It’s a long long day – Mission clears… but Plot thickens!

“So, what did the Chief say?” I asked Praveen, unable to control my curiosity, as soon as he cut his call and was still bringing down his hand from his ears.

“Hmm. This looks serious” he said.

“What?” I asked raising my tone a bit.

We were by now driving on the Bangalore Honnavar Road towards Sagara. It was newly constructed road that curved neatly amidst the dense forests of Western Ghats. Thick forest with abundant greenery on both sides of the road; the road with nice competitive curves; the fresh oxygen with an aroma that comes only amidst this thick greenery; cool breeze without any sunrays to strike into our eyes via the windshield; not much vehicles to disturb the silence; if only I was not on a job at the moment and my head was not filled with thoughts, questions, missions, dangerous groups and a life at stake, I would have driven slower and stopped every mile and enjoyed that drive to the fullest.

“First thing that Chief said was he sent that encrypted message hidden in those riddles because he has got a message that some of the IDs in our mail server have been hacked. They have locked down the entire mail server and stopped all the e-communications. The technical team is working on any leaks and any suspicious traffic recently.”

“Shit man! That’s hell! How did that happen? And how did they know? Any leads?” I exclaimed almost jumping out of my seat hearing to his words.

Though spies have been thriving from the era when no one knew what a computer was, in the present Software Era spies have to rely on multiple software technologies for most of their communications, encryptions and storages. And with the most recent technical advancements, software has almost become an integral part of a spy just like his gun. A spy in these has to know using these technologies at his fingertips as much as he knows how to reload and shoot a gun within seconds in any condition he is stuck in.

This was one of the most secured networks of Indian Intelligence and hacking it didn’t show the weakness of our country’s most secured network. It clearly meant some rich pocket and some very dangerous brain is behind this who could reach any risk to get into it. One more message any hacking incident delivers is ‘look out for a traitor in your team’.

“The technical head has not yet confirmed it but the GPS tracker on this missing RAW agent stopped working within 30 mins after he sent out this mail. That’s what has spooked a guess on this hacking and also this spy’s kidnapping.”

“No other clues?”

“That’s not to it. This agent had to handover the information he had collected on whatever he was working to another local IB agent before he infiltrated that group which he mentioned in his mail. He had even called him and they had confirmed upon a meeting place and time but this RAW guy never showed up. The local agent waited for an hour and then went looking for this guy in the local surrounding areas of their decided meeting place trying to get any information on him. He even took help of local police to search for him just in case he was stuck up in some accident or anything of that kind. But nothing came up. Upon contacting the base at Bangalore they confirmed the agent’s GPS had stopped sending signals within minutes after he sent out his last mail to his head which was after the call with the local agent. There has been no sign of him or his activities or any of his belongings since then. His last known address, a small rented house in Honnavar has been swiped clean.”

“Hmm. Strange. So he is a smoke now”

“Yeah. There are only few clues with this local agent whom we will have to meet and he would be helping us.”

“Who is this guy?”

“He is a former spy now into special ops on information gathering working on Western Ghats Area as Info Gatherer. He is purely into being a local contact whose main job is to collecting information on the local happenings and from such spies working around this area and what not and encrypt all the information and send it to the main base. His code name is Ram. By the way Chief spoke about him, it looks like this man has earned some respect both in the Bureau and also locally in Honnavar as a local grocery shopkeeper.”

“Hmm. So he would be joining us in Honnavar?”

“No. First thing that Chief cleared is, Agent Ram is completely into information gathering and his job is only to do what he does. In no way he is a spy now and in no way he can get involved into any action and at any cost his cover id should not be blown. We would be driving for an approximate of 68 kms from Sagara towards Honnavar. Then we would get this place called Herangadi Bus Stop on Bangalore Honnavar Highway. This place comes within the Honnavar Taluk. Agent Ram would be waiting for us there. He would brief us on the clues and next preferred actions and any other local information that would help us in our mission. His part is done” Praveen said, opening a bottle and gulping down some water.

He had been on call for atleast 20 minutes and now was sharing the information with me. I thought it better to spare him few minutes to gulp in some water and help himself with his dried throat. I took a moment and looked out of the window on my right. Though it was still the same mesmerizing scenery surrounding us, the thoughts of the mission had blocked any outside signals, especially about enjoying the scenery.

Declining his offer of water, I asked, “What else did Chief say?”

“No one clearly knows what this missing agent was working on and what organizations are involved in whatever he was working on. The one thing that is for sure is he was working with INTERPOL which confirms that this is something international but even they don’t have any details about what information he had laid his hands on. INTERPOL has been notified and they are also sending down their team. They are looking for an update within 24 hours; else they want their involvement in all this. That’s all he said. This is the mission. We now have less than 24 hours to find him.”

“A RAW agent working on something big and dangerous happening in this Ghats and suddenly goes mission without any trace. Just like smoke in the air. No clues, no contacts. Now I understand why Chief gave this mission code 206” I said raising the speed a bit.

“True”

“And what about that text? Why he wanted us to text him ‘it’s hot’?” I asked trying to get another piece of the puzzle.

“Ah that! That was one of his ways to find out if we were able to decrypt his message and had got the exact message without missing out any word or message”

“Makes sense. That’s our Chief!”

“At what time are we meeting Agent Ram?”

“No certain time. He has been notified about our whereabouts and would be waiting for us near that Herangadi Bust Stop at a roughly calculated time of 1 PM. We have to reach by then. How many days has it been since you showed your speeding skills in Ghats?”

“There has been a long gap. But today is the chance” I said raising the speed a bit more as we drove towards Honnavar.

The brain of any spy is specially made and further more trained to stop thinking about anything other than the mission. Especially when a mission involves something like saving a life, the brain rarely gets a chance to think about anything other than plotting the next actions for the mission.

Our brains too had started putting up all the required thoughts for this mission and had turned as noisy as silent it was out in that lovely green  scenery which had turned blank and useless for us now. The only thing that we saw now was this Rescue Mission and a Long Long Day!

Mission Begins next Sunday!

Vishal…

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