The Acquaintance Read online

  “It could be a while”, she said. Ram looked at Rizwan’s room again. He had been missing for at least twenty minutes. So he could be anywhere by now.

  Nargis wouldn’t be happy. He pulled out his phone and scrolled through his contacts till he got to her name. Nargis’ contact profile picture was one of her smiling at a community picnic they had attended a while back. The picture was of him laughing by her side with his arm around her shoulder. Back when they were friends or rather more amicable. The animosity was his fault, he had doubted her every step of the way. Even after she had revealed her plan, Ram had been skeptical. He pressed the little green call button and braced himself for what was about to go down. He waited nervously as her phone rang on the other end. She picked up after three rings, “Is he there?”, said Nargis, sounding hopeful. Her tone indicated desperation like she knew that Rizwan was not here but wanted to be wrong. “He’s not here, somebody checked him out.”

  “Who could have possibly checked out a high priority asset from a public hospital with full security?”, said Nargis exasperated. “That’s the thing, there was no security outside his door. In fact there was no security anywhere. The entire floor was empty Nargis, somebody had already pulled the bodies from Rizwan’s security detail. Also, there is no record of him having been admitted in the first place, so there’s that”

  Ram waited for her to speak again. She was silent, so was the floor. That’s when he heard footsteps coming his way and laboured breathing. Ram was preoccupied with his phone call to notice the man dragging his feet across the floor in shiny new slippers and a flowing kaftan. He had what appeared to be a can of a soft drink gripped in his hand and he looked like he was in pain. “May I help you sir?”, said the nurse getting up from her seat approaching the man.

  A scream pierced the floor and Ram almost dropped the phone. He turned on his heel to see the nurse on the ground. The man was standing over her staring right at Ram. Ram took a second to compose himself. This was not at all what he was expecting.

  “Ram? Ram are you there?”, said Nargis. There was silence on the line again. “Ram? Is everything alright?”, said Nargis, her voice trembling. “I’ll have to call you back Nargis”, said Ram before hanging up on her.

  CHAPTER 41

  “Let me get this straight, you want me to order an evacuation of the Saint Margaret Church. The venue where the Prime Minister and the arch-diocese are going to be leading an Easter mass in solidarity of the Chor Bazaar attack. Especially after, RAW and the DIA went through the place with a fine tooth comb and have secured the place tighter than a sphincter less bum. All of that on a mere hunch. Is that what you’re asking me to do?”

  “John, it’s not on a hunch, I have credible intelligence that Shahzad’s associates will be carrying out the attack at the church. They may have already smuggled the bomb inside the grounds in parts. I believe it’s a new plastic compound, it will not appear on any scanner…..”

  “Nargis I have given you enough latitude to run your little off the books operation, but I will not tolerate your little flights of fancy about science fiction tomfoolery. The function is still far away, I suggest you use that time to bring me some credible intel or you can start looking for a new job.”

  Nargis stared at him. “Listen to me, you’ve not given me latitude, you’ve given me rope, now trust me when I say this. If I’m right about this, you will be the hero that had the foresight to evacuate VVIPs ahead of danger and if there is no attack. You can farm the blame onto me. Now, a minor inconvenience would not be much of a firing offense, but for me it will be the final inch that tightens the noose around my neck. You really don’t want all of that rope to go to waste just for a few lousy inches now do you?” He stared at her, his mind clearly working the odds. “You really want me to hang myself don’t you?, she pushed. “Grant me this order and you’ll have set yourself up for a win-win situation.”

  The line went dead. The asshole hung up on her. She dialled her secret source, “Please tell me you have a lead on him.”

  She felt a ping on her phone. She pulled up the surveillance app that had been installed on her phone. A bright green dot was blinking on her screen. Finally, they had isolated his signal. Just as she had expected, the bomb was headed towards the church, way ahead of schedule. She had precious few hours. A very narrow window to accomplish what she had to.

  ***

  Nargis was running out of options. She pressed her foot down on the accelerator and barrelled down the road towards her destination. She risked a glance at her watch, she only had an hour left till the deadline. She cursed under her breath. She could not let this happen. She would not let this happen. She would not let him get the better of her.

  Nargis hoped that Ram was having better luck than her. The food truck was making its way to the church just as she suspected. The Prime Minister had made the announcement three hours ago that he would be attending Easter mass in solidarity for the market bombing. The last minute announcement had been a security measure, but the politician in the PM had made it a theatrical display of media opportunity. She looked at her GPS tracker, the truck was already on the premises. But it was nowhere near the main building.

  She saw the church up ahead and eased her Toyota into a crawl as she approached the gate. The church spire kissed the bruised velvet of the sky while multi-coloured floodlights lit up the base of the church in a rainbow of light. Preparations were in full swing. The advanced team from the Prime Minister’s Special Protection Group had already set up shop. She exhaled at the sight of them. Six men and three women were sweeping the perimeter. The Prime Minister would be landing any minute. After a quick media brief at the Taj, he will head to this very church to stand with the archdiocese as he leads Easter mass.

  The food truck was nowhere in sight. There were two security officers at the toll bar. The bright red barrier came down in front of her with a luminous sign in all caps that screamed STOP. They were checking ids and the boot space as well as the concave mirror under car test for hidden explosives. The invitations and ids would undergo two more checks before the guests would be allowed into the church. She flashed her badge at the booth and was waved inside without incident. She parked her car near the entrance and got out. She patted the gun she had holstered under her arm and followed the blinking dot on her tracker that was now right inside the main building. Nargis looked up, from her vantage point in the garden, she could see the entirety of the church. It was empty except for a few altar boys and security personnel running last minute checks on the premises. She looked at her tracker again. The dot was smack dab in the middle of the church. How was that possible? Then it hit her. The catacombs.

  She dialled her contact, who sent the blueprints of the church grounds to her inbox, the exchange took less than a minute. On any other day. Nargis would have marvelled at that. But today, she felt like it was a minute wasted. She headed towards the grate behind the main atrium. The back of the atrium was a disabused wall that clearly did not match the façade facing the street. It looked like the dirty secret pushed to the back. Out of sight out of mind. The weathered white paint was poxed with moss and creepers that led to a stone arch water tunnel with metal bars leading into the catacombs below the church. The rusted metal had been pried open just moments ago. She snuck a glance at the food truck parked a couple of feet away.

  She could see fresh tracks leading down into the darkness. A singular pair of footprints. She crouched on all fours, pushing aside the rusted heavy metal of the sewer grate with her feet. She felt like a turtle on its back, helpless and vulnerable. She shimmied forward, the damp grass leaving a trail of green on the back of her three day old clothes. When this was done, she would burn these clothes. Though she was quite fond of her periwinkle blouse and the cream pants she had bought on a whim from Zara. They had been a gift she had given herself on her big promotion at work, but now they just seemed to have too many bad memories attached to them. The worst of them all was the one she was about to make
.

  She pulled out her gun and entered the catacombs. She was greeted with a deafening silence. The catacombs were known to swallow sound. She could hear rhythmic splashes on a trickle of water. She thanked the silence but it was the all blinding darkness that unnerved her. She tapped the flashlight on her gun muzzle to life. She followed the thin beam towards a gaping semi-circle in the floor.

  She was standing at the top of an access stairway. She descended the steep grimy steps into an abyss of semi-darkness. The stench of still water picked at her nose. She was quite familiar with the aroma. The old YMCA pool where she used to spend her weekends practicing had been shut down for maintenance. A month later she had returned to find the pool reeking of algae and chlorine. The water had turned a sickening shade of green with algae festering in the tiles. The green blooms filled the air with the smell of rotting plants. A distinctly unpleasant odour that had lingered inside her nostrils for days after.

  This place however smelled like hell. Literally. She could have sworn she was smelling death of a different kind in this oversized coffin. Her foot hit water and she stifled a scream. Her mind conjured up images of water-logged corpses floating in the waist-deep water. She waved her flashlight over the surface of the water. An eerie and corporeal glow seemed to wink back at her from under the water. She shivered. She tentatively dipped her feet into what she sincerely hoped wasn’t sewage. The second her skin made contact with the water. She relaxed. She was in her element. She was a world class swimmer. No matter the putrefaction in the air or the sludge on the surface, water was her friend. She holstered her gun and bit the flashlight between her teeth. She glided soundlessly over the surface of the water. A few short strokes and she felt something hard against her shins. She waded towards a small rise of marble above the surface. She was standing in a massive passageway intersected by a grid of corridors. She was soaking wet. She looked around at the walls. She was in a far deeper section of the catacombs. She could see that a gallery floor from the upper levels of the church had been lowered to accommodate more loculi. She was thankful that there was not much to view in these galleries.

  She observed surface apertures carved into the vaulted ceiling that was leaking a kaleidoscope of light into the catacombs. Luminaria they were called, she remembered. These openings had originally been designed to haul out the earth dug out during the excavation of a catacomb. But these could be adapted to allow for natural light and air to enter the catacombs. She recognised the light was residue from the massive rainbow floodlight she had seen earlier.

  She risked a glance at the schematics on her phone. She was under an aqueduct. She didn’t even know they had aqueducts under the city.

  She tip-toed towards the dot, examining the walls. There were niches cut into the walls for oil lamps. They bore no symbols or motifs. Perhaps they had been lost to age and disrepair. She focused turning into a chamber cloaked in shadow. As she illuminated the path ahead, she saw an interconnected room with thresholds and caved in door jambs. There were nearly a dozen doors she could try. Thank god for technology. She looked at her phone. The dot lay straight ahead. She thanked small mercies and walked towards the largest of the chambers. As she entered. She felt the light around her dim. She looked down. Her flashlight was fine. She tapped at her phone to wake it up. The screen lit up again but only briefly. Her GPS app showed a buffering symbol and then sputtered to a blank screen. She cursed. What was the point of having technology when it abandoned you when you most needed it. She was standing in a massive circular room. With a vaulted ceiling similar to the galleries she had seen. They were painted with frescoes. She couldn’t make them out in the darkness though. She felt an ache creep up her spine and a raging headache chisel into her forehead. She was getting tired again. She was close to him. She knew it. She could taste it. He was close.

  She waded through the darkness in search of the bomb. She had called back-up but they wouldn’t get here in time and if she was honest with herself, every qualified and able-bodied commando and soldier that flooded this place would be unnecessary collateral damage. They would slow her down. And none of them would be of any use to her until it was too late. This was between her and the man she trusted. She had to be the one to look him in the eye and finish it. She was on her own. She felt a tingling in her chest. Shit, not now. She clutched her chest as a wave of nausea hit her. She shook it off and leaned against a sewer grate. She heard footsteps to her right. She picked up the pace and ran towards the sound of the footsteps. She was gaining on the source of the sound. But she soon hit a dead end and the footsteps stopped. She was winded and she didn’t know where she was. She pulled out her phone and checked the schematics again. That’s when she heard it. A distinct beeping. She had asked for an electronic jammer for the ceremony so that no one could remotely detonate anything, but again she had been shot down saying that she was insane. The entire evening was going to be televised. There was no way they could jam the church.

  CHAPTER 42

  Nargis was having trouble breathing but she knew she had to get to the bomb before it detonated. Terrorists often worked on false promises, the whole 72 virgins shtick was a given when it came to suicide bombers but this was different, he was not operating on a false promise but false information. He had been lied to. Her breath was coming in short rapid bursts as she tried to follow the tiny dot on her screen.

  Nargis had jumped at the chance to be an analyst at the CTU in the immediate aftermath of 26/11 but it was Rizwan who had pushed her towards the job. It was always Rizwan, HOMA, CTU, he was always the albatross around her neck.

  The day after her entire world had come crashing down, she had waded through campus placements and the job fair in a daze. She had been in shock. It had been a week since Rizwan had disappeared and the police had told her in no less certain terms that a missing persons case took time. It would be unreasonable of her to expect hourly updates on the supposed whereabouts of her husband. She was paraphrasing of course. She had known it was a waste of time, he had left a note after all. But she had to be sure.

  It was at a job fair that Nargis first ran into the acquaintance. At first glance he had struck her as a very distinguished gentleman. He stuck out like a sore thumb yet managed to blend in like a fly on the wall among the sea of eager young graduates ready to take on the world. He had walked up to her with a bottle of water and struck up a conversation. She had heard his voice cut through the haze and grab her. “How would you like to know where your husband is?”, he had said.

  The next day, Nargis had taken a clandestine tour of HOMA. “What does it stand for?”, asked Nargis as she stood in a dark office. The acquaintance smiled at her, “In the Mahabharata, HOMA stands for a sacrificial rite or offering. We subscribe to that very philosophy. Every person that walks through our doors is a sacrifice for the greater good.” Nargis felt a chill run down her spine. “Sounds like something a terrorist would say before blowing himself up”, said Nargis without a hint of irony. “Exactly what a terrorist would say”, said the acquaintance, he was looking at Nargis intently. What had she gotten herself into? What was this place? Was this some kind of terrorist recruitment centre? Was this some domestic terrorist cell that wanted to use her as cannon fodder? Well fuck that. “Listen Mister, I was led to believe you could help me find my husband, but if you’re trying to make me into some kind of deranged psycho terrorist bomber for your perverted sense of patriotism, you can count me out. Your profile of me is deeply flawed, just because I’m a muslim doesn’t mean I’m going to jump on your little hate parade. Contrary to what you might think of me. I love this country.”

  The acquaintance smiled, “I know and that is why you will be our BHINDIWALA.”

  A weapon of war.

  CHAPTER 43

  A gunfight was not out of the realm of possibilities but she could have used some back-up right about now. She was ashamed to admit it, but she was horrible at identifying directions or reading a map. And right now staring at a shiny grid on he
r phone with a blinking dot was giving her a headache. Nargis had never been good at hide and seek. One of the many reasons she had joined HOMA. And over the years she had trained herself to get better at the game. But right now crouched in the dark and playing for keeps was not the ideal way she would have liked to test her skills.

  She made a mental note of the schematics on her phone. She quickly memorised the elevated ground, the valleys in the aqueducts and the tributaries and tunnels that could act as good hiding spots but severely impacted line of sight. She had noticed something, he was not laying down cover fire. He had let off a couple of silenced rounds and then nothing. Was he waiting for her to stick her head out like some amateur? She looked down at her feet, the water was lapping at her ankles. She was trapped, this was trench warfare if anything. She got on her hands and knees and lay down in the water half-submerged. She was five nine, now she had effectively reduced their target sight on her by half. She had a .22 with her. And from what she could assess, he was working alone, he didn’t have any henchmen with him.

  She cocked her hand gun and crawled on her belly towards the dot on her screen. She heard a splash on her right. She craned her neck around the corner, she could see an eerie blue light bouncing off the wall. She knew in an instant what it was. The time for caution was over, she got to her feet and made her way towards the light. She was coiled tight as a spring, her senses on high alert. She edged through the water, she put up a palm to stop the beam from her flashlight. She didn’t want him to know she was coming. She entered the cavernous room, with low arching ceilings made of wet and marred brown stone seeded with algae and moss. The perfect place to detonate a bomb to bring a building down. She could see a figure hunched over an OLED display. It was surreal, the device looked like something out of a sci-fi novel. He was dressed in the same clothes she had seen him in at the hospital. How could she have been so blind. She raised her gun. No matter what he meant to her. She had a job to do. She took a deep breath. “Step away from the bomb with your hands raised”, she said in a thundering voice that bounced off the water. He turned around, startled and she took advantage of his distraction to blind him with her flashlight. He threw up his hands and Nargis decided to take advantage of his temporary disorientation to charge him. But before she could, he fell into the water and screamed, “Stay where you are.” Which made Nargis stop dead in her tracks. He struggled to his feet, the blue light giving him a sinister halo.