KALYUG

by R. SREERAM

  This time, as they crossed the stairwell, they continued on to the corridor on the left, towards what he assumed was the outside. On the way, he saw the bodies of a few guards, some still writhing in pain. So it hadn’t been a massacre, he thought. There was some humanity in his captors.

  As soon as they were outside, the gunmen were joined by quite a few others – a quick count showed Llong that their number had swelled from four to fourteen. The commander of his contingent held a hurried conference with his counterpart from some other group before turning back to his team and making a circle above his head with his right hand. Llong felt himself being pulled back as the entire force retreated.

  When they were almost level with the gate, the commander removed a remote from his pocket and pressed a button. There was a dull whoop from the interiors of the building and a cylinder of dust seemed to rise from the centre of its ceiling. Even as Llong watched, the building shook once again and then started to cave in on itself, burying the dead and the dying inside.

  He heard a couple of muted bursts and turned to his right just in time to see the bodies of the security guards jerk with the impact of the bullets. He was close enough to hear the death rattle as life finally left them.

  17th September, 2012. Washington, D.C.

  Andrea Simps relived her conversation with the Texan less than an hour earlier. The organization he represented had been emphatic about the suitability of Mr Patil and she wondered, not for the first time since she had heard of the man, how it was that he had come under the influence of Powerhouse. Simps, with her inherited wealth and sense of entitlement, found it difficult to believe that there were those who worked for Powerhouse unwillingly. She had been overjoyed when she had been invited.

  The questions the president had raised were valid to the point of being disruptive. Patil was a risk, true, but for her, since GK was unacceptable, any risk was, therefore, conversely acceptable. The dossier that her State Department had compiled on her candidate showed that he could be the right choice, provided he was handled in the right way. She trusted her hand-picked analysts a lot.

  And she trusted Powerhouse a lot more. So when both groups agreed that Karamchand Patil was a good replacement for GK, she had no hesitation in accepting their collective wisdom.

  ‘Mr President,’ she said evenly, meeting his gaze, holding it, refusing to back down. ‘I’d stake everything I have on this man.’

  The president straightened up and pushed the picture back at her. ‘You just did, Simps. You just did.’

  17th September, 2012. New Delhi.

  It wasn’t until more than an hour after Richa had left that it occurred to me that I should have asked for her number – as well as Jagannath’s and Raghav’s. It seemed pretty certain that she would have at least one of their numbers, if not both, and I started having panic attacks about having to settle the Leela’s café bill on my own.

  It’s pretty stupid when you stop to think about it. I mean, what guarantee did I have that neither of them would wash their hands off me, leaving me to foot the bills for food and accommodation at one of the priciest, trendiest hotels in the country? If I couldn’t check out without clearing the bill or at least pointing them in the direction in which they could be paid up, I was certain to add one more crime to my chequered past. Not a thought that induces a nice afternoon siesta.

  So the afternoon found me idly switching from channel to channel, catching up on my daily dose of soap operas and news – affairs and affairs, as it were – alternately. It was around three in the afternoon that I found the first mention of any sort of a protest against the Emergency, a small demonstration by a few celebrities at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi.

  Towards the evening, however, the public seemed to have regained its voice – at least, in pockets. The regional channels did a better job of covering the agitations than the national ones, especially in the south and in West Bengal. It was a bit strange to see the line, ‘Breaking News: Protesters clash with . . .’, at seven in the evening, while the visuals showed the events happening under bright sunshine, and I could only assume that the channels were airing the news after a deliberate delay – but at whose insistence?

  By seven in the evening, India had recorded thirty-three protests, ranging in intensity and impact from one extreme to another. The quietest one, by far, was the agitation at Jantar Mantar; the most violent incident, unsurprisingly, was in Thiruvananthapuram, with a final toll of seven killed and fifty-plus injured when a mob turned on the police and was lathi-charged. Most of those killed were members of the ruling dispensation, the first time that had happened since the dismissal of the first-ever Left government in independent India.

  Under normal circumstances, the aftermath of such a violent response would have seen the senior-most police officer lose his cap – at least temporarily – and the promise of many more such ‘uprisings’ until the ‘fascist, undemocratic and corrupt’ (their words, not mine) state regime of the day was dismissed. For the first time that I could remember, beyond an expression of regret for the damage to life and public property, there was no further reaction from the state or from the victims.

  Was it the first of the many I feared, or would such a violent reaction act as an effective deterrent for all but the most passionate protesters?

  Various pundits on channels continued to debate the constitutional validity of the Emergency, with one anchor repeatedly asking each of his guests, ‘India wants to know, Mr So-and-so . . . what are you going to do about this crisis?’ and then moving on to the next guest before the first one even had a chance to open his mouth.

  Most of the channels kept repeating clips from GK’s address the previous evening as well as a press conference held on the lawn of the Rashtrapati Bhavan earlier in the day. Nothing new, nothing that I didn’t know already. GK repeated his promises, recycled his rhetoric and thundered his way out of every question that was even mildly uncomfortable. I was constantly reminded of an old friend of mine, a retired editor, bemoaning the sheep-like behaviour of reporters today – he was of the opinion that no self-respecting journalist from the days of Goenka would have ever allowed a press-conference to close without making the subject sweat bullets. From what I could see, GK barely broke a trickle.

  I was just about to order my dinner from room service when there was a knock on my door. I checked through the peephole – one rarely had cause to regret caution – and was relieved to see Raghav Menon on the other side. He seemed to be alone.

  I opened the door and welcomed him inside, thankful for some company at last. I was desperate for someone to relieve me from the stupor-inducing debates on TV.

  ‘How would you like to get out for a while?’ he asked without much of a preamble.

  ‘Dinner?’ I asked, my stomach having given up on subtle hints was now becoming more insistent.

  ‘Dwarka Layout,’ he said. ‘The place where Major-General Qureshi shot himself.’

  17th September, 2012. Singapore.

  ‘Primary objective completed,’ reported the protégé. ‘Extraction in progress. But there’s a minor complication.’

  ‘Minor?’

  Before elaborating, the younger man slid a picture towards the chief. The snapshot was quite noisy but clearly showed a white male on his knees, eyes closed, his arms in the vice-like grips of the two gunmen of whom only the torsos could be seen. ‘We don’t know who he is. He was with Leela at the safe-house, along with the decoy. No problems with the latter, by the way – he was taken care of, so no one will ever suspect that he was a plant.’

  ‘What’s the commander’s call?’

  ‘Jacob wants to get rid of him at the first opportunity, but given that he’s obviously a foreign national, he wanted to run it by us first. He might prove to be useful, especially if he’s working for somebody we would be interested in. The fact that INSAF had him in their custody means he knows something that’s important to them.’

  The chief raised an eyebrow. ‘So we have confirm
ation that it is Insaaf?’

  ‘They found some documents with the name on it – I. N. S. A. F. Probably Indian Security Agencies’ Federation or something similar. Nothing much, but enough to suggest that this is who we are dealing with.’

  ‘And we had no prior knowledge about such an organization?’ The chief’s eyes blazed. Powerhouse spent millions of dollars precisely to be informed of things like this. Such a powerful adversary was not created overnight, and for the first time, the chief found himself wondering if every piece of intel that had passed through Powerhouse had not been compromised in one way or another.

  Not the time, he chided himself. The present and future were always more important than the past he could not alter.

  ‘They have been very . . . effective in staying under the radar,’ said the protégé cautiously. ‘Sharma had mentioned this once, but he was not very concerned about them. Small fry, he said. We left it to him to deal with it and because we heard nothing more, we assumed he had shut them down without any problem.’

  The chief harrumphed. ‘Well, they are out in the open now, and so are we. But it’s going to take them a while to realize that the demolition was not to cover her escape – that will be their first assumption. What’s next?’

  ‘Simps has been in touch. Apparently Jackson has approved the assassination of GK at the earliest if we can get Patil on board. The CIA’s shopping around for an assassin.’

  The chief almost clapped his hand in glee. He wasn’t a very devout person usually, but there were times when the Divine Plan seemed to fall in with his wishes with uncanny precision. This was yet another instance, yet more proof that the role he played in this life had supernatural sanction.

  ‘Jacob’s already there – let him take this one.’

  The protégé nodded. Jacob was a good choice. He was an Asian of indeterminate race, a chameleon who had been trained by the best in the world and had fought for and against the occupation forces in Afghanistan and Iraq after going private. What made him especially invaluable was his ability to work with teams as well as by himself. Of course, once an assignment was over, Jacob often took out the rest of the team so that there were no loose ends left behind – which suited Powerhouse just fine. No one who was still alive could ever claim to have worked with him. Powerhouse had used him so often recently it almost felt like he was on the payroll.

  As the protégé turned to leave, the chief shared one last thought. ‘I wonder what the Indians will do once they get to know.’

  17th September, 2012. New Delhi.

  They waited for a few minutes to ensure that no one had survived before heading for the exit. But just as they were sliding the gates open, a high-pitched whine rent the air. Even as the attackers watched in open-mouthed surprise, a rocket trailing a white plume impacted the lower middle of the truck they had come in and exploded underneath, flipping it over.

  Llong heard the lead gunman next to him mutter an oath under his breath before he directed the others to fire in the direction that the missile had come from. The men shook off their surprise and turned their guns to the right of the compound, towards where they assumed their attackers to be, and in a few seconds, even as the underside of the truck started to glow with small flames licking at the steel, the air was filled with the hum of their automatic rifles raking the darkness ahead of them.

  Llong thought he heard a muffled scream. Someone was hit.

  He considered making a break for it but dismissed the idea the very next instant. There was no cover in either direction and he had no intention of letting whoever was on the other side get a clear shot at him. Whoever they were, they were clearly pitted against his captors – but that did not necessarily mean that they were his friends. Lesser evils, perhaps, but nothing else could be guaranteed.

  He was probably the first one to register the metallic clink that seemed to emanate from their midst and was moving away even before his conscious mind had registered the danger. The lead gunman – whether it was the clink or the sight of Llong moving – reacted as well, jumping after him and running for the cover that the gates provided.

  The fragmentation grenades exploded in the midst of the gunmen, ripping their bodies to shreds, turning their weapons and ammo packs to shrapnel that were just as dangerous as the blasts themselves. For the men caught on the outer edges of the blasts, the heat seared them but left them alive; the shrapnel piercing their armour and cutting into vital organs made them wish it hadn’t.

  The few survivors fired wildly, dispersing in all directions, creating more targets for the bomber. Llong, gasping for breath behind the gate – which was bent inward due to the nearest blast – peeked around the edges and saw two of the gunmen heading towards the truck jerk like puppets before collapsing to the ground. Someone was on the other side of the truck, on the empty plot opposite the safe-house, picking off his targets easily against the back-light from the burning truck and the lights on the street.

  The masked gunman who had taken refuge with him jumped to his feet and pulled Llong up. They were so close that Llong could see his eyes, have them etched on his memory for a lifetime. The gunman was agitated but not panicked; his eyes bore into him steadily instead of darting around all over. ‘Who is it?’ he thundered, bringing a pistol to Llong’s forehead. ‘Have they come for you? Who are you?’

  Llong had enough sense to cower, to look scared – hell, it did not need much acting anyway. Nothing at Langley had ever prepared him for this.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, trying to raise his hands. ‘I swear.’

  Llong sensed the movement behind him, maybe even saw the shadow flit across the masked gunman’s eyes, and reacted before thinking. Even as he felt the pistol being moved away from his head, he brought his duct-taped hands up between them and tried to hammer the jaw of the gunman.

  The gunman moved his head back at the last instant, his reflexes too good for Llong. But the action also caused him to lose his balance and Llong stepped closer, looping his clasped hands around his neck and twisting him around while moving in the opposite direction at the same time. Before the other man could blink, Llong had moved behind him and used his knees on the gunman’s kidneys a couple of times.

  Out of the corner of his eyes, Llong saw for the first time what had caused his captor to be distracted. The man was dressed in army fatigues and had an assault rifle aimed at them, walking diagonally away from the gate, making sure he would notice if someone followed him from the other side. The barrel of the weapon barely wavered. The hand was rock-steady.

  ‘Drop that gun and kick it over to me,’ Nawaz Qureshi told him.

  17th September, 2012. Hyderabad.

  Nazim Qazi walked through the stalls in the shadow of the Charminar, inhaling the scents that were so familiar to him. It had taken him the better part of an hour to get to the market from where he had been dropped off, an anonymous point on the highway leading to the city.

  Here, in the heart of the city, death once again seemed to distance itself, to withdraw from the intrusive presence it had cloaked itself with less than twenty-four hours earlier. Those hours were a blur to him, a vague memory of forests, graves, bullets, bumpy rides and questions. The only thing that had felt real to him was the small military aircraft that had touched down at the old airport before dawn.

  Of all the words that he had listened to and uttered since his last-second respite, only a part continued to resonate within him. The man who had saved him from execution – twice – had dropped him off with that promise. ‘We’ll protect your family, Qazi. And you keep your end of our bargain.’

  With each passing step, though, the doubts were creeping back. It was obvious the man who had saved him was part of the Army’s Special Forces – he could not ask for more substantial proof than the aircraft he had been flown into Hyderabad on – and as such, a part of the same establishment that Qazi had been fighting against. It was hard to surrender a lifetime of hate, of distrust . . . the only thing that made it easier
was his own need to believe that man. That there was, perhaps, some good in this world after all.

  And not for the first time, he wondered if his disguise would fool anyone. True, everyone who’d met his eye had given a bow of respect; some had even offered the goodies from their stall to the man of God. But these were all strangers, people who had never met The Pathan or would have him introduced to them as such. What would happen once he finally ran into someone who knew The Pathan personally?

  Allah ki marzi, he thought, pausing mid-stride to bow in the direction of Mecca, the small prayer refreshing his sense of purpose. As He wishes.

  17th September, 2012. New Delhi.

  The gun clattered to the ground.

  The next instant, so did the gunman.

  He dropped out of Llong’s grip and to the ground. Before the latter could react, he moved his body behind Llong’s, shielding himself from the gun trained on them; he withdrew a knife from his belt and jammed it against the soft part of Llong’s jaw.

  Nawaz’s eyes never left them. As Llong watched, he brought his rifle higher until the stock was wedged against his shoulder and the scope was right in front of his eyes. His finger caressed the trigger.

  Talk about a rock and a hard place, Llong thought glumly. The only choice he seemed to have was the manner of death. Shot or knifed. It was like walking around New York at night.

  He felt the gunman behind him pull him slowly towards the gate and had no choice but to comply – the slight increase in pressure of the tip of the blade, at the smallest sign of resistance from him, was a powerful argument for obeisance.

  ‘Stop, or I’ll shoot,’ said the Army man.

  Llong closed his eyes when the gunman behind him stopped, knowing instinctively what would happen. It was the only thing that could happen, anyway, if the gunman didn’t want to surrender and was willing to take a risk.