James Huston - Fallout

Luke looked around the room and saw the instructors, and Brian, and felt at home. He glanced back at Morrissey, whom he hadn’t even noticed before. “What brings you here?”

“You,” Morrissey said, looking at Helen and Lane. “I brought a nice, wet blanket.” Morrissey walked to the front of the ready room; the instructors watched him. “Congratulations on your flight in India, by the way. Nice job.” Morrissey looked at the rest of the room, then turned to Luke. “The submarine. You thought it was probably a Kilo. Right?”

Luke rolled his eyes. “I told you, I told him,” he said, looking to the back of the room at Lane, “I wasn’t sure. I’m still not.”

“It was our suspicion, and yours, I believe, that Pakistan had been deceiving us all along and was in fact behind the entire operation. They used the rogue Air Force officer excuse, the Islamic radical excuse, to hide. It allows them to achieve their objectives and claim no involvement. It makes our response very tricky, because if we come down hard on them, it looks unfair. Reactionary. Exactly what they would like. But we couldn’t be sure. It could have been anybody’s submarine.”

“We’ve been through all that,” Luke said, glancing in annoyance at Helen Li, who was still sitting in the back of the room.

Morrissey started walking back and forth. “But Pakistan doesn’t have any Kilo-class submarines. Who does? Iran, of course. So we all chased the rabbit that led to Iran. Maybe they picked Khan up off the coast.”

“Exactly,” Luke said. “That’s what India implied. Or at least one guy—”

Morrissey nodded knowingly. “Who exactly?”

Luke was getting an awkward, cold feeling. “Intelligence guy. Gave us the final stuff on when the strike was going to happen. He said they’d been following Khan for years. It was kind of odd. Everybody else left when he was there.” Luke recalled the conversation. “He said he’d told you guys,” Luke said, “but you wouldn’t listen to him. He said the United States always assumed that anything India said about Pakistan was full of lies because it’s in India’s interest to upset our relationship with Pakistan. He said we would never believe what he said. Looks like he was right.”

“When did you see him?” Morrissey asked icily.

“The night of the attack.”

Morrissey nodded. “Good-looking guy. Sophisticated, British accent—more than usual.”

Luke was startled. “How did you know?”

“Sunil, right?”

“How do you know all that?”

Morrissey said nothing.

Lane spoke. “Iran has only two Kilo-class submarines. Both were in port during the attack on San Onofre. The only Kilo not in port was an Indian Kilo.”

Luke looked at Brian and the others, who all looked as confused as he felt. “What are you saying?”

“This photograph is of an Indian Kilo.”

Luke frowned. “Indian?”

Morrissey nodded.

Brian couldn’t stand it anymore. “Why in the hell would an Indian submarine pick him up?”

“The very question I’ve been wrestling with for the last three days. Then I read the Naval Intelligence analysis,” Morrissey replied. “It finally occurred to me, and I checked with several sources—sensitive and highly placed sources we can check with only once. An Indian Kilo was deployed during that time. We thought it was operating off the coast of India. That’s what India told us when we inquired. But our sources confirm that it was somewhere far away and was transiting faster than it had ever transited before. No one knew what it was doing, at least no one I could find.”

“What are you saying? What the hell are you saying?” Brian demanded.

“It is my belief that Khan was assisted by India.”

“What? India? Why?”

“Intense and irreparable damage to Pakistan. There are some new people working in Indian intelligence who aren’t just sitting back and taking Pakistani aggression anymore. They’re becoming much more active, bolder. This is the boldest and most aggressive move I’ve ever seen, if I’m right.”

“They were helping Khan attack us?” Luke asked, his head spinning.

“Khan was what we thought. Part of some splinter group.” Morrissey shifted his weight, obviously debating with himself whether he was saying too much. “We think this entire thing started when the Chief Executive of Pakistan addressed the UN General Assembly in New York. He told them Pakistan was prepared to sign a no-war pact with India, that they were ready for mutual reduction of forces, ready to agree to a nuclear-free South Asia, and ready to talk to India anytime, anywhere, at any level. Khan and his people saw that they were doomed unless they acted quickly, and dramatically, not only against India but to get rid of a Pakistani government that would utter such heresy.

“Khan thought he had an inside guy. A guy I understand who went by the false name of Shirish. He thought he was using Indian intelligence to kill the current Pakistani regime. But Shirish was one of Sunil’s agents, an Islamic Indian, I’m told. He convinced Khan they could help him, even to attack the Indian nuclear plant. He promised to alert Khan if anyone was suspicious of an attack and warn him of preparations. If there were no suspicions, Khan would succeed in his attack and certainly start a war between Pakistan and India. There were already hundreds of men strategically placed by Khan’s group in Kashmir—dressed as both Indian and Pakistani belligerents—to fight in both directions so each side could claim the other started it. They know that the next time there’s fighting over Kashmir, it won’t stop.” He studied their shocked faces. “President Clinton didn’t call Kashmir the most dangerous place on the planet for nothing.”

“And it was all a trap?”

“Sunil lured Khan into a very deep trap. He used him to disgrace Pakistan and—you’ve seen what the President of India is saying—avoided the very war that was inevitable if Khan succeeded. Pakistan has lost its credibility for fifty years. He made sure you were waiting for Khan when he came. He took out perhaps the greatest threat to peace in the region. They were prepared to defend their nuclear plant on their own, but when Vlad offered to help—passed on to India by the Russian intelligence people—Sunil must have laughed out loud. Perfect symmetry. Use an American and a Russian to stop the Pakistani. He didn’t even have to risk an Indian pilot.”

Luke sat down and put his head back. The others in the room simply stared at Morrissey, who continued, “But there’s one thing I need to know.”

Luke didn’t know what to say. His mind was spinning. “What?”

“Did this Vladimir Petkov try to do you harm in India? Did he try to prevent you from stopping Khan?’

Luke shook his head. “No. He kept me from getting killed. Why?”

“We had developed information that he was controlled by the Russian Mafia. And they were tied in with Khan somehow. It’s probably lucky for him that he died over there. If he hadn’t, I’ve got a feeling he’d be on somebody’s shit list.”

Luke continued shaking his head. “I can’t believe it.”

Morrissey put his hands in his pockets. “So here’s the wet-blanket part. Nobody else would believe it either. That’s why we can’t go public with it. If we did, we’d look completely foolish. You’d look like a dupe, and nobody would buy it. You don’t even buy it,” he said, looking around the room. “India is the big winner. They get to say Pakistan is full of nuts who attacked the United States and then India. They’ll say that what happened to the U.S. is terrible, and it almost happened to them, but fortunately, thanks to their skilled Air Force, they were able to defeat the attack by the Pakistani Air Force on their nuclear power plant. They’ll rub Pakistan’s nose in this for decades. And Pakistan had nothing to do with it.