I LEFT THE guest house and ran towards the rickshaw stand on the corner. Salman was sprawled on a mat under his rickshaw. At the sound of my footsteps he opened his eyes and hauled himself to his feet. He gave a hacking cough and spat into the roadside gutter.
‘Office, sahib?’
I nodded and climbed aboard the rickshaw. With one finger of his right hand, Salman rang a battered little tin bell that hung from a string tied around his wrist. It tinkled like a child’s toy. Then we were off.
The roads were busy despite the early hour. The morning was humid and still and the sky was already turning from pinks and oranges to the hazy blue that brought with it the portent of another broiling day.
There was a note from Daniels waiting on my desk, imploring me to call him, at my earliest convenience, to arrange a time to brief the Commissioner. That was fine by me. I was more than happy to do so, now that I actually had something to tell him.
I telephoned Daniels’ office but no one answered. It was only six o’clock and the man was probably still in his bed and I took a perverse pleasure in writing him an angry note, telling him I’d tried to contact him several times as I needed to brief the Commissioner urgently on developments. I called in a peon from the corridor outside and dispatched him to Daniels’ office with the note.
Once confident he was headed in the right direction, I telephoned the pit and asked the duty officer to take a message for Surrender-not. The sergeant was already at his desk, so I asked him to join me, bringing with him all the files we had on Benoy Sen and the terrorist group Jugantor.
Ten minutes later he knocked and entered the office, carrying a pile of fat buff-coloured folders. He let out a sigh as he dropped the lot onto the desk. ‘Here you are, sir,’ he said. ‘The thick ones are on Jugantor. They go back about ten years. The thin one is on Sen himself.’
‘Good work, Sergeant,’ I said. ‘Any news on that missing baggage manifest for the Darjeeling Mail?’
‘I’m afraid not, sir. I’ll keep pushing.’
I dismissed him and began reading through the Jugantor files. They told the classic tale of an outfit which, from innocuous beginnings, had developed into a major terrorist threat. The early files comprised mainly scene-of-crime reports, detailing petty theft and thuggery. The later files showed a graduation to gun attacks and much more sophisticated felonies. They’d started out robbing taxi cabs and ended up robbing banks. The proceeds of these raids were used to pay for guns and parts for bombs. As for assassinations, they were mainly of policemen, most of them natives, and a few minor British government officials. What was interesting, though, was the number of failed assassination attempts recorded in the file. On many occasions the terrorists hadn’t even come close to achieving their objectives, either through laughably poor execution or faulty weaponry or because they’d been infiltrated by security service informants.
Alongside the scene-of-crime reports were a small number of intelligence reports. These speculated on the hierarchy and operating structure of the organisation, together with what was known about the group’s regional cells throughout Bengal, and their contacts with terrorist factions in other parts of India. The group’s leader had been a Bengali named Jatindranath Mukherjee, whom the natives referred to as ‘Bagha Jatin’ – ‘the Tiger’.
There was a significant increase in Jugantor’s activities during the war, with several of the later files devoted solely to a period between 1914 and 1917. The Tiger seemed to have looked on the war as a golden opportunity to try to force the British out of India and there were several reports on a raid that he and his men had carried out on the warehouses of a company called Rodda & Co, which held one of the biggest arms stores in Calcutta. They’d managed to escape with ten cases of arms and ammunition, including fifty Mauser pistols and forty-six thousand rounds of ammunition.
Most of the files, though, focused on what they termed ‘the German Conspiracy’, detailing a plot to acquire weapons from the Kaiser, seize Calcutta and foment insurrection of the native regiments of the Indian army throughout India. They described the group’s links to seditious Indian organisations as far afield as Berlin and San Francisco, detailing how funds were channelled through these organisations to pay for arms shipments. In the end, the group had been fatally compromised by a number of spies acting for Section H, and the insurrections in Bengal and the Punjab were strangled at birth. Mukherjee and five of his comrades had gone into hiding and were discovered near Balasore, betrayed by locals. Section H moved in and Mukherjee and two others were mortally wounded. Two more were captured. Only one man escaped. Benoy Sen.
I turned to Sen’s file. There were few hard facts and no photographs or sketches of the man. Most of it was just speculation about his involvement in raids in the movement’s early days. Later there were rumours of him having a role in the group’s strategic planning, but nothing concrete. Section H, with their greater resources and spies within Jugantor, would probably have a better picture of the man. I’d make sure to ask them for access to their files on him. It would be interesting to see whether their commitment to provide ‘any and all assistance’ would stretch that far. Somehow I doubted it.
The telephone began to ring. I picked up the receiver. On the other end, Daniels was breathing heavily. The Commissioner would see me in his office in ten minutes.
I sat facing Lord Taggart’s empty chair, listening to the clock in his office tick slowly by. Lord Taggart was running late and Daniels had offered no explanation as to why. So I sat there as the sublime countenance of the King Emperor George V gazed down on me from his exalted position on the wall. The doors opened and Lord Taggart strode in, the silver buttons on his freshly pressed uniform glinting in the sunlight.
‘My apologies, Sam,’ he said, gesturing for me to sit and dropping down into his leather chair. ‘Now, what have you got for me?’
I told him of the meeting with Digby’s informant and that we now had a prime suspect in the form of Benoy Sen.
His ears pricked up at the mention of Sen.
‘So the old fox has finally come home,’ he said, more to himself than to me. ‘That’s good work, Sam,’ he continued. ‘You have my permission to call on whatever resources you need to track him down. Do whatever you have to. I’ve waited a long time for this and I don’t want him slipping through our fingers again. In the meantime, I’ll inform the L-G of your progress.’
‘It may be better to wait until we have Sen in custody,’ I ventured.
Taggart shook his head. ‘No. That might seem like the prudent thing to do, Sam, but it would be a severely career-limiting move for all of us if the L-G found out we’d been keeping information from him. Besides, his other sources might be able to help find Sen.’
‘There’s something else,’ I said. ‘I think Sen might be linked to the attack on the Darjeeling Mail.’
‘Go on,’ said Taggart calmly, as though what I’d suggested was the most natural thing in the world.
‘I suspect the attack was carried out by terrorists rather than mere dacoits. It’s the only explanation that makes sense. The attackers were searching for something specific, something they expected to find in the safes on board. Fortunately those safes were empty. Dacoits wouldn’t have left empty handed. They’d at least have robbed the passengers of their valuables. Terrorists, though, wouldn’t be interested in petty theft. From what I’m told, it would probably offend their sensibilities.’
‘So what were they looking for, Sam?’ said the Commissioner. It felt as though he was leading me to an answer he already knew.
‘My guess is they were looking for cash. And a lot of it. They were expecting to find it in the safes.’
‘Then why not take the mail sacks?’
‘Time.’ I said. ‘Monetising the valuables in the mail would take time.’
‘That would imply their need for the cash is urgent,’ said Taggart. ‘What does that suggest to you?’
The answer was obvious. ‘They’re looking to conclude an arms deal. If this man Sen’s suddenly come back to Calcutta, and he is behind the attack, that suggests MacAuley’s assassination is just the first shot in a much larger, bloodier campaign.’
‘You need to share your concerns with Section H,’ said Taggart. ‘If you’re right, we’re facing something far more dangerous than I’d anticipated. Sen and his cohorts must be stopped before they get the chance to launch a real terror campaign. Get to it, Captain.’
I rose and walked towards the door, but stopped halfway and turned.
‘You knew, didn’t you, sir?’ I said.
Taggart looked up from his desk. ‘Knew what, Sam?’
‘The attack on the Darjeeling Mail, that it wasn’t just a botched robbery by some dacoits.’
‘I suspected, Sam. I didn’t know. For that matter, I still don’t.’
‘Why didn’t you voice your suspicions before?’
‘I trusted your judgement. Besides, one whiff of suspicion that this might have been the work of terrorists and the case would have been handed to Section H. You wouldn’t have got a sniff of it, and, by extension, neither would I.’
I thanked him for his candour and headed back to my office. The situation was grave, but as I saw it, we had one thing in our favour. The safes had been empty. That suggested Sen still hadn’t the funds to purchase the arms. It meant we had a window of opportunity. We just had to find him before he found the cash.