The Honeybee Conspiracy

Part 6

Chapter 4

The fax was addressed to Deputy Commissioner, Somnath Bandopadhya of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and was lying on his desk when the senior officer with a cup of hot milk in hand swaggered into his office. He was overweight at hundred kgs with a bald head but he had a razor-sharp mind with several years spent in the field as an intelligence officer.

The fax had come from RAW. Somnath sat on his chair, read the fax and went cold. He slumped in his chair, closed his eyes he was heading for a severe migraine headache again. The fax had warned of a substantial quantity of explosives likely to land on Indian soil somewhere on the Southern coast. Somnath summoned his team into his office. They were all going to spend weeks of sleepless nights. Information was passed on to all DGP's in South India with the dire warning that the carriers of the explosives were to be brought in alive and not dead.

Ten days later before Anwar was to leave for Iran ahead of the Prime Minister's delegation, he was on his routine jog followed by his chai and the newspaper. As Anwar opened the paper, the headlines read,' 110 Dead in Bomb Blast at Howrah Station in Calcutta. Terrorist hand suspected.'

Somnath was summoned by his superiors and a brainstorming session was in progress. What had gone wrong. No one had any idea where the explosives landed and how they got to Calcutta. This was the first terrorist attack after the Surender Yogi government took office. The meeting went on for hours and by nightfall, Somnath was back in his office tired as hell. He had briefed his superiors on all the events and actions that had taken place including surveillance of known suspects. Obviously whoever had planned and executed this carnage was unknown to the IB or RAW.