Sacred Games

  I told the boys that we had to follow the power. From the roof, from the pole, we traced the in-wall connections that went down to the junction box on the ground floor. There was a separate small room at the back of the house that contained this junction box, with two steel locks on the door. We had to extract Jagat Narain from his cell, get him to give us the keys for the locks. By now he had understood that he ought to be scared. He was co-operative, and made no arguments, but his hands were shaking, and he whispered, ‘Where’s Barjinder? Don’t leave Barjinder behind.’

  ‘Who is Barjinder, kaka?’ Nikhil said, patting him on the shoulder. ‘What are you going on about?’

  Jagat Narain shook his head. ‘We have to get to Amritsar,’ he said. ‘Our house is burnt. We have to get to Amritsar.’ He was still saying it when Nikhil shut the door on him.

  I was shaking a little myself when we emerged again into the twilight, thunderous with calling birds. I thought, I am wound up from the excitement of the chase. I knew I was on to something, and I was even more sure when we opened this back room and saw the junction boxes and the circuit breakers and the meters. All the technology was up to date and beyond, clean and shining and working flawlessly. The numbers on the meters were moving, slowly but steadily, no doubt of that. Something was sucking up electricity.

  We followed the cables. There had been an attempt to disguise the paths that they followed under the plaster and through the brick, so we had to arm ourselves with picks and shovels. We dug. There was one circuit that fed the house, but there were two others that looped off outside, two feet under the surface. It was hard, slow work, chipping at the packed soil under the gravel. We crawled slowly into the shadows under the mango trees. Nikhil went back to the house and came out with two Petromax lanterns, and we went forward in that dancing light. It was full night when we found the underground complex. There was an empty square in the middle of the grove, a shape that you only saw as an absence of trees. It was very innocent, unless you traced the PVC-sleeved cable that led to a T-junction and then went straight down. We padded about in circles. Jatti found a ventilator first, guided by the small hiss of air. Then, under an adjacent patch of thatch, a small metal panel painted in camouflage brown and dull green. Nikhil put his ear to it.

  ‘The air-conditioning unit is under here,’ he said.

  I put a hand down, and the hum came into my shoulder. Now we knew we were right. The boys scraped at the ground, clawed at the grass, calling for the lanterns. I went out beyond the light, unmindful of the sting in my knees as I went over roots and rocks. The secret was underneath, I could feel it close. The gold was close. I had searched it out always, the prize, the advantage. And so I found it.

  There was a length of the same metal as the air-conditioning panel. It lay between two old trees, making a slight rise in the earth. There was a thin covering of leaves and twigs, and under it the riveted steel. ‘Here,’ I shouted. ‘Here.’

  We cleared off the top of it, and now in the lamplight I could see that it was a trapdoor. Five feet by five, with slots let into one side to allow for lifting. Jatti caught hold and gave it an experimental tug. ‘Locked,’ he said, pointing at a keyhole between the handles.

  ‘Look on the dead chutiya,’ I said.

  I was shooting deadly straight that night, no misses. They found the key on a dirty nada around Kirpal Singh’s neck. It was a big, heavy, three-inch slab of steel, one of those computerized keys, now stained with blood. But it turned effortlessly in the lock, and we were in. A ladder angled down. A light-switch conveniently positioned next to the door provided clean, even, blue-white illumination. There were three large rooms, decreasing in size. The first two were efficiently filled with bookshelves, filing cabinets and computer tables. But the shelves were empty, and there were no files, and no computers. The extension cords were still in place, though, and there was a mess of other computer cables behind the desks. On the white surface of the desks, we could see faint outlines where the computers had rested. Nikhil ran his finger around the brown outline of the bottom of a cup on one of the keyboard trays, where someone had put down his chai. There was one very large printer that sat in a corner of the second room, and that was all the equipment that they had left behind.

  The third room was a storage space, now completely empty. A wire rubbish bin held only the wrappers from two reams of computer paper. Jatti went down the room, opening cupboards. He stopped at the last one. ‘Bhai.’

  There was a steel trunk on the bottom shelf, not one of those tinny things that you can buy in any bazaar, but a sleek silver cube of foreign make. You could tell that from the locks alone, which were built into the shape of the trunk itself. ‘Bring it out,’ I said.

  It was heavy. It took two of them to drag it out into the central room. ‘That key was the only one on the commando, bhai,’ Nikhil said.

  So Jatti got out his ghoda, leant close to the first lock and squeezed one off. There was a whine that sped around the room and went by my head, and we all dropped, cursing. ‘Maderchod,’ I said. ‘Everyone all right?’

  They nodded. But there was a hole in the printer. And only a small dimple in the lock on the trunk.

  Our blood was up now. We looked at each other, and then at the shiny, plump curves of the trunk. ‘Get me a rod,’ I said, ‘or something.’

  It took us forty minutes of hacking at the locks with picks and shovels to open a crack in the trunk, to get it to reveal the seam that ran around its circumference. Then we inserted two crowbars into the split and heaved in opposite directions. It flew open finally with a shriek of tortured metal, and all of us fell to the floor. And then we were silent.

  The trunk was three-quarters full, and what it contained was dollars. I reached out – and I noticed that my hand was skinned and bleeding and trembling – and picked up one of the little stacks, wrapped around with a paper band. The denomination was hundreds.

  ‘How much, bhai?’ Nikhil said.

  ‘A lot.’

  I moved the boys fast, then. We took the trunk, closed the trapdoor, went back to the house. I had everyone wash under the pump in the courtyard before we went out to the car. We were going to be on the road, near the border, early in the morning, and if we were stopped I didn’t want to get into a shootout because of a blood-stained shirt. There wasn’t much we could do about Chandar’s hand, which was swollen into a football. He had a fever now, besides. So we wrapped him up in a blanket and put him on the back seat. Then we were ready to go. But not quite yet. There was one more item of business, and we all knew it. Jatti was the one who finally spoke.

  ‘What about the old man, bhai?’

  Yes, the old man. He was senile, he was half-mad, but he had seen our faces. There was a dead body in the house, and the old man could perhaps connect us to it. I had taught the boys what needed to be done in such situations. ‘I’ll do it,’ I said. I went back in, past the snuffling of the cow, through the corridor – towards the slow tapping of water – and into the courtyard. I opened a door, and Jagat Narain was sitting on a bed, his hands resting on his thighs, watching. He was waiting for me.

  ‘Come,’ I said. ‘We’re leaving now. You can come out.’

  He didn’t move. I went in, took him by the arm, and he stood up easily enough. I walked him out, and as we stepped over the high sill, he whispered, ‘What time is it?’

  ‘It’s going to be five.’

  ‘Morning or evening?’

  Now, under the starlight, I could see his big thatch of white hair, and his high forehead. In his cracked lens, there was my face, broken in half. ‘Morning,’ I said, overcome by a sudden tenderness for the helplessness of old age. He didn’t know whether it was day or night, where he was or where he was going. It was all the same to him. ‘Look, there is the moon.’

  He raised his face and blundered away from me, his arms up. ‘Yes,’ he said, pointing with both hands.

  There was a small sliver of moon, a piece of an arc, rising or setting – I didn’t
know. I took a step back, raised my ghoda, levelled it and fired. The flash filled my eyes, and then he was lying on the brick, his hands extended. I leaned over him, and gave him another in the head.

  And then I ran. I don’t know why, but I ran all the way to the car, and jumped in, and Nikhil didn’t need to be instructed. He turned the wheel, and we were moving. But even through the spray of gravel, and over the sudden reek of exhaust, the smell of mogra followed me all the way to the canal. We raced through the dawn, and reached Amritsar safely. We paused only for a short visit to a doctor, and then I split up the team and sent them on their various ways. I understood well that this was the end of our mission. We had not found Guru-ji, but what we had found was something finally valuable enough to attract a lot of attention. There were, in that trunk, exactly nine hundred and eighty-four thousand, three hundred and twenty-two dollars. The boys called it a million, but the true amount was a little less. So Nikhil and Jatti caught a train to Delhi, and Chandar a plane to Bhopal, and that evening I flew to Bombay with the money. There was a car waiting for me at the airport, and a new safe house ready in Juhu. But I wasn’t yet safe when my satellite phone began to ring. We were ploughing through traffic on the highway when I heard the ring, muffled but distinctive. It was my Guru-ji phone, my latest encrypted satellite one. I shouted at the driver to pull off to the side, hit the back of his head when he was slow to batter his way across the weaving streams of cars, and then I dragged him out to open the boot. I knew exactly where the phone was, in the outside pocket of my shoulder bag, and then I had it out and up to my ear.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘You took my money.’

  ‘Yes.’ Yes, it was Guru-ji. Yes, it was that familiar voice, that chesty, resonating boom which was so reassuring, so comforting. Yes, there was the precise enunciation of every word, especially the last. Finally, after all this searching, I had found Guru-ji, I had brought him back to me. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Why did you take the money, Ganesh?’

  ‘Why did you go away?’

  ‘I told you that we would never see each other again.’

  ‘But not that you would vanish.’

  ‘Ganesh,’ he sighed. ‘Ganesh. After all this time you haven’t understood that fundamental teaching I tried to give you. We are all lost to each other already. To cling in love is to betray love itself.’

  ‘Big words,’ I said. ‘Big-big words.’ There I was, Ganesh Gaitonde, standing on the side of the highway, within sight of hundreds of men and women as they went to home and work, stamping my feet. There were passing gaggles of blue-skirted schoolgirls who could see the tears I was wiping from my eyes. But I didn’t care. ‘I was calling you, and there was no reply,’ I said. ‘But it was only when you lost some dollars that you cared to call me.’

  ‘It’s not the dollars, Ganesh,’ Guru-ji said. ‘It’s the inconvenience. I am in the middle of a big project. I need the cash to make certain payments. I don’t care about money, but the rest of the world wants hard currency.’

  ‘What is this project?’

  ‘I will tell you that it is a big project, Ganesh.’

  ‘Did you make me a part of it?’

  ‘Everyone has a part in it.’

  ‘Don’t play games with me. Answer me. Answer me.’ I fought for control over myself, lowered my voice. ‘You had us bring in some kind of nuclear material. Don’t tell me you didn’t. My men died.’

  He sighed. ‘Yes, Ganesh. That is true enough.’

  ‘What are you going to do with it?’ I said. He was silent. ‘Tell me, and I’ll give your money back.’

  ‘Will you, Ganesh? Will you really if I tell you the purpose?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I will.’

  ‘I wonder if you will have the courage. But why do you ask me, Ganesh? I think that perhaps you already know.’

  I felt a stab of outrage, that this old man was questioning my courage. Me, who had risked so much for him. But I stopped myself, I said nothing. For what would I not have courage? I turned, and looked at the untidy roofs of a basti stretching away below the raised road, and the clustered buildings beyond. This man had first come to me wanting weapons. He was preparing for war. I wasn’t afraid of battles, I had thrown myself into combat all my life. But if his war came, it would be a big one, it would burn through every corner of India. It would be painful, he had said to me, but afterwards we will be better. We will find peace. And then I remembered standing on the roof of the house he had built close to the border, and seeing a sea of green, and glimpsing – for only a moment – a perfect happiness, everything fresh and completely new and unstained, and me, I was young again and full of hope, and the world was again newborn and vast, and I was smiling.

  And in that moment, I knew.

  I heard myself say, against the living roar of the city, ‘You want a bigger war.’

  ‘Very good, Ganesh. A war bigger than the one you thought we were getting ready for.’

  ‘You built…a bomb?’

  ‘Don’t ask me such questions, Ganesh. I can’t answer those. I told you, you know already. What would I do with such a thing?’

  ‘Set it off. In a city somewhere. In Mumbai.’

  ‘And who would be held responsible?’

  ‘You would make sure it was some Muslim organization.’

  ‘Very good. And then what?’

  Then? Bloodshed. Murder everywhere. If there was tension on the border, maybe some kind of retaliation. Maybe even if there wasn’t tension, war would come, a real war, a war that would eat millions, a war unlike anything we had ever heard of. But these were only words. I tried to imagine it, but I couldn’t. I could only feel a hole inside myself, an emptiness so deep that it could swallow Mumbai, the country, everything.

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘You shouldn’t do it.’

  ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘Are you afraid of dying? You’ve been so close to death so many times, you can’t be afraid of it. And you know you will die, if not today, then tomorrow. You have dug holes for so many, someone will dig a hole for you. You told me that, once.’

  ‘I don’t care about my own death.’

  ‘But you care about the death of many? A few thousand, or a few million? Why, Ganesh? You have killed a few hundred in your life, at least. What does it matter, a few more?’

  I didn’t have an answer for him. I didn’t know why it mattered, but it did. I imagined this crawling ants’ nest of a city eaten by fire, all of it crumpled and black and twisting and finally gone. They led miserable, small lives, these scuttling millions. After they were gone, after the great cleansing wind that would take not only this city but every other one, there would be space for a new start. From all the sermons I had listened to, from fragments of lessons and from wisps of Sanskrit, came this certain knowledge: this is what Guru-ji wanted, this complete erasure of everything I knew. And I was scared. I couldn’t speak.

  He understood this. ‘You are weak, Ganesh,’ he said. ‘Despite my best efforts you lack strength. You are wilful and violent, but all that is only a thin covering for your frailty. Underneath you are as sentimental as a woman. But it’s not your fault. This is the general condition of the human race in this Kaliyug, Ganesh. All these United Nations, these dreamy-eyed do-gooders who rush to stop conflicts, they don’t understand that some wars must be fought, that killing must happen. They think they have stopped war, but all they ensure is a state of constant, smouldering war. Look at India and Pakistan, bleeding each other for more than fifty years. Instead of a final, glorious battle, we have a long, filthy mess. These well-meaning idiots always chatter on about the progress of the human race, but they don’t understand that progress cannot occur without destruction. Every golden age must be preceded by an apocalypse. It has always been so, and it will be so again. But now we have become too cowardly to let time move on. We stop up its wheels, we clog it up with our fears. Think of it, Ganesh. For more than fifty years we have put off the fight on our borders, and suffered small
humiliations and small bloodshed every day. We have been dishonoured and disgraced, and have become used to living with this shame. We have become a whole race of quailing Arjuns fleeing from what we know to be our duty. But enough. We will fight. The battle is necessary.’

  ‘But everything will be finished,’ I said, in a child’s quavering voice. ‘Everything.’

  ‘Exactly so. Every great religious tradition predicts this burning, Ganesh. We all know it’s coming.’

  ‘Why? But why?’

  ‘You told me yourself, when you were making that film. What was it called?’

  ‘International Dhamaka.’

  He gurgled with glee again. ‘Yes, Dhamaka. You told me that every story needed a climax, and a big story needed a big climax. Read the signs in this world, the signs all over this life we lead, and see what it needs. It wants an ending, Ganesh. It needs a close, so it can start over again. You’re only scared because you’re seeing it from the inside. Step outside and take a look, and you will see how it cannot end any other way.’

  ‘I’ll stop you.’

  ‘How, Ganesh? I’ve learnt security from you. And you have taught me well. You found me once, long ago, because my people were careless. But you won’t find me again. You haven’t found me after all these months of searching. You can’t do anything. Nobody can do anything. Time will move on. The inevitable will come. You took my money, and all you did was delay what must happen, what has to happen. That is all.’

  ‘So what do you want from me, then?’

  ‘Don’t fight me. Don’t go against the mechanism of history. Give me back my money.’

  ‘No. I won’t be part of this.’

  ‘You are already a part of it, Ganesh. You made it possible, you ran part of it, and whatever you do now, you will help it to happen. Whether you act or don’t act, the war will come, the blood will flow. You can’t stop it. You can’t stop yourself, Ganesh.’

  ‘I will tell…I will tell the authorities.’