAVs, hundreds of lines had been hired anonymously and through untraceable payments. A cloud of powerful computers controlled the incoming lines, noting the incoming numbers and comparing that with a pre-approved list; once a match was made, a recording would play continuously. The PAVs’ crews could either save the recording and then play it back on a loop, or keep the line open and play it over the speakers. It was the trickiest phase of the operation, when the PAVs realized that it was not a new nation-wide product launch that they had been signed up for but a startling pronouncement about the government. INSAF was prepared for the leakage that would happen due to some of the PAVs getting cold feet, but it was still the fastest way to get the message out to the people who were neither online nor glued to their television sets.