Warlock

by Vickram E Diwan

  It took them almost two hours to reach the flat in Dilshad Garden; Payal was astonished to see the overcrowded area, full of a cluster of Jugghies around and the dirtiness of Eastern part of the city. The traffic was a nightmare; she was glad it was Abhay behind the wheel and not she. She checked the number of the apartment block written on the yellow-colored three-storied building. Sitting on the seat next to Abhay in his car, she declared that it was the place.

  Both of them got out of the car and after Abhay had locked its doors, they together walked towards the building, next to the road, which ran straight to the vast complex of Guru Teg Bahadur hospital. The small nameplate on the door of a flat on the first floor; bore the name of Colonel Narang (Retd.), Payal pressed the push button of the call bell, she had started to feel claustrophobic standing in the small stairway of the building. She put her hand on Abhay’s left arm, who patted it reassuringly.

  A man in his late thirties opened the door; he was wearing a white uniform, of an orderly. He looked questioningly at Abhay and asked, “Yes?”

  “Hi, we were looking for Colonel Narang; he had talked to my fiancé` Payal on the phone this morning,” said Abhay.

  “Oh; you are that girl,” the man said looking at Payal, who stood behind Abhay, holding on his hand. “Please come in, the Colonel is expecting you,” he said, stepping aside from the door.

  Payal sensed a very strong smell of medicines, which reminded her of hospitals, when she entered the flat behind Abhay. The man closed the door and turning to the two of them said, “My name is Harish; I was working as a nurse at the hospital nearby, these days I am looking after the Colonel full time. I think you should know about his condition before you meet him, that way you won’t be shocked and won’t upset him by your facial expressions.”

  “What condition are you talking about?” Abhay asked.

  “Colonel Narang is suffering from severe paralysis for the past three years,” the male nurse said in a low voice, “His body under the neck is practically dead; his heart beats, his lungs work to be sure, but he can’t raise a finger, can’t move a single muscle of his body under the neck.”

  “My God!” Payal said horrified. “He’s alive despite that, thank God!”

  “He is to be sure; he can hear and speak and his brain is working, but that is about it as far as bodily functions go.”

  “But he talked to me on the phone this very day,” said Payal.

  “Yes, but it was I who dialed your number and was holding the receiver all along next to his ear and mouth so that he could hear and talk to you,” he explained.

  “If he can’t move a muscle how does he eat, goes to the toilet, and how does he bathe?” Abhay asked.

  “I have to feed him, bathe him and do everything else for him,” Harish informed them.

  “He seems to be in a pretty bad shape; you think that we should go and meet him?” Payal asked Abhay.

  “Of course,” Harish answered instead, “do not be scared, his disease is not contagious; besides he is in rather a good state at present.”

  “You call this good state; what kind of a man are you?” Payal asked surprised. “What worse can it get than this?”

  “When it gets worse I have to put him on oxygen and call the doctor from the nearby hospital on the phone.”

  “Let’s leave Abhay,” Payal said, “what good such a man can do for us, what help could we get from him?”

  “More than you can possibly think of my child,” said a loud voice from the inside room. “Bring them here Harish,” said the same authoritative voice, which Payal had earlier in the day heard on the phone.

  The male nurse led Abhay and Payal inside the two bedroom flat; on their way inside they passed a lobby filled with all kinds of wooden trash. Once again the putrid ordour of medicines overwhelmed her senses as Payal went inside the room, holding steadfastly Abhay’s arm.

  It was a medium-sized room that looked like a mini hospital with its shelves filled with all sorts of medicines, on a bed in the middle of the room laid an old man, next to the bed were two long oxygen cylinders. On a bedside table to the right of the old man was a notebook computer displaying a game of Chess.

  The male nurse offered a sofa to the left of the old man to Payal and Abhay and he himself went to sit on a chair kept to the right of the bed, behind the laptop. Payal felt uneasy as soon as she sat on the old sofa, the springs of which were broken and the brown cover was faded and torn out. She looked apprehensively at the old man on the hospital-bed who was looking straight at them.

  The old man’s body lay motionless on the bed, like that of a dead person. He was wearing a properly pressed shirt and trousers. But the most striking feature of his body was his head; Payal was amazed to see the enormous size of his head. The old man seemed to have unlimited knowledge and wisdom in that huge head of his that was mostly bald, except for a few gray-hair on both sides and he seemed to have got himself shaved that very day.

  Looking straight at Payal with his shinning eyes he said, “I am Colonel Brijeshwar Dayal Narang; and you are Shomu’s niece, right?”

  “Yes, she answered after the reassuring patting of Abhay on her hand.

  “Payal…you were a little girl back, and now you sit before me as a full-grown woman. How time flies away…I think you can now understand, why I could not come to your place to meet you and had to call you here instead.”

  “It was no trouble, Sir,” Abhay said in a sympathetic voice.

  Colonel Narang looked at him questioningly. Payal introduced Abhay, her fiancé to the old man and asked, “Why did you want me to meet you, Sir?”

  “I want to help you; it was only two days back I found out about your horrifying experience. As I told you on the phone that I don’t read many papers and the magazines I was going through, prompted me to find out if you were the same Payal, the niece of my dear friend Shomu. It was after that I found out your number and called you.”

  “I can understand why you don’t read papers,” Abhay said in an amicable tone.

  “Life is full of surprises, promises, hopes, and dreams for you, but for me, it is the end of the road. Why would I need to read the newspapers? It is all the same; only the characters of the drama change, the rest remains as it always has been. Why characters even? Only the name and faces change; from the experience of my long life, I can say that humans never change; never do they learn anything from History. In fact, human beings are pathetically predictable; I prefer henceforth to spend my time playing chess on my computer.”

  “You play chess?” Payal asked.

  “I understand what you mean; Harish must have told you about my condition. But my mind is more capable than that of most full-bodied man, I dare say! Would you believe,” the old man said with pride in his voice, “that I am leading in this month with twenty games to eighteen, against the computer! I use voice command and the AI presses the keys; B4, A5, whatever the case may be.”

  “That’s very impressive sir,” Abhay said.

  “Yeah; and it is also all that I’m left with. But why bore you young people with how I spend my lonely days and nights. What I want my child,” the old man said turning to Payal, “is to see you safe and happy. The little I have found about your tormentor has made me realise that you are in grave danger; I would rather die of my disease and sickness than with the shame of not doing my duty towards my friend’s niece. I urge you to tell me everything, how you met that Schönherr and whatever happened between you. I want to know everything, each and every detail, take it as a wish of a dying man, if you can’t take it as a worthwhile offer of a help.”

  “It’s a long story Uncle,” Payal said.

  “Time is all that I have got,” said Colonel Narang.

  Payal looked at Abhay and on his agreeing went on to narrate the whole experience from the first meeting with Rudolf Schönherr to the details of the legal case.”

  “You have been through hell, “Colonel Narang said sympathetically, “but do not worry, you are not al
one now. Now you have me on your side, the greatest strategist, and I don’t exaggerate! You just wait and see Payal how I get that Rudolf boy. Oh, he will be sorry that he ever met you. I will give that little boy a run for his money. No offense Payal, but now Warlock would have to face a man, a real man. If he thinks that he’s ‘vicious and intrinsically evil’, then believe me, in me, he would meet more than his match.”

  “What do you intend to do sir, if I may ask?” Abhay inquired.

  “To give that kid a taste of his own medicine; it is no longer Payal who’s fighting against him, but me. You don’t worry about a single thing child and leave it all to me; I will trap that Schönherr in my net and he will beg mercy on his knees. Don’t go on my physical state, I can’t hurt a fly with my hands to be sure; but there is more to a man than his hands or his brute physical abilities,” boasted Colonel Narang.

  “What do you mean Uncle?” Payal asked.

  The old man’s eyes softened on hearing Payal call him uncle, “What’s the ultimate weapon, my children? It is not the one in the hand of a warrior, but the one above his shoulders. It is the human mind, which is the ultimate weapon of a warrior and which fights and wins the battles. I will use my mind to beat Rudolf Schönherr; physically I’m no match him but mentally that Warlock is no match for me!”

  “I don’t know if you should get involved in all this, Uncle. I don’t want to see you get hurt because of me,” Payal said in a voice of concern.

  “Nonsense; even if I did not win what have I got to lose? I have seen a lot in my life, no desire left to see anymore; but you my children, you have your whole life to look forward to. And I will be damned before I let the evil hands of Warlock snatch away your happiness. When are you two getting married?” He asked in a different voice.

  Abhay looked at Payal and slowly answered, “Very soon, this very month in fact.”

  “Congratulations in advance, I cannot come to attend your wedding, but my blessings would always be there with you two.”

  “Thank you, Uncle,” both said together.

  Abhay and Payal got up from the sofa, the springs inside yet again registered a loud protest. Greeting the old Colonel they both went out of the room. Harish locked the door behind them and came back in the room.

  “Harish,” the Colonel said, “bring the telephone diary; in it, you will find the entries; one listed under the alphabet ‘T’ as T.K. Bharoo Shah Bengali and another as P.I. Sadhna. Call them both and tell them that Colonel Narang wants to meet them and they should come down here this very day.”

  “Yes sir; by the way Colonel,” Harish asked turning the pages of the telephone diary, “P.I., I can understand as a private investigator, what does T.K. stand for?”

  “Tantrik!” Answered the old man and turned his attention to the chess game showing on his computer.

  It was about five in the evening when the doorbell of the flat rang; Harish went to open it. He found a fat; bulky middle-aged woman outside the door, who looked like a ‘Russian Mamma’ mother of five healthy children. She was wearing oversized and out of fashion black sunglasses and had a large leather handbag hanging by her shoulder so full of things that it could not be closed and in her hand was a mobile phone.

  “Get out of the way,” she said pushing away the thin bodied Harish from the doorway as if he was made of cotton.

  “But who are you?” Harish called behind her with panting breath.

  “Sadhna, you had called in the afternoon,” she said as she forced her way into the room of Colonel Narang.

  ‘Great!’ Harish thought to himself as he closed the door of the flat; that ‘Russian Mamma’ was going to spy on Warlock! That Colonel Narang sure had an eye for finding weirdoes, who surpassed even him in their strange ways. Mean who in his right mind could think of that fat middle-aged woman with a manly face as a Private Investigator? Harish found the woman sitting on the sofa inside the room; he quietly went to sit on his chair in the room.

  “How’s your kid?” Colonel Narang was asking the private investigator.

  “He’s fine, thank you,” she answered.

  “And how’s work?”

  “Not many cases these days; but I am getting along. At least I did not starve to death as my Bastard husband had thought when he went away with his bimbo and gave me a divorce. It takes time to settle in this profession, which I have chosen, but I was never over-ambitious,” the fat woman said totally unconcerned about her situation.

  “You intend to continue with this dangerous line of work?” Colonel inquired.

  “What choice do I have? Besides, this is something I am actually good at; and it also brings some adventure in my otherwise dull life. I hope that someday I will have my own office with numerous field agents; that is the goal I work for, but this is not so easy. Tell me why have you called me; what’s the matter, Colonel?”

  “Well there is a case Sadhna, but I’m not sure if I should get you involved in it. Besides, I can’t pay you much; you know that I have since long retired from the Army.”

  “Don’t insult me like this Colonel; how can I forget that it was you who pulled me out of my depression, showed me a way to live, to stand alone and fight my way in this vast world and raise my child as a single parent. It was you, who made me what I’m today; even the first cases, which I got, were only due to your recommendation. I would not hear a word about the money; you just tell me what the case is,” she said full of gratitude.

  Colonel Narang took a hard look at the unattractive yet honest face of the private investigator and said, “The main reason for my hesitation is that the man is very dangerous, he won’t stop at anything. People like him have no principles, no compassion and utterly ruthless and cruel. I am not sure whether I should let you risk your life; you have also a child to take care of.”

  “Who is he, colonel? Let us not beat about the bush and run into circles uselessly; the reason why you have called me here is that you want me in this case. Therefore I see no reason whatsoever for futile arguments.”

  “His name is Rudolf Schönherr,” Colonel declared.

  “I have heard that name,” the private investigator said narrowing her eyes. “Yes, that Choreographer, whose name appeared in the papers recently.”

  “Precisely.”

  “But what have you got to do with him?” She inquired.

  “Not with him but the young woman he had tried to kill, Payal Chatterjee is the niece of my late friend and I want to help her defeat Rudolf Schönherr in the court case. What I need you to do is to follow him as his shadow; I want to know everything, where he goes, what he does and who he meets,” Colonel Narang narrated, mincing no matter for her understanding.

  “You got it; but how will it help the court case, if I may ask?”

  “If we can get some evidence, it would immensely strengthen Payal’s case in the court. One last thing, Rudolf Schönherr not only is an extremely shrewd person but is also a very cunning operator, from all that I have heard about him. You will have to be especially careful when you are following him. I repeat yet again that he’s utterly ruthless and cruel.”

  “You don’t worry about me at all. I will be constantly in touch with you on my mobile,” answered the fat woman.

  “Good, note down the address of his Institute of performing arts in South Extension. He also has a farmhouse in Mehrauli, but I fancy that he won’t be going there these days. And he has a bungalow in Vasant Vihar, the address of which you can look in the telephone directory. That would be all; you stay in touch, and do not take unnecessary risks,” Colonel warned her.

  The bulky woman went away after greeting him; Harish came back after closing the door and sat down on the sofa. “Forgive me, sir,” but why didn’t you tell the private investigator about Rudolf Schönherr being a Warlock?”

  The old man looked at his male nurse as a teacher would look at his pupil and said, “What good it would have done? She can’t fight a Warlock. I have decided to wage this battle on two fronts, on the legal
front, and on the supernatural front. The P.I. may help to strengthenthe case on the first front, while the second front would best be taken care of by a Tantrik that I have called.”

  “Why did you say ‘may’ Colonel? Aren’t you sure about the competence and abilities of this woman?”

  “Not at all, she’s a very good private investigator; but from what I have heard about Rudolf Schönherr from Payal, makes me conclude that he is a remarkably intelligent man. I have no illusion that he would fall foolishly and let a P.I. get away with incriminating evidence against him."

  “Why did you bother to put that private investigator on this case, to begin with?”

  “Because I needed someone to act as my eyes; she will monitor the movements of Rudolf Schönherr boy for me. Tell me about what is he doing at any given time; from that, I would be in a position to be able to anticipate his moves and formulate my strategy accordingly.”

  “Why didn’t you tell all this to her?” asked Harish curiously.

  “Because I needed to make her feel that her assignment was important; she would not have been able to give the best out of her if she felt that her job was only of secondary importance. It’s human nature my boy, they need to feel important, their work as being very important in the overall scheme of things, only are they able to deliver their best.”

  “If this Rudolf Schönherr is so shrewd and cunning,” the male nurse asked, “why was he busted? Why was he caught red-handed; if he was such a smart and smooth operator, as you think of him?”

  “Part of Warlock’s success thus far lay in his ability to live two separate lives. Two existences separate from each other, with no common link or denominator between them except Rudolf Schönherr himself. Payal was the first link that joined the two separate worlds - of a famous Choreographer and a Warlock. This has led him to his present downfall and exposure. But he must have learned from his mistakes and will be more threatening and menacing. An injured snake is immeasurably dangerous.” Just the bell rang, “That must be Tantrik Bharoo and his assistant Twinkle,” said the Colonel to his nurse, Harish, “Show them both in.”