* * *
—
Ajay is standing outside the elevator, waiting to return to his room when a sly-faced young man in a brilliantly patterned shirt slips beside him. The doors open. They both walk in.
“You want to meet the Singh brothers?” this man says as soon as the doors close. “I heard you talking,” he hurries on. “They all pretend it’s impossible, but it can be arranged, just don’t waste your time with that chutiya at the desk. He’s full of big talk but he’s small fry, he knows nothing.”
“Who are you?”
“Vipin Tyagi,” the man says, putting his hands together in namaste. “I fix things.”
“I want to meet them,” Ajay says.
“I understand.”
“I want to see them face-to-face.”
“Difficult. Not impossible.”
The elevator opens at Ajay’s floor.
“How much?” Ajay says.
Vipin uses his body to keep the door from closing. “Shhhh. This is not how good people talk. Why don’t we meet tonight to discuss? Nine p.m.? Behind the Hanuman mandir. By the old cricket ground. Nice and quiet. Bring some goodwill with you and let’s talk in the shadow of God.”
6.
The town is stirring to dark. The thin light of day cracks and sinks into the frigid night. Vendors with steaming stalls sell aloo tikki, kachori, shakarkandi chaat, hot sweet tea. Plumes of smoke from wood fires rise against the dusk. Temple bells ring out. Ajay bathes with a bucket of cold water.
He knows there’s a good chance he is walking into a trap.
But what else can he do?
At seven he dresses, checks the bulge of the gun under his suit, places the money in his bag. He eats an omelet at the cart opposite the hotel, kills time by wandering the lanes of the town, keeping to the shadows as much as he can. A febrile atmosphere. Groups of young toughs loiter. Cops man wary checkpoints. Whom they serve is unknown. He makes a distant pass of the Hanuman mandir before returning to the market, watching from the shadows. By eight thirty, the streets are emptying out, the hotel lobby is deserted. He turns and makes his way through the backstreets.
He reaches the locked and desolate mandir a few minutes before nine. In the lane at the rear, he can sense someone within, watching him. He should turn around and leave. He should reach for his gun. He should . . .
“My friend, you came.”
This is not a good place to meet.
Ajay begins to back away.
“Where are you going, my friend? Don’t you want to meet Kuldeep Singh?”
“I made a mistake,” Ajay says. His own voice startles him. Reedy, weak.
He turns to walk away, only to find a gun pointing in his face. A man he thinks he saw in the street? It’s hard to focus on the face with this gun on him.
“You stick out here, brother,” Vipin calls out affably. “Everyone sees you. You’re already famous. Better step inside and talk.”
The goon with the gun waves it toward Vipin Tyagi’s voice, and Ajay steps inside.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Vipin says, flanked by another goon. “I brought my friends. After all, it would be foolish to meet a stranger alone in this town at night, don’t you think?”
Ajay has no words. How foolish of him. How futile to believe he could alter the world.
Vipin steps forward. “It’s better that you hand over that bag.”
The goon beside Vipin draws a machete, while the gunman presses the muzzle into the back of Ajay’s head.
“You don’t know who I am,” Ajay says.
Vipin Tyagi laughs and the goons’ laughter follows. “Throw me the bag.”
Ajay places the bag down at his own feet.
“I said throw me the bag, behenchod!”
“I work for Vicky Wadia,” Ajay says.
Vipin pauses, narrows his eyes. Then the laughter rings out even more. “Is that right?! You work for Vicky-ji?” Vipin Tyagi wags his finger. “If you worked for a man like him, you wouldn’t need to come to me.” He nods to the gunman, impatient, bored. “Get the bag. Then kill him.”
* * *
—
It all happens in a matter of seconds.
Of the three men, the gunman dies first. He’s the one reaching for the bag, the one taking his eye off their prey. All Ajay needs is instinct, the split-second understanding that the gun is no longer in the back of his head but pointed at the sky. Ajay spins away. He doesn’t think how he might die, how his brains may explode and splatter the earth. He spins and grabs the gunman’s wrist and the gun goes off as they fall to the ground. He is the first to react. Thank Eli for that, all those hours of dry, mechanical training. But who to thank for the rage? Sunny? His mother? They fall and Ajay snaps the gunman’s arm. The machete goon is already coming at him. But something about the sound of the arm bone cracking makes him come half-heartedly, and that’s all Ajay needs to leap forward and take him down, pin the machete hand with his knee and smash the goon repeatedly in the face. Grab the goon’s head in his hands and smash it against the dirt. Take the machete and slit his throat. Take the machete and hack at the head of the gunman with the shattered arm. When Ajay turns, panting, his eyes a film of blood, Vipin Tyagi is rooted to the spot, his own eyes wide, jaw agape. “I can take you to them, brother!” Vipin cries. But Ajay doesn’t care anymore. The red mist has fallen. He strides toward Vipin, raises the blade, and brings it down into Vipin’s face.