Shofiullah was leading a convoy of three container trucks out of the customs yard in the port city of Chittagong, sitting in one of many thousands of trucks in line, except that his goods had no manifest, no bill of lading, no tax clearances, no papers at all, in fact. They were dark containers, unloaded in secret, unrecognized by the ship that had carried them in from the eastern ocean, waved through by a chain of corrupt officials. This was the very thing that was never supposed to happen, the thing a hundred safeguards had been made to prevent, yet Shofiullah drove in and out of the yard with a swagger, cigarette dangling from grease-stained fingers, driving one-handed, his twelve-year-old assistant capering like a monkey from the passenger-side window, trying to shout a way through heavy traffic.
These were routine shipments from Thailand, containers filled with Yaba tablets and other pharmaceutical products that were sold at huge markups to the addicted fashionistas of the capital city, plus boxes of cocaine, ecstasy, speed, diet pills—everything packed in oilcloth and sunk in sealed barrels of motor grease, just a brief nod toward security, for it was actually unthinkable that any official would interfere. It was a part of cabal business, a very lucrative part, not least because of the influence it allowed the cabal to wield among the city’s elite, selling upmarket supplies to high-end people.
Shofiullah and his fellow drivers had barely gotten a hundred meters out of the gate when plainclothes investigators stopped them, flashing papers too fast to read, pulling guns, sweating in the heat beneath large dark glasses and black bandannas. One or two shotgun-wielding, jackbooted RAB were behind them. Shofiullah had time to flick away his cigarette and reach for his trusty Nokia before they pulled him down, face against the tarmac. There was something perfunctory about their refusal to talk. The gunshot was casual, once in the back with a six-chambered revolver.
“Trying to escape,” one of them said, as they began to walk away. “Cross fire.”
He bled out on the road, but the drug haul was large enough that when his body made the eight o’clock news, he was promoted from hapless driver to international drug runner and armed terrorist with links to Salafi groups worldwide.
In an apartment in Old Dhaka, three elderly women spent all night gumming new labels onto cans of expired milk powder bought on the cheap and distributed as fresh inventory all across the city. Each lot took a week to clear, and the women were paid well and allowed to live in the apartment, a marked improvement from the slums that would have been their more natural milieu. They had worked here unmolested for three years now, had literally grown fat off the expired milk, for no one minded if they consumed a few tins of their own supply. This was cabal business, the cabal being one of the greatest net importers of food, although to be fair, the trade in expired goods was only a small part of its genuine distribution; still, profits were profits, and this was a highly lucrative side business.
Three A.M., and the police busted through the door, splintering the flimsy plywood down the middle, and then proceeded to lay waste to everything. The women had money set aside for this, phone numbers, secret handshakes. These cops were peculiarly deaf. They still took the money, but pretended not to hear anything else. They had notebooks full of serial numbers that they matched to the tins, tracing shipping documents to original letters of credit. Finally, a magistrate came in with his own stool and little folding table, set up shop, and began writing his report. A journalist with a video camera started filming everything. It was then that the old women realized the cabal had finally failed them.
At the crack of dawn, long before any respectable tax officials ever rose from their beds, the guards of an office building in Motijheel, the city’s financial district, were rudely awakened. Ministry men from the National Board of Revenue came out of two hired vans, escorted by plainclothes police. They didn’t bother speaking, for their orders came from up high, and they had received very specific instructions on what to find. The office doors were hastily opened, books of accounts ransacked, laptops confiscated. This was a cabal office, a part of the real estate business that formed the bulk of its assets, and there were important documents here: land deeds, tax files, sales figures. Dargoman himself sat here sometimes, for the stock exchange and the bank head offices were all nearby.
They would find nothing great. The cabal had accountants and lawyers, after all, who were adept at hiding wealth. Taxes were filed on time, bribes were made, paperwork was kept up to date; in many ways they were model citizens. The NBR men had their own skills, however, from countless hours poring over handwritten accounts: hard-won instincts for weakness. And it wasn’t long before they identified one of their bread-and-butter targets, the VAT on rent. The land deeds were fine, income taxes paid, licenses renewed, but the office was rented, one of the many the cabal kept around the city, and the office manager had neglected to pay VAT on the rent, a newish rule that was normally overlooked and settled out of hand.
Once the chink was found, further NBR accountants and lawyers were drafted in, notes were written back and forth, until the file, now several yards thick, appeared on the table of a director of the VAT wing, a relative of the Khan Rahmans, a once indigent boy whose schooling had been paid for by the trust, whose passage to this very post had been eased by a series of calls made by old Uncle Sikkim. While his inspectors waited patiently for him to cut a deal, the director did the exact opposite. He marked it for immediate prosecution, applied the highest possible penalties, ordered an eight-year tax investigation of all related enterprises, and then promptly went on his preapproved annual leave to visit his daughter in Canada, basking in the peculiar glow of having, for once, done his job.
“Where is Matteras?” Dargoman tapped his cane impatiently, thrusting aside the doorman. His bodyguards were on either side, ex-army men with shotguns and vests, no real attempt at hiding their purpose. The emissary was a worried man these days and had dispensed with the niceties of civil society altogether. He had an ex-cartel armored car with bulletproof glass, one of only three in the country, reportedly.
It was not his patron djinn he found in the conference room, but rather Hazard lounging in a swivel seat, smoking a long brown cigar and apparently contemplating the city traffic through the tinted French windows.
“He’s gone north,” said the djinn without looking up. “To Kuriken.”
“I need him,” Dargoman snarled. He flung himself into a chair.
Hazard motioned for the varied flunkies to leave. “Humans.” He blew out smoke. “What use are you? You need. You want. Need I remind you, emissary, that you work for us?”
“I work for Matteras,” Dargoman said. He modified his tone, however. Hazard, if anything, was even more rabid than Matteras, barely reined in at the best of times. He had spent very little time in the human world, was unused to the hustle and bustle, the constant irritations of daily life. He was one of those who yearned for the untamed vistas, the vast reaches of gray sand and ocean, and he was willing to depopulate entire nations to improve his view. “Still, perhaps you would deign to advise me.”
“Unburden yourself, by all means.”
“You are aware that Matteras entrusted the company assets in Bengal to my care?”
“Yes, his cabal, this great human plaything,” Hazard said. “Each of us must pass time the best way we can.”
“I was given the impossible task of liquidating and removing our wealth. Millions of dollars’ worth of land, interests in industries, proxy shares in banks and insurance companies…”
“I assure you, I have little to no interest in this.”
“It was proceeding,” Dargoman said, “at a reasonable pace. I was happy with the progress.”
“My delight knows no bounds.”
“Until recently. Everything has reversed. We are being blocked at every turn. The National Board of Revenue has opened an investigation on us. Money laundering. On us. We damn near wrote the tax code for the last budget. Naturally I summoned my clients in the NBR—”
“Our clients, you mean,” Hazard said. “Humans do not have clients.”
“Yes, fine, I summoned the clients of Matteras and the many officers in my pay. They could do nothing. The dealing officer will not take bribes, he cannot be threatened.” Dargoman held up his hand. “In isolation, this is nothing. But three days after, our trucks were seized by Narcotics Control, trucks without bills of lading or invoices, carrying hard-earned Yaba pills worth eighteen crore in the Dhaka market. Last week, seven sales of property failed to go through, seven guaranteed buyers who inexplicably canceled their contracts. No explanation given. No phone calls returned.”
“So, bad luck?”
“It’s that damned woman!” Dargoman said. “She’s thrown out that senile fool Sikkim, she’s taken over.”
“You killed her husband, did you not?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you can hardly expect her to sit idly by. Are you telling me this much-vaunted cabal of yours cannot handle one irate middle-aged woman?”
“We are wealthier,” Dargoman said. “But she has hundreds of relatives. They’re like weeds. And she’s cultivated the most peculiar contacts. She has servants everywhere—peons, guards, drivers—they all seem to belong to her. Our files are vanishing from tables, information lost, titles and deeds stolen from safes. The SEC peon who keeps the mail register has inexplicably lost two of our applications, setting us back a year. The land registry office has lost three of our original deeds. The sitting minister for land has apologized, there’s nothing he can do. Thirty million dollars put at risk, because some land clerk owes a favor to that bitch!”
Hazard was amused. He was always amused, even when he killed men like cockroaches.
“I know where she is hiding,” Dargoman said. “I want your help to smash them.”
“I am hardly interested in humans smashing each other. Kill her yourself if you can.”
“They have that djinn there, you fool!”
Hazard stared at him for a moment, and Dargoman saw madness spiraling in the turn of his pupils.
“I apologize,” Dargoman said hastily, dropping to one knee. “My ardor has betrayed me. Forgive the impertinence.”
“Quite.”
“The djinn Barabas is holed up with them. He does that infernal pup’s bidding, that upstart emissary. To destroy the house will be difficult using our more… regular forces.”
“I will not kill Kaikobad’s nephew, and certainly not Barabas,” Hazard said. “He is a very old friend.”
“They’re all very old friends,” Dargoman said despairingly.
“We are not low men, murdering each other for scraps. We are made of fire, human,” Hazard said. “You would do well to remember that… before I am forced to chastise you.”
“Matteras wouldn’t like that,” Dargoman said. Humiliating, debilitating fear spread from his bowels. He had seen Hazard chastising people before.
Hazard smiled his jackal grin. “Matteras does not speak for me.”
“I beg forgiveness, my lord,” Dargoman said. He prostrated himself for good measure. “I am a humble emissary.”
“That word,” Hazard said. “It is tossed around a great deal. You seem to think it confers some sort of privilege upon you, some mantle of djinndom, as if you were more than human. You are a servant, Dargoman, plain and simple, and sometimes servants require a good beating. Matteras indulges you.”
“Yes, Lord.”
“Forget your petty misfortune. You have been summoned to the Celestial Court.”
“Me? Why?!”
“A case has been lodged against you. By the woman.”
“She’s a civilian!” Dargoman snarled. “By what right can she file a case?”
“The court has accepted her complaint,” Hazard said, “possibly because so many of our jurists owe her money.”
“Her husband was not an emissary,” Dargoman said. “I am within my rights in killing him. It was a personal matter, between humans.”
“Quite. I regret to inform you, emissary, that the complaint is not for your little murder. It is for something much more serious. Breach of contract.”
“What?”
“Apparently you signed a contract with Kaikobad, undertaking the safety of his son. A commission you failed terribly at.” Hazard smoked his cigar. “Did you undertake such a contract?”
“A verbal contract at best.”
“Did you take custody of the boy?”
“You know I did.”
“Then off to court you go. I suggest you hire a good barrister.”
“You must help me—I did it for you.”
“Oh, I’m a terrible lawyer. My talents are… slightly less academic.”
“Matteras then?”
“My dear boy, can you imagine Matteras going to court to defend a human, much less his own cat’s-paw?”
“I’m his emissary, for god’s sake. He can get the case dismissed. His auctoritas is enormous.”
“Best ask him then. Only don’t go tearing off to Siberia. If you think I’m bad, you should see Kuriken. He’ll hang you on a spike and light a lamp inside your gut. I’ve seen him do it.”
“Has Kuriken blessed our cause?”
“They are negotiating. He leads his faction of the conservative party. We must see why he delays. He has been vague. Matteras no doubt will convince him. His auctoritas joined to ours will be enough.”
“And then?”
“Then comes the storm.”