‘I might have,’ Moshe said.

  ‘Come on!’ Ajay replied. ‘How long have we known each other?’

  ‘The duration of our association alone does not help me, my man,’ Moshe said. ‘There has to be an equal give and take.’

  ‘Fine,’ Ajay said. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘A friend wants to come to India. He needs a visa issued without any hassle.’

  ‘Consider it done,’ Ajay responded. He knew better than to ask who this ‘friend’ was. ‘Now tell me.’

  ‘A flying bird from Tel Aviv told me that you should be on the lookout for a group of women who are bent on creating anarchy in India.’

  ‘Women?’

  ‘Yes. Several women have joined ISIS. Female militants played a key role in the Easter bombings in Sri Lanka. So they are closer to home than you’d want. For all you know, they are already hiding in the underbelly of this city.’

  The information was in line with Kumar’s assessment of the situation. Ajay had a hunch that Nazneen was definitely involved with this sleeper cell. He thanked Moshe for the lead.

  Walking away, Ajay glanced at the majestic dome of the Taj hotel, which had caught fire during the 26/11 attacks. The image of the burning dome had become a defining moment of the incident. Now, a flock of pigeons fluttered over it. Ajay thought of the many people who lived in this city, including the woman he was beginning to love. He wondered to what extent he would need to go to keep her and this city safe.

  11

  From his front-row seat, Commissioner Kumar enjoyed the rhythmic beat of music booming through the loudspeakers as two Bollywood stars danced to the beats along with a large troupe. This year’s edition of Utsav, the annual cultural festival of the Mumbai Police, had top actors and actresses performing. The audience included civilians and police officers.

  Asiya was seated a few rows behind Kumar. She had been invited as a member of the law fraternity.

  The film industry never cribbed about performing for Utsav each year. Bollywood was already abuzz with plans for a biopic based on Kumar’s stint with the ATS. The entire equation was based on trade, not unlike the shady world of espionage. When Bollywood’s first couple had needed police protection following threat calls from the underworld, Kumar arranged Sten gun-toting personal security officers for them without any red tape. Months ago, a reigning actress was in extreme fear after receiving an extortion call, which was traced to Malaysia. The matter had been resolved only after Kumar’s personal intervention. The film industry, in turn, obliged the police force by performing at their annual festival. It had turned out to be a good evening so far. But Kumar’s jovial mood was about to turn sour.

  Just as the performance on the stage came to an end and the audience broke into thunderous applause, Pratap came hurrying towards his boss. ‘Sir,’ he said. ‘A suspicious bag has been found at the Central Mall. Bomb squad is on the way.’

  Kumar immediately rose from his seat. ‘Let’s go.’

  The show was allowed to continue as Kumar did not want to cause any panic. The message was relayed to the home minister’s office. Pratap and Kumar dashed to the commissioner’s official car, where the driver had already turned on the engine. Kumar rushed into the back seat while Pratap settled next to the driver. The siren was turned on and the commissioner’s car sped towards the Central Mall.

  At that moment, Ajay was driving through Mahalaxmi towards the Police Gymkhana. He was looking forward to attending the Utsav event, as it would provide him with some much-needed respite. He was also secretly hoping to meet Asiya, as he knew that prominent figures from the legal community were routinely invited. He found himself thinking about how she had such a grip over a wide variety of subjects, which made her all the more attractive to him, when his phone rang. Ajay touched a button on his Bluetooth earpiece.

  ‘How’s it going, my man?’ Moshe said from the other end.

  ‘It’s going,’ Ajay said. ‘Your friend get in okay?’

  It had been a week since his meeting with Moshe, during which time he had arranged for a visa to be granted to the ‘friend’.

  ‘Funny you should mention him,’ Moshe said.

  ‘I can’t do your friend any more favours, Moshe,’ Ajay replied.

  ‘Ah, no, my man. It is my friend who is going to do you a favour.’

  ‘O … okay …’

  ‘Listen carefully. My friend tells me that a pretty dangerous man has been hired to eliminate your police chief.’

  Ajay slammed the brakes.

  ‘What the hell, Moshe?’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Just listen. Apparently, the plan is to lure the Mumbai commissioner to some mall with a bomb scare and kill him as soon as he shows up. The assassin is an expert sniper and if your commissioner gets within half a kilometre of him, let’s just say the city will need to look for a new police chief.’

  Ajay slammed his car into gear. He knew better than to doubt Moshe.

  ‘Moshe, my man,’ he said. ‘I owe you not one, not two, but three.’

  Ajay cut the call and speed-dialled the Mumbai control room.

  ‘DIG Ajay, NIA. Any major calls tonight?’

  ‘Suspicious bag ka call hai, sir,’ the officer at the control room answered. ‘Central Mall, Mumbai Central.’

  ‘Fuck,’ Ajay exclaimed. ‘Fuck!’

  His mind began churning. Truly, he had no time to lose. He tried calling both Kumar and Pratap, but telecom networks were already jammed as news about the bomb scare had begun to spread. Ajay was not very far from the signal where the ambush had been set up. But the traffic was constraining him. At this rate, he would only make it to the police commissioner’s funeral. He honked, but the road ahead was congested. However, the other side of the street was empty. He had an idea.

  Ajay moved to the rightmost lane. And at the first possible opportunity, he steered the vehicle over the divider and turned on his siren at full blast. The tyres rumbled as the car landed on the wrong side of the road. Now his training took over as he began driving the wrong way. At the academy, they had taught him high-speed driving. Soon, he was swerving left and right while keeping an eye out for the commissioner’s vehicle, which could easily be identified from the insignia above its number plate. He was cutting close to the vehicles, dodging them at critical moments. Then he could see the traffic signal ahead and his eyes were all over the place, on the road, over the top of buildings. He heard the approaching siren of the commissioner’s car and saw it at a distance. Ajay moved his car on course for a direct collision with the commissioner’s.

  From the terrace of a high-rise, where he had taken position an hour ago, the sniper also spotted Kumar’s car and trapped the commissioner in the crosshairs of his rifle. He factored in the wind speed and decided to follow the target until the car slowed down at the signal. Then he would fire a bullet straight into the commissioner’s head. And, with the second shot, he would take out Pratap.

  Kumar’s driver was aghast at the sight of the incoming vehicle. He tried changing lanes, but Ajay matched him move for move. The zigzag motion of the car threw off the sniper’s aim. Before Kumar or Pratap could react, Ajay rammed his vehicle head-on to the commissioner’s.

  At that moment, the sniper fired. A bullet shot through the air. An empty cartridge clanked to the floor. The bullet broke through the glass and hit the driver on his arm. Kumar quickly exited from the other side with his pistol drawn. He took cover behind the car. Pratap and the injured driver also moved out of the vehicle and formed a protective cover around their boss. Soon, they were joined by Ajay, who had also drawn his weapon out. He placed a hand on Pratap’s shoulder and Pratap nodded to convey that the commissioner was unhurt.

  Pratap and Ajay approached the front and tail end of the car respectively, keeping their heads low. Ajay studied the angle of the bullet and had a good sense of the vantage point. His eyes fell on the terrace of the high-rise where the sniper was perched. Movement. He subtly pointed out the location to Pratap.

  The sniper realized that his cover had been blown. He quickly dumped the weapon and activated his escape plan.

  ‘There’s the bastard,’ Ajay said to Pratap. ‘Go get him.’

  Pratap dashed towards the building.

  When Pratap reached the high-rise, he noticed a suspicious man in a black T-shirt and jeans hurriedly making his way towards the street. The suspect had a hood over his head and seemed to be avoiding eye contact. He was trying to hail a cab. Training told Pratap that this was his man, but experience also told him that appearances could be deceptive. He needed to be doubly sure. Pratap drew out his pistol and aimed it at the suspect.

  ‘Hey,’ he shouted. ‘Stop!’

  The hooded man immediately made a run for his life. Now, Pratap was sure. He thought of firing, but too many civilians were in the way. Chaos descended upon the place as people realized that a shootout was about to occur. Women and children began shouting. Pratap decided against endangering the lives of innocent citizens. He sprinted towards the suspect, jumped over the hood of a vehicle and began chasing on foot. The suspect made a quick turn and entered what eventually turned out to be a labyrinth of interconnected streets.

  Pratap was close on the suspect’s heels. A regular at many of Mumbai’s marathons, he was up for the chase. He could hear the echo of his boots as the suspect moved swiftly from one street to another. For a moment, the hooded man disappeared from his sight. Pratap slowed to a stop and looked left and right. And then he saw the man climbing up a boundary wall. Pratap managed to scale the wall in his first attempt. The suspect had inadvertently ventured into an empty, open space. Pratap now had a clear aim at the target. He fired a warning shot in the air with his 9mm Glock semi-automatic pistol.

  ‘Stop !’ Pratap said. ‘Else I’ll blow your brains out.’

  The hooded man froze. With his back turned towards Pratap, he placed his hands on his knees and began panting for breath. Pratap could hear his laboured breathing in the air. But if he thought that the assassin had surrendered, he was completely mistaken. The suspect pulled out a Russian pistol which he had hidden in the front of his jeans. He turned around and took aim at Pratap.

  But Pratap had seen this movement. And he was the first to press the trigger, firing three shots at the suspect. Each bullet pierced through the sniper’s chest, one after the other. His blood began spreading over the black T-shirt. He thudded to the ground. Keeping his pistol aimed at the suspect, Pratap approached the fallen criminal. The man was dead. Pratap wiped the sweat off his face and called the control room so that the body could be sent for a postmortem.

  ‘Sir …’ the control room officer said. ‘It might take some time, sir.’

  ‘Why?’ Pratap barked.

  ‘A bomb has been found at the Police Gymkhana, sir.’

  ‘WHAT THE FUCK!’ Pratap yelled.

  Ajay looked at the blue bag from a distance.

  He had received a call while he was shepherding Kumar into his vehicle. According to the control room officer, advocate Asiya Shaikh had spotted a blue bag under a seat and raised an alarm, after which one of the cops at the Gymkhana had informed the control room. The Bomb Detection and Disposal Squad was on its way, but Ajay got there first.

  ‘I can defuse it, sir,’ Ajay said to Kumar. ‘I have been trained in explosives and devices. If I have your permission …’

  Kumar made a quick decision. ‘Granted.’

  Ajay asked for a torchlight and a constable arranged one from the toolkit of one of the vehicles parked in the compound. And Ajay already had a Swiss knife, which doubled as a keychain. He would need the knife and the screwdriver from it.

  Before he began making his way towards the bag, Ajay hugged Asiya and wondered if this was the last time. Asiya’s eyes were moist with emotion as she clung to him. He kissed her on the forehead. Halfheartedly, she moved out of his way.

  Slowly, Ajay began to walk towards the bag. Sweat poured down his ribs. But he was in control of his breathing. He entered the row where the bomb was placed and bent to look at the bag.

  He flashed the torch under the seat to ensure that the bag itself was not booby-trapped. Then he slowly pulled the bag and placed his ear on top of the zip. Tick. Tick. Tick. He gulped and examined the zipper with his fingers until he was sure that there was no trigger mechanism attached to it. Then he opened the bag.

  The device was wrapped in a newspaper. He removed those layers slowly until he discovered a big box which was blinking with lights. He used his hands to signal to Kumar that he had found the bomb and it was active. But he didn’t look at his colleagues or the woman he loved, who had now covered her mouth with her hand and was on the verge of tears.

  Ajay checked the box’s lid again to make sure that taking off the lid would not set off the device. Then he used the screwdriver from the Swiss knife to unscrew the lid. He gulped. Five wires of different colours were mangled together. He would have to cut three of them in the right sequence to defuse the bomb. Using the experience he had gained at the academy and in the field, he decoded the sequence. The first wire to be cut was definitely the green one. He cut it off in a jiffy. But even in his confidence, he was joyous that he hadn’t been blown to shreds. The second wire to be cut was the red. This time, his fingers trembled as he slit the wire with his Swiss knife. Again, he was relieved to be breathing. He was a little unsure of the third and final wire to be cut. Which was it? Black? Or blue?

  Sweat flowed off his forehead into his eyes. Under the pressure of the situation, Ajay was facing a hard time even telling black from blue. Tick. Tick. Tick. He used the torch to check the colour of the wires again. He cast one last look at Asiya and his eyes closed as he finally cut the blue wire. He expected an explosion but … the timer stopped.

  Ajay raised his thumb in the air. A cheer ran through the auditorium. As he made his way back towards the exit, Asiya rushed towards him and hugged him again. He also wrapped his arms around her. She planted a peck on his lips and he kissed her back. In the backdrop of the thunderous applause from his colleagues, including the commissioner of police, Ajay suddenly knew that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with this woman.

  12

  In her safe house, Hafsa was pacing across the room. The TV was switched on. Although the K-e-M had planted only one bomb at the police fest, she believed its impact would be equivalent to the thirteen explosions of the Black Friday bombings in March 1993.

  The 1993 bombings were deemed to be a response to the communal riots that had followed the demolition of the Babri mosque in Uttar Pradesh. Until then, it was unfathomable that an extremely large quantity of RDX – called kala sabun in local parlance – could be smuggled into the city, that devices could be assembled in factories and planted across sensitive points, timed to explode around a particular hour of the day. After 12 March 1993, Mumbai was repeatedly subjected to terror attacks, each of which would inevitably make it to the front page of every national newspaper.

  Hafsa grinned. Her plan was to cause maximum damage to the police personnel. Yes, it was an act of war. She could imagine the headlines, the attention it would draw from the national and international media. She was basking in anticipation of her victory when the news anchor, who had been screaming about the bomb, stopped mid-sentence, listening to the feedback through her earpiece. A second later, Hafsa’s jaw dropped.

  ‘DIG Ajay of the National Investigation Agency has, just half an hour ago, defused the bomb that was planted at the Utsav venue …’

  Hafsa’s nostrils flared at the sight of the policeman she hated the most. A vein in her forehead throbbed. Her head pounded as if someone had hammered a nail into her skull. Unable to control her rage, she picked up a candlestand from the dressing table and threw it towards the TV, shattering it right in the centre. Her heavy breathing resounded in the room.

  After her fury had found an outlet, she got to work. One by one, she started dialling numbers from memory, using a different SIM card each time. It was slow work, but patience was one of the many qualities that made Hafsa the seasoned operative that she was. By the end of ninety minutes, she had called up all her closest confidantes, instructing them to gather at the safe house right away.

  By midnight, all the top-ranking operatives of the K-e-M were assembled in the basement of the boutique shop. Over a period of time, Hafsa had built a complex web of connections, all of whom had managed to camouflage their activities.

  Hafsa stared at the grim faces around her. She switched on the projector and turned off the lights. A visual of a mushroom cloud rising in the air showed up on the screen.

  ‘We must not lose sight of our goal,’ Hafsa said. ‘The destruction of this city is inevitable. We will destroy the enemy with their own weapons.’

  Someone in the room asked a question: ‘But how will we get our hands on a nuclear weapon?’

  ‘This plan has been in motion for years,’ Hafsa said. ‘One of our most efficient operatives had trapped three Indian scientists and gleaned a lot of information from them. We will use this information to obtain the design of the prototype being developed under Operation Trishul. And based on this design, the weapon will be built across the border. Then it will be disassembled and smuggled into the hands of a guerrilla group who will fire the weapon into the heart of Mumbai.’

  ‘But this is not going to be easy—’

  ‘War is not easy,’ Hafsa scorned. ‘War demands blood. You think it was easy for the Iraqis when America invaded them for the second time?’

  Hafsa picked up a pistol and held it in the air in a pose which was strikingly similar to the manner in which Saddam Hussein used to address his followers. She knew that like most dictators, Saddam’s oratory had had great influence over his people.

  ‘Our enemies want to battle against us?’ Hafsa said with her gun still raised. ‘Fine. We will give them the Umm al-Muharib!’

  Hafsa had even picked this term from Saddam’s dictionary. When Arabs want to signify something of great importance, they usually associate it with ‘mother’. In the Arabic language, ‘Umm’ means mother and ‘Muharib’ roughly means a battle. So, Saddam had called the fight against the Americans the ‘mother of all battles’.