The Third Squad

by V. Sanjay Kumar

  “You told me your department is scared, and that you will become like the Class of ’83. True?”

  He nodded. But unlike the Class of ’83 he had committed no crime, and looking around at his modest possessions anyone could tell he had made very little extra money.

  “They are idiots,” said Nandini. “I am scared that you will remain who you are.”

  “Who I am?”

  “What are you, Karan?”

  He had to think through this question. “I am a person.”

  “Are you trying to be funny?” She was shouting now.

  He wasn’t being funny. He meant every word. “I am a person, not a puzzle.”

  Later she went to the wall in his den. Below Aham Brahmasmi, she wrote: A MAN WHO OBEYS.

  * * *

  You walk to the nearest station and catch a train. You follow yourself, observing from a distance. You are a man with a hood holding a camera behind you, panning the compartment from your six-foot height. The most useless way of spending an hour in Mumbai is taking the train from Borivali to Churchgate. The slow train takes prisoners. You are jammed amid paan chewers, people with bleeding gums whose breath smells of halitosis and plaque. There are lice nesting around you, quiet lice that are hard at work making colonies in unwashed hair. You cannot prevent people feeling you up. You stopped being sensitive a long time ago. At Andheri Station there is commotion and at Dadar Terminus where people switch lines it will turn to mayhem. People will crush past in both directions. The mindless train moves on. At Bandra Station there is a Hail Mary—at least you thought you heard one. Phones ring, some vibrate against your knee, and one man’s headphones shudder as the bass kicks in.

  You exit at the Marine Lines Station seemingly on a whim. That was Desai telling you to go off and do the unexpected. Walk to Metro Cinema, he said, step inside, and watch a film. Doesn’t matter what is running, stay with it. Leave the theater and it will be dark outside. Adjust quickly to the city’s rhythm that has changed to red. Scan your surroundings. One of our men will be in some nook observing you. We wish to determine if you are being tailed. We have been told you are under watch. Be yourself, whatever that is. Desai snickered here despite himself, proving for once he was human.

  Pick up your trail at Charni Road Station. As you stand on the platform, facing the Taraporewala Aquarium outside, do not look behind you. If someone comes up to you he will do so quietly. Ignore the buzz in your ear, the hair that stands on the nape of your neck, and your instinct to reach for your metal, because it will be too late. Someone does come up but nothing happens. A train comes and goes. Then another one. You think hard and now you want to do something slowly. You want to turn around and see who is beside you. The rest will be up to him. “Do what you feel you need to,” you say.

  It happens just the way Desai said it would. You control your unruly mind that is screaming at your silent hands. Your eyes blur with effort as you wheel around. You are hurting but you remain steady as everything leaks out of the picture frame, and only one face comes into focus: Evam Bhaskar. He belongs to your childhood. You belong to a place he created.

  “Where have you been hiding?” he asks you.

  You spend a couple of hours with him, unburdening, and nothing gets resolved. “There are no answers to the question, Why me?” he says.

  So you ask him differently: “Do things happen for a reason?”

  BOOK II

  Department Records: Counterintelligence

  Ranvir Pratap returned from his enforced leave of absence and it was obvious he hadn’t forgotten or forgiven. It was hard enough handling him when he was his normal self. Right now he was exerting a threatening influence on his boss, Parthasarathy. Partha, forced out of his customary diffidence, had asked to meet Mishra.

  “The problem with you, Parthasarathy, is that you were busy covering your ass instead of keeping your eyes and ears open,” said Mishra. “What do you know of what went on between Ranvir and Evam?”

  “Very little, sir,” said Partha.

  Mishra, the chief of counterintelligence, was an imposing and burly man who ate nails for breakfast. He had a sharp tongue—rare was the sentence that did not contain abuse—and he was proficient in many languages when it came to unparliamentary words. Mishra sat back and took a deep breath. There was no point in venting about this man who was a misfit in his current post and a passenger at best.

  “Can I see the classified files?” asked Partha. “I believe they have all the details.”

  “They do because I handled it, Mr. Parthasarathy. They will come to you like a prepared meal. You think this will help you have a balanced view?”

  “Yes sir,” replied Partha. What he did not say was that he knew Mishra favored Ranvir and hated Tiwari.

  “Fine. But you will have to read it here and make no copies. Is that understood? And one more thing: officially these files do not exist.”

  Parthasarathy was taken to an airless, musty room. There were three monitors and a pair of headphones on a table, with a lone lamp that shined its circular light upon various transcripts and two documents. It seemed counterintelligence had bugged Ranvir’s office, Evam’s facility, and their phones. He sat in the relative darkness and listened to the scratchy audio files. He was enthralled. This was living history. What unfolded was a complete picture on the origins of the Third Squad. Once the tapes ran out he had trouble breathing.

  * * *

  “Understand this,” said Ranvir Pratap. “This is an informal meeting, you are merely my sounding board, I still question your credentials in the field of psycho-whatever-you-call-it, and whatever we discuss will stay within this room at the risk of my having to put you away permanently.”

  Evam Bhaskar trusted himself to nod. He felt privileged that his advice was being sought in the first place. Perhaps handling Ranvir’s son the way he did gave Ranvir some confidence in his abilities. They moved toward Evam’s small office. Ranvir entered and stood near the door for a moment, absorbing the contents of the room. He headed to the cushioned seat which had been left for him. Evam was eyeing him closely as well. Ranvir was not the tall, elegant officer people imagined him to be. As a physical specimen he belied his image. His defining features were his eyes and his fingers. Neither kept still unless they were wrapped around an object of attention. The man scared his superiors, thought Evam. He probably hated formal reporting, begrudged public shows of respect, and his standard expression would surely qualify for rank insubordination.

  Most of all, Ranvir was an enigma (like Krishna in the epics, someone said), and Evam liked enigmas. Ranvir was a strict vegetarian, not that it really mattered. It seems he went to the Vaishno Devi temple every year and made pilgrimages at night to the holy shrine. This was fine as well; you can choose your gods even if you send people up to meet them.

  Ranvir patiently recounted the history of the now infamous Class of ’83. The members of this group were the most successful encounter specialists that the city had seen. He explained what had happened later with each of them. “This is what I have been asked to steer clear of,” he said, “and I don’t know how.”

  He then handed Evam a draft job description for the Third Squad. Evam read through the materials.

  CRITERIA FOR SELECTION FOR THE THIRD SQUAD

  PREPARED BY RANVIR PRATAP

  1. Ability to focus is crucial. While this is difficult to test, its absence can be spotted. Look for hyperfocus, and not for those who are hyperactive.

  2. Ability to work at night. We cannot have people who sleep on the job, especially during long, boring watch duty or stalking assignments at night.

  3. Loners work better than others. Lack of social skills and etiquette is not a deal-breaker here.

  4. The nature of the job is such that emotional or friendly individuals will not last. There will be assignments with casualties. Team members will go down and this has to be overcome. I am not suggesting heartless, ruthless thugs, but I will still look at them.

 
5. Team members should be honest. We cannot have the team exposed because of the lack of honesty of any member. Failures will happen in this line of work. Each member of the team has to own up and tell it as it is.

  6. Confidentiality is at a premium. The less the candidate babbles the better. Small talk in our case is overrated.

  7. Lack of attention to detail can derail everything. If possible we should look for perfectionists, people obsessed with quality in execution.

  8. Operatives should follow rules and instructions without exception. We do not need people who question everything, however intelligent they may be; even if their way is sound, the one that everyone follows is the best. It is a hierarchical setup and orders need to be executed instantly, without fail.

  “The idea of this job description,” explained Ranvir, “is to help narrow down a bunch of hopefuls into a smaller group who can then be short-listed after an interview. The chosen few can then be put on an intensive training regimen to further narrow the field.”

  This document seemed to be a general description, but the behavioral approach it took was interesting. It was the kind of approach that Evam would have been proud of initiating. There was more that Ranvir had written.

  DOES A MEMBER HAVE TO BE

  1. AN ATHLETE? Historically, we’ve identified a group of physically fit men and women as potential recruits. But how does it actually help to have a strong athlete as a member? Do we still chase people down by running after them like in the movies? Do they have to climb mountains, cross rivers, or engage in hand-to-hand combat? Increasingly, we have to do focused legwork. We have to be dogged in pursuit, boring in execution, and intelligent in response. If things come down to hand-to-hand combat, we have failed.

  2. A GUNSLINGER? Shootouts seem to be the norm in our perception of an encounter. It would seem that every operation has to end in a physical altercation including possibly an exchange of fire. The fastest with the gun and the one with the better eye wins. That is history. Encounters should be one-sided. Our pursuit has to be anonymous, our information good, and our closure ruthless. It doesn’t have to be physical. If a bullet needs to be fired, we should do so through a scope which affords good aim, produces no return fire, and preferably has a stationary target.

  3. AN EINSTEIN? We do need creative members on the team but they are not the ones we want in the field. In the field we need people who can execute. If we have to think too much on our feet, change the game plan as things emerge, and act upon instinct at that moment, then we are doomed to fail in the long run. Think of making a movie without a script, where the actor improvises the lines, the accidents on the set determine the plot, and the camera decides the focus. You will get a flop.

  4. A WOMANIZER? Sorry, I couldn’t resist this one. I was merely going by the popular perception of this department consisting of 007s—suave, cool, handsome, indestructible, and irresistible to women. Times have changed. History, thy name is Bond.

  Evam liked this approach. It was a fresh, different, and maverick methodology. This team would comprise a unique vintage, very different from the Class of ’83. What excited him was the fact that Providence had smiled. He was sure that in the list of his life’s coincidences this was up there. How often does it happen that you have an agenda of finding jobs for four young men and someone walks into your world and describes them to a T?

  “Ranvir, sir, I have explained this to you before but hear me out again. Imagine people who are different from us but the difference is slight. They are born that way and they are a parallel group of humans who coexist. They have some known limitations which curiously help in your context. And they have some peculiar qualities which you could stand to benefit from. There is only one problem.”

  “And that is?”

  “They come from a spectrum disorder that includes your son.” Ranvir looked shocked and Evam clarified hastily: “It is a wide spectrum and your son was at one extreme. The A-word frightens people, I know.” Evam paused here for a moment. “What you need, Mr. Ranvir Pratap, are people we call Aspies. They fit your description. But it would be a bold man who would make that call.”

  “Aspies? I recall reading about them.”

  Evam explained as best he could, taking care not to make too strong a case. “Autism is called a spectrum disorder because each person is affected differently. On one end of this spectrum is a mild form that is called Asperger’s syndrome, so mild that sometimes we meet such people without knowing it. While there is a greater awareness of this today, there are many in our country who are still unaware that they are Aspies.”

  “Refresh my memory—what causes all of this?”

  “It’s genetic. It’s not because of upbringing or social circumstance; it’s not anyone’s fault.”

  “So it’s an abnormality?”

  Evam looked like he was searching for words, something that modern doctors and analysts do a lot these days. They are more careful with words than writers. “I would describe it as being outside of the norm; we who are the norm are called ‘typicals.’”

  “And unlike my child, these people survive, grow up, and live by themselves? They have a normal lifespan?”

  “Yes. Contrary to popular perceptions and beliefs, their lifespan is typical and they are independent. With some exceptions, of course.”

  Ranvir scratched his head, for once. Nothing was resolved at this meeting but at least a seed was sown. And as long as Ranvir Pratap had a puzzle on his plate he couldn’t rest.

  * * *

  A few weeks passed before Evam received a call asking for another meeting.

  “Go through it again,” said Ranvir once they were seated. “Just take me through this, slowly.”

  Evam tried to explain. He guessed that Ranvir would have done his homework. “Imagine people who are diagnosed late, perhaps even as adults, because what they have is not considered an illness. It has no cure or treatment and is a lifelong condition. You could be living with such a person, initially not knowing and then at some point feeling that something is ‘wrong’ without being able to put your finger on it. Often parents take such children or young adults to doctors. They suspect something is either wrong or something is missing. It is a small niggling matter that won’t go away. It is not easy for them to describe what makes them uneasy.”

  “And they come to you after all the other tests have proven fruitless?”

  Evam nodded, then flipped through four case files. He pulled one out and showed the cover to Ranvir. “Munna. That’s his name. His mother thought he had eye trouble because he kept bumping into things, often toppling them over, and rather than appear guilty he seemed if anything a little surprised. What the hell? he would blurt, every time. He looked awkward somehow. His mother felt he was making faces at her even if he did not move a muscle. I brought him to a dart board in my office, made him stand eight feet away and throw darts. He was clumsy and the score was awful but the result wasn’t important. The fact is, he would lose his balance throwing that tiny object—he actually fell once.”

  He showed Ranvir a photograph of the young lad. He had a man’s face and a child’s expression. Munna was looking away from the camera even while facing it. Evam took the next file and wiped some dust off it. “Tapas, a boy from Orissa. Thought to have some impediment because he didn’t participate in much conversation, was extremely shy, took a lot of time to reply when spoken to, and when he did, he would drift off into unconnected subjects. On a hunch I asked him if he could recite poetry and he did so for the next five minutes, without a break. He reeled off three pages of Shakespeare, verbatim, without stopping. He was perfect to the letter, but I had a bad feeling. I noticed his diction was unvaried and there was no feeling. Halfway through, his parents looked toward me with an expression that said, We told you so.”

  He lingered on the third file, turning it over and taking his time before opening it. “Kumaran,” he finally said. “A bright child who is very good at math. He would go for treks in the city and return
hours later, having forgotten why he left in the first place. He could not tie his shoelaces. They suspected dyslexia but it was never diagnosed. Kumaran is an obsessive sort and has unreal knowledge of unimportant and unconnected things. He is quite happy to be by himself in his world. I asked Kumaran to take a shirt off my rack and fold it. I watched him do it. He would measure every angle of every fold, computing, calculating, and when he was done he had a slight smile as if he had solved a puzzle in his head, an efficient puzzle that was resolved with a precise fold.” The photograph showed the kid wearing a hood, under which his recessed eyes gave him a mysterious presence.

  Evam took a long pause, the fourth file resting unopened between them, then said, “The fourth fellow remains a puzzle. I took him to the dart board. He stood, all six feet of him, erect, perfectly proportioned, fair, good-looking like an actor, and he did badly. He was a little surprised, I think, to be scoring low. And almost in disgust he turned away from the board as he flung his last dart. Bingo. It was a bull’s-eye. I asked him to do that again, five times. He looked away from the dart board and threw. Five hits in a row, each was dead center; it was unreal. This was a rare gift. It wasn’t chance.”

  “What’s his name?” asked Ranvir.

  “Karan,” said Evam. “An orphan,” he added, “like in the epics.”

  It was time for Ranvir to voice his doubts. “Nobody will question me if I recruit left-handers,” he said. “Why are some people left-handed? I’ve researched it but I could never find an answer. Some people will question me if I knowingly recruit gays. For some reason the armed forces and the police approach it differently than, say, the fashion industry. But a gay person can still be a good cop, and I think we can all agree on that. Why are some people gay? I’m not sure we have that answer, do we?”