by S Venkatesh
Finding Lotus Café was not difficult. You just had to ask the right person in the right manner.
By day, Lotus Café was an innocuous, somewhat grungy convenience store surrounded by a very large but poorly tended lawn.
By night, on certain days of the week, however, Lotus Café underwent a Jekyll and Hyde transformation. The poorly kept lawn metamorphosed into a den of revelry with huge psychedelic lights, trance music and free availability of various questionable substances.
Sam knew that asking the question straight-out would never get them to the rave. He had learnt this while trekking near Malana in the Himalayas. Raves were for the regulars, not for those who might create a nuisance or blurt things out within earshot of the authorities. The unwritten code was to keep the ‘tourists’ and the ‘fuddy-duddy crowd’ out.
So he had approached a couple of bike-taxi guys, subtly dropped hints about his knowledge of the ‘scene’, and got them to ferry Bani and him to Lotus Café.
Sam and Bani walked amongst the crowd in the lawns off Lotus Café, wondering how they would spot Jeff.
Most people at the rave were in a haze, hippies with needle marks all over their arms. They were in their own private Shangri-las, sprawled on hand-crafted mats, hands drooping to the sides, occasionally moving to drag the chillums towards their mouths, eyes glazed with far-away looks.
At the foot of the hill right behind Lotus Café, a flight of stairs led towards the centre of the party from where the music—rhythmic chants—seemed to be emanating. The only person in the vicinity who seemed remotely awake and aware was a Caucasian woman sitting on one of the steps of the stairs.
At last, Sam thought, somebody with whom I can have a semblance of a conversation.
She seemed to be in her thirties, around 5’5”, was of slim build and had silky hair that fell loosely over her shoulders. For a moment, her figure reminded Sam of Ananya, and he was immediately hit by a stab of guilt as he remembered what he was here for.
He moved closer to her to ask her a question, but his throat went dry as he smelled what seemed like a delicate floral perfume on her. Probably the same perfume that Ananya had worn during their last meeting in Colaba.
‘Yes?’ she asked, in a French accent.
‘Uh . . . my friend and I are looking for Jeff,’ Sam said.
‘Follow me,’ she said, taking a drag from her chillum.
***
Damini was able to locate Jeff fairly easily at the rave party. His profile on the underground social networking site did not have his photo, but it did have the names of some of his ‘friends’, and Damini was able to convincingly throw their names around and locate Jeff. Sporting an orange bandanna, a T-shirt littered with esoteric symbols, and a faded pair of jeans, Damini blended in completely.
Jeff fit the hippy profile well. He looked like what a 1960s ‘flower child’ might look like if he had continued living the same nomadic lifestyle, complete with drugs and rock-and-roll, but without the sense of energy and purposeful revolt that had characterised those times. He had a scraggy beard, unkempt hair, a continuous wheeze, an unsteady gaze and a few syringe marks on his arms.
Damini kept her distance, as she wanted to glean whatever intelligence she could before she tried a more direct approach.
Her antennae went up as she saw two Indian blokes, accompanied by a Caucasian woman, walk up to Jeff.
Damini almost choked with suppressed laughter. The older, avuncular man looked hopelessly out of place in the rave. He would attract as much attention as a red teddy bear in a sombre company board meeting.
She captured the images of the two men using her smartphone’s camera and sent them to Mini at the control room. ‘I need the download on these two guys,’ she said.
***
After suspiciously checking whether Sam and Bani were accompanied by any cops, Jeff eased up.
He walked up to the makeshift parking lot near Lotus Café, and got on a bike. He motioned towards a spare bike and tossed the keys to Sam who nodded, started the engine and glanced at Bani, who had made no attempt to get on the bike.
‘I can ride,’ Bani said tersely, barely concealing his distaste for taking the backseat to Sam.
‘You don’t have a bike,’ Sam pointed out. ‘Or a key.’
Jeff was already on his way, and Bani could not afford to lose the trail over a squabble. He gritted his teeth and climbed behind Sam.
***
Jeff rode through a route that was not a thoroughfare, to put it mildly. Both Sam and Bani felt like they were being put through the blender as they passed through bumpy hillocks, village dirt roads and sandy beaches. Sam wondered how Jeff was managing to ride his bike through all this when he could not even manage a steady handshake through his drug-hardened veins.
More than once, Sam, who possessed a keen sense of sound, paused as he thought he heard a bike somewhere behind them. But Jeff was getting away, and they could not afford to stop and lose time.
Sam stopped his bike abruptly as Jeff reached Solaris Hospital.
***
Damini whistled. The plot was getting thicker.
Mini had sent Damini the brief stats on the two blokes—the young man, Sameer, and the old, avuncular guy, Bhabani—by matching their photographs with her database. The young man’s profile matched that of a person who had fled a crime scene in Mumbai, while the professor, according to Mini, was a conspiracy theorist with some bizarre obsessions.
As Damini followed them on her motorcycle, her eyes widened as she saw a man wearing shorts and a blue T-shirt also following them. He seemed to be riding his bike with panache. Even through the dark, she could make out the reflection of the moonlight on the metal of a revolver sticking out of his pocket.
Excellent, she thought. The situation just got more interesting, what with this fast-and-furious acolyte joining the game.
She reached into her holster, fished out her handgun and released the safety catch. This could get ugly.
***
It was difficult to shadow people on a completely deserted, winding path without being discovered.
Rider realised he was being followed.
He spoke into his Bluetooth mouthpiece. ‘Bruce, I have a tail, probably a woman, probably on a bike.’ He then addressed the two backups. ‘Milind, Nicole, Solaris Hospital is the nearest landmark. Meet me at the parking lot. Bring the Land Rover.’
Bruce’s instructions were clear. ‘Don’t make a move on anyone till we have located Steve. Then take the professor. The younger guy I don’t care about.’
‘Sure,’ Rider nodded as he continued on his bike. He knew what the last bit meant.
Bruce added, ‘Don’t forget to retrieve the USB drive from the younger guy before you kill him.’
CHAPTER 18
Goa, Monday, 10.30 p.m.
Damini was smart and cocky, and a daredevil, but she was no fool.
After the incident in Mumbai when she had lost Ji-hoon Kim, she was wary of sharing too much information with Kunal. But the situation now demanded urgent action.
She would have to take a chance and trust him. If he was partnering with the bad guys, he might deliberately stall. But at least she would be able to confirm her suspicions.
She called the control room. Kunal came on line.
Damini spoke quickly. ‘I need backup. Fast. Have them come in an SUV and arrange to rendezvous somewhere near my current path.’
‘Mind telling me what’s going on?’ Kunal asked.
‘I will,’ Damini said tersely. ‘Let me get done with this high-speed chase first.’
Kunal sighed and then said, ‘Ok, backup coming your way. I’m sending two agents: Malcolm and Nisha.’
Thankfully, the ACG had a unit in Goa who were aware of Damini’s movements. It would not take much time for the backup to materialise. If Kunal wanted to cooperate, that is.
‘Mini,’ Damini continued. ‘I need more info on the two blokes, Sameer and Bhabani.’
***
>
Solaris Hospital, Goa, Monday, 11 p.m.
Bani and Sam trooped behind Jeff as he made his way up the staircase at Solaris Hospital. Paranoid sociophobe that he was, Jeff did not want to take the lift to get to the intensive care unit on the second floor.
‘You seem to be in good spirits,’ Sam remarked as Bani bounded up the stairs.
‘Can’t wait to hear what Steve has to say,’ Bani replied.
Sam snorted. ‘You make me sick, man. Steve, who is supposedly your friend, is probably in some trauma-induced state, and all you can think of is your stupid research!’
***
Steve, sure enough, was in delirium. His head and left shoulder were wrapped in bandages, his eyes were heavy with sedation and his hands were limp, though he was conscious.
‘No visitors,’ one of the nurses on duty told them with a stern look.
The resident doctor stopped briefly to talk to Sam and Bani as he emerged from the ICU. He told them that one of Jeff’s friends had apparently dressed Steve’s wounds and given him sedatives in Mumbai. Nevertheless, the wounds, including a bad gash on the left shoulder and blows to the head, had acted up further due to the ill-advised train journey from Mumbai to Goa.
Bani, notwithstanding his enthusiasm for what Steve had to say, felt a sharp tug of guilt and concern.
As the two nurses at the ICU station stepped away from their desk to attend to another patient, Sam and Bani grabbed the window of opportunity. They quickly made their way to Steve’s cubicle.
Steve showed a glimmer of recognition as he saw Bani, but he was too weak to speak coherently.
With a huge effort, he tugged at Bani’s sleeve. His voice was hoarse. ‘KaalKoot . . . Demo,’ he croaked haltingly.
‘What demo?’ Bani asked, leaning close to Steve’s face.
‘Master . . . different . . . l . . . l . . . lo.’ Steve paused, his entire face heaving as he struggled to speak.
He was getting progressively agitated as he spoke. ‘Torture. Hot, hot . . .’
‘Hot what?’ Bani egged him on with a sense of urgency. ‘Tell me.’
Steve was choking now. ‘Ho . . . Ho . . . Hottt,’ he continued, as wheezing shook his entire body.
‘In . . . s.s.sick,’ Steve panted, barely audible, his voice reduced to a croak.
Sam noticed a glimmer of understanding pass through Bani’s face. Clearly, Steve had said something that made sense to him.
The last wheeze was particularly bad. Steve’s face contorted into a grotesque expression as he spat out blood.
He was now gasping for breath, getting progressively more hysterical. ‘KaalKoot. Demo.’
Bani leaned closer. ‘What demo?’
Steve had a look of terror in his eyes as he mustered up his last ounce of energy to scream ‘Stop . . . it.’.
Clearly, the effort was too much for him. His eyeballs moved rapidly as the left side of his body slumped. The monitors connected to Steve’s body pranced about wildly as a nurse rushed in and urgently motioned Bani and Sam to leave the room.
This nurse was fair, tall and athletic, with blonde hair. A fleeting thought about the unusualness of this entered Sam’s mind, but there was no time to think.
The blonde nurse hurriedly pushed Bani to the side as she fished out a needle to inject Steve with a sedative. ‘You will have to leave the room,’ she said with a heavy Australian accent. ‘Now.’
Bani and Sam stepped outside the doorway.
They did not notice that the look on Steve’s face had twisted into an even darker expression of horror as the Aussie nurse turned towards him.
***
Solaris Hospital, Goa, Monday, 11.08 p.m.
Bani and Sam walked up to the stairwell from the ICU, intending to make their way to the cafeteria on the ground floor.
Jeff was nowhere to be seen. ‘Probably scooted off back to the rave, now that his job is done,’ Sam snorted.
The two of them were just starting to walk down the stairs when they heard the deafening sound of glass shattering.
The noise of the crash reverberated through the floor. This was followed by the sound of more glass breaking and the almost simultaneous shrieking of people from around the ICU.
Sam and Bani mouthed the same word as they rushed towards the ICU.
‘Steve. . .’
***
Solaris Hospital, Goa, Monday, 11.10 p.m.
There was commotion on the second floor of the hospital. It was not every day that a patient got into a scuffle at the ICU. The staff and nurses were swarming around the corridors, while the hospital’s security guards cordoned off the area around Steve’s lifeless body.
The same resident doctor whom Sam and Bani had spoken to earlier came to talk to them. ‘He seems to have had a scuffle with the nurse and overturned the trolley with all the medicines and ampoules. Considering how much blood he had lost, that must have taken a lot of strength. But coupled with the ill-conceived train ride from Mumbai, I guess his heart could not handle the strain, and it gave way.’
Sam noticed Bani sighing loudly as he fought hard to control his emotions.
‘So how did he get the strength?’ Sam asked the doctor.
‘Well, something may have triggered the release of a large amount of adrenaline in his body. A person can muster up that kind of hysterical strength when he is responding to extreme fear.’
Sam and Bani walked up to Steve’s bed. The water jug on the bedside table was overturned, and a needle was lying on the floor.
Something about the needle rang a bell in Sam’s mind. ‘The tall Aussie nurse,’ he blurted out. ‘She was the one who took out a needle to inject Steve. She seemed out of place here.’
Bani had recovered enough from the shock of Steve’s death to nod slowly. ‘Let’s find her.’
***
Sam and Bani were walking down the corridor when they saw the Aussie ‘nurse’ at one end.
They had just begun to run towards her when the sight of another person stopped them dead in their tracks.
The Aussie ‘nurse’ was with a person who wore a doctor’s uniform.
Sam and Bani did not know that the person had, till recently, worn beach shorts and a blue T-shirt, and was known as Rider. But the revolver in his hand told them more than they needed to know.
They ran in the opposite direction, desperately looking for an exit.
They entered into the first door that came their way. It turned out to be a housekeeping room, filled with shelves lined with linen and blankets.
But their pursuers were not far behind.
Bani had barely entered the room when a powerful hit to the head knocked him out cold.
The last thing Sam did before a blow to his head rendered him unconscious was to take the USB drive out of his pocket and shove it under the rack of linen and towels in the housekeeping room.
CHAPTER 19
Solaris Hospital, Goa, 11.20 p.m.
While Nicole and Rider had been busy with Sam and Bani, the second backup, Milind, had been assigned to ‘take care’ of Damini.
Unfortunately, he had no clue where she was.
He had seen her getting into the lift on the ground floor, and had waited right outside the lift door on the first floor for her to emerge.
Bafflingly, the lift door opened and there was nobody inside.
He entered the lift gingerly, looking perplexed, when a kick to his head squarely knocked him down.
Damini had suspended herself below the lift ceiling, balancing herself between the walls. As soon as Milind entered the lift, she had found her opportunity and flattened him.
She was starting to drag Milind’s limp body to a safe place when she happened to glance through the corridor window. A man was pushing a stretcher with a limp body across the parking lot to a Land Rover.
It had to be either Sameer or Bhabani on the stretcher, Damini thought with dismay. Or maybe both, considering how big the body looked.
The man dragging the bodies w
as the same fast-and-furious guy she had been following. And along with him was a tall, athletic blonde woman in a nurse’s uniform.
***
A firefight in the hospital, that too with a guy who could potentially use Sameer or Bhabani as human shields, was a bad idea. Even if Damini fired simply to create a distraction, she would still be hauled up by the Chief for an unprovoked firefight.
But then if the guy got away, Damini might lose her main clue. Along with possibly the lives of Sameer and Bhabani.
She had to decide fast.
Damini let go of Milind and ran at breakneck speed towards the window by the staircase.
She fished out her gun, took careful aim at the tyres of the Land Rover, and fired.
***
All hell broke loose. Rider immediately looked up, saw Damini, dived for cover and unholstered his revolver, all within a span of two seconds. Nicole did the same.
They were both crouched behind the Land Rover, on the same side. That was the only narrow spot which gave them cover from Damini’s window. The stretcher was lying about fourteen feet away from them, Sam and Bani’s limp bodies on it.
Rider was under strict orders to get Bani alive. He could not afford to have him shot. Sam he could dispense with, but only after retrieving the USB drive from him.
Rider sensed that his hands were tied. He could not quite use either Sam or Bani as human shields.
Then a realisation hit him, and his eyes lit up.
His opponent did not know his constraints. She had no clue that he was under orders to get Bani alive.
***
Damini had won the first round, crouched as she was at a vantage point, with the fast-and-furious guy and the blonde nurse both constrained in terms of moving space.
But she also knew that this advantage would not last for very long. The bad guys, who had nothing to lose if a couple of innocents died, were always at an advantage when there were bystanders around.
For one, the guy might get nervous and fire at Sameer or Bhabani. Hospital staff or patients would almost certainly arrive on the scene and complicate matters.
She had barely finished thinking this when the fast-and-furious guy fired at the windows of the hospital’s casualty department on the ground floor.