The Enemy Within

Chapter 10

Chief Khan holds up his hand and everyone quiets down, "Let's not hit the panic button so soon. All we know for sure is that he copied a file. We have managed to salvage some data from his hard drive including the file that was copied. Our best tech people are at work on this – but currently the copied file is heavily encrypted and they could not crack it yet. So even if it is somewhere, the encryption will make sure it cannot be accessed by a regular person."

The Home Minister shakes his head wearily, "Chief Khan, this is a real can of worms. How do you plan to recover this data? Do we know if he has passed it on to someone?"

Chief Khan nods, "We know that the file was copied and we are currently getting a debrief from the team at Jaisalmer. We will get a blow-by-blow account from them and retrace every step to find it. Rathore is putting a task force together as we speak. They will fly out to Jaisalmer on the first available flight. Also we are doing a complete deep dive into Alan's history to figure out if there was any chance that he was working with someone else."

The Home Minister leans back and let's out a deep sigh, "Keep me updated on every move... This is a national security issue. First of all we are dealing with this new outbreak of the novel Coronavirus – where no one knows what to expect next, it could be a pandemic! Now you are telling me that we might have a huge security leak. I will let the Prime Minister know about this in the morning – he is not going to be happy." He gets up and leaves.

Chief Khan looks around the table, "Ok people; this case takes top priority over everything else. Get your teams together and comb through Alan's background, his personal life, everything. I want to know every little detail – no matter how trivial."

He turns to Rathore, "Assemble your task force in the next couple of hours, we will meet back here at 11 p.m. for a debrief. Everyone else, back to work." Everyone moves out quickly.

Khan and Rathore open a file and go through it. The chief looks wearily at his deputy "I'm getting too old for this business, Rathore... I can't even imagine what we will find out next!"

Rathore pats him sympathetically on the shoulder, "Relax Chief, we will get to the bottom of this... go home and take a shower and have a nice hot meal... you will feel better."

Khan smiles and nods "Good idea – I think I'll do just that. Let's reconvene at midnight here to brief the task force... get our best team on it."

Khan trudges wearily out of the room as Rathore picks up the phone and starts making calls.