Authors: R. SREERAM
‘. . . the new agency will be called INSAF – Indian Security Agencies’ Federation – and will always operate under the joint offices of the home minister, the prime minister and the president. This agency will have a broad mandate that, in its simplest terms, simply means that it is their job to protect the country from within just as it is the border forces’ duty to protect us from external dangers . . .’
2nd October, 2012. INSAF HQ.
‘Did you know he was going to do it?’
Nelson massaged his temples.
GK, you goddamn
. . . he didn’t bother finishing the thought. You can take the politician out of politics, but you can’t take politics out of the politician, he thought.
He glared at Jagannath. ‘Yeah. I encouraged him to go public about INSAF. What do
you
think?’
Jagannath backed off. ‘Sorry, Boss. Just thought he might have run it by you.’
You don’t have time.
Nelson remembered GK’s warning. Trying to shake off his despondency, he stood up and paced the floor. In a way, GK was right. The nation needed the hope that something was being done. The people needed to know that they would be taken care of. GK had done what he had to. Nelson didn’t have to like it, but he could live with it.
‘He didn’t, okay?’ he asked, still feeling defensive. ‘But forget about it. Just because Kalyug is almost done, it doesn’t mean that we get to relax. We’ve still got to figure out who is behind this string of attacks.’
There was a knock on the door and one of their assistants peeked in. ‘Sir,’ he said, addressing Jagannath. ‘You need to see this.’
As Jagannath stood up to follow him, he turned to Nelson with a rueful smile. ‘Do us a favour, Boss. Please make sure that GK doesn’t bring reservation here too.’
2nd October, 2012. New Delhi.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Llong hissed. ‘Get back inside!’
Sir Harold turned to him with a smile that was almost beatific. ‘You’re sure this is the place they held you?’ Behind him, too familiar for comfort, Llong could see the compound he had escaped from. Through the bars of the gates, he could see the debris that was piled high in the middle but the guard’s cabin was still intact. He had seen its exteriors only once, at night, and that too in the midst of a fire-fight, but there was no doubt in his mind.
‘Yes it is, you old fool!’ he said, glancing nervously at the road behind him. Any moment now, he expected a troop of INSAF soldiers to swoop in on their vehicle and take him back into custody. ‘Let’s go.’
Instead of complying, the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service walked to the gate and looked straight up at the surveillance camera mounted high on a pole near the cabin. Then he smiled, pulled a gun out and shot out the lock on the chain. Llong jumped out of his skin at the retort of the weapon. At that moment, if Sir Harold had made the mistake of leaving the keys in the car, he would have driven away without a second’s hesitation. Senile old men deserved what they got.
With a satisfied smile, Sir Harold walked back to their car. ‘And now,’ he said, calmly holstering his pistol. ‘We wait.’
3rd October, 2012. Singapore.
The day had just ticked over to the next when Gyandeep finished relaying his instructions over the phone. Hanging up, he noticed the thoughtful expression on his host’s face.
‘Is all that really necessary?’ the chief asked. ‘You’ve just placed orders for executing almost the entire level of our India team. We were blind without you, but we will almost certainly be crippled now.’
‘Relax,’ said Gyandeep, finally feeling relaxed himself. The end-game was near. He reached out and pulled a cigar from the stash that the chief had placed on the table. ‘Haven’t you realized that we’ve been penetrated too badly not to do this? INSAF knew too much about us – they had to have a senior snitch. We don’t have the time to find that rat, so let’s flush the whole thing and start with a brand new crew.’
‘But that will set us back by years,’ protested the chief. He was worried by the Indian’s attitude. There was an element of the suicidal in the way he had redrawn the plans he, the chief himself, had outlined less than a week earlier . . . almost as if he no longer cared about Powerhouse. As if the only thing he cared about was revenge.
Gyandeep Sharma waved the objection aside with a casual exhalation of smoke. ‘No, it won’t. We have money, and money will get us what we don’t have to pay time for.’ He smiled humourlessly at the chief. ‘See, that’s the thing you haven’t understood about India even after all these years. That’s why your explosions have failed, if you will pardon the pun, to ignite the passion of the average Indian.’
He took another puff before continuing his discourse. ‘You thought the death tolls in the first two cases would outrage them. It won’t. Beyond a point, death becomes a statistic. It’s much more effective to play on the possibilities.’ He tapped the ash off the tip. ‘For instance, what if the bomb had exploded
after
the kids were on board? What
if
the bomb had been timed properly? If those kids had died, you wouldn’t have the horror of the what-ifs. And then it wouldn’t have been so horrifying, would it?’
There was a time when Gyandeep had been respectful, almost fearful, of the chief. Now, glancing at the man on the opposite side of the table, he was left only with a profound sense of the futility of their lives. Of all the empires conquered, of all those victories that were powerless in the face of death, and not even their own deaths at that. At that moment, he pitied the chief for having no one to mourn – he knew how that felt.
‘If you really want to pit one Indian against another, you’ve got to hit them where they really feel it. Their temples, their mosques, churches. Their caste symbols. Those are their identities now. That’s the only way to suck in enough of them to create that critical mass. That’s the only way to ensure that India spirals into inescapable chaos.’
He chuckled, almost a replica of the chief’s from the previous evening. ‘Of course, that’s what President Timothy Jackson wants. And you know what, my dear Chief? I don’t really give a damn anymore.’
3rd October, 2012. INSAF HQ.
‘We’ve got good news, bad news, worse news and even-worse news,’ Jagannath informed his boss as soon as he came in.
Nelson Katara looked balefully at his subordinate. ‘Give me the good news first. Then the bad. If the worse can wait, I’d appreciate it.’
Jagannath followed him into the office and shut the door. ‘The good news is that we have an eyewitness for Leela’s assassination now. We finished debriefing Llong last night and he swears that the same team that stormed the safe-house also shot her dead. The way he described it matches our reconstruction of the event, and he confirms that they took pictures of her right afterwards. I guess those are the same pictures we intercepted.’
Nelson nodded. He hoped the bad news was as . . . weak as the good news was. Leela wasn’t very high in the list of his concerns. Llong was even lower.
‘The bad?’
‘Llong was accompanied by Sir Harold Holmes.’
Nelson groaned. ‘Were you able to confirm it?’
‘Yes. He gave us a few protocols that checked out. And though there are very few pictures of him in existence, our man in London came through. We confirmed the bona fides just a few minutes ago. It’s official, I guess. We’ve got the head of British Intelligence in our custody.’
‘Is that all?’
‘No,’ said Jagannath. ‘As of five minutes ago, the British High Commission has passed along to our MEA an official letter of protest against the detention of one of its most honourable citizens. Last known location, right outside our HQ.’
‘Do you mean to tell me we picked him up without checking for a backup detail?’
‘Either that, or he was wearing a transmitter,’ Jagannath conceded. ‘To be fair, we didn’t know who we were dealing with until it was too late.’
‘What’s next on our shit-list?’
‘You remember Qazi?’
‘The terrorist we hope we’ve turned?’
‘The
ex
-terrorist we hope we’ve turned,’ Jagannath corrected. ‘He called in today. Apparently, the underground jihadi network is buzzing with talk of an impending hit. Any day now. And it’s going to be a big one in Delhi. Most likely a repeat of 26/11. The recruiters are looking for cannon fodder with enough experience with guns and grenades. And before you ask, yes, our guy made the cut. And no, he hasn’t been told what the target is – or targets are, as the case may be.’
Nelson chose to look at the silver lining. ‘But we are slightly better placed to know when and where, than if we didn’t have him. Assuming he can get back in touch with us. Assuming we can trust him. Assuming
they
trust him with the right info. Slim odds, but still something to hope for. Remind me once again, Jagannath. Why did we ever think we could actually save the world in the first place?’
Jagannath knew an answer was not expected. Nelson just needed to let off some steam.
‘And your last piece of good cheer for the morning?’
Jagannath passed across a sheet with a list of names written on them. He didn’t say anything for the few seconds it took his boss to go through the list and identify the pattern.
‘The first letters of these names spell “Gyandeep”,’ he said sarcastically, shaking the sheet of paper. ‘Very creative, but I hope that, next time, you will either arrange the names alphabetically or leave them as they are. I am sure there are other things that could benefit from the application of your valuable time.’
The sarcasm did not daunt Jagannath in the least. ‘That list is chronological, in the order that they died. In every case, the killer or killers left very clear indicators about the exact time that the murder had taken place. Every single name on that list was killed within fifteen minutes of the previous one. Then there was a pause, an hour’s break. Like the space between two words. Then four more hits, all on known ex-Powerhouse/Infinity personnel. Heeralal Desai in Ahmedabad, Ebenzer James in Puducherry, Rahman Khan in Pune and Eldo Fernandez in Kochi.’
‘
Gyandeep here
?’ Nelson stared at Jagannath, incredulously. ‘But . . . Gyandeep’s dead, isn’t he?’
‘I’ve thought about that,’ Jagannath answered sombrely. ‘
Someone
jumped. We
assumed
it was Gyandeep because the pattern was there. Gyandeep stopping on the Sea Link every day. But what if he had arranged for a double to jump in his place and then made his escape while we were hoping his body would wash up on the shore?’
For the few minutes it took Nelson to absorb the shock, both of them sat silently, caught up in their own thoughts. Finally, deciding that as incredible as it seemed, it was better to operate under the assumption that Jagannath’s theory was correct, Nelson asked him what their next step was.
‘Simple,’ his deputy replied. ‘We have to flush him out. If Gyandeep’s alive, then these attacks make sense. It’s Powerhouse hitting back at us and at the government. It’ll stop only if we stop Powerhouse, maybe even the big ones. And to do that, we need to take him out once and for all. Him, and whoever helped him escape. My guess is that’s the next guy higher up on the totem pole in Powerhouse.’
‘And because you say it’s simple, can I assume that you have a simple plan to go with it?’ Nelson asked.
Jagannath nodded. ‘It’s what we primed him for from the start. It’s time we made use of him.’
Nelson understood instantly. ‘Selvam?’
‘Selvam.’
21
11th October, 2012. New Delhi. 9.58 a.m.
She didn’t answer my call but returned it a few minutes later as I was retrieving my luggage from the carousel. ‘Hi,’ she said. I picked up on the shadows in her voice immediately.
‘Hi,’ I replied, wondering if I should say anything. What the heck, I thought. ‘What happened? You sound a little . . . down.’
‘JNU,’ Richa explained, referring to the Jawaharalal Nehru University that was the source of the four conflicting seasonings of thought in India – a bit of right, a dash of centre, a lot of left and a splash of the far left. ‘There’s been a bombing in the campus. One student died, a few more injured. That makes it six campus bombings in the last three days.’
‘Campus politics? Or something more sinister, like Powerhouse?’
‘Powerhouse? Is that why you’re here?’
‘Powerhouse
is
the reason I’m here,’ I agreed, catching sight of the first of my bags. ‘But I don’t know if they’re behind these attacks. That’s why I asked you. Has anyone claimed responsibility yet?’
‘No one. I’ve been trying to reach Raghav for a tip but he’s not answering. If you see him, give him hell from me, okay?’
‘Will do,’ I said, feeling a little more cheerful. ‘He’s picking
me up from the airport. Why don’t we swing by and you can grill him yourself, huh?’
That would also give me the chance to see her at the earliest, instead of waiting for an evening when she would be free. Since the presidential announcement, the demand for her services had multiplied, starting with her old firm NDNN that had offered her five times her last-drawn. She had turned all those offers down in favour of the BBC, explaining to me that the BBC would have more sense than to ever hire that ‘clown’ she once answered to.
‘Sounds good,’ she finally said, much to my relief.
‘Okay. So . . . it should take us what, about thirty minutes to get there?’
‘Thereabouts. I’ll need that much time anyway to clean up my footage and send it back to the studio. Once you get here, give me a call. I’ll let you know how much longer I’ll take.’
I was about to agree and hang up when she whispered my name urgently, as if she was checking if I had hung up. ‘Yeah?’ I asked, bringing the phone back to my ear.
‘When you get here, find a way to talk to me. Alone.’
10.02 a.m.
‘Is all this really necessary?’ the chief asked.
Gyandeep Sharma looked almost bored with the question. The chief was starting to get on his nerves with his constant double-guessing their – his – plans. What did he have to be so uptight about? There had been no problems so far, even with the entry into India via Maldives. Their passports – genuine, but illegal – had been worth every dollar they had paid for them.
‘Relax, Chief. Don’t you want to be there for the climax? When Powerhouse triumphs once again over its enemies, especially when these enemies have probably been the most serious threats to us in recent memory?’
‘I would have been quite content to do all that from Singapore, thank you,’ said the chief testily. ‘What I don’t understand is your decision to risk both of us on this madcap mission of yours. And why did you need to pull Jacob out of his assignment?’
‘Jacob has not been pulled out of his assignment,’ Gyandeep said. ‘In fact, I’ve probably made his task easier. And, as for being there on the ground when everything happens . . . look at it this way. If anything happens to me, you will be able to take charge immediately. And if things go off as smoothly as they have so far – well, why worry?’
Touch wood, the chief thought absently. He didn’t mention his biggest concern – of flying. It was bad enough to have to fly in and out of the spit of land that passed for the airstrip in Male, but to actually spend hours more on a private charter from the southernmost airport in the mainland to the national capital – and the turbulence they had suffered en route – was something he would have paid millions not to suffer. I’m flying direct on the way back, he promised himself. That, and the thought that they were just under an hour from landing in New Delhi, made him feel better.
A soft alarm sounded over the intercom and the pilot’s voice came through the cabin speakers. ‘Mr Sharma, this is the captain. The Delhi ATC has cleared our flight path – we should be touching down on schedule in about thirty minutes, although we are already over the outskirts. You can plug your SatPhone into the port now.’
10.07 a.m.
Raghav looked suitably apologetic when I told him that Richa had been trying to reach him all morning.
‘I know,’ he said, placing my luggage into the trunk of his car. ‘I saw her missed calls. But there have been more urgent concerns this morning. Get in. I’ll brief you on the way.’
But it was like a switch had been thrown. As soon as we had pulled away from the kerb, Raghav changed topics without any further explanation. ‘How’s your new book coming along?’ he asked.
‘Haven’t you read today’s papers?’ I asked sarcastically, still slightly resentful about the way my latest assignment had found its way to the public domain before I had even understood its terms completely. When I accepted Jagannath’s proposal to write a complete exposé on Powerhouse – supported by every possible documentation, classified or otherwise – I hadn’t expected him to turn it into a three-ring PR circus. Unlike the last time, the advance was already paid into my account before I had signed the deal with the publisher he had set up; before the end of the day, according to E!, I was, ‘Busy with my next path-breaking bestseller, an insider’s look at the shadowy world of Powerhouse – a cartel that has determined the fates of this world more than once.’
Raghav grinned. ‘I guess you aren’t entirely thrilled by the attention they are giving you now, are you?’
‘You have to see it to believe it,’ I told him. ‘I went to the Nungambakkam RTO yesterday to renew my licence. By evening, they were reporting that I was following up on a connection between Powerhouse and the RTO.’ I shook my head in disbelief. ‘With everything that’s happening around us, you’d think they’d have better things to do.’
‘Speaking of which,’ Raghav said, dropping the bombshell, ‘that’s why we’ve brought you here. We intercepted some chatter about an attempt on your life in Chennai. Jagannath thought it would be better if you moved here, where we can keep an eye on you all the time.’ Guessing correctly that I was about to protest, he added quickly, ‘It’s just a short-term measure. We can’t spare a team to look out for you in Chennai until things settle down. But over here, we’ve got enough spare staff to have someone with you 24/7.’
10.12 a.m.
‘Jagannath Mitra?’
‘Who’s this?’
‘How sad that you should fail to recognize my voice. True, we’ve spoken to each other only once before, but surely you should be more familiar with my voice if you’ve investigated me thoroughly. In case you’re still wondering . . . no, I have not dropped off the face of the earth over the Sea Link. Is that a sufficiently enlightening clue?’
‘Gyandeep Sharma!’
Gyandeep chuckled. He could imagine Jagannath’s stunned expression, could empathize with the other’s sense of incredulity. He had felt the same barely a month ago. How quickly the tables had turned!
‘Yes, and thank you. At least my so-called death was noticed. You are a busy man, Jagannath, and I have commitments on my time as well – so let me cut to the chase here. And don’t bother tracing this call. I’ll tell you where I am. We are in a private flight just a few minutes away from landing at New Delhi, and I’d appreciate it if you could send someone to pick us up. Direct them to the private flights’ terminal – we are in a golden Dornier. And the reason I’ve decided to extend an olive branch is because, obviously, neither of us is really winning anything here. Let’s call a truce. You get your peace, and, if you’ll pardon the pun, we’d like to close down that piece about Powerhouse your man is writing.’
‘I’ll have to think about that.’
‘Oh, Jagannath . . . Jagannath! You know this is as good a bargain as you’ll ever get. Even if you don’t want it, I’m sure your boss, the eminently diplomatic Nelson Katara would. Why don’t you check with him and let me know? You have my number. If he too passes on this offer . . . well, I can only hope that history will not judge you too harshly for the consequences.’
‘Can your threats, Mr Sharma. Your Powerhouse is all but destroyed – no thanks to your own cannibalism. Why do I even have to waste time talking to you? I could just shoot you out of the sky.’
‘True, but we are already over the city. You don’t know what we are carrying – for all you know, I could be having a dirty bomb with me that’ll go off if anything happens to the plane. Again, the consequences will be on your head. A dirty bomb over Delhi . . . tch! The casualty numbers would be mind-boggling.’
He paused to let that possibility sink in. ‘Look, maybe I do need this meeting more than you do. So let me make it sweeter. We’ll do it on your turf. Your headquarters. Two hours from now. And I’m coming with the Asian head of operations for Powerhouse, so you could potentially make a deal with us across the continent.’
He heard what might be hurried whispers at the other end and surmised that Jagannath was probably discussing it with Nelson. After a long minute, Jagannath came back on the line. ‘Okay, let’s do it.’
‘My friend has a concern, though, and the more I think about it, the more I find it worthy of addressing. We want a guarantee of safe-passage. In writing as soon as your vehicle arrives to pick us up at the airport. And we want two moderators present as well.’
‘Who are you talking about?’
‘One is President Gopi Kishan. I would feel a lot safer in his presence. Tell him this is a one-time offer only and if he takes it up, he might very well end up with a truly golden legacy.’
Both of them knew enough of GK to know that it would indeed appeal to the man’s ego. ‘Who’s the other?’
‘Your author. Mr Balamurali Selvam. Don’t bother telling me that he’s in Chennai – I know as well as you do that he’s just landed in Delhi. I want him to destroy, in our presence, everything he’s written about Powerhouse.’
10.30 a.m.
‘Today. Time nt sure. Airport. Qazi’
‘Shit!’ said the handler when he saw the SMS. An attack on the Indira Gandhi International Airport was on the ‘worst-case scenarios’ list. ‘Any idea who’s behind it?’ he typed back.
A few seconds later, he got the reply. ‘A man Yakub in charge. V r gng nw. Will stop if poss.’
The handler took a minute to compose his reply. ‘Will ask men not to shoot you if they can identify you. Any way to do that?’
He waited, but when five minutes passed without a reply, he gave up. He could only hope that Qazi had been sensible enough to destroy both the phone and the SIM card so that it couldn’t be traced back to him. But without any way to identify him as a friendly, Qazi’s fate would be of his own making if and when the attack started. The handler couldn’t risk his commandos’ safety by asking them to ask first and shoot later.
He uttered a silent prayer for the young man before raising the alert. As the rest of his team assembled, he made his decision – he would join the defences at the airport. He was the only one of his current squad who knew what Qazi looked like – the rest of the team that had hit the terrorists at Vagamon had returned to their post in Kochi.
Within minutes, everyone was geared up. As he boarded the van that would take them to the airport, the handler glanced heavenwards and asked his God to help out in any way He saw fit.
Inshallah
.
10.32 a.m.
We used Raghav’s law-enforcement badge to find and make our way to where Richa was winding up her work. She was a bit surprised when we suddenly appeared in front of her, especially since she had not answered my call when we entered the car-park. Before she could voice her question, however, Raghav flashed her his card and she understood instantly.
It took her a few more minutes, time that Raghav and I spent pondering, uselessly, I must admit, the pros and cons of the contributions of the university’s alumni to the country. As she finally walked towards us, snapping her bag closed, she gave me a look that was a clear reminder of her demand for privacy. I didn’t panic – I had already thought of a way.
‘Hey, before we push off, can you point me to the restrooms?’
‘You can use the facilities at the headquarters,’ Raghav said, butting in. ‘We’ll be there soon.’
I shot him a look. ‘It’s urgent.’
He grinned.
‘Come on,’ Richa said, taking the cue. ‘I’ll take you. I need to use it myself, freshen up a little.’ She handed her bag to Raghav, much to his chagrin. ‘Hold this, please.’ As she pulled out a small purse from inside, I grinned back at him. He made quite a sight, standing there with a lady’s handbag in his hand. Hardly the agent provocateur he was supposed to be.
‘What is it?’ I asked when we were sufficiently far away. ‘You said you wanted to talk.’
‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you,’ she said, and my heart sped up a little bit. Hope, you fickle thing . . .
‘Go on,’ I prompted her as she paused.
She stopped in her tracks and turned around. Satisfied that no one was behind us, she continued, ‘Ever since you told me you were coming back, I’ve been wondering the same thing you have – why you?’
‘Oh.’
‘Exactly. Why were
you
chosen? Sure, you had problems with the current establishment – but how could they have hoped to turn you over to their way of thinking? How sure could anyone at INSAF have been that you would fall in with their plans?’
‘I haven’t,’ I pointed out. ‘I keep telling them this is a bad idea, but nobody seems to listen.’
‘Exactly,’ she repeated. ‘So what else do you have that would be useful to them?’
After a moment’s pause, I realized I was expected to come up with an answer. ‘My writing?’ I offered, imagining a colon and the letter P following it. ‘My sense of moral outrage?’
She gave me the feminine equivalent of the look that I had given Raghav just a minute ago. ‘And the recent fame that has attached itself to you. Doesn’t it seem . . . contrived?’