‘And they’re using NGOs and grant funding and charitable trusts to funnel and whitewash the dirty profits from these illicit activities before rerouting them back into the system, is that right?’
He made a gesture with an upturned palm, tilting his head and smiling. ‘There you go. You have it in a nutshell.’
‘And now they want me dead because I know this?’ she asked, looking puzzled now. ‘That doesn’t make sense, father. I don’t have the documents anymore, so I can’t really prove anything …’
‘No,’ he said, looking surprised. ‘They want you dead on general principles, yes. But the real reason why they’re after you is because of the schedule, of course. I thought you knew that already.’
Now it was her turn to look surprised. ‘What schedule?’ Ah, the painkillers have kicked in. Man, that feels great!
‘The one that spells out the next round of terror attacks in India.’
‘What?’
‘It’s a tabular list on a single sheet, right at the end. It just has dates and place names, just cities, no neighbourhoods or specific details.’
She stared at him. ‘And this is a list of terror attacks in our country?’
‘Impending terror attacks.’
She reached into the back pocket of her jeans, pulling out the sheet she had folded and put into her wallet right at the beginning. The sheet that had slipped out of the package when she pulled out the pile of papers and which was stuck to her face when she woke up in Papanasam Sea Resort. She opened it out now. It was a list of dates and places, that was all.
But it was no longer meaningless.
She stared at it for a long moment.
‘What is it, Anita?’ Father Francis asked, leaning forward to look at the page.
She turned it and showed it to him, jabbing her finger at the topmost entry. He took the sheet from her, looking at it in a way that told her he had never actually laid eyes on it until that moment, even though he had known of its existence.
‘That’s today’s date, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he said, his face paling. ‘Damn it, we thought we had at least another week.’ He looked down the list and his face grew even more troubled. He genuflected silently with his right hand, presumably because of the ‘damn’.
She caught hold of his wrist, making the paper rattle. ‘And the first attack is … when?’
He finished crossing himself and lowered his hand, two fingers still joined and crooked as if about to anoint with holy water.
‘Now,’ he said. ‘In a few minutes. It starts in Delhi …’
15.2
NACHIKETA WAS TOO STUNNED to do more than simply sit in the wheelchair as Rajendra Powar wheeled her out of the office, watched by the condescending eyes of the MBA brigade. She told the Jat to wait a moment as she made a quick phone call to a clerk she knew at the Delhi High Court, a Chennaiite who had been in an abusive marriage and had expressed sympathy for Nachiketa’s ordeal and admiration for her fighting back. The clerk was still at the courthouse and looking up a judgment on record was simply a matter of opening a page in an Internet browser these days. She confirmed what Shama had said back in Pink’s office: the judgment on record was declared against Nachiketa, not for her, as claimed by Judge R.K. Jain just two days ago. How that was possible, Nachiketa had no idea. But by now, it didn’t surprise her that these people, whoever they were, might be powerful enough to alter court judgments – perhaps even have a judgment rescinded and a fresh one issued. Or an incorrect one filed. It didn’t matter how they’d done it or whether Nachiketa could appeal against it or overturn it on various grounds; the point was the judgment presently stood against her, and that lent credence to what the ‘living dead’ Advaita and ‘undead’ Shonali seemed to be telling every journalist and columnist in Delhi. As Powar and she waited for the lift, she had taken a moment to check her messages and emails on her BB and had seen that she had forty-seven unread messages and/or emails, and about twice as many missed calls, almost all from media publications and channels. Whoever these people were, they were thorough as hell. They had come up with a story that fit what could be presented as ‘facts’ and there was nothing she could do to change that now.
She was silent in the lift all the way down and in the street while Powar pushed her back to where they had parked the car in a Pay and Park zone. She hadn’t fully recovered even after he had decanted her from the chair to the car, packed away the wheelchair and seated himself in the driver’s seat. He fiddled with the keys of the Civic for a moment and put one into the ignition but didn’t start the car. Finally, he turned slightly so he could see her better, his right elbow banging the side of the steering wheel.
‘Who is persons doing this to madam?’ he asked indignantly. ‘Who is behind all so much shitness?’
She glanced at him, intrigued by the choice of words more than the outburst. But she said nothing. She could think of nothing to say.
He reached towards her, his bandaged hand like a fat white rabbit on a hairy stick, and she reacted. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ he said, then jabbed the bandage downwards. She realized he was trying to point. ‘I am wanting see envelope. Lifafa?’
She took hold of the package with both her bandaged hands, lifting it up. As delicately as possible under the circumstances, and with the awkwardness typical of Indian men forced to be in close proximity with women yet trying to avoid actual contact, he managed to take the envelope in both his bandaged hands and towed it over to his side, propping it against the steering wheel. The horn went off once, alerting the parking attendant who assumed they were leaving and started towards them, pulling his notepad from his DMC coat pocket and jotting down the figures.
Powar struggled with the documents for a moment, then finally managed to pull the wad of papers out of the envelope. Because he was pressing the envelope against the steering wheel, one paper at the end got caught inside and tore as the rest were pulled out. He looked sheepishly at the torn sheet, then heaved the rest against his chest, tucking the sheets under his chin to hold them in place while he struggled to free the last sheet with his white mittens. Just then the parking attendant knocked on the closed window and slapped the parking receipt against the glass, just in case they were planning to drive off without paying. Powar nodded at the attendant who couldn’t see him from that angle – Powar was so tall, the attendant would have had to bend down and look inside the car to see his face properly. Nachiketa watched this with a detachment that was yogic in its quietude. Nothing seemed to matter anymore.
What was the point of taking any action at all? Shonali was dead, her office was burnt to ashes, her practice destroyed, Advaita’s death in vain too, and somehow, incredibly, the forces at work here had altered the verdict in her case, putting a ‘Denial of Claimant’s Petition’ in place of the finding for the plaintiff that had been announced in open court. How the hell did you do that anyway? How did you get the Delhi High Court to reverse a declared verdict? She could guess, of course: they had got to Justice R.K. Jain somehow, either coerced him or killed him, and since it took a day or so for the verdict to be entered into the system’s records, they had been able to enter the altered verdict. So in a sense they hadn’t changed the official record, just the verbally declared one. Even so. What arrogance! What power! What hubris!
And now, every single one of her friends believed she was a raving lunatic, that she had gone off the deep end at last. She could almost hear them chatting on their BBMs now: ‘I saw it coming for some time. You have to know how to read the signs.’
Even the dog was dead, that poor thing. Along with her poor pups.
‘Justice is dead,’ Nachiketa said. ‘And so are her children.’
The attendant knocked again, still unaware that Powar was otherwise occupied. Rajendra was struggling with the pile of documents which was slowly slipping down his chest. Nachiketa sighed, deciding to rejoin the real world, and reached out. She took the envelope from his hand, indicating the pile of papers with her
eyes. He made a sound of acquiescence and used both hands to grab the slipping pile, settled them on the steering wheel – another blast of the horn – then rolled down the window to pay the attendant.
Nachiketa had the envelope in her hand now. The half-torn sheet was still in it, but it had come almost all the way out. She was about to stuff it back inside when she happened to see the tabular rows of dates and times and places. It was fairly simple. Her eye happened to notice the word ‘Daryaganj’ because that was where they were right now, in a Pay and Park almost within sight of Delhi Gate. The words beside the Daryaganj entry simply said ‘Jama Masjid’. There were some numbers in the right-hand column which she read easily as twenty-four-hour times. The time entry for Daryaganj–Jama Masjid read 21:11. There was something about that time that caught her attention – twenty-one hours was 9 p.m.. She glanced at the digital clock on the Civic dashboard which had come on just that instant, as Powar, having paid the attendant, turned on the ignition. The time display was accurate – it was a lawyer’s car, after all – and read 9:10 in bold, blinking digits. That would be 21:10 in 24-hour time, a minute before the time listed here, which meant that whatever was supposed to happen at Jama Masjid, Daryaganj, Delhi, was going to happen in less than a minute. At the precise time of …
‘Nine eleven,’ she said aloud.
Rajendra Powar glanced at her as he used the paddle shift to put the Civic into gear to reverse out of the parking space. ‘Aapne kuch kaha, madamji?’
She looked at him. ‘Something is supposed to happen at nine elev—’
That was as far as she got before the car shook as if hit by an invisible fist and the world turned white.
The digital clock on the dashboard had just turned to 9:11.
15.3
AN ASSISTANT OR BODYGUARD – was there a difference? – whom Sheila had seen often before, came up to Stanley with a cell phone and said something briefly. Stanley took the cell and listened to it for barely a second before handing it back to the assistant. The assistant’s eyes met Sheila’s as he turned to leave and he acknowledged her without making any visible gesture or action: for a well-mannered Chinese, merely making eye contact was acknowledgement. The man left as discreetly as he had entered, receding into the shadows. She saw that a change had come over Stanley. He turned back to look out at the view, but he had lost all interest in it. He turned to look at her, then came over. From the way he walked she knew that the news must be really bad for him to be taking it this hard. She hadn’t known him long enough, but had seen him in his most intimate moments and in the throes of intense emotional release, and she felt sure he had revealed more to her in those instances than he did to people he did business with or socialized with all his life.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
He made a gesture of resignation. ‘Chi.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘It is the reason you are here. Why you came to me.’
‘I came to find out what that package means. Why people are trying to ruin my life – have ruined my life. Why they’re trying to kill me. Who they are.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And this is why.’
He gestured at the view, at Kolkata in the dark night, a sprinkling of lights. ‘It will begin soon. It has already begun in Delhi.’
She had no idea what he was talking about. ‘What has begun?’
‘The same thing we have been talking about all this time.’
She tried to connect the dots. ‘Slave trading? Human trafficking?’
‘That’s part of it, yes. That is the ongoing business, the bread-and-butter part. It’s a big business, the fastest growing in the world. But this is bigger than that and they use this to drive that business and others. This is the whip they use to keep the sheep in line.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know anything about this shit, Wu. Please explain it to me.’
He came over and sat beside her on the futon. ‘Capital markets. That’s the heart of the whole thing, right? Business, manufacturing, trading, services, everything can only give you so much return, no more. There are expenses, rules, regulations, limitations, taxes. But capital markets are unlimited. Once you’ve put together a pile from whatever sources – legitimate, illegitimate, it doesn’t matter – you have only one place left to invest it, if you want it to grow.’
‘The stock market.’
‘Yes. In 1992, in a single day, George Soros short-sold UK Pound Sterling currency worth $10 billion. He was exploiting a weakness in the Pound Sterling which he had been talking about openly for years before that. The Government of England knew what he was doing, knew it was possible to do just that, and tried to counter him by pumping as much as $15 billion to prop up the Sterling. But by the close of business, when the accounts were squared, the Bank of England couldn’t afford to meet its short calls for the day. Soros basically broke the Bank of England in that one day. And in the process, he pocketed a neat $1.1 billion for himself.’
Sheila raised her eyebrows. ‘That’s a lot of fish and chips.’
‘He did it again, in 1997 during the Asian financial crisis. He killed the Thai Baht and Malaysian Ringgit just as he had done the Pound Sterling. Mahathir Mohamad was PM of Malaysia then. He’s a close family friend, and insisted that Soros deliberately chose that time to attack the Asian market because the Association of South Asian Nations or ASEAN had just inducted Myanmar, formerly Burma, as a member.’ Stanley smiled wryly, without humour. ‘Mahathir was accused of being anti-Semitic. Of course. You can’t accuse a Jewish billionaire of anything without being anti-Semitic. Mahathir later recanted his allegations publicly, but in private anyone who knew the Asian markets knew that Soros and his gang of European–American billionaire bullies had set out to crash Asia. In barely fourteen months, over 1997 and ’98, they caused losses of over $125 billion to ASEAN countries. Nobody knows for sure how much Soros personally profited from that raid, but that was when he went from being just a punk opportunist to a billionaire hedge fund manager. A player. Today, he only manages his own family’s investments of almost $30 billion.’
Sheila still hadn’t understood a thing. ‘So are you saying that George Soros is behind this?’
Stanley Wu laughed. ‘I wish. It would be so nice and simple, wouldn’t it? Like a Bond movie. The villain with the eyepatch and the Siamese cat with the diamond collar. Or a glass eye and a cigarillo. But there are no individual villains here, Sheila. That’s what I’m trying to explain to you. It’s the whole system. The reason I brought up Soros is because he’s written some interesting books on global capital markets that really make a lot of sense, if you’re interested.’
‘I’m not, actually,’ she said. ‘So I’ll take your word for it.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But he has a theory he came up with a long while back, based on the work of philosopher Karl Popper. It’s called Reflexivity and it’s quite simple to understand.’
‘For you, no doubt. For me, probably not so simple. I don’t dine and wine prime ministers and finance moguls, Stanley. I run a women’s gym. I work out. I read a little, watch some TV. Costume historical dramas are my favourite. I don’t know shit-all about capital markets or what the fuck they have to do with human trafficking. You’re still not making a whole lot of sense here.’
He nodded. ‘Bear with me just a few moments longer. Reflexivity, okay? It’s really simple. It’s a philosophy that says that the very act of observing a stock market closely influences the market.’
Sheila raised her eyebrows. ‘That’s heavy. Like spectators watching a game affecting the game’s outcome?’
‘No, not spectators. Participants. The actual investors whose money is in the market, the more intently they observe the market, the more they influence its valuation.’
‘For better or worse?’
‘That’s the point: it throws them into a vicious cycle of ups and downs which can never be corrected completely.’
‘Because they can’t stop watchin
g?’
‘Yes and because the market can’t stop being influenced by their watching. Soros says that is the current state of the world economy. It’s in a death spiral from which it can never recover. There will be occasional stabilization, bubbles that make it float upwards – he claimed that we now have super-bubbles in which our speculation fuels more speculation which in turn influences further speculation, thereby causing the market valuation to shoot up to unsustainable heights – but in the end, what goes up must come down.’
‘So the world economy is in a tailspin,’ Sheila said. ‘Great, I’ll make sure I don’t put all the cash I withdrew from the ATM last night into a hedge fund. But how does all this economic philosophy connect with trafficking humans?’
‘The big guns, the kings who run the world of big finance, the hedge fund managers, the tycoons of Wall Street, the MNCs, the mega-accounting firms, the insurance conglomerates, all those guys, they know that there isn’t any business or trade left that can give them new bubbles of growth, especially the super-growth they now want, that they’re addicted to.’
‘The greed economy.’
‘Yes. Money for the sake of money. As an end in itself. That’s the only purpose of a corporation. Not to build or manufacture or serve or provide. Simply to make money. It’s a machine. And the machine must be fed.’
‘So they turned to illegitimate means of earning more bucks? Like slave trading, you say? Human trafficking?’
‘Yes, but that’s only the bread and butter.’
‘So you said. What’s the jam then?’
He looked at her. ‘Terrorism.’
She didn’t get it. ‘What do you mean, terrorism?’
‘The business of terror.’
‘Yeah, duh, I know what terrorism means, I know it’s run like a business now, but what’s that got to do with—’
BLOOD RED SARI Page 21