KALYUG

by R. SREERAM

  She hung up without further comment or discussion. If Jack were telling the truth, there was no time to be lost. She needed to take this as high as possible, as soon as possible. One did not sit on news like this.

  On the other hand, a coup in India . . . she had heard folklore about how, in 1975, the CIA had known at least twenty-four hours earlier that Indira Gandhi was going to impose a coup-like Emergency. At that time, with limited manpower and a fraction of today’s technology, the secret had still leaked; it seemed improbable that in this day and age, with eyes and ears on the ground and in the skies, with the vast network of informants and the listening stations of NSA, such an event could happen in a country like India without having set off alarms much earlier.

  But still . . .

  She had almost reached for the in-house telephone which would, just by the action of lifting the handset, connect her to the deputy director of operations for the CIA, when she stopped. Her fingers hovered over the handset, undecided, before they swept towards the fifth phone. She made up her mind; it was better to be safe than to make an ass of yourself. This late in the night, she needed a lot of evidence to be safe.

  ‘Hello, Rajeev,’ she said when the phone was answered. ‘This is Nina, from the CIA. Can we talk?’

  Halfway across the world, in his own office inside the Research and Analysis Wing’s headquarters in New Delhi, Rajeev listened to her questions and promised to call her back within a few minutes, as soon as he had checked out his own sources.

  The moment she hung up, he called the number he had been given to reach at INSAF.

  16th September, 2012. Mumbai.

  ‘This is Gyandeep Sharma. Who am I talking to?’

  ‘Gyandeep! I’m sure you’ve heard of me, just as I’ve heard of you – but I believe this is the first time we’ve spoken. This is Jagannath Mitra here, calling from the Rashtrapati Bhavan.’

  There was a pause as the older man tried to digest this revelation. So his fears had come true. INSAF was at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

  ‘And to what do I owe the pleasure of this conversation?’ Gyandeep asked, forcing himself to keep his voice level. ‘I have just been introduced to some of your goons who have, to use a euphemism, been rather liberal with redecorating my office.’

  Jagannath’s chuckle echoed around the CEO’s office. ‘I assure you they meant no physical harm. But I understand Leela put up a fight. No, don’t worry, she’s quite all right. Nothing a bit of first aid couldn’t take care of. Once we are done brainwashing her, she’ll be right back where she belongs.’

  Gyandeep ignored the jibe. He had too much respect for Leela’s intelligence to believe that she could be brainwashed by anybody, even INSAF. It was probably just a ploy by Jagannath to ensure that he would never trust his niece so unquestioningly again.

  ‘But you are a busy man, Sharmaji. So I will get right to the point of this call. Infinity has been damaged but not put out of commission. Kalyug is in operation right now – and I know you’ve been trying to stop us ever since you found out about it. But right now, there is very little you can do about it, except what we want you to.

  ‘And what we want you to do is very simple. Advise your clients to stay put. It is in neither of our interests to have the market tank at a time like this. We need to retain the investors’ confidence and tell them that for the capitalist, it’s still as hunky-dory as ever.

  ‘But if you try to screw us both, believe me, it will hurt you before it hurts us. And I’ll personally shut you down before you can do any more damage. You are no longer as invincible or untouchable as you were yesterday. I hope I’m being clear.’

  ‘Crystal,’ said the financier with barely-controlled contempt.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Jagannath. ‘Oh, and there’s one more thing, but I think I’ll have my major there explain it to you.’

  The line went dead. Gyandeep glanced at the commando who stood before him. Tall, thin and wiry, his eyes bored into Gyandeep with undisguised contempt. As soon as the call terminated, the commando returned the satellite phone to its case and latched it shut.

  Then, without taking his eyes off the older man, he pulled a sheaf of papers from the inside of his fatigues. He placed them on the table in front of Gyandeep Sharma.

  ‘Sign it,’ he ordered, extending a pen.

  ‘What is it?’ Gyandeep asked, making no move to take the offered pen. His ego demanded that he regain at least some of the face he had lost in the exchange with Mitra, and he was confident that the commando would have been expressly forbidden from causing him any physical harm.

  ‘It’s a release order for forty-five million dollars,’ said the commando, the pen still proffered, steady, nary a shake. ‘Towards the welfare fund for the families of officers killed in peace-time duty.’

  ‘Forty-five million dollars?’ exclaimed Gyandeep. ‘That’s a little high, don’t you think?’ He picked up the first sheet and pretended to read.

  ‘What price would you put on their lives then, you son of a bitch?’

  Surprised at the invective, Gyandeep looked up. Just in time to see the commando’s left hand rush at his stomach with astonishing speed. The next moment, he dropped to his knees, gasping for breath, a victim of physical violence for the first time in several decades. He tried to swallow large gulps of air, but it seemed that there was no space for it in his body – even as his nerves screamed for more oxygen to ease the pain that seemed to radiate from his very core.

  After a few minutes of dry heaves and coughs, Gyandeep finally managed to pull himself up using the edge of the table. The commando stared at him, stone-like in his demeanour. The pen was offered once again.

  His faith in his own safety now thoroughly shaken, Gyandeep took the pen and signed his name wherever required. The amount itself was petty change to the coffers at Infinity, and it was not worth getting beaten up over.

  But his own feeling of self-survival could still not prevent him from promising retribution. ‘One day,’ he told the commando as he returned the pen, ‘I’ll get you for this.’

  ‘You already did,’ said the commando, ignoring the pen. He calmly checked the documents, satisfied himself that everything was in order and then placed it back inside his fatigues. The very next instant, he unleashed a vicious blow to Gyandeep’s jaw. The head snapped back, the knuckles on his hand cracked a little and the older man collapsed in a stunned heap on his back.

  The commando inspected his knuckles indulgently as Gyandeep struggled to sit up. Finally, as the latter fought to regain his vision, the commando went down on one knee and gripped Gyandeep’s jaw, forcing him to make eye contact.

  ‘I’m Nawaz Qureshi. And that one was for my father.’

  7

  16th September, 2012. New Delhi.

  The headquarters of INSAF was situated in an old office complex that had been completely gutted out and renovated, strategically close to the international airport and just a few minutes’ drive from the Metro that connected it to the rest of the city. The four floors above street level advertised an obscure export-import company, hiding within its innards workstations and conference rooms. The building violated many safety rules, particularly when it came to fire escapes and alternate emergency exits, but since it was this part of New Delhi, nobody really cared too much.

  If the uninviting façade and the deliberate impression of a shady, fly-by-night operation still failed to dissuade enquiries, there was a reception desk manned by a distinctly unhelpful middle-aged man whose job description required him to be brusque and dismissive. Of the few people who had walked in, shopping for jobs or better services, none ever returned.

  The four floors above complemented the three floors underground, but they paled in comparison to the levels of security clearance and intrigue that was associated with the latter. If the conference rooms above ground had multi-layered walls and vacuum curtains to prevent eavesdropping, the underground ones were even more thoroughly secured. Built into solid rock, the perimete
r also employed the same sonar technology that submarines used, continuously scanning the area for even minute vibrations. The air-vents were rigged with infrared and piezoelectric sensors, while the only means of egress – a staircase and an elevator – were protected by biometric sensors and pressure pads that even tracked the number of footfalls at any given point of time.

  It was from the lowest of these levels that Operation Kalyug was being coordinated.

  The moment the liaison officer had used the phrase he had been given, the voice-print engine had swung into work, sifting through the data and identifying the speaker. The built-in algorithm to detect stress-levels – and therefore, if a person was being forced to speak – flagged his tension as normal, which was understandable in the circumstances. Like a call-centre where each agent handled a particular product line, the co-ordination centre had ten operatives manning each aspect of the operations. The call was routed to the officer in charge of Intelligence agencies.

  ‘The CIA is getting suspicious,’ said Rajeev without preamble. He knew he didn’t need one – he had already been told that everyone who was involved in Kalyug was voice-mapped. ‘One of their men spotted the commandos in Ghaziabad. Nina at Langley called me to check if we know what’s happening. She did not say as much, but I think they are aware that we’ve locked down the conference centre.’

  ‘Understood,’ said the other. ‘Hold on.’ His fingers moved rapidly over the keypad, connecting in the operative who was tracking the events in Ghaziabad. As the latter came online, he immediately briefed him on the details of the call.

  ‘Rajeev,’ said the Ghaziabad officer. ‘Wait for another ten minutes – exactly ten – and then call her back. Tell her you think there is cause for concern, but we aren’t sure exactly what the problem is. We are sending our own team in to take a look, but it could be just a drill that was wrongly scheduled. Ask her if she can loop us in on whatever recon details she has, and if her operative will meet up with us near the conference centre. Counting down to nine minutes and thirty seconds. Clear?’

  ‘Clear,’ affirmed Rajeev before he hung up.

  The Ghaziabad officer immediately pressed another button on his console. The speed-dial connected him almost instantly to his point-man in Ghaziabad.

  ‘The CIA has been warned,’ he said.

  ‘We know,’ said the man at the other end. ‘He managed to leave the premises and get to a mall nearby. Out of range of our jammers. He must have used a phone there. I have two men watching him right now.’

  ‘Take him in,’ ordered the Ghaziabad officer. ‘He’s a wild-card we can’t afford to have loose. Have the local cops arrest him or something, but keep him offline.’

  ‘Roger. Anything else?’

  ‘Yes. For God’s sake, lock down the entire hotel. In another half hour, it won’t matter – but until then, no leaks!’

  ‘It’s already done.’

  16th September, 2012. Ghaziabad.

  Jack looked around him anxiously. For some reason, he felt that he was being watched – it was an unfamiliar, unwelcome feeling. Yet, he saw nothing that should have aroused his suspicions. Families, couples, kids in groups . . . no one seemed out of place. Even the loners he spotted at the Café Coffee Day lounge in the atrium seemed completely immersed in their laptops or books.

  Seven minutes had passed since he had hung up after talking to Nina. Seven indecisive minutes. Jack was torn between shopping for a camera and staying put, realizing suddenly that for the first time in his career, he was out in the open without any backup. The milling crowd reassured him, made him feel anonymous; but to walk into a shop, any shop, was to call attention to himself.

  Abruptly, he stood up from the bench that he had been sitting on and scurried towards one of the displays, trying to spot any sudden movement behind him through the reflections in the glass panels. Nothing out of the ordinary jumped at him; no one seemed to care about his existence, except for the security guard in front who reached for the door handle, ready to open it if he took one more step in that direction.

  Slightly calmer now, Jack walked from display to display, still on the lookout for any tails. Calm down, buddy, he told himself, no one knew that he was here. He himself hadn’t known he was coming here. Besides, there was no reason to pay him any attention. There were other expats here, some single, some in groups, and he hoped that his plain old American looks worked to his advantage – if, indeed, someone was actually looking for him.

  He spotted the foreign exchange desk at the far end of the mall, right next to a Nikon showroom. Heaving a sigh of relief at the fact that he would get a better deal there than if he had tried the store, he hurried over. The counter was manned by a young girl who looked barely old enough to work, and the only customer was an Indian – much older – who looked more like he was flirting with her than effecting any financial transaction.

  Reaching the desk, Jack slapped down a handful of dollar notes. ‘Indian rupees, please,’ he said, almost breathless, not even looking at the girl. He calculated, on the basis of the conversion rate listed behind her, that he would be getting roughly twelve thousand rupees for his two hundred and twenty dollars. He reached into his pocket to see if he could make it an even fifteen thousand.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said the Indian man as the girl picked up his notes. ‘Let me see that.’

  For the first time, Jack studied the face of the other customer. His attention was instantly drawn to the holster and the gun, expertly concealed by the oversized jacket that the man was wearing. Even more alarming was the way in which the man was holding out each note to the light, inspecting them suspiciously. Jack was instantly wary.

  ‘Can I see some identification, please?’ The Indian now held out his left hand, the notes placed back on the counter, the right hand unnervingly close to his holster.

  ‘Why? What’s the matter, man?’ said Jack, his rising panic evident. Hearing himself, Jack hoped the other mistook him for an overwrought tourist and nothing more. He had heard horror stories from others at the consulate about the police system, particularly in the National Capital Region; right now, the last thing he wanted was to get entangled with them.

  ‘Identification, please,’ said the Indian, even more insistently. His right hand moved closer to his holster.

  ‘Haven’t done anything wrong, man,’ said Jack, reaching for his wallet. ‘Look, I’m with the Press. Thought I’d do a bit of shopping for the missus before the press conference later today – here’s my badge and accreditation.’

  The INSAF operative pretended to study the papers while he waited for his partner to come up behind the unsuspecting American. Timing it perfectly, he dropped the sheets on the counter and picked up the notes.

  ‘These are counterfeit notes,’ he said, waving them in the air. ‘I am arresting you for the possession and circulation of illegal foreign currency.’

  Jack evaluated his options and decided that flight was the best one right now. He tried to snatch the money out of the officer’s hand but failed – the other man was too quick for him; his next move was to push the man as heavily as he could, which he managed to do to some extent. The man staggered back but kept his balance, stabilizing just out of reach of the American.

  Jack turned around and started to sprint. He had run just a few feet when the other INSAF officer tackled him around the waist, taking him down, knocking the breath out of him. Before he realized what was happening, he was turned over onto his stomach. The first officer joined the melee, wrenched his hands around and snapped a pair of handcuffs in one smooth motion.

  Still dazed, he was pulled to his feet. The first officer turned towards the girl at the counter and said, ‘This guy is part of an international ring of counterfeiters. We’d received a tip-off that they would come here today. I’m taking him to headquarters now, but someone will be around later to take your statement. Stay here.’

  Jack tried to protest but he was led away before he could utter anything coherent. As they mo
ved towards the exit, the second officer moved closer and whispered, ‘Do you want me to read you your rights, asshole? You have no right to remain silent. And if you don’t say anything, we have ways of making you talk. And believe me, anything you say can and will be used against you.’

  24th April, 2012. New Delhi.

  ‘But we’ve already advertised the exposé for tonight’s exclusive,’ protested Richa.

  Her producer waved an impatient hand. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? Top management took a look at it, and they think the story is not solid enough. They want you to take a few more days and get it rock-solid.’

  ‘Since when have we cared about any of that?’ she exploded. ‘Last week, you ran that story about the prostitution ring inside a mutt that was just a half-baked theory; before that, you led with that double-murder case where the parents were tried and convicted by our channel even before the cops had taken the bodies outside.’

  ‘Enough!’ the producer flared up. ‘Who are you to talk about editorial policy? I can’t allow the reputation of our channel to be tarnished by the shoddy work of a woman just out of school. You’ve got two days to get more corroboration from the MoD and –’

  ‘But no one there will talk to me on the record –’

  ‘And a validation by a forensic lab about the suit becoming brittle at sub-zero temperatures,’ he continued, as if she had not interrupted. ‘Oh, and by the way, you’ll have to get your own cameraman for any more shots. I’ve transferred Vinod to the Entertainment section – he’s earned the break. Which is more than I can say for some others.’

  Richa suppressed the impulse to continue to plead her case. The smug son of a bitch, she thought angrily. How she would just love to cock him one on that jaw, right there, knock some sense into him. Ever since he had heard her airing to her colleagues her thoughts on one of his pet projects gone wrong, the producer had had it in for her. This is his way of getting back at me.