He finished the beer and asked for his food. The pork chunks with the Naga-style bamboo shoots tasted all the better with the fiery chilli-and-tomato chutney. By the time he was done his mouth felt like it was on fire. Sweat poured off his face, and he had to come out and ask for a cold drink, much to the amusement of the lady behind the counter.
The beer, the meal and the meeting with Baia had put him in a good mood, and back at the hotel he lay down on the bed to take a nap—even the room didn’t bother him any more. The mournful hoots of a train sounded and he felt his eyelids dragging down. He remembered the evocative photos of the hills framed on the walls of the cafe, and recalled Baia’s comment about looking at the world with jaded eyes. Truly, there was so much beauty and wonder to be found here, instead of wading through the muck as he was doing—he should come back once with Rhea and try one of the homestays that were opening in the unspoilt interior parts of the state. Yes, that would be a good thing to do, he thought.
He was woken up by his phone ringing. It was Abbas, who said he was on his way. A groggy Arjun washed his face and turned on the lights. He called for a cup of tea, and when the same bearer turned up Arjun gave him a small tip. After the tea (which was overdone as usual, and reminded him of the stuff Chandu brought from Market No. 1 in CR Park) he went out to the window at the end of the corridor and lit a cigarette. The lights were on in the hovels by the train tracks, and men went in and came out, brushing past grimy curtains. In the courtyard of one structure a group of women stood chatting with their hands on hips. The bearer, a nondescript-looking Bengali man from Tripura, came and stood by Arjun’s side.
‘That is one place,’ the man said with wonder in his voice, ‘where even army-wallahs are afraid to go in.’
The occasional shout or scream came up to them; it was hard to tell whether they were from inside or outside the dwellings.
‘Have you ever been there?’ Arjun asked him.
‘Me? No, never. I hardly leave the hotel.’
A while later, after he had returned to his room, there was a knock on the door. Arjun opened it to find his old friend standing there.
29
DRESSED IN DARK-BROWN TROUSERS AND a cream-coloured sweater, Javed Abbas seemed more like a senior college lecturer than an intelligence operative. He looked thinner than before, worn out, with more white in his hair, but his moustache was still a luxuriant black. In his hands he held a newspaper-wrapped carton. They embraced, slapping each other’s backs, and Abbas handed him the carton.
‘I got something for you, Arora.’
They had always, for some reason, used their surnames with one another. Arjun removed the wrapping to find a bottle of scotch.
‘I hope this isn’t the turpentine-mixed version from Khatkhati, Abbas?’
‘Arrey, what are you saying? This is genuine army ka maal.’
Arjun had the bearer bring up glasses and water, and some fried peanuts and papad from the kitchen. They said cheers and drank.
‘You’re right,’ Arjun said. ‘It must be army stuff.’
Abbas laughed. ‘Always suspicious. No wonder you became a detective.’
‘It’s good to see you, Abbas.’
‘You too, Arora. Do you remember those days back in Jorhat?’
‘How could I forget? But you’ve lost weight, Abbas. Too much of yoga, kya?’
The military intelligence officer shook his head. ‘I wasn’t well. Work pressure too. But I’m getting transferred to south India next year. I’ve had enough of the North-east.’
‘Where’s your family?’
‘Bangalore. We’ve bought a flat there. What about your family? Okay?’
‘They’re fine,’ Arjun said, not wanting to get into explanations. ‘Where’s your car?’
‘At the railway station with my driver and security person. Safer there.’
They finished their first drink quickly and Arjun poured out two more. Abbas asked him for a cigarette, lit it, then said, ‘So why are you looking for Tony Haokip?’
‘A Naga girl was murdered in Delhi last year. I need to talk to him about that.’
‘Do you think he’ll talk to you?’
Arjun shrugged. ‘I have to try.’
‘How did this case come to you?’
Arjun told Abbas, and also gave him a condensed version of his investigation so far.
‘Bendangtoshi Longkumer,’ Abbas said after he had heard the account. ‘I’ve met him. He’s got a good hold in the Ao areas.’
Arjun nodded. ‘And what about Tony Haokip? Could you find out anything?’
His friend took out a small photo from his wallet—a passport-sized photo taken of another passport photo showing the long, dark-complexioned face of a tribal youth. He said, ‘Is this him?’
Arjun opened the photo of the driving licence on his phone and compared the two.
‘Yes,’ he said, showing Abbas his phone. ‘The same person. What do you know?’
‘Anthony or Tony Haokip was a former member of one of the Kuki defence groups. He was asked to leave due to alleged financial irregularities he had committed, which is what usually happens when a senior-level person keeps most or all of the money they’ve extorted with themselves. Last known, he was trying to put together another Kuki outfit.’
‘Any idea where he is?’
‘Somewhere in Manipur. Not in the Naga areas or in the Imphal valley of course. Maybe in Myanmar. I’ve made inquiries and I’ve put the word out. We should know soon.’
‘Okay. I’m thinking of going to Imphal. It’ll be quicker to move from there.’
‘When do you plan to go?’
‘In a day or two. There was another person, Colonel Khrienuo, where is he?’
‘He’s in Dimapur. Do you know him?’
‘I took him into custody once. Later we became friends. I thought I could ask him.’
‘Hmm. Yes, Khrienuo might be able to find out. He’s built a huge house on the way to Rangapahar. Gets money from Delhi, and collects money here too. Good life he has.’
‘I saw something in the paper yesterday. Two cadres shot dead in Dimapur town?’
‘Khrienuo’s men did that. In broad daylight. And when the police later questioned the shopkeepers in the area, no one had seen anything!’
‘What was it about?’
‘What else? Tax collection dispute.’ Abbas gave him a weary smile. ‘The people here are fed up with the groups, but they use the nationalism card to keep the issue alive. There are about six or seven of them in total now.’
‘When will things change?’ Arjun asked, looking into his glass.
‘Delhi has used money to keep them quiet, but what is happening to their society?’ Abbas picked up his phone and showed Arjun a few photos of a vast wedding reception venue which with its decor wouldn’t have been out of place in an upscale New York or LA neighbourhood. ‘The wedding of the son of a senior bureaucrat here in Dimapur recently. He spent six or seven crores on it. And in the interior areas there are no roads, no hospitals, no rations. Everything that comes in for the public distribution system is looted.’ He shook his head in disgust, then looked around the room. ‘I should have put you up in a better hotel, isn’t it? It’s only because I know Sushil that I told you about this place.’
‘Don’t worry, it doesn’t bother me.’
They refilled their glasses. Drinking after so long, Arjun could feel the buzz within him quite clearly. He told himself to be careful.
‘Tony Haokip has an interesting story,’ Abbas said. ‘I don’t think you know it?’
‘Tell me.’
‘His father joined the government service and moved to Imphal from their old village in Ukhrul. Tony was sent to boarding school in Shillong. He was a good student. Then the Kuki–Naga clashes in the mid-nineties, you’ll know about that. But how did it start? There was always bad blood between the two sides, but what happened in the early nineties was that the main Naga group, which had been fighting after the NNC signed th
e Shillong Accord, split along tribal lines thanks to some devious minds among us. The leaders of one group had a narrow escape. They were hiding in Assam for a while, then went abroad from Nepal using passports from that country. When they returned in the mid-nineties, eviction notices were served to the Kuki villages in the hills of Manipur. It was about territory, plus a lot of Kukis were getting into the Assam Rifles. It started from Chandel, and then spread to Senapati, Ukhrul and Tamenglong. So there was all that killing, you saw some of it too, I know. Of course, we didn’t exactly go all out to stop the conflict. Tony’s father was helping the Kuki villages with supplies and money. The family moved to Churachandpur. Nothing happened then, but a few years later they waited for him at a petrol pump they knew he went to when he was in Kohima, and shot him a couple of times.’
Abbas paused to help himself to some peanuts and Arjun lit a cigarette. Strange, these details of long-forgotten wars. Suddenly it came to him: an upper Assam village with muddy roads and betel-nut trees, the villagers coming out of their thatch- and tin-roofed huts. He shook the memory out of his mind. His friend resumed his story.
‘Tony was in a college in Delhi then. He returned home after his graduation and enrolled at Manipur University. He studied for the UPSC and got into the allied services but he didn’t join—from what I heard, he wanted to be an IAS officer or nothing. And then he didn’t even try a second time. By then he knew a lot of the Kuki leaders, his father had been an important member of the community, and he joined one of the Kuki groups. He was smart, and he rose up quickly. But a little too smart in the end maybe.’
‘Interesting. The girl who was killed was his first girlfriend, from when they were in school in Shillong. And he was in Delhi just before that happened.’
Abbas looked thoughtful. ‘That’s a strange connection,’ he said.
‘Yes. Tell me, do you know a Manipuri guy called Romeo? Drives a Fortuner with a Dimapur number plate.’
‘Romeo? Yes, his father is an MLA from the Imphal valley.’
‘Okay. And what do you know about WY and 88 tablets?’
‘Methamphetamines. Or yaba. They’re common here. They come from Myanmar, and are taken to Delhi. Then there’s heroin. Gold. Guns. Some of our senior people are involved in it too. But of late all of it is starting to move down towards the Mizoram border.’
‘Less security?’
‘Exactly. Here there are just too many agencies to be paid off.’
‘I found a meth tablet in the girl’s room. The Delhi Police seemed to have overlooked it. Do you think Tony Haokip might be involved in the trade?’
‘Hmm. Yes, that’s possible. These groups deal in them too. It starts from Moreh, and comes down all the way to Dimapur. There’s a nightclub here where you can buy the stuff. In fact,’ Abbas checked his wristwatch, ‘want to go have a look? It’s not too far from here.’
Arjun was feeling good now, enjoying what was for him the rare occasion of an old friend’s company. ‘Why not? Just like old times.’
‘Yes. Let me call my boys.’
The Sumo came to the front of the hotel from the nearby station. They went out after Abbas had a couple of words with Sushil who was at the reception. The driver took a few turns through the commercial heart of the city where the showrooms were starting to close. Just like old times—the humid, monotonous days followed by the drives at night, to tea garden clubs, to houses, to the riverside, the gentle frisson of danger giving the whisky an added flavour. A thought struck Arjun.
‘Is this a hired car?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Don’t worry, a reliable supplier from Tezpur. What do you drive now?’
‘A Scorpio. Had a Swift before that.’
‘Scorpio is good. I have a Honda City now. Achcha, do you want to buy a Hilux?’
‘A Toyota Hilux?’
‘Yes. 4x4. For just sixteen lakhs. There’s a fellow here in Dimapur . . . gets the cars through a contact in Bhutan, where they don’t pay any import duties, then fixes the papers here with the transport department.’ Abbas chuckled. ‘Tell me if you’re interested, he owes me a favour. He even sent a car to Delhi last year, a Toyota Land Cruiser, almost half of the price in India. For the state chief secretary. Okay, let’s get down here. My boys will wait nearby.’
The street was dark and Arjun got down before a darkened building. He followed Abbas past an open garbage dump and up on to the footpath, from where they entered the building and went up the dimly lit staircase with paan stains on the wall. Arjun had Abbas with him but he was still alert. Anything could happen in these places. On the third floor they turned into a wide corridor with the faint throb of music, but only when Abbas pushed open the padded doors and the loud music hit them did Arjun realize that the place had been soundproofed, possibly because this was a dry state, and thus no nightclubs could exist.
The all-black interiors were bathed in red light, and the insistent beat of the dance music assailed his eardrums. They took one of the tables and Abbas had a word with the waiter who came over. Arjun looked around: Young boys and girls, including some Marwari boys at the bar, and harder-looking men in black jackets who stared at the two of them. It was the look on the faces of the girls though, young girls clad in flowing gowns or tight jackets, which caught Arjun’s attention: they had a look of utter blankness and boredom that seemed to proclaim that life had nothing more to interest them. He drank the whisky that had arrived and hoped they could leave soon.
Abbas was talking but Arjun couldn’t hear anything and pointed at his ear and at the DJ console, so the other man came over and shouted into his ear, ‘Grass, opium, meth, heroin. Anything you want, these guys will supply it.’
‘How much do the meth tablets go for?’ Arjun asked.
‘Around 100 to 120 bucks a tablet. Cheaper in bulk. And if you have pseudoephedrine tablets they’ll buy them from you. That’s what they use to make meth over the border.’
Arjun nodded, recalling his conversation with Tinkuji, the chemist.
‘If you cross into Myanmar by the bridge over the Ningthee river at Moreh, you’ll see hundreds, maybe thousands, of empty tablet strips by the river on the Indian side. Tablets containing pseudoephedrine.’
‘How do they get the meth out of here?” Arjun asked.
‘What they do,’ Abbas continued, ‘is that they get these mechanics to make a false compartment in the fuel tank. All the stuff then goes in there.’
‘I hadn’t heard that before.’
His friend chuckled. ‘Dimapur is the hub of criminals in the North-east. Even my friends in the Nagaland Police say so.’
A short man in a leather jacket with a paunch and slicked-back hair came over to their table and sat down. Abbas crossed the table again and spoke to the man. Arjun noticed his small eyes darting all over the room. A while later the man got up and left, and Abbas sat down beside Arjun again.
‘He knows Tony Haokip but hasn’t seen him in a while. I’ve asked him to find out.’
‘Okay. So who controls this place?’
‘Indirectly, Khrienuo’s men. Of course, if you ask him he’ll deny it. Here, take down this number. Give him a call tomorrow.’
Arjun took out his phone and saved the number. Abbas downed his drink and motioned to the waiter for another round, the same one as the bottle he had arrived with.
‘Where does the opium come from?’ Arjun asked.
‘They grow poppy near the Myanmar border in both Nagaland and Manipur. We allow them, generally. Once they have a business operation set up, there’s less of an incentive for them to walk out of a ceasefire deal.’
Arjun looked at the dead faces of the girls, trapped in this shadowy netherland, and thought of his daughter back in Delhi.
‘Can we go someplace quieter?’ he asked.
They went to another nightclub, but something far more relaxed, in a residential area of the city. It was on top of an apartment building. Soundproofed, like the first place, they were playing nineties’ rock tracks at a
modest volume, even as a handful of young people played pool or drank beer. Arjun looked around the place as Abbas ordered more whisky and some smoked meat—with its faux raw-brick walls and music posters and pool table it looked just like a hip Delhi resto-pub; even the alcohol prices in this dry state were comparable.
‘Nice place,’ Arjun said after their waiter had departed. ‘But not for poor people.’
‘That’s what we Indians are teaching the Nagas,’ Abbas said. ‘And they’re proving to be good students.’
He took a few sips after their drinks and meat had arrived, and then said to Arjun, ‘I thought I wouldn’t ask you this, but . . .’
‘What, Abbas?’
His friend looked at him intently. ‘You don’t know, do you?’
‘Know what?’
Abbas nodded, pursed his lips, then said, ‘Colonel Khanna is in Dimapur.’
Arjun froze for a moment on hearing the name, then took a big swig of whisky.
‘He was out of the North-east for many years,’ Abbas continued, ‘J&K, Mumbai . . . but he came to Dimapur last year. Already he’s involved in all sorts of things. Did you hear about those three Manipuri boys who were tortured and killed? They say that was him.’
‘How does it matter if he’s here,’ Arjun said, feigning nonchalance. ‘I’m not bothered about him.’
‘Still, after what happened between you and him . . . just be careful as long as you’re here, Arora.’
‘I’ll do that, Abbas. Now let’s talk about something else. Have you got yourself any women here or not?’
More Bodies Will Fall Page 17