Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

* * *

By the next morning the rain had turned into one of those endless monsoon drenchings that felt as if the sky had collapsed under the weight of water. Sartaj ran from the car to the station, and by the time he was under cover his shoulders were drenched. He could feel the water inside his shoes.

'Your girlfriend's waiting for you, Sartaj Saab,' Kamble said from his perch on the first-floor balustrade above. He was leaning out, head close to the smooth fall of water from the roof, a cigarette in one hand.

'Kamble, my friend,' Sartaj said, 'you are full of bad habits and bad beliefs.' He had to raise his voice to be heard above the drumming of the water on the bricks. Kamble grinned back at him, very comfortable with his badness. By the time Sartaj got up the stairs, he was lighting another cigarette and he had his answer ready.

'Sometimes you need a bad one like me, Sartaj Saab,' he said, 'for all the bad work that has to be done in this world.'

'Since when have you become a philosopher, chutiya? You never needed any excuses before, so don't start blaming the world now. Who is waiting?'

'Arre, your CBI girlfriend, boss. You have so many you don't know which one is coming to visit?'

Anjali Mathur was at the station. 'Where?' Sartaj said.

'Parulkar Saab's office.'

'And is Parulkar Saab there?'

'No, he got a call, he had to rush to a meeting with the CM at the Juhu Centaur.'

'With the CM. Very impressive.'

'Our Parulkar Saab is a very impressive man. But I don't think he likes your chavvi very much, Sartaj Saab. I just see something in his look. Maybe he wants her also.'

Sartaj thumped Kamble on the shoulder. 'You have a very dirty mind. Let me see what this is about.' He walked down the corridor. Kamble was indeed dirty, but maybe it was just that he took more pleasure in the same dirt that everyone was swimming in. He certainly understood the politics of the station, and knew everything that went on in it. Sartaj nodded at Sardesai, Parulkar's PA, who waved him towards Parulkar's door. Sartaj knocked and went in. Anjali Mathur was sitting alone on the sofa at the rear of the room, at the end furthest from Parulkar's desk.

'Namaste, madam,' Sartaj said.

'Namaste,' she said. 'Please sit.'

Sartaj sat and told her what he had learned from Mary, which was very little. As usual, she took in the news, such as it was, and then stayed perfectly still. She was deliberating. Today she was in a dark red salwar-kameez. Wine-coloured, Sartaj thought. An interesting hue on her dark-brown skin, but it was loose, and covered her quite impersonally. There was no cut there, no personality. She carried her face the same way, shut off. Not hostile, just guarded, closed.

'Shabash,' she said. 'Every little thing is important. You know that. You never know what will open up a case. Now, I have two things to tell you. One, that Delhi has decided to halt this investigation. We were interested in Ganesh Gaitonde's return to Mumbai, the reasons for it, what he wanted here. But from what we have found out so far, Delhi doesn't think there's enough there to justify further enquiries. Frankly, nobody cares. They say, Gaitonde is dead, he's finished.'

'But you don't think he's finished.'

'I don't understand why he was here, why he killed himself, what he was looking for. Who he was looking for. But I have been called back to Delhi. There are more important things to work on, it is felt.'

'At the national level.'

'Yes. At the national level. But I would appreciate it very much if you would continue looking into the matter a little. I appreciate very much your hard work. If you could continue, maybe we would have some answers to our questions.'

'Why are you so interested in Ganesh Gaitonde? He was a common gangster. He's dead.'

She thought for a moment, considered her options. 'There is not much I am allowed to tell you. But I am interested in him because he was connected to certain very important people, to events at a national level. Whatever brought him back here, that could have an effect on future events.'

And you want me to risk my head under these huge juggernauts, Sartaj thought. You want me to put my golis in the path of those oncoming, grinding wheels. You want to involve me in Research and Analysis Wing matters. International intrigue, derring-do in foreign lands, desi James Bonds. He knew the agency existed somewhere, he had been told it did exist, but it was all very fantastic and very far from his very ordinary life. He had never really felt it was real, all that sinister spy stuff. And yet here was serious, small Anjali Mathur, in her dark red salwar-kameez, sitting on the sofa a few feet from him. And she was interested in the death and life of Ganesh Gaitonde.

The next question was obvious, but Sartaj kept himself from asking it: why does RAW have an interest in our friend Ganesh Gaitonde at all? Maybe some of the important people that Gaitonde had connections with were in RAW, maybe some mutual dealings had existed between the agency and Gaitonde, but Sartaj didn't want to know. He didn't want to be in this room any more, with quiet Anjali Mathur. He wanted to be back in his own life. 'Yes,' he said. 'Very true.' He was quiet. These RAW things happened far away from him, as they should. He didn't have any questions, he didn't want answers. He was done.

'I have to go back,' Anjali Mathur said finally. 'To Delhi. But I would be grateful if you would continue to investigate this issue. For you to do so would be completely logical, expected. If you learn anything, here is my number in Delhi. Please call me.'

He took the card, and stood up. 'I will,' he said.

She nodded, but he knew she saw his nerviness, his desire to be out of the room, away. Outside, Kamble was sitting on the visitor's bench, one leg crossed comfortably over the other. 'So what happened, boss?' he said with his customary leer.

'Nothing,' Sartaj said. 'Absolutely nothing. Nothing happened. Nothing will.'

* * *

Ordinary life had its own savoury pleasures. Sartaj was eating a very hot chicken Hyderabadi with Kamble when his mobile rang and began to skid slowly across the table. Sartaj nudged it back with a knuckle, and saw that Wasim Zafar Ali Ahmad was calling. 'Arre, tissue, tissue!' he called to the waiter and thumbed the phone. 'Hold,' he managed to get out before a cough caught at his throat.

'Saab, take a sip of water,' Wasim Zafar Ali Ahmad said paternally when Sartaj finally got the phone up to his ear.

'What do you want?'

'You are eating lunch, saab. I have your dessert.'

'The Bihari and the boys?'

'Yes.'

'Where? When?'

'They are coming tonight after midnight to collect money from a receiver.'

'After midnight, when?'

'I only know that the meeting is after midnight, saab. Maybe they are being careful. But I have an exact address.'

Sartaj wrote down the street and the landmarks and the name of the receiver. Wasim was very exact indeed. 'Saab, there are many kholis on the track side of the road, and there are always people moving around there, even late at night. So you must go in carefully, otherwise there will be trouble.'

'Chutiya, we have done a thousand of these arrests. This one will be nothing special.'

'Yes, yes, saab. Of course you are the master of these matters. I didn't mean…'

'All that matters is that the information should be good. Is the information good?'

'Saab, it is solid. You don't even know what I went through to get it.'

'Don't tell me. Keep your mobile on tonight.'

'Yes, saab.'

Sartaj put down the phone. He took up his tandoori roti and ate a large mouthful of chicken. It was delicious. 'What are you doing tonight?' he said to Kamble.

* * *

Sartaj and Katekar were waiting. They were in disguise, in tattered banians and dirty pants and old rubber-soled keds. Sartaj had an old patka draped loosely over his hair and tucked behind his ears, and thought that he looked like a rather debonair, dashing thela-wallah. They were sitting, reclining, under a thela pushed up on the pavement, across the road from a barred iron fence that edged the railway tracks. Katekar was complaining about the crowds on the trains. 'This country is hopeless,' he said. 'People push out babies with no more thought than street dogs making puppies. That's why nothing works, all progress is eaten up by new mouths. How can there be development?' This was one of his favourite themes. Any moment now he would start advocating a scientific dictatorship, universal registration and identity cards, and a strict birth-control policy. But now they were both silent as a train clattered by, going up the line, almost empty. During the day pods of men hung from the doors, swelling out over the rushing tracks, suspended by fingertips and toes. 'Almost one hour since the last train,' Katekar said. It was almost two-thirty. 'You watch. One heavy rain and trains will stop. This chutiya central line, if ten schoolboys stand in a row and piss on the tracks, bhenchod service is disrupted.'