The two men began walking towards the lush gardens, crossing students who had degrees in their hands and the promise of a bright future on their faces. Dhoble’s face, however, was drowning in worry. He had no clue what Khush Dil had up his sleeve at this time.

  ‘Mahesh, allow me to tell you a story,’ Khush Dil said.

  What choice did Dhoble have except to listen?

  Khush Dil continued without waiting for an answer: ‘I once took on the job of stealing a classified document from a secure facility in Lebanon …’

  He had first conducted a recce of the facility, noting the placement of the security guards and the cameras’ blind spots. In the cover of the night, he’d managed to breach the facility and get his hands on the file. But just as he was about to exit the facility with the file hidden in his jacket, he was apprehended by the guards, who beat the living hell out of him and locked him in a cell.

  ‘Now I was flat on the floor of my cell, every bone in my body broken,’ Khush Dil said. ‘I was to face a firing squad at the break of dawn, and I kept waiting for the sun to rise so that it would put me out of my misery.’

  But a miracle happened: the cell door opened and the chief of security of that facility walked inside, holding a copy of the file which Khush Dil had attempted to steal. The chief handed over the copy to Khush Dil.

  ‘You came here for this information?’ he asked.

  Khush Dil looked over the file. It contained the information he had come looking for. ‘Yes.’

  ‘It can be yours,’ the chief said, ‘for one million dollars.’

  Khush Dil was stunned. He had risked life and limb when the file could have been obtained for less than half of what he was being paid for this job. He asked to make a phone call, which the chief allowed. A few hours later, the money was deposited in an account number provided by the chief, and Khush Dil had walked out of the cell with a fractured leg. But he was alive and he had the file; it was all that mattered. The chief got his money and the original file was still secure because he had provided Khush Dil with a copy, so nobody suspected him either.

  ‘This mission happened early in my career,’ Khush Dil said. ‘And it taught me an important lesson. One should not risk one’s life for a problem which money can solve.’

  ‘Why are you telling me all this?’ Dhoble asked.

  ‘Because for five million dollars, you will provide me access to the IARC computer network. My job will only take a few minutes. No one will ever know.’

  ‘Are you out of your fucking mind?!’ Dhoble said, struggling to keep his voice down. ‘I am not going to betray my country.’

  ‘Easy, tiger.’ Khush Dil leaned towards Dhoble’s ear. He took out his phone and played a video file. ‘You don’t want your son to see this.’

  The video was a recording from the previous night, of Dhoble screwing the young foreigner. Dhoble knew he was done for. Khush Dil had royally fucked him. There were close-up frames of Dhoble snorting lines of cocaine from the dressing table. It looked disgusting on camera – he with his fat and hairy stomach mounting the slim young girl. And then, there were the drugs and the alcohol. All of this would burn his reputation to the ground.

  ‘I’ve had the good fortune of tracking your career, Mahesh,’ said Khush Dil.

  Dhoble’s career was a distinguished one. Before being posted to the IARC, he had served with the Anti-Narcotics Cell and gained massive coverage in the media for wiping out drug cartels and the peddlers from the streets of Mumbai. Huge quantities of cocaine and heroin were seized under his supervision. From nightclubs and rave parties, Dhoble had confiscated sizable quantities of Mephedrone, also known as 4-methyl ephedrone in scientific parlance and Meow Meow among its consumers.

  But no one had noticed that the seizures were being recorded in smaller quantities than the actual, or that drugs were being pilfered from the storerooms of the Anti-Narcotics Cell. Dhoble had discreetly distributed the drugs he had confiscated back in the market at higher prices and made a killing out of it.

  ‘Imagine how the home minister will explain your benami land worth Rs 23 crore in Wardha,’ Khush Dil said and pointed to the video. ‘And how will you explain snorting that white powder?’

  Dhoble’s eyes widened. Khush Dil could sense his fear. He went for the kill.

  ‘You were the darling of the media when you closed down illegal brothels on Grant Road in the late 1990s,’ he continued. ‘Imagine how excited they will be to play your sex tape with this young foreigner.’ He paused. ‘What will your wife think?’

  Dhoble had a tough decision to make. He looked dazed and confused.

  ‘Let me show the video to your son and his friends.’ Khush Dil began moving towards the spot where Dhoble’s son was talking to his batchmates with a big smile on his face. ‘They can help you decide your future course of action.’

  Dhoble grabbed Khush Dil by the arm. ‘Okay … okay,’ he pleaded in a broken voice. ‘I’ll do what you want.’

  Khush Dil patted him on the back. ‘Good choice, my man.’ He turned around to leave. ‘See you back in Mumbai.’

  As KD walked away, leaving a devastated Dhoble in his wake, he sent a single word message to Hafsa.

  ‘Mubarak.’

  24

  The gym’s air-conditioner provided no respite. Asiya’s heart was burning with the heat of a thousand suns. With each repetition of the deadlift, she felt the pain rip through her muscles. Her stoic reflection stared back from the mirror. But in her mind there was just one image, that of Ajay; and the smile she imagined on his face caused her chest to swell with deep, passionate hatred.

  She took a deep breath as she lifted a 140-pound barbell from the floor and straightened her back. She locked her hips and knees as she held the weight. Beads of sweat dripped down her neck.

  She dropped the weight with a massive sound of clanging of plates on each sight. For a slender woman like her, lifting four plates of forty-five pounds on each side was quite a challenge. Asiya’s rage had made the weight seem much lighter.

  However, this weight was nothing compared to the load she had carried since she was barely out of her teens, for the last twelve years.

  She remembered the night clearly – the first time she saw Ajay from her hiding place in the Abbottabad mansion, amidst all the chaos and confusion. The first thing she’d noticed were his eyes, which burned with an unusual intensity. But what also caught her attention was the way in which Ajay held his gun.

  Most soldiers or policemen held their pistol with one hand and supported it with the other, placing the palm of the supporting hand directly below the butt of their pistol. Ajay, however, held the wrist of his gun hand with his supporting hand. It was something that had stuck in her memory.

  She had spent years trying to figure out the identity of the masked man with the peculiar way of holding his gun, but it was only after news of the encounter in Kashmir was published that she found him. Any good spy always reads the newspapers of the enemy nation, and Asiya would make it a point to peruse all the Indian newspapers that she could get her hands on. The Kashmir encounter had made the headlines in every major newspaper, and some of them carried pictures of the security team. Although the men wore masks to hide their identities, the leader was holding his pistol in the same way: with his left hand gripping his right wrist.

  From then on, it was just the matter of tapping the right sleeper agents to ascertain his identity. The Indian intelligence community did not even have an inkling of how deeply the K-e-M had infiltrated their ranks. As soon as she found out his name, she went online and tracked him down on social media. His face made her heart skip a beat. She knew that face. She had seen this man before; he used to accompany the doctor on his visits to the mansion.

  By this time, her plan in Mumbai was well underway. She already had a fully functioning cover as a lawyer, and fate dealt her a good hand when Ajay came to the city to investigate Chandrashekhar’s death. The next step was to get close to Ajay by defending the accused arrested by the NIA.

  The rest was easy. Asiya was as attractive with her face uncovered as she was lethal with her face hidden, and also fully aware of the effect she had on men. At the first sign of attraction from Ajay, she had shown ten-fold reciprocation and reeled him in.

  During the inception of the K-e-M, the sisterhood had learned one very valuable lesson: being a woman was more of a strength than a weakness. Granted, nature had made them physically slightly weaker than men, but this was nothing that could not be taken care of with the right training. Recruits were taken to Pakistan via Dubai and then to a top-secret training camp in Afghanistan, where the fiercest of fighters imparted the most gruelling training to them. For three months, they were stripped of all their dignity and made to perform drills and exercises that made their very cores ache. Half of them ran away within the first month. But they had nowhere to go, being trapped in a foreign land with no documents. The only option was the illegal flesh trade, so most of them came back. Once they did, they were subjected to even more cruel training. Day after day, their bodies were toughened while their souls were drained of any humanity. At the end of their training period, brutal exercise and constant alertness became a way of life.

  Then followed another three-month training period in another camp where they were taught to dismantle and assemble guns, make and defuse bombs and use daggers and other tools of close combat. All the while, they were given good food, expensive skincare and massages, so that their looks were not marred by their hard lives. They learned to take care of their God-given beauty.

  The last month was a crash course in the art of seduction. When it came to women, according to their leader, men would always be dogs with their tongues hanging out. All they needed was a push in the right direction. They didn’t need more than a month to understand how to do that.

  The K-e-M had spent months planning the double attack – the hit on Kumar coupled with the bomb blast at Utsav. Asiya was always meant to ‘find’ the bomb exactly when the city’s streets would be clogged with traffic following Kumar’s death. A police commissioner getting shot would automatically mean most of the city’s police force rushing to the crime scene. As a result, the Bomb Detection and Disposal Squad would never make it to the Utsav venue in time. The K-e-M had recently learned how to put together a time bomb with its timer inside the bomb, as opposed to face up, with the numbers counting down for everyone to see. This way, no one would know when the bomb was supposed to go off and even though civilians would have been cleared away, the bomb would have taken dozens of policemen with it. The police force had always been the target.

  Only Ajay fucking Rajvardhan had first averted Kumar’s death and then managed to get to Utsav in time to defuse the bomb. Thinking on her feet, Asiya knew what she had to do. As soon as he put the bomb out of action, she had rushed to Ajay and hugged him, and the way he hugged her back told her all she needed to know. For added effect, she planted a kiss on his lips and the bastard was hooked that very moment. Policeman or no policeman, few people could stay strong in the face of such intense display of affection immediately after a life-threatening situation. It was basic human psychology.

  Asiya still had no idea what had given her away and how Ajay had gotten wise to her true intentions. But that didn’t matter anymore. Their plans were already underway.

  Now, as Asiya clanged the weights down on the mat for the final time, she allowed herself to smile. Ajay would die such a painful death that it would send a shiver down the spine of all humanity.

  25

  It was early in the morning but the IARC was already teeming with activity. Research was a continuous process and they couldn’t afford any breaks. Work never stopped here, with people coming in shifts.

  As a result, the security of the place, too, had to be monitored round the clock. Dhoble ran a tight ship. The former cop had always prided himself on his commitment to his work and was known to be a strict taskmaster. His subordinates lived in mortal fear of being caught napping on the job.

  When he took up this assignment, Dhoble decided that he would do it with all his heart. He had already made enough ‘extra income’ in his previous job to ensure a quality education for his only son and a comfortable retired life, and this second innings paid much better anyway, which meant there was no reason to be corrupt.

  That is until the cursed Khush Dil Khan came back into his life, Dhoble, now back in India, thought bitterly as he paced up and down the parking lot of his workplace.

  He glanced at his watch for the hundredth time, absurdly hoping that time would pass slower if he kept tracking it. It didn’t. At exactly 8 a.m., a car slowed to a stop and two men got out. One was Khush Dil and the other was a young man Dhoble had never seen before. Both were clad in crisp formals. Khush Dil’s beard was neatly trimmed and shaped and the other man was cleanshaven. Their leather shoes shone in the morning sunlight. They walked to where Dhoble was standing, and without a word, he turned around and led them inside.

  He signed in the two men as visitors, got them passes and ushered them through a door. They went to the central server room. There were five armed security guards standing at various points. The senior-most came forward, concern written all over his face.

  ‘Everything okay, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘We’ll find out, won’t we?’ Dhoble said sternly. ‘I’m conducting a surprise security check. These are independent cyber experts who shall look for any breach in our system.’

  The senior guard’s concern doubled.

  ‘There’s been no lapse from our side, sir …’

  ‘You will kindly let me be the judge of that, Sakpal!’ Dhoble growled. ‘Now open the door.’

  Sakpal complied immediately. He swiped his key card and the doors to the server room slid open. Dhoble and the two men stepped inside and the doors sucked shut.

  ‘Nicely done!’ Khush Dil exclaimed softly, patting Dhoble’s shoulder. Dhoble shrugged off his hand angrily.

  ‘Make it fast,’ was all he said.

  The other man, who was none other than the hacker Nick, was already unzipping his backpack and removing a laptop. He processed to fish out several cables and plugged them into his computer, inserting the other ends into various jacks in the central server. He then sat down on the floor and starting tapping away at the keyboard.

  ‘Why, man,’ Dhoble said softly to KD. ‘Why this? Do you realize what it is we do over here?’

  Khush Dil leaned against a wall.

  ‘You know how I started in this line of work, I presume?’

  Dhoble nodded. KD’s father, Reham Dil Khan, had been one of don Karim Lala’s closest associates, so close that he had been in the front of Lala’s funeral procession when the gangster died.

  In the late 1980s, a young Khush Dil was put on a flight to the UK to study at Oxford University. Every month, his father would send him money through hawala operators, which ultimately sent the young man spiralling into the world of crime.

  Khush Dil was fascinated by how suitcases full of money could be moved across continents with codes written on the back of currency notes and telephone calls which lasted only a few seconds. Soon, he too entered the hawala business.

  But one of the deals went wrong in 1991 and Khush Dil was deported to India, where he was charged under the prevailing foreign exchange management laws. While the trial was in progress, he was lodged at Arthur Road Jail. An ordinary youngster would have learned a lesson or two about the law by now, but Khush Dil had been brought up in a family that had always worn a jail sentence like a badge of honour. He had grown up listening to his father talk about how to survive in prison. So, the incarceration was much like a ritual to announce his arrival into the world of crime.

  There was only one more high-profile prisoner in Arthur Road apart from KD at the time – a slightly built middle-aged man named Harshesh Mehra, who was imprisoned for a series of financial frauds that had left the stock market in ruins. Mehra had no backing or godfather, but he had a lot of money hidden away, which made him the prime target for many an old salt in the prison gang hierarchy.

  KD immediately saw an opportunity. Using his connections to the Karim Lala gang as well as his considerable physical strength, he appointed himself as Mehra’s personal bodyguard. He would walk alongside the nervous Mehra as the latter traversed the risk-ridden corridors of the human zoo and rebuff any predatory attempts with a well-aimed punch to the nose or gut.

  Mehra took a liking to the brawny youngster and the duo began spending more time together. During a casual conversation, Mehra mentioned that he had Rs 2,000 crore of Indian currency stuck in the Cayman Islands. He wanted to move this money to Hong Kong first and then to various banks in India. Mehra’s network was already under the scanner, so he was looking for a man who could pull off this job. Khush Dil volunteered for the task even as Mehra’s jaw nearly hit the floor on seeing the young man’s confidence.

  ‘But,’ Khush Dil said, ‘I need my commission for the job.’

  ‘How much?’ Mehra asked.

  ‘Ten per cent.’

  For a man who was sitting on one of the tallest stacks of currency notes in the country, Mehra was a tough customer. ‘Too much,’ he replied. ‘Five is fair.’

  The two men shook hands. As a litmus test, Khush Dil was tasked to move the first tranche of Rs 50 crore. He began relaying information to his partners in the UK through the lawyers who would come to meet him at the jail, who were promised a good cut. Mehra was pleasantly shocked when his contacts confirmed that the first tranche had landed in their benami accounts, which had not been discovered by the cops.

  And then, over a period of two months, KD moved the entire Rs 2,000 crore to India. Mehra stayed good on his promise and paid Rs 100 crore to KD. So, by the time KD stepped out of Arthur Road Jail after being acquitted of all charges for lack of evidence, he was already a rich man. The first thing he did was to purchase a sea-facing villa in Bandra and a Rolls-Royce.