The Case of the Love Commandos

by Tarquin Hall

  The bus lurched forward, its stereo pumping out the theme tune to Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!

  “Are we going to Lucknow?” asked Facecream after Deep had spoken with his friend the conductor.

  “She got off near the center of the city.”

  “Where exactly?”

  The boy looked suddenly apprehensive. “Are you sure you want to know?” he asked.

  Sixteen

  Soon after Puri set off on the new Yamuna Expressway for Delhi, he realized he was being followed by a black SUV with tinted windows matching the description of the vehicle in which Ram had been abducted.

  It had an untraceable number plate and a sticker at the top right of the windscreen printed with a unique code. He’d seen such stickers before: they served as notice to the police that the occupants were politically connected, meaning the vehicle wasn’t to be stopped under any circumstances.

  That the SUV made little attempt to conceal itself and simply shadowed the detective’s vehicle at a respectable distance suggested three possibilities: the occupants weren’t very good at surveillance, they were trying to intimidate him, or their intentions were altogether more sinister.

  Perhaps they’d arranged for an accident up ahead? Collisions happened all the time. Indeed, in the last seconds as his life flashed behind his eyes, Puri might well find himself at a loss to know whether he’d met his end by his faceless enemy’s design or whether he’d just been the victim of some idiot with kamikaze tendencies.

  He considered stopping at the next petrol station or resort-type place where there would be people around. But the expressway had opened only a few weeks earlier and none had yet been built. The detective therefore put his seat belt on, retrieved his pistol from his bag and warned his driver that they were being followed.

  Puri soon wished that he hadn’t said anything.

  The driver, who looked terrified, couldn’t keep his eyes off his rearview mirror (he didn’t have side ones—they’d been shorn off during several close shaves) and stopped paying the requisite amount of attention to the road ahead. Given the numerous obstacles—including a herd of goats, an oncoming truck that had taken to the wrong side of the road and several homemade jugaad tractors that didn’t differentiate between the slow and fast lanes despite moving at the speed of a petrol lawn mower—this resulted in four or five near misses. And when, ten miles into the journey, the SUV suddenly closed the distance between them, the driver looked like he was about to have a heart attack.

  Puri, too, could feel his heart pounding like a dhol drum. As he cocked the trigger on his pistol and tried to keep one eye on the road ahead and the other on the vehicle behind, his hands shook badly.

  If it came to it, he would aim for the tires and hope that his driver held his nerve and didn’t lose control of the wheel, Puri decided.

  In any event, the danger passed.

  The SUV soon slowed and stopped to make a U-turn.

  Puri watched it start back for Agra, puzzling over what had caused the occupants to break off their pursuit—and indeed whom they were working for. It wasn’t Hari. Nor Vishnu Mishra. Perhaps ICMB?

  But there was no profit to be gained in speculating. Tubelight’s boys were already on their way to set up round-the-clock surveillance of the facility, so he would soon know either way.

  Puri put his revolver back in his bag, yet kept his seat belt on, given that his driver’s nerves seemed a little strained. He then took out the Shaadiwaadi.in business card he’d found in Dr. Basu’s apartment and dialed the number.

  A helpful manager soon came on the line and confirmed that Dr. Basu had been a client of his.

  “And a contented one at that,” he added. “She was getting engaged to a certain gentleman on our books. In fact, she had dinner with him that very night.”

  “Sir, it is of the utmost importance that I speak with this individual right away,” stated Puri, and went on to explain his purpose for calling.

  But the manager said he couldn’t help. “There are privacy issues,” he said.

  “Sir, under normal circumstances I would respect your wishes. But understand this: Dr. Basu was murdered.”

  “Murdered?”

  “Correct.”

  “By who?”

  “That is my sworn duty to find out.”

  There was a long pause. “The best I can do is ask him to call you.”

  “Sooner the better.”

  It was almost dark by the time Puri reached Delhi. After paying the driver, who seemed positively relieved to be seeing the back of him, the detective traversed the busy pavement at the front of Khan Market. He stepped over the sleeping street dogs, scowled at the newest designer sunglasses shop to have replaced one of the old mummy-and-papa stores, almost fell into an open drain that was being excavated manually, and greeted Zahir, the blind shopkeeper, who welcomed him back with his customary good humor.

  Elizabeth Rani was waiting upstairs in the small reception. She greeted him with the phrase “Sir, I’m afraid your rotis have gone stale.”

  This was code for “The office is bugged,” and Puri responded with “Then we had better feed them to the crows, Madam Rani,” to indicate that he had understood her.

  He followed this up with “Kindly fetch some kathi rolls with extra chutney.”

  Elizabeth Rani shot him a puzzled look before realizing that the order contained no hidden meaning and promptly dispatched Door Stop, the office boy, to the market.

  Entering his office, Puri found the walls bare, his secretary having put away all his accolades, including his signed and personalized Kenny G album cover and the photograph of him in his younger years posing next to Indira Gandhi. He went and washed his face in his “executive” bathroom. Then he called Rumpi.

  “You made it, haan? Wonderful! How was the climb? You took horses, is it? But Mummy was determined to walk every foot of the way. Well, her years are fast advancing, I suppose. All well otherwise, my dear? Pardon? Chetan made it without collapsing, is it? Pukka? That is a bloody miracle if ever there was one!”

  His next call was to a retired army batchmate and fellow member of the Gymkhana Club whom everyone called Pappi. Puri asked if he was busy and said that he had some work for him.

  “That is assuming your wife hasn’t got you on one of those bloody diets, you bugger.”

  A burst of raucous laughter came down the line.

  “Tip-top. See you tomorrow ten o’clock. Usual place.”

  Elizabeth Rani stepped into the office and placed a file in front of him containing a short biography of Justus Bergstrom, the ICMB director. One section, which Puri’s secretary had taken the trouble to highlight, provided details of his work in Ecuador, where he’d been accused of stealing DNA from a tribe living deep within the Amazon. In an attached news report Bergstrom was referred to as a “vampire” and a “racist.” The Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism had called for his prosecution for crimes against humanity.

  Puri put the report aside, turned on the TV and then headed into the communications room, which was protected by jamming equipment.

  He found Flush working on a laptop.

  “Tell me,” said the detective.

  “There’s an IF beam pointed at your office window. State-of-the-art.”

  For once, Puri understood his brilliant young operative’s lingo. IF stood for “infrared.” It was his understanding that such beams were bounced off panes of glass, which acted as sound conductors and picked up the vibrations of people’s voices.

  “It’s coming from where exactly?”

  “A new Volkswagen van parked outside. Tinted windows.”

  “Untraceable number plate, is it?”

  “Right, Boss.”

  “That is why the SUV turned around—they planned to pick up my trail this side,” Puri said to himself. “Anything more is there?” he asked.

  “I’m working on accessing the ICMB mainframe—sorry, computer system. But it’s going to take some time.”


  “How much time?”

  “Days, could be weeks, Boss. Decoding the system’s going to take a lot of hair.”

  “Hair?”

  “Never mind, Boss—hacker term. Basically, whoever built that system knew what they were doing.”

  Puri sighed. “Tell me some other progress is there.”

  “Yes and no. I got hold of Dr. Anju Basu’s mobile phone records.”

  “Wonderful!”

  “Just one problem.”

  “Don’t tell me.”

  “Someone tampered with the records, erasing all the numbers dialed and received.”

  The detective groaned.

  “See here,” Flush continued as he ran his finger down the printout. “They’re all gone.”

  “Arrey! What’s the good news?”

  “They failed to delete the call time figures at the bottom of the page.” He pointed. “See here—it lists the total talk times of the five most popular numbers.”

  “Numbers are missing.”

  “They were deleted, also.”

  Puri’s face was impassive. “Get to the point, yaar.”

  Flush reached for another printout. “This is Ram’s phone record, Boss. His account was tampered with, also.”

  “That I know.”

  “See here at the bottom of the page. His total talk time is there also for his most popular five numbers.”

  The detective looked down at the top figure. It read: “03 hr 52 mins.”

  He felt a pang of excitement as he looked again at Dr. Basu’s record. The number matched.

  “By God, that cannot be a coincidence!” exclaimed Puri, and gave his operative a slap on the back. “Tip-top work, yaar!” he added. “Now there can be no doubt. There was a connection between these two. Dots are starting to connect!”

  They celebrated by scoffing down the kathi rolls brought by Door Stop.

  Puri promptly sent the office boy back to the market for two more, as well as some sticky jalebis to share around.

  Mummy and the family had maintained a constant pace throughout the afternoon, stopping only for lunch and a couple of saddle breaks. The Dughals had never been more than five minutes ahead, reaching the summit with a scant three-minute lead. With the sun setting over an ocean of frozen peaks stretching toward the horizon, the Puris and their faithful mounts finally found themselves being led along a series of narrow alleys that wound through a complex of buildings perched on the side of the mountain. Temples and restaurants were nestled with guesthouses and dhabas. Despite the presence of electricity and the occasional blaring TV, the place retained a distinctly medieval atmosphere. The sounds of worship, of yatris chanting and singing, and of bells pealing pervaded the place.

  Mummy ensured that the Puris checked into the same guesthouse as the Dughals, which meant that they all had to share a single room.

  The family deposited their bags, freshened up, and promptly set off again to reach the cave complex where their prebooked darshan tickets guaranteed them entry to the shrine at eight o’clock.

  They joined a long queue that snaked up a series of steep steps and, over the next hour, inched slowly upward. The entrance to the cave was ornate and buzzing with excitement as hundreds of pilgrims waited to go inside. A curtain of plastic flowers hung around the mouth and a pair of golden lions stood sentinel on either side.

  From her honeymoon, Mummy remembered a narrow entrance through which she’d had to squeeze herself in her bridal finery. But a larger tunnel now led to the sanctum inside the mountain. The chiming of tiny cymbals and the flickering light cast by flaming jyotis, or divine lamps, greeted them as they approached the shrine itself, flanked by a crush of other pilgrims. Lying within an alcove, they found three small rock formations representing shakti, the concept of divine, feminine creative power, each adorned with dazzling crowns and surrounded by a bed of red cloth with gold braid. Strings of marigolds and bunches of plastic mangoes and oranges hung from the rock ceiling above.

  Each pilgrim was given but a few precious seconds in front of the sacred spot—barely enough time to seek the mother goddess’s blessings before making a cash donation to a priest holding a brass tray. Mummy was the last to stand before the shrine, palms pressed together, her covered head bowed in obeisance. With a long line of yatris pressing impatiently behind her, she stepped aside and placed a five-hundred-rupee note on top of the pile lying thick upon the tray.

  It was only then, by the light of the diyas burning in the cave, that she took note of the priest. He was dressed from top to bottom in red—tunic, dhoti, turban. But she recognized him instantly. It was Weasel Face.

  Concealing her surprise, she left the cave bereft of the sense of fulfillment she’d experienced, albeit momentarily, while standing before the mother goddess.

  “What’s the matter, Mummy-ji?” asked Rumpi when she saw her troubled expression.

  “It was him—from the train,” she replied.

  “Oh please, not this again.”

  They stopped halfway down the steps. The rest of the family had gone on ahead.

  “He’s a priest. Means he knows the place inside out.”

  “Mummy-ji, please, I’m exhausted and sore from all that riding. All I want to do is sleep,” said Rumpi.

  But her mother-in-law’s mind was elsewhere. She’d spotted Weasel Face again, coming down the steps from the shrine. He and another priest were carrying two canvas sacks. The jingle-jangle sound these made was unmistakable: they were filled with coins.

  “That is it!” Mummy exclaimed suddenly. “Dughal is planning to do robbery of the shrine! Imagine how much of cash the temple takes each and every day. Must be lakhs and lakhs at least.”

  Suddenly it all made sense. Weasel Face was the inside man. He’d provide Dughal with access to the temple coffers. They’d loot as much as they could carry and escape on the chartered helicopter.

  Rumpi listened patiently to her explanation and then said, “Mummy-ji, I’m sure you’re right. God only knows you have a nose for such things. But all I care about now is sleep. Let’s rest ’til morning and then—I promise—I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

  At about the same time that Rumpi and the rest of the family (bar Mummy) were settling down for a fitful night’s sleep, Facecream and Deep’s bus crawled through Lucknow’s evening traffic.

  They got down from the bus outside an ordinary office block with four floors and air-conditioning units jutting from windows.

  Only it was no ordinary building. Fixed to the railings were big portraits of Uttar Pradesh chief minister Baba Dhobi. Above the entrance was a sign spelling out the name of his political party.

  “She came here—to his political headquarters?” asked Facecream as they stood on the pavement.

  “Baba Dhobi was here that night,” said Deep. “One evening a week he sits here and people come to tell him their problems and ask for help.”

  Sirens sounded down the street and a cavalcade of vehicles appeared moving toward them. Like any Indian government cavalcade, it swept along at high speed with total disregard for everything in its path. The lead car, an Ambassador, was packed with peons and secretaries, two of whom leant out the window signaling wildly for people to get out of the way. Behind them rode two more Ambassadors packed with special protection officers, the barrels of their machine guns protruding from open windows. Then came a couple of police jeeps with whirring red beacons on their rooftops, four motorbike outriders, a black BMW, and finally another couple of Ambassadors with yet more functionaries gesticulating as if any further warning of their approach were needed.

  Security guards bustled Facecream and Deep down the pavement as the cavalcade screeched to a halt in front of the building. The special protection officers got out and took position around the BMW. A back door was opened and Facecream immediately recognized the figure who stepped out. Dressed in a simple white dhoti with tufts of hair growing from his ears, Baba Dhobi was dwarfed by the officers. Yet they had to hurry to keep up
with him as he strode purposefully toward the building. The bevy of secretaries and peons all clutching files, clipboards and briefcases followed behind, leaving the police and drivers to their idle banter and packets of Gold Flake cigarettes.

  “How do you know Kamlesh got inside?” Facecream asked Deep after the street had returned to normal.

  His answer was drowned out by passing traffic. But Facecream didn’t ask him to repeat himself. Something had caught her attention—something that sent a chill down her spine to the tips of her toes.

  Discreetly, she pulled out her khukuri and handed it to the boy. Then she told him to wait and approached the building. At the entrance, a security guard waved a metal-detector wand in front of her. It emitted a beep a couple of times. A female security guard gave her a pat-down. Facecream was cleared to enter and stepped up to a small desk. A bored-looking functionary sat with a phone and a thick visitors ledger before him. Facecream told him that she wanted to make a donation to the party.

  “Fourth floor, room seventeen,” he said with impatience, before writing down her name and designation.

  Then he said, “Show me your hand.”

  Facecream reached out with her right one. The man pressed a rubber stamp onto the skin.

  She’d been branded: a smiley face in black indelible ink.

  Seventeen

  Tubelight’s boys Shashi and Zia had opted for ragpicker disguises and, having purchased an old wooden barrow from a bemused kabari wallah in an Agra slum, set up camp on an undeveloped plot of land across from the entrance to the ICMB compound. The guards paid them no heed, even when the two passed the gates in their rags, asking if they had any plastic or paper that needed hauling away. The duo proceeded to collect all the trash that lay scattered across the plot and make piles of it outside the primitive tarpaulin tent they’d erected.

  “What is this place Swi-dan?” Shashi asked Zia once they were settled around a fire with their spotting scope, disguised inside a cardboard roll, trained on the gates.