Bankerupt (Ravi Subramanian) (2 page)

Clinton sighed as he walked away from the Central Rotunda. He was getting late for a meeting of the standing committee of the senate which had been formed to discuss changes to the Second Amendment.

A lot changed in America over the next few years. Clinton moved on in January 2001. Under George W. Bush, a Republican from Texas, gun rights took a significant step forward. Unsurprisingly, the Supreme Court struck down key parts of the Brady Bill calling them unconstitutional. Even the AWB was allowed to lapse into oblivion in 2004.

Guns were back in business.

2

5th June 2008, 9.25 a.m.

Boston Public Garden

There was a fair bit of commotion at the northern end of Boston Public Garden, right next to the weeping willows growing by the lagoons. There were quite a few people in the park, though the fifty-acre expanse made it appear sparsely populated at that hour. A few late morning joggers were hurriedly going through their routine, oblivious to the ruckus at one end of the garden.

The medic was doing his last few laps in a section of the park. Three more rounds and he would be done. He’d head home for a big breakfast, a few hours of sleep and be up and ready for the late evening shift. He was sweating through his Nike T-shirt. Cheap China-made earphones playing Metallica kept him company as he jogged. That’s when he heard a woman shriek, loud enough to drown out Metallica for an instant. Pulling out his earphones, he ran rapidly in the direction of the shriek. The wails grew louder in the direction of the weeping willows. The incessant barking of a dog added to the noise.

When he cut through the crowd of twenty-odd onlookers and made his way ahead, he figured out what the commotion was all about.

He bent down and felt for the pulse. There was none. He pulled back the eyelids and looked for the dilation of the pupils. Desperately, he tried to listen for the heartbeat. Nothing. Absolutely no sign of life. The person lying on the ground was dead. There were no physical injuries on the body to suggest murder. Probably a tired jogger who had suffered a cardiac arrest while jogging.

Someone from the crowd had already called 911. The cops arrived with the paramedics in the next seven minutes and the body was wheeled away to a nearby hospital.

3

Early March 2008

Boston

Cirisha Narayanan was alone in her cabin in the Academic Block, intently staring at the bright screen of her iMac. Petite-framed, Cirisha was an extremely attractive Tamilian, born and bred in Coimbatore. An assistant professor in Social Psychology, she had joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) a few years ago.

Her eyes were riveted on the screen in front as she ignored a steaming cup of black coffee on the table next to her. Two stories had caught her attention that day.

On the home page of
International Herald Tribune
was the tale of the spectacular collapse of Bear Stearns, a New York-based global investment bank and securities trading and broking firm. From the dizzying heights of a hundred and seventy-two dollars, its share price had plummeted to two dollars, which was the price at which it was picked up by J.P. Morgan Chase—a figure which was just 7 per cent of its price a few days before the collapse. It was a morbid tale of greed and lust for power which had led to the loss of livelihood and savings of hundreds of people.

‘Hope someone pays for this mayhem,’ she muttered to herself as she grudgingly moved on to the next story. Her mind stayed with Bear Stearns while her eyes moved on.

The second story was about two prominent American historians, who had had their research retracted over the past three months on account of conduct that was unbecoming of research faculty. Professor Hubert Didymus, who had won the National Book Award for his biography of Thomas Jefferson and even the Pulitzer for his book,
Brothers in Barracks
—the
Revolutionary Generation
, had been found guilty of lying about his experience in the Vietnam War and even referring to it in his books. Investigations conducted by the
Boston Globe
had revealed that he hadn’t even gone beyond the East Coast of the United States in his entire life. The second, professor Stephanie Walsh, author of more than thirty-five books over forty years, had plagiarized entire passages from papers of authors whose works had been mentioned in the endnotes.

While the first incident shocked her about the greed of the nation she was working in, the latter left her distressed about the state of the profession that she had chosen to be in. How could people so reputed, so trusted in their professions, compromise the faith reposed in them by millions of people? More importantly, what were they thinking when they committed these professional indiscretions? Were they hoping never to be exposed?

So lost was she in these thoughts that it took her a while to realize that the phone on her table was ringing. It was Louisa.

‘Michael wants to talk to you. Can you come to his room?’

‘I’ll be there in a minute.’ And she walked out of her cabin, turned left and walked up to Michael Cardoza’s enclosure, five rooms down the corridor.

‘Yes, Michael. You wanted to see me.’

Cardoza, her supervisor, the one who had hired her at MIT, looked up and smiled. She liked him. Fifty-seven-year-old Cardoza couldn’t stop the wrinkles from making an appearance on his face, but had maintained a physique that would put men fifteen years younger to shame. Probably a result of the discipline and training he received during his time with the US Army in the Vietnam War in the early 1970s.

He got up from his chair and walked around the table. His six-foot-two frame towered over the five-foot-two Cirisha.

‘Are you ready?’ he had a grin on his face.

‘For?’

Cardoza laughed. He turned towards his table, picked out a folder from the pile of papers and stretched out his hand towards Cirisha. ‘There you go.’

‘Oh no! I completely forgot! It is that time of the year.’ She opened the folder. It contained forty-two sheets of paper. Each of them had a photo of a student accompanied by a brief profile. ‘How much time do I have?’

‘You have time. They arrive in three weeks. The induction begins early next month.’

‘So I have to memorize these names, their profiles and mentally match it with their appearances.’

‘Yes, sweetheart. I know you don’t like this, but Cirisha, at MIT, we believe in our faculty knowing the students even before they land here. Before you enter the class, you are expected to know each student by name. Background. Profile. Even country of origin. Faculty must address students only by their first names. This goes a long way in making them feel that they belong here.’

‘When you hired me, Michael, you never told me that you would make me take an annual memory test.’ Cirisha had a grin on her face. She hated memorizing the names of students. But she had to do it, because that’s the way the institute operated.

‘Time for memory booster pills,’ said Cardoza. Cirisha smiled wider. If it had to be done, it had to be done. She took the folder from Cardoza and walked out of the room.

Back in her room she was flipping through the student profiles when her mobile phone rang. She picked it up. It was a call from India. After the initial courtesies, there was a long pause.

‘When did this happen?’

A pause.

‘And why?’

A longer pause.

‘How could you even do this?’ It was difficult to make out if she was angry or upset. ‘Weren’t you worried about the consequences? How could you?’

A pause.

‘My return flight is next Wednesday. I will bring it forward. But when I get there, you better have all the answers ready.’ And she abruptly hung up. She was extremely anguished by the call. Her entire world was beginning to crumble.

With Louisa’s help, she changed the dates of her travel back to India and brought it forward to that night.

At the Boston Logan International Airport, she walked past security check and made herself comfortable in front of the departure gate number 12 and looked at her watch. Her flight would take off in an hour. She had time to kill. She glanced up towards the television that was tuned to a news channel. She could make out that the news anchor was discussing the collapse of Bear Stearns. Just then, a ticker at the bottom of the screen caught her eye. ‘
Staring Down the Barrel
in the eye of a storm. Democrat Senator Kristoveyich from Illinois casts serious doubts on its veracity.’

4

Summer of 2000

Greater Boston Global Bank, Mumbai

It was in the summer of 2000 that he had met her. Dressed in denims and a red semi-formal top, she had walked in with a team from Coimbatore.

She looked strikingly beautiful. Aditya, who was standing outside the CEO’s room with a colleague, was smitten the moment he saw her. How could someone be so pretty, yet so innocent-looking? Twenty-five years old, at best, with an intensity in her deep brown eyes that Aditya had never seen before. Hair straight and combed neatly, held by a tiny band at the nape of her neck, this dusky beauty was straight out of his fantasies. There was a certain serenity about her, a calming, yet agitating influence. She strode to the conference room and took her seat along with the rest on one side of the table. The fact that the dark man next to her was her father, Aditya would only find out later.

The moment the door to the conference room closed, Aditya jumped. He ran to the reception on the fifth floor. ‘Who are these guys? Who has brought them here? What are they here for?’

The receptionist was taken aback by this barrage of questions. Weren’t investment bankers meant to be stylish and classy? ‘I don’t know. Saif brought them here.’ After a teasing pause and a seductive look in her eyes, she added, ‘To meet your boss.’

‘My boss? Nalin?’ Aditya was surprised. ‘Really?’

‘Hmm.’ The receptionist nodded.

Aditya quickly snatched the visitors’ register from her and peered into it. They had been ushered in as ‘Saif + 4’. He frowned. ‘Why don’t you go in and ask for her name?’ The receptionist smiled mischievously.

‘Shut up.’ Aditya darted back in. This time he went straight to the cabin of Nalin Sud—the head of investment banking of GB2. Nalin was extricating his jacket from behind his chair, presumably preparing to walk up to the conference room.

‘Who are these guys, Nalin?’

‘Who? The guys with Saif?’ Aditya nodded. ‘I don’t know much. They came scouting for some loans. Fifty crores. Quite a large sum for us to consider lending to a new customer. Saif requested me to meet them and see if we could help raise some money through our network of investors.’

‘Doable?’ Aditya queried.

‘I don’t know. More importantly, it’s not part of our target list of companies. No one knows them or has dealt with them in the past. So corporate bank is not interested. But it’s too small for our business. Even if we help them arrange an investment of fifty crores, we will hardly make any money. At best a 2 per cent arranger’s fee. Not worth the effort.’ He rolled his eyes, took a deep breath. ‘It’s OK. Saif feels that if we help them now, he might be able to get some business from them at a later stage.’