KALYUG (9 page)

5

26th March, 2012. New Delhi.

‘Thank you for agreeing to see me, Major-General,’ Richa said as she took the chair opposite him.

Major-General Iqbal Qureshi responded with a shrug, setting his cup back on the small table in front of him. Without asking, he poured her a cup of tea as well. They were alone on the lawn of his ancestral home in Nilotpalganj, an hour’s drive away from his official residence. A meeting decided on after a lot of thought, a venue after much more.

Throughout the morning, the closer she got to her appointment, Richa had been finding it increasingly difficult to justify her doubts. What had seemed like a brilliant breakthrough the day after the attack had started to break down under the questions from everyone she had pitched it to – she knew that the more seasoned journalists in the office had already heard about the dressing down she had gotten from her producer for her theory and were openly pleased about it. The hundred times she had practised her pitch suddenly seemed insufficient; faced with the prospect of questioning a grieving national hero, she found that her words had already deserted her.

The way he seemed to be studying her did not help her retain her composure. She felt like an interloper on his grief, a joke that he was going to dismiss with contempt and disdain. Yet, there was still one final vestige of self-respect that prevented her from excusing herself and making a quick exit. She had called in all the favours she was owed in an effort to get these few minutes with the General – and if it was all to be for nothing, so be it. At least, she would have tried.

On his part, Major-General Qureshi was wondering if the young woman in front of him belonged to the same despicable organization as Raghav Menon. She was clearly nervous, but he had already been taken in by a similar performance earlier – and he had no intention of being made a fool once again. He had not heard from Menon or anybody else since the attack and was expecting a fresh contact soon. When he had heard from a close friend that there was a reporter who wished to talk to him about his wife, he had put off giving his approval by twenty-four hours, a period he had used to investigate her identity.

A Pune girl. Father retired from government service the previous year, mother still teaching at the same high school that she had joined two decades ago. A younger brother who had just joined one of the numerous engineering colleges that dotted the geography around the city. The typical Indian middle-class family of the Nineties, safe, secure, uncontroversial. Richa’s three years at NDNN had been characterized by mediocrity, spectacular in how uneventful it had been so far, given the sensational nature of the channel – yet, his contacts had also spoken highly of her unwillingness to jump into a story without verifying facts. In this day and age of news tickers and TRPs, that sense of discretion probably explained why no one treated her seriously.

She seemed to be genuine. Then again, she could be a ‘sleeper’ who worked for the criminals, killing the stories by cutting off the feed from the sources on the street.

He glanced back once towards the empty house, finding himself missing his wife’s intuition when it came to people. She had had an uncanny knack for judging people accurately, a skill that he had – knowingly, for it irritated her and amused him – dismissed more than once, claiming that his environment had no place for human emotions and understanding.

‘Thank you for agreeing to see me, Major-General Qureshi,’ she repeated a little more loudly. She bit her tongue as soon as she spoke, scolding herself for sounding like a broken record.

‘You said you were doing a feature on my wife’s life?’ he said, his question devoid of any emotion. Yet, seeing the intelligence in his eyes, she knew right then that he did not believe her story. Instantly, she decided that it was better to be up front with him rather than try and trick him into any startling revelation.

‘It is about your wife,’ she said, taking her mobile out of her bag and passing it to him after pressing a button. As the video started playing, she added, ‘But not for an obit. I have reason to believe that your wife was not just an unintended victim of the attack – I think she was
the
reason for the attack.’ She held her breath, waiting for his reaction.

Major-General Qureshi watched the video without comment. The angle indicated that it was a CCTV grab, probably cropped to show only the relevant parts of the video. He saw his wife, recognized her instantly; he saw one of the gunmen walk up to her and open fire with just a moment’s hesitation. It confirmed for him what he had known the moment her final call had been cut short.

16th September, 2012. Mumbai.

Excesses.

Gyandeep Sharma stared morosely out of his window.
Excesses
, he thought bitterly,
were the privilege of the strong.
The right to act as you pleased was a powerful drug. Unquestioned, unquestionable. When you were on the right side of excesses, as he had been until now, you started to forget how the victims on the other side felt.

Now he remembered. He had been reminded. In a way that he would never again forget, he had been given a powerful message by INSAF.

From his office high above the streets, the vehicles were little more than specks of colour against a splash of gray, brown and black. One of those vehicles, he supposed – he hoped – was carrying his niece and some of his trusted majors under armed guard. To where, he did not know; he only knew there was no point in trying to guess. Mumbai was a rabbit warren of safe-houses for those who wanted to hide or be hidden.

His own fate was a more pressing concern, particularly because he hoped he could control it himself – to some extent, anyway. When the commandos had burst into his office, a sea of overpowering khaki and fatigues, they had all – with the exception of his niece, who had tried to fight and had been restrained rather roughly – surrendered without protest, knowing that it would have been suicide to argue or fight. Every corner of the office had been raided and ruined beyond repair. At the time, Gyandeep had wondered why the destruction had been so senseless and wanton.

Left to his thoughts, alone in the room but for the two commandos posted beside the exits, he realized it had not been as aimless as he had imagined. Every laptop in the premises had been smashed, but the desktops had been spared. The plate-glass windows had not been smashed – they had been expertly cut, exposing parts of the office to the elements, ensuring that shards did not fall on the streets below. The server room had been decimated completely, its innards of steel, silicon, copper and insulation incinerated in minutes with blowtorches. A few feet away, separated only by a thin wall, the visitors’ area still retained its air of pristine opulence.

The excesses were not uncontrolled, he realized with a wan smile. They had been orchestrated to disorganize and disorient the opposition, to ensure that Powerhouse responded in a weaker – and perhaps an anticipated – manner. He reflected matter-of-factly that though Powerhouse was still functional, still capable of rallying its forces to provide a fitting reply to INSAF when the time came, the attacks on the Infinity offices would undoubtedly slow down its reflexes.

His thoughts returned, for the briefest of moments, to his niece. She was his heir, the successor who would inherit the rights and duties that Powerhouse offered and demanded, and he had been looking forward to a day when he could trust her to run the daily operations herself. Her role in scuttling Operation Kalyug had been the final test. Until a few hours ago, he had been so sure that Kalyug would be the start that she needed to prove herself to him, and to the others who commanded Powerhouse.

Everyone must be aware that Infinity has been taken off the grid,
he thought. Even as INSAF kept him incommunicado, probably believing that Powerhouse had been rendered leaderless, he was sure that the others within the cartel were already scrambling all their resources to find out what had happened to Infinity. After all, his was just
one
of the arms of Powerhouse.

16th September, 2012. Ghaziabad.

Jack peeled himself away from the windows long enough to open the door. An elegantly dressed steward, dressed in unbelievably starched whites, stepped in, pulling a cart filled with trays of plastic-sheet-covered food, smiling brightly.

‘Good afternoon, sirs!’ he chirped as he moved towards a corner and started to unload some of the trays. ‘We are having a small trouble in our restaurant, so we are feeding the guests in the rooms. Compliments of the hotel! You are American, yes? We have Corn Manchurian and Bread Pakodas, but if you want more spicy food –’

‘But we haven’t ordered anything from room service,’ protested John, shooting a warning glance at his compatriot.

‘Yes, sir, yes, sir, I know, sir. Like I said, trouble in restaurant. Somebody saw a cockroach, sir. I don’t believe it, but management says we have to close until some terminators arrive.’ The steward moved towards the door. ‘If you need anything else . . .’ He paused, looking expectantly at the two Americans. John waved a hand busily, turning back to the window, still trying to understand what was happening inside the convention hall. Jack pulled out a ten-dollar note from his wallet and thrust it into the hands of the grateful attendant. The man was still bent obsequiously as he closed the door behind him.

A few seconds later, he was startled when the American guest flung the door open and joined him in the corridor. Gesturing furtively that he wanted silence, the American made his way towards him and grabbed him by the elbow, quietly but surely ushering him down the hallway.

‘Sir . . . ?’ whispered the steward hesitatingly. A foreign madam seeking an assignation would have been encouraged enthusiastically, but a foreign man – irrespective of the fact that he had just tipped him six hundred rupees – showing such an interest in him was just the kind of thing his friends had warned him about.

‘Shhh!’ said Jack. Once he was sure he was a safe distance away from the rooms, he stopped and placed his arm around the steward’s shoulders, unaware of how uncomfortable the latter was feeling. ‘Now, then, buddy,’ he said, pulling a crisp tenner from his pocket and stuffing it into the other’s. ‘You gotta do me a favour. Can you find out what’s happening at the convention centre?’

‘Oh, that?’ said the relieved steward. ‘That’s easy. Meeting. Lots of politicians.’
Too many of them anyway,
his tone implied.

‘I know that,’ hissed the American spy. ‘What I want to know is, what are the cops doing there?’

‘Cops? Oh, you mean police . . . No, sir. That is not police. That is Army. Commando, you know, Black Cats.’

‘Black cats? Oh, you mean special forces?’

The steward paused before nodding vigorously. ‘Yes, special forces. Like
Expendables
, you know. Or Steven Seagull.’

‘So what are they doing here?’ Jack asked impatiently. He was already writing off the twenty dollars.

The steward leaned forward conspiratorially. Jack absently did the same. ‘I don’t know sir, but there is something my friend in the kitchen told me. You know the man from the Army who was murdered last night? Major-General Qureshi? Well, my friend heard that the Army guys are mad about that.’

He nodded in the direction of the convention hall, hidden from their sight by opaque glass walls. ‘My guess is, they’ve finally decided to do something about it.’

16th September, 2012. Siliguri.

Kuldip Razdan left the comfort of a large, air-conditioned jet for the comfort of a small, air-conditioned officer’s bunker within the Eastern Air Command camp in Siliguri. It was, the officer who had escorted him from the flight kept reminding him, his own quarters, and he hoped that the prime minister would find it acceptable for the short duration that he was expected to be detained.

Detained.
As he rolled the words off his tongue again and again, Kuldip Razdan no longer doubted that he was in the midst of a very powerful conspiracy. He knew he was now in Siliguri – having seen the name emblazoned across the terminal as he was being driven over – a small town on the eastern side of West Bengal, closer to where he had come from than where he wanted to be.

He looked around the quarters, trying not to be snoopy, yet disappointed at not finding even a diary or an Officer’s Log. There were few personal items, certainly nothing that spoke of persons or personality. Despite the Air Force officer’s emphatic claims to ownership, Kuldip Razdan was inclined to believe that his temporary home had been readied for his arrival quite a few days in advance.

The furnishing itself was sparse, a long way away from the comfortable opulence of his own residence at 7, Race Course Road, with a single cot and mattress, covers folded with military precision, towels laid out, a kettle with hot water . . . and a dead phone. It was the first thing he had tested as soon as he walked in, and he had not been too surprised to hear only silence through the earpiece.

Within a few minutes of his arrival, the same officer had returned, enquiring as to his needs. ‘My needs are few,’ said Kuldip, ‘but my wants are many. Freedom, glorious freedom, can you grant me any?’

The officer declined politely and walked away, muttering something that sounded to Kuldip like, ‘Poetry . . . always, damn poetry! No wonder . . .’

Sighing, knowing that there was really no point in a seventy-year-old man trying to escape from an armed camp, Razdan resigned himself to waiting it out.

16th September, 2012. New Delhi.

‘Time is running out, GK,’ said Nelson Katara. Gone was the ‘Your Excellency’ – it had been missing in action for the last five minutes, ever since Katara had dropped the bombshell about the president himself heading the new government. Understandably enough, the man in question – Gopi Kishan Yadav – was having a tough time getting his head around the idea.

‘You’re crazy if you think this will work,’ he said, not for the first time.

‘Look,’ said the younger man – Jagannath Mitra – breaking his silence for the first time since my arrival. ‘You know you want to do it, if only to prove that all the years you wanted the job, you weren’t kidding. You’ve run the government as much as Razdan over the last few years, and you’ve put out more fires than if you had been the prime minister yourself.’