Chankya's Chant (56 page)

‘Tell the NCRB to make a note of whoever calls up demanding it. The ones who call are the only ones who actually need it. The others merely receive it and file it away. Save time and expense by sending reports to only those who need them!’ instructed Ikram.

They were at the offices of the Intelligence Bureau. The director was taking the home minister on a guided tour of the workings of the world’s oldest intelligence agency. They had been old friends in their previous avatars as mayor and police commissioner of Kanpur but the new hierarchy made the conversation between the two men a little uncomfortable.

‘When was the agency established?’ asked Ikram.

‘In 1885,’ came the reply. ‘The Intelligence Department for the British Army was established in Simla to monitor troop movements in Afghanistan.’

‘And then?’ asked Ikram.

‘In 1909, we became the Indian Political Intelligence Office to monitor Indian anarchist activities. The men were trained by Scotland Yard and MI5.’

‘And then?’

‘With Indian Independence in 1947 we acquired our present form.’

‘As a man ages he begins to lose his intelligence. You’ve become too old,’ joked Ikram, as he outlined his plan to overhaul the establishment. ‘How do you monitor your success?’ he asked.

‘Most of our cases are classified, thus we’re never able to discuss our successes,’ complained the director.

‘Neither are you compelled to discuss your failures,’ retorted Ikram. ‘When citizens are not aware of what you’re doing, they can’t tell what you’re doing wrong! When was the last time you were able to accurately predict a terrorist act or an invasion?’

‘There are practical limitations to what we can do,’ protested the director.

‘With twenty-five thousand employees and agents?’ wondered Ikram. He paused for a moment and then looked the director in his face. ‘Tell you what, you’re familiar with Kanpur, right? Why don’t you have a meeting with Ranbir Gill?’

‘Who’s he?’ asked the director.

‘He’s the president of the Bar Owners’ Association of India and the proprietor of a seedy joint in Kanpur that you might remember from your youthful days—it’s called the Durbar Club.’

‘Why should I meet him?’

‘There’s nothing that doesn’t get discussed when people are drunk. Want to revamp your intelligencegathering? Speak to sober people who spend their time with others who are pissed!’

‘He’s pissed off,’ said the director of the Intelligence Bureau.

‘Then cool him off,’ said Gangasagar.

‘If he starts getting into too many details, we’ll have a problem on our hands,’ said the director.

‘Then maybe you need another solution,’ replied Gangasagar.

Ikram and the director of the Intelligence Bureau were walking down the narrow lane of Chandini Chowk— the old city of Delhi. The director had requested the home minister not to come—the area was troubled and he could not guarantee Ikram’s safety. The minister, however, had insisted. Hindu-Muslim riots had broken out in the Old City. The lanes of Chandini Chowk were too narrow for the police jeep to pass through and so the men got out of their vehicle and walked. Dirty, congested, and difficult to access, the narrow lane seemed to be filled with dark and dingy corners that were eerily quiet. Chandini Chowk was like the aftermath of a battle zone. Rocks and broken bottles lay strewn all over the street. All the shops were shuttered and there wasn’t a soul in sight except for a few stray dogs.

Ikram surveyed the scene and winced. Why was India so easily excited by religion? Indians could tolerate poor sanitation, pathetic hospitals, lack of schools, potholed roads, erratic power, unhygienic water and subsistence living, but say something to offend a man’s religion and you had an instant explosion. ‘This is the last Hindu- Muslim riot that shall ever happen on my watch as home minister, is that clear?’ he told the director as he walked with him through the street. ‘There shall be no compromises. Offenders shall see that it isn’t a good idea to fuck around with us!’

They had walked a few steps further when there was a crash behind them. They spun around and saw broken glass lying in a puddle of acid. Someone from one of the upper floors of an overlooking building had thrown an acid bomb at the home minister. ‘Send your men to search that building. I want all the men, women and children lined up here immediately!’ barked Ikram, and his instructions were relayed almost in parallel to the policemen. Within ten minutes around fifty people had been rounded up. ‘Anyone else inside the building?’ asked Ikram. ‘No sir, everyone’s here,’ came the reply.

‘Tell the women and children to return inside,’ commanded Ikram. There was a shuffling of feet as the nervous women gathered their children and hurried indoors. Around fifteen men were left standing in a line. ‘Stretch out your hands, palms facing upwards,’ shouted Ikram and waited for a minute as everyone did what they were asked to. Ikram walked along the length of the human chain observing the palms and occasionally bending down and sniffing their hands. He walked to the end of the line and walked back, repeating the process. He stopped at the seventh man and sniffed again. ‘Step forward,’ he said softly. The worried man stepped forward, his eyes darting about shiftily.

‘Come here, son,’ said Ikram to one of the constables, ‘lend me your sidearm.’ The man who had been asked to step forward went into a panic. ‘No wait, you can’t do that. Nothing has been proven—’

The shot fired from the gun in Ikram’s hand was directly aimed at the culprit’s head. He fell to the ground, his brain splattered in a gooey mess. There was pin-drop silence in the street. ‘This is a word of advice from your new home minister. Never, ever, fuck with me! Get it? I’ll always—always—shoot first and ask questions later. Unless you want to get shot, don’t you dare mess with me!’ He wiped his prints off the revolver with a handkerchief, returned it to the constable and said to the director, ‘Write it up as an encounter. He was hit in crossfire.’

He turned around and spoke to the fourteen remaining men. ‘Anyone else in the mood for getting a quick cure for a headache?’ Chandini Chowk was back to normal by five pm that evening. Gangasagar had chosen the right home minister.

‘He bumped off a civilian without blinking an eyelid,’ said the director of the Intelligence Bureau.

‘Typically Ikram,’ said Gangasagar coolly.

‘If he makes this a habit, we’ll have a problem,’ said the director.

‘I made Ikram home minister knowing that you would be around to keep him in check. Do your job,’ replied Gangasagar.

The Indian Airlines flight took off from Mumbai en route to Nagpur at three pm in the afternoon with a hundred and seventy-seven passengers and twelve crew on board. Thirty minutes later, as the aircraft passed over the city of Nashik, a ferocious-looking man holding a semiautomatic kicked open the door of the cockpit and ordered the pilot to get up and join the rest of the passengers in the back of the aircraft. He commanded the petrified co-pilot to take control of the aeroplane. Three accomplices—all armed with handguns—brought the passengers and crew under their absolute control. Their leader—a thirty-four-year-old Pakistani—ordered the co-pilot to head towards Muzaffarabad, in Pakistan- Occupied Kashmir. The nervous co-pilot told him that they had just enough fuel to reach the city of Bhopal where they would necessarily need to refuel.

As the information of the hijack was conveyed from the aircraft to the control tower and on to the home ministry, Ikram rushed to the New Delhi control room of the Crisis Management Group—the high-powered officers entrusted with the unenviable task of dealing with such unfortunate situations. ‘Shoot at the fucking tyres,’ he ordered the commander of the National Security Guards—the NSG—which had already reached Bhopal. The aircraft was standing in the middle of the Bhopal airfield and the tyres were in plain sight of the sharpshooters. It had been awaiting fuel for the past thirty minutes and not a single tanker had approached the aircraft.

The hijacker’s animal instincts told him that something was afoot. ‘Take off!’ he instructed the co-pilot. ‘We need permission from Air Traffic Control,’ protested the nervous co-pilot but the gun to his head was all the permission he needed. ‘Take off now! No fucking permission is needed!’ the hijacker growled.