Sacred Games

by Vikram Chandra

  ‘He sounds like a lodu, Sardar-ji,’ Gaitonde said. ‘I wouldn’t hire him to wash my cars. But he would do well as a policeman.’

  ‘I’m getting tired of this, Gaitonde,’ Sartaj said. Katekar had his shoulders tensed, he was glowering at Sartaj, wanting him to curse Gaitonde, to shut him up by telling him exactly what kind of bhenchod he was, that they were going to string him up and shove a lathi up his filthy gaand. But, it seemed to Sartaj, to shout abuse at an unhinged man inside an impregnable cube would be spectacularly useless, if momentarily satisfying.

  Gaitonde laughed bitterly. ‘Are your feelings hurt, saab? Should I be more respectful? Should I tell you about the wonderful and astonishing feats of the police, our defenders who give their lives in service without a thought for their own profit?’

  ‘Gaitonde?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll be back. I need a cold drink.’

  Gaitonde became avuncular, affectionate. ‘Yes, yes, of course you do. Hot out there.’

  ‘For you also? A Thums Up?’

  ‘I’ve a fridge in here, chikniya. Just because you’re so fair and so hero-like good looking doesn’t mean you’re extra smart. You get your drink.’

  ‘I will. I’ll be back.’

  ‘What else would you do, Sardar-ji? Go, go.’

  Sartaj walked down the street, and Katekar fell in beside him. The cracked black tarmac swam and shimmered in the heat. The street had emptied, the spectators bored by the lack of explosions and bullets and hungry for lunch. Between Bhagwan Tailors and Trimurti Music, they found the straightforwardly named Best Cafe, which had tables scattered under a neem tree and rattling black floor fans. Sartaj pulled desperately at a Coke, and Katekar sipped at fresh lime and soda, only slightly sweet. He was trying to lose weight. From where they sat they could see Gaitonde’s white bunker. What was Gaitonde doing back in the city? Who was the informant who had given him to Sartaj? All these were questions for later. First catch the man, Sartaj thought, then worry about why and when and how, and he took another sip.

  ‘Let’s blow it up,’ Katekar said.

  ‘With what?’ Sartaj said. ‘And that’ll kill him for sure.’

  Katekar grinned. ‘Yes, sir. So what, sir?’

  ‘And what would the intelligence boys say?’

  ‘Sahib, excuse me, but the intelligence boys are mainly useless bhadwas. Why didn’t they know he was building this thing?’

  ‘Now, that would have been very-very intelligent, wouldn’t it?’ Sartaj said. He leaned back in his chair and stretched. ‘You think we can find a bulldozer?’

  Sartaj had a metal chair brought to the front of the bunker, and he sat on it, patting his face with a cold, wet towel. He was sleepy. The video camera was unmoving and silent.

  ‘Ay, Gaitonde!’ Sartaj said. ‘You there?’

  The camera made its very small buzzing machine noise, nosed about blindly and found Sartaj. ‘I’m here,’ Gaitonde said. ‘Did you get a drink? Shall I phone and order something for you to eat?’

  Sartaj thought suddenly that Gaitonde had learned that big voice from the movies, from Prithviraj Kapoor in a smoking jacket being magnanimous to the lowly. ‘I’m fine. Why don’t you order something for yourself?’

  ‘I don’t want food.’

  ‘You’ll stay hungry?’ Sartaj was trying to calculate the chances of starving Gaitonde out. But he remembered that Gandhi-ji had lasted for weeks on water and juice. The bulldozer would arrive in an hour, an hour and a half, at most.

  ‘There’s plenty of food in here, enough for months. And I’ve been hungry before,’ Gaitonde said. ‘More hungry than you could imagine.’

  ‘Listen, it’s too hot out here,’ Sartaj said. ‘Come out and back at the station you can tell me all about how hungry you were.’

  ‘I can’t come out.’

  ‘I’ll take care of you, Gaitonde. There are all sorts of people trying to kill you, I know. But no danger, I promise. This is not going to turn into an encounter. You come out now and we’ll be back at the station in six minutes. You’ll be absolutely safe. From there you can call your friends. Safe, ekdum safe. You have my promise.’

  But Gaitonde wasn’t interested in promises. ‘Back when I was very young, I left the country for the first time. It was on a boat, you know. Those days, that was the business: get on a boat, go to Dubai, go to Bahrain, come back with gold biscuits. I was excited, because I had never left the country before. Not even to Nepal, you understand. Okay, Sardar-ji, establishing shot: there was the small boat, five of us on it, sea, sun, all that kind of chutmaari atmosphere. Salim Kaka was the leader, a six-foot Pathan with a long beard, good man with a sword. Then there was Mathu, narrow and thin everywhere, always picking his nose, supposed to be a tough boy. Me, nineteen and didn’t know a thing. And there was Gaston, the owner of the boat, and Pascal, his assistant, two small dark men from somewhere in the south. It was Salim Kaka’s deal, his contacts there, and his money that hired the boat, and his experience, when to go out, when to come back, everything was his. Mathu and I were his boys, behind him all the time. Got it?’

  Katekar rolled his eyes. Sartaj said, ‘Yes, Salim Kaka was the leader, you and Mathu were the guns and Gaston and Pascal sailed the boat. Got it.’

  Katekar propped himself against the wall next to the door and spilled paan masala into his palm. The speaker gleamed a hard, metallic silver. Sartaj shut his eyes.

  Gaitonde went on. ‘I had never seen such a huge sky before. Purple and gold and purple. Mathu was combing his hair again and again into a Dev Anand puff. Salim Kaka sat on the deck with us. He had huge feet, square and blunt, each cracked like a piece of wood, and a beard that was smooth and red like a flame. That night he told us about his first job, robbing an angadia couriering cash from Surat to Mumbai. They caught the angadia as he got off the bus, tossed him in the back of an Ambassador and went roaring away to an empty chemical godown in the industrial estates at Vikhroli. In the godown they stripped him of his shirt, his banian, his pants, everything, and found sewn inside the pants, over the thighs, four lakhs in five-hundred-rupee notes. Also a money belt with sixteen thousand in it. He was standing there baby-naked, his big paunch shaking, holding his hands over his shrunken lauda, as they left. Clear?’

  Sartaj opened his eyes. ‘A courier, they got him, they made some money. So what?’

  ‘So the story’s not over yet, smart Sardar-ji. Salim Kaka was closing the door, but then he turned around and came back. He caught the guy by the throat, lifted him up and around and put a knee between his legs. “Come on, Salim Pathan,” someone yelled to him. “This is no time to take a boy’s gaand.” And Salim Kaka, who was groping the angadia’s bum, said, “Sometimes if you squeeze a beautiful ass, as you would a peach, it reveals all the secrets of the world,” and he held up a little brown silk packet which the angadia had taped behind his balls. In it were a good dozen of the highest-quality diamonds, agleam and aglitter, which they fenced the next week at fifty per cent, and Salim Kaka’s cut alone was one lakh, and this was in the days when a lakh meant something. “But,” Salim Kaka said, “the lakh was the least of it, money is only money.” But after that he was known as a lustrous talent, a sharp lad. “I’ll squeeze you like a peach,” he’d say, cocking a craggy eyebrow, and the poor unfortunate at the receiving end would spill cash, cocaine, secrets, anything.

  ‘“How did you know with the angadia, Salim Kaka?” I asked, and Salim Kaka said, “It is very simple. I looked at him from the door and he was still afraid. When I had my knife at his throat he had said to me in a child’s little trembling voice, ‘Please don’t kill me, my baap.’ I hadn’t killed him, he was still alive and holding his lauda, the money was gone, but it wasn’t his, we were leaving, so why was he still afraid? A man who is afraid is a man who still has something to lose.”’

  ‘Very impressive,’ Sartaj said. He shifted in his chair, and regretted it immediately as his shoulder blade found a curve of heated metal. He adjusted h
is turban and tried to breathe slowly, evenly. Katekar was fanning himself with a folded afternoon newspaper, his eyes abstracted and his forehead slack, while into the slow stirring of the air came Gaitonde’s voice with its cool electronic hiss.

  ‘I resolved to be sharply watchful for ever after, for I was ambitious. That night I laid my body down along the bow, as close as I could get to the onrushing water, and I dreamed. Did I tell you I was nineteen? I was nineteen and I made myself stories about cars and a high house and myself entering a party and flashbulbs popping.

  ‘Mathu came and sat beside me. He lit a cigarette for himself and gave me one. I drew hard on it like him. In the dark I could see the puff of his hair, his haggard shoulders, and I tried to remember his features, which were too bony to be anywhere close to Dev Anand’s, but still every day he stroked talcum powder on to that pointy rat’s face and tried. I felt suddenly kindly towards him. “Isn’t this beautiful?” I said. He laughed. “Beautiful? We could drown,” he said, “and nobody would know what happened to us. We would disappear, phat, gone.” His cigarette made spirals in the dark. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Oh, you pitiful dehati idiot,” he said. “Don’t you know? Nobody knows we are out here.” “But,” I said, “Salim Kaka’s people know, his boss knows.” I could feel him laughing at me, his knee jogging against my shoulder. “No, they don’t.” He was leaning closer to me, whispering, and I could smell his banian and see the pale phosphorescence of his eyes. “Nobody knows, he didn’t tell his boss. Don’t you get it? This is his own deal. Why do you think we’re on this little khatara of a boat, not a trawler? Why do you think we are with him, one dehati smelling of farm dirt and a very-very junior member of the company? Eh? Why? This is Salim Kaka’s own little operation. He wants to go independent, and to go independent, what do you need? Capital. That’s what. That’s why we’re out here slopping away in this chodu, wheezing tin trap, one pitch away from the big fishes. He thinks he’s going to make enough to start himself all new and fresh and shiny. Capital, capital, you understand?”

  ‘I sat up then. He put a hand on my shoulder and swung himself up. “Gaandu,” he said, “if you want to live in the city you have to think ahead three turns, and look behind a lie to see the truth and then behind that truth to see the lie. And then, and then, if you want to live well, you need a bankroll. Think about it.” Mathu patted my shoulder and drew back. I saw his face for a second in dim light as he lowered himself into the cabin. And I did think about it.’

  Under the speaker Katekar turned his head, right and left, and Sartaj heard the small clicking noise of the bones in his neck. ‘I remember this Salim Kaka,’ Katekar said softly. ‘I remember seeing him in Andheri, walking around in a red lungi and a silk kurta. The kurtas were of different colours, but the lungi was always red. He worked with Haji Salman’s gang, and he had a woman in Andheri, I remember hearing.’

  Sartaj nodded. Katekar’s face was puffy, as if he had just woken from sleep. ‘Love?’ Sartaj said.

  Katekar grinned. ‘Judging by the silk, it must have been,’ he said. ‘Or maybe it was just that she was seventeen and had a rear like a prancing deer’s. She was an auto mechanic’s daughter, I think.’

  ‘Don’t believe in love, Katekar?’

  ‘Saab, I believe in silk, and in everything that is soft, and everything else that is hard, but…’

  Above their heads the speaker rumbled. ‘What are you mumbling about, Sardar-ji?’

  ‘Go on, go on,’ Sartaj said. ‘Just minor instructions.’

  ‘So listen. The next afternoon, we started to see tree branches in the water, pieces of old crates, bottles bobbing down and up, tyres, once the whole wooden roof of a house floating upside down. Gaston stayed on deck the whole time now, one arm around the mast, looking this way and that with binoculars, never stopping. I asked Mathu, “Are we close?” He shrugged. Salim Kaka came up in a new kurta. He stood by the bow, looking to the north, and I saw his fingers dabbing at the silver taveez at his chest. I wanted to ask him where we were, but there was a seriousness on his face that kept me from speaking.’

  Sartaj remembered the pictures of Gaitonde, the medium-sized body and the medium face, neither ugly nor handsome, all of it instantly forgettable despite the bright blue and red cashmere sweaters, everything quite commonplace. But now there was this voice, quiet and urgent, and Sartaj tipped his head towards the speaker.

  ‘As night came, in the last failing light, there was a pinpoint of red winking steadily to the north. We dropped anchor, then headed towards it in a dinghy. Mathu rowed and Salim Kaka sat opposite, watching our beacon, and I between them. I was expecting a wall, like I had seen near the Gateway of India, but instead there were high rushes that towered above our heads. Salim Kaka took a pole and pushed us through the feathered banks that creaked and whispered, and although I wasn’t told to, I had my ghoda in my hand, loaded and ready. Then the wood scraped under my feet, hard on ground. Flashlight in hand, Salim Kaka led us up the island – that’s what it was, a soft wet rising in the swamp. We walked for a long time, half an hour maybe, Salim Kaka in front, under a rising moon. He had a brown canvas bag over his shoulder, big as a wheat sack. Then I saw the beacon again, over the top of the stalks. It was a torch tied to a pole. I could smell the tallow; the flames jumped two feet high. Under it there were three men. They were dressed like city people, and in the leaping light I could see their fair skin, their bushy black eyebrows, their big noses. Turks? Iranis? Arabs? I don’t know still, but two of them had rifles, muzzles pointed just a little away from us. My trigger was cool and sweaty on my finger. I cramped and thought, You’ll fire and finish us all. I took a breath, turned my wrist, feeling the butt against my thumb, and watched them. Salim Kaka and one of them spoke, their heads close together. Now the bag was offered, and a suitcase in return. I saw a gleam of yellow, and heard the clicks of locks shutting. My arm ached.

  ‘Salim Kaka stepped backward, and we edged away from the foreigners. I felt the smooth, wet rim of a stalk against my neck, and I couldn’t find a way out, only the yielding pressure of vegetation, and panic. Then Salim Kaka turned abruptly and slipped between the bushes, the faint beam of his flashlight marking his way, and then Mathu. I came last, sideways, my revolver hand held low, my neck taut. I can still see them watching, the three men. I see the gleam of the metal bands around the rifle muzzles, and their shaded eyes. We were walking fast. I felt as if we were flying, and the tall grass that had pulled and clawed at me at first now brushed softly along my sides. Salim Kaka turned his head, and I saw his frantic smile. We were happy, running.

  ‘Salim Kaka paused at the edge of a little stream where water had cut a drop of three feet, maybe four, and he reached down with his right foot and found a place for his heel. Mathu looked at me, his face cut into angles by the gaunt moonlight, and I looked at him. Before Salim Kaka had completed his step, I knew where we were going. The report of the revolver bounced off the water into my belly. I knew the butt had bruised the base of my thumb. Only when the flare left my eyes could I see again, and my stomach was twisting and loosening and twisting, and at the bottom of the ditch Salim Kaka’s feet were treading steadily, as if he were still finding his way to the boat. The water thrashed and boiled. ‘Fire, Mathu,’ I said. ‘Fire, maderchod.’ Those were the first words I had spoken since we’d come ashore. My voice was firm and strange, the sound of it alien. Mathu tilted his head and pointed his barrel. Again, a flash brought the weeds out from the shadows, but still those feet clambered away, going steadily somewhere. I aimed my revolver into the round, frothy turbulence, and at the first discharge all movement stopped, but I put another one in just to make sure. “Come on,” I said, “let’s go home.” Mathu nodded, as if I were in charge, and he jumped into the ditch and scrabbled for the suitcase. The flashlight was glowing under the water, a luminous yellow bubble that embraced exactly half of Salim Kaka’s head. I snapped it up as I went through, though all the way back to the dinghy the fat moon was low over
head and lit us to safety.’

  Sartaj and Katekar heard Gaitonde drink now. They heard, clearly, every long gulp and the glass emptying. ‘Whisky?’ Sartaj whispered. ‘Beer?’

  Katekar shook his head. ‘No, he doesn’t drink. Doesn’t smoke either. Very health-conscious don he is. Exercises every day. He’s drinking water. Bisleri with a twist of lime in it.’

  Gaitonde went on, hurrying now. ‘When the sun came up on the boat the next day, Mathu and I were still awake. We had spent the night sitting in the cabin, across from each other, with the suitcase tucked under Mathu’s bunk but still visible. I had my revolver in my lap, and I could see Mathu’s under his thigh. The roof above my head creaked out a stealthy step. We had told Gaston and Pascal that we had been ambushed by the police, the police of whatever country we had been in. Pascal had wept, and they were both moving very gently now, in respect for our mourning. Behind Mathu’s head there was the dark brown of the wood, and the white of his banian floating and dipping with the swell of the waves. There was the hazy distance between us, and I knew what he was thinking. So I decided. I put my revolver on the pillow, put my feet up on the bunk. “I’m going to sleep,” I said. “Wake me up in three hours and then you can rest.” I turned to the wood, with my back towards Mathu, and shut my eyes. Very low down on my back there was a single circle on my skin which twitched and crawled. It expected a bullet. I could not calm it. But I kept my breathing steady, my knuckles against my lips. There are some things you can control.

  ‘When I woke it was evening. There was a thick orange light pushing into the cabin from the hatch, colouring the wood like fire. My tongue filled my throat and mouth, and my hand when I tried to move it had become a loathsome bloated weight. I thought the bullet had found me, or I had found the bullet, but then I jerked once and my heart was thudding painfully and I sat up. My stomach was covered with sweat. Mathu was asleep, his face down on the pillow. I tucked my revolver into my waistband and went up. Pascal smiled at me out of his black little face. The clouds were piled above us, enormous and bulging, higher and higher into the red heaven. And this boat a twig on the water. My legs shook and I sat down and shook. I trembled and stopped and then trembled again. When it was dark, I asked Pascal for two strong bags. He gave me two white sacks made of canvas, with drawstrings.