‘The plans that I have for your pathetic country are already in motion. You cannot stop them. Even I cannot stop them. But every little inconvenience you create in my path will only be met with one response.’
Without warning, Ayyub whipped out an automatic pistol, turned partially and shot Rehmat through the heart.
‘Punishment,’ Ayyub said.
The screen went blank.
15
‘Assalaam-o-alaikum. My name is not important. I am a soldier. A soldier of Allah. And I have waited for a long time for this. Allah always rewards patience, and the time for my reward is near. For days, I have been walking amongst you, staying in your midst, laughing and eating with you, while mounting a carefully planned attack on your pitiful nation.
‘This girl is Rehmat Khan. She thought she was making a difference by trying to rescue teenagers from street drugs. What she does not realize is that the real danger is people like her. People who work shoulder to shoulder with kaafirs, who despite being born into Islam, call India their own country and extend their services to its government. It is people like her who are traitors to our great religion, as well as to our jihad.
‘Speaking of governments, a group of policemen from this country have been relentlessly on my trail for weeks now. It seems that I underestimated how committed they are to their own hollow cause.
‘Well, you found me. A little too late, but still … not bad. And now, let me show you something. The plans that I have for your pathetic country are already in motion. You cannot stop them. Even I cannot stop them. But every little inconvenience you create in my path will only be met with one response.
‘Punishment.’
The room fell silent.
After an entire night of screaming back and forth, the news channel had finally agreed to hand over a copy of the full video to Mirza’s team. Even this was done after NSA Pradeep Singh contacted the channel’s editor in Delhi and threatened to make public some very sensitive details of the channel’s biggest investors.
‘You know well enough that I will fucking do it,’ Singh had said coldly.
The video began with only Rehmat visible in the centre of the dimly lit room. It stayed that way for about five seconds till Ayyub came over from behind the camera and stood behind the chair that Rehmat was tied to. Halfway through, he came forward, blocking Rehmat with his body, and then moved away just before he shot her.
It was next to impossible to discern where the video had been shot. The room was bare, devoid of any furniture whatsoever save the chair, which was a cheap white plastic one. Rehmat was wearing a black salwar-kurta, and a matching dupatta had been used to gag her. Ayyub was wearing a grey Pathani suit and had a checkered scarf around his face, with only his eyes visible. Anyone who didn’t know his true identity wouldn’t be able to recognize him.
The video had just been viewed by Mirza, Vikrant and Shaina, with Pradeep Singh joining them via video conference. There were also two others in the room. One of them was Joseph Samuel, MOSSAD’s man in Mumbai. The other was Benzion Solomon, also known as Ben Solo. Ben because it was short, and Solo also because it was short and because he liked to work alone.
Personally, he preferred to be called Benzion, for its meaning – an expression of pining for the promised land of Zion. But Ben Solo’s face was not one that invited personal questions. Nor, for that matter, were his files in the records of intelligence agencies around the world. The forty-five-year-old fair, muscular man with a perpetually expressionless face was a MOSSAD assassin with a kill record that was the stuff of legend in the world of espionage.
Half a minute after the video stopped playing, Vikrant stood up and opened all the curtains.
Finally, Mirza spoke. ‘Ben … may I call you Ben?’
Ben Solo shrugged.
‘For the benefit of the others, Ben, why don’t you take a minute to explain your presence here?’
Ben shifted in his seat.
‘The man we just saw on the TV,’ he said in a deep voice, ‘is someone I’ve been tracking for the last four years.’
At that moment, the door to the room opened and Mankame emerged. Vikrant immediately stood up and went over to him.
‘You okay?’ he asked.
Mankame nodded. After watching Rehmat get shot in the video the previous night, it had taken the combined strength of Mirza, Vikrant and Shaina to wrestle him into the bedroom and keep him pinned to the bed till the alcohol finally took over and he passed out. Vikrant and Shaina took turns sleeping on a couch in the room while Mankame slept without moving.
They let him sleep till as late as they could while they worked the phones, spoke to Singh several times in the morning and were informed by Mirza that Samuel and Solomon would be joining them. Then, an hour before the meeting was to start, Vikrant woke up Mankame, who was already stirring by then, ordered a large pot of black coffee for him and told him to take his time and join them when he was ready.
‘I’m fine, Vikrant sir,’ Mankame said. Silently, he settled down on a chair and nodded to the two Jewish spies in the room, who nodded back.
Mirza introduced them and said, ‘Ben here was just telling us how he has been tracking Ayyub for the last four years.’
‘We know him as Al Muqadam. The leader.’
‘Who named him that?’ Shaina asked.
Ben shrugged.
‘You know how these things work. Some asshole from some corner of the world uploads a new video hailing someone or the other as the new hero of jihad. Someone else picks it up and before you know it, this new hero has a title. The next minute, the video goes viral and the motherfuckers have a new idol.’
They all nodded. Ben went on.
‘Al Muqadam burst on the scene five years ago as the new emerging leader of the cause, in a video uploaded from an IP address somewhere in Beirut. We spent a year looking into him, after which his file was handed over to me. I found him connected to scores of terrorist activities in Asia. A bombing here, a recruitment there. He’s one of those next-generation terrorists, a millennial, if you will. Seems to be amazingly knowledgeable and knows how to use the latest technology.’
Vikrant sighed.
‘That’s the Ayyub I know all right,’ he said.
All eyes turned to him.
‘Suppose,’ Joseph suggested, ‘you tell us what you know about him and then we take it forward from there?’
Vikrant quickly took them through what he knew. Both Ayyub and his elder brother, Mazhar, came from a broken family. Their backstory included their mother running away with a younger man and Mazhar breaking his drug-addict father’s arm. While Mazhar was the stronger one with a short fuse, Ayyub had always been the silent and studious type.
After the incident with their father, when Vikrant helped them start their life anew, Ayyub started scoring higher marks. Vikrant had had high hopes for him till the day he disappeared. A week later, a video of him saying that he was renouncing the world for jihad had been uploaded on YouTube and picked up by Indian intelligence agencies. The IB downloaded the video, traced its online footprint as far back as they could, and then had it taken off the website.
‘Apparently, he remained the brainy one,’ Ben Solo said. ‘He’s believed to have travelled all over, met sleeper cells and educated them in modern technology, including obscure chatting apps that are difficult to track and the use of the dark net. How old was he when he disappeared?’
‘Eighteen,’ Vikrant said.
‘That would make him twenty-four now. Checks out with what we know. He’s young but rising fast. He’s killed before, but his forte is planning. He’s a mastermind, not a triggerman.’
‘Where are we with the video?’ Mirza asked.
‘I’ve got tech teams at RAW trying to find some clues to the location, with IB helping as well. But so far, nothing,’ Vikrant said.
‘I’ll work with the local police. Try t
o trace their movements after they left the building,’ Mankame said.
Mirza looked at him once. Then he nodded.
‘You do that, lad,’ he said.
‘As you know,’ Samuel spoke up, ‘the Indian PMO has authorized our involvement in this operation. We will stay away from the public eye but please feel free to tell us if you need anything. My bosses are emailing all that we have on Al Muqadam as we speak.’
‘Meanwhile,’ Ben Solo said. ‘If there’s anything else I need to know about this man, I’d like to know now.’
‘Meaning?’ Mirza asked.
‘Meaning – and I say this with the full backing of your government – the minute I set my eyes on him, I intend to kill him. If that’s going to be a problem for anyone in this room, it’s better we discuss it right now.’
Mirza and Vikrant exchanged looks. Ben Solo saw this and waited. He was a patient man.
Mirza looked away from Vikrant and stared at the window for a long moment. Then he looked back at Vikrant.
But Vikrant was no longer looking at him. He was looking at his phone, which had started buzzing.
‘Shit,’ was all he said.
16
The first time Daniel saw him, he had been lurking outside Lilavati Hospital while Naidu was still admitted there. Daniel was standing at the window talking to Vikrant while Vaishali had gone to the cafeteria to eat. He’d seen the man standing beside a parked car by the side of the road, sipping a soft drink from a cardboard cup. It was a face Daniel would never forget. As he stared, he could have sworn that the man looked up right at him, raised his cup in a toast and then got into the car. Daniel had squinted hard as he drove away but had not been able to see the licence-plate number.
The next time Daniel saw the man was at Naidu’s funeral, when he had been standing beside Vaishali as people offered their condolences before leaving.
The man had stood calmly in the queue, looked Daniel straight in the eye as he passed by, stopped in front of Vaishali and said, ‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’
A broken Vaishali had only nodded mechanically and the man had walked away without looking back.
It was only when Daniel saw the man’s car drive by his house in Andheri thrice in the span of an hour late at night that he’d decided that enough was enough. It had been three days since Naidu’s death. Vaishali had been staying with him since.
It was night and Vaishali was sleeping. He went to the bedroom to check on her once and then stepped out of his building on Yaari Road. Lighting a cigarette, he leaned against the compound wall and waited till the car reappeared. This time, instead of driving by, it slowed to a stop near him. Daniel tossed away his cigarette and got inside.
For a minute, no one said anything. Then the man turned to him.
‘Madman Dan,’ he said, referring to him by the nickname Daniel had earned back when he was in the Special Forces.
‘Shukla,’ was all Daniel said.
Madan Shukla chuckled.
‘That’s not what you used to call me,’ he said.
‘That was when we were friends,’ Daniel snapped.
Shukla had been working with military intelligence when they first met. He had requested a soldier to accompany a civilian asset as protection, and the job had been assigned to Daniel. The mission, as most missions in Kashmir are bound to, went sideways and Daniel, armed with nothing but a pocketknife, pulled the asset out of what would otherwise have been a fatal situation.
Shukla was massively impressed and wrote a glowing report for Daniel, and the two men went on to become friends. The friendship lasted for six years, till Shukla had put up two of his own assets as bait in order to flush a terrorist module out of hiding, while Daniel had been assigned to protect them.
Shukla’s plan failed and both the assets, young men with families, were captured, tortured and executed on camera. Daniel had used all the goodwill he had accumulated with his superiors over the years and requested that he never be asked to work with Shukla again. A year after that, he’d quit to take care of his ailing father and the two men never saw each other again.
‘Still angry about that little incident in Baramulla, eh?’ Shukla asked.
Daniel said nothing.
‘I don’t have time for this,’ Shukla said. ‘But what I need to tell you is important, so listen carefully. You will find the truck driver that hit Naidu sir’s car in the Supreme Industrial Estate in Goregaon East. His name is Sopan Patil and the truck, too, is parked there.’
Daniel was too stunned to react.
‘What the fuck?’ he asked finally.
‘It’s a gesture of good faith on my part. If this pans out the way I’m saying, you listen to what I have to say. Deal?’
Daniel was still trying to believe what he had just heard.
‘Deal?’ Shukla asked. Reluctantly, Daniel nodded. ‘Good. Get out.’
Daniel complied silently and Shukla drove away without saying anything else.
Vaishali was awake when Daniel went back in.
‘Who was it?’ she asked.
‘Just an old friend,’ he said. ‘From back in the army. He was in the area and I didn’t want to wake you up.’
It was like he was back working for military intelligence, lying effortlessly to anyone and everyone while working on covert missions. He hated lying to Vaishali but if Naidu’s death was indeed more than an accident, which was what Shukla was implying, he needed something more than Shukla’s word before breaking the news to her.
The next morning, he woke up early and hit the road before the rush-hour traffic started. He told Vaishali that he was going to the company for which he worked as a security consultant and started his bike.
He reached Goregaon within an hour and, with the help of his cell phone’s GPS, located the industrial estate Shukla had told him about. It was a collection of small garages and imitation-jewellery manufacturing units.
After Naidu’s death, the police had let him view the CCTV footage of the accident. The truck had had a picture of Lord Ganesh painted on the back in bright orange. He had also convinced the investigating officer to share the footage with him, as well as a picture of the truck driver’s licence, obtained from the RTO based on the licence-plate number. It was amazing what having friends in the government could get you.
Daniel parked his bike and entered the estate.
It was a typical industrial compound, with establishments crammed into one large building. The workers employed often slept on the premises at night and many had families staying with them. It took him some fifteen minutes but he finally found the truck parked in a corner at the back. He clicked a picture of the truck on his cell phone.
The next problem was to find Sopan Patil. He roamed around for another fifteen minutes till he found a boy about twelve years old, running with a thermos in one hand and small paper cups in another. He stopped the kid and showed him a hundred-rupee note.
‘I need to know whose truck that is,’ he said.
The boy eyed the note hungrily.
‘I don’t want any lafda,’ he said.
‘No lafda,’ Daniel assured him. ‘Just show me who he is and your name will never come up.’
The boy struggled for another half a minute before nodding. He led Daniel to a garage on the ground floor in one corner of the building, where several mechanics were working.
‘The bald man in the black vest,’ the boy whispered. Daniel wasn’t even looking at the garage as he slipped the boy the note and bought a glass of tea from him before letting him go.
Slowly, casually, Daniel sipped his tea and ran his eye over the garage till he found the man. He took one long look at him, committing his face to memory, and walked away.
He rode his bike to his office, which was in Chakala, and borrowed a company car, telling the motor pool manager that he had to move some of Naidu’s things to his own house. The mana
ger nodded sympathetically and told him he could take any car he wanted and not to worry about the paperwork, while Daniel once again marvelled at how easily he was lying.
He then texted Vaishali while he walked to the parking area, saying he would be late as he had a lot of pending work to catch up on. In the car, he opened his satchel and pulled out his licensed pistol, which he had taken with him before leaving from home. He checked it to make sure it was working properly and loaded twelve rounds in the magazine before slipping it back inside.
It took him nearly an hour and a half to go back to the industrial estate, as traffic was in full force by then, and it was late afternoon by the time he got there. He parked across the street from the entrance. Then he leaned back and waited, his eyes never leaving the gate.
17
Sopan Patil was sobbing.
He had been bound and gagged with duct tape and there was a bruise on the left side of his face.
He had stepped out of the industrial compound to get a drink at a local bar after work. It was past 11 p.m. and the street was nearly deserted. As he ambled along, he didn’t even hear Daniel come up from behind him.
‘Make one sound and you’re dead,’ Daniel whispered, thrusting his gun into the small of Patil’s back with one hand and clutching the back of his neck with the other. He led the terrified Patil to the back of his car, where he pressed two fingers on Patil’s jugular vein and caught him as he collapsed. The boot was already open, and Daniel bound and gagged him using duct tape from his satchel before stuffing him inside. He took a picture of Patil with his cell phone, shut the boot and got into the driver’s seat.
He then sped to Naidu’s house in Bandra, a modest one-storey bungalow near the Reclamation, and entered the compound using the key he had taken from Vaishali’s purse that morning. He drove straight into the garage, opened the boot and carried Patil inside to Naidu’s guest bedroom. He shut all the doors and windows and placed Patil, still bound and gagged and unconscious, on the bed.
The Endgame Page 8