MAMista Read Online Free PDF

of President Benz, serene and benevolent, wearing an admiral’s uniform complete with medals and yellow sash. The window shutters were closed but Chori went and checked them carefully. Then he switched on the desk light. It was an ancient brass contraption. Its glass shade made a pool of yellow light on the table while colouring their faces green. Chori returned to the steel safe and tapped on it with his battered fingers. Now it could be seen that three of his fingernails had been roughly torn out. ‘You understand,’ he said, ‘this baby must go. There must be enough explosive to destroy the papers inside. Ifwe just loosen the door it will all be a waste of time.’ Chori was bringing from a cardboard box all the things that Paz wanted: the explosive and the wires and the clocks. ‘We found a little plastic,’ said Chori proudly.
    â€˜What’s inside the safe?’
    â€˜They don’t tell me things like that, señor.’ He looked up to be quite certain that the woman was not in the room. ‘Now, your comrade Inez Cassidy, she is told things like that. But I am just a comrade, comrade.’
    Paz watched him arranging the slab of explosive, and the Mickey Mouse clocks, on the Minister’s polished mahogany desk.
    Emboldened by Paz’s silence, Chori said, ‘Inez Cassidy is a big shot. Her father was an official in the Indian Service: big house, big garden, lots of servants – vacations in Spain.’ There was no need for further description. Trips to Spain put her into a social milieu remote from security guards and night-watchmen. ‘When the revolution is successful the workers will go on working: the labourers will still be digging the fields. My brother who is a bus driver will continue to get up at four in the morning to drive his bus. But your friend Inez Cassidy will be Minister of State Security.’ He smiled. ‘Or maybe Minister of Pensions. Sitting right here, working out ways to prevent people like me from blowing her safe to pieces.’
    Paz used the tape measure and wrote the dimensions of the safe on a piece of paper. Chori looked over his shoulder and read aloud what was written. ‘Sixteen R three, KC. What does it mean?’ Chori asked.
    â€˜R equals the breaching radius in metres, K is the strength of the material and C is the tamping factor.’
    â€˜Holy Jesus!’
    â€˜It’s a simple way of designing the explosion we need.’
    â€˜Designer explosions! And all this time I’ve just been making bangs,’ said Chori.
    Paz slapped the safe. ‘Make a big bang under this fatold bastard and all we will do is shift him into the next room with a headache.’ He took the polish tins and arranged the explosive in them: first the Japanese TNP, then the orange-coloured plastic and finally the grey home-made booster. Then he took a knife and started to carve the plastic, cutting a deep cone from it and arranging the charge so that none was wasted.
    â€˜What are you doing?’
    â€˜Relax, Daddy.’
    â€˜Tell me.’
    â€˜I’m going to focus the rays of the explosion. About forty-five degrees is best. I want it real narrow: like a spotlight. Here, hold this.’ To demonstrate he held the tins to the sides of the safe. He moved them until the tins were exactly opposite each other. ‘The explosions will meet in the middle of the safe, like two express trains in a head-on collision. That will devastate anything inside the safe without wasting energy on the steel safe itself.’
    â€˜Will it make a hole?’
    â€˜Two tiny holes; and the frame will be hardly bent.’
    â€˜I’ve never seen anything like that.’
    Paz looked at him. ‘The man who showed me how, would have put tiny charges in a line all round, focusing them at the centre. But he was an artist. We’d be up all night trying to do that.’
    â€˜It’s great.’
    â€˜It’s not done