Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

'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 staircases, 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.'