Table of Contents
___________________
Somewhere Outside Pune, India
BOOK I
The First Encounter
Encounter Twenty-Five: Gonzales
Encounter Twenty-Six
Encounter Twenty-Seven
Cast a Lazy Eye
City Happenings
Ranvir Pratap
Nandini
Encounter Twenty-Eight: Panduranga
Getaway
Encounter Thirty
BOOK II
Department Records: Counterintelligence
Encounter Thirty-One
Inside or Out?
Evam Bhaskar
The Minds of Men
The Bahurupi Sena
Tiwari’s World
Tiwari’s Office
Department of Counterintelligence
The Test
Encounter Thirty-Two
BOOK III
Encounter ThiRty-Three
Day Two
Day Four: Encounter ThiRty-four
Encounter Thirty-Five
The Next Day
Acknowledgments
About V. Sanjay Kumar
Copyright & Credits
About Akashic Books
Dedicated to my parents Sumedha and Vijay,
my siblings Ashok and Rajiv, and the idea that
willy-nilly you can get caught in the middle.
Once upon a time, a woman was picking up firewood. She came upon a poisonous snake frozen in the snow. She took the snake home and nursed it back to health. One day the snake bit her on the cheek. As she lay dying, she asked the snake, “Why have you done this to me?” And the snake answered, “Look, bitch, you knew I was a snake.”
—Natural Born Killers, 1994
Somewhere Outside Pune, India
Police Headquarters: Special Training Unit
“You don’t have to strip a man to see his face,” says the controller. “But it helps.”
I examine myself closely in the handheld mirror. The first rays slant through the wooden slats in the dark barracks. The sun rises between two peaks of the Sahyadri Hills, a range that shelters our training camp. In the last year we have grown to hate this valley. It has been a rigorous incarceration. Today it is all over and done with, and one way or another we will be freed. I am anxious; I feel like I have never seen myself before.
I get dressed quickly. The summons comes and the four of us soon file down a narrow corridor, shuffling and stumbling and smelling of sweat. We duck through a low door and emerge into bright sunshine and we arrange ourselves as we always do, forming a straight line with the tips of our polished boots. The roll call is poignant; one of us is missing.
He keeps us waiting as he examines each of us. I hold my breath.
“Spell discipline,” he says.
I begin spelling the world and am cut off.
“Chutiya, define it!”
I glance around at the three others who are staring straight ahead. Munna, Tapas, and Kumaran. It suits them to behave like three monkeys. I start again.
“Discipline: training expected to produce a specific character or pattern of behavior.”
The controller nods. He holds a polished stick in his hand that he raps on his thigh.
The fleshy sound brings back memories and I wince. He has his back turned toward us. His worn brown belt has a tear and sweat is building under his armpits. He talks to the wall.
“And how do we go about achieving this?”
I look to my colleagues and they are still motionless, backs ramrod straight and showing no signs that they are about to respond. It is up to me again.
“Discipline is instilled by a combination of repetition, physical and mental challenges, and punishment for failing to meet certain standards.” I could rephrase that. I could use sister this and mother that and tell you more succinctly that we were taught to follow fucking orders, or else.
In truth, there was no real need to teach us discipline; it was something that came naturally to each of us. We hardly spoke to one other and none of us made friends. And we busied ourselves in routine. Like taking apart and assembling our firearms every day. The whole day was lived by the clock, the week was lived by the calendar, and changing seasons made no difference to us. In the worst of rains we would still be out on our run every morning. We would still go to the range and shoot our socks off.
The controller nods again, gripping the cane firmly in the palm of his other hand, and a rap follows. He pivots on the toes of his left leg. He regards each of us in turn with bulging eyes and a hint of distaste around his mouth. Somebody needs to clean his spectacles.
“Why have you been called here, gentlemen?” he barks. He speaks without pausing and his phrasing is confusing—nobody has ever called us gentlemen before.
None of us wants to say why we are here. We all know it but are loath to speak. I sense his irritation and I crack first; I always do.
“To learn from those who have passed on?”
He clucks his tongue. “Why do you talk like this, Karan? Vague, roundabout, and always with a question. Say it as it is. One of you has died, has fallen, has failed. It is a failure.”
I breathe deeply. One of us had taken a bullet between the eyes. The rest of us were asked to inform the family.
“He did not die in vain,” I say. I sound like a schoolboy.
After a moment of silence the controller shrugs. “We need to learn. If you men learn from this incident, then what you say is true.” And then he speaks in French: “Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres.”
I alone understand what he is saying. He looks toward me expectantly.
“Karan, you seem upset. If you know the meaning of this expression, why don’t you translate it for the others?”
I rephrase it to make him seem less heartless than he is: “It is strange how it is good that from time to time someone dies so others don’t have to.”
Ranvir Pratap looks at me. He is surprised and there is a hint of respect as he nods slightly in my direction. They do not expect us to think, and they get worried when our gray cells start working, because thinking is their job and doing is ours.
“You may be feeling raw right now but I will not lecture you. Get used to death. I have operated in its realm long enough to respect it. It is extreme, and its finality is hard to stomach. You guys are not meant to respond like the rest of humanity. That’s not your nature. Right, Karan?”
He wheels around and glares at me because I am a known weak link, someone who occasionally gets muddled and hesitates. I am in the squad only because I topped every shooting test, busting their all-time records. They could not dump me on paper. But I was on the case that claimed my friend and colleague. I was the backup and the sod who was slow to pull the trigger, who gave benefit of doubt to his target, and my colleague paid for it with his life. I did make amends. I finished the target, made him pay. A rage I never knew I had ruled me for a few minutes. The controller had arrived at the scene and was speechless at my handiwork. I guessed then that I had lost my chances of qualifying and they would post me back to a desk job in that morass of clerkdom from which we were pulled out. Rage is not good in this business because it’s unpredictable.
Summing-up time, and Ranvir Pratap is brief. I expect the worst.
“We experienced a live situation and, despite your training, you came up short. None of us know how we will respond in a moment of extreme stress, when a split second decides life and death. We try to train you for it but that is only half the job. The other half comes from who you are, your genetic code. As trainers, our job is to choose correctly.” He looks at each of us and settles his gaze on me. “Kar
an, you have barely survived this program. But I have decided to back you—I was the deciding vote. You will be under my direct command, so if anybody has to hold the can it will be me.”
Later he pulls me to the side. “What I said there was for the others. Do you know why we chose you despite your mistake?”
“Sir?”
“All trainers look for just one thing and you have it. You have something that cannot be taught.”
* * *
We entered Mumbai by road; there was no welcome committee. The four of us were in an unmarked jeep and as instructed we were in plainclothes. We hardly spoke during the winding journey through the hills. I felt a tingling sensation as we approached Special Branch which I chalked up to pins and needles. Ranvir Pratap’s words still rang in my head. You will lead a simple life, he said. There will be no statistics in the Third Squad, not if I can help it. There will be no presentations, no bar charts, and no medals. You will clean your guns, mark your ammunition, and do God’s work.
Arriving at Special Branch I caught myself smiling as we stepped out of the jeep. Kumaran had a pronounced limp, Munna the “lookout” was bumping into objects animate and inanimate, and Tapas was memorizing all the signs including one that said, No paan chewing, no spitting, and no loitering.
The four of us walked up to a drab building with a low entrance on the side. At the door we turned, stood with our backs to it, and clicked our heels.
“Stand down!” barked Munna, imitating Ranvir Pratap.
“Gentlemen,” said Tapas, sotto voce.
We flipped open our minicameras, raised our hands in unison, and took selfies.
BOOK I
The First Encounter
Some Months Later
The priests lit a fire in his house and fed it some cow fat. Flames leapt and the smoke licked the ceiling before spreading to the corners of the large hall. The small group of guests coughed and sneezed as the chanting reached a crescendo and tapered with, “Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.” They looked around the hall for Swamy, their host. Swamy was seated on the floor in a hidden chamber, head bowed, his legs folded beneath him. He was breathing deeply. “Shanti, Shanti, Shanti,” chanted the priest corps. Swamy scowled. It wasn’t working. What was the point of having priests on his payroll?
He left quietly, a thief in his own house. Three bodyguards checked for any signs of trouble, ushered him into a black SUV, and then got in behind him. Swamy jockeyed for space to breathe. “All clear,” said the driver. They pulled away. The vehicle weaved its way through lanes and alleys before arriving at a nondescript building. Inside was Swamy’s lifeline. A doctor escorted him up some stairs and they entered a white-tiled room where Swamy rolled up his sleeves, exposed his veins, and submitted himself to the machine. A middle-aged man who was already waiting in the room shuffled over and sat beside him. It was a practiced routine. They spoke occasionally, cracked some jokes over the next three hours before their heads dropped and they dozed. Swamy’s phone rang, breaking his stupor. He peered at the number absently.
“Would you like to live longer, Swamy?” asked the caller.
“What?” Swamy stared at his phone in horror. The SIM card was half a day old and they had traced him already.
“Take a deep breath, Swamy Anna.”
He took one. He wanted to kill the call. The tainted SIM would give away his location very soon.
“You need blood, Swamy Anna, good clean blood. Stand up now, go take a piss.”
He couldn’t and they knew it. “How much longer?” he asked the nurse.
“We are done,” she said. She massaged his wrists and his feet.
He stood up abruptly and his head swam.
“Go see your granddaughter, Swamy. She is traveling soon.”
He rubbed his temples as he grew furious. He slumped on the bed, opened the back cover of the phone, and pulled out the SIM card. His hands shook as he broke it in two.
“They are threatening me.” He pointed at himself. “Me.” The bodyguards who stood near the door snorted in unison.
The middle-aged man spoke softly: “That is their job, Anna. They wouldn’t dare take on someone as important as you.”
Swamy wanted to get up and leave. He half rose before falling back, his head hitting the backrest. This new police encounter team bothered him. It was headed by Ranvir Pratap, a name that brought bile to Swamy’s lips. He coughed and almost retched.
“Get me a damn towel—you, quickly!”
A burly guard brought a white towel. In his hurry he dropped his automatic weapon and it clattered on the floor. The doctor jumped first and the nurse jumped next as the weapon’s snout raked the room and came to rest pointing at their feet. Swamy glanced at the ceiling and then slowly lowered his gaze. His outburst was preempted by a pinging sound. The middle-aged man pulled out his phone and he read the message aloud. “A week from now is an inauspicious date. Message from Mumbai police.”
“That would be the eleventh,” said Swamy, his voice down to a whisper. “They have even declared a bloody date.” He ruefully examined the veins in his hands. What had they done to him?
They left the makeshift dialysis clinic. It was night in this obscure middle-class neighborhood with its crowded streets, where the local population worshipped the Don of Wadala, who now sat in his SUV and allowed himself some filtered coffee. He took a couple of sips and his body relaxed, relieved to be away from the stern gaze of Mrs. Swamy. They headed to a small temple where a bare-chested priest was waiting impatiently, watching the clock reach the appointed hour. The priest lit some camphor as Swamy crossed the threshold, right foot first, head bare, hands folded. He then rang a small bell and made three circles with the flame chanting a Sanskrit shloka. The priest would often offer some fruits and flowers to the deity on Swamy’s behalf. The stone deity was small and black and the sanctum was dimly lit. Roaches and rats scurried in the dark reaches.
* * *
In the first floor of his chawl Karan flung off the covers, brushed his hair, and threw on his uniform. He slammed the door behind him, took the stairs two at a time, and ran across the quadrangle down a narrow lane into a small nook where he parked his dented car with one wobbly wheel. His Fiat had bucket seats and a floor-shift and it rattled as he drove down the western arterial. When he exited at the office blocks near Haji Ali and headed toward the sea, he saw another version of the chawl. The chawls came in various shapes and sizes and this one was built on common land. The roadside here was a public convenience. Power was available on tap and water came in tankers paid for by the brotherhood. Everything (his car, the chawl) seemed makeshift and temporary and rightly so, because in Mumbai poverty was considered a temporary affliction. This was the faith, the one illusion that kept the murky reality at bay.
A single command before the voice on the other end of the line hung up: “Head to the seaface.”
After a while the Worli Seaface turned genteel. Karan parked his car, locked it, and got down to his favorite pastime: watching. A rain-bearing cloud hung over the sea, thinking about landfall. The tide was low and the rocks jutted out of the water near the shore, where two men completed their morning ablutions.
“Don’t get out of your car yet.”
In a holster near his midriff, Karan carried an American pistol, a Ruger, just like his infamous predecessor, Inspector Pradeep Sharma—Karan admired his senior because of how he stood, hands folded across his chest, the matter-of-fact way he spoke, and above all the uncommon reputation he left behind him. Pradeep Sharma was from the Class of 1983, a Mumbai police class that eliminated hundreds of gangsters but subsequently did not age well.
At the stroke of nine, just as the second hand of his watch aligned with the hour, his phone rang again. Karan waited for three rings, flipping the cover open as he took it to his ear. After a small pause someone spoke.
“I hope you are not wearing your uniform.”
“I am,” he replied. He thought the uniform would help.
�
��Have you lost your mind?” shouted the caller. “Is that how you meet an informer?” There was a murmur in the background. “Well, because of your stupidity we’ll have to change the location. Start the car and drive slowly past the Worli Dairy. There will be a traffic signal up ahead.” The caller spoke again to someone who was with him: “Yes, that light will turn red when you approach. Don’t worry, it will. Someone will come up to your window selling magazines. Keep your window down. You will buy a magazine from him. Inside there will be a message that will tell you when and where to go. Got it?”
“Why all this drama?” asked Karan.
“You do your job, I’ll do mine. I have to keep the informer alive.”
Karan looked to see if there was anybody around. The seaface was deserted. He did as he was told.
That night he reread Swamy’s bulky folder. It was incredible how someone like Swamy had survived for so long despite the attention shown by the police and the judiciary. The court case against him began twelve years ago. Two witnesses were dead, one had gone missing, and fourteen had turned hostile. A decision was due next month and the file said it was likely the prosecution would lose.
* * *
Swamy began his career as a porter in a railway station. Tired of small change, he began to loot goods from trains that passed through it. In all he killed three people as he rose to the top of the heap in the railway yards. Each of the deceased was tied to the tracks and left to the vagaries of the overnight express train. Soon his leadership was undisputed. He granted people favors and in return he adjudicated their lives. His gang collected a daily or weekly fee from most commercial establishments in Wadala. He had the traders by the balls. Even Muruga, the ruling deity, was a lesser entity than Swamy in Wadala, a god with a weaker sovereignty. Swamy’s followers knew that while Muruga might be a superior being above, in this life they’d have to reckon with this bloody goon.
Swamy was a Tamilian from the south of the country and built up his fearsome network between 1975 and 1985. A phone call from Swamy was a dagger to the heart. People who answered his call died twice. Every year Swamy would conduct a show killing and the press built his mythology by going into a feeding frenzy every time, making him out to be the most fearsome don since Haji Mastan and Karim Lala.
The Third Squad Page 1