Sacred Games (124 page)

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.'

‘And they will believe you, Ganesh? A gangster who has told a hundred lies to them, killed a thousand men?'

‘I'll kill more of your sadhus.'

‘They all must die some day. What difference is a few days?'

I had nothing more to threaten him with.

‘What difference is a few days for any of this, Ganesh?' he said. ‘The sooner the end comes for this filth we live in, the better. Think of the future, Ganesh. The future. What comes afterwards.'

And then there was a click, and he was gone.

The cars sped by me, bleeding their trails of light in the dusk. I felt as if I was falling. Then, in that moment, I didn't think of my boys or millions of people or the country or the world. I thought only of me. That faint metallic snap in my ear sliced through my neck and into my stomach, and left me alone. I knew he wouldn't come back. I wouldn't find him, and he would not call me again. I was alone. Once again, I was Ganesh Gaitonde setting out into an unknown world, a knife hidden under my shirt. There was bile rising into my mouth. I turned my head and spat, and brownish liquid trickled down the low white wall that ran along a pavement. I watched it flow, and again there was a rupture inside me, an endless, raw-edged chasm, and I was falling into it. I was alone. Across the road, smoke drifted up from a pile of rubbish. I was seized by a violent shaking, a trembling in my legs and arms and shoulders. I stumbled to the car, and got in. The driver carefully avoided looking at me, and we went on. I lay in the rear seat, holding myself.

The new safe house in Juhu was an apartment on the top floor of a two-storey bungalow overlooking the beach. Bunty had put a team on guard, and the place had been swept and secured. The boys took me on a tour of the place and showed me the two rear exits, down separate stair
cases, which were also watched over. I went up to the top floor, and I shut two doors and let myself collapse on to the bed. You're exhausted, I told myself. All that travelling for weeks and weeks, the anxiety of the hunt, the changes in water and food. You need to rest. But I was still shaking, I was full of a wild energy that raced under my skin and made it itch and twitch. And there was that smell. Not just mogra this time, but something smouldering underneath, the heavy bulk of burning flesh. Some bastard must have tossed a dead rat or something into a bonfire on the beach. I'd send the boys out and get the maderchod fixed. I staggered over to the window. No, there was no fire, nothing but the waves drumming evenly on the sand. But these windows. There were windows along the entire sea-facing wall, from floor to ceiling. And more windows along the other wall, facing another building across the road. What sort of safe house was this? Suleiman Isa and his entire organization could watch me from that other roof. The police could station a battalion of snipers on the beach, to take off my head. I called down to the boys. Bastards, come close these windows.

I had them close and bolt the windows, and draw the curtains. Still there was that funereal stench of flowers and flaming meat. I shouted for the boys again. I had them bring up electrician's tape and seal all the edges of the windows. They were baffled, and despite their fear of me, and the years of respect, there were some who couldn't hide their scepticism, and their amusement. I didn't care. I told them to go out on the beach and look for a bonfire, and to look in the compounds of all the buildings around us. Extinguish any fire you find, I told them, stamp it out. They nodded, yes, bhai, yes, bhai, and they shuffled out. I shut the door and put wide black swathes of tape over all the chinks and gaps and the keyhole. Then I dragged an armchair over to the exact centre of the room and sat, holding my ankles. No question about it, the smell was still in the room. Give it some time, I thought, let the contamination in the room die out, and you will be delivered from it. So I let the minutes sag by, and took in slow breaths. I shut my eyes and practised my pranayama. I wanted calm, all I wanted was a small portion of peace. But there was light pressing up against my eyes, flares of carroty orange against a lighter background of saffron. It was dark in the room, the curtains were golden and thick, some kind of brocade. Where did this light come from? And then I thought of how fragile this building was, how brittle was the glass in the windows. I may as well be sitting cross-legged on top of my funeral pyre, waiting to be blown back into death by my enemies, by whatever
disaster was just now heaving itself over the horizon. I had to protect myself.

Bunty had his handy switched off. I must have called him thirty times over the next two hours, only to get the same bhenchod voice with its purring foreign accents. He finally called back, in a panic. ‘Sorry, bhai, sorry. I just had it on vibrate, and it was under a shirt and things. Sorry. Really sorry.'

The bastard's legs didn't work, but another piece of him was still half-functional. It turned out that he had been with a sixteen-year-old girl, and needed to concentrate so much that he forgot his job and his obligations. I educated him again in the requirements of his position, gave him a rundown on the sort of careless chutiya he had become, and told him what I wanted. And then he became even more of a cringing dog. He confessed that he didn't have the keys for my underground shelter, for the safe house I had built for Jojo in Kailashpada. He had some long story about how the builders had needed the keys because they had to finish the electrical connections, and they had given it to so-and-so, and this and that. I cut him off, and told him that I wanted to be in my shelter by nine in the morning, and if I wasn't he would lose something else besides his legs.

‘But, bhai,' he said, ‘don't you want to go home?'

‘Home? What home?'

‘Thailand, bhai. The yacht. Now that the mission is over.'

I told him to mind his own business, and slammed down the phone. Should I go across the waters again? Far away, to safety. But where was safety? I could go to New Zealand, or to some rocky island beyond, yes, sure. But when the burning came, when Guru-ji's great destruction swept along the seas, what would be left?

I walked the perimeter of my room, clenching and unclenching my hands, trying to take the cramps out of my shoulders. Where would home be when home was gone? Could you have a home away from home when there was no home? What would you long for, what would you dream of when you settled into sleep? When somebody asked, where do you come from, what would you say? No, I couldn't go anywhere, I couldn't leave. I would stay right here, close to the field of battle, in it, and I would stop Guru-ji. He was confident that I couldn't stop him – ‘You can't stop it'
–
but I was Ganesh Gaitonde. He could see forwards and backwards in time, but I had escaped fate many times. I had beaten what was written, I had changed it. I had survived. Now I would survive again. I would save my home. And to do that I needed to be completely safe.

Bunty beat his deadline by three hours. He called at six, and had me picked up at six-thirty. I hadn't slept at all, but I felt strong and alert as we drove through the stirring, stretching city. I watched as an auto driver uncurled himself out of the back seat of his rickshaw, as a mother hurried her stumbling son towards a public toilet. Elderly people walked in a garden, swinging their arms briskly. There was sun on the very tops of the trees. A bhajan was playing on some radio channel, and we heard scattered snatches of it from a long row of kholis as we passed.

Then we took a left turn and drove up to a market square. The shops were still mostly shut. One yawning seth and his boy assistant struggled with a shutter, and they paid us no attention as we parked next to the white cube in the middle of an empty plot. I ran a hand over a faultless white wall as we went up to the door, and felt better already. I remembered the specifications, the exact hardened thickness of its walls, and the cost of the cement we had used. One of Bunty's boys rattled the key in the door, until I grew irritated and took it from him. It was a computer-cut key, with little dimples on both sides, and once you slid it in half-way you had to give it half a turn to the left. Then with a little push inwards, it turned like silk. ‘Right,' I said. ‘Tell Bunty I'll call him.'

‘Bhai, if you need anything else…'

I shut the door – I had to lean into the weight of it with my shoulder – and stood in complete, welcome darkness. There was a low hum of well-tuned machinery in my feet, but the squawking of crows outside was gone, cut short. From the blueprints, I knew exactly where the light-switch was, to my right on the wall, but I didn't want to reach over. For the moment, I was content to swim in this safety, to know that nothing could reach me here. My mind stilled, and I stood.