“How’s that?” Bolan asked.
Pahlavi shrugged. “Eighty percent of all the people living there are Muslim, like myself and my government, but it is ruled by Hindu leaders. It reminds me of South Africa, the white and black, or Protestant and Catholic in Belfast. Yes?”
Clearly, Darice Pahlavi hadn’t been the only member of her family to get an education. It was Bolan’s turn to shrug. “It happens. If we’re lucky, governments can work it out.”
“But these two only fight and threaten. Never really talking, never listening. For this, they’ve gone to war three times in forty years, but nothing is resolved. Why either country wants more mouths to feed remains a mystery to me.”
“So, that’s the rub,” Bolan said. “And you’re thinking there may be another war.”
“If Pakistan supplies a suitcase bomb to Sikh extremists and they use it against India?” Pahlavi’s smile was bitter as he shook his head. “The next war will destroy life as we know it here, and possibly throughout the world. There are alliances, support agreements. If one nation uses its atomic bombs against the other—”
Pahlavi shook his head again, slump-shouldered. At a glance, it seemed that he had aged ten years while he was talking, in the time it took Bolan to drive five miles.
“Let us assume,” Pahlavi said, “that the retaliations are confined to the subcontinent. Nearly two billion people live here. That’s about one-fourth of the whole planet’s population. Even if the fallout never drifts beyond our borders—an impossibility, all scientists agree—most of those people will be lost, either in bombings of the cities or through radiation poisoning, starvation and disease. Beyond that, if the fallout spreads…”
“I get it,” Bolan said.
“And don’t forget the various alliances, treaties and nonaggression pacts. Who knows what’s written down somewhere and hidden in some diplomatic vault? Will the Chinese move in? The Russians? Either way, it means reaction from the U.S.A. and Britain, probably the UN, too. Picture the world on fire.”
Bolan had been there in his head, a thousand times. He didn’t like the view.
“What was your plan, at first?” he asked.
“Darice would smuggle out proof of Project X, for distribution to the media. Once the conspiracy was public knowledge, those responsible would either have to stop or face the condemnation of a world united to oppose them.”
“But she never made it out,” Bolan observed.
Pahlavi’s eyes were misty now. “I still don’t know what happened, how they found her out. I’ve been in hiding since the day she…disappeared. The government wants me and everyone involved in our group, Ohm, to silence us. Even the politicians who might once have raised their voices against Project X show a united face against a threat to national security.”
“So,” Bolan asked him, “what’s your alternative plan?”
Pahlavi was quiet.
“What’s your alternative to going public in the media? You can’t do that without the evidence, so what’s up next? Why am I here?” Bolan asked.
Pahlavi swallowed hard. “We have no other choice,” he said. “We must destroy the roots of Project X.”
Although the thought had not been far from Pahlavi’s mind since the loss of his sister, it still intimidated him to speak the words aloud.
“All right,” Bolan said. “Spell it out. What have you got in mind?”
“Perhaps to penetrate the laboratory somehow,” Pahlavi replied. “Once inside, there should be some way to destroy the weapon and its plans.”
“Perhaps? Somehow? Some way?” Bolan glanced over at him, then back toward the road. “That’s not a plan. It’s wishful thinking.”
Embarrassed by the truth of the American’s words, Pahlavi said, “I grant you that I do not have full knowledge of the laboratory, how to get inside, or what to do there. I was counting on Darice to help us. She…we talked about the lab, of course. Security precautions, all the measures they employ to keep strangers out. I know where the lab is located, the best way to approach it, but I’m not a soldier. Until recently, I never thought that I would have to be.”
“Sometimes it sneaks up on you,” Bolan said. “But once you come to the decision, there’s no turning back.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
“I know that it may mean my death,” Pahlavi said.
“But not just yours. How has the rest of Ohm been taking this?”
“You saw Adi and Sanjiv die for us. The others feel the same.”
Bolan frowned. “Can you be sure of that?” he asked.
Pahlavi felt his hackles rising. “Ask me what you mean to say.”
“It’s SOP—standard operating procedure—for a government to infiltrate opposing groups whenever possible, keep track of what they’re planning.” Bolan spared another quick glance from the two-lane highway. “It may be an absolute coincidence that a patrol with thirty-odd soldiers came along just at the time we were supposed to meet, but then again, maybe it wasn’t.”
“You believe there is a traitor in the group?” Pahlavi asked.
“I don’t believe or disbelieve,” Bolan replied. “I’m saying it’s a possibility you should consider, if it hasn’t crossed your mind already.”
“You’re wrong,” Pahlavi answered stubbornly. “Darice and I joined Ohm. They did not come to us with flattery, pretending to believe as we did. As I do.”
“All the more reason to consider who your friends are,” Bolan said. “The group has been around a while. Presumably it’s known to the security police, maybe G-2.”
“I do not understand.”
“Army Intelligence,” Bolan explained. “I don’t know what you call it here. I guarantee your government has one or more departments dedicated to collecting information on its opposition, doing everything it can to bring them down.”
“Of course.” Pahlavi thought about it for a moment, suddenly uneasy. “But if what you say is true, then we are doomed.”
“Not necessarily,” Bolan replied. “First thing, remember that I’m only saying if. What if there was a mole inside. Then he or she may not know where we’d go, in case the setup fell apart. Be careful who you trust, is all I’m saying.”
“But you ask me to trust you,” Pahlavi said in challenge.
“The difference is that you called me, and I’m from the outside. You’ve also seen me stand against your enemies. A double agent wouldn’t do that. Couldn’t risk it.”
To that logic, there was no response. Pahlavi knew that the American was correct. No traitor working inside Ohm would kill soldiers to keep his cover story solid. His superiors surely would punish such an act with death, perhaps the execution of the man’s whole family.
Or woman’s, Pahlavi thought, riven with suspicion. His mind had moved along those lines before, of course, but each time he’d found some excuse to tell himself it was impossible. No traitors could exist within the group he’d come to trust with everything—his life, his sister and his sanity.
Pahlavi would have cursed Cooper for raising all those ugly doubts again, but the American was simply speaking honestly, forcing Pahlavi to confront a possibility that he had been remiss in overlooking previously.
“Now, I’ll ask again,” Bolan said. “What’s our destination?”
“Still