Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

I went, of course, to Zoya's Dr Langston Lee. I gave him two months and a lot of money, and experienced more pain than ever before in my life. He gave me a long, elegant nose with a sharp bridge, new cheekbones, a narrower chin that balanced the nose, and a complete absence of jowls. He did some subtle things with my eyebrows, and put a dimple in each of my newly taut cheeks. And I was a different man. The first time I looked into a mirror, after the surgery was complete, after the bandages had come off, I wanted to hug Dr Langston Lee, the little Chinese bastard. Even past the remaining swelling and the stitches I could see that he had understood what I wanted to become. His talent was not only in his fingertips, it was in his eyes and in his imagination. He could share your dream, and cut through skin and fat to make it come alive. I looked nothing like the Ganesh Gaitonde that had been. I was the Ganesh Gaitonde that I wanted to be. I was myself.

'Zoya is not going to know who you are, bhai,' Suhasini said when she and Arvind visited that afternoon. 'I can hardly tell who you are myself. This Langston Lee is a genius.'

It hurt to smile, but I did. I liked the idea of Zoya not knowing who I was, of her being baffled by this new man. I wanted her confused and jittery, unsure of herself. She was shooting two films in America, in Detroit and Houston, and I had not told her about my plans for a new look. My surgery had been kept a secret, from her and anyone else who did not need to know. 'Let's surprise Zoya,' I said.

'She's going to jump like a cow with a stick jabbed up its gaand,' Arvind said. 'If it wasn't for the voice, bhai, I wouldn't have recognized you.' He peered at me, leaning over the foot of the bed. 'It's not like anything has changed that much. But somehow all the changes together have completely changed you.'

I healed fast. As soon as Dr Langston Lee gave me the go-ahead, I flew to America. Zoya couldn't get much time off from her shoots, and I really wanted to see her. Or, rather, I wanted her to see me. So I went. Our operations in the US were very limited, so there were no teams of boys to set up the logistics for me, and no bodyguards. I travelled alone, under an impeccable Indonesian passport, and I was sure I would be safe. I was protected by my new look. I had new clothes as well, a suitcase full of light linen suits and cotton shirts in pastel colours. Arvind had been nervous about sending me off alone, but I'd told him that I was safer on my own, that I would attract less attention without an entourage. More so because this broke the pattern that my enemies expected and watched for, they knew that for years I had always been surrounded by my boys. They would never look for me by myself.

I said all this, and believed it. Yet, when the plane took off from Bangkok, and I was soaring off to this new world, I dipped headlong into terror. I was alone. On the Lucky Chance , I could hear my boys walking on the deck, their laughter was the first thing I heard in the morning. Now, in this little bubble of first-class air, in this cabin hurtling far above the earth, I couldn't reach them. They were gone. I touched my chin, my nose. Under my handsome new skin there was only me. I felt that I was far away, far from everyone and everything I knew. I calmed myself, told myself that this was an unexpected but natural response to a situation I was not used to, that my body was anxious in its new form. I asked for water, and shut my eyes. The perspiration rolled off my neck, and I knew I was making myself conspicuous. But I couldn't fight down the panic, and finally I gave in and used the airline phone to place a call to Arvind. He was quite agitated when he picked up and heard my voice, we had agreed to maintain an emergency-call-only policy over this trip. 'Bhai,' he said. 'What's wrong?'

Of course I couldn't tell him what was really wrong, about the steely taste of longing and loneliness at the back of my throat. I couldn't say, I just wanted to hear your voice, you bastard. I spoke to him about some investments we had made the week before, and the movement of money from an account in Hong Kong to funds in India. It was all trivial stuff, not material for an emergency call at all. He was puzzled, but he knew his manners, and so he asked no questions, just listened to my instructions. I hung up, and then called Bunty in Bombay. I had nothing to discuss with him that was even vaguely urgent, so I talked to him about Suleiman Isa and our latest intelligence on S-Company's activities. I left Bunty as confused as Arvind, and then I called Jojo. 'I'm in the middle of a meeting,' she said. 'I'll call you back.'

'You can't.'

'Why not? I'll be free in half an hour.'

I hadn't told her about my trip to America, or my surgery. And I certainly couldn't tell her now, sitting next to a Thai grandmother with stern, steel-rimmed glasses and very sharp ears. 'I will be in meetings myself,' I said. 'Tomorrow. I will call.'

'Is something wrong, Gaitonde?'

She knew me too well, this Jojo. 'No, no,' I said. 'Go back to work. Tomorrow, we'll talk tomorrow.'

'Okay,' she said. 'Tomorrow.'

I thought about Jojo as I lay back in my seat. She was my friend, and she could tell more than anyone else what my mood was, whether I was generous or angry, hard or heated or just sad. I trusted her, but I had to keep certain facts from her for reasons of my security. I lived in constant and unrelenting danger, and I had to keep secrets. I had to be careful. I had to assume that this grey-haired Thai woman in the next seat, who was now eating peanuts with the very tips of her glossy fingers, this harmless old lady may also be a spy capable of hurting me. Maybe she understood the Hindi that I spoke to Jojo, maybe she worked for Suleiman Isa and his allies. It was impossible, but I had to allow the possibility.

No wonder I felt lonely, I thought. I lived a life of secrets and suspicion. I had necessarily to separate myself from even my friends, and this was the price I paid for power. I was a ruler, a king, so I could never relax. Even a new face couldn't completely liberate me from fear. I was compelled to walk alone. But this solitude that I felt on the flight to America, this was new. I had never felt anything like it. I felt like I was a whirling ball floating in immeasurable space. I was suspended in a complete vacuum, quite free. Yes, this was freedom, I was independent and alone. And I was terrified.

I broke my rule of years and asked for a Scotch. I held my breath and drank the bitter brown medicine. Then I drank two more, and finally I was able to sleep.

I woke up to Los Angeles spreading like a long stain to my right. It was vast, and I felt very small. I couldn't shake it off, this feeling of my own littleness, this childlike apprehension. It stayed with me in the limousine to the hotel. The streets were wide and clean, and the cars moved in orderly rows, and it all seemed very foreign. I had never felt so apart in Thailand, or even in Singapore, so unlike the drivers who sped past me. I saw an Indian man parking his car next to a market, and I watched him as he walked to a phone. He was bald, paunchy, and he could have walked down any gali in Bombay without attracting any attention. His name was probably Ramesh, or Nitin, or Dharam. But still I felt very far from him. Maybe it was an effect of this huge, hazy sky above, and this clear, colourless light. Space was different here, and so was gravity. I felt weightless.

My suite at the Mondrian floated twelve storeys above Sunset Boulevard. The traffic slid along below in silent ribbons of metal. The silence was unsettling. I switched on the television, turned it up, took a quick shower, and then called Zoya. She was in a room on the seventh floor. She had caught an early flight from Houston that morning and had checked in under the name of Madhubala. I had to spell the name out to the operator twice, finally the call went through, and there was Zoya. 'Hello?' she said. She had picked up an American accent.