Omer Rafique October 21, 2002

Tags: Responsibility , Friendship , Strength , Humor , Magic , Hope , Children , Immigrants , Women

The multi-part saga of a potential doomsday scenario

inn&start=0&end=9&page=1&chapter=1">The King’s Gambit: Chapter 2(The Soldier)
The King’s Gambit: Chapter 3 (The Prostitute)
The King’s Gambit: Chapter 4 (The Aviator)


East Palo Alto, California, 3:00 p.m.:

Silicon Valley’s odd weather patterns never receive much publicity. There are usually far too many other things to talk about in this new center of the Universe. The weather is nearly perfect ten out of the twelve months of the year. It rains everyday in February and does not rain for the rest of the year. It is burning hot in the month of July and surprisingly mild for the rest of the year.

It was neither February nor July. And once again, today, no was talking about the weather.

The TV crews and journalists were standing, one on top of the other, at the edge of the tarmac. Cameramen, jousting with each other to get into the front row. Sound engineers, in the rear rows, extending long metallic poles with cloth covered microphones attached at their ends, over the heads of the cameramen. The media mob’s only sign of civility was its deliberate attempt to stay one foot away from the three-foot high thick red velvet-covered rope that extended out in front of them. It was tied at five-yard partitions into small golden colored metallic posts.

Air Force Two taxied onto the Moffet field tarmac. The twin-engine C-32A, smaller than its four-engine Boeing 747B-200 cousin belonging to the President, is a sight to see. It is a specially designed version of the Boeing 757-200, with different interior furnishings, next generation electronics, and its own unique color scheme - sleek white fuselage, with a blue underbelly and engines - the two colors meeting each other at the nose of the aircraft. The words, “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” written in oversized golden capitals on the center of the top portion of the fuselage. A shining brightly colored American flag painted in the center of the vertical stabilizer. The airplane was designed to be more than just a mode of transport. It was designed to create pride in the hearts of those inside the United States, and awe in the hearts of those outside.

Dr. Carl Davis Jr. sat comfortably in the conference facility area in the third section of the aircraft. As soon as the aircraft came to a complete stop, he unbuckled his seatbelt and stepped out of the wide blue-colored leather passenger seat. The whole aircraft was filled to its capacity of forty-five passengers - staff members and the traveling Capital Hill press, mostly seated in the rear cabin of the aircraft. Almost on cue, each one of them unbuckled themselves as well and stood up, as if playing a game of follow the leader. The six foot-two inch muscularly built Carl Davis ran his fingers along the inside of his belt, admiring the fact that he still hadn’t gained a single ounce over his two hundred and twenty five pound college playing weight. He was wearing a microfibre charcoal colored suit, with a small red handkerchief barely visible in the top left pocket, and black shoes. Davis reached up and adjusted the knot of his red silk tie, ensuring it was perfectly centered. He noticed his press secretary, bent over across the conference table, hurriedly trying to get things organized into the Vice-President’s briefcase.

“Sam, I want to meet Dr. Williams at Berkeley before we leave. Can you arrange that?” he asked his press secretary.
“Sure,” replied the attractive forty-year old Samantha Taylor. “I’ll send him an invitation to tomorrow’s brunch.”

The enlisted Air Force cabin crew rotated the latch and slid the aircraft door upwards. A warm whiff of air rushed into the aircraft, immediately lowering the temperature of the air-conditioned cabin. Carl Davis rechecked his suit and briskly stepped towards the aircraft exit, stopping one step outside the door on the tarmac ladder. He took a deep breath, adjusted his smile and raised his right hand, simultaneously waving to and saluting the crowd.

It was good to be back home again.

The air quickly filled with the fast repetitive clicks of cameras and the monologues of TV anchormen and anchorwomen trying to outdo their competitors. The airplane had deliberately been parked at an angle with the late afternoon sun behind the photographers and the Freemont hills appearing in a perfect silhouette behind the raised waving arm of the smiling Vice-President. This was the shot that was going to appear on the front page of every major and minor newspaper in California the next morning. And Davis wanted to make sure it was perfectly orchestrated.

“Sam, it’s not going to rain today, is it?” Davis turned his head slightly backwards and whispered to his press secretary, standing behind him.
“Only in February, Mr. Vice-President” she replied.

Davis carefully descended from the aircraft stairs. Immediately the floodgates opened, and a slew of screaming voices started firing questions at him. “Mr. Vice-President, what are your party’s chances of winning California in the next elections?” cried a reporter over the loud humming noise of the aircraft engines shutting down. “Are you still firm on your affirmative action plans for your home state?” “Do you think opening one community center is enough to win over the African-American vote?”

Carl Davis reached the bottom of the steps and continued waving to the crowd, as he stepped into the long black limousine with Sam Taylor, leaving behind his aides to answer the reporters’ queries. His motorcade of cars and police motorcycles, with their booming sirens, quickly climbed onto Highway 101 and headed northwards towards the East Palo Alto Boys and Girls Club.
The crowd at the airport was smaller than he had hoped, but larger than he had expected. It occurred to him that the cost of the new community center he was about to inaugurate was probably less than the cost of this Vice-Presidential trip to California. Such were the ironies of campaign politics.

Within minutes, the motorcade crossed through Mountain View into Palo Alto. Carl Davis glanced outside, in both directions, through the heavily tinted bulletproof windows of the limousine. He had passed over this exact same spot, and looked in both directions, on countless occasions in his life. Yet each time, he was amazed at the sight. Less than half mile from each other, East and West Palo Alto were poles apart. The Palo Alto on the west side of Highway 101 boasted of the Stanford campus, PARC research center, multi-million dollar homes, and multi-billion dollar tech companies. The Palo Alto on the east side of the highway was the center of unemployment, gang-violence, drugs and crime - by far the poorest area in Silicon Valley, and one of the poorest in California. The eighty-foot wide Highway 101, the aorta of Silicon Valley, acted as an un-crossable social wall, ensuring the two sides never met. A wall so strong that even the powerful Vice-President’s genuine promises had not been able to bring it down. The list of people throughout the decades who had lost their millions by buying land in East Palo Alto, under the false hopes that its adjacent western neighbor would sooner or later stretch across the highway and absorb its poor eastern twin, was long and distinguished.

“How long has it been, since you visited this area?” Sam asked, running her fingers through her short blond hair.
“I spoke at the San Jose State University graduation ceremony, a few months ago,” replied Davis, trying to figure out how his press secretary could have forgotten her boss’s calendar of assignments. “Doesn’t seem to have changed much since I lived here six years ago,” he added in a voice filled with concern.

The limousine turned onto the University Avenue off-ramp and entered East Palo Alto. The depressing scenes passing outside the window quickly started reminding Davis of his childhood - old creaking houses with beat up cars parked in front of them, small food stores piled one on top of the other, poorly maintained schools with broken down fences. And the classic symbol of urban American poverty - Black and Hispanic teenagers, with odd hairstyles, wearing rebellious clothes, aggressively and needlessly breaking all the traffic laws. Davis had vowed to change all of this. It was more than just a campaign promise. It was a personal ambition. Yet here he was, the second most powerful man in the USA, driving through the middle of his own political district, witnessing a financial and social divide, which made his inner city birthplace of central Wichita, Kansas look like Disneyland.

“It’s not all bad,” he tried to encourage himself. “There are now quite a few Asian immigrants settled in West Palo Alto. And there are a couple of Hispanic Congressmen.” But he knew the word, “minority” only applied to African-Americans. The fact that nearly all the first-generation Chinese and South Asian immigrants had zoomed past African-Americans, who had been in the area for generations, further depressed him. “Maybe we just don’t have it in us,” Davis quietly commented, shaking his head.

Sam, overhearing the Vice-President replied, “You didn’t do too bad, Sir.”

He hadn’t done bad, at all. Born as the sixth of seven children to Carl Davis Sr. and Louise Davis, he had seen poverty first hand. His father had been a regularly-out-of-work Chaplain in Wichita, Kansas. The east and west ends of the Wichita were inhabited totally by the rich folks, who all happened to be white. The central part of town was the black neighborhood where Davis spent all his childhood years. There was only a little discrimination and a lot of welfare plans, yet somehow or the other the members of the Black communities could never make it five miles either way to the east or west end. As soon as they moved into a new apartment complex, one block in either direction, the price of the apartment building crashed, resulting in all the White families moving out further east and west.

It was a rude awakening to life for the young Carl Davis Jr.

A teenaged prodigy. He was the class valedictorian, and was voted the scholar-athlete of the year at Southeast High School in Wichita. He graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from University of Oklahoma in 1976, with a Bachelors degree in History, at the ripe young age of twenty-one. He was the only black member of the 1976 Sooners football team, who had made it to the University on an academic scholarship. During his senior year, at the encouragement of his academic advisor, he applied to some of the highly reputed public universities, outside the Midwest. His high GPA proved valuable and he received a full Ph.D. scholarship to UC Berkeley.

The California weather and the cosmopolitan student body of Berkeley suited him just fine. Within five years, still waiting to reach his twenty-seventh birthday, Dr. Carl Davis graduated from Berkeley’s famous Golden School of Public Policy with a Ph.D. in International Affairs, specializing in the Middle East. His dissertation on Arab-Israeli conflict resolution received wide acclaim as an authoritative document on this thorniest of issues. Its readers and reviewers could not have guessed that the man who authored this insightful study had never traveled outside the continental United States in his whole life.
It didn’t take long for Davis to be noticed. A year after graduation, he was an associate professor in the Political Science department, teaching Middle Eastern Studies, in the School of Humanities and Sciences at the sprawling campus at Stanford - just an hour’s drive from Berkeley.

His students were surprised to see someone younger than many of them as their professor. But Davis’s confident yet laid-back approach, his photographic memory and his encyclopedia-like knowledge of the Middle East made him an instant hit. His long list of papers and theses on the Israel-Palestine conflict resolution were soon making headlines all over the country. In just the third year of his stint in academia, Davis won the prestigious Walter J. Gores award for excellence in teaching. His gargantuan twelve hundred page national bestseller titled, “Israel: A Nation Under Threat” won the coveted Arthur Ross book award, presented to him by the American Council on Foreign Relations. The book soon became the unofficial Bible on the Middle East in the American intellectual circles. His well-earned reputation as an expert on the subject was no longer limited to the borders of North America. His work was translated into sixteen languages and became a fixture in the International Affairs departments of universities all over the world. Still in his early thirties, Davis was offered, and he accepted, a fellowship to the Hoover Institution. He was now regularly being invited to speak on Middle-East issues in areas as far flung as Vancouver to Tel-Aviv to Tokyo.

No one was surprised when on a brief visit to the Stanford; the National Security Advisor offered the thirty-five year old Carl Davis Jr. an opportunity of a lifetime - a position as the Senior Director for Middle Eastern Affairs in the National Security Council.

Davis had been an excellent student, an even better professor, but he was about to realize his greatest talents lay in the field of politics. He now had his foot in the door of Capital Hill, and there was going to be no looking back. Dr. Carl Davis Jr. planned to make sure his name would be remembered in US history for something greater than being the second string linebacker who blocked the potential game-winning field goal as a member of the national champion Sooners in the 1976 Orange Bowl.

“We are almost there, Sir,” Samantha surprised her boss, who was still staring outside through the window.
“Can you hand me the speech?” Davis requested.
“Sure,” replied Samantha. She opened his briefcase and took out the dark blue leather folder, which contained the speech the Vice-President was to deliver.

The D.C. newspapers never tired of describing the oratorical gifts of the baby-faced Davis. Reagananisque and Churchillian, or a combination of both, were the overflowing superlatives that were often used. Davis could not quite figure out whether the regular utterances of, “He speaks so well” were a compliment to him, or an insult to his African-American heritage. As a matter of practice, he only read his speeches once, immediately before he was to deliver them, knowing fully well that if required, he could speak extempore on any topic under the sun anytime he wanted.

The ten-minute limousine ride finally ended. The vehicle entered through the main gates of the East Palo Alto Boys and Girls club. It continued moving on the narrow blacktop road running parallel to the club’s small football field. Davis noticed the rectangular stage that had been set up at the end of the field, right in front of the goalpost. Just behind the stage was a fence that was covered with white cloth, with a huge message welcoming the Vice President. Davis could tell the young members of the Boys and Girls club had made the banner themselves. The crowd of about one thousand was seated in rows of chairs, set in arcs that extended all the way to the center of the field. It consisted almost completely of poor middle-aged church going African-American women, dressed in second-hand long skirts, whose children were members of the Boys and Girls club - demographically the strongest supporters of the Democrat party of any group in the USA.

Carl Davis stepped out of the limousine and immediately started waving to the seated crowd. The muffled and somewhat subdued cheers of the crowd were far from the enthusiastic receptions he was used to. He looked to his left and noticed Samantha placing the paper copy of his speech on the wooden dais located in the center of the stage. He slowly stepped onto the stage and settled himself comfortably behind the dais, still waving to the crowd. The scene reminded him of his childhood days, when he used to accompany his father to the local church in Kansas. Finally, in position, he glanced down at the first page of his speech.

“Thank you. Thank you for coming here,” he lifted his eyes and addressed the crowd. The Vice-President’s seductively disarming voice and self-effacing demeanor immediately quieted the crowd. He continued with the speech.

Samantha, sitting in the front row, slowly shook his head in admiration of her boss. “This guy is amazing,” she whispered to the undercover guard seated next to her.

As usual, Carl Davis had memorized the complete five-minute speech, and would not need to look at the pieces of paper, in front of him again. Samantha had worked for the Vice President for five years, yet she still could not get over her boss’s photographic memory, and his ability to hypnotize an audience with his words - each syllable carefully delivered with the confidence of a university professor and the enthusiasm of a Black chaplain’s son.

But today his magic was not working.

“They are not responding,” the thought was racing through Carl Davis’s mind, as he spoke about his promises of bridging the digital divide between the black and white neighborhoods. Davis knew he had been unsuccessful in living up to his campaign pledges and dreams of uniting East Palo Alto with its western neighbor. He knew if his party did not bridge this divide quickly throughout the State of California, it could cost them the next Presidential election. “A potential anti-climax to my extremely well charted political career,” he kept reminding himself.

The decision to enter politics had been a no-brainer. His three year tenure in the National Security Council brought him close enough to politicians to realize he could out-talk and out-smart most of them. It was just a matter of deciding which state he was going to run from. His first thought had pointed him to his home state of Kansas. He shifted his headquarters from Georgetown to the Kansas side of Kansas City to test the waters. The initial response to the return of the hometown hero was quite good. But the State of Kansas had never, in its history, voted a Black man in any kind of representative position to Capital Hill. After a few months, Davis correctly concluded that he was not going to be the first.

Wisely, he packed his bags, and set up shop in the middle of Silicon Valley. He was back for another tenure at Stanford. But this time, instead of publishing books, his aim was to reach out to big business for future campaign funding. And what better place to start than the high offices of the Valley’s high-tech companies. The rich IT companies had traditionally remained out of the loop in sending their lobbyists to Capital Hill. All of them were desperately looking to correct this mistake. Each one of them quickly jumped in line, wanting the young suave professor-politician and potential Senator to be associated with their company’s name. Dr. Carl Davis Jr. was soon sitting on the board of directors of Transnational Software, National Semi Systems, Hewlett Packard, and Altima Technologies.

Davis had to choose his opportunities carefully. He had no personal wealth of his own to speak of to fund his campaign. These people were going to completely finance his campaign, and he needed to make sure he associated himself with companies with excellent reputations. Most of all, with companies that were willing to offer him access to their long financial pockets. So, when he received a phone call in his tiny professor’s office for a dinner invitation from the Valley’s second biggest venture capital fund and incubator, he was more than happy to accept. Four hours later, he was sitting at the downtown Palo Alto Spagos, right behind the famous University Avenue, with a young bearded Vice President of HMC&J with a strange sounding name. They had hit it off immediately - each trying to one up the other with his rags to riches stories. Both had calculated correctly that someday the other was going to an international player.

Dr. Carl Davis Jr.’s campaign for the next Congressional election was now well financed. It was time to reach out to the common folk of the State. That would prove to be a much more difficult yet fruitful task.

The California demography is roughly divided into three major groups: it is one-third African-American, one-third Hispanic and one-third Caucasian. Los Angeles, the largest city in California, is already more than fifty percent Hispanic. Amongst the non-Hispanic and non-Black groups, the California powerbrokers include the Jewish voters. Davis had already received an honorary lifetime membership of the National Jewish League. San Jose’s sister city in Israel had honored him as their Man of the Year for his, “Outstanding efforts in promoting friendship” between the USA and Israel. California was definitely Democrat territory. A charismatic African-American professor, well-funded by the rich IT houses, with strong connections to the Jewish lobbyists and a reputation on the Hill as a cool and collected diplomat and conflict resolution expert, had his fingers so deep into all the liberal power groups of California that it would be nearly impossible for him to lose a Senate seat on a Democrat ticket.

The problem was that Dr. Carl Davis Jr. was a Republican.

Carl Davis ended his short five minute speech with a reaffirmation of the promise he had made in this exact same ground six years ago, when he had kicked-off his Senate campaign. “It is time to close the digital and financial divide between the haves and have-nots,” he emphasized. “It is time to merge the East with the West. I promise you, as your representative and your friend, my party will not fail you!”

The applause, this time around, was noticeably dissimilar to the applause six years ago. The women sitting in front of him, along with the influential Jewish lobby from the other side of Highway 101, were the swing vote in the state of California. The crowd respected him. They even admired him - a fellow African-American from the projects, who had beaten the odds. They considered him a role model for their kids. But it was clear to the whole crowd that the imaginary but strong half a mile boundary between East and West Palo Alto had not decreased by even a single inch in the past six years. They had made up their minds. In the next election, they were not going to repeat the mistake of deserting their Democrat Party for the man standing in front of them.

Vice-President Davis glanced over at Samantha. They both noticed the concern on each other’s faces. They had spent the last three months touring the length and breadth of California, addressing one African-American community after another. Each time, the applause died down far quicker than either of them had hoped. With each dying clap, each sarcastic roll of an audience member’s eyes, they felt the next Presidential election slowly disappear into the hot Valley sky, like silicon slipping thorough a clenched fist trying its best to keep it in place.

Politics in all countries is local. But American local politics is international. Such is the power of the United States of America that the indifference of a small group of its minority housewives on welfare was about to set into motion a series of events that could destroy nations half way around the world.
The Vice-President of the United States stepped off the stage and into his limousine. He knew his speech had not been a success. He was already planning for his brunch speech tomorrow to the San Jose chapter of the National Jewish League. Carl Davis had just lost one group of swing votes in his home state. He was going to make sure he did not lose the other group also.

West Palo Alto, California:

“Are we rich, Daddy?” the five-year girl, in polka-dot pajamas, screamed out as loud as she could, as she ran straight towards her father, arms spread out, imitating an airplane on a take-off run.
“I think we’re kind of rich,” replied Rafi Qureshi sitting up in his chair, surprised by the question.
“What about Mommy? Is she rich?” the girl excitedly shouted as she jumped up, lifted her knees, and cannonballed herself into her father’s lap.

Rafi Qureshi, underestimating how much his daughter had grown in the past year, was visibly shaken by the impact. It was clear he could no longer sit on his favorite lounger and comfortably read the newspaper. He settled his daughter into his lap, and reached down with his right hand to pick up his glasses that had just fallen off. He glanced over at Maryam, hoping for assistance from his wife with their daughter’s difficult questions.

Maryam looked at him and smiled, as if telling him that she had no intention of helping. He was on his own.
“Well, I think Mommy is kind of rich, also,” he replied, not knowing what to say.
“OK!” screamed little Baenish Qureshi. She jumped out of her father’s lap, and started taxiing her aircraft towards the far end of the large TV room.

Rafi looked over at his wife with concern, hoping their daughter would make a right turn and fly her airplane upstairs and straight into her room. Maryam nearly burst out in laughter, when she saw the worried look on her husband’s face as he saw Baenish turning around, locking her eyes on target again, and come running in towards him. Their daughter was now whistling loudly, trying her best to imitate the noise of an aircraft engine.

Rafi’s eyes started getting wider and wider, as he noticed his tiny daughter getting closer and closer. This time, instinctively, he reached out and grabbed her before she could launch herself at him and pulled her into his lap.

“How long are we going to stay rich, Daddy?” she asked, trying to catch her breath.
“Hmm,” he slowly looked up at the ceiling and replied softly and philosophically, “As long as there is oil under the deserts of Arabia.” His wife and his daughter looked at him in confusion, trying to understand the reply.

The trip to Riyadh had been mentally and physically exhausting. He had trouble concentrating on flying the plane on the way back. He was used to being in the company of influential men. He regularly met powerful presidents, wealthy kings and hotshot multinational CEOs, whenever they were brought on their showcase visits to Silicon Valley. But this time the feeling was different. It was a combination of ambition, awe, disgust, confusion, hope and fear. He did not like it when he was not in complete control of situations, or if he was kept unaware of the complete picture. Used to being the grand master, in Riyadh, for the first time in a long time, Rafi had felt like a small pawn in someone else’s chess game.

“The workshop completed framing the picture that Jacques sent,” Maryam broke the silence.
“It’s actually starting to look quite good now,” Rafi commented without glancing over to look at the picture hanging on the wall.
Both, husband and wife stared at each other with a look of concern and bewilderment.
“I can never understand art.” Rafi admitted. “Why in the world is this painting worth fifteen thousand dollars?”
“Got me,” replied Maryam. “I don’t like nudes hanging on the wall, even if it is made by a famous painter. You know that.”
“Neither do I,” replied Rafi, reaching for the remote to turn off the TV. “We’ll take it down once Jacques leaves.”

No sooner had the conversation ended, Rafi Qureshi stepped out of the lounger and started walking towards the far end of the TV room. The front of the room consisted of two large sliding glass doors that covered nearly the whole wall. Just outside the doors was the finely manicured front yard. It surrounded half the house in a large semicircle. Los Altos Hills recently moved ahead of Beverly Hills as the most expensive real estate in California. Owning a house on these Valley hills was now the ultimate West coast status symbol. Owning one’s own little plateau on one of the few cliffs on these hills was something only a handful of individuals could afford. The higher up on the hill, the more the value of the house. Rafi’s mini-mansion was on a cliff at the summit of one of the pointed hills, making it one of the only houses with a view on both sides of Los Altos hills. On its eastern side, the cliff sloped down at a steep angle to a creek that ran parallel to Highway 280. The double story house was constructed in Victorian style, with a covered area of five thousand square feet. It was built facing a northeasterly direction, because Rafi wanted a clear view of the Golden Gate Bridge from his bedroom window. The nearest neighbors were on another plateau half a mile north and four hundred feet below. The only way to get off this cliff was by a narrow two lane road that started from the large multi-car garage behind the house, and wound its way downwards through the extremely thickly forested hill, opening up onto a service lane that run parallel to the highway.

It was nine o’ clock in the evening, and Rafi was dressed in a white shalwar kurta, with a brown chaddar covering his back and draped over both his shoulders. He slid open the large glass doors and stepped out into the lawn. Dew had already started forming on the grass. It felt cold on his bare feet. He slowly covered the fifty feet breadth of the lawn. The only thing between him and the edge of the cliff was the four-foot high brick boundary wall that encircled this piece of real estate. Running alongside the boundary wall were thick flower bushes of red, pink, cream and yellow colored roses brought in especially from the Canary Islands. The view was breathtaking and relaxing. He could feel the tension of the long trip slowly disappearing from his mind and body. Perched fifteen hundred feet above sea level, Rafi Qureshi took a long look at the sprawling Valley underneath his feet. The view was the prize he had earned after fighting and winning many personal and corporate battles. It was a sense of accomplishment. For a brief moment, Rafi Qureshi felt like Napoleon, standing on the hills of Austerlitz, admiring his conquered lands.

It was good to be back home again.

Maryam walked out and caught him by surprise, ““Did you know the Vice-President is here?
“Yes, I know,” Rafi replied. “He is on a campaign tour.”
“Are you still in touch with him?” Maryam asked, recalling her husband’s prediction that Carl Davis would one day become a Senator.
“Not really,” Rafi replied. “I am just on his advisory committee on Middle East trade. We meet once a year. That’s about it.” “That reminds me,” Rafi continued. “I am thinking of going to the brunch he is hosting tomorrow morning. Do you think we should go?”
“How much are we donating, this time,” Maryam asked with a smile and an emphasis on the word, “donating.” She always wondered why, after twenty years of marriage, her husband still never took a decision without her approval. Twenty years ago, it was small things - the clothes to wear, the way to talk, the books to read. But even now, when Maryam was unable to comprehend the intricacies of his multi-million dollar business plans, he still wouldn’t move without a nod of her head. She assumed it was for good luck. That in the end he would do whatever he thought appropriate. So she always shook her head approvingly to all his business-related questions. Yet sometimes she wondered how many of the world-famous high-tech companies would have never been funded, and how many of the charismatic young CEOs would have been unknown had she not approved of them?
“It’s only a thousand dollars per plate,” Rafi replied, wondering why his wife found this so amusing. “It’s being hosted by the National Jewish League,” Rafi added. “He is on his last legs. If the Republicans lose California, they will lose the Presidency. And Carl will be back teaching at Stanford.”
“Its’ going to start getting dark soon. Will I see you for dinner in a half an hour?” Maryam asked, realizing that her husband was in one of his thinking moods and needed some time by himself.
“Yes, of course,” came back the expected reply, as she walked back to the house.

Rafi Qureshi slowly started strolling barefoot from one end of the lawn to the other. His mind was replaying everything he had heard and seen at the meeting in Riyadh. He was trying to figure out if everything added up. “Will it all work?” He had asked this question to himself a hundred times now. Each time the answer was somewhere in between a clear, “Yes,” and a clear, “No.”

Cool late evenings and early mornings sometimes brought in fog and clouds that descended down and completely surrounded the house. Tonight was such a night. The fragrance of the roses in the cool night was starting to have an effect on him. He had done the landscaping of the lawn and garden himself. The north side of the lawn was covered with a twenty-foot high artificial hill that blended in perfectly with the edge of the cliff at its back. It was made of thirty tons of natural boulders - coral rock from Florida, moss rock from Canada and stacking stones from Tennessee. The top of this landscaped hill was covered with a small artificial waterfall, which on its way down separated into channels that had an uncanny resemblance to the claw-foot of a hen. They were designed after a famous picnic spot he visited just outside Srinagar, as a young boy. The rocks on the hill were covered with red leaf and dwarf pygmy barberry, potentilla and ginnala maple shrubs. The hill was partitioned into three levels. Each level had a one-foot high edge wall made completely out of small bonsai trees imported straight from Japan. It was in this little slice of heaven, surrounded by clouds and flowers, where Rafi Qureshi analyzed his most difficult problems.

It was completely dark now. The cool breeze, coming in from the Pacific, was gently blowing back the loose shalwar and kurta he was wearing. Rafi Qureshi was about to make the biggest decision of his life. He realized it was the first time he was deciding something of such importance without discussing it with Maryam. This added to his apprehension. He was a clear thinker, with an uncanny knack for judging gray areas and instinctively making quick and correct business decisions involving hundreds of millions of dollars. However, this time, it was not a matter of millions of dollars. It was a matter of millions of lives. And his instincts were not providing the answers.

In a state of deep thought, Rafi took his chaddar off his shoulders and laid it down in a southeasterly direction, at the edge of the lawn. He raised his head to get a good look at the crescent shining brightly through the cloudy black sky. He closed his eyes, gently lowered his head, and quietly stood at the edge of the large piece of brown cloth he had just laid on the ground. He raised his hands, and with his thumbs gently touching his earlobes, quietly whispered, “Allah-o-Akbar.” Rafi Qureshi was now in a deep state of meditation, looking for answers to his difficult questions in a quiet private conversation with his God.

For the next half hour, cars traveling north on Highway 280 would see the tiny outline of a bearded man on top of a foggy distant cliff, dressed in loose flowing white clothing, going through sets of oddly repetitive physical motions - standing straight up with his hands clasped in front of him, bending at the knees, then bowing completely to the ground, kneeling, and then standing up again. The more knowledgeable amongst the drivers would comment that it was an Islamic holy man praying in the direction of Mecca. A closer look would have revealed that it was actually a multi-millionaire head of a fully armed militia, praying, not in the direction of Mecca, but in the direction of a home he had been forced to leave behind twenty-five years ago.

Shahjanabad, India:

The food and the facilities at the hotel had been excellent. Michael hoped so would be the rest of their stay. But the taxi ride was starting to put doubts in his mind. It was exactly twelve o’clock in the afternoon and the air-conditioning in the taxi was having a difficult time competing with the scorching heat outside. Michael was instinctively moving his shoulders from one side to the other, pressing imaginary brake pedals, as if he were driving the cab himself. Sitting in the back seat of a Delhi taxi was proving more dangerous than sitting in his trusted F-16. Everything in India seemed a magnification of what he was used to in Israel - the colors, the congestion, the crowds, the poverty and definitely the traffic. This was the first time he had visited India.

“Has the traffic always been like this?” he leaned over and asked colleague.
“Yup,” replied General Yitzhak. “I come here twice a year.” “You’ll get used to it,” Yitzhak smiled. “Don’t worry. We should reach the headquarters soon.”

This was their fourth taxi ride in Delhi. It was the second time their driver had been a retired Indian army NCO. Upon learning of their destination, he volunteered to give them a running commentary on every famous spot they passed. "I was in the Bombay Sappers," he commented proudly. "More are more taxi drivers are now ex-soldiers. Because we are better drivers and are permitted to bear licensed arms," volunteering once again in broken English, in an attempt to make his anxious customers feel comfortable.

They were passing through the old city, getting a chance to view the historical Lal Qila from close quarters - a massive structure, with eighteen-meter high walls, made of red sandstone, stretching for two kilometers from one end to the other. The gigantic fort is surrounded on all sides by fourteen gates, with the Lahore Gate serving as the main entrance. Each red brick of this Red Fort, dripping with history of the Sub-Continent. It was from the fortified embankments of this fort that the last scion of the Mughal Empire, the defeated poet-king Bahadur Shah Zafar, uttered his final tragic verses before being exiled to the peripheries of Rangoon by the victorious British. It was on the ramparts of the Lahore Gate, in mid-August 1947, that India’s first Hindu ruler in eight hundred years, Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru uttered the now famous words, "At the stroke of midnight, as the world sleeps, India awakes." It is here that the serving Prime Minister of India raises the Indian flag every year on India’s independence day. It is also here that the foundations of the first headquarters of the Free Indian army were laid, over five decades ago.

Ironically, the building in which the modern Indian Army began its life was constructed by the Muslim Mughal Emperor Shah Jehan in 1639 - five years before he went on to complete the world famous Taj Mahal. Shah Jehan’s father, Jehangir, laid the historical foundations of the Indian army in 1627 - exactly one hundred years after Jehangir’s great grandfather, Zaheeruddin Babur, won his first battle in the Sub-Continent. The irony lay neither in the age of the building nor in its decayed appearance. It lay in the fact that India’s most important nationalistic spot, the Lahore Gate, was still named after the most famous city in Pakistan - India’s traditional Muslim enemy to the west. Pakistanis considered Jehangir and Shah Jehan one of their own and amongst the founding great-grandfathers of their nation.

The Indian army grew very quickly after independence. Within a few years, the Red Fort of Delhi had become too small to house the headquarters of an army which was well on its way to become the second largest in the world - nearly three times the size of the US army and more than twice the size of the army of its major adversary on its western border. Barring a few interrogation cells, which were left inside the Fort, the remaining Indian army high command soon moved into newer more modern facilities.

Michael relaxed somewhat as the taxi reached the Rajpath. They were now proceeding on a westerly direction, leaving the Red Fort behind them. As they passed by Vijay chowk, Michael glanced through the window on the right side to get a good view of the Parliament building.

"We’re almost there," the driver warned Michael.

They were now ascending up the Raisina hill. Rashtaprati Bhavan, the home of the Indian President, was in front of them on top of the hill. Half way up the hill, approximately five kilometers from the Red Fort, Michael noticed the South Block and the North Block of the new Indian Army headquarters towards his left and right. The taxi driver, being a retired soldier, knew exactly where he was going and stopped right in front of the main gate of the South Block. Michael reached into his wallet and handed the driver the fare, as Yitzhak stepped out of the taxi. Both of them were sweating heavily in their suits, under the bright afternoon sun.

"I hope that’s for us," Michael looked across the gate at the olive green army jeep. His prayers were answered and a startchly dressed soldier greeted him at the gate, politely inviting both the guests to get into the jeep.
"The South Block houses the office of the Chief of Staff of the Indian Army. The COAS is assisted by the Vice Chief and two Deputy Chiefs of Staff, along with a large number of other two and three star Staff officers," Yitzhak quickly attempted to cover the command structure of the Indian army with Michael, as they drove towards the office of their host. "With a total strength of 1.1 million, on any given day the number of Indian army soldiers in uniform is nearly equal to the total adult male population of Israel," he empahsised.

Lieutenant General Jagmohan Singh’s secretary received the two guests at the front door of the, "A" wing of the main building. He escorted both of them into the private briefing room reserved for the Staff officers. It was a midsize room with an oval shaped dark brown shinning wooden table in the middle, surrounded by twelve chairs. There was a large projection screen in the front and a small projector, placed on the desk. The projector was connected to a laptop computer humming quietly on the desk. The two Israelis had visited the Tel Aviv offices of the software companies owned by expatriate Indians in the USA. They were somewhat surprised at the simplicity of this conference room in comparison to the ones belonging to Indians in the overseas private industry. The two guests quietly seated themselves in the seats at the front of the table.

"How are you, Yitzhak?" General Jagmohan surprised the two men as he quickly stepped into the room and excitedly greeted them.

"Good to see you again, General," Yitzhak stood up to shake his old friend’s hand. "This is Colonel Moaz," Yitzhak added while pointing to his colleague.

"All Sikhs look alike to me," Micheal recalled Yitzhak’s late-night attempt at humor, as he leaned over to shake the hand of the Indian General. Yitzhak was only partially correct, Michael calculated. General Jagmohan was of medium height by average Indian standards, but short by Sikh standards. He was slightly overweight, with a fledgling potbelly anxiously waiting for the General’s retirement before breaking out in all its glory. Micheal couldn’t help but stare at the General’s trimmed white beard, wondering how many layers of hair were tightly wound and tucked into his khaki turban.

"Please have a seat," Jagmohan insisted in his thick Punjabi accent, as he grabbed the wireless mouse and started his presentation.

General Yitzhak had first met his Indian counterpart three years ago, when the later was the General Officer Commanding for the Army’s Northern Command in Udhampur. India had requested Israel’s assistance in deploying Unarmed Airborne Vehicles to monitor the activities on the Kashmir Line of Control. Yitzhak had been send to Srinagar by the Israeli government to carry out the initial study. General Yitzhak had been highly impressed with Jagmohan’s sharp intellect and down-to-earth demeanor. Outside his uniform and outside the aura of the tens of thousands of soldiers he commanded, dressed in a white kurta pyjama and black leather chappals, Jagmohan could not be distinguished from any family’s favorite simple grandfather. The two of them had developed a genuine friendship and had kept in close touch since then. General Jagmohan’s next assignment had been a posting to the Army Headquarters in Delhi as the Vice-Chief of Army Staff - the second highest position in the Indian Army command structure. However, as Yitzhak soon discovered, Jagmohan’s primary responsibility was to untangle the vast beuracratic mess the army was facing within the Indian Ministry of Defense (MoD).

Unlike its two main adversaries, Pakistan and China, India had been ruled since independence through a civilian democratic system. While this brought all the positive aspects of a democracy, it also resulted in the creation of an inefficient gigantic civilian bureaucracy. This resulted in the Indian military facing all the problems third-world militaries face when they compete with civilian Defense organizations to control massive military budgets. Despite its huge size, the Indian military is dependent on the various civilian organizations in the MoD for its logistics and armament. On top of this list is the Department of Defense Research and Development (DDR&D), headed by the fifty-nine year old career bureaucrat Dr. Prakash Bagai. This department is responsible for, "developing an integrated and indigenous base for production of defense hardware." The Department of Defense Production and Supplies (DDP&S), further complicates this whole scenario. This is another bureaucratic albatross, set up in 1962, with an objective of providing, “advice on scientific aspects of military equipment and logistics and the formulation of research, design and development plans for equipment used by the Services." The Secretary DDP&S was another member of the Indian Civil Services, who had built his career in the Department of Forestries and Horticulture.

Being totally dependent on these two departments for acquiring and manufacturing the equipment that is needed by the soldiers has lead to one disaster after another. India is caught in the unfavorable position of being too technically advanced to not dream about end-to-end indigenous manufacturing of military equipment, yet not technologically advanced enough to fulfill this dream. Indian civilian planners, in an effort to prove themselves, kept relying on the first option. Until the arrival of General Jagmohan on the scene, they had tried their best to avoid joint development of Defense equipment in partnerships with countries with more technologically advanced infrastructures - a concept their tinier adversary to the west had perfected over decades of joint development projects with China. Indian Generals’ requests for buying foreign equipment were regularly over-ruled by the civilian bureaucracy in an attempt to assemble the machinery locally. This led to over-inflated budgets for the civilian MoD organizations, and dangerous and under-developed equipment for the soldiers. Despite the complaints from the tank units, the Arjun tanks were being shoved down their throats. The white elephant Light Combat Aircraft project had an airframe that was delivered twenty years behind schedule, at a cost that was many times the original budget. Even then, it was barely able to successfully complete its first gear up test flight - that too, only when its indigenous GTX-35VS Kaveri engine had been replaced by the American General Electric F2J3 engine. It was the butt of many jokes in the international aviation community. The latest being that the Light Combat Aircraft was neither Light, nor Combat-ready, and was in fact barely an Aircraft.

"India’s DDR&D is Pakistan’s secret weapon," a retired Pakistani General had recently been quoted by a major Indian magazine. The Indian General Staff had shown outrage at this comment. They issued public denials. But deep down inside they knew the Pakistani had hit the nail right on the head.

“New Generals discuss strategy, experienced Generals discuss logistics,” was the first statement India’s new COAS, General Murthy Ramana, had made to Jagmohan Singh when he had appointed him his VCOAS. The COAS knew his subordinate was as experienced as they came. General Jagmohan had fought in the 1965 war as a young Lieutenant, and the 1971 war as an experienced new Major. He had not received any gallantry awards. He was not a war hero. He had just done his job. But he possessed the one quality that was lacking in many great wartime soldiers - the talents of being an excellent peacetime administrator. His simple carefree demeanor and over-developed sense of humor hid an analytical mind that cut through complex logistical and administrative problems like a hot knife cutting through warm butter.

It was clear to Jagmohan Singh that regardless of the large increases in the budget of the Indian military, and despite the high caliber of its soldiers, it could not be an efficient fighting machine until it solved its manufacturing problems. And it could not solve its manufacturing problems, until the army was given the deciding vote on the purchasing and development of military equipment. For the past two years, he had slowly, but surely, started to develop the political connections, on behalf of his boss, to isolate the civilian bureaucracy from important decision-making logistical positions. This had resulted in the Indian military relying less and less on the, "junk" that was thrown its way by the various Defense labs and research departments. It had also resulted in a break from traditional Warsaw Pact third-country arms suppliers. Behind the scenes, Jagmohan was slowly reorganizing the logistics of the whole Army. When the Senior Vice President of Global Sales from IBM, trying to make a two hundred million dollar supply chain software deal, had attempted to explain the challenges and frustrations of restructuring the complete sales force of a three hundred thousand plus company, he had been completely surprised by Jagmohan’s casual reply, "Believe me. My job is twice as difficult as yours."

"Russia is no longer the first or even second source of equipment for the Indian military," the General emphasized the point, as he clicked through the PowerPoint slides. "The Indian military is completely transitioning to French and British equipment. We have signed a one billion contract with BAE Systems in UK for Mk-127 Hawk Advanced Jet Trainer aircraft. We are in the middle of a one billion dollar deal with General Dynamics Land System in USA for the M1A1/2 Abrams main battle tank. We signed a one billion dollar deal with in France for six state of the art submarines, which will be upgraded in our Mumbai-based Mazagon Docks submarine building facility. And we have just completed a half billion-dollar deal wih Avions Marcel Dassault for purchasing and upgrading four of our fighter squadrons with Mirage-2000 fighters. We are also in the initial stages of establishing our sales lines with the private industry in the US, UK and France for co-development of all this equipment."

His small audience was well aware of all this information. They also understood that the jewel in this policy reorganization crown was the strengthening of India’s defense ties with Israel - a country whose name Jagmohan had yet to mention. India, after China, is the second biggest importer of weapons in the world. Israel is the fifth largest exporter of weapons in the world. It was only natural for India and Israel to develop a symbiotic relationship. Over the last two years, Jagmohan Singh had initiated programs with the Israeli Defense forces, which in the next ten years would be equal to many times the one billion dollar per year price tag that had been placed on them by the Indian press. The Israeli-Indian exchange of military technology was second only to that of Israel and USA. Lt. Gen. Jagmohan Singh’s had correctly calculated that apart from software engineering, India’s civilian R&D and manufacturing standards would take two decades to reach international levels. Until that time, he was going to make sure that none of his soldiers died due to explosions in locally manufactured tank turrets, and none of his pilots died due cracked horizontal stabilizers in locally manufactured fighter-trainers. For the next twenty years, India’s Defense Research and Development would not be done in the DDR&D’s labs. It would be done in the labs in Tel Aviv.

All of this fit in quiet nicely with Israel’s foreign policy. It was finally able to move India, a country with the second largest Muslim population in the world, away from its traditional pro-Palestine stance. The latest elections in India had brought in a government that was bent on using the pro-Israeli lobby in the USA, to isolate Pakistan internationally. Israel’s fear of Pakistan’s nuclear technology being passed over to Arab states, combined with multi-billion dollar military contracts with India, resulted in further development of common areas of interests. With his strong personal relationship with Yitzhak, Jagmohan had found the support he needed in Israel. Within two years, the clever General had almost single-handedly brought the manufacturing supply chain of the Indian military under his own control. He now had the finances and political connections in India and in Israel to jump into the international arms markets and buy to his heart’s desire. India’s inefficient MoD bureaucracy would continue with its research projects, but none of them would be forced into the hands of the soldiers. Not if Jagmohan had his way.

Michael was having difficulty concentrating on General Jagmohan words, as he explained the organization of the Indian Army to his two guests. This was the first time in his life he had a chance to interact with a Sikh. He was itching to ask the Indian General how long his hair was under the khaki headgear. He was also well aware that the actual discussion would start after the presentation. Jagmohan went through the last slide and completed the presentation. He slowly settled into the chair across from Yitzhak, and addressed his friend with a smile, "So Yitzhak, what do you have for me?"

With these few casual words, the Indo-Israeli military relationship was about to move to the next level - beyond equipment contracts, beyond research and development projects, and beyond joint military exercises. India and Israel were about to plan their first joint military attack. Of the eight people in the world who were privy to this information, three were sitting in this conference room. Of those three, only one completely understood the true implications and motivations of such an attack. General Yitzhak stared into the deep brown eyes of his counterpart, sitting across the table. "Could he fool him?" the thought raced through his mind. "Or would his shrewd Sikh friend, with the razor sharp mind, be able to see right through him?"

"Is it true that chess was invented in India, General Sahib?" Yitzhak started his carefully rehearsed mission statement.

To be continued .....