Immortals (14 page)

Chapter 18

Breaking News

Chennai

India

20 May, 2012

Jai woke up on the sofa in Raja’s flat in Chennai. There was no getting used to these ‘replays’. It brought shock, bewilderment, and confusion each time it happened. But Jai was slowly getting the hang of it. He now knew how the day was going to unfold. However, he did not yet know what he was going to do about it this time.

Raja woke up ten minutes after Jai and saw him sitting morosely on the sofa.

‘There isn’t anywhere I can run to. No distance is far for them. No land is foreign to them. Wherever I go, they will come after me. What have I gotten myself into? What have I gotten Henna into?’

Raja heard him mumbling and looked at him.

‘Hey! Had a bad dream?’ he asked Jai. ‘You are mumbling and you don’t look very well. You alright?’

Jai nodded.

‘I have to leave now,’ Jai mumbled and then looked into Raja’s eyes and continued:

‘Thanks for all you have done for me, my friend. But I have to leave today. They have found us. They will come for us. We have to leave today.’

Raja was wide-awake now and was seeing Jai ramble on about leaving.

‘Have you heard something? Did you get any news from Mumbai? Who told you?’

‘No one. Just the way I feel.’

‘Have you lost it, Jai? Why this “gut feeling” all of a sudden?’

Jai could not tell Raja how he knew what he knew. It would simply be too much for him to digest. Anyway, Jai did not have the time or the patience to explain something that he had barely brought himself around to believe in, without any understanding of it. Jai looked at Raja with all the seriousness he could muster

‘Raja, I can’t explain it to you. It is just a feeling that I have; and of late, I have come to rely, a bit more than usual, on my instincts. I am leaving right now with Henna. However, promise me that you will also run the moment you smell danger. And I know you will probably smell it sooner rather than later. I am sorry that I brought you into all this. Very sorry, my friend.’

‘I would not be alive here in the first place if it were not for you, Jai. Therefore, you do not owe any apology to me. I only wish I could understand what you are trying to say.’ He continued with a shrug:

‘I won’t try to stop you if you feel so strongly about this.’

Jai got up from the sofa, walked up to the door of the adjoining room and knocked gently before pushing the door open.

Henna had heard the knock and she sat up.

‘Sorry to wake you up. But we need to leave now.’

Henna looked blankly at Jai.

‘Um... hmm? Leave? Leave for where?’

‘I don’t know. Just start packing up your things. I want to leave in thirty minutes.’

Henna rushed from her bed and started to do Jai’s bidding.

She paused in between and turned to look at Jai.

‘What happened?’

‘Another nightmare. A nightmare where things do not end too well for us.’

She cursed under her breath and scurried away to get their things into the air-bag they had been carrying since Mumbai.

She was ready to go in twenty-five minutes and joined Jai near the door. Jai, in the meanwhile, had collected a chamber-full of bullets for his gun, from Raja.

Jai looked at her glancing around the house as if she had developed some sort of bond with this house in the past few days. He saw her eyes wandering from the floor to the cupboard, to the sofa, to the TV… and then as his eyes paused at the TV, it struck him where he wanted to go.

‘Hey, Raja! Do you know how far Kalpakkam is from here?’

Jai blurted out the question but immediately realised he should not have asked the question of Raja. It was better for him not to know, where they were off to.

‘Takes about an hour by bus. Catch a bus to Pondicherry that goes through the East Coast Road. Forty kilometres, tops.’

Jai and Henna took their leave of Raja. Henna cried a little. Raja reminded her of her brother Ashfaque in the village, no news of whom she had until then. Raja had a lump in his throat too, and they said hurried good-byes to each other.

They took an auto-rickshaw that took twenty minutes to reach the bus stand. A bus to Pondicherry was about to leave and they got on it. Henna had still not asked Jai why he had chosen Kalpakkam and what they were going to do there. She just sat demurely on the window seat, watching the scenery go by, the air-bag close to her chest on her lap. The wind blew wisps of her unclasped hair over her face. Jai stole glances at his pretty companion while still thinking about what he was going to do in Kalpakkam.

They reached Kalpakkam in fifty minutes and got down near the East Coast Road market just outside the town. Jai realised he was a complete stranger in this town. New town, new people, new language. He had to work towards a plan. He decided he needed a car, preferably a van of some type. There was a roadside temple a few metres ahead, and there was a brand new Maruti Ertiga, decked with flowers and garlands, parked outside the temple, good-luck lemons crushed under its tires and threaded lemons and chillies hanging from under the blank number plate in front. The driver was sitting at the wheel while the priest read incantations, holding a plate with flaming camphor, swirling its smoke all over the vehicle. There was no one else around them. The priest would not be a problem and Jai hoped that the driver would acquiesce on seeing the gun.

Jai grasped Henna’s hand.

‘Come with me.’

He pulled her near the Ertiga and left her standing at the passenger door. He reached the door on the driver’s side, took out his gun and pointed it directly at the driver’s head

‘Get out of the van. I need the van now.’ He went round the car and entered to take a seat by the driver’s side, the gun pointed at his head all the while. He opened the rear door for Henna and motioned her to get in. The priest had seen the gun and immediately ran back inside the sanctum of the temple, still muttering incantations, burning camphor flying in the air.

The driver was trembling in fear and sat there dumbly, at a loss for any words.

Jai took the passenger seat, closed his and Henna’s doors, his gun still cocked at the driver’s head.

‘Drive!’ he bellowed the order to the driver.

The driver jerked into action, shifting gears and accelerating like a horse out of the gates at the races. When he was a kilometre further on the East Coast Road, Jai asked him to park on the verge.

The driver obliged, still trembling in fear.

‘Please don’t kill me, Sir. I’ll give you whatever I have.’

‘Yeah! That is a good idea. Empty your pockets and get out of the van.’

The driver had five thousand rupees, some change, and a Chinese ‘Nookia’ mobile that he dumped on his seat and bailed away from the van, running for dear life.

Jai shifted to the driver’s seat, put the van in gear and drove on till he reached the southern entry road to Kalpakkam. On the way, he stopped at a roadside motel just outside Kalpakkam town, and booked a room with cable TV.

Having booked the room, he then drove on with Henna, reaching the perfunctorily guarded Nuclear Research Centre campus. He asked one of the guards about the staff quarters and drove on to them, looking at the names on the gates. Professor Ananthakrishnan occupied an A-type staff bungalow that was not very difficult to find. The bungalow had high compound walls and an ornate wrought iron gate with an armed gatekeeper at the gate, holding a sub-machine gun of some kind.

Jai parked the van about twenty metres from the house and waited. There was still some time for the assassins to arrive.

Jai turned to Henna and asked:

‘Who do you think will have an answer to what’s been happening to me?’

Henna was puzzled for an instant and it took her a moment to understand what Jai was referring to. She had no idea how to explain what Jai was going through. She thought over it, going through various possibilities, but finally did not say anything.

Jai continued:

‘Should I seek the help of a god-man or a science-man?’

‘I have no faith in God or his men,’ Henna replied tersely after an infinitesimal pause. Then she pleaded with Jai:

‘Will you tell me what happened today with you, with us?’

‘The gang tracked us to Chennai, came into our home, and killed both of us.’

There was silence in the van for a minute.

‘When did this happen?’

‘A couple of hours from now.’

‘What are we doing here then?’

‘I saw something on the news.’

‘What?’

‘The the man in that building gets shot and killed by two men on a motorcycle.’ Jai pointed to Professor Ananthakrishnan’s bungalow as he said this.

‘Who is this man?’

‘Some hot-shot big nuclear scientist who has also done a lot of research on the human brain. Actually he said something about the dreams that we have and probably that’s what has brought me here to help him help me.’

‘A science-man,’ Henna echoed Jai’s words, then continued, ‘But Jai, we are fugitives and we cannot risk exposure like this.’

Jai nodded his head and muttered:

‘I think we may not have to, if what I have planned goes through.’

They waited for another half an hour and Jai narrated his ‘dream within a dream’ sequence of flight on a strange flying creature over a strange land.

The gate of the bungalow creaked open and the old man, whom Jai had seen on TV in his ‘dream’ and whom Jai wanted to save, came out of the gate holding a dog on a leash. Jai had not seen the dog anywhere during the news telecast. Maybe it had run away by then or maybe he had just not noticed it earlier.

He hushed Henna who had another question about his dreams.

‘Sshh... I think it is time. They should be coming anytime now.’

Henna looked to where Jai was pointing towards and saw the old man and his dog. The man was fair, with a mat of white hair on his head, large ears, a long face with deep-set eyes, and an amiable air about him. He stood near the gate chatting with the gatekeeper, and they shared a laugh.

That was when the motorcycle passed by them from behind. Jai gave a start; he had not expected that.

He had seen them approaching from the other end, on TV. He could easily identify the men and the bike. Both of them wore helmets. Jai recovered, and was about to start the van when Henna held his arm firmly.

‘Wait. They are not stopping there.’

Jai looked up and saw them passing the scientist’s bungalow without stopping. Nevertheless, both of them had turned their heads towards the house and Jai was sure that these were the men. They went on beyond the house for another fifty metres and then stopped. Jai saw them turn and ride back towards the house again.

Jai turned the key in the van’s ignition and it quietly purred into life. The motorcycle stopped in front of the gate and the man behind leaned forward and asked a question of the old man. Jai stepped on the accelerator and rushed full speed towards the motorcycle. He was only twenty metres away when the man sitting pillion on the bike, pulled out a gun. Jai honked loudly and the man got distracted for a moment. Jai pressed his foot on the accelerator and he ploughed into the bike and the assassins. There was a loud report and the assassin’s bullet found the gatekeeper who had by then, very bravely and instinctively, covered the professor, not having had the time to draw out the submachine-gun slung on his shoulder.

Jai got down from the van, drew out his gun and pumped two bullets each into both the assassins. The guard was lying on the road, shot in the shoulder. Jai could guess that the guard would live. He went to the badly shaken scientist and held him hard by his arm and whisked him into the van. For some strange reason the professor complied, probably too shaken up to respond or to question someone who had just saved his life.

Jai backed up the van from the wreck and sped past the dead assailants on the road. There was still no commotion on the road although he could still feel eyes prying on them from their hidden shelters in the neighbouring buildings. Professor Ananthakrishnan only managed a couple of questions.

‘Who were those men?’

‘They were terrorists who wanted to kill you,’ Jai responded. As an afterthought he added:

‘You are safe with us. We need to take you away to some safe place.’

‘Are you with the police?’

‘Something like that,’ Jai lied.

He drove the van at full speed, getting away from there before anything else happened. He went straight to the hotel and the professor accompanied the couple to their previously booked room.

Jai ordered a cool drink for the professor and made him lie down on the bed while Henna kept watch over him. Jai had forbidden the professor any phone calls.

‘Just wait for a couple of hours till our guys tidy everything up. I have been asked to hold you here until everything is safe. Then I will drop you home myself.’

The professor had, in a state of bewilderment, believed the yarn Jai had woven, but doubts were emerging in his head now. He knew that these two teenagers could not belong to police. It had to be some sort of intelligence agency. He did not know which intelligence agency they belonged to. Neither did he understand which agency would recruit teenagers like them.