Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

We watched Jeetendra and Mehmood bounce around the screen, thrashing their enemies as they sang One, two, chal shuru hoja , and I was nicely distracted by the laughter that filled the room. The vivid seventies colours were restful to look at, and even the tightness of Jeetendra's white pants was comforting. This past was a foreign country that I could escape into, a haven that had already happened and that nothing could disturb. Over the next two days we watched Dil Diya Dard Liya , and Anand , and Haathi Mere Sathi . When the call came in from Mumbai, I was watching that scene near the end of Guide , that scene where Rosie comes to see the guide as he fasts to death. 'Bhai, it's Nikhil, from Mumbai. Bunty's assistant.' I wiped the tears from my face, and took the phone. I rarely spoke to this Nikhil, who had worked with Bunty for four years now. Nikhil reported to Bunty, and Bunty reported to me, that was the chain.

'What?' I said.

'They shot Bunty, bhai.'

'Who?'

'I don't know.'

He was swallowing again and again, hiccuping into my ear, and I knew he was about to vomit. 'Nikhil,' I said. 'Sit down. Are you sitting down? Sit. Don't worry. I have boys on the way. Just tell me what happened.'

It took me twenty minutes, and he did dribble up twice, but I got the story out of him. Bunty had gone that morning to the Juhu Maurya, where he got a massage from a specialist in the Thai temple technique. He then had a breakfast meeting in the coffee shop, and got some chocolate cake packed for his children. He waited in the lobby for his car to pull up, and then walked down the stairs to it, flanked by three bodyguards. In the driveway, there were three tall, turbaned and liveried gatemen, opening and closing doors, and also four hotel security guards in grey safari suits. The four security guards now reached under their shirts and pulled out Glocks, and they shot Bunty and his boys, two bullets for each target. It was deadly efficient, and crisply done. The bodyguards were blown down, dropped to the road and dead. Bunty had bent to get into his car, and he was knocked through the open door. That was what saved him, the bending, and his driver. The bullets hit him in the back and neck, instead of the back of his skull, and when he fell face forward on to the seat, his driver stepped on the accelerator and skidded away. Bunty dangled and dragged along, and he lost four toes on his right foot, but he lived. The driver got him out of the hotel gate, even as blasts blew through the rear window and the left-hand windows. One of the Sikh gatemen charged the shooters, and got a bullet in his belly for his troubles. But by then the real hotel guards were running up to the front of the building, and there were police constables lumbering up from the chowki at the intersection, and the shooters had to go. They went.

They got away, and Bunty was alive. They had him in the Lilavati Hospital, tubed and wired. He was hanging on. He was fighting. But my boys were afraid, they were angry and confused and lost. I tasted their panic in the air, the promise of it like the first faint tinge of rot. I did what I had to, I managed them. I moved people around, I moved in money, I moved influence. To give my boys the illusion that we were fighting back, I organized two encounters over the next two days. The Suleiman Isa boys who were killed were low-level functionaries, riff-raff, but morale depends sometimes on the necessary deaths of small men. So it was done.

But I knew the truth, that we didn't know who we were fighting against. Even if the Suleiman Isa bastards took credit – which they did – there was no reason to believe that it was actually their operation. No, they were maderchod liars, and if they said they had shot Bunty, it was definite that they hadn't, that someone else had watched him, learnt him and his habits, and had tried to execute him. But who? Who?

I knew who. I spoke to Nikhil the next day, and then directly to one of the investigating police officers on the case, who read to me from the eyewitness testimonies. Every last one of them reported short haircuts on the shooters. One of the Sikh doormen used the word 'fauji' when he described the bastards. And I remembered the two in the corridor in Singapore, the ones who stopped me and questioned me even as their friends did their bloody work in Arvind's apartment. They were the same crew, I knew this, I could tell. Maybe they were even the same men, flown from Singapore to Bombay by their bosses, by an organization which watched me and knew everything about me. They knew where I lived and where I went and what I did, they were hunting me. They wanted to eliminate me. They had used me, I had served a function, and now – because I had served my own interests in a manner that they disliked – they wanted to wipe me away, rub me out so that there wasn't as much as a small stain left on their files. I would cease to be, and they would pretend I had never been.

I was sure, almost sure that I knew my killers. To be absolutely certain, I needed to consult Guru-ji. I needed him to see the truth and tell it to me. But he was travelling, I was told, he was unavailable, even to me. I left urgent messages, asking and beseeching that he get in touch. But he didn't call, and I was left to myself. I was astonished. I had always been able to reach him, even just to ask him if the next Tuesday was a good day to start a new diet. Now, in the hour of my greatest crisis, when my allies were hunting my men and me, Guru-ji was gone. I was patient as long as I could be, and then I cursed the sadhus I spoke to on the phone. 'Do you know who I am?' I said. 'Do you know how close I am to him? I will have you thrown out, exiled to an ashram in Africa, bastard.' But they insisted that they did not know where he was. Ten days after he first became unavailable, a message appeared on Guru-ji's website explaining that he was in retreat at an undisclosed location, that he was deep in meditation, that he could not be disturbed, but he would be back soon, that he would bring back new and deeper wisdom to his disciples, who were his beloved children.

But I am your eldest son, gaandu, and where are you? Yes, I cursed him directly. I needed him, and he had vanished without a word to me. He knew everything, he must have known that he was going even as he said goodbye to me in Munich, a sign would have sufficed – a hand on my shoulder, a single touch on my cheek. But he was gone.

Four days after Bunty was shot, I became even more alone: Gaston and Pascal died, one in the morning, one in the night.

'The doctors said they know what it was now, bhai,' Nikhil told me. 'They know what they died of. The doctors say it was radiation sickness, bhai.'

I had to ask what it was, this 'radiation sickness'.

Nikhil explained it to me, what he had learnt from the doctors. 'They wanted to know if Gaston and Pascal had visited an atomic power plant recently, bhai. Like maybe Trombay. Or if they had drunk water from a well near Trombay, or eaten fish caught in Thane creek. Or gone anywhere close to the Tarapur plant. I told them, of course not. Why would Gaston and Pascal visit Tarapur?'

'Did you tell them anything, Nikhil?'

'No, no, nothing. Nothing at all, bhai. I told them the truth, that Gaston and Pascal are respectable businessmen and family men. That they haven't been anywhere dirty like that.'

But they had been on a trip recently, into the open sea. The ocean was not dirty, but maybe you could catch radiation sickness from what you brought back from the waves. I called Guru-ji again, and this time when there was no reply I had boys go to his offices in Delhi, and his homes in Noida and Mathura. His servants didn't know where he was, his sadhus didn't know, his mother said she didn't know. He was gone, vanished, as if he had suddenly transcended his body and become one with the universe. But the sadhus closest to him had gone too, Prem Shantam and all the others in the inner group, the ones who travelled with Guru-ji and tended to him and took care of him. They were travelling. Guru-ji had not left this earth, he was going somewhere? But where? Where did his journey end, and when?