Sacred Games

by Vikram Chandra

  He turned smartly and trotted off to his car. The bodyguards got into their jeeps with a clanking of weapons and doors, and the procession went on its way in a festive cloud of dust, followed by two yelping dogs.

  Ma was standing by the door. ‘The bananas and the beer,’ she said. ‘You knew he was coming.’

  ‘Yes.’ She hadn’t listened to all those policemen’s tales for all those years for nothing. She knew how to take apart motives and actions, consequences and causes.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is there any trouble? Did you do something?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Go and rest.’

  As he went by her, she laid a hand on his wrist, in an action as familiar and old as childhood. She was checking him for fever, for anything out of balance and in need of care. But today, this afternoon, there was no sickness in him, no particular bodily reason for his exhaustion and his reddened eyes. As he slumped by the open door to Ma’s room, he saw something glint and glimmer on the table next to her bed. So Ma had decided to keep the photograph of her beloved Navneet. Ma’s attachment to things was fading, but she still cared for people. He could still feel her hand on his wrist. How small her hands were, and her feet. She was altogether a small person, so tiny in her childhood that Navneet and the rest of the family had called her ‘Nikki’. It was hard to imagine her as a giggly girl, but little Nikki had somehow grown into Ma, who took care of him even as she slowly loosened herself from the world’s grip. In his room, Sartaj put the fan on full and stripped down to his underwear. The sleep came fast, and when he woke up it was quite dark. He lay still, listening to the night. He could hear Ma, moving things about in the kitchen, and beyond her, the neighbours and a slight shifting of wind and cars and a small squall of children’s voices. We are still here, he thought, we are still alive. We have survived another day. But the thought did not make him feel any better.

  Sartaj called Iffat-bibi four times that night, and then every hour the next morning, while he drove back to Bombay. Each time she said the same thing, ‘When they are ready, they will tell me. And then I will tell you your sadhu’s address. You will get your information, saab. Don’t worry. Just have a little patience, a little more.’

  But Sartaj, who had practised patience his entire career, found it hard to find any now. Back in Zone 13, from the patio of the station, he watched Parulkar come into work that morning, and the man seemed as jovial and energetic as always. So he was still unaware of the trap that already had him in its teeth. And he didn’t know, yet, who had set him up. He would know soon.

  Sartaj left the station and halfheartedly pursued leads on a burglary case until noon. He then decided he needed an early lunch, and made his way to Sindoor. He asked for some papad, and chicken tikkas, and gave the waiter a bottle of Royal Challenge whisky in a plastic bag. By the time Kamble joined him an hour later, Sartaj had managed to soften the light inside Sindoor into a gentle haze. Kamble sat, and watched as the waiter put another full glass of tawny liquid on the table.

  ‘Boss,’ Kamble said, ‘do you want to eat something also?’

  ‘I’m not really hungry. This is enough.’

  ‘Bring some naan,’ Kamble told the waiter. ‘Lots of naan. And some vegetable raita. And some daal.’ He settled back into the booth, squared his shoulders and said softly, ‘What happened? Trouble with the girl? Tell me.’

  Sartaj laughed, then stopped himself, and laughed again. Kamble was sympathetic, he wanted to give advice about women. Kamble the man about town. Kamble was a good fellow. Kamble was a dirty bastard, had his fingers in every filthy deal, but he was also generous. He was kind. He was a good man. ‘Kamble,’ Sartaj said, ‘you are a good man.’

  ‘Yaar, I am as good as I should be. Here, drink some water. What are you doing?’

  ‘What am I doing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I am eating my lunch. I am sitting in Sindoor eating my lunch with my good friend.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘I am also waiting for some very important information.’

  ‘From who? About what?’

  Sartaj shook a finger at Kamble. ‘That I can’t tell you. Sources must not be revealed. Even to a friend. Not this source. But the information is good. I tell you it is good. And we need it, it is for the big case. The biggest case. You know.’ Sartaj pointed at the patterned ceiling, and made the sound of an explosion.

  ‘Yes, I know. Here, eat.’

  Kamble put a piece of chicken on Sartaj’s plate. Sartaj nodded, and picked it up and chewed. Kamble fussed over him through lunch, and made him eat far too much, and drink a glass of chhass. Still, Sartaj managed to keep up his intake of alcohol to match, despite Kamble’s dodges of handing half-emptied glasses to passing waiters. So he was still nicely fuzzy when Shambhu Shetty came into the restaurant and pulled a chair over to the booth.

  ‘The boys said you were here,’ he said. He had the pudgy look of a very content man.

  ‘Shambhu, you have to start exercising more,’ Sartaj said. ‘It’s not nice to see you like this.’

  Kamble whispered something to Shambhu, and Shambhu whispered back. Then he unfolded a paper and slid it on to the table. ‘Saab,’ he said. ‘I get Samachar early at the bar. I thought you would want to see.’

  There was a triple-height banner headline spread across the page: ‘Senior Police Officer Caught in Conversation with Anti-National Don.’ And a picture of a uniformed Parulkar underneath. The subheading ran: ‘Opposition Demands Suspension and Probe.’ Sartaj turned his head away. He didn’t want to read further.

  ‘They say that the ACB has a half-hour recording of Parulkar talking to Suleiman Isa in Karachi, and this recording has been leaked to all the newspapers,’ Shambhu said. ‘It is already on several websites, you can listen to the whole thing. Parulkar discusses money payments with Suleiman Isa, specific jobs, things like that. And – where is it? – here. “Independent voice experts have already indicated to this newspaper that in their opinion the recording in question is of the voices of DCP Parulkar and Suleiman Isa.”’

  ‘Bhenchod,’ Kamble said. ‘Let me see.’ He grabbed the paper, read rapidly, threw over the sheet and skimmed down the page. ‘Maderchod. The man is finished. This saala is gone.’

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ Shambhu said. ‘Such a mistake from him.’

  ‘Everyone makes mistakes,’ Sartaj said, ‘sooner or later. Tomorrow if not today.’

  They both were quiet. Then Kamble pointed to the newspaper. ‘You want to read it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘All right. I have to go back to work. What are you going to do?’

  ‘I will sit here and wait for my information.’

  But Kamble seemed to think that was a bad idea. He objected and argued until Sartaj grew furious, and then Kamble argued some more. The other diners in the restaurant, the tables of executives and housewives, risked uneasy glances over shoulders, and began to mutter, and so finally Sartaj gave in. He went with Kamble on his very boring rounds of a matka den and a shoe factory, and of the Nehru Nagar basti in Andheri in search of a tadipaar who had reportedly crept back into Kailashpada and exited again. Sartaj stumbled through the lanes behind Kamble, his head reeling from the fanfare of smells, good and bad. He was not drunk any more, but the walking and the unceasing surge of faces pressing close to him kept him occupied and comfortably numb.

  At six, his phone rang. ‘Bhai was pleased,’ Iffat-bibi said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He said to give you a gift. Just a token. Five petis.’

  ‘I don’t want the maderchod’s money. Just give me the address.’

  ‘Are you sure? Turning down a gift from Bhai is rude.’

  ‘You tell him exactly what I said. I want the address, okay? The address.’

  Iffat-bibi sighed. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘You young people are very foolish sometimes. Do you have a pen?’

  The address was for
a two-storey bungalow at the western edge of Chembur, set back from a middle-class neighbourhood by a well-maintained ten-foot wall. After Sartaj wrote down the address in his notebook in very careful block letters, he made Iffat-bibi repeat it three times. Then events moved very fast. He called Anjali Mathur, and he and Kamble met her and her people on a street near Vrindavan Chowk in Sion. Then they went north to Chembur, accompanied by an IG and a gaggle of very senior policemen and some tough-looking military officers who offered no job descriptions. Some local Chembur cops – none of whom Sartaj had met before – offered local information, and led them to the immediate neighbourhood of the bungalow. A discreet perimeter was set up, and a command post was set up over a dairy sixty metres away, behind a screen of trees. Sartaj never saw the bungalow. He and Kamble sat to one side of the very busy room, and watched it fill with radios and unrecognizable equipment and competent, confident men. Anjali Mathur huddled in conferences with her boss and others, and remembered to send chai to Sartaj and Kamble when it came around.

  Kamble nudged Sartaj. ‘Boss,’ he whispered, ‘go over and stand near them. They may want your advice. Or to ask you something. You found this maderchod house for them. You are the hero of the day. Go and behave like you deserve the credit, or one of those gaandu IPS officers will steal it.’

  But Sartaj didn’t particularly want to give advice to anyone. He was content to sit in the glow of the laptop screens and watch the skies change colour outside the window to the rear. Someone had once told him, he didn’t remember who, that the fantastic colours in Mumbai’s evening came from all the pollution that floated over the city, from all the incredible millions who crowded into a very small space. Sartaj had no doubt it was true, but the purples and reds and oranges were still beautiful and grand. You could watch them change and deepen and lose themselves in black.

  At ten that night, Anjali Mathur came over and sat next to them. ‘It is confirmed,’ she said. ‘There are seven men in the house. We have two distinct radioactive signatures, and there are two three-ton trucks in the back, behind the bungalow. We think they were going to drive the bombs to their ground zeros.’

  ‘Two bombs? Now what happens?’ Kamble said. He was rigid with excitement and anticipation.

  ‘There is a team already here, in place. They will go some time in the night. That decision will be made by the operational commander.’ She tilted her head towards the front of the room, to a military man leaning over a radio. She seemed to be waiting for a response from Sartaj.

  He cleared his throat. ‘I am sure your team will win.’ Sartaj felt, inexplicably, like laughing. He restrained himself, of course, but she gave him an appraising glance as she got up.

  Kamble followed her past the tables, and came back a few minutes later even more nervous and anxious. His eyes flared and he leant over and thumped Sartaj on the shoulder. ‘The Black Cats are here, boss. With those black commando hoods and guns and everything.’

  Sartaj tried to discover some enthusiasm within himself about the Black Cats, but he just felt sleepy. He noted his own curious lack of excitement about the prospect of being saved, and thought it was probably just exhaustion. It is the insomnia, he thought, and all the recent ups and downs, all the stresses coming together. Probably I will feel something tomorrow. But right now I think I will just sit here and feel nothing. Probably it is all the beer and the whisky, making up the weight that is crushing my thighs like black iron. Probably I am just very tired.

  He awoke to a rough jostling, to insistent and heavy hands against his cheeks. ‘Sartaj, wake up.’ It was Kamble. ‘Gaandu, you are the only man in the world who would snore through his own best moments. The climax is about to happen, boss. They are about to go in. Wake up. Wake up.’

  Sartaj sat up, ground the sleep from his eyes. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Four-thirty.’

  A single bird hooted in the pre-dawn stillness. Inside the command post, there was an expectant silence, an absolute immobility that was filled with waiting. Sartaj wanted to ask Kamble how they would know that the team had gone in, that the command had been given, but Kamble had his hands over his mouth, his thumbs hard over his cheeks. He looked like a little boy waiting for exam results to be announced.

  Nothing changed in the room, but then, from far away, came a series of pops, and then another, phap-phap-phap, phap-phap-phap-phap. And then a last little boom. A moment passed, and then from the front of the room, a cheer grew and spread. Anjali Mathur came running through the clapping crowd. ‘We’re safe,’ she said. ‘We’re safe.’

  Sartaj nodded, and made himself smile. He was surrounded suddenly by police officers and RAW men and Black Cats, all of whom jostled each other and hugged each other and shook hands with him. Apparently Kamble had made sure that they knew where the credit was due. Sartaj turned through the crowd and was able, slowly, to peel through it and get down the stairs. He walked away, to the back of the compound behind the dairy, which was crowded now with police vehicles and other unmarked cars. But it smelt mostly of milk, and Sartaj thought he caught the faint, good edge of gobar. But that was doubtful, how many dairies in the city really had cows any more? But it was rejuvenating to breathe in. His head was clearing.

  So, with those little banging sounds far away, apparently the world had been saved. Sartaj didn’t feel any safer. Inside him, even now, there was that burning fuse, that ticking fear. He leant against a post in a wire fence and tried to feel satisfaction. Our team won. Sure. Kamble had been dancing inside, he was happy. But Sartaj couldn’t keep the question at bay: You want to save this? For what? Why?

  It took three weeks for Sartaj’s promotion to come through. Nobody knew about his work on the Gaitonde affair, on the bombs, so there was no reason given for the extraordinarily expedited order and paperwork. At the dairy itself, that morning, Anjali Mathur had told him that the bombs did not exist officially, and that they never would. The decision had been made at the very top, she told him, for reasons of national security. And she had shrugged, and he had understood, because he was a policeman and he knew that successful operations sometimes could not exist officially so that some higher-up’s reputation could be protected, so that some politician would not have to acknowledge how close disaster had wandered.

  Sartaj wouldn’t have minded the invisibility of what they had done that morning, except for the fact that rumours rushed in to fill the vacuum left behind by the lack of facts. The general understanding in the department was that Sartaj had somehow rolled over on Parulkar, that he had engineered Parulkar’s astonishing downfall. In the version of the phone call between Parulkar and Suleiman Isa that was on the ACB tapes and the websites, the first few seconds had been clipped off. Sartaj’s ‘Hello?’ had been cut, and the conversation only began with Parulkar picking up the phone and saying, ‘I am here.’ Nobody knew that the call had been taken at Sartaj’s mother’s house, and yet there was a tacit understanding throughout the force that Sartaj had had something to do with the circumstances of the call. It was known that the promotion was his reward, along with a gift of one full khoka from Suleiman Isa. There were rumours also that Sartaj had beaten up an innocent man, injured him very badly, and a belief that even this matter was squashed in return for the destruction of Parulkar. In the department, there was no bad feeling towards Sartaj about this, and in fact there was a renewed respect from many quarters. Parulkar was an old player, and he had made many enemies along the way. Many were not unhappy to see him fall. Even those neutral towards him felt that he had maybe tried to grab too much. Parulkar’s friends and enemies now thought of Sartaj as a formidable strategist, someone to be cultivated.

  Meanwhile, Parulkar was on the run. On the second day after the phone call was made public, questions were asked in the legislative assembly and also in parliament. That same evening, a warrant was issued for Parulkar’s arrest. But his application for anticipatory bail had already come in, and he was already absconding. His lawyer told the papers the next day that th
e proceedings had been hasty and unprofessional, that the voice on the tapes was not Parulkar, who had dedicated many years of selfless service to the nation. Furthermore, there was no proof that the other voice on the tape was indeed one Suleiman Isa. And also, that the conversation which actually took place on the tape was in no way demonstrative of criminal malfeasance or anti-national activity.

  But that same day the chief minister announced a massive reshuffling of senior police officers, and in response to questioning by reporters stated categorically that there was no question of himself or anyone from his cabinet interfering with the due process of the law. ‘The enquiry is going along. We will have results very fast. You will see. DCP Parulkar should give himself up. We will be strict but fair.’

  Sartaj himself had no idea where Parulkar was. He had some idea of how to get word to him, and so he left discreet messages with a couple of khabaris, and with Homi Mehta the money manager. But there was no response. Twice that fortnight, his mobile had rung late at night. Both times, the caller had not spoken. Sartaj could hear slow exhalations, an old man’s laborious inhalations. The second time he had said, ‘Sir? Is that you, sir?’ But there had been no response, and no caller’s number on the display. The morning after Sartaj’s promotion was formally announced, his mobile rang while he was in the bathroom. He felt his way out, soap still on his face, and found the phone vibrating on his bed. ‘Hello?’ he said.

  Again, there was the same breathing. This time, Sartaj felt that this silent man was very angry at him. ‘Sir,’ Sartaj said. ‘Sir, you have to listen to me. It was very important, I will tell you everything about it.’

  But the caller put down his receiver. There was a click, and then nothing. That evening, Sartaj was just finishing his shift when Kamble came into the detection room. ‘Boss,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Sartaj snapped. He had been overseeing the interrogation of an armed robber. Since his promotion, he no longer found it necessary to third-degree the prisoners himself. He merely instructed, and watched. The room smelt of sweat and piss.