by Vaseem Khan
Kartik moved from individual to individual, listening to the ever more inventive offers being hurled his way. Finally his eyes alighted on Maxwell Bomberton. His forehead creased into a frown. ‘I am sorry, sir, but I do not believe that I have your acquaintance.’
‘Too damned right, you don’t,’ growled Bomberton.
Standing beside the Englishman, Chopra tensed himself for an explosion. He had felt Bomberton struggling to reign in his fury as Kartik had shamelessly displayed the Koh-i-Noor and boasted of his complicity in its theft.
The frown on Kartik’s brow deepened. Clearly, he had not expected such a bellicose response. He seemed momentarily nonplussed.
He shot a glance at Bulbul Kanodia as if to ask Who is this man, and what is he doing here? then said, ‘Perhaps you would care to tell me what you have to offer?’
Bomberton reached into his pocket. He removed a handgun and pointed it at Kartik. With his other hand he swept off his mask. ‘How about twenty years in a maximum-security prison? Bed and board included.’ The Englishman’s face was red with rage. ‘My name is Detective Chief Inspector Maxwell Bomberton and by virtue of the authority vested in me by both the British and the Indian governments I hereby place you all under arrest.’
A stunned silence greeted these words. And then the fat tycoon who had queried the Koh-i-Noor’s authenticity squealed, ‘Hai, Ram!’ and fainted.
The others in the ballroom regarded the plump body as it lay spread-eagled on the floor… and then pandemonium ensued.
Bellows of panic filled the air as the gathered gentry stampeded for the exits. Those that fell were trampled underhoof. Chopra saw a veteran tycoon hurl himself over the bar, scattering rare vintages and bottles of premium Scotch. Another white-haired gentleman who had been wheeled into the ballroom trailing a tank of oxygen, now collapsed in his wheelchair, wheezing as he clutched despairingly at his chest.
Chopra’s head flashed around just in time to see Kartik disappearing through a door at the rear of the ballroom.
He stepped towards the strongbox.
It was empty.
‘You grab Kanodia, I’m going after Kartik.’ Without waiting for Bomberton to reply, Chopra raced after his quarry.
THE GREAT ESCAPE
Ganesha stirred in the darkness. He had lost track of time, but he knew that many hours had passed since he had been imprisoned in the concrete room. He had attempted to charge the door but although he had made some impressive dents, the grim portal would not yield.
Finally, exhausted and emotionally spent, he had slumped into a corner, curled his trunk under his face, and fallen into a troubled sleep.
But now a noise had brought him up from the well of slumber.
He listened intently as the rusted steel bolt scraped back. The door swung open, and then a dark shape slipped inside. Ganesha stumbled to his feet, his every muscle tensed.
‘Shhh, don’t make any noise or he will hear us.’
Ganesha’s ears flapped happily and then he raised his trunk and held it up to Irfan’s face, a gust of affection for his friend washing over him. His delight was apparent.
Irfan patted Ganesha on the head. ‘You shouldn’t have come, boy.’
The tip of Ganesha’s trunk froze as it reached the fresh bruise that had swollen Irfan’s right eye. His ears stopped flapping.
‘It’s OK, boy,’ mumbled Irfan. ‘It’s OK. I am sorry I had to leave you, but I had no choice. If I had stayed, that evil man might have hurt Poppy and Chopra. I know him too well. He would have stopped at nothing. I couldn’t take the chance that they would be hurt because of me. You understand, don’t you?’
For a brief moment they stood together in silence, and then Irfan stirred. ‘Come on, let’s go.’
With Irfan leading the way, they left the room and headed stealthily for the concrete steps to the floor below.
They had made it halfway there when a tall shape stepped out from behind a column on the very edge of the open expanse. The man held a flaming torch, the sulphurous yellow light throwing a spectral halo over his grizzled features.
Mukhthar Lodi looked down at the fugitives. And then a cold smile spread over the shadows that made up his face.
Behind him the night was dark, punctuated by strange noises. The clicking of cicadas. The whoop of a hyena. A solitary scream from the nearby slum, cut off at its zenith. A bat flew past, chittering in the moonlight.
‘It seems that you have not learned your lesson, Irfan. Perhaps this time I must teach you properly.’
Ganesha snorted angrily and moved in front of the boy.
Lodi reached into the sash around his black kurta. The light from the torch now reflected from the burnished barrel of an antique revolver. ‘Perhaps your friend needs to learn a lesson too.’
Ganesha did not hesitate. He lowered his head and charged.
Lodi’s eyes widened. He had not been expecting this. For a second he stood there, frozen, and then his finger tightened on the trigger.
The bang of the revolver was abnormally loud inside the abandoned building.
Ganesha ploughed into Lodi, sending him careening backwards and over the side, the torch flying from his hand.
The little elephant’s momentum carried him forward until he bundled headlong into the column Lodi had hidden behind. He bounced off the concrete pillar, spun backwards and then collapsed onto the floor.
‘Ganesha!’
Irfan rushed to the stricken elephant and knelt down beside him.
For a moment Ganesha did not respond.
‘Come on, boy!’ sobbed Irfan, his face dissolving into tears.
And then Ganesha shook his head from side to side. He reached up with his trunk to pat either side of his skull. Then he flapped his ears forward. At the bottom of his right ear, where the membrane was thinnest, a small round hole was rimmed with blood. Ganesha touched the hole with the tip of his trunk. A shudder passed through him.
Irfan placed his arms around the elephant’s neck. ‘You could have been killed, boy.’
A piercing shout drew them both from their huddle.
Groggily, Ganesha got to his feet. Then, together, they moved to the edge of the floor.
Below them, clinging on with one hand, was Mukhthar Lodi.
He was dangling some two floors above the ground. Directly below his feet was a moving river of sludge, a six-foot-wide stream of cancerous sewage that flowed from nearby industrial plants all the way to the Mithi River at Krishna Nagar.
As they watched, Lodi tried to reach up and grasp the edge with his other hand, but his shoulder was unnaturally twisted, and as he rotated the dislocated joint a scream of pain escaped him. The arm fell limply by his side.
‘Help me!’
Irfan stared down with round eyes at the man who had controlled his life since the day he had been born.
‘I am your father, boy! Now help me!’
Slowly, as if walking in a dream, Irfan advanced to the very edge.
‘That’s it, boy! Reach out and pull me up!’
Irfan extended a tentative arm… and then stopped, his hand frozen mid-reach.
‘What are you waiting for? Pull me up!’
Irfan stepped back.
Ganesha looked up at the boy, at the fear and uncertainty passing like storm clouds over his bruised and battered face.
Then the elephant moved forward.
He reached out with his trunk. He would pull the man up, and then they would leave. Lodi was in no shape to stop them now.
Ganesha turned at the sound of bare feet slapping on concrete.
Behind him were ranged a dozen young boys of Irfan’s age. They all wore ragged shorts and vests or T-shirts. Some were bare-chested. All displayed bruises, cigarette burns and razor cuts, testaments to Lodi’s brutality.
There was a moment of breathless silence in which only the wind could be heard howling between the columns of the concrete floor.
And then, acting as one, the boys swarmed forward.
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For thousands of years Indians have believed that justice is a universal constant of nature, shaped by the concept of dharma – the principle of right conduct. The obligation of each individual to behave in a moral and righteous manner towards his fellow man. Thus when a man betrays the code of dharma he brings his own fate down upon his head.
Before Ganesha could move, the urchins had clawed Lodi’s fingers from the edge of the floor.
Lodi fell swiftly, a scream rising from his throat. With a loud spludge he struck the ooze and immediately sank in up to his waist.
The arch thief began to thrash around but was hampered by his dislocated arm. The harder he struggled the further he sank into the sewage, which sucked at him greedily like quicksand. Soon only his shoulders were visible.
As he sank Lodi hurled curses up at the watching boys, interspersed with pitiable entreaties to come to his aid. But the boys may as well have been a succession of statues arrayed on the lip of the concrete floor.
Finally, only his head was visible.
Irfan drew closer to Ganesha. He shivered as he watched the slime creep up his father’s neck. Ganesha reached out his trunk and entwined it around the boy’s hand.
Lodi spluttered as the ooze found his mouth. ‘The devil take you all!’ he cursed and then the sludge entered his mouth and he could say no more.
The sound of choking gradually died away as the sewage rose to engulf Lodi’s face.
With a final plop, he vanished completely beneath the river of black.
A SHOWDOWN IN MUMBAI HARBOUR
Chopra hurtled through the interior of the yacht, hot on the heels of Sunil Kartik. Though he prided himself on his fitness Kartik was younger, leaner and in better condition. Kartik had the added advantage of knowing the layout of his pleasure boat intimately.
As Chopra skidded around another corner he caught a flash of Kartik’s handmade brogues as they disappeared down a stairwell. He halted a second, wheezing, then leaped back into the chase.
As Kartik ran he threw obstacles into his pursuer’s path: a bust of his hero Alexander the Great, a gold-plated statue of Shiva in his aspect as destroyer, a priceless Oriental vase that shattered on the marble floor and scattered porcelain shards under Chopra’s feet.
‘Stop!’ he panted. ‘There is nowhere to go!’
Kartik ran on.
Chopra thundered down a passageway that ran past the galley. At that precise moment a white-suited chef chose to step out from the galley doors holding a punchbowl. ‘Out of the way!’ roared Chopra, but it was too late. He barrelled into the man, whose eyebrows had shot up towards his jauntily angled toque blanche.
Both men hit the deck in a tangle of limbs.
The punchbowl completed a somersault in the air, dumping its contents over Chopra and drenching him in rum and fruit. The bowl landed on the chef’s head.
Chopra lay on the tiled floor staring up at the ceiling. A bright white light coalesced above his head. All noises seemed to have become muted, and then he heard a steady thundering like an approaching steam train… He realised that it was his heart, flailing wildly against his ribs. Dammit! Not again! Not now!
Chopra willed himself to calm.
In the past few months, his heart had been remarkably well behaved. This had been partly due to Chopra’s own self-enforced avoidance of stressful activity, and partly thanks to Poppy’s stern vigilance. But now, now he was back in the fray, and the old bomb ticking away in the centre of his chest was reminding him that it had merely gone quiescent for a while; it had not been defused.
He struggled to his feet, rubbing his breastbone with the heel of his hand. He heaved in a deep lungful of air, then continued on his way.
He reached the stern of the yacht just in time to see Sunny Kartik scrambling around inside a speedboat bobbing beside the landing apron.
He raced down the shallow stairs leading down to the apron, taking three steps at a time. Just as he bounded onto the apron, Kartik threw off the boat’s moorings, gunned the motor and leaped to the wheel. In a fury of thrashing seawater, it began to pull away.
Chopra did not hesitate.
He raced across the landing apron and leaped after the departing boat, falling against the side of it with a heavy thud. His arms hooked themselves around the starboard gunnel, while his legs plunged into the water.
Chopra was dragged along by the speeding motorboat, clinging on for dear life. The roar of the motor was deafening; backwash from the wake splashed over him in a furious torrent. Each time he attempted to scrabble up, he would lose his footing and slip back down again. If he had not been so preoccupied with survival, he would have been numb with terror.
Chopra could not swim.
If he lost his grip, he would drown. It was that simple. There would be no one to save him, not this far out into the harbour, not at this time of night.
Suddenly, he sensed the boat turning.
Kartik was swinging the speedboat in a wide arc back towards the mainland. The mechanics of the turn lifted the boat’s starboard hull out of the water, dragging Chopra with it. With a monumental effort, he scissored his legs up and over the side of the hull.
He collapsed into the motorboat’s bilge, a froth of seawater spluttering from his mouth, his body drenched from head to toe. Finally, having regained a semblance of composure, he lifted himself onto his haunches.
Kartik, intent on the wheel, had clearly not sensed his presence. The billionaire playboy was focused on guiding the speedboat back towards the distant lights of Apollo Bunder.
Chopra raised his voice above the roar of the outboard motor. ‘Stop the boat!’
At first Kartik did not hear him.
Chopra shouted again, then again.
Finally Kartik turned. Astonishment flashed across his features. Then he turned back, flipped the boat onto automatic pilot and leaned under the dashboard. When he straightened, he was holding a fishing gaff in his hand.
Kartik advanced.
Steadying himself against the motion of the boat, Chopra got to his feet. Then he reached into the pocket of his waistcoat and took out the gun he had snatched from Bomberton as he ran from the ballroom.
‘Stop the boat!’ he ordered.
Kartik’s eyes narrowed. His arms fell to his sides. He dropped his gaze to the handgun as if judging whether or not to charge. But Chopra’s arm did not waver.
Finally, Kartik stepped backwards and cut the motor. The boat drifted to a standstill.
‘Sunil Kartik, I am making a citizen’s arrest. I arrest you for the crime of stealing the Crown of Queen Elizabeth.’
Kartik frowned. ‘Citizen’s arrest? Aren’t you a policeman?’ Then his eyes narrowed. ‘Wait a minute. I recognise you. You were in the Tata Gallery when I—’ He stopped.
Chopra nodded. ‘Yes. My name is Chopra. It took me a while to place you, but now I have it. You were the Sikh gentleman, weren’t you?’
Kartik gave a thin smile. ‘A rather convincing disguise, even if I do say so myself.’
‘That’s how you got the crown out,’ continued Chopra. And in his mind’s eye was an image of the circus owner Tiger Singh performing the three-ball trick, making the ball vanish beneath his improvised turban. He now knew that the big Sikh in the Tata Gallery – Sunny Kartik – had executed a similar sleight-of-hand.
The whole plan shimmered in Chopra’s mind now, each detail laid out in blinding clarity.
Months ago Sunny Kartik had installed his man Prakash Yadav in the Prince of Wales Museum to plant the gas canisters and plastic explosive inside the Kali statue. And Chopra was now certain that the explosive had not been brought in on the day of the heist – it had been there all along, left there by Yadav. Chopra thought that he now understood exactly how the explosive had been employed in the heist. He believed that it had been used from inside the jewel room. To his mind, it was the only way to explain the debris that had been found in the corridor, a detail that had bothered him since the very beginning.
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br /> A day before the heist, just before he vanished, Yadav had installed a programmed virus into the museum’s new CCTV system, probably using something as simple as a USB stick.
On the day of the robbery Bulbul Kanodia and Sunny Kartik had entered the museum together, Kartik disguised as a Sikh. The metal scanner detected his Sikh kara, his steel bracelet, but Kartik had made such a fuss – claiming that he could not remove the bracelet even if he wished to – that the guards had let it through. This would be vital to the plan later on. Kanodia, for his part, had brought in an asthma inhaler into which had been built the resonance generator that they would subsequently use to crack the display case.
At the pre-planned moment the CCTV cameras were disabled by the computer virus. Kartik and Kanodia had been monitoring the daily queues, knowing that each group of twenty was only permitted to stay inside the jewel room for a set time. They knew roughly when they could expect to enter the museum and had set a window for the start of the CCTV blackout accordingly.
Once inside the gallery Kartik leaped into action.
He quickly recovered the pressurised gas canisters, the plastic explosive, and nose filters and latex gloves for himself and Kanodia from the Kali statue. Employing the gas canisters, they swiftly rendered everyone in the room unconscious.
While Kanodia used the resonance generator to smash the display case, Kartik put into effect the ingenious plan they had come up with to throw those who would ultimately investigate the theft off the scent.
Using a minute amount of plastic explosive he blasted a small hole in the sealed rear door of the gallery, just enough to put his arm through and place a much larger quantity of plastic explosive on the outside of the door. The second explosion would blow a bigger hole, enough to obliterate signs of the first. In this way the authorities might be fooled into believing that the thieves had entered the gallery from the corridor. There was nothing Kartik could do about the small amount of debris deposited in the corridor from the first explosion – he had simply relied on the forensics experts assuming this to be blowback. At least for long enough to muddy the initial investigation.
