Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

'I can help you,' he said. 'If you help us.'

'How do I help you?'

'If you stay in India, you will keep suffering violent attacks. Besides, all these legal troubles will continue. Now there is no TADA, but for you TADA will remain alive for ever. One day you'll arrange to get out, and then go in again. Maybe they will make a new, more ferocious law, and slap that on you as well.'

'Yes. No doubt.'

'So, go abroad.'

'I have thought of that. But my base is here. I do have some connections and facilities outside, but not enough, saab. It would take a lot of money and effort and time to set up operations anywhere else.'

'That is where we can help you. We can provide information, help. Initial arrangements, of course, and logistics. Maybe money.'

The man was offering a lot. And he offered as if he had the ability to provide what he promised. But I needed to pin him down. 'And, saab, what do you want from me?'

'Your co-operation. You will give us information on anti-national activities. What they are doing, what they are planning. Sometimes we may have certain tasks that we may want you to complete. We need a partner who can do work of all types.'

Yes, work of all types. No doubt they needed someone to do the really dirty things that they could not get done legally themselves. They needed a strong arm, but one they could disown in public. It was time to let him know that he wasn't offering help to a fool. I leaned forward. 'But, Kumar Saab,' I said, 'you already have Chotta Madhav working for you.' Chotta Madhav had been one of Suleiman Isa's boys, but had split off and formed his own company after the bomb blasts. He operated now out of Indonesia, and fought against Suleiman Isa, and because he was an enemy of my enemy, we had maintained cordial relations, not hatred but not friendship either. And we knew he had some kind of relationship with the organization called RAW. This is what I wanted this Mr Kumar to know, that it didn't take very much thinking to fathom who he was.

Mr Kumar was amused. His smile was like a thin ripple that passed quickly across his skull. 'Is he working for us?'

'That he is. Just like Suleiman Isa is working for the ISI.'

'Maybe Madhav is working for us. But this is a time of extreme danger. We need more patriots.'

I nodded. 'What do you want me to do, saab?'

He told me. The rain fell outside. We made our plans. And so I became a warrior for my country and my people.

Zoya Mirza was a hard woman. She was hard to find, hard to speak to on the phone, hard to meet. Sartaj tried to explain this to Anjali Mathur, who seemed to think that a police inspector armed with the awful majesty of the law and incriminating photographs ought to be able to interrupt a film star's life of glamour and travel and subject her to an interrogation. 'Maybe I could do that,' Sartaj said, 'if any of this were official. Are we official yet?'

'No, I don't have anything I can take to my boss yet,' Anjali said. 'Just the vague possibility of a connection between a gangster and a film star. Nothing special.'

Sartaj couldn't argue with this. That filmi people were often connected to bhais was something that children in distant villages knew. This wasn't news. The information would damage Zoya Mirza's impeccable image of chaste sexiness if it got out, yes, and maybe twist her career out of its steadily rising arc, but there was no explanation yet as to why Ganesh Gaitonde had come back to Bombay. And not the faintest smoky beginnings of a story that would explain why he had built a concrete cube in Kailashpada, why he had shot Jojo and then blown his own head in half. 'You still want me to investigate quietly. So I can't ask my boss to call her to the station. You want me to go and talk to her privately, just go in and harass her. These film star types have high connections,' Sartaj said. 'If she calls some minister and gets me suspended, you won't be able to take that to your boss either.'

'She won't. You have the photographs.'

'It's a risk.'

'A small one.'

The risk is still larger than my profits from conducting this investigation, Sartaj wanted to say. He had called Anjali Mathur at the Delhi number she had left him, and she had picked up on the first ring. Her telephone manner was brisk, and she had listened to his report and quietly suggested that he talk to Zoya Mirza. Very simple, very efficient. Sartaj took in a deep breath, let it out. 'Maybe everything looks small from Delhi, Miss Anjali. But I am truly a small man. And even small risks are big for me.'

She was quiet for a moment. She was a quiet woman altogether, restrained in her person and her dress. But now Sartaj could sense her making a decision, and when she spoke there was a decided urgency in her voice. 'I understand, but there is some background you need to know.'

'I need all the background. I have been told absolutely nothing.'

'I am telling you now. Listen. That house you found Gaitonde in, that was a nuclear shelter.'

'A what?'

'A shelter to protect from a bomb. An atomic weapon. The building was constructed according to a well-known architectural model. It is in books, and you can find it on the internet.'

'Why would he need that? Here?'

'That is what I want to know.'

The handset was warm against Sartaj's ear. He was sitting at the back of a small café in the main market street in Kailashpada, and the morning traffic was passing. A school bus lurched to the right and drew close to the footpath where a line of blue-uniformed girls picked up their book-heavy bags. An auto-rickshaw squeezed past the bus. Ordinary life, on an ordinary morning. Sartaj thought about Gaitonde's cube, on that plot two streets and three turns away, and felt dread settle into his chest, like a drip of cold water. He coughed his throat clear. 'Is there a threat? Do you know?'

'There has been a generalized threat perception, that some militant group could use a portable weapon in an urban area. One of the Kashmir groups. Or from the north-east. But no, there is no specific information. No particular threat.'

There had been a film. Sartaj hadn't seen it, but he had watched the advertisements on television. A militant group planted a nuclear bomb in Delhi. The hero warded off disaster by seconds, stopped the neon-green countdown timer just as it ticked down to zero. That was a movie, but Gaitonde's cube had been real. Sartaj had rested his hand on it. He sat up, eased his shoulders. He tried to think. 'Madam,' he said. 'Madam, if Gaitonde knew something about a threat, why didn't he tell your department? Our understanding is that there was a connection.'

'There was no connection.' She was curt, and quick. Sartaj understood that he had overstepped the bounds of departmental propriety, that she couldn't and wouldn't admit to running Gaitonde, especially not on an open phone line. 'We tracked his movements,' she said. 'We found out that he was running weapons into the country. And then we lost track of him. Then he showed up in Bombay.'

'In that house?'

'Yes. Talking to you. Maybe he was trying to tell you about the threat, before you went in.'

So maybe he was responsible if there was a real bomb in his city. A real bomb in this real city. Was that what Gaitonde had been trying to tell him at the end, when Sartaj walked away to send the bulldozer in? Sartaj had cut off Gaitonde in mid-sentence, had cut off his story and then found him dead. But it had been very hot, and Gaitonde had been very arrogant, behind his steel door. 'But it's been many months,' Sartaj said. 'Nothing's happened. You said there was no particular threat.'

'Yes. But I would still like to know what he was doing there. Why he built that house.'

Sartaj was starting to feel oddly cold. 'I'll talk to Zoya Mirza,' he said. 'I'll try.'