KALYUG (8 page)

‘What is it?’

The president, Jagannath thought, was clearly irritated – and just as intrigued – at this last-minute meeting. Irrespective of how senior they were, bureaucrats were often lowest in the totem pole of appointments with the president – coming after foreign heads of state, foreign ministers, Indian leaders (of parties with more than five Lok Sabha members), Indian leaders (of parties with less than or equal to five Lok Sabha members – except just after elections or when a no-confidence motion had been called, at which time they were usually treated on par with the others already mentioned), major industrialists and important family members. For a bureaucrat to not only get an appointment on a Sunday afternoon, not to mention force the rescheduling of a few other meetings, was unheard of – at least since President GK had been sworn in.

When Katara answered, gone was the deference with which he had stood up. In its place was the polite – but undeniable – firmness that he employed in his negotiations.

‘Your Excellency,’ he began, placing a folder on the low table between them, ‘we’ve met only once before, so I doubt you remember me. I’m Nelson Katara and this is my associate, Jagannath Mitra. I am the head of INSAF.’

‘Never heard of it,’ said the president, making no move towards the folder. ‘Central or autonomous?’

‘Autonomous, I guess,’ replied the other with the beginning of a smile. ‘INSAF stands for Indian Security Agencies’ Federation.’

The president nodded appreciatively. ‘Appropriate, I guess. “Insaaf” is Urdu for justice. Are you a new organization? I don’t remember hearing the name before.’

‘Well . . . actually, we were formed in 2007, shortly after the Mumbai attacks.’

GK’s surprise was writ large on his face. Over the last ten years, he had held the home ministry, under which INSAF should have been placed, a few times. Despite the constant churn in his portfolios – which he had always privately held to be the work of his long-time colleague who now occupied the prime minister’s chair – he was sure he would have remembered being briefed on the agency’s existence. At least, for having such a clever acronym.

Katara saw the expression on the president’s face, and continued. ‘Neither the prime minister nor the . . . party chairperson knows about us. In fact, I doubt anyone in the political establishment is aware of us at all.’

‘Do you mean to tell me that you have been operating for five years without the government’s approval?’ GK asked incredulously.

There was no change in the visitor’s demeanour as he answered, ‘We’ve had the government’s approval, yes. But not this government’s.’ As the president’s eyes narrowed, he continued calmly, ‘The home minister at the time had proposed the setting up of a national investigative agency – but all of us working in Intelligence knew it would take a few more years to materialize. We couldn’t afford to wait, though – I am sure you remember how badly the country needed to salvage its pride and exact some revenge. INSAF was the result.

‘The government you refer to, Your Excellency, is different from the one I am talking about. Yours is of elected members who keep changing every five years. I refer to the officials who’ve been working in this field for decades, who’ve built up their competencies and their understanding and risked their lives to keep India safe.

‘Soon after 26/11, all the Intelligence chiefs – the non-political appointees, that is – met to discuss setting up a single clearinghouse for intel from the various departments. Everyone was there – RAW, BSF, Military Intelligence, IB, CBI . . . all of them sworn to secrecy at any cost, pledged to a charter that allows us to do whatever it takes to protect our country from dangers, internal and external.’

‘But – but,’ sputtered the president, ‘that’s preposterous. How can you take a decision like that? You are not allowed to – how dare you? All of you? I’ll have each and every single one of you punished for –’

‘For doing something that needed doing,’ interrupted Katara. ‘A necessary evil, if you want to label us. But hear me out and spare us the threats. Do you think we would have exposed ourselves to you without being able to make threats of our own?’

As the president started to protest, Nelson Katara shut him up with one final question. ‘Do you think we would be here right now without first shutting down Powerhouse?’

16th September, 2012. New Delhi.

I listened with rapt attention as Raghav Menon explained the history of INSAF to me. How, in a rare moment of unity, the top Intelligence chiefs in the country had foregone traditional turf wars and instituted an organization that was freed from such meaningless limitations. How, over the past few years, the same organization had grown from strength to strength, absorbing the best and most talented minds from every service to set up a corps of agents that rivalled the Mossad for cunning, the CIA for funding, the KGB for ruthlessness and the ISI for penetration. I dismissed most of the comparisons as hyperbole but I was still blown away by the possibility of such an organization existing for so long without being exposed.

It was also evident that Raghav Menon was an employee of INSAF.

‘An agent,’ he corrected me when I remarked that he was being the ideal employee, the hyper-enthused evangelist. ‘But yes, I guess I do get carried away when I talk about INSAF. Until today, we were completely forbidden to talk about the federation to anybody outside of it. It’s actually an honour for you – you’re one of the first few civilians allowed to know about it.’

‘And I appreciate it,’ I told him. The sarcasm was lost on him. Despite his passionate argument earlier – or perhaps exactly because of the passion in his arguments – I was still leaning towards a ruling of ‘diminished mental capacity’. A new possibility occurred to me – what if Raghav Menon had actually been an agent of the Research and Analysis Wing, or maybe even the Central Bureau of Investigation, but was now an undiagnosed lunatic? That would explain the access to planes and chauffeur-driven cars and the far-fetched scenarios he was trying to impress me with.

That still left a disturbing question, however. Why me?

‘In your book,’ he said, breaking into my chain of thought, ‘you’ve mentioned a loosely-formed cartel of businessmen who finance the coup.’

‘What about it?’

‘What if the reality is different?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What if this cartel actually exists? But they are not for a coup, they are against it. Because they’ve already bought a lot of influence across the political spectrum. What if they are the ones remotely running the government and dictating its policies?’

‘They would need a lot of money,’ I said, thinking that the hole I was punching into his hypothesis was big enough to shut him up. I needed to think, to find a way out of this predicament without getting myself arrested or, worse, shot. ‘We’ve got enough billionaires in the country who can outbid everyone else. Ambani. Tata. Mittal. Premji. They would give your cartel a tough run for their money, and they’d probably prevail too. Unless, of course, they are a part of the cartel.’

‘Money alone would be an unequal battlefield,’ he agreed. ‘But what if this cartel had so much more to bargain with? Scandalous information on family members. Influence with foreign governments. Labour unions. The ability to make or break the lives of you and your descendants . . . and the wealth of an Ambani or a Tata or a Mittal . . .’

‘As unlikely as that seems,’ I said, sighing, ‘I’ll bite. What would you call this cartel of yours?’

‘We call it the Powerhouse.’

23rd March, 2012. New Delhi.

The mobile studio was like an oven, slowly baking its occupants as it waited in the uncovered parking lot of Fortune Mall. Despite the attack less than twenty-four hours ago, the neighbourhood was bustling with visitors, secure in their faith that the assailants would not return to the scene of their crime. The lot was largely empty, with visitors preferring to park underground to avoid their vehicles heating up. NDNN’s
van had no choice – going underground would cut off its satellite access and so it remained under the hot sun, roasting silently.

Richa Naik jabbed her finger at the screen, shouting excitedly, ‘That’s it. Pause it there . . . pause it!’

‘Jeez, Richa,’ muttered the cameraman. ‘I’m doing it. Don’t touch my screen!’

‘Sorry, Vinod,’ said the young woman without the slightest sign of sincerity. ‘But look at this. The first victim to be shot is this lady here – the one talking on the phone.’

‘Yeah, so?’ The CCTV grab was grainy and hardly fit for broadcast television, especially in these days of HDTVs and digital cable, but on the small screen inside the studio, it was saved from the pixellation that would have distorted the image at higher resolutions.

‘That would be Mrs Iqbal Qureshi – the wife of the major-general we tried to get an interview with last night? Look at her hair – she’s got it covered with a hijab. And . . . can you zoom in?’

Vinod grunted. He could not understand her excitement, but then, that was not his job anyway. Besides, he liked her. She was so much nicer – and far less condescending – than that jerk who was the news anchor these days. Holding the joystick gingerly, he pushed it upwards, zooming in smoothly on the image of the victim. For the umpteenth time, as the picture started to break down into pixels, he objected silently to the amount she had paid the security guard to sneak out a copy of the CCTV footage before it was sealed by the authorities.

‘There!’ Richa screamed triumphantly. ‘Around her wrist. That bracelet she is wearing. It says 786.’

This time, Vinod just glared at her.

Exasperated, she pressed the play button. The video moved forward a few seconds before she pressed the pause button.

On the screen, the attacker and his victim were both visible. They were very close to each other, perhaps just a few feet. Certainly close enough to be able to read the digits off her bracelet.

‘That’s the clue,’ Richa stated emphatically. ‘He could see her bracelet, he would have known she was a Muslim. He wouldn’t have shot her if he was one too, right?’

‘I don’t know, Richa,’ said the cameraman thoughtfully. ‘I mean, they are all Muslims in Pakistan – and that doesn’t stop them from killing each other, right? Maybe the guy just didn’t care.’

He could see by the resolute stubbornness in her eyes that she refused to be discouraged. ‘Or,’ she said, ‘he might not be a Muslim. It could be one of these Hindu terror groups we keep hearing about. Maybe they want us to think it was the LeT or SIMI, but –’

Vinod’s phone buzzed. Recognizing the number, he held up a hand to ask her to be quiet. He mumbled a few affirmatives while she kept shifting her weight from one foot to another, impatiently waiting for him to hang up so that he could clean up the video and she could make her finding public.

He hung up and then, just as she was about to open her mouth, he said, ‘Told you it was one of the crazies. They’ve caught a couple of these guys. And guess what?’ He didn’t want to be sadistic, so he told her straightaway. ‘He says they are with the Islamic Jihad. And he’s sorry that a Muslim woman was killed, but feels that it was probably punishment from God for her husband siding with the quote-infidels-unquote.’

16th September, 2012. New Delhi. Rashtrapati Bhavan.

I was shown into an antechamber which was already occupied by three people. I recognized the president immediately, but
the other two were complete strangers. All of them turned towards me as soon as I entered. Not for the first time, I rued the fact that Menon had refused to accompany me to this meeting. From the looks of it, I had interrupted a very important discussion – not really the right setting for finding out that you are at the butt-end of a very bad joke.

‘Who are you?’ barked the president.

‘He’s Balamurali Selvam,’ said the man next to him after a perfunctory nod at me. Menon had briefed me on my contacts inside. I presumed the speaker, correctly as it turned out, to be Nelson Katara. There was hardly a wrinkle on his suit as he stood up to shake hands with me. ‘You must remember him – he demolished you during a debate on national television – I believe it was NDNN – when his book was banned.’

‘What’s he doing here?’

Relieved that I was expected – and therefore, finally some proof that Raghav Menon had not been talking through his hat since the time I met him – I ignored the lack of warmth in the question. I was not particularly fond of the president. He and his ilk were responsible for my persecution two years ago and the nightmares I still woke up to – whatever satisfaction I had gleamed from the victory the man had alluded to had soon turned to ash, for it was the very next evening when I had been arrested.

I glanced at the other man and he smiled back at me. But there was something disconcerting about his expression, as if he was looking through me. Six feet tall and visibly fit, clean-shaven and erect, his suit quite obviously well-worn with a shirt that did not go with it, I almost pegged him for one of the presidential bodyguards before I remembered that I was also supposed to meet with Katara’s deputy, a Jagannath Mitra. Was this him?

‘He’s the historian who’s going to document everything that happens,’ Nelson Katara said. ‘One day, when this is all over and people ask, “What happened?”, we are going to have an accurate account. Proof that we didn’t rouse you up from your bathtub.’

The president opened his mouth to speak before checking his impulse. I had this sudden feeling that he was choosing his battles. Should he insist on my leaving or . . . whatever else they had been discussing before I showed up?

Eventually, he made his decision. ‘So what do you want me to do?’

Oh, good. That’s what I would like to know too.

‘We want you to announce a coup, Your Excellency.’

‘A what?’

This should be interesting.

‘A coup. In exactly half an hour from now, you are going on national television and announcing the dismissal of the Kuldip Razdan government.’

‘You’re crazy!’

Amen to that.

Continuing to speak as if no one else had, Nelson Katara concluded his demands with a flourish. ‘And we want you to announce that, for the next five years, you shall head the new government.’