The former finance minister—he had been forced to resign owing to Gangasagar's machinations—was being interviewed on television. He was saying, ‘The situation is fairly serious. I think it's very unfortunate. When you look at the R&S conglomerate, the workers there are the most highly paid! Some elements from outside are creating this problem. I am all for protection of workers’ rights. In no way should workers’ rights be compromised, but there has to be a fair process by which problems between management and workers are sorted out. My fear is that if it isn't controlled, the situation may get worse.’
‘He's taken the bait, the foolish man. It's time to use my straight flush not only to destroy him but also anyone who thinks that they can take me out of the game,’ thought Gangasagar as he watched the interview.
‘Sir, land for Special Economic Zones—SEZs—was allotted by the commerce ministry without considering the intrinsic value of it. Thousands of acres of land were given away to a single company, R&S Realty,’ said the news anchor, ‘would you care to comment?’
‘No comment,’ said the irritated prime minister, ‘I was defence minister then, you should ask that of the then minister for commerce.’
‘Sir, telecom licences were issued in an arbitrary fashion at fees that were low, even going by ten-year-old benchmarks. Subsequently, the company that obtained the new spectrum allocations sold its stake to outside investors for huge profit. The company that was allocated the licence was R&S Telecom,’ said the anchor. ‘Can you shed some light on the issue?’
‘No comment,’ said the angry prime minister, ‘I was defence minister at the time, you should ask the then minister for telecommunications.’
‘Sir, oil exploration rights were handed out to R&S Petroleum even though oil had already been discovered,’ said the news anchor. ‘Can you tell us why you did not step in?’
‘No comment,’ said the flustered prime minister. ‘I was only defence minister, you should ask the then minister for petroleum.’
‘Sir, large quantities of fodder and fertiliser were procured from R&S Agro for farmers and cattle that did not exist,’ said the anchor. ‘How could you allow such deals to pass muster?’
‘No comment,’ said the helpless prime minister. ‘I was only defence minister, you should ask the then minister for agriculture.’
‘The former finance minister ensured that he took the prime minister down with him. The grapevine is abuzz with news that the PM has resigned,’ said Agrawalji.
‘If he hadn't resigned, the entire government would have come crashing down—we would have had to withdraw the support of our MPs, and all at once, the comfortable majority would have disappeared,’ laughed Gangasagar.
‘Now what?’ asked Menon.
‘Well, we knocked out the finance minister so that the minister for external affairs could take his place, thus leaving the external affairs portfolio to Chandini. We've now knocked out the prime minister—in all probability the home minister will take his place. He's the only one who has broad support from all quarters,’ said Gangasagar.
‘So the home minister's slot will now fall vacant?’ asked Agrawalji.
‘Absolutely. And you know what, it needs a thug at the helm of affairs to control things,’ said Gangasagar.
‘Ikram? Are you mad, Ganga? We don't even know whether the plot to sabotage Chandini's chopper had his blessings or not. And you want him as home minister?’ said Agrawalji.
‘Yes. One should keep one's friends close and enemies even closer,’ replied Gangasagar and burst out laughing.
‘What's so funny?’ asked Agrawalji.
‘Ikram's always been responsible for a large chunk of the crime in Kanpur. He now gets to be responsible for nationwide crime!’
‘How many people were murdered last year?’
‘32,481.’
‘And, say, fifty years ago?’
‘9,802.’
‘How many people were kidnapped last year?’
‘23,991.’
‘And fifty years ago?’
‘5,261.’
‘How many burglaries last year?’
‘91,666.’
‘And fifty years ago?’
‘147,379.’
‘We need more murders and kidnappings!’
‘Why?’
‘Don't you see? Your burglars have graduated to bigger crimes such as murder and kidnapping. And as they've moved on, burglaries have actually dropped. Congratulations!’ said Ikram in a tone of irony to his home secretary.
‘What is the length of the border between India and Bangladesh?’
‘4,096 kilometres.’
‘India and China?’
‘3,488 kilometres.’
‘India and Pakistan?’
‘3,323 kilometres.’
‘India and Nepal?’
‘1,751 kilometres.’
‘India and Myanmar?’
‘1,643 kilometres.’
‘Including Bhutan and Afghanistan, a total of over fifteen thousand kilometres, right?’
‘That's right.’
‘And how do you prevent infiltration of terrorists through these borders?’
‘Barbed wire fences and patrolling wherever possible.’
‘Bollocks! There's no way you can police fifteen thousand kilometres of border areas. Do you know who knows these borders better than your police?’
‘Who?’
‘The smugglers. Help them smuggle their stuff. They'll help you catch the terrorists.’
Ikram was visiting the National Crime Records Bureau— the NCRB. He noticed tens of high-speed printers spewing out reams of paper. ‘What's that?’ he asked.
‘Daily reports, crime statistics, national briefings— they are required at various levels of the home ministry. The data is processed here and passed on to hundreds of functionaries within the departments,’ replied the home secretary.
‘Shut down the reports for a week,’ said Ikram.
‘What?’ asked the worried home secretary. ‘It will result in paralysis. How will senior officers manage without the information?’
‘Tell the NCRB to make a note of whoever calls up demanding it. The ones who call are the only ones who actually need it. The others merely receive it and file it away. Save time and expense by sending reports to only those who need them!’ instructed Ikram.
They were at the offices of the Intelligence Bureau. The director was taking the home minister on a guided tour of the workings of the world's oldest intelligence agency. They had been old friends in their previous avatars as mayor and police commissioner of Kanpur but the new hierarchy made the conversation between the two men a little uncomfortable.
‘When was the agency established?’ asked Ikram.
‘In 1885,’ came the reply. ‘The Intelligence Department for the British Army was established in Simla to monitor troop movements in Afghanistan.’
‘And then?’ asked Ikram.
‘In 1909, we became the Indian Political Intelligence Office to monitor Indian anarchist activities. The men were trained by Scotland Yard and MI5.’
‘And then?’
‘With Indian Independence in 1947 we acquired our present form.’
‘As a man ages he begins to lose his intelligence. You've become too old,’ joked Ikram, as he outlined his plan to overhaul the establishment. ‘How do you monitor your success?’ he asked.
‘Most of our cases are classified, thus we're never able to discuss our successes,’ complained the director.
‘Neither are you compelled to discuss your failures,’ retorted Ikram. ‘When citizens are not aware of what you're doing, they can't tell what you're doing wrong! When was the last time you were able to accurately predict a terrorist act or an invasion?’
‘There are practical limitations to what we can do,’ protested the director.
‘With twenty-five thousand employees and agents?’ wondered Ikram. He paused for a moment and then looked the director in his face. ‘Tell you what, you're familiar with K
anpur, right? Why don't you have a meeting with Ranbir Gill?’
‘Who's he?’ asked the director.
‘He's the president of the Bar Owners’ Association of India and the proprietor of a seedy joint in Kanpur that you might remember from your youthful days—it's called the Durbar Club.’
‘Why should I meet him?’
‘There's nothing that doesn't get discussed when people are drunk. Want to revamp your intelligencegathering? Speak to sober people who spend their time with others who are pissed!’
‘He's pissed off,’ said the director of the Intelligence Bureau.
‘Then cool him off,’ said Gangasagar.
‘If he starts getting into too many details, we'll have a problem on our hands,’ said the director.
‘Then maybe you need another solution,’ replied Gangasagar.
Ikram and the director of the Intelligence Bureau were walking down the narrow lane of Chandini Chowk— the old city of Delhi. The director had requested the home minister not to come—the area was troubled and he could not guarantee Ikram's safety. The minister, however, had insisted. Hindu-Muslim riots had broken out in the Old City. The lanes of Chandini Chowk were too narrow for the police jeep to pass through and so the men got out of their vehicle and walked. Dirty, congested, and difficult to access, the narrow lane seemed to be filled with dark and dingy corners that were eerily quiet. Chandini Chowk was like the aftermath of a battle zone. Rocks and broken bottles lay strewn all over the street. All the shops were shuttered and there wasn't a soul in sight except for a few stray dogs.
Ikram surveyed the scene and winced. Why was India so easily excited by religion? Indians could tolerate poor sanitation, pathetic hospitals, lack of schools, potholed roads, erratic power, unhygienic water and subsistence living, but say something to offend a man's religion and you had an instant explosion. ‘This is the last Hindu-Muslim riot that shall ever happen on my watch as home minister, is that clear?’ he told the director as he walked with him through the street. ‘There shall be no compromises. Offenders shall see that it isn't a good idea to fuck around with us!’
They had walked a few steps further when there was a crash behind them. They spun around and saw broken glass lying in a puddle of acid. Someone from one of the upper floors of an overlooking building had thrown an acid bomb at the home minister. ‘Send your men to search that building. I want all the men, women and children lined up here immediately!’ barked Ikram, and his instructions were relayed almost in parallel to the policemen. Within ten minutes around fifty people had been rounded up. ‘Anyone else inside the building?’ asked Ikram. ‘No sir, everyone's here,’ came the reply.
‘Tell the women and children to return inside,’ commanded Ikram. There was a shuffling of feet as the nervous women gathered their children and hurried indoors. Around fifteen men were left standing in a line. ‘Stretch out your hands, palms facing upwards,’ shouted Ikram and waited for a minute as everyone did what they were asked to. Ikram walked along the length of the human chain observing the palms and occasionally bending down and sniffing their hands. He walked to the end of the line and walked back, repeating the process. He stopped at the seventh man and sniffed again. ‘Step forward,’ he said softly. The worried man stepped forward, his eyes darting about shiftily.
‘Come here, son,’ said Ikram to one of the constables, ‘lend me your sidearm.’ The man who had been asked to step forward went into a panic. ‘No wait, you can't do that. Nothing has been proven—’
The shot fired from the gun in Ikram's hand was directly aimed at the culprit's head. He fell to the ground, his brain splattered in a gooey mess. There was pin-drop silence in the street. ‘This is a word of advice from your new home minister. Never, ever, fuck with me! Get it? I'll always—always—shoot first and ask questions later. Unless you want to get shot, don't you dare mess with me!’ He wiped his prints off the revolver with a handkerchief, returned it to the constable and said to the director, ‘Write it up as an encounter. He was hit in crossfire.’
He turned around and spoke to the fourteen remaining men. ‘Anyone else in the mood for getting a quick cure for a headache?’ Chandini Chowk was back to normal by five pm that evening. Gangasagar had chosen the right home minister.
‘He bumped off a civilian without blinking an eyelid,’ said the director of the Intelligence Bureau.
‘Typically Ikram,’ said Gangasagar coolly.
‘If he makes this a habit, we'll have a problem,’ said the director.
‘I made Ikram home minister knowing that you would be around to keep him in check. Do your job,’ replied Gangasagar.
The Indian Airlines flight took off from Mumbai en route to Nagpur at three pm in the afternoon with a hundred and seventy-seven passengers and twelve crew on board. Thirty minutes later, as the aircraft passed over the city of Nashik, a ferocious-looking man holding a semiautomatic kicked open the door of the cockpit and ordered the pilot to get up and join the rest of the passengers in the back of the aircraft. He commanded the petrified co-pilot to take control of the aeroplane. Three accomplices—all armed with handguns—brought the passengers and crew under their absolute control. Their leader—a thirty-four-year-old Pakistani—ordered the co-pilot to head towards Muzaffarabad, in PakistanOccupied Kashmir. The nervous co-pilot told him that they had just enough fuel to reach the city of Bhopal where they would necessarily need to refuel.
As the information of the hijack was conveyed from the aircraft to the control tower and on to the home ministry, Ikram rushed to the New Delhi control room of the Crisis Management Group—the high-powered officers entrusted with the unenviable task of dealing with such unfortunate situations. ‘Shoot at the fucking tyres,’ he ordered the commander of the National Security Guards—the NSG—which had already reached Bhopal. The aircraft was standing in the middle of the Bhopal airfield and the tyres were in plain sight of the sharpshooters. It had been awaiting fuel for the past thirty minutes and not a single tanker had approached the aircraft.
The hijacker's animal instincts told him that something was afoot. ‘Take off!’ he instructed the co-pilot. ‘We need permission from Air Traffic Control,’ protested the nervous co-pilot but the gun to his head was all the permission he needed. ‘Take off now! No fucking permission is needed!’ the hijacker growled.
‘Why the delay in shooting the tyres? Send in the fuel tanker. It will buy us some time!’ said Ikram on the phone from New Delhi to the NSG. ‘Sir, if we place the fuel tank in the vicinity of the aircraft, we'll not be in a position to take out the tyres. The slightest spark could ignite the aircraft and the fuel tank into one giant fireball,’ argued the NSG commander. ‘Then find out how much fuel the damn aeroplane actually has,’ barked Ikram. ‘Enough to get him to Muzaffarabad,’ came the reply. The NSG had tallied the fuel log filed in Mumbai with the theoretical consumption from Mumbai to Bhopal.
‘Tell the pilot to take off and jettison fuel midair discreetly—convey it in your pilot gobbledegook!’ said Ikram. ‘Give him clearance to fly to New Delhi. We'll be lucky if he lands here—we're in a better position to handle things in the Capital,’ said Ikram.
‘Bhopal ground, IC-617, request radio check,’ squawked the co-pilot.
‘IC-617, read you five by five,’ replied ground control.
‘IC-617, gate six, request IFR clearance to Muzaffarabad as filed.’
‘IC-617, cleared IFR Delhi not Muzaffarabad as filed, Lambourne four Mike departure runway twenty-six left, initial five thousand feet, squawk four-four-five-five.’
‘IC-617, request push and start.’
‘IC-617 push and start approved, call for taxi.’
The aircraft taxied and prepared for take-off. The copilot was aware that his life depended on the hijacker's finger on the trigger. ‘Why did you file a flight plan for New Delhi?’ screamed the hijacker to the co-pilot. ‘I asked for Muzaffarabad, but they approved New Delhi instead. They know that there isn't enough fuel to reach Muzaffarabad,’ replie
d the co-pilot, sweating profusely. ‘I don't care. We're going to Muzaffarabad,’ shouted the hijacker.
‘Muzzaffarabad airport is a disused facility—it's unlikely to have any night landing,’ explained the copilot as he manoeuvred the aircraft into takeoff and discreetly jettisoned a thousand gallons of jet fuel as soon as he crossed an altitude of five thousand feet. The special valves, located on the airplane's wings, released fuel into the air, which evaporated into the providentially hot and dry Bhopal atmosphere.
‘We're not going to land in New Delhi,’ growled the hijacker as he pressed the butt of his pistol into the copilot's neck. ‘If you have enough fuel for Delhi, you also have enough fuel for Karachi—that's closer than Delhi!’
‘Tell Pakistan to deny the landing request!’ said Ikram to Chandini. Both were inside the control room along with the home secretary. Chandini nodded and picked up the hotline to her counterpart in Islamabad.
‘Mr Foreign Minister, if you allow IC-617 to land in Karachi we shall use it as an opportunity to tell the world that the Pakistan government actively planned, financed and encouraged this act of terrorism. Thousands of television stations around the world will beam images of the aircraft standing at Karachi airport,’ said Chandini over the phone. ‘You decide whether Pakistan needs that sort of publicity!’
‘Even if we deny permission, it's possible that they may still land,’ pleaded the Pakistani minister.
‘But you can shut down your Air Traffic Control and landing lights! If you black out communication and navigation, IC-617 will necessarily divert from Karachi,’ Chandini said, and slammed down the phone.
‘They've shut down all communication,’ said the co-pilot to the hijacker. ‘I can just about make it into New Delhi from Karachi with the fuel that we now have. What do you want me to do?’
‘I can see a fucking stretch of runway down below— land!’ screamed the hijacker. The dazed co-pilot, now entirely dependent on his own naked vision, began the descent towards what seemed like a runway. As the plane descended, he realised that what had looked like a runway was just a well-illuminated stretch of road. He was able to climb just in time to avoid what would have otherwise been a massive accident. ‘Fine, let's go to fucking New Delhi!’ grumbled the assailant, realising the hopelessness of the situation.