St. Olav’s Gate, Oslo, Norway
11 May, 2012
Ludvig woke up in the bed in the back room of his office. He had worked late the previous night and had decided to sleep right there in the office itself.
He had until afternoon before taking a couple of gunshots in the back of his head. The biggest problem of the ‘rewind’ was reliving the same moments all over again. He knew what was to happen each minute of that day. He knew each word that would be spoken to him.
He was still stumped by the oddity of what happened in the ‘interruption’. He knew that he would get tired of asking himself questions and yet not have any answers. He had learnt not to ask himself these questions and to just get on with the strange life that he had been given.
He made a phone call and found out about the guard. His name was Brasa, an Italian immigrant who had been in his security detail for the past two years.
He had to plan for the day ahead.
He called for Dan to meet him personally.
Dan was in the building, having spent his night in the office too, and walked up to his boss’s office in five minutes.
‘Wanted to see me?’
‘Yeah. I have been thinking.’
‘I have sent the material to Luvenson. Expect to hear from the bastard soon.’
Ludvig sighed and sat down in the chair.
‘I have changed my mind, Dan. No more meeting the bastard. I want you to set up a timer on the Internet that will release the file after a countdown of six hours. Send a screenshot of the timer to Luvenson. In addition, send him the message that I want him out of this year’s political race, immediately. No negotiations.’
There was that tone of finality in Ludvig’s voice. Dan did not say anything and got up from his chair to do his boss’s bidding.
‘And one more thing, Dan,’ Ludvig continued.
‘Just run a check on Brasa.’
Dan knew Brasa, on the security detail of Ludvig. He did not understand what Ludvig meant. He was surprised that Ludvig even knew the name of the bodyguard.
Dan would later find a fresh deposit of a million kroner in Brasa’s account and on a little prodding and questioning Brasa would confess to having received money to eliminate Ludvig.
Dan was taken aback. But it wasn’t the first time that this was happening. He was now sure that Ludvig had other means of gathering intelligence. And that he had failed to uncover these other means even after secretly trying to do so over the last few years. It filled him with respect and contempt for the wily old Ludvig.
Brasa was not heard from, ever again.
Chapter 13
The Impossible Mission
Mumbai, India
11 May, 2012
Henna did not understand what Jai was up to. But she had developed a blind faith in him. She had never been loved so by anyone in her entire life. Her parents had sold her to ease their penury and Rashique had used her like a rag doll to fulfil his carnal desires. It was only Jai who loved her unconditionally. He had put life and limb in danger for her and had asked for nothing in return. She felt indebted to him and knew that she would do anything for him. In her heart, she had surrendered herself to Jai and she was his, for him to take whenever he wished. But he had never asked for or expected anything from her in return. She was a witness to his ability and she knew he was no dunce either. He had taken on an armed gang of four single-handedly and emerged unscathed and victorious.
There was something primitive and animalistic about the love between both and yet it was never about lust. They would kill and be killed for the other and yet had never declared their love for each other. But in their simple hearts, they both knew their unwavering commitment to each other.
It was evening when they got down in the Dadra railway station. As he walked to the taxi stand, his eyes stopped at the cigarette stall at the corner and he thought for a moment and turned to Henna
‘Do you play cards?’
Henna looked over at him quizzically. ‘Why?’
‘Just tell me, do you play cards? Do you know anything about cards?’
Henna looked offended.
‘Of course I do. I play with Nasreen all the time.’
‘Good,’ replied Jai and then got himself a pack of playing cards from the stall.
Then, Jai hailed a taxi and gave directions to Rashique Bhai’s farmhouse on the Mumbai-Pune highway.
They reached near the farmhouse by late evening. Jai stopped the taxi about half a kilometre from the farmhouse, just outside a run-down hotel next to a gas station. Henna waited outside as Jai went in and got them a corner room far from the motel entrance.
The room was twelve by twelve feet in size and had a wooden queen-sized cot with a defunct spring-coir bed. A sofa with betel-stained covers took up the remaining space in the room. Henna kept her bag by the bed and looked enquiringly at Jai.
‘You must be tired. You can sleep on the bed. I will sleep on the sofa.’
Henna did not understand what Jai was up to. Her eyes met the resolute eyes of Jai to see a steely hardness in those teenage eyes. She washed up and then curled herself on the bed.
Jai kept fumbling with his gun that had just two rounds remaining in it. Henna still had not the faintest idea about what they were doing in Mumbai at that time.
Soon her tiredness caught up with her and she dozed off.
She woke up from yet another nightmare. It was already morning light. Jai was sitting on the sofa, shuffling the pack of cards in his hands.
He looked up and saw her wake up. He pushed a small stool between them.
‘Henna, you said that you know how to play cards?’
Henna sat up on the bed, not understanding what Jai was up to.
Jai handed her the pack.
‘Shuffle the pack well and place five cards face down here.’
Henna was puzzled but she obeyed him.
Jai turned the cards over.
‘Jack of spades, Queen of hearts, four of spades, Ace of diamonds and three of clubs,’ Jack read them aloud in order as he turned them over revealing them, and mentally repeated the order, memorising it. He looked up to see Henna giving him a very confused look. He smiled reassuringly at her and said:
‘Henna, I am going out now. Do not open the door for anyone but me. Wait for me for two hours. If I am not back by then, just leave; never to come back, never to look back; and get as far away as you can, for I will be dead for sure and they will be coming to look for you.’
Henna listened and nodded. She wanted to ask a million questions but realised the inevitability of Jai’s decision. Jai rose from his chair and picked up the gun from under the sofa cushion.
Henna had by now started sobbing. Jai went near her and placed his palm against her face, her tears rolling against his palm and dripping down on to the bed. She held his hand in her hands and kissed them.
The feeling was ethereal. Her lips quivered against his hands. She stood before him, held his face in both her hands and pulled his face down to hers. Their lips met and a tear rolled from Jai’s right eye. He had never been kissed before and it had been a long time since anyone had expressed any kind of love for him. He had known the love of an adopted family but that was a very long time ago. This burst of emotion wracked his teenage body and a shiver ran down his spine. Henna’s soft, warm lips dissolved his life’s lovelessness and filled his starved heart with joy and hope. The tenderness of the kiss flowed over the orphan and his brain stormed, seeking the long-forgotten love of his mother, sister, and now his beloved, all in the fleeting moments of that one kiss.
Tears flowed freely from both of their eyes as they embraced each other for the first and possibly the last time in their lives.
Jai wrenched himself from the embrace, held her face in his hands, and then kissed her on her forehead yet again.
He then turned and left the room as Henna slumped by the bedpost on to the floor, tears streaming from her eyes.
Jai took an auto to the farmhouse even t
hough it was within walking distance. There might be Bhai’s men roaming in the market place and he could not risk getting caught before he reached the farmhouse. He got down from the auto a hundred metres from the farmhouse and made a quick recce of the place. The farm had a barbed-wire fence all around and had two Toyota SUVs parked on one side, by the gate. There were five armed men with Enfield rifles patrolling the garden and two more, packing a Sterling machine gun each, sitting in a hut by the side of the gate.
A brand-new Honda CRV stood in the porch in front of the house, which meant that Rashique Bhai was, in all probability, inside the house.
Jai decided to wait until both the Sterling-bearing guards were separate. He had only a couple of rounds in his gun and he could not possibly take down both of them with those rounds.
He waited out of sight for a couple of minutes until one of the machine-gun-wielding men walked away from the hut for a walk around the perimeter.
Jai left his hiding place and walked towards the gate of the compound. He realised he should have brought a cap to hide his face but it was too late to get one now. He walked right up to the gate. Suddenly from the corner of his eye, he saw some activity in one of the Toyotas parked beside the gate. One of the men from inside the Toyota climbed down and started running towards him, drawn gun in his hand. Jai had not planned on this. He had assumed that only the drivers would be inside the SUVs.
He had to think fast.
This idiot was drawing too much attention. He waited for a bit longer until he came within his range.
A kill shot was needed.
He let him come a bit closer, while slowly gripping the gun in his hand by the side of his body, and marked the target on his quarry.
Closer… closer.
Bam! Jai had turned in a fraction of a second and fired his shot. The bullet hit the man at close range, piercing through his chest and the man was thrown back on the ground, dead before he hit dirt.
Jai saw that the gate was locked from within. However, it was easily scalable. Without waiting any longer, he started to climb up the gate.
The guard with the machine gun had hurried out of the hut on hearing the shot. By the time he reached near the gate, Jai had already perched himself on top of the gate.
He pounced with a shriek and landed directly on the guard.
Thud. The guard fell to the ground with Jai straddling him, gun drawn in his hand. He drew the gun to the man’s face, pulled him up with his collar, and fired the remaining round, squarely in his forehead. Blood splattered all over Jai and he released the collar of the guard whose head rolled to the side, lifeless.
The other guards were converging towards him.
One of them had steadied his Lee, ready to take a shot at Jai.
Jai rolled off the dead guard and wrenched the Sterling from him. The magazine felt heavy and was probably more than half-full.
He fired a burst in the general direction of the guard who had by then fired a shot and missed. Jai steadied himself, taking aim and summoning all his sharp-shooting skills to the fore. He saw the guard loading another round, aimed for his head and let off another short burst at him. This time the bullets found their mark and the guard went down.
Two other guards were converging on him from opposite directions. However, they were still some distance away. Jai was anxiously looking for the Sterling-wielding guard who had gone for the perimeter patrol. He had to take him down first. The rifle-bearing guards would not stand a chance against his machine gun.
Tut-tttrr–
Jai heard the staccato chatter of the Sterling but this burst did not come from his gun. It came from somewhere behind him and the burst caught Jai right in the nape of the neck.
Jai was thrown forward by the impact of the round. The last thing that dawned on him before he lapsed into darkness was that the Sterling-wielding guard had circled the perimeter and had come from behind the hut, having shot Jai at point-blank distance from right behind him.
Jai had a smile on his lips as he lay dead, face down in the dirt, armed with foreknowledge.
The last words on his lips were:
‘Jack of spades, Queen of hearts, four of spades, Ace of diamonds…’
***
Etin County
Domus-Nova
Mouse-tail Galaxy
Domus-Nova Year 2547, Earth Year 7858 AD
Jai heard the wind howling by him even before he could open his eyes.
And then came the vicious smack of the Xuenemaia’s tail that snapped him into opening his eyes. The Xuenemaia that he rode was called Wrecko – The Wrecker. It had earned that name after it had literally knocked down a Humae’it SF-32 Gladys fighter jet while the jet was trying a stabilising manoeuvre. Wrecko was brave and always ready to fight. Jai felt a kinship with Wrecko. It was as if they shared emotions; as if they shared anger and bitterness for their enemy. An enemy that had foisted war upon them, had subjugated them, and was now systematically erasing them from their planet.
Jai was saddled up on Wrecko’s back and had a metal bow slung on his right shoulder. His hand instinctively went back to one of the pouches on either side of the beast and found it full of Quesenium-tipped arrows. Quesenium salts heated up in flight and detonated on impact, and it was possible, with a concerted Quesenium attack, to bring down enemy craft. This was an ambush and they had hit upon a Humae’it patrol convoy. There was nothing to steal and their aim was to inflict the maximum possible damage and then scram.
The Xuenemaia flew without any wings. It had the build and the feel of an oversized rhino with stocky and sturdy legs and a furry body. It ran like the wind on the ground and retracted its legs within its furry exterior during flight. It had hard plates on its body within the fur, which were composed of magnetic chloroferrum salts that helped keep it in flight, levitating it against the planet’s strong magnetosphere. The propulsion depended on the ingress and egress of air through an intensely muscular blow-tube that ran through the beast’s length. The Xuenemaia manoeuvred itself by adjusting its bio-magnetic field and by regulating the thrust of air passing through the blow-tube.
Jai held on to the beast as it encircled the battle sector yet again. His platoon was engaged in a pitched battle against the enemy’s patrol jets. The platoon consisted of twenty-four riders taking on eight jets in flight. They had already downed a couple of patrol jets and had suffered at least four casualties. That was as high a price as Jai was willing to pay for this mission.
He surveyed the scene and saw three riders tailing another jet, its fuselage already on fire. One more was down.
As he was thinking about them, Jai heard the shrill drone of the fighters. It was time to return to their base. Jai’s hand rose to a button by his right ear that flicked on his communicator and he shouted in Etinnish:
‘Platoon! Fall back. Fall back to Zero point now.’
He had by then circled the battle scene and he could see the rest of his mounted Etin guerillas, heeding his command and retreating in formation, to line up behind the line of mighty blubar trees at the beginning of the Zunn, the largest of the Etin rain forests.
Zero point was code for the eleventh aquatic base from where they had taken flight today.
Jai turned around and looked at the patrol jets, steadying themselves in a formation, with a couple of fighters on the outside. His eyes momentarily caught the jerking of one of the fighters and then–
BOOM!
There was a loud explosion just behind Jai as he circled towards the tree line, and he was knocked off Wrecko. He started falling free, clutching at nothingness, his body spread-eagled, backwards. Wrecko was diving straight at him but he was falling too fast. He felt the leaves and the twigs brush by his side, followed by a branch splintering under his body, flipping him over. He now fell face down, seeing the ground rise up to him as his body was bruised and battered by the forest canopy. He looked back and saw the outline of his beast, Wrecko, a couple of feet from him, diving right behind him, its suckers bared o
pen, revealing a row of inwardly directed teeth.
***
Domus-Nova
Mouse-tail Galaxy
Domus-Nova Year 2548, Earth Year 7859 AD
He felt his body smacking into the ground, and he jerked as he opened his eyes on the cot in the white room. He was sweating profusely, still paralysed on the cot.
Damn! What had happened? Was he dreaming?
He looked around. He was still strapped to the cot in the same featureless white room with the bizarre clock face. The clock hands stood aligned horizontally, a two forty-five back home but with sixteen numerals, he had no idea.
Jai opened his mouth to shout but no words came out. He heard the whirring behind him and the white began to slowly fade away…
***
Mumbai, India
11 May, 2012
He woke up with a start, on the couch. Henna was still fast asleep on the bed.
Jai was shaking
What was that this time? Where was he before he woke up in the white room? Why was he fighting against the Humae’its? And who were the Humae’its? What is a Xuenemaia? He had never drawn a bow in his entire life… let alone with Quesenium-tipped arrows.
Things could not get any weirder.
What in the name of fuck was happening to him?
Henna stirred and got up. She was sweating and had woken up with a start. Jai realised that she had seen yet another of her nightmares. He wondered what she had seen, but was sure it could not be more bizarre than what he had seen. He had to tackle the problems of his real world before he tackled those of his weird dreams.
He hoped he would put an end to all of Henna’s nightmares today. But for that to happen, he had to go through what he had planned for this day.
He pushed a small stool between them.
‘Henna, you said you know cards, right?’
Henna nodded.
Jai handed her the pack.
‘Shuffle the pack well and place five cards face down here.’
Henna was puzzled but she obeyed him.
Jai got up and sat with her on the bed.
Immortals Page 8
