Arocha already knew which car had driven ‘Louis’ here. His staff had already done their homework. He also probably knew that the name left at the reception was Louis Goetinberg, who happened to be a ruined and eccentric Belgian citizen with distant nobility who was using a fake name and had just arrived yesterday on a tourist package.
Arocha was made to believe a story, security had overheard from the concierge of the ‘Oberoi’ about this big party and how it was a good opportunity for people like this guy to prey on chic Indian women who were attracted by his pleasant appearance and sweet talk. It appeared that the imposter had almost certainly stolen the invitation card.
Arocha was going to investigate right now, as he knew he couldn’t let him go back to his hotel without questioning him first. He preferred to double-check everything himself.
Arocha was expert at asking questions that no one could ever refuse to answer.
Pascal could only think of the opportunity that being escorted out by Arocha would bring. He had to take the risk and be the scapegoat as it fitted perfectly with their plan. Luckily he had time to call his friends, who were ready and waiting outside.
A magnificent, extended Rolls Royce Corniche stopped two minutes later in front of the gate.
“Our boss’s preferred car,” said Arocha in a convivial tone as he extended his arm to the door in a welcome gesture.
The driver was wearing a red and beige uniform and a muscular man in a dark suit with an assassin’s hard face, exited from the front seat to open the door for Pascal and Arocha. He slipped back next to the driver with ease.
Inside the car sat a tall man with a shrewd face and bulging eyes, waiting with a broad smile.
“Our Chief Operations Executive,” introduced Arocha. He is in charge of my personal security. I got him out of the jail where he was to rot for the rest of his life. He is skilful with all kind of blades; his favorite is the razor. He kills only when I order him to.”
Arocha smiled cheerfully at Pascal, “He can peel human skin like it was an orange. But don’t worry; you are safe with our security team; they are very discreet and efficient, like family. They always know how to protect our guests and eliminate undesirable menaces. You know, these days, it is best to be very cautious.”
The message was quite clear and unpleasant. And if something happened, it would be inside Arun Kumar’s car; very smart.
Pascal set himself comfortably between ‘Blade Man’, and ‘Angel face’, stretching his legs into the large space in front of him and pretending to enjoy the extreme comfort.
As a connoisseur, he smelt the fine fragrance of the leather upholstery; pushed buttons to adjust them to his liking; turned on the remote control for the flat TV screen; opened the small mahogany doors of a mini bar and caressed with contempt the precious wood panels carved with Arun Kumar’s monogram.
“It is like my lovely car!” he exclaimed, smiling at Arocha and pretending not to notice that the limousine was obviously going in the wrong direction.
“Mine at my Fontainebleau castle is only a very old black Silver Shadow passed down from my ancestors. It’s not really as glamorous and extravagant as this one,” he emphasised, acting the wealthy man and not showing that he was afraid.
“Congratulations to your boss. What a tasteful man!” But despite his bravado Pascal quietly had to admit that this mistake might not be so clever.
…
The only possible option for Pascal, who was now detained in the car, was to use the element of surprise to his advantage. He knew from his friend that Arocha was smart, experienced, and ruthless, but he had a weakness: he was over-confident. And the fact that he was operating in his own arena should add to the sense of superiority and safety he always exhibited in Mumbai.
Obviously he was not prepared for what was about to happen: to be the target himself.
The ambush was very simple, but prepared with precise attention. This was Mohit’s revenge. For years he wanted Arocha to pay for his father death, and many of his supporters among his community who had been hurt by Arocha’s merciless operations shared his commitment. They would no longer stand for people who disappeared never being accounted for by the authorities because these criminals were the authorities!
Even the Untouchables, who were used to being rejected and living in the poorest conditions of misery, hated Arocha and his drifters for his arrogance towards them.
Bad Karma was no good reason to treat them so harshly.
The classic action scenario is sometimes the best and they used an old trick. Since they knew car route from the party area to Arocha’s special secret headquarters, they had set the most convenient location and time for the trap. In a narrow lane near Arocha’s place, a bullock pulling a wooden cart full of bricks was stuck in the middle of the path and blocked the way. One of its wooden wheels had broken and the merchandise had fallen onto the road.
The Rolls Royce was forced to stop.
The peasant who was trying to fix the wheel was working very slowly. The driver wasn’t used to being forced to wait for such a low-caste worker. He honked loudly—a habit in large Indian cities.
The peasant unleashed the bullock, which ran inadvertently towards the car and fell on the bonnet. A holy animal had damaged the luxury car and tore the beautiful angel hood ornament that stood on top of this symbol of wealth.
It was too much to bear! The driver felt that his noble and superior caste was being challenged by having to suffer such indignity from poor, dirty peasants—something that is intolerable in India. He exited the car in frenzy, ready to punish this low-caste peasant who dared to challenge him.
That was the first mistake.
The peasant didn’t seem afraid at all. It was a sign that Arocha, a trained intuitive fighter, didn’t perceive immediately because he was too focused on his desire to question the detainee in his house. He was too self-confident and not alert enough to listen to his sixth sense.
Arocha and the man from the front seat followed the driver, leaving ‘Blade Guy’ and Pascal in the car, to give a personal lesson to this insolent beggar by giving him the beating he deserved.
That was the second mistake and the signal to move.
Unconsciously, the ‘Blade Guy’ had started to evaluate the danger and ready himself for the situation, but it was too late.
Suddenly, Pascal thumped ‘Blade Guy’ very hard in the neck. His eyes bulged and although startled, he was on the offensive and pulled a razor out in a powerful response.
He received Pascal’s next blow on his left ear at that exact moment, but managed to slice him on the shoulder with the treacherous razor before he fell back, losing his balance.
The strength of the razor blow cut into Pascal’s tuxedo and slashed into his flesh. Not feeling the wound yet, Pascal finished off his opponent with a powerful Karate technique, on the other side of his head. The man collapsed, unconscious.
Pascal opened the car door and made his escape into the darkness.
At the same time, dozens of Untouchables emerged from nowhere and attacked the three security professionals who had left the car. Some smashed the car with wooden bats and iron bars.
Soon, the driver and his fellow passenger were lying in the mud, beaten to death.
The indomitable Arocha had received serious blows; his nose was broken; he had a large wound on his face; his right arm was badly smashed and a wooden bat had shattered his chest bones. His suit was torn and his hair stuck to his blood-covered face, but he was incredibly strong and stubborn. He had made two mistakes tonight; he wouldn’t make another one.
As stealthily as a tiger, unconquerable and resolute to the end, he slipped out of the aggressive crowd and ran through the night towards his house; blood was dripping profusely from his forehead and falling into his eyes.
He was lucky that his headquarters was not far away. Some of his staff was running to help him. Once he was safe, Arocha scrambled around and realised that in the battle he had lost his mobile phone.
&
nbsp; Bleeding from the blade wound, Pascal also ran for safety, but two black, unidentified cars stopped in front of him. Pascal’s heart froze. Then, in the gloomy light he saw a shadow inside as the car door opened. Pascal climbed in, relieved to find his friend Mohit.
His friend had been waiting in the shadows, as he didn’t want to be identified by the gangsters.
The street was a mess. The hired bullock ran away, happy to graze somewhere else. The luxury car was ruined, but as if by enchantment, the crowd and the peasant had vanished.
Mohit held up Arocha’s phone and a SMALL BLACK BOX triumphantly. He knew that this phone had a larger-than-usual memory with a special USB port that could be connected to a little black box that decrypted the coded information for the memory card. Mohit knew the way Arocha had organized his computerized security network because his own company had supplied the components.
The surprise assault had given them an advantage, but only for a short time. It wasn’t worth running after Arocha to finish him off, as his powerful task force was probably on the way to rescue him.
But Mohit had his phone and the black box! He knew it was a good catch because this black box contained all of Arocha’s security data and codes. He immediately opened his laptop and started to download the encrypted information from the memory card in the phone itself and at the same time decrypted the electronics, using the black box connection.
His findings would be worth millions of dollars!
Mohit was disappointed to find a secret code that he couldn’t break. Interestingly, this code was similar to the microchip encoding that Pascal had sent to him. In fact, the source code was the same. Some essential secrets were still not accessible, so his team would have to work harder to unlock both of them—but Mohit was a genius in theoretical physics and he knew he would find a way, probably by using Quantum particles entanglement.
For the time being, he threw the phone and device back where Arocha had lost them and retreated quickly. Arocha would retrieve his toys soon, but would be unaware that he may have no more secrets.
By the time Arocha was back at his headquarters, five minutes only had passed.
Arocha was seriously wounded; his arm was swollen and his chest was aching. He hoped he had no internal damage and knew that the early stage of broken bones was a kind of anesthetic state where the body could be full of energy due to the adrenaline.
For the moment he could bear the pain, but he knew it wouldn’t be long before he had to be treated at a hospital. He felt that his arm was broken in two places and he had a terrible headache. Very soon he would experience excruciating and intolerable pain, but he had a few things to do before taking care of himself.
First he had to retrieve his phone and the box. He couldn’t imagine his secret information and codes laying somewhere in a street. Almost certainly the box had been undetected; there was a great chance none of these savages would ever know it was an important code transmitter.
Arocha was a cautious man. He had survived because he had always been vigilant, never taking a situation for granted, which proved efficient. He swiftly changed some features of the access codes in his systems as a preventive move. However, the code would be easy to break for someone knowing the original encryption. He could not imagine that it was already too late.
He wasn’t too anxious. It was almost impossible to master the technology he used, even for specialists. He supposed some idiots from the slums might probably take the risk of using his telephone by replacing the memory card with a conventional one; they would disregard the possibility that his phone and the box were technological treasures, had chips inserted, and could be found immediately with his GPS system.
They would most certainly not pay attention to his black box that looked useless to the ordinary person. Nevertheless, as a double precaution, he had immediately sent people to recover the phone and the device so no one could use them... and they had found them.
His security organization was structured on an army model with a strict and disciplined chain of command. He was the General, and his orders could not be disobeyed. Sloppy officers were simply eliminated; disobedience was considered a major crime and the death penalty was executed. The notorious Chief of Staff listened and moved fast. Arocha was a skilled assassin and fear was his most powerful weapon.
He quickly sent his team to the scene of the attack to take care of his driver and bodyguards, who were discretely sent to the emergency room of the nearest hospital. The car was towed away.
Two of his men were in terrible condition. The third, ‘Blade Guy’, had had a short life. He had been pulled away from the car by the mob and his own sharp razor had cut his throat.
In Arocha’s tenacious mind, the second important mission was to find the foreign suspect who had fled the scene and neutralize him. He might be a potential threat, but only if he had harmful information. Most likely he was just a playboy seeking the high life. At this stage, Arocha considered him a low-class thief eager to get money from rich women.
Arocha would have him talk as soon as they could recapture him. He was angry, but not worried about that menace. The accident was most probably a dramatic coincidence.
For the first time, Arocha acknowledged that he had made a mistake using such a luxurious limousine to drive near the border of the Dharavi slums where organized criminal gangs were always ready to trap rich people. He had known it was dangerous but had ignored it.
Arocha had no reason to worry, as he didn’t know that the undesirable guest had mentioned the Cosmos secret project. It was impossible that a foreigner, motivated by the easy life and rich people’s money, could have planned such a complicated scheme to rescue himself in such unpredictable circumstances.
Even though he was too proud to accept this fact, he, Arocha, the feared security master of this city, could have been trapped in his own territory. Of course he had to double-check as usual. But surely it was a simple coincidence and, of course, he didn’t believe in synchronicity.
For a moment he was thinking about the Japanese woman he held hostage in the tower. He knew he couldn’t take care of her until he could recover from his wounds in maybe one or two days, but there was nothing to worry about as surveillance was perfectly sound.
He also had news from Daisukei—the Japanese informer from the Buddhist group—that Pascal, the woman’s French lover, was in London with the mantras that the Cosmos Group needed to recover. Pascal, he heard, was in a deep psychological depression and lay sick in his hotel room. There was no urgency; he could wait and keep things as they were. Too much haste was prejudicial... or was it?
That might be his third mistake!
He had given precise instructions: Hussein, his headman, had started a massive manhunt for the playboy here in Mumbai. He would show his boss that he was not an amateur in his own city! The lucky opportunist had little chance of staying hidden and would be captured, if possible, alive, tonight!
All the ways of exiting Mumbai were going to be covered. Hussein knew everyone at Immigration, and all the harbour officers were his friends. He had spies everywhere checking for the foreigner; every bar and club was under his protection and would report to him at once.
Although Mumbai’s population was forty million, Arocha would find this fake Louis de Maintenon who was probably in one of these discos or bars right now trying to attract wealthy, naïve women.
On his way to the hospital Arocha felt a personal hatred growing towards the foreigner and he didn’t like it. Personal feelings always hamper efficiency and a clear mind; he had to calm down!
The pain was becoming unbearable, so the doctor injected a high dose of painkillers and Arocha was immediately admitted.
In the growing wave of unconsciousness, Arocha had the obsessive recurrent image of that young foreigner turning around and teasing him; mocking him. He couldn’t dissociate his reasoning from his intuition that he was a dangerous challenger who was nearby, but just out of his reach in the middle of his own secur
ity network. This made him feel nervous and nauseous.
A tense Pascal was listening to his friend Mohit.
Yes, of course he couldn’t go back to his hotel, any hotel. He had to find a way to hide somewhere safe before the numerous spies in Arocha’s network spotted him. And yes, the Dharavi slum was the best. Who would ever look for ‘a noble playboy’ in that miserable place amongst almost a million people? How could a foreigner stay there, hidden among rats and half-naked survivors dressed in rags?
He would be safe there—that was the Indian paradox: the vital intermingling force of Indian society. Even coming from nowhere and belonging to no particular cast, he could be helped and adopted just like that.
Pascal noted that arrogance didn’t pay and a lot of Untouchables from the slum had already made Pascal their hero for being the one who dared annoy Arocha.
So as long as he stayed undercover with his new friends he would be safe—at least until the next morning; then he would move again.
Mohit called on some staff that took Pascal deep inside the slum to their friends’ home.
…
“If my mind is modest I walk the great way.
Arrogance is all I fear.”
Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching
The Quantum Mantra Page 20
