Free Third World War by Unknown Page B

beautiful intellectual into a destructive hedonist, addicted to drugs and high-rolling parties. Mehta, on the other hand, was portrayed as a man of principle and a solitary figure, working alone late into the night in his South Block office to secure India against her enemies.
    Mehta had loathed the press coverage against Geeta, but was grateful that the great nation he led could have open debate, even on his private life. He had understood that complexities and contradictions were what created literature, music, art, science and great civilizations. Yet never did he stop yearning for simplicity.
    At the height of the scandal, Mehta had been persuaded to run for Parliament. His decisiveness and pragmatism soon led him to high office - particularly when American reliability was again questioned after the start of the 2001 War against Terror.
    Single-mindedly, Mehta had pushed forward India's plans for a streamlined and independent defence system. Then he had announced in Parliament that India would not - under any circumstances - make a first nuclear strike against any nation, not even if it detected a launch from a hostile power, because such detections could be in error. In a nutshell, India would be prepared to sacrifice at least one city before it retaliated.
    Almost unprecedented for any Indian leader, Mehta reinforced India's position in an essay in the prestigious Washington-based Foreign Affairs magazine. 'Should the tragedy of a nuclear attack on India or Indian interests occur anywhere in the world,' he had written, 'then my government would obliterate the nation responsible, whether the attack came from the government itself or from rogue elements being nurtured by that government. On this there will never be any negotiation. By stating this policy now unequivocally and with the widest distribution possible, we hope to avoid any confusion. No one will be able to claim misunderstanding.'
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    Beijing, China*
    The icy cold gave way to winter drizzle, and low cloud blended with pollution formed a dome over the Chinese capital Beijing. Air Koryo flights to Pyongyang were never full, but in the aftermath of the missile strike on Japan, the passenger list had been even further depleted. A business delegation from Australia, hoping to finalize long-term mining contracts, had shied away. A European Union Chamber of Commerce visit had been postponed indefinitely. A tour group run by a small travel agency in Britain had pulled the trip at the eleventh hour, leaving its clients kicking their heels in Beijing. Several were irritated journalists travelling under cover in bogus professions.
    Only a handful of passengers were taken out by bus to the ageing TU-154 parked at a distant end of the airport tarmac. They included the Hungarian and British ambassadors returning from a few days' break in China; a Swedish couple, young aid workers whose organization had been helping famine victims now for almost twenty years; six North Korean diplomats flying back for consultations after the 'Yokata incident'; a low-ranking delegation of Chinese officials, ostensibly from the Foreign Ministry, but both key intelligence officials reporting to different units; two Russian diplomats, assigned to Russia's overseas intelligence service, the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki (SVR), and the Pakistani military attache, who also reported to his country's Joint Counter Intelligence Bureau (JCIB), responsible for running intellligence officers as diplomats through embassies.
    Iran also sent a delegation, which included a neatly dressed diplomat whose passport described him as Mashhoud Najari, first secretary at the embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Beijing. Najari was, in fact, Ahmed Memed. One of the men with him was Memed's bodyguard from the Philippines, Hassan Muda. The other was an Iranian special forces captain, attached to the embassy and employed by Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security known by its Farsi acronym as