Encounter Twenty-Six

“Casual sex,” remarks Ranvir Pratap. “Do not treat a kill like casual sex.” He picks up the used cartridge from the floor and hands it to me. “Here, you dropped your sheath.”

My sheath looks empty and misshapen. I slip it into my pocket.

“Always pick up your DNA,” says my boss. It is a mild reprimand delivered with a wink.

The room is strewn with dirty clothes, stale food, and the DNA of a man who had hunkered down for the final standoff. We called him Churi Ram. He lies spread-eagled and his eyes have rolled.

Ranvir does a walkabout. He is piecing together how I carried this one out. He is forensic, unsparing, and clinical, looking for chinks, for that one small fissure in my mind.

Churi Ram had no idea it was someone like me but he was still careful. I knocked on the door and quickly side-stepped to the open window. I could not see him but I heard him creep up to the door; he would have his knife in his hand. We held our breath and waited—till he knew. The legendary killer and serial rapist sensing danger. At that very moment he whirled, his knife glistening, and charged my way. I believe at moments like these a second has fractions. Within one long second I aimed where his head should have been and fired; his knife took air and lost speed, clattering to the ground; he came into view and started to fall. Churi Ram had three eyes, one in the middle of his forehead. The other two eyes flickered as he saw me before he went down. His fall was silent. We lost touch with each other as he collapsed.

“You shoot blindly and yet you spill his brains. Either you are gifted or you’re a fool,” concludes Ranvir, standing at the exact spot where I took my shot not so long ago. He examines the hole in the door, then turns to me, and I look at my trigger finger.

It was a strange moment and it brought me no joy. I had taken down a fellow marksman, a man who could split hair with a knife from fifteen feet. The chap was on our hit list for two long years and had survived our three previous attempts.

“Karuna,” chides Ranvir in a singsong voice. He is measuring how far the knife had traveled toward where I stood. “You gave him a chance, did you not?”

Had I really run it this close? I had no bloody idea. All I know is Churi Ram’s last living act was the throw of his churi. And that should never have happened.

* * *

They have turned me into a killing machine and I make Captain Fantastic—Ranvir Pratap—proud. Initially the rest of Special Branch worried at my clinical efficiency and monitored me very closely. They sent Ms. Daftary. Now they worry I might be softening and slowing down. So they pack me off on forced leave to a lodge in Lonavla, a rainy haven where clouds drift into my living room like ghosts. I sit in a chair all day and worry that they must be sitting somewhere in a meeting and deciding my fate. Every other day the rain seeks me out by beating down on the windows. The water trickles in and puddles collect around my feet. My socks get wet and I feel miserable and cold. I call Nandini and then don’t know what to say. “Are you hiding?” she asks.

After a week I am recalled. “Come back, son,” says Desai.

“How do you feel now?” they ask. They search my face to see if I’ve been drinking and drowning in that open shower called Lonavla.

“Cold,” I say, looking down at my feet.

“Cold-hearted?” asks one of them.

“Cold fish,” mumbles another.

They want me to show some feeling.

“Cold feet,” I reply.

“Karuna, twenty-six down, and you still have cold feet?”

They laugh; all of them find it funny. I do not join in and the laughter tapers. Somebody coughs.

“Err . . . Can I leave now?” I ask.

They glance at each other, shrug, and let me go.

* * *

And then I get called in for a formal debriefing. There is a room in a covert building just for this purpose. It has blue walls, fluorescent lights, and a cement floor. Ranvir prepared me for this, saying they would try to unsettle me. “Do not discuss details of any operation; simply say it’s all there in the files.” (The files are black holes.) “Don’t explain your actions. You follow my orders and that’s it. And one last thing: please don’t share your thoughts.”

“Step down, Karan.”

They are seated in a semicircle and I’m placed under a spotlight. They examine me without expression, and the nagging feeling that I had when walking in won’t go away—that of being a specimen in a lab. Parthasarathy is here as well. Should I be worried about that?

“What troubles you, Karan?” asks Ranvir as he examines the report on the clinical killing that I had carried out. “Is there anything you want to say?” It’s unlike him to ask such questions, but I remember his warning.

“Umm . . . nothing, sir,” I reply. It’s true. The sum total of what worries me amounts to nothing.

Parthasarathy stirs. There’s a fat file in front of him. He gazes from it to me. “You seem to be slowing down. In the last couple of cases it’s almost like you’ve been asking for trouble, like you want to get yourself hurt. Are you aware of this?”

“I have no wish to be injured, sir,” I reply. “As to slowing down, why would anyone question me when I am the last man standing?”

I feel breathless after that salvo. Someone snickers while the rest turn toward Parthasarathy.

There’s a grain of truth in what he said. What caused me to pause at that very moment when I wasn’t supposed to? But I’m not qualified to hazard a reason. I guess I pause a lot in most things I do; when I speak, when I walk, and sometimes people have stepped up to me to shake me. I realize I’ve paused again because Ranvir has asked something that I haven’t heard. He rises from his chair and peers over the photographs that have been placed on the table. There are grainy black-and-white images of the last two encounters. He smiles at me and I nod in return.

“I asked if you have been seeing the counselor, Ms. Daftary,” he repeats, echoing the question on everyone’s mind.

I shake my head. “No sir.”

“Are you are scared of meeting someone like her?” asks Parthasarathy. “You missed the last two appointments.”

“I believe they’re optional, sir,” I blurt out.

“Do you doubt what you are doing? That is what she would have asked you.”

I say nothing.

“Are you aware that your wife follows you occasionally? Do you know that she has anonymously visited the homes of some of your targets?”

I’m not prepared for this question—there’s no point in looking toward Ranvir for help on this one. I nod absentmindedly.

“Why does she do it?”

Why not ask her? “I have no idea, sir.”

“Can you stop her?” asks Parthasarathy.

“No sir,” I reply, for once answering quickly. Should I have said I would try, that I would discuss it with her? Was this the end? Had I just finished my career with that one answer?

“Do you think she has anything to do with your slowing down, or your so-called hesitancy?”

“No sir,” I say as firmly as I can. I should have denied any slowdown, and it hurts to know they consider that a given. Parthasarathy stares at me for some time and I know better than to meet his gaze.

“Why does she do it?” he repeats. It’s not really a question directed at me; it’s more of a puzzle that interests him. “What did she tell you after her Gonzales visit?”

It was obvious the two of us were being tailed by the department. I can’t evade this direct question. I look toward my boss who in turn is staring at my shoes, as if urging them to get up and walk. Should I repeat what she told me? Nandini had been unusually quiet when she returned from Bandra after the Gonzales funeral. At the dinner table she had toyed with her food and finally said something I didn’t understand: I saw his wife and realized death has a human face. Don’t you ever forget that.

“You can leave now,” I hear Ranvir tell me, though my mind is elsewhere.

As I walk out I catch him saying to Parthasarathy, “I am sure it’s temporary.”

And part of the reply: “He is going to get killed very soon. It’s a question of when and not . . .”

* * *

I walk away and drive back to Special Branch. I head for the washroom to freshen up. This time I examine my face in the mirror. There are no worry lines on my forehead and no bags below my eyes. I trace my hand along my forehead and feel a cold glass sheet. Water drips from my palm down my reflected eyes and cheeks.

Tiwari walks in at that moment. He spits juice into a corner and loosens his belt. He looks toward me sympathetically. “I have information,” he announces. His belt is undone and his pants begin to sag. I have to turn away.

“You always have information, sir,” I reply.

He laughs and leans over the urinal, placing a hand on the wall. “The department has had enough of you and Ranvir.”

A splashing sound comes in spurts. I glimpse his vast backside and settle upon a spot on his balding head. I know the caliber that I will use if I ever need to puncture that pumpkin.

“What about the others, sir?” I ask him.

He shrugs his shoulders and his pants sag farther. “The word is out on all of you.”

“Why are you giving me this information, sir?” I ask.

“I could help you,” he says. “I could help you if you help me. People like you burn out quickly. You should take a transfer immediately. We need a man who can use a gun. You see, I need protection. The information I carry in my head needs protection.”

He cozies up to the urinal and shuts his eyes as he finishes. And then he turns around, hitches up his pants, and struggles with his belt. As he washes his hands in the basin, I meet his eye in the mirror and approach. He is wary as I walk up and whisper into his ear.

“Come with me, sir, to these places that I roam.”

“What?” he says curiously. He leans away from me and his eyes widen. “Come where?”

I place my hand on his shoulder and I can feel him shudder. “Come with me to the shadow lands,” I whisper.

The basin tap is open and the water is gushing hard. Drops are splashing onto his trousers but Tiwari doesn’t notice. He is gaping at me. “Are you mad? You are truly mad!” he says. He wants to get away from me.

I place my other hand on his shoulder as well and I stare at a space a few inches above his head. He crouches and tries to get away.

“Sir, I do not kill friends,” I tell him. “I may be mad but I am not crazy. I do not kill friends.”

He retreats backward, looking at me the entire time. Then he stammers out, “I am not your friend.”

We spend a few precious seconds doing nothing. He recovers, straightens himself, and points his fat finger at me. “You,” he says. “You,” he repeats. And he is gone.

* * *

I take the long way home that day. I have to muster up courage to confront the questions that will come at me from Nandini. She knows about the review, knows it was an untimely one, and really the first since I joined the police force. This to her is a harbinger of change in an already unsettled world.