16.2 Third Infiltration

There stood six tube houses built of metal and canvas fabric, doors to the ends and no windows. A separate shed housed a generator to supply electricity to air-conditioning inside the tubes. An open shower with three shower heads and taps. Mala snapped photos from a camera that remained in mid-air. She did not bother to read the notices on the doors but signboards read; ‘NO ADMITTANCE’. She took pictures of all that.

Mala opened few doors and noticed the insulation underneath. In one of the tubes, she found a table fixed to the length of the unit with spotlights hanging from the roof, shelves on the other side, all stainless-steel. It looked pretty empty though. In three other tubes, she found narrow clinical beds. She noted the gasmasks and overalls, trays full of test tubes and glassware. Lockers equipped with stainless-steel utensils, hypodermic needles and syringes in plastic packings, refrigerators and too many amber bottles on the racks.

It was a compact lab combined in six tubes and designed to a certain level of bio-safety though that safety had long breached. She was exposed to a deadly virus or radiation.

Mala took photos and then looked for items she could carry. She couldn’t find a used piece of cotton or a swab, a slide or a needle, a piece of cloth or a note. She picked a handful of bottles randomly not knowing a thing on the labels. She looked for the word ‘CAUTION’ that appeared everywhere on the lockers and the bottles. She separated the pillowcase from a pillow and dropped the bottles carefully. She entered the tube with the glovebox and fume hood. Picked some tools and a flask inside the fume hood. She checked a dustbin which was empty. She used a blade and cut off the gloves from the glovebox.

Mala picked some disposal bags from a rack and stepped out to collect soil samples. She squatted in front of the doors and filled them. She did not bring a pen to note down so she tied knots to the count starting from north tube to south. Two hours passed.

Rain escalated. She reached the shower area and picked soil samples from there too.

Mala experienced this manoeuvre quite revealing and sensational as she posed nude. She was conscious to the microscopic hairs on her body. She certainly did not want anyone to see. And she could not be seen. She knew that. However, crouching to dig the earth out in the open made her warily look around for snoops. Not because Mala was only involved in a covert operation but she was naked too.

Finally, she had to take the pillowcase hidden in the leaves to the spot where she left her handbag.

Mala arrived at the spot to come across two women cavorting with two foreigners in the rain. She dropped the pillowcase and surveyed. She had to sneak in through the bushes to reach the bag or she could simply cross in front of them because they would not see. She stepped closer standing in the rain. None of them noticed. They were not aware of the presence of a human being because Mariam Mala was invisible. She listened to their utterances quite unintelligible. They were not English.

She crouched close enough to enter the bushes when suddenly one guy turned his face and stopped his eyes at her. Mala paused her movement. She was six feet from them. Water dripped down her body. He could see a figure behind forming shoulders and arms like an ice sculpture. And then he noticed sparse frills of ombre hair and shockingly a pair of eyes – and painted lips.

He was thrown back in shock and kicked away with his heels. The brown girl saw the image too. Mala could not help it but smiled getting up on her feet. The girl saw a row of teeth. She was horrified. She got up and ran away screaming on top of her voice.

Giuseppe pointed this looming image to his mate who lay on top of a brown girl who was scarpering away. Massimiliano could not figure a posture but he thought he caught a movement of something entering the bushes brushing the leaves.

Mariam Mala thought fast. She quickly retrieved her bag and shoes and bolted away through the coppice before they came looking for her. And the duo did look poking into the bushes in the rain few yards behind where she left the pillowcase full of contents.

Mala waited for them to give up and go in order to pull the things away.

The Italians were in Gan for ten days. There was a loudspeaker on the control tower used to warn the locals of an aircraft coming to land and not to cross the runway, spoken in Divehi, Sinhalese and Urdu. Obviously, none at the tower could speak Italian. The Brits spent days chasing those Italians off the runway as planes came to land. And those Italians were chasing women.

This Italian freighter was pulled off the reef by HMS Lincoln.

Addu folks somehow got the cargo off the ship and spread on the ground in front of the magistrate’s office; now the Secretariat of USIR. A dozen of enormous lengths of cloth material ideal for their sarongs, some 50 yards in length, unwound to dry in the sun. Also laid out to dry were hundreds of shiny new brass Primus stoves. It really was quite a sight.

Dwire returned empty-handed to meet the prime minister at Golden Court, “Sir! I see a man with dual-tone on his face, split down the middle and cloudy in the eye. There’s a lot going on in an unsettled mind.  He is not going to succeed but he can’t see it. He just can’t. He is a proper blind man.”

Prime Minister Virgo saw it as a failure, “You’re unwilling to impose reasonable terms on him. I want you to restore Addu Atoll under the sultanate.”

“I have proposed so. I have asked him to take the asylum now and leave the country,” replied Dwire.

“No,” said the prime minister, “you are not going to take him out of the country.”

“He has British protection. He can leave anytime he wants.”

“I will not allow that. He is a Maldivian citizen and a wanted criminal by the Sultan’s Government. You cannot take him without our permission. If you did, you would face grave consequences.”

“It is for your good, sir,” said Dwire.

“I want him to surrender.”

This failure led further to anti-British demonstrations in Malé. Teachers and other British subjects had to be taken away for their safety immediately.

Minister at Commonwealth Relations Office C J M Portal uttered, “I only hope that negotiations to settle the dispute can be held more successfully. This seems at present just a pious hope.”