Henna and her mother were at their door, looking aghast at what had happened. Jai rushed to them.
Henna gave him a quick brush over, searching for any bullet holes, and then burst out crying with concern and alarm.
Jai held her in her arms.
‘Nothing has happened to me. I am alright. One of the bastards got away.’
Henna looks up at him, tears running down her cheeks
‘Who were these people?’
‘Bhai’s men, I guess. I didn’t think they would reach here.’ Jai said the words but he did not mean them. He had known that they would come after her family but he had not anticipated that it be would be so brutally quick.
That these men found him and Henna here was perhaps a mere coincidence. They had come with the motive to wipe out Henna’s family, the price that her family had to pay for her betrayal.
It was all about appearances in the underworld. A gang-leader cannot be perceived as weak and in this deadly display of retribution, the family often was the apt target. The consequences of one’s actions did not stop with that person, but engulfed their entire kinship.
That was the greatest morality check for the Mumbai mob. What you did on the streets of Mumbai was a matter of life or death for your family. You die loyal, and they were rewarded; you betray, and they had to pay with their lives. People like Jai were considered dangerous. Jai had no one to call a family and that meant the gang had no insurance against a betrayal by him.
Jai realised he had betrayed the gang and that now the gang had Henna and her family to answer for Jai’s and her own betrayal. Only, that made his resolve stronger to guard Henna with all his might, and keep her safe, come what may.
Henna had told her mother the gist of what had happened to her. She saw the mayhem and understood what had transpired. The pillar on the left of the house had collapsed during the fight and the courtyard was a mess. Three unknown and armed male dead bodies lay strewn in her house.
Henna’s mother gathered herself in a moment and said:
‘Both of you leave immediately. I will handle everything.’
She urged her daughter and Jai to go. She feared for the safety of her daughter.
‘But…’
Jai wanted to say something but Henna’s mother cut him short.
‘Henna’s father will be here soon. I will send for him. The police also will be here anytime now. No one outside of the house has seen both of you till now. It will be very difficult to explain your presence to the police and it would not take them long to figure out the connection. Moreover, I am sure the police are also in cahoots with these people.’
That last sentence made sense to Jai.
The advice was sound and it was best for them to leave.
‘But Aunty, you cannot stay here for long. They will make another attempt sooner rather than later. It is a prestige issue for these bastards now.’
She nodded but did not say anything.
Quick farewells were said and Jai and Henna were on the road, sneaking out of the back of the house in ten minutes.
Jai walked at a steady pace as they made their way to the railway station. They would be on the first train out of there.
‘Where will we go now?’ Henna asked between sobs.
‘Mumbai.’
‘What?’ Henna was surprised and stopped in her tracks. She looked at Jai, dumbstruck.
‘What’s in Mumbai? Nothing you say to Bhai can make him change his mind now,’ Henna said in a desperate voice.
Jai walked close to her, placed his palm against her face
‘Henna, I am never going to plead for mercy with the person who has hurt you thus. I am not going to Mumbai to plead with the bastard.’
A tear rolled down Henna’s cheek.
Jai continued, ‘I am not going to say anything, but we need to do something. If we do not, they will stop at nothing. Your family will be murdered and then a relentless cat-and-mouse game will go on until we are caught. I do not wish to live a life of the hunted, looking over our shoulders at all times.’
‘But what can we do, Jai?’
‘I have something in my mind and I need you to trust me on this. Please.’
Henna stood there, ambivalent for a second, and then bobbed her head in an affirmative and caught up in stride with Jai.
Henna’s trust in Jai was nothing short of absolute.
Jai did not have to try too hard to convince her. She was now following him blindly and if anything were to happen to her, Jai would never be able to forgive himself.
He would not let anything happen to her.
He had already ‘brought her back’ from the dead twice. He would do that over and over again if needed.
They walked in silence towards the railway station.
***
The train journey was uneventful.
It had mostly been silence between them during the journey. They were uncertain about what lay ahead for them. Jai had an ill-conceived plan and all Henna had was a blind yet shaky trust in Jai. Shaky not because she felt he would betray her, rather whether he would achieve what he had set out to do. Neither had any answers and so neither asked any questions of the other. Henna was worried about her family but realised that she could not do much to help them. Jai was lost in his own world, fighting his own demons.
Jai had a little sleep and in it he had a nightmare where he was amidst the burning ruins of the urban Somalian landscape and before him lay the bullet-ridden lifeless body of Henna. Jai was Abdi in the dream and he was screaming in horror and his voice echoed across the hollow walls of a destroyed city. There was no one to hear the wails of Jai, and next thing he saw was that he was carrying the lifeless body of Henna in her arms and frantically running here and there, seeking help.
Jai had woken up in a cold sweat.
He realised that there was perhaps no other way for him. He had to take the bull by its horns. Or else he would have to run all his life; he would tire one day and then they would get caught and meet a sorry end.
The things that had happened to him in the last few days gave him reason to believe that he could pull off what he had in mind. Something that had never happened before, and something that probably never would again.
He did not understand what was happening to him. He had been so busy keeping alive that he hadn’t given much thought to anything else.
Was he immortal? Was he beyond injury? Why was it happening to him? What was happening to him? Why did the room in white have a sixteen-hour clock face? Why did the room have a window that opened to the most beautiful night sky he had ever seen; a sky with two very beautiful moons? Why was the room there? And where was there? And why did he not look like himself in the room? Why was he in the room?
He didn’t have the answers to any of these questions. He wondered if he ever would have answers to them. All this thinking just led to a severe, splitting headache and he let go of his thoughts.
He looked at Henna’s lovely face, sleeping with her head on his lap, a thin line of saliva drooling down from the corner of her lips on to his pants.
That made him smile for the first time since he had been on the train. He had her with him and that was all that mattered right now.
Chapter 12
The Bodyguard
Hantel Corporate Headquarters
St. Olav’s Gate, Oslo, Norway
9 May, 2012
Ludvig was in a pensive mood. He had made the trip back from Sogn the night before. He had denied himself Dagny the second time round, for fear of the fucking heart-attack. As soon as he had reached Oslo, he had decided to immerse himself in work, after just a brief night’s sleep.
The transcripts that lay on his table were ominous. The political Left of Norway was resurgent and would, in all likelihood, be a part of the ruling coalition after the forthcoming elections. On his table were the transcripts of emails exchanged between a [email protected] and a [email protected]. The contents alluded to an unholy pact betwe
en a Bernt Garethson, the chairman of the second-largest telecommunications concern in Norway, and Hanka Luvenson, the leader of the Norway Nationalist Party.
The Norwegian government’s most ambitious project of unifying the country under a single wireless framework providing service for all the competing networks would soon be announced. As per the emails on Ludvig’s desk, Hantel would not be allowed to bid for the contract, as it would be deemed to be holding competing interests. The reasons would be tenuous but Luvenson would make sure that the government managed to scrape through with the decision to keep out Hantel, and also make sure that the 1.4 billion-dollar contract went to Garethson. An amount equal to $200 million had transferred hands to seal the pact and Ludvig held emails written in code that intimated the routes that the money had to take to reach Luvenson.
There was a knock on the door.
Eindride Haalkud walked in. A gentle giant, he was the head of the ostensibly insipid Company Analysis wing of Hantel. The offices of the Company Analysis wing were in the basement and pretty much no one had any idea what went on there.
Haalkud was seldom seen beyond the confines of the basement, although some geeky types working in the wing occasionally surfaced in the company canteen for a quick bite or two.
‘You are aware of these emails?’ Ludvig asked him.
Haalkud peeked over from his chair and saw the transcripts on Ludvig’s table.
‘Yes.’
Haalkud was very meticulous in his work and everything that came from his office went through him. These transcripts had been intercepted the day before and he had understood their significance as soon as he had seen them. He had dispatched them immediately to the boss’s office and had sent the memo number and an (*) asterisk to Ludvig’s personal cell by an SMS.
‘Do we have anything on Luvenson? Something worth “going to war with” kind of leverage?’
Haalkud had just the thing that Ludvig wanted.
‘I have something but I am not sure if you are going to like what I have.’
Ludvig looked into Haalkud’s eyes
‘Indulge me, please.’
Haalkud presided over his electronic dragnet every day, pulling straws out of thin air. He was privy to 3,589 different zero-day attacks on virtually every email, social network, banking and financial network. These attacks, if used recklessly, would perhaps cripple half of the world’s communication networks, plunging more than a billion people into the stone-age instantly. He understood that the modern world ran on computers and networks and had dedicated more than two decades to silently bug every bug-worthy network. He had diligently found some of the flaws and had created a host of others. But he was careful with what he did with the power he had. What he pulled out from the electronic quagmire surprised even him every now and then. And what he was about to tell Ludvig was going to be surprising, if not shocking, for him.
He hesitated a bit and then spoke very slowly for a measure of impact.
‘Miss Dagny is doing Luvenson.’
Ludvig’s face did not reveal any emotion.
A smirk played across Haalkud’s face as he continued:
‘Could be love.’
Ludvig smiled a wry smile. He knew better.
‘Thanks, Haalkud. Keep me posted if something interesting props up.’
Haalkud got his cue and pulled his burly frame up awkwardly from the chair.
Ludvig watched him shuffle out of the room, and then picked up the phone on his table.
***
Hantel Corporate Headquarters
St. Olav’s Gate, Oslo, Norway
11 May, 2012
It was a couple of days after his little talk with Haalkud, and what he wanted lay before him on his table – a compressed video file written on a mini-disk that had very explicit and intimate scenes of the nubile nymphet Dagny and the very married Luvenson.
Ludvig was waiting in quiet anticipation. Waiting for another one of his corporate combats; rare occasions that livened him up and infused a rush of adrenaline in his wiry old veins.
Dagny had been easy to recruit. The lure of a major film and the threat of a scandal had been enough to buy her co-operation. She had captured her next tryst with Luvenson on film and the film now lay in front of Ludvig. She was then promptly sent out of the country and was currently vacationing in a holiday chateau in Lyon in France.
There wasn’t any pretence of love between the two. For Dagny, it was part of her social climbing that led her to cling to men of power in industry and politics. There was nothing as personal as love as had been suggested by Haalkud a couple of days ago. Her concerns regarding the fallout had been addressed adequately. She was assured by Ludvig’s men that Luvenson would either not do anything or would be rendered irrelevant when this was over.
A copy of the file had already been dispatched to Luvenson in the morning. Ludvig was waiting for the response.
Daniel Knutsen, a divisional head of the Market Analysis bureau of Hantel, walked into Ludvig’s chambers.
Daniel or Dan to everyone, was actually the operational head of the Company Analysis wing and was responsible for action on any ‘actionable intelligence’ that was provided by Haalkud’s team.
Ludvig liked Dan. He was efficient and loyal to a fault; qualities that Ludvig knew were worth their measure in gold.
‘Any news, Dan?’
‘Well, Luvenson has gobbled up the bait. I have heard he was jumping up and down on the Stortinget and was hurling abuses at all and sundry.’
Ludvig had a hearty laugh. Dan continued
‘He wants to schedule a meeting. But the bastard wants to talk to you directly.’
Ludvig smiled.
‘I am looking forward to it. Set it up tonight.’ He relished the fact that he would make the bastard squirm in front of his eyes, set a price for putting an end to his torture, and then extract what he wanted from him.
***
The meeting had been set up in a rundown diner that made an impossibly delicious Smørrebrød. An advance team of Dan’s men had sanitised the place. Ludvig, looking dapper in a formal suit, descended from his office and headed towards the exit. All this excitement was making him a bit edgy and he was relishing the rush.
He needed to empty his bladder yet again and entered the lavatory in the parking area. Two of his guards took position on either side of the door.
Ludvig was engrossed in imagining the course that the evening was about to take when he heard a commotion outside. There was the unmistakable hushed sound of a silenced automatic. Ludvig heard at least three rounds, maybe one more. The rest-room door was pushed in and one of his guards barged in while Ludvig was still fumbling with the zip on his pants. The guard rushed towards Ludvig and caught his neck from behind with an iron grip. He then pushed Ludvig towards the wall, pinning him against the wall. Before Ludvig could make any sound, the guard pressed the trigger of his gun and emptied two rounds into the back of Ludvig’s head in quick succession.
Ludvig heard his skull crack and then felt the bullet searing into his left eye from within, before blacking out, his limbs going limp and then his body slumping to the ground once his assailant loosened the grip on his neck.
In a matter of a few more seconds, he was dead, slumped under a urinal of the Hantel Corporation headquarters.
Domus-Nova
Mouse-tail Galaxy
Domus-Nova Year 2548, Earth Year 7859 AD
He woke up in the white room, paralysed and on the cot as before. He glanced around the room and found the same big, featureless white room.
However, the room was not entirely featureless this time.
He screwed up his eyes for a better view and there was a dark, rectangular clock face on the far wall. He had never seen anything on any wall until then. On the last sojourn to the white hall, he had seen his young face and had seen another young man strapped to yet another cot in an adjacent room.
Now, he was looking at a clock face.
It seemed like a
n information overload to him, having drawn a blank for the last thirty years of ‘interruptions’. He instinctively peered into the clock face for the time.
It was about six thirty. Then the oddity sunk in
Oh no! But it wasn’t six thirty.
The clock face was marked zero to sixteen, making it a sixteen hour clock face; the time then had to be eight thirty or rather eight forty!
That also meant that the day it represented was a thirty-two hour day, provided the clock showed half a day and each hour would have eighty minutes. It was entirely possible that the clock showed only a quarter of a day in which case it would be a sixty-four hour day.. That too, assuming the intervals depicted five minutes each. It could be an entirely different time-span if the intervals meant something else.
Holy crap! Where the fuck was he?
There was a soft whirring noise to his left and a window materialised in the wall there, with a beautiful, dark, night sky. A light swept through the night sky as if a giant searchlight was scanning the night sky and it was dark again.
The dark revealed numerous stars twinkling in the background. The searchlight came at regular intervals and lit up the sky, dimming the stars in its light. Ludvig stayed transfixed by the view and watched the play of the light.
Then he saw the most wondrous, the most beautiful sight of his entire life. A deep blue light slowly spread across the night sky, and this light was followed in a few minutes by a radiant blue sphere that rose across his window sill, ascending up over the horizon. A smaller white sphere occupied the left lower quadrant of the bigger blue sphere, the white and the blue of the spheres bathing the night sky.
The beauty of this sky was bewitching and it was the first time Ludvig felt calm and relaxed in the white room. The white of the room slowly started dissolving and he felt the familiar sensation of his body being slowly engulfed in the darkness that preceded the return to his earth life.
He knew he was going back but this was the first time that he wished to stay in the white room for a bit longer…
***
Hantel Corporate Headquarters
Immortals Page 7