Sacred Games (125 page)

I jerked out of my reverie suddenly. I didn't know how long it had been, a minute or half an hour. I hadn't quite slept, but I had rested somehow. I willed myself into movement, switched on the light and pulled up the metal trapdoor in the middle of the room. A short ladder led down into the control room. Everything was as I had planned, the multiple video screens and the computers, the radios and the gas masks. The builders and technicians had followed the instructions precisely, down to the dry fruit stores and sealed bottles of water. There was a small gymnasium, and a shelf of DVDs, of old Dev Anand and Dilip Kumar films. A steel cabinet contained ranks of weapons, AK-56s and Glocks. A man could live here.

So I did live in my home, my house beneath the earth, for two weeks. I communicated with Bunty and the boys, and took calls from Nikhil in
Thailand every morning and evening, and conducted business with Brussels and New York. The boys brought my files over, and all important incoming documents were handed over to me as they arrived. Everything was as before, except that I was not floating about on some foreign sea, or flying from one alien city to another. I did my work, safe in Mumbai's belly. Not that I was complacent about being back home. I followed all security procedures, and I wore a comfortable nylon shoulder holster always, with a readied Glock 34 in it. I was in a combat zone, and I protected myself.

But I couldn't sleep. I lay in bed, or on the ground, or on a special body-conforming mattress that Bunty's boys brought me, and none of these gave me a moment of slumber. I ate handfuls of Calmpose and Mandrax, and a bottle of Ambien was specially flown in from New York. But even the American pills couldn't drag me down into unconsciousness. All I could fight my way to was a twilight between wakefulness and sleep, a suspended paralysis in which my body was heavy and unmovable, but my mind was still awake and aware. Through half-open eyes, I watched driblets of fire crawl up the wall. I knew there was no fire, that what looked like sparks were reflections from the computer monitors and the little red lights on the disk drives, but even when the effects of the chemicals wore off, I could still smell – yes – the mogra and the burnt bodies. I consoled myself with the thought that the air-exchange systems couldn't completely scrub the city odours away. After all, the carbon filters weren't creating new air, they couldn't get out what was already in, at the very deepest levels. What I was smelling was the pollution of the millions above me, the effluvium of their living. From this there was no escape, there couldn't be, and I taught myself to get used to it. It was only a sharpness at the back of my throat, a small irritation in my eyes. I was Ganesh Gaitonde, I had suffered greater pains.

I couldn't get used to the worry, though. Being awake through the day and the night gave me time to sit around and think. Long after business had been taken care of, after I had gone through my to-do list and my accounts and my planning, I sat in my swivel chair in front of the computers and screens and thought. I was of course trying to debrief myself about my recent search for that bastard who called himself a guru, I painstakingly went through the files and papers we had taken from his offices, I tried to remember exactly each sentence he had uttered during our last conversation. Maybe there was some clue somewhere that I had missed, maybe there was some opening that I could squeeze through. I
would turn the thing over, our entire history together, and go back and forth, and finally withdraw defeated. I was beaten. So then I worried. I would distract myself with simultaneous channels of television, news and a film and music all together, and yet the worry welled up from the maps behind the newscasters, and from the dances that the heroines and heroes threw themselves into, and the peace of Lata's voice.

‘What are you worrying about now, Gaitonde?' asked Jojo. She now finally believed that I was back in some foreign country, because of the quiet I phoned her from. And as always, she could tell my mood from the moment I began to speak, and even before, from my silence.

‘About you,' I told her. It was true. If the war came, I would survive in my shelter. But if Jojo was outside, I would lose her. But how would I live without this voice in my ear, without the knowledge that Jojo knew me? I was feeling alone now as I never had before. I had been by myself in my youth, I was then desperately poor and ignorant and quite alone, but the loneliness had hung lightly on my shoulders, like the swirling, streaming cape of a dashing hero. The screenplay of my life had arced upwards in a single continuous movement, and I had left lovers and yaars and enemies behind without regret. It was necessary. It was an essential part of my character, and without it I could never have become Ganesh Gaitonde. But now Jojo was inside me, and without her I would shatter. I knew it. ‘I worry about you only, Jojo,' I told her. ‘Kutiya that you are. I don't know why.'

‘You've gone senile,' she said. ‘If you don't know why, why are you worrying?'

‘No, no. I know why I am worrying. Only I don't know why I'm worrying about you. You're such a rude, shameless, bad-tempered kutiya.'

She roared out her laughter, like the beast she was. ‘Arre, Gaitonde, after all these years you still don't know? You really don't know? All right, all right, never mind. Let it go. But tell me what the worry is.'

‘You need to live in a safer place.'

At this she became unreasonable, as she always did. She spewed abuse, and told me I needed to get my head checked, or my golis, or maybe both. And then that her life was just fine, her business was good, and she wasn't scared of anything. And that I needed to get my train off this annoying track or she would have to drive it up my gaand.

I, by contrast, was completely reasonable. I started to point out the rising crime rate in the city, the worrisome incidence of random robberies, the rapes, and also the aggressive posturing of governments and militant
groups, leading to bomb explosions in restaurants, and what this might mean for the situation at the border. At this, she whispered fiercely, ‘I wish they would put one of their bombs inside your head,' and hung up.

These days, ever since I had entered the bunker, our conversations seemed to be ending this way more often than ever. We had our usual discussions about the girls Jojo was representing, or the television shows she was producing, and trends in the business climate, but finally I would bring the talk around to the nature of the world we lived in, the mortal dangers it was planning to throw at us. Then, with a groan or a curse or a shout, she would hang up. And I would go back to my worrying.

Today, I began to consider alternatives for Jojo. I could present her with a shelter that looked like a house, and fool her into safety. But how would I guarantee that she kept the doors closed, and keep her from asking where the windows were? No, no. I flipped channels, and saw an advertisement for exotic foreign holidays. A happy couple walked on a beach. I could send her off to remote locations, give her free first-class tickets to some island in the southern oceans. Yes. Fly her off to some resort with plenty of muscular beach-boys and fancy shopping. Yes, here she was, buying a pair of high-heeled boots. I could see her. She was dressed in a tiny red skirt, and her legs were young and muscular. She had a row of shopping bags behind her, and she was happy. Next to her was a little black handbag, very soft leather. And in the handbag there were two phones, one ordinary mobile that she used for her life, and a red encrypted phone that was her link to me. She was safe and happy, and thinking about this made me content. Even if something happened, if fire rumbled behind the horizon, she would be protected.

But, but if something happened, if that thing happened, the phones wouldn't work. There would be no flights, no planes perhaps. All the systems that ran the planes and the phones would crash. I knew enough now, from the films I had seen and the television shows I had watched, I knew that this complete breakdown was what I should expect. Even the machines that were still working would die from lack of power. That was why we had installed a triple set of generators and batteries for the shelter, in addition to hardened power lines from the mains, and made arrangements for solar power. So Jojo would be on her island, and I in my underground rooms. And between us there would be vast oceans, and merciless sun. In all the years we had been together, I had never minded the distance, because I knew that even if I were walking down some street in Belgium, or flying over an Arabian desert, Jojo was with me. She was
always nestling close on my hip, two presses of a button away. I could send her away now, but how would I bring her back? I paced the control room, from end to end, thinking of the effort it required to walk a mile. For years now, distance had meant nothing to me, and I had cared only about time. I had located cities by the number of hours it took to fly a jet from one to another, and had learnt to subtract a day from the date, or add half a night to the morning hour. Now, on the ground under my feet, I saw the long lines of longitude and latitude, I saw them stretching out beyond the walls, I saw the awful arc of the earth, and the rocky void that gaped between Jojo and me. We were so small, and this world was so vast. Without her voice in my ear, I was smaller still.

I had to bring her in. Yes. She would resist, she would be angry at first, but finally she would understand. I would lay out for her the magnitude of the problem at hand, I would convince her of the danger, I would show her the evidence and she would understand. We had always been able to talk, right from the start. She was a stubborn harridan, but she was also reasonable. She was interested in her own interest, and I would show her that it was impossible to remain outside. She would agree.

I picked up a phone, called Bunty and gave instructions. ‘Get her over here,' I said.

She would be frightened and angry when they got her, but I had no choice. If I had issued her an invitation to meet me, she would have refused, no matter how much I pleaded. So the boys did what they had to do: they waited until morning, outside Jojo's building. She drove out at ten-thirty, alone in her blue Toyota. They followed her down Yari Road, and north towards Goregaon. They were in two cars and a van, and it took them just ten minutes to neatly box her in and drive along, with the van on the rear. Then the car in front of Jojo braked hard, and the van clanged on her rear bumper and pushed her forward for a gentle three-vehicle accident. They were travelling slowly, there was no danger of anyone getting hurt, but Jojo got out of her car spitting maderchods and bhenchods. She was too angry at the girl driving the van to notice the three men who got out of the car in front, and the other two in the car to the side. I'd told them all that Jojo was not to be hit, and I wasn't sure the sight of a ghoda would be enough to keep her from fighting and screaming, even if it was held to her head. So they used an Omega stun gun. As Jojo ranted at the girl, one of the boys pressed the stun gun into her hip, just above her belt, and let her have a thirty-second shot. There was a crackling sound, and Jojo gave out a little scream that turned into a
whine, and then she went to the ground. Using a stun gun is a risky business: you can give some people a jolt, and they feel the ferocious snake-bite, and they just get angrier and break your skull. I had been afraid that Jojo would start kicking the boys in the golis, but she collapsed and twitched and rolled her eyes back and was out for a good ten minutes. By which time she was in the back of the van, hands and feet gently roped, too jangled to do anything but slobber on to the seat. The other cars – including Jojo's – followed, and so this little procession brought her to me.

I took delivery at the door – shielded from the shopkeepers' eyes by the bulk of the van – I took her and shut the door, and carried her down the staircase. I laid her on the bed, propped her head on a soft pillow and brought her some cold water. I held the glass to her lips, and then wiped up the slabber from her chin and neck. She mumbled something, all thick-voiced and wet. Her mouth was rubbery and out of control, I could tell, but by now her eyes were concentrated and very alive. She looked at me, she glanced right and left to take in the room.

‘Relax, Jojo,' I said. ‘A few minutes and everything will be all right. Here, drink some water.'

But she clamped her chin and gave me a spiky glare, sharp enough to take my head off. She tried to speak, and again it turned into a saliva-dribbling slur. I cleaned her up, and then I sat back and looked at her. She was thinner than I remembered from the photographs, a little pinched around the lips. In the pictures she had always had a luxurious red mouth, and for the last many years I had always imagined her like that, every day. But that was all right. This was the early morning for her, she had just woken up and was heading to her gym, she hadn't had time to put on her lipstick. I understood about women and their make-up. Jojo looked a little older than I had expected, I hadn't known about the lines on her neck, or the wrinkly skin on her hands. But she was attractive all the same, a taut, well-maintained item with thick, highlighted brown hair and a slim body. I could see her flat stomach where her top had ridden up a bit, over the low-slung jeans.

She saw me looking, and she raised her head from the pillow. This time, she paused before each word, and formed it with exacting, laborious precision. She said, ‘Who. Are. You?'

I clapped my chin, and laughed. ‘Arre, Jojo. Sorry, yaar. I never told you. I changed my face. For security reasons. I am Ganesh. Ganesh Gaitonde. Gaitonde.'

She shook her head. ‘Zo-ya said.'

So Zoya had told her about my surgery. Never trust a woman with your security. Maybe I should have had that kutiya Zoya shot after I had discarded her. But never mind that randi, here was Jojo still quite scared and suspicious and hostile. I had to convince her that I was me, that I was the Ganesh Gaitonde who spoke to her every day. Was my voice that different, was it so altered by distance and electricity? But no matter. I had to become Ganesh Gaitonde for Jojo in this face-to-face meeting, even though both our faces were changed from those we had imagined during our long friendship. I told her about how we had first spoken to each other, so long ago, and how we had become yaars. I told her about the girls that she had sent to me, and the jokes we had made afterwards. I told her about the virgins I had taken, and the payments that I made to her for their freshness. I told her about the projects I had funded for her, and about the problems I had talked to her about. I told her how she had cursed me, and called me ‘Gaitonde'.