Shantaram (120 page)

"What the fuck were you doing in that show?" Sanjay asked me when the greetings were made and received.

"It's a long story," I grinned.

"That's a damn scary Ganpatti you got there," he said. "I never saw anything like it. It looked so real. It was like it was moving. I got quite a religious feeling. I tell you, man, I'm going to pay a bahinchudh to light some incense when I get home."

"Come on, Lin," Salman prodded. "What's it all about, yaar?"

"Well," I groaned, knowing that no explanation would seem sensible. "We had to smuggle a bear out of the slum, and get him up to this spot, right here, because the cops had a warrant out on him and wanted to arrest him."

"Smuggle a what?" Farid asked politely.

"A bear."

"What... kind of a bear?"

"A dancing bear, of course," I said stiffly.

"You know, Lin," Sanjay pronounced, grimacing happily as he picked his teeth clean with a match, "you do some very weird shit."

"Are you talking about my bear?" Abdullah asked, suddenly interested.

"Yes, fuck you. It's really all your fault, if you want to go back far enough."

"Why do you say it was your bear?" Salman wanted to know.

"Because I arranged that bear," Abdullah replied. "I sent him to Lin brother, a long time ago."

"Why?"

"Well, it was all about the hugging," Abdullah began, laughing.

"Don't start," I said through pressed lips, warning him off the subject with my eyes.

"What _is all this with fuckin' bears?" Sanjay asked. "Are we still talking about bears?"

"Oh, shit!" Salman cut in, looking over Sanjay's shoulder.

"Faisal is in a big hurry. And he's got Nazeer with him. This looks like trouble." Another Ambassador gravelled to a stop near us. A second car followed, only two seconds behind it. Faisal and Amir leapt from the first car. Nazeer and Andrew rushed forward from the second.

I saw that another man got out of Faisal's car and waited there, watching the approach road. I recognised the fine features of my friend Mahmoud Melbaaf. One more man, a heavy-set gangster named Raj, waited with the boy Tariq in the second car.

"They're here!" Faisal announced breathlessly when he joined us.

"They're supposed to come tomorrow, I know, but they're already here. They just joined up with Chuha and his guys."

"Already? How many?" Salman asked.

"Just them," Faisal replied. "If we move now, we get all of them.

The rest of the gang is at a wedding in Thana. It's like a sign from heaven or something. It's the best chance we'll ever have.

But we've got to be damn quick!"

"I can't believe it," Salman muttered, as if to himself.

My stomach dropped and then set hard. I knew exactly what they were talking about, and what it meant for us. There'd been reports and rumours for days that Chuha and his gang within the Walidlalla council had made contact with the Sapna survivor and two of his family members, a brother and a brother-in-law. They were planning a strike against our group. The border war for new gang territory had flared, pitting Chuha's mafia council against ours, and Chuha was hungry.

The Sapna-Iran connection, all survivors from Abdul Ghani's treacherous attempted coup, had learned of the hostility between the councils, and had appeared at just the right moment to capitalise on Chuha's greed and ambition. They'd promised to bring weapons-new guns-and lucrative contacts in the Pakistani heroin trade. They were renegades: the Sapna killers were working without Abdul Ghani, and the Iranians had no official support from the Savak. It was hatred that had brought them together.

They wanted revenge for the deaths of their friends, and their hate had combined with Chuha's to put murder in their minds.

The situation had been so tense, for so long, that Salman had infiltrated the Chuha gang with his own man, Little Tony, a gangster from Goa who was unknown in Bombay. He'd provided information from the inside. They were his reports that had alerted Salman to the Sapna-Iran connection and the imminent attack. With Faisal's confirmation of their arrival at Chuha's house, we all knew there was only one option Salman would consider. Fight. Make war. Put an end to the Sapna killers and the Iranian spies, once and for all. Finish Chuha.

Absorb his territory. Seize his operations.

"Fuck, man! How lucky can we get?" Sanjay whooped, his eyes glittering in the grey-white streetlight.

"Are you sure?" Salman asked, fixing his friend Amir, an older man, with his sternest frown.

"I'm sure, Salman," Amir drawled, running his hand over the short, grey hair on his blunt head. He twirled the ends of his thick moustache with the same hand as he spoke. "I saw them myself. Abdullah's guys, from Iran, they came half an hour ago.

The Sapna fucks, you know, they've been there all day. They came in the morning. Little Tony, he told us as soon as he could.

We've been watching them for two hours at Chuha's place. The last time he talked to me, Little Tony said they were all getting together-Chuha and his closest guys, the Sapnas, and the guys from Iran. They were waiting for the Iran guys to get here and then they want to hit us. Soon. Maybe tomorrow night. The day after tomorrow, at the latest. Chuha sent word for a lot more guys. They're coming from Delhi and Calcutta. They're working out some kind of a plan where they hit us at about ten places at once, like, to stop us from coming back at them. I told Tony to go back and to let us know when the Iran guys got there. We were watching the place, like usual. Then we saw them walk in, a day early like, but we were pretty sure. Not long after, Little Tony came out and lit a cigarette. That was the signal. They're the ones-the ones who are after Abdullah. Now they're all in there together, and we're only two minutes away. I know it's early, but we have to go. We have to do it now, Salman, in the next five minutes."

"How many, all together?" Salman demanded.

"Chuha and his buddies," Amir answered in his lazy drawl. I think the slow, softly slurring style of the man gave everyone there new heart: he wasn't, or didn't seem to be, anywhere near as nervous as the rest of us. "That makes six. One of them, Manu, is a good man. You know him. He put the Harshan brothers down, all three of them, on his own. His cousin Bichchu is also a good fighter-they don't call him the Scorpion for nothing. The rest of them, including Chuha, that madachudh, are not much. Then there's the Sapnas. That makes three more. And from Iran, two more. That's eleven. Maybe one or two more, at the most. Hussein is watching the place. He'll tell us if any more arrived."

"Eleven," Salman murmured, avoiding the eyes of the men while he considered the situation. "And we are... eleven-twelve, counting Little Tony. But we have to lose two, on the street outside Chuha's house-one on each side, to slow up the cops if they come screaming on us while we're inside. I'll make a call before we go in, to keep the cops away, but we need to be sure.

Chuha might have more guys coming, as well, so we need at least two on the outside. I don't mind fighting my way in there, but I don't want to fight my way out again if I don't have to. Hussein is already there. Faisal, you're the number two on the street outside, okay? Nobody goes in, or out, but us."

"No problem," the young fighter agreed.

"Check the guns, now, with Raj. Get them ready."

"I'm on it," he said, collecting guns from a few of the men and then jogging over to the cars, where Raj and Mahmoud waited.

"And two will have to go back to Khader's house with Tariq,"

Salman continued.

"It was Nazeer's idea to bring him with us," Andrew put in. "He didn't want to leave him behind there when Faisal and Amir came to give us the news. I told him not to bring the kid, but you know how Nazeer is when he gets an idea in his head."

"Nazeer can take the boy to Sobhan Mahmoud's house in Versova, and watch over him," Salman declared. "And you'll go with him."

"Oh, come on, man!" Andrew complained. "Why do I have to do that?

Why do I have to miss all the action?"

"I need two men to watch over old Sobhan and the boy. Especially the boy-Nazeer was right not to leave him. Tariq is a target. As long as he's alive, the council is still Khader's council. If they kill him, Chuha will take a lot of power from it. The same goes for old Sobhan. Take the boy out of the city, and keep him and Sobhan Mahmoud safe."

"But why do I have to miss the action, man? Why does it have to be me? Send someone else, Salman. Let me go with you to Chuha's."

"Are you going to argue with me?" Salman said, his lip curling with anger.

"No, man," Andrew snarled petulantly. "I'll do it. I'll take the kid."

"That leaves eight of us," Salman concluded. "Sanjay and me, Abdullah and Amir, Raj and little Tony, Farid and Mahmoud-"

"Nine," I cut in. "There's nine of us."

"You should take off, Lin," Salman said quietly, raising his eyes to meet mine. "I was just now going to ask you to take a cab and pass the word to Rajubhai, and the boys at your passport shop."

"I'm not leaving Abdullah," I said flatly.

"Maybe you can go back with Nazeer," Amir, who was Andrew's close friend, suggested.

"I left Abdullah once," I declared. "I'm not doing it again. It's like fate or something. I've got a feeling, Salman. I've got a feeling not to leave Abdullah. I'm in it. I'm not leaving Mahmoud Melbaaf, either. I'm with them. I'm with you."

Salman held the stare, frowning pensively. It occurred to me, stupidly, that his slightly crooked face-one eye a little lower than the other, his nose bent from a bad break, his mouth scarred in the corner-found a handsome symmetry only then, when the burden of his thoughts creased his features into a determined frown.

"Okay." he agreed, at last.

"What the fuck!" Andrew exploded. "He gets to go, but I do the baby-sitting job?"

"Settle down, Andrew," Farid said soothingly.

"No, fuck him! I'm sick of this fuckin' gora, man. So Khader liked him, so he went to Afghanistan, so fuckin' what? Khader's dead, yaar. Khader's day is gone."

"Relax, man," Amir put in.

"What relax? Fuck Khader, and fuck his gora, too!"

"You should watch your mouth," I muttered through clenched teeth.

"I should?" he asked, thrusting his face forward pugnaciously.

"Well, fuck your sister! How's my mouth now? You like that?"

"I don't have a sister," I said evenly in Hindi. A few men laughed.

"Well, maybe I'll go fuck your mother," he snarled, "and make you a new sister!"

"That's good enough," I growled, shaping up to fight him. "Get 'em up! Get your fuckin' hands up! Let's go!"

It would've been messy. I wasn't a good fighter, but I knew the moves. I could hit hard. And if I got into real trouble in those years, I wasn't afraid to put the wet end of a knife into another man's body. Andrew was capa- ble. With a gun in his hand, he was deadly. As Amir moved around to support him, directly behind his right shoulder, Abdullah took up a similar position beside me. A fight would become a brawl. We all knew it. But the young Goan didn't raise his hands, and as one second became five, and ten, and fifteen, it seemed that he wasn't as willing with his fists as he was with his mouth.

Nazeer broke the stand-off. Pushing between us, he seized Andrew by the wrist and a scruff of shirtsleeve. I knew that grip well.

I knew that Andrew had to kill the burly Afghan if he wanted to break it. Nazeer paused only long enough to give me a bewilderingly cryptic look, part censure and part pride, part anger and part red-eyed affection, before he shoved the young Goan backwards through the circle of men. At the car, he pushed Andrew into the driver's seat and then climbed into the back with Tariq. Andrew started the car and sped away, spitting gravel and dust as he wheeled around and headed back toward Marine Drive. As the car swept past me I saw Tariq's face at the window. It was pale, with only the eyes, like wild paw prints in snow, betraying any hint of the mind or the mood within.

"_Mai _jata _hu," I repeated when the car had passed. I'm going.

Everyone laughed. I wasn't sure if it was at the vehemence of my tone or the blunt simplicity of the Hindi phrase.

"I think we got that, Lin," Salman said. "I think that's very clear, na? Okay, I'll put you with Abdullah, out the back.

There's a lane behind Chuha's house-Abdullah, you know it. It has two feeds from other lanes, one into the main street, and one around the corner to other houses in the block. At the back of Chuha's house there's a yard. I've seen it. There are two windows, both with heavy bars, and only one door to the house.

It's down two steps. You two hold that place. Nobody goes in when we start. If we do right, some of them will try to make a run for it out there. Don't let them get past you. Stop them right there, in the yard. The rest of us will go in through the front. What about the guns, Faisal?"

"Seven," he answered. "Two short shotgun, two automatic, three revolver."

"Give me one of the automatics," Salman ordered. "Abdullah, you take the other one. You'll have to share it, Lin. The shotguns are no good inside-it's gonna get very close in there, and we want to be real sure what we're shooting at. I want them on the street outside, for maximum coverage if we need it. Faisal, you take the shotguns, and give one to Hussein. When we're finished, we'll go out the back way, past Abdullah and Lin. We won't go out the front, so put holes in anything that tries to go in or out once we're in there. The three other guns are for Farid, Amir, and Mahmoud. Raj, you'll have to share with us. Okay?"

The men nodded, and wagged their heads in agreement.

"Listen, if we wait, we can get thirty more men and thirty guns to go in with us. You know that. But we might miss them. As it is, we've already talked for ten minutes too long. If we hit them now, quick and hard, before they know it, we can take them out, and none of them will get away. I want to finish them, and finish this business, right now, tonight. But I want to leave it up to you. I don't want to make you go in if you don't feel ready. Do you want to wait for more men, or go now?"