Ajay’s blood ran cold.

  15

  A police jeep picked up Ajay from the airport. They sped off towards Colaba, where Moshe used to live in a nondescript house in the bylanes. It was a fair distance away from Chabad House, which served as the outreach centre for the Jews in Mumbai and had been one of the targets of the 26/11 attacks.

  By the time Ajay arrived, Pratap had cordoned off the area. Barricades had been put up. There was considerable police presence on the streets. The constable parked the car near the bylane where Moshe lived and Ajay disembarked from the vehicle. He acknowledged the salutes from the other policemen as he walked towards the building.

  A fleet of cars was parked on both sides of the road. Shop owners around the complex had downed their shutters for the day. Ajay could understand their predicament. ‘Police ka lafda nahi chahiye (we want no trouble with the cops)’ was the most common refrain of civilians everywhere. Ajay climbed up the wooden stairs and squatted under the police tape to enter Moshe’s house. One of the junior policemen brought over a pair of non-porous gloves and Ajay slipped them onto his hands.

  Pratap was dictating his observations to a constable, who was making notes in a red diary. The living room was filled with cops. The body was not visible to Ajay yet. He found it ironic that people turned into bodies after their death. Their names were written in police records, but their identities were reduced to statistics and euphemisms.

  ‘Where is it?’ Ajay asked.

  Pratap led him to a corridor that went to the other rooms. To kill an Israeli operative was not an easy task. A foreign-made pistol was lying a few feet away from his body, which was sprawled in the middle of the corridor.

  Moshe’s gold-plated spectacles were still on. The lens had cracked when he had fallen to the floor.

  ‘Who reported it to the police?’ Ajay asked.

  ‘The Israeli Embassy asked us to check in on him,’ Pratap said. ‘His wife had called them up.’

  ‘Where is his wife?’

  ‘In Haifa,’ Pratap said. ‘She’d left for Israel only four days ago. The two were on a video call in the bedroom when Moshe told her that perhaps someone was at the door. He disconnected and never called back. He didn’t answer her subsequent calls for hours either. Troubled by the sudden events, she alerted her embassy.’

  ‘Did the murderer make a forced entry?’

  ‘Yes,’ Pratap said. ‘She picked the door lock.’

  ‘She?’ Ajay said. ‘Interesting.’

  ‘There’s CCTV footage captured by the store on the opposite side of the road. A woman with a limp made her way into the apartment around the time the murder happened.’

  ‘Do you have an ID on the suspect?’

  ‘No,’ Pratap said. ‘She was wearing a burqa.’

  The gears suddenly started turning in Ajay’s head. A group of women in burqas had been also spotted in the CCTV footage recovered from the site of Chandrashekhar’s murder. Plus, there was the warning from Moshe himself about a module of women being active in Mumbai.

  Still, Ajay was not the kind of officer who would solely rely on his instincts.

  ‘Forensics picked up any fingerprints?’ he asked.

  ‘They’ve soaked the place with Ninhydrin,’ Pratap said. ‘But not one damn print could be obtained. The killer was wearing gloves.’

  Ninhydrin was the chemical forensic teams used to detect fingerprints.

  They reached Moshe’s study. The killer hadn’t left behind a lot of mess, but she hadn’t bothered cleaning up either. Moshe’s desk had been ransacked. Papers were strewn all over. But it wasn’t clear if the killer had come looking for a document or if she had tried to stage the crime scene after the killing. On one of the walls, Moshe had put up the Star of David, symbolic of his Jewish identity.

  There was a certain tension in the room. Ajay asked for the room to be cleared, except for Pratap. Then he took a moment to breathe and began to recreate the scene with inputs from Pratap. From the CCTV footage that the JCP showed him on his cellphone, Ajay could see that the killer had walked towards the apartment. She had climbed up the stairs. At that time, Moshe must have been engaged in the video call with his wife. Forensics had studied the dents and scuff marks around the main door’s keyhole and confirmed that an improvised lockpick had been used. It could have taken the killer anywhere between ten to twenty seconds to break in. And, according to Pratap, Moshe did not hear the noise because he was wearing earphones during the video call. The earphones were still connected to his laptop, which was inside his bedroom.

  Ajay put himself in Moshe’s position. The killer would have slightly pushed the door open, making as little noise as possible. However, a trained spy like Moshe would have instantly detected the shift in the air – he was that good – and quickly told his wife that he was going to check on the door.

  He would have been stealthy, trying to ensure that the intruder did not figure out his exact position in the three-bedroom house. He would have gone for his weapon – Ajay saw an open drawer in the study, which had probably housed his IWI Masada semi-automatic pistol, the one that was now lying on the floor. Then, a game of cat-and-mouse would have begun.

  From here on, it was pure conjecture, but Ajay let his mind run with it. Moshe would have raised his gun to his shooting position. But he was already at a disadvantage. The killer had taken her position in the living room and aimed her own pistol towards the corridor. As soon as Moshe stepped into the corridor, the killer would have sprung from beyond the wall and fired two bullets to his head.

  Ajay’s eyes circled around the room and came back to a stop near Moshe’s body. Kneeling down, he gently turned his friend’s head around till he saw the two entry wounds. They were bunched very close together, indicating that the killer had superb aim and very stable hands. She had fired the second bullet only to leave nothing to chance.

  Moshe fell in the corridor. He hadn’t been able to return the fire. The killer had walked up to him to make sure he had died. She had probably not established any contact with the dead body to avoid leaving any fingerprints. And then she had rummaged through his documents to look for something crucial. Or she wanted to throw the investigation towards a different track. Pratap had checked with the shopkeepers whether they heard any suspicious noises and no one had heard a sound. It meant that the killer had used a silencer on her pistol.

  Ajay thought again about the killer’s motive. If she had to procure a document, she could have chosen a time when the house was empty. But she had come when the agent was inside and it was nothing short of putting one’s hand into a viper’s pit, because Israeli agents are amongst the deadliest in the world. However, the killer had completed her job with efficiency and walked out of the situation alive. There were no signs to show that she had met with any harm.

  Ajay murmured a prayer under his breath for his fallen friend. He was just finishing it when a memory came rushing back to him.

  ‘My man,’ Moshe had once told Ajay, ‘the secrets I carry will go with me to my grave.’

  ‘And you’re randomly telling me this because?’ Ajay had asked, nonplussed.

  ‘Let’s call it a test,’ Moshe had said, smiling enigmatically. ‘Let’s see if you’re able to decode this puzzle.’

  Ajay stood motionless and thought hard.

  ‘With me to my grave …’

  Ajay turned to the forensics team.

  ‘Are you guys done?’ he asked. The head of the team nodded.

  ‘Turn the body over, please,’ Ajay said and the team obeyed.

  Ajay started searching Moshe’s body carefully. He checked under the shirt collar, then under both shirt sleeves and both legs of his pants, but found nothing.

  ‘I need everyone except Pratap sir out of here, please,’ he said and everyone complied instantly, filing out of the house. Ajay waited for a minute to ensure they were alone before proceeding to undress Moshe completely. The man was very fair, like most Israelis, and his body was largely hairless.

  Ajay went over every inch of his body before turning Moshe over onto his stomach again.

  And then he saw it.

  Tattooed at the base of his spine were two words in very small font. Ajay took a picture with his phone from as close as he could. Then, he enlarged the image with Pratap looking over his shoulder.

  ‘What is it?’ Pratap asked.

  ‘Shem-kha,’ Ajay replied. ‘It’s Hebrew for “your name”.’

  ‘And what the hell does that mean?’

  ‘Let’s find out,’ Ajay said as he stood up and walked over to Moshe’s laptop. He hit the spacebar and a prompt asked him for the password.

  ‘Moshe once told me that he would take his secrets to the grave. Jewish last rites are similar to Islamic ones, where the dead are buried, only in coffins.’

  ‘You’re telling me that Moshe had his laptop’s password tattooed on his back?’ Pratap said incredulously.

  ‘In a way, yes,’ Ajay said as he confidently hit the keys on the keyboard and then hit enter. Pratap watched in wonder as the screen came alive.

  ‘What did you type?’ he asked.

  ‘The Hebrew word for “invincible”, which is the meaning of my name, in English alphabet,’ Ajay replied.

  ‘You know Arabic, Urdu AND Hebrew?’ Pratap asked, impressed.

  ‘Among other languages.’ Ajay chuckled.

  ‘No, wait,’ Pratap said. ‘Of all the people, Moshe tattoos your name on his back?’

  Ajay’s face hardened.

  ‘It’s a recent one,’ he said. ‘He trusted me. I plan to honour that.’

  Even as he was talking, both Ajay and Pratap saw that Moshe’s desktop contained only a single word file. Ajay opened it and a single page opened.

  ‘Okay, smart guy,’ Pratap said, reading the only three words on the screen. ‘What in the blue hell is “Operation Dark Ages”?’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea,’ Ajay replied.

  16

  Ajay was facing an emergency at home. As a seasoned police officer, having held multiple postings at state as well as central government levels, he could tackle any investigation or operation. What he absolutely could not triumph over, try as he might, was his brown leather wallet. He was in the habit of tossing it into whichever open drawer he saw as soon as he came home and hence, every morning, he would have to go looking for it all over his quarters. Every day, he told himself he would decide on a fixed spot to keep it and every night, he would tell himself that he was too tired and would do it tomorrow.

  Growing up in a lower-middle-class household, Ajay was habituated to saving his money to the point of self-deprivation. So far, he had resisted the lure of bribery. His mother had taught him about the sins of graft and the virtues of earning a livelihood free from malice, that did not endanger the lives of others. Ajay had understood this perfectly and his job paid him well enough to sustain his grounded lifestyle.

  But he never skimped when it came to helping others, like paying for an aged relative’s crucial surgery or sponsoring the school fees for the young boy who polished shoes outside the NIA office in Delhi. However, it was a different story when it came to his personal needs. Last month, he’d visited the Heera Panna market near Haji Ali to shop for a new watch and the salesman had shown him a piece which he had instantly liked. The price was just a little beyond his budget, but Ajay had restrained himself and settled for something cheaper. Which was why not being able to find his wallet always gave him a tinge of anxiety.

  Now, Ajay checked the time on his new watch. He was getting late for a meeting with Kumar and Ranawat. But how could he step out without his wallet? A wallet with a wad of notes in its compartments was essential for a man’s confidence. Ajay still hadn’t become comfortable with digital payments. He liked the feeling of hard cash against his fingers. Having grown up without privilege, the feeling of money in his hands gave him a sense of security.

  By the time he had searched half the drawers in his house, including two in the kitchen – he had actually placed his wallet in those more than once – he was suddenly hit by a realization that brought a smile to his lips: he wasn’t living alone anymore.

  ‘Asiya!’ he shouted. ‘Where is my wallet?’

  He could hear the clang of steel utensils from the kitchen, then the subtle thud of her naked feet approaching. His orderly was still on leave and he planned to enjoy the privacy while he could. Living in with a partner was not a luxury available to government servants staying in government quarters, unless they wanted to set tongues wagging across the department.

  Asiya appeared in the doorway. She was holding a ladle in her hand and he noticed that the apron she’d tied around her torso was still spotless. He admired the efficiency with which she cooked.

  Leaning against the doorframe, she put on an expression of playful sternness.

  ‘What are you screaming for?’ she said.

  ‘I can’t find my purse.’

  ‘Call the CBI, no?’ She laughed. ‘File a police complaint.’

  ‘C’mon,’ he said. ‘I’m getting late! The CP has scheduled an important meeting.’

  Asiya stepped forward and slid her wardrobe, right next to his, open. She plucked out the wallet from underneath her dresses.

  ‘Here’, she said. ‘I needed to pay for the groceries last night. So I borrowed the cash from your wallet but forgot to put it back in your drawer.’

  ‘Pickpocketing is a serious crime.’ Ajay grinned and leaned closer. ‘You’ll be arrested. Let me get the handcuffs!’

  ‘Don’t you forget, DIG Ajay,’ she said. ‘I am also a lawyer.’ She pecked his lips and moved back swiftly. ‘And wasn’t someone getting late for a meeting with the CP?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Ajay said. ‘I’ll chargesheet you tonight. But let me file an FIR now.’

  He grabbed her by the arms and they kissed again, but he was aware that there was not much time. Soon he was halfway out of the door and she was halfway back into the kitchen. Both of them cast longing glances at each other. Asiya blew him a kiss and he resisted the urge pluck that kiss out of the air and smack it on his lips like a teenager. He had to get back to being a policeman now. But before that happened, he wanted to imagine living with her for the rest of his life, with two children, one of them was a girl who’d look just like her mother. And he would come back home to all of them in the evening.

  Ajay was smiling from ear to ear as he turned the ignition of his car.

  Sitting in CP Kumar’s office, Ajay tried not to fidget. He was updating Kumar and JCP Pratap on the progress on Moshe’s case. Word from New Delhi was that the Israel Embassy had raised diplomatic hell. Moshe had been operating under unofficial cover and though they couldn’t describe him as an official actor of the state, it was clear that his death had ruffled feathers.

  ‘The job was highly professional,’ Pratap said. ‘Clean. Such efficiency can only come from an assassin of repute. This wasn’t a mafia job with trails of blood all over the place. It was a cold and calculated hit.’ Pratap recollected how Kumar had been attacked by a sniper recently, and the hitman seems to have entered India without even a blip on the radar of the Indian agencies. ‘Perhaps there were two who entered the country at the same time and one of them got Moshe now.’

  Ajay wasn’t convinced. ‘The suspect in Moshe’s murder was in a burqa, yet knew exactly where they were going. I didn’t see any hesitation in their gait. I’d suspect it was someone who had more local knowledge.’

  Kumar had his own theory too. ‘Perhaps the Iranians got him. They are forever fighting the Mossad.’

  Ajay had to agree that it was a possibility. If this was true, it wouldn’t be the first time that the Iranians and the Israelis had washed their dirty linen on Indian streets.

  In 2012, a motorcycle-borne assassin had trailed the car of an Israeli diplomat who was working with the embassy in Delhi. When the car stopped at a signal near Aurangzeb Road, the biker attached a sticky bomb to it and fled the scene. The magnetic device soon exploded. The diplomat sustained shrapnel injuries but survived the attack.

  Around the same time, another bomb was discovered under a car belonging to the Israeli embassy in Georgia. However, the bomb was defused by the Georgian authorities. Perhaps Moshe’s assassination was another such relay between the two warring factions.

  Just then, another thought struck Ajay, something that had been at the back of his mind all day.

  ‘Sir,’ Ajay said. ‘The person we are after may not be an assassin for hire or a trained agent from Iran.’ He paused, and it felt like the longest pause he would ever take in his life as the gears in his head churned furiously.

  ‘In fact, I now have a fairly good idea about the killer’s identity. But I will have to verify my theory.’

  ‘You know something we don’t, Ajay?’ Pratap asked.

  ‘I don’t know it yet,’ Ajay replied. ‘But I’m meeting a gait analysis expert this evening, and I just thought of something else I need to ask him. Depending on his answer, sir,’ Ajay said, addressing the last bit to both Kumar and Pratap, ‘I shall have an update for you by this time tomorrow.’

  Kumar was staring hard at him.

  ‘Ajay,’ he finally said. ‘I understand you’re a spy, and I understand that compartmentalizing information is like second nature to you. But if there is something happening in my city that I need to know about, then I want to know it before anyone else does. I am very serious about this.’

  ‘Sir, if this is what I think it is, you will be the first to know,’ Ajay assured him.

  17

  If Ajay could kick himself, he would.

  The thought had started forming in his head even as he was talking to Kumar and Pratap, but it still took time to form. When it did, it took all his strength and restraint to not jump out of his chair and scream.

  The discussion about Moshe’s murder had got him thinking about the suspect in the burqa, and that led his subconscious train of thought to the burqa-clad women seen in the CCTV footage outside Dr Chandrashekhar’s house. At that very moment, his cell phone had buzzed with a text message. It was from Asiya. It simply said, ‘Miss you 😘’ But it immediately formed her image in his mind and took him back to the first time he had seen her. That memory had dredged up another name in his head and caused the final piece of the puzzle to click in place. Nazneen.