Sacred Games

by Vikram Chandra

  ‘“Wake up,” I said to Mathu when I went downstairs, and kicked his bunk. He came awake groping for his revolver, which he couldn’t find until I pointed to it, between the mattress and the wall. “Calm down, you jumpy chut. Just calm down. We have to share.” He said, “Don’t ever do that again.” He was growling, stretching his shoulders up like a rooster heaving its feathers. I smiled at him. “Listen,” I said, “you bhenchod sleepy son of maderchod Kumbhkaran, do you want your half or what?” He calculated for a moment, still all swollen and angry, but then he subsided with a laugh. “Yes, yes,” he said. “Half-half. Half-half.”

  ‘Gold is good. It moves and slips on your fingers with a satisfying smoothness. When it is near to pure it has that healthy reddish glow that reminds you of apple cheeks. But that afternoon, as we moved the bars from the suitcase into the sacks, one by one, one for one and then one for the other, what I liked best was the weight. The bars were small, a little longer than the breadth of my palm, much smaller than I had expected, but they felt so dense and plump I could hardly bear to put each in my sack. My face was warm and my heart congested and I knew I had done right. When we got to the last bar, which was mine, I put it in my left pants pocket, where I could feel it always, slapping against me. Then the revolver on the other side, at the back of my waistband. Mathu nodded. “Almost home,” he said. “How much do you think it’s worth?” His smile was slow and faltering. He picked at his nose, as he always did when he was nervous, which was most of the time. I looked down at him and felt only contempt. I knew absolutely and for certain and in one instant that he would always be a tapori, nothing more, maybe even with ten or twelve people working for him, but always nothing more than a nerve-racked small-time local buffoon, jacked up into tottery brutishness with a gun and a chopper under his shirt, that’s all. If you think in rupees, you’re a sweep-carrying bhangi, nothing more. Because lakhs are dirt, and crores are shit. I thought, what is golden is the future in your pocket, the endless possibility of it. So I shoved the sack under my bunk, nudging the last of it under with my foot as Mathu watched with wide eyes. I turned my back on him and climbed up to the deck, laughing to myself. I was no longer afraid. I knew him now. That night I slept like a baby.’

  Katekar snorted, and shook his head. ‘And for years he slept a restful sleep every night, while the bodies fell right and left.’ Sartaj held up a warning hand, and Katekar wiped the sweat from his face and muttered quietly, ‘They’re all of them the swinish same, maderchod greedy bastards. The trouble is, when one gets killed, five come up to take his place.’

  ‘Quiet,’ Sartaj said. ‘I want to hear this.’

  The speaker growled again. ‘The day after the next, I saw, over the water, a faraway hillock. “What is that?” I asked Gaston. “Home,” he said. From the bow Pascal called to another boat leaning out towards the horizon. “Aaa-hoooooooo,” he called, and the long cry and its echoing reply wrapped about my shoulders. I was home.

  ‘We helped to beach the boat, and then took leave of Pascal and Gaston. Mathu was whispering threats at them, but I shouldered him aside, not too gently, and said, “Listen, boys, keep this quiet, very quiet, and we’ll do business again.” I gave them a gold bar each from my share, and shook hands with them, and they grinned and were my fellows for life. Mathu and I walked a little way down the road, to the bus stop, with our white sacks dragging over our shoulders. I waved down an auto-rickshaw and nodded at Mathu. I left him standing there, his finger at his nose, buffeted by exhaust. I knew he wanted to come with me, but he thought more of himself than he was, and he would’ve forced me to kill him, sooner or later. I had no time for him. I was going to Bombay.’

  The speaker was silent. Sartaj stood up, turned and looked up and down the street. ‘Eh, Gaitonde?’ he said.

  A moment passed, and then the answer came: ‘Yes, Sartaj?’

  ‘The bulldozer’s here.’

  Indeed it was there, a black leviathan that now appeared at the very end of the street with a throaty clanking that caused a crowd to appear instantly. The machine had a certain dignity, and the driver had a cap on his head, worn with the flair of a specialist.

  ‘Get those people out of the road,’ Sartaj said to Katekar. ‘And that thing up here. Pointed this way.’

  ‘I can hear it now,’ Gaitonde said. The video lens moved in its housing restlessly.

  ‘You’ll see it soon,’ Sartaj said. The policemen near the vans were checking their weapons. ‘Listen, Gaitonde, this is all a farce that I don’t like one bit. We’ve never met, but still we’ve spent the afternoon talking. Let’s be gentlemen. There’s no need for this. Just come out and we can go back to the station.’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ Gaitonde said.

  ‘Stop it,’ Sartaj said. ‘Stop acting the filmi villain, you’re better than that. This isn’t some schoolboy game.’

  ‘It is a game, my friend,’ Gaitonde said. ‘It is only a game, it is leela.’

  Sartaj turned away from the door. He wanted, with an excruciating desire, a cup of tea. ‘All right. What’s your name?’ he said to the driver of the bulldozer, who was leaning against a gargantuan track.

  ‘Bashir Ali.’

  ‘You know what to do?’

  Bashir Ali twisted his blue cap in his hands.

  ‘It’s my responsibility, Bashir Ali. I’m giving you an order as a police inspector, so you don’t have to worry about it. Let’s get that door down.’

  Bashir Ali cleared his throat. ‘But that’s Gaitonde in there, Inspector sahib,’ he said tentatively.

  Sartaj took Bashir Ali by the elbow and walked him to the door.

  ‘Gaitonde?’

  ‘Yes, Sardar-ji?’

  ‘This is Bashir Ali, the driver of the bulldozer. He’s afraid of helping us. He’s frightened of you.’

  ‘Bashir Ali,’ Gaitonde said. The voice was commanding, like an emperor’s, sure of its consonants and its generosity.

  Bashir Ali was looking at the middle of the door. Sartaj pointed up at the video camera, and Ali blinked up at it. ‘Yes, Gaitonde Bhai?’ he said.

  ‘Don’t worry. I won’t forgive you –’ Bashir Ali blanched ‘– because there’s nothing to forgive. We are both trapped, you on that side of the door and me on this. Do what they tell you to do, get it over with and go home to your children. Nothing will happen to you. Not now and not later. I give you my word.’ There was a pause. ‘The word of Ganesh Gaitonde.’

  By the time Bashir Ali had climbed up to his seat on top of the bulldozer he had understood, it seemed, his starring role in the situation. He put his cap on his head with a twirl and pointed it backward. The engine grunted and then settled into a steady roar. Sartaj leaned close to the speaker. The left side of his head, from the nape of the neck to the temples, was caught in a sweeping pulse of heat and pain.

  ‘Gaitonde?’

  ‘Speak, Sardar-ji, I’m listening.’

  ‘Just open this door.’

  ‘You want me to just open this door? I know, Sardar-ji, I know.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘I know what you want. You want me to just open this door. Then you want to arrest me and take me to the station. You want to be a hero in the newspapers. You want a promotion. Two promotions. Deep down you want even more. You want to be rich. You want to be an all-India hero. You want the President to give you a medal on Republic Day. You want the medal in full colour on television. You want to be seen with film stars.’

  ‘Gaitonde…’

  ‘But you know, I’ve had all that. And I’ll beat you. Even in this last game I’ll beat you.’

  ‘How? You have some of your boys in there with you?’

  ‘No. Not one. I told you, I’m alone.’

  ‘A tunnel? A helicopter hidden inside?’

  Gaitonde chuckled. ‘No, no.’

  ‘What then? You have a battery of Bofors guns?’

  ‘No. But I’ll beat you.’

  The bulldozer was shimmering on the black ro
ad, flanked by grim-eyed policemen. Their choices were narrowing rapidly, leading them inevitably to this metal door, and they were determined, and helpless, and afraid.

  ‘Gaitonde,’ Sartaj said, rubbing his eyes. ‘Last chance. Come on, yaar. This is stupid.’

  ‘I can’t do it. Sorry.’

  ‘All right. Just stay back from the door when we come in. And have your hands up.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Gaitonde said. ‘I’m no danger.’

  Sartaj stood up straight, his back to the door, and checked his revolver. He rotated the cylinder, and the yellow bullets sat fat and round in the metal. The heat came through the soles of his shoes, into his feet.

  Suddenly the speaker came to life again against his shoulder blade. ‘Sartaj, you called me yaar. So I’ll tell you something. Build it big or small, there is no house that is safe. To win is to lose everything, and the game always wins.’

  Sartaj could feel the tinny trembling in his chest from the speaker. The machine in front of him produced a blare that pressed him back against the door, and it was enough. He palmed the cylinder back into the revolver, and stepped off the porch. ‘All right,’ he shouted. ‘Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.’ He waved towards the door with the weapon. The speaker was buzzing again, but Sartaj wasn’t listening. As he walked away, he thought that under the engine’s roar he heard a last fragment, a question: ‘Sartaj Singh, do you believe in God?’

  Sartaj called, ‘Come on, Bashir Ali, move.’ Bashir Ali raised a hand, and Sartaj pointed a rigid finger at him. ‘Get that thing moving.’

  Bashir Ali crouched in his high seat, and the behemoth lurched forward, past Sartaj, and smashed against the building with a dull crunch, raising a soaring cloud of plaster. But after a moment, when the bulldozer pulled back, the building still stood complete and sacrosanct, the door not even dented. Only the video camera had been injured: it lay next to the door, flattened neatly half-way along its length. A long jeer rose from the crowd down the street. It grew louder when Bashir Ali switched off his engine.

  ‘What was that?’ Sartaj said when Bashir Ali stepped down into the bulldozer’s shadow.

  ‘What do you expect when you won’t let me do it the way it should be done?’

  They were both wiping plaster from their noses. On the sunlit side of the bulldozer the crowd was chanting, ‘Jai Gaitonde.’

  ‘Do you know the way to do it?’

  Bashir Ali shrugged. ‘I have an idea.’

  ‘All right,’ Sartaj said. ‘Fine. Do it how you want.’

  ‘Get out of my way then. And get your men back from the building.’

  As Bashir Ali spun his steed on the gravel, Sartaj saw that he was an artist. He operated with flicks and thumps of his hands on the driving sticks, leaning into the direction of his turns, in sympathy with the groaning gears underneath. He raised and then lowered his blade, positioning it precisely, with its lower extended edge level with the door. He reversed ten feet, twenty, thirty, his arm jauntily on the back of his seat. He came at the building at a diagonal, and as he went past Sartaj he gleamed a white grin. This time there was a scream of metal, and when the violent juddering of the bulldozer had ceased, Sartaj saw that the door had been peeled back, inward. A crack ran three feet up into the masonry.

  ‘Back!’ Sartaj shouted. He was running forward, revolver held in front of him. ‘Get back, get back.’ Then Bashir Ali was gone, and Sartaj was leaning against one side of the doorway, and Katekar on the other. An icy wind came out and Sartaj felt it drying the sweat on his face and his forearms. Suddenly, for a moment, he envied Gaitonde all his air-conditioners, the frigid climate control won by his audacity. And for a moment, rising from somewhere deep in his hips, unbidden and nauseating, like a buoyant dribble of bile, was a tiny bubble of admiration. He took a deep breath. ‘Do you think the building will hold?’ he said.

  Katekar nodded. He was looking in, through the door, and his face was dark with rage. Sartaj touched the tip of his tongue to his upper lip, felt the dryness, and then they went in. Sartaj went ahead, and at the first door inside Katekar went by him. Behind them followed the rustling of the others. Sartaj was trying to hear above the thunderous unclenching of his heart. He had done entries like this before, and it never got better. It was very cold inside the building, and the light was low and luxurious. There was carpet under their feet. There were four square rooms, all white, all empty. And at the exact centre of the building was a very steep, almost vertical, metal staircase going downward through the floor. Sartaj nodded at Katekar, and then followed him down. The metal door at the bottom opened easily, but it was very heavy, and when Katekar finally had it back Sartaj saw that it was as thick as a hatch to a bank vault. Inside it was dark. Sartaj was shivering uncontrollably. He moved past Katekar, and now he saw a bluish light on the left. Katekar slid past his shoulders and went out wide, and then they shuffled forward, weapons held rigidly before them. Another step and now in the new angle Sartaj saw a figure, shoulders, in front of a bank of haze-filled TV monitors, a brown hand near the controls on a black panel.

  ‘Gaitonde!’ Sartaj hadn’t meant to shout – a gentle admonitory assertion was the preferred tone – and now he squeezed his voice down. ‘Gaitonde, put your hands up very slowly.’ There was no movement from the figure in the darkness. Sartaj tightened his finger painfully on his trigger, and fought the urge to fire, and fire again. ‘Gaitonde. Gaitonde?’

  From Sartaj’s right, where Katekar was, came a very small click, and even as Sartaj turned his head the room was flooded with white neon radiance, generous and encompassing and clean. And in the universal illumination Gaitonde sat revealed, a black pistol in his left hand, and half his head gone.

  Gaitonde’s right eye bulged with a bloodshot and manic intensity. Sartaj could see the fragile tracery of pink lines, the hard black of the pupil, the shining seep of fluid from the inside corner, which despite himself he thought of as a tear. But it was only the body reacting to the gigantic blow which had sheared off everything from the chin up on the other side, slicing from the left nostril up into the forehead and spraying a creamy mess on to the white ceiling. A tooth winked pearl-like, whole and undamaged, from the raw red where Gaitonde’s tight-lipped grimace stopped abruptly.

  ‘Sir,’ Katekar said. Sartaj jerked, and followed the rigidly pointing barrel of Katekar’s revolver to a doorway in the white wall. Just where the boundary lay between sharp brightness and darkness, in that shadow, were two small bare feet, toes pointing up at the ceiling. Sartaj stepped up, and he couldn’t see the body clearly, just the cuffs of white pants, but he knew somehow, from the indistinct spread of the hips, that it was a woman. Again Katekar found a switch, and there she was, yes, a woman, wearing tight white pants, slung low – Sartaj knew they were called hipsters. She wore a tight pink top, it was elegant. It showed her belly, she must have been proud of the narrowness of her waist and the perfect navel. And there was a hole in her chest, just under the downy spot on her thorax where the top clipped shut.

  ‘He shot her,’ Sartaj said.

  ‘Yes,’ Katekar said. ‘She must have been standing in the doorway.’

  Her face was turned to the left, with long hair falling over her cheek.

  ‘Check the rest,’ Sartaj said. In the square room where the girl lay, there were three bare beds, in a row, with white night-stands next to each. It looked rather like a dormitory. Against the wall, an exercise cycle and a row of graduated weights on a rack. DVDs of old black-and-white movies. A steel cabinet with a row of AK-56 rifles, and pistols underneath. And there were showers and western-style toilets in a bathroom, and three cupboards full of men’s clothing and shoes and boots. In the central room Katekar had finished his survey, and they stood together over Gaitonde.

  There was a press of armed policemen behind Sartaj, jostling shoulders and clanking rifle butts as they craned forward to see what the great Gaitonde had come to, and his murdered girlfriend. ‘Enough,’ Sartaj said. ‘What is this, a f
ree tamasha? A film show? I want everyone up and out of here.’ But he knew his voice was full of relief and released tension, and they grinned at him as they turned away. He propped himself on the edge of the long desk and waited for the strange liquid elasticity behind his kneecaps to subside. From the back of Gaitonde’s chair there was a steady drip on to the floor.

  Katekar was opening and shutting the white cabinets that lined the central room, with a blue handkerchief draped over his fingers. He was always methodical in the wake of gunshots, and Sartaj found comfort in the breadth and solidity of his shoulders and the serious set of his jaw.

  ‘Nothing in here, sir,’ Katekar said. ‘Not one thing.’

  Next to Sartaj’s leg, there was a drawer in the desk. Sartaj found his own handkerchief and pulled at the handle. A small black book sat in the exact centre of the drawer, the edges lined up with the sides of the drawer.

  ‘Diary?’ Katekar said.

  It was an album, black pages covered with sticky film, behind which photographs had been inserted. Sartaj flipped the pages by the very corners. Women, some very young, in posed studio shots, looking over shoulders and holding their faces and cocking their hips, decently dressed but all glamorous.

  ‘All his women,’ Sartaj said.

  ‘All his randis,’ Katekar said. He flipped his blue handkerchief over his index finger and edged open the waist-high filing cabinet that stood at the other end of the desk. Sartaj heard the intake of his breath even over the low hum of the generators. ‘Sir.’

  The filing cabinet was full of money. The money was new money, five-hundred-rupee notes in clean little bundles still in the Central Bank of India wrappers and rubber bands, and the bundles were held together in bricks of five by crisp shrink-wrapped plastic. Katekar pushed at the top layer, into the crack between the stacks. There was more underneath. And then more.