Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

Bazil began to weep again. Faraj swallowed, and said, 'I know it was wrong.' Aadil let them talk, and extracted promises that they would never touch alcohol again. Then he led them from the circle, through the rings of cars, and bought them a water-melon juice each. They discussed the next job. Their best source of intelligence had been Shamsul, who people had trusted because of his mildness and reedy body. Householders and chowkidars had thought him harmless, and talked to him. Now the team was handicapped, but there was nothing to do but adapt. In less than a week they had a target, and a plan. The address this time came from Bazil, for a family near Sahar Airport. They had a son working in Dubai, who sent them frequent parcels. Aadil delayed the job by four days, just so that they could make sure they had their information right. They walked the area, penetrated the building compound and came out again. The operation went smoothly, the boys were calm, they walked away with sixty thousand in cash and a bagful of gold jewellery, including biscuits. The Dubai boy had been preparing for his sister's wedding. Aadil was pleased.

Faraj had been detailed to find a trustworthy receiver, and had located one along Tulsi Pipe Road. The contact had been made over the phone, and arrangements finalized, and they were now on their way to make the delivery. Aadil had decided that all of them were to go, to prevent future misunderstandings. They walked along the railway tracks, skirting the shacks that had been built along the fence. The meeting had been set up for the late evening, but Aadil had been hit by a headache that swirled up his spine like a storm. He had been unable to see past the bursts of sharp fire that arrived in his eyes. Even now, when midnight had long passed, and he was recovered, the streetlights burnt hotly with a spectral glow of orange around them. A train sped by, and each rattle and knocking stood out against the darkness and hurt Aadil's ears. The boys were quiet and solicitous, and they walked on either side of him.

Aadil felt alive, awakened by the pain. The crunch from the ground under his feet recalled to him some far memory, something that came to him and retreated, came to him and went. The earth was breathing, he could feel it.

The shouts came from behind and ahead, and they were very loud. A flare from a flashlight came at Aadil, and with it, 'Police'. Aadil twisted to the left and ran, crouching low. There were men ahead of him. Directly against his right shoulder there was a tin shack, a closed door. Then a small gap before the next shack. Aadil went into the hole, and brought up against the bars of the fence. The tracks were on the other side, but the fence was high. Aadil reached up, and his hand slipped against the iron. He turned. His chopper was in his hand.

'Out, bhenchod. Throw it out.'

The policeman had a pistol. Aadil could see the barrel, the line of light along it, and the heavy shoulders of the man behind. He threw the chopper out low, on to the road. A small clang. The policeman was waiting, and the barrel of the pistol lowered just a little. Aadil inhaled a long, sweet swig of air, and had the absurd thought that maybe they could stay like this for ever, at bay and at peace. But his hand had already found his knife, swirled it open, and then his body was moving. The policeman never fired, maybe he lost Aadil in the shadow. Aadil went at him, and he struck as he had been taught, as he had learnt, as he had practised.

Aadil was running. The policemen were behind him and he was running. He still had the knife in his hand and he wanted to let go but he couldn't. He ran. Then he was no longer moving. He shut his eyes, opened them, and knew that he was on the ground, face down. The surface of the road arced away from him, and a trickle of water shone softly. There was no pain, but he felt very dreamy and soft, as if he were just waking up. I think I killed that man, he thought. Then it occurred to him that he was himself dying. He was not afraid, not afraid at all. But he felt enormously sad, but he did not know why, or what for, and he wondered and waited. Then he was dead.

II

Sharmeen defended her hero loyally. 'The trouble with you, Aisha Akbani,' she told her friend, 'is that you change your opinion every five minutes. One day Chandrachur Singh is everything to you, one week later you say you wouldn't even look at him if he showed up under your window with roses. You know what you are? You are fickle .' Sharmeen had read the word 'fickle' recently, in one of her eighth-grade texts, and she used it with huge satisfaction.

Aisha tilted her admittedly very pretty nose and dismissed Chandrachur Singh with a decisive wave of her hand. 'Sharmeen Khan, if it was a matter of one week or one month, then okay, you would have a point. But that guy is so over. It's been so long since Maachis , and not a single good film. Okay, maybe one or two. And it's not about films anyway. I keep telling you, I just don't like him.'

Sharmeen and Aisha were lying on Sharmeen's bed, in her bedroom on the second floor of a house in Bethesda. Sharmeen loved the sharp drop in the Maryland countryside outside her window, which caused a medium-sized oak to hang over what she called a 'cliff' and what Aisha described as a 'little drop'. Aisha was sometimes infuriatingly contrary, she would argue for the sake of argument, but Sharmeen adored her anyway. She had been her first friend when Sharmeen had arrived in America nearly two years ago, when she still in her half-Punjabi, half-London accent had spoken of 'Amrika'. Aisha – who hadn't been quite as pretty then – had been sympathetic and kind, and now, even when she had blossomed, even in eighth grade, she still stuck to Sharmeen. They were best friends, and they were inseparable. Aisha liked to pretend that she was an anti-romantic, a cynic, and so she refused to admit that the view from Sharmeen's window was really quite dramatic, especially when it was all covered in January snow, as now. There was the oak, the cliff and a long, rolling meadow that ended in a snarl of tall bushes. On full moon nights it all sparkled and looked quite wild, and Sharmeen lay with sleepy, half-open eyes and imagined Chandrachur Singh on a white horse, galloping through the brambles and up the cliff.

'You're dreaming again,' Aisha said, and pinched Sharmeen's arm.

Sharmeen pinched her in turn, and said, 'Turn the page.' They were sprawled face down on the flowered bedspread, heads away from the pillows, chins leaning on the very bottom rim of the bedstead. They had a new issue of Stardust open on the floor, where it could be slid speedily under the bed at the first warning creak on the stairs. Sharmeen's parents were strict about what she read, and Stardust was so not allowed that it had never even been mentioned in this house. Sharmeen's father especially had disciplined and encouraged her from an early age to guard her values and family izzat. His name was Shahid Khan, and he was a colonel, and he had been posted at the embassy in London, and he had travelled all over the world, but he had never slackened in his observances and prayers, and he was known among his friends and colleagues for his piety and simple living. So Sharmeen didn't talk or read about Pakistani films and actors, much less the hideously shameless industry across the border. But Sharmeen and Aisha read Stardust anyway. They were mildly interested in home-grown talent like Noor and Zara Sheikh, but they were passionate about Indian films. A three-page article about Chandrachur Singh, with colour photographs, had sparked off this last argument, which had gone exactly the way it had the time before, and the time before that. Sharmeen was always steadfast in her devotion to Chandrachur Singh, she defended him against Aisha's unfair accusations and attacks, and finally she drifted off into a Chandrachur Singh reverie. There she would stay, until Aisha jolted her out of it with a pinch. Aisha turned the page, and now they were looking down at a double-page spread of Zoya Mirza.