‘Can we get the registration number of the cab?’ Adrian asked. ‘Might help. We might also get some info on who those guys were.’
‘It is likely to be a fake,’ Tony responded.
Nonetheless, Adrian took down the number. One by one they spotted the ten groups of perpetrators leaving the location. Four by cab and the rest on foot. But in none of the sightings were they able to get a clear shot of any of their faces.
Overall, the cameras were a big disappointment for Adrian. The only fact that they could establish was that their initial assumption was correct. The crime was hatched in the neighbourhood. They had been able to visually confirm that all the ten groups were in the neighbourhood just before the ATM heist began.
Adrian stood up. ‘Let’s go.’ he said.
Duster got up too.
‘Thanks, Franklin, for doing this at such short notice.’ Tony started to follow Adrian, then suddenly swivelled back to look at the screen again. Duster hadn’t switched it off. The feed was still playing. ‘Adrian, take a look at this!’
Adrian turned.
Tony pointed at the screen with his index finger. ‘Same guy, isn’t it?’ he whispered.
It was indeed the same tweed coat, hat and invisible face. But this time, he was with a woman. A woman wearing a floral dress and stylish hat, and carrying a designer handbag.
Tony replayed the feed.
The woman gave the man a quick hug and walked towards Coney Island Bridge, where she went out of the camera’s range. The old man turned and walked back in the direction he had come from.
‘Play it from the top,’ Adrian instructed. Tony rewound the video and cued it to when the man and woman just were about to enter the frame.
‘Stop!’ Adrian yelled the moment the man’s face became visible. ‘Can we get a larger image?’
‘Yes. The resolution is good. I can zoom in.’
Adrian looked on as Duster zoomed in. He was a dusky old man, sporting a moustache and glasses. ‘Can we get a facial scan, please?’
Duster nodded.
Tony pressed play on the remote and the video moved forward. In ten seconds, the woman’s face appeared on the screen too. Adrian raised his hand. Tony paused.
‘I can zoom this one too. You will get a better image,’ Duster volunteered.
Adrian looked at the image of the woman in the floral dress in shock.
‘Should I zoom in?’ Duster asked. He was at the console now.
‘Not necessary,’ Adrian said, as he turned towards Tony. ‘Let’s go. There is one person who can give us the answers.’ He looked pale.
44
Washington DC
Josh was sweating when he logged off. How was he going to do this? He had agreed to the ATM heist only because, as a handler, he had done one of the tasks earlier. As a student leader, he had experience in handling groups of people and mobilizing teams. To top that, the money he had been offered was phenomenal. He made good money as the admin of cotton trail, but half a million for a day’s work was easy money. Delivering the goods to Santo Domingo, however, was never a part of the original deal. How he had got sucked into the entire thing was a mystery to him.
For a long time, he sat there wondering what his next step should be. What if he picked up the remaining money and disappeared? Would they be able to track him down? What would happen if they did?
The idea went out of the window faster than it occurred to him. These guys would be watching his every move. He had only one option: figure out a way to get the money. And he had only twenty-four hours to find it if he didn’t want to end up in a body bag.
It occurred to him that he had an escape route. If he was unable to get the money, he might as well kill for something bigger. Hunt a whale so big that it not only took care of his immediate problem but netted him enough money to not worry about another job ever again.
He pulled out a loaded Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum. Flipping open the magazine, he took out the bullets, counting six as he placed them on the table. He pulled back the hammer and the trigger to test the revolver. The pulling of the trigger released the hammer and it struck the spot where the bullet would have been. It worked perfectly. He checked the barrel and reloaded the single-action revolver.
He pulled out a bag from his cupboard, threw in a magazine with spare bullets, and a large meat knife. He zipped the bag and walked out. The clock was ticking faster than he wanted it to.
*
Within five minutes, Tony and Adrian were hurtling down the highway at over 100 mph. Somewhere along the way, Tony saw a board: Washington DC, 160 miles. In the heavy traffic, it would take them four hours to get back.
‘What the fuck is wrong with you, Adrian? Who did you see on the screen? Why don’t you say something?’
Adrian was gripping the steering wheel tightly, really tightly. He was worried. When he saw that Tony was really furious at his not saying anything, he finally responded, ‘It’s not an Islamic terrorist group, Tony.’
‘Then who is it?’
‘That’s what we have to find out.’
*
Josh drove past the gate and braked. It was dark. The streetlights were off. He picked up his bag from the passenger seat of his Ford pick-up and got off. He didn’t lock the truck. It would have beeped. He walked slowly towards the house. There was a seven-feet-high wall all round the two-acre plot.
He threw a piece of metal wire over the periphery. No alarm went off.
The wall was the least of the challenges. He had climbed walls much higher than this one. In a couple of minutes, he was in and making his way towards the house. A few guards would be stationed at the entrance to the main building, he was sure. If he could get past them, the rest would be a cakewalk. The nearest cop picket was at least six minutes away. But for them to respond, someone would have to call them.
*
On the way, Adrian called FBI headquarters. Thankfully, Robert Brick was in office. Adrian told him everything he had seen. Robert was shocked too.
‘Can you send us some back-up at the site, Robert? We will reach in twenty minutes.’
‘Right away!’
When Adrian got into action, it was difficult to figure out who the boss was.
*
Josh hid behind a pillar and scanned the main entrance. Two guards, busy chatting. This was going to be easy. He screwed the muzzler on to the barrel of his .357. Standing a good 30 feet away, he took aim and waited for the right moment. It didn’t come. He was running out of time. Not wanting to wait any longer, he muttered a prayer and pressed the trigger.
A puff of smoke. And the guard fell face down on the marble. He didn’t even have time to scream in pain. That’s what a bullet to the brain does. The other guard pulled out his gun and looked around frantically. He reached for his walkie-talkie and whispered into it.
The surviving guard tried to withdraw towards the pillar to his left. In the open, he was vulnerable.
And then he heard it. The clank of a revolver’s hammer. He turned. Only to stare straight into the barrel of Josh’s gun. Josh didn’t waste another moment and fired. The only sound that could be heard was that of the guard’s gun hitting the portico.
Josh walked in. It was a big house. The occupant would most probably be asleep. Killing was not his first option. He wanted to quietly take away what he had come for. Something that would make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. Something he had helped create.
He quietly padded into the living room. His shoes were stuffed in his backpack. It was familiar territory.
There was one bedroom on the ground floor. He opened the door and looked in just to make sure everyone was asleep. There was nobody there. It looked like a teenage girl’s room. Posters of Justin Bieber covered the walls. He moved on to the first floor. The first room to his right was the study. He stood in the corridor, weighing his options. He heard a light snore from one of the other rooms. He thought for a moment and then walked into the study. Carefully, he shut the doo
r behind him. There was a bookshelf to his right, and a study table and a window to his left.
He switched on the light and walked up to the table, stopping long enough to draw the curtain. Books were neatly arranged on the table. He looked at them carefully. He rummaged through the drawers but found nothing there. He was conscious of the time. If the second guard had managed to alert them the cops would be arriving any minute now.
‘Where would you hide your deepest and most valuable secret?’ he muttered. He was looking for a file containing documents or a CD or a hard disk. But who hid them like that these days? It had to be in a laptop but he couldn’t find one. Had the FBI confiscated it? He panicked.
‘What the hell are you doing here, Josh?’ It was the moment he had been dreading all along. He turned. The door to the study was open and she was standing at the door with a baseball bat in hand.
‘I came for a few papers,’ Josh responded, innocently.
‘In the dead of the night? Like a thief?’
‘Some things cannot be done in Midland Café, in the light of day, sweetheart.’
That caught her by surprise. She thought she had done well enough to hide her identity. It didn’t cross her mind that someone could have seen her there.
‘Perhaps you can care to tell me what you were doing at Midland Café the other day. Tailing me?’ he ridiculed.
‘None of your business, Josh,’ she yelled.
‘Well then, perhaps I should get back to my business. If you would care to go back to sleep now, I can finish my work in peace.’
‘I called 911. They should be here any moment. Perhaps I will go to sleep after that.’ And she waved the baseball bat at him.
That’s when he saw it. He had found what he was looking for. But the mention of 911 sent him into a rage. In one swift movement, he pulled out his gun, pointed it at her and fired. A shrill scream pierced the silence of the neighbourhood as the bullet passed through her and embedded itself in the door behind her.
Adrian’s car screeched to a halt the moment he heard the scream. Damn! Was he too late? He jumped out of the car and rushed in, Tony in hot pursuit. He pushed the main gate open and ran in. On the portico, he found two guards from the state police department lying on the floor. They appeared to be dead. He dashed in. All the lights were off except for the one in the room on the first floor. It took him some time to figure out where to go. He ran up the stairs and turned right. And immediately collided with Josh and took a tumble. Josh kept running.
‘Freeze! FBI!’ Adrian hollered.
Josh didn’t stop. Adrian made a split-second decision and fired. He missed. The bullet shattered the glass door of a connecting room instead.
Tony was faster than Adrian. He sprinted and got closer to Josh who ran out the main door, jumped over the body of the first cop and was about to leap over the second cop when he got unlucky. Tony fired, Josh leapt and landed right in the pool of blood that the second cop was lying in, and slipped.
By the time Adrian reached Josh, Tony was there. Josh lay motionless. When he slipped, Tony’s bullet had hit him in the neck. Tony felt his pulse then looked up at Adrian and shook his head.
‘Take charge of his bag, and do a body search. I will look inside,’ Adrian said.
He turned and walked in. He switched on all the lights and walked up to the rooms on the first floor.
He opened the door to the first room. There was no one there. The moment he reached the second room, he involuntarily covered his mouth, feeling nauseous.
Nikki Tan was lying on the floor. She was unconscious but she was breathing. Miraculously, the bullet had missed her heart. The 911 response team arrived just then.
Adrian looked at her. ‘Hold on, Nikki, hold on. Help is on its way,’ he said as he rubbed her right hand. The moment he held it in his hand, he felt something gooey and let it go. It fell with a thud. Her body twitched in pain.
The EMTs took her away, leaving Adrian wondering what had just happened.
Only two people could tell him that. One was dead and the other had almost died in his arms. Nikki Tan looked so pretty even in that state. Even prettier than she had looked in her floral dress on the CCTV camera on Coney Island Avenue.
45
Mumbai
The eTIOS issue was fast becoming a matter of national pride and importance. India’s reputation as an IT giant was at stake. Pretty much all the world outsourced its operations to India. If the data breach was not dealt with quickly, it would lead to a loss of faith and consequent losses in business.
What made matters worse for eTIOS was that a security breach had been detected three months ago. It was plugged but not reported. That was a mistake. It was seen as some pranksters trying to hack into the system for fun. No one took it seriously. And then it happened again—on the day of the ATM heist. But by the time it was detected and plugged, the miscreants had done the damage.
Preoccupied with the eTIOS debacle and Malvika’s death, Aditya let Varun handle everything related to Indiscape. After all, Varun could do no wrong. Townsville’s MAUs climbed to 600,000 within ten days of the start of the Facebook promotion. There wasn’t a country in the world where someone wasn’t playing Townsville.
This was the context in which the head of programming came to Varun.
‘Varun, we have a minor problem.’
‘Yes?’
‘There are close to 8000 gamers who are stuck at level six and are unable to move to the next level. The paid cheats are also not helping them. They have tried at least twenty times each to cross that level.’
‘What could have caused this?’
‘It’s a bug in the system predictive algorithm. The game has gone into a loop. There is no way for them to get out and head to the next level. Until we intervene and change the program, they can’t move on.’
‘So what do you want to do?’
‘We need to pull out four programmers for a week. They can make some changes and we can release an update so that the bug can be fixed.’
‘Are you out of your mind? Four programmers for a week? Just when we are going full steam ahead on Townsville? It will set us back on game development.’
‘But what about this bug?’
‘Don’t worry. We have 600,000 playing, of whom only a little over 1 per cent are impacted by the bug. What’s the worst that will happen? They will stop playing, right? We’ll live with it. Make some five to ten dollars out of those customers and let them drop off.’
‘But, Varun . . . ’
‘Is there anything else?’
‘No, Varun.’
‘Thank you. Now if you will excuse me, I need to catch up on something.’
He walked back to his table, then turned around. ‘Well, I can give you one resource. Here . . . ’ He picked up a CV from his table and handed it over. ‘Hire this guy. This CV came to me this morning, highly recommended. Get him to do the update you want. That’s the best we can do.’
The director of programming looked at the CV. It seemed reasonable. ‘Okay.’
Varun looked at his watch. It was hitting 8 p.m. He had promised Tanya that he would have dinner with her.
46
Washington DC
‘Adrian . . . Adrian!’ Tony screamed.
The ambulance had just zoomed off with an injured Nikki Tan and the bodies of the two police officers. Josh’s body would be released for an inquest only after the preliminary investigations. A forensic team from the FBI had also arrived on the scene. Tony was going through the contents of Josh’s bag.
‘Looks like he had come prepared for more,’ Tony said, holding up the unused magazine that he had pulled out of the bag. He opened the backpack wide and looked in. ‘What’s this?’ He pulled out a big meat knife and a piece of cloth. There was a key too. ‘Our friend drove down here,’ he declared.
‘The car can’t be far!’ Adrian exclaimed.
‘Wait? There is something else here. It feels cold. A sausage.’
‘A sa
usage?’ Adrian was surprised.
‘Here we go . . .’ Using a tweezer, Tony pulled out a four inch long sausage from the backpack. He held it up for Adrian to see and was about to drop it into an evidence bag when he shouted, ‘What the fuck?’
Adrian rushed to his side. It was not a sausage. It was a human finger, chopped off from a body. He recollected the gooey feeling when he had rubbed Nikki Tan’s right hand. He hadn’t realized that it had only four fingers. He thought it was an injury caused in the attack.
‘What kind of guy would chop off a victim’s finger and carry it with him? A souvenir? How deranged can one be?’
As Tony dropped the finger into the evidence bag, Adrian couldn’t help notice the sparkling gold ring that still adorned it.
47
Washington DC
‘I’d like to monitor the patient before I can comment.’
That was all the doctor would say when asked about Nikki Tan’s condition. The bullet had gone straight through her, missing her heart by less than a centimetre. Enough to kill most people but Nikki was a strong woman. She had been through a lot in life. When Adrian had met her in the course of the investigation into Gillian’s killing, he had been impressed with her strength and resolve.
After meeting the physician in charge, Adrian wanted to examine the room where Nikki was being attended to. He was reviewing the security arrangements around the ward when he saw her—Gloria Tan, Gillian and Nikki’s daughter. Barely out of her teens, Gloria always looked delicately pretty but today she looked particularly vulnerable.
‘She is going to be fine. I just met the doctor. Have faith,’ Adrian whispered as he sat next to Gloria, taking care not to startle her.
‘Are you going to find the attackers?’ Gloria asked. It was clear she had been crying.
‘He is already dead.’
‘Are you sure he was the only one? What if there are others lurking about?’
‘If there are, we will get them.’ Adrian too had a lot of questions but they would have to wait.
God is a Gamer Page 12