He waited for the applause to die down and then spoke briefly about air pollution, availability of clean water, sanitation, and all the other difficulties the country’s capital was still grappling with, and what ordinary folks could possibly do to play a positive role.
“And that brings me to the end of my talk,” he said, eyes scanning the room. “I shall now announce the winner of the state essay competition.”
The children waited with bated breath. After all, the winner was one among them.
“And the winner, for her essay entitled ‘Health Care, Fair and Square?’, is Maya,” said Roy. “Maya Gandhe.”
He stood back as the auditorium erupted in applause, and from the crowd stood Maya Gandhe.
And the moment he saw her, Amit Roy decided this event wasn’t such a drag after all.
Chapter 60
SANTOSH WALKED THROUGH the congested by-lanes filled with vendors selling kebabs and waited for the man to appear. Neel had double-checked the records and confirmed that the cell phone number dialed from Thakkar’s desk phone belonged to someone called Iqbal Ibrahim, whose residential address was near the Jama Masjid.
As it turned out, Ibrahim was praying in India’s most famous mosque, the Jama Masjid. Built in 1656 by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, the mosque was vast. Three great gates, four towers, and two forty-meter-high minarets constructed of red sandstone and white marble overlooked a gargantuan courtyard that could accommodate more than twenty-five thousand faithful for prayer.
Neel had given Santosh a photo of Ibraham he’d managed to retrieve from a database. He’d also supplied Santosh with the latest gizmo he’d developed. It was a pair of regular-looking eyeglasses that accommodated a camera and mic capable of transmitting to the Private Delhi office.
Reaching the mosque, Santosh put on the glasses. He noticed a crowd of people exiting. Prayers seemed to have ended. Then, after ten minutes, Santosh saw a man who resembled the picture he had. He continued staring in his direction, knowing that the camera would be relaying the image to Neel. Santosh watched as the man walked toward him, removing his prayer cap as he approached.
Santosh took a few tentative steps in the direction of the man and held out his arm for a handshake. “Mr. Iqbal Ibrahim? Could I have a few minutes of your time?” he asked.
The man smiled at him. “Please don’t be formal, Mr. Wagh,” he said courteously. Santosh had half a second to register the fact that the man knew his name, because Ibrahim’s statement was accompanied by an almost imperceptible nod of the head. A baton slammed into the back of Santosh’s head and he crumpled to the ground, his cane and phone falling along with him, the handset shattering.
Chapter 61
JACK HAD A stopover in Dubai on his way from LA to Delhi. Unfortunately, his Emirates flight from Dubai to Delhi had been delayed. The result was that he arrived at terminal three of Indira Gandhi International Airport almost two hours after the scheduled time.
He cleared immigration, collected his single suitcase from the luggage carousel, passed through the green channel of customs, and emerged expecting to be greeted by Santosh. Instead he saw another familiar face: Nisha.
He rolled his baggage cart toward her, pecked her on the cheek, and asked, “Where is he?”
“He had to meet someone,” said Nisha as she led Jack toward the parking lot where her car awaited. “He asked me to do the honors instead.”
“My lucky day,” said Jack with a smile.
They stowed the suitcase in the trunk and took their seats inside. “Where to?” asked Nisha. “We’ve booked you at the Oberoi Hotel.”
“No, not yet,” replied Jack. “We had better go directly to the conference. My session starts in ninety minutes. In the meantime, fill me in on this case.”
They set off, and as Jack relished the sights and sounds of Delhi once more, Nisha explained their theory.
“And it is just a theory at this stage,” she clarified when she had finished.
“Give it to me as a percentage.”
“Santosh is almost certain.”
“Shall we say ninety percent?”
“We could.”
“So, you’re ninety percent certain that some kind of war has broken out over an organ-harvesting operation. That about sums it up?”
“It does.”
“Do we know who’s involved?”
Nisha blew out her cheeks. “Well, now it gets really interesting. As you know, Ram Chopra and Mohan Jaswal are at war anyway—a political war, I should add. Chopra’s name is connected to the house in Greater Kailash where the bodies were found, and we think he’s been doing deals with a medical corporation called Surgiquip, run by Samir Patel—the recently deceased Samir Patel. Somewhere in the mix we have an insurance company called ResQ—a company run by Jai Thakkar, a friend of Jaswal’s, who’s fallen out with Chopra.”
Jack cleared his throat. “You realize you’re going to have to run this past me again when I haven’t just stepped off a plane.”
Nisha laughed. “Yeah, I understand. Okay, look, the short version is that all the signs point to Chopra, but Santosh feels it’s a bit too convenient.”
“Sometimes the obvious answer is the right one.”
“Tell that to him.”
“Either way, it sounds like there’s a mountain of political dog shit we need to avoiding stepping in. How is the police investigation proceeding?”
She shrugged. “At the moment it feels as though the police couldn’t care less. As you know, the general feeling is that Sharma is running things in a way that benefits Chopra. And if Chopra is involved in the organ-harvesting scheme …”
“If they’re fighting we could just leave them to it. Let them all kill each other and let God sort it out.”
Nisha gave him a sideways look. “Do we want to do that?”
Jack chuckled. “Tempting though it is, no, Nisha, I suppose not.”
Chapter 62
THE MORGUE OF the Delhi Memorial Hospital was like most other morgues in the city: understaffed and overstuffed.
Located in the bowels of the hospital, two-thirds of its area consisted of a refrigerated section that contained individual drawers kept at a constant temperature of four degrees Celsius, while the remaining third was made up of a stark autopsy room tiled entirely in white, with two stainless steel operating tables in the center. A scale for weighing body parts hung from the ceiling over each table, much like a butcher’s shop, in addition to a trolley that held Stryker saws for ripping bone, suturing materials, knives, and scalpels.
A hosepipe fitted with a washing nozzle was at hand to sluice blood and tissue down the drain and into the septic tank. Unfortunately it wasn’t used often enough. There was always a long queue of gurneys waiting with bodies that needed to be autopsied or refrigerated.
Patel’s mutilated body was wheeled into the morgue along with another gurney. Patel’s body was transferred to a surgical table, waiting to be dissected like a laboratory rat. The autopsy technician placed a block of wood under the corpse’s shoulders, making it look as though it was sitting. He then made an incision from the top of one ear to the top of the other and pulled the skin from the top and middle of the head down over the face. Patel’s face was now grotesquely inside out. The technician used the Stryker saw to cut the skull and expose the brain for tissue sampling and weighing.
In the meantime, the second body was uncovered and placed on the nearby surgical table. The autopsy technician took a quick look. He knew who it was. He had received a call from Ibrahim about him. Whenever Ibrahim needed to eliminate someone without having the headache of body disposal, he would send the case to him.
“I don’t have time for this one right now,” he said, putting on a casual face. “Put him in the refrigerator and I’ll deal with him later.”
The assistants wheeled Santosh Wagh into the refrigeration chamber, opened one of the refrigeration drawers, placed him inside it, and slammed the drawer shut.
Chapter 63
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THEY WERE IN the Private Delhi conference room.
“Where is he?” asked Jack.
Nisha tried Santosh’s cell phone once again. A message indicated that the phone was either switched off or outside the coverage area.
“What did he go out for?” asked Jack.
“He had several meetings lined up,” replied Nisha. “One was with Thakkar, the CEO of ResQ. He also had a meeting with someone called Iqbal Ibrahim near Jama Masjid.”
“I have some bad news,” said Neel.
“What?” asked Nisha.
“I tried to find the IP address of the person calling himself Dr. O. S. Rangoon,” said Neel.
“Wouldn’t he have been using a proxy server?” asked Nisha.
“Exactly,” replied Neel. “He was using a proxy server to hide his IP address from the administrators of the systems that he was posting on. But all individuals who hide behind proxy servers always leave a trail of digital breadcrumbs. I tried following the breadcrumbs.”
“And?” asked Jack.
“Dr. O. S. Rangoon used a single proxy server to mask himself. I figured that if I could access the proxy server logs, I would be able to find his connection requests to the target server.”
“Go on,” said Nisha.
“The proxy server is located in Russia. Usually such companies would demand a court order to reveal their logs but the idiots had left their own server exposed and I was able to access their logs.”
“Excellent,” said Jack. “You have the source IP?”
Neel nodded. “It belongs to Iqbal Ibrahim, the man Santosh went to meet. Dr. O. S. Rangoon and Ibrahim are one and the same.”
“But the phone number Santosh asked us to trace—which turned out to be that of Ibrahim—was not the same as the number listed on the website by Dr. O. S. Rangoon,” argued Nisha.
“He’s obviously using two phone numbers,” said Neel.
“Is Santosh’s RFID chip working?” asked Jack. “I’m authorizing you to track it.”
All employees of the Private organization across the world were required to be fitted with a small locator chip embedded under the skin of the upper back. It enabled the Private team to locate them during emergencies. In order to prevent misuse, only Jack Morgan had the power to authorize tracking.
Neel logged into a laptop that generated an email to Jack. Jack clicked on the authorization link and entered his password.
“Can’t locate it,” said Neel after a minute. “He could be in a basement or a vault, preventing the signals from being picked up.”
“He took his spy glasses with him, Neel,” said Nisha. “Don’t those glasses have GSM? Can you track the signal?”
“No luck,” replied Neel after a minute. “He’s definitely in an area without signal.”
“Did the camera in his glasses send in any feed?” asked Nisha.
“Let me check,” replied Neel, quickly accessing the secure server of Private Delhi from his notebook.
Jack and Nisha hunched behind Neel to look at the video footage that had been sent in by the glasses to the server. The first ten minutes were uneventful. Santosh had simply stood, waiting for Ibrahim, near the Jama Masjid. The footage showed hundreds of worshipers emerging from within the mosque after prayers.
The footage soon focused on one particular man, removing his prayer cap as he walked toward the camera. “Mr. Iqbal Ibrahim? Could I have a few minutes of your time?”—words spoken by Santosh and recorded in the audio.
The words of Ibrahim had also been picked up: “Please don’t be formal, Mr. Wagh.” Ibrahim was smiling. Suddenly the camera jerked. The view seemed to oscillate all over the place until it settled on the blue sky above.
A few seconds later, Ibrahim’s voice could be heard again. “Put him in the van and give him a high dose of midazolam,” he said. Two burly men lifted Santosh and placed him inside a black van. “Inshallah, it should be sufficient to keep him asleep for four hours. Also, discard his broken cell phone.”
One of the men could be heard asking if he could keep the walking stick for himself.
Then Ibrahim’s voice: “He doesn’t need it. Dead men can’t walk.”
Nisha froze. Did that mean …?
“He can’t be dead,” said Neel.
“Why?” asked Nisha.
“Midazolam is a sedative,” said Neel. “Why sedate someone who is already dead?”
Nisha sighed with relief. “Let’s review the rest of the tape.”
The audio was punctuated by the sound of a van door being slammed shut. The next forty minutes were blank because a white sheet had been placed on top of Santosh, covering the glasses he was wearing. The audio contained traffic noise and honking.
The Private Delhi conference room remained silent as Jack, Nisha, and Neel watched the video intently. Then there was the sound of the van door being opened. The sheet was removed as a couple of orderlies peered over Santosh’s face. They only seemed interested in removing valuables from his person—watch, pen, wallet, shoes, and eyeglasses. The video blanked out as one of the orderlies pocketed the camera glasses. The moment he folded the glasses, the transmission had stopped.
“He could be anywhere,” said Neel. “That’s anywhere within a forty-minute radius of Jama Masjid. And that’s a lot!”
“Just play the last bit again,” said Nisha. “The orderlies who removed the stuff were wearing white shirts with a logo on the pocket. Can you zoom in on the shirt?”
Neel tried but it was of no use. The image was just a pixelated mess. “Let me try something else.” He left the conference room for his lab to have a go with SmartDeblur, a software program that could partially restore and enhance blurred images.
“Thank God you’re here, Jack,” said Nisha as they waited in the conference room. “I just hope Santosh is safe.”
“The man knows how to look after himself,” said Jack. “Stop worrying.” He was not very convincing.
“He obviously received a blow from behind,” said Nisha. “But that doesn’t explain why he remained motionless in the van. I’m praying he isn’t …” The word “dead” was still on her mind but she was unable to bring it to her lips. Neel’s observation about the midazolam had given her hope.
Neel came back a couple of minutes later. “I’ve successfully zoomed in on the shirt logo,” he said, handing Nisha a printout. “The logo says DMH.”
“Delhi Memorial Hospital. Let’s go,” said Nisha, running out.
Chapter 64
SANTOSH OPENED HIS eyes. He blinked a few times, struggling to see, but his world remained dark. What’s happened to me? Have I gone blind? Or am I dead?
His body was wracked with an involuntary tremor. He realized he was shivering. It was freezing cold. He tried moving his arms but his body seemed to be confined within a tightly restricted place.
He tried to wiggle his feet. He was able to but just for a few inches in either direction. His back felt frozen solid. It seemed to be resting on cold metal. He desperately wanted to curl up into a fetal position but there simply wasn’t any space to do that. The realization suddenly hit him: I’m in a morgue.
Santosh attempted to calculate how much time he could survive inside the refrigerated coffin. He remembered reading somewhere that body heat is lost twenty-five times faster in cold water than in cold air. Most morgues are kept at around four degrees Celsius. At that temperature in water, a person would survive around an hour. Theoretically, he had several hours left provided he remained conscious and kept some movement going.
He succeeded in lifting an arm but there was simply no way to bend it. There was a metal ceiling above him that was only a few inches above his nose. He touched it with the back of his hand. It was just as cold as the floor on which he lay. He touched his thigh with his hand. He was pretty certain he was naked even though the freezing temperature had reduced the sensation in his body. Then the panic attack set in.
He suddenly felt a hot flash in his toes. Then his fingers. To shut
down the loss of heat from the extremities, his body was inducing vasoconstriction—a reflexive contraction of blood vessels. But the muscles required to induce vasoconstriction had failed. It was causing warm blood to rush from the core to his extremities.
Santosh tried screaming but couldn’t be sure whether any sound was emerging from within him at all. His body seemed to have slowed down to a point where no physical activity was possible. The sounds that did emerge were slurred, almost as though he were under the influence of drugs or alcohol. He felt dazed. Disoriented. Confused. The effects of hypothermia had begun to set in.
He tried getting his mind to remain focused. He knew that if the hypothermia became severe, it would eventually slow down his respiration and heart rate, making him lose consciousness before the onset of death.
He attempted to recall what had happened before he’d passed out. He had met Ibrahim and had then received a blow behind his head. They had obviously brought him here later. But why was he in a morgue? Had he been assumed dead? Or were they trying to kill him by freezing him? Which morgue was he in? Did Nisha or Neel know he was in trouble?
Santosh felt suffocated. It wasn’t claustrophobia—it was his lungs giving up. He felt himself slipping out of consciousness. He imagined he was back in the hospital after the car accident in which he had lost his wife and son. Then he was back inside the Tower of Silence, battling Assistant Commissioner of Police Rupesh Desai, with the vultures circling overhead. The scene quickly changed. Santosh imagined he was at an Alcoholics Anonomous meeting. The members had surrounded him and pinned him down to the floor. They were attempting to forcibly pour whisky down his throat.
Santosh sensed his pulse slowing as he slipped into an abyss of darkness.
Finally, there was no pulse at all.
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