Kalkoot- The Lost Himalayan Secret Page 2

  The Worthy Heir shall reach the sanctum

  Only after enduring the four Great Agonies

  Through faith, fearlessness, stillness and silence

  Shall the Worthy Heir conquer the Agonies.

  He wiped off beads of cold sweat from his forehead as his shadow on the wall formed an ominous backdrop to the cramped room.

  CHAPTER 2

  Two hours later. . .

  Mumbai, Sunday, 10.30 p.m.

  The room was spinning around Steve. He retched lightly as he desperately tried to hold up his head.

  The men had left him to recoup, but he had no doubt that they would be back in a few minutes for the next round of questioning.

  He had revealed nothing, but he was not sure he would be able to hold out much longer. From his time as a mercenary soldier, Steve knew that everybody eventually buckled under torture.

  He had to escape. Now.

  And then there was this thing that he had overheard.

  KaalKoot. The Demo. The stuff of his worst nightmares.

  He hoped that he had heard wrong. But he knew he hadn’t.

  Less than three days to stop it. He had to get word out. Somehow.

  He tried twisting and turning his hands, but the knot seemed tight.

  Or did it, really?

  Steve’s eyes regained some colour as he sensed an opening.

  After a few minutes’ struggle, he managed to free his hands. And then his legs.

  That was exactly when the door opened.

  ***

  Both the men had knives. Even through the pain, the dizziness and the nausea, Steve knew he had to play this carefully.

  He made his first move when one of the men came close enough. Steve kicked him hard in the stomach. Steve snatched his knife as the man was reeling, just in time as the second man threw himself at him.

  Steve had managed to step sideways, but the second man’s knife nevertheless slashed Steve’s left shoulder, drawing blood. The man swiftly turned around and lunged at Steve again, but Steve, his reflexes honed through years of roughing it out, was faster, wooziness notwithstanding.

  Steve’s knife got the man right in the stomach, and he slumped, never to wake up again.

  Steve did not even glance at him as he tried to wobble out of the room. This was no time for softer emotions.

  The first man, meanwhile, had regained his footing. He executed a jump and landed right on Steve, throwing him down to the floor. Steve’s head hit the floor with a loud bang, but not before his knife went right through the man’s chest.

  Steve summoned up his last reserves of strength as he extricated himself and stumbled out of the room.

  ***

  Steve missed a step and almost tumbled down the staircase. The entire stairwell was spinning around him wildly as his head throbbed. He could barely keep his eyes open, even as he could see blood oozing from his wounds.

  He had to find a phone and get through to Bani. Fast.

  Before they got to him.

  CHAPTER 3

  Shillim (near Mumbai, off Lonavla), Sunday, 9 p.m.

  The rain fell in long, dreary drops on the imposing hills of Shillim in what promised to be a long and dark night. When a black Toyota Camry made its crooked way up the steep road that led to Kanchenjunga Kutir, all that was visible from up the hill was the intermittent feeble gleam of the headlights, like two serpents playing with each others’ tails.

  The Camry entered the sprawling compound of the farmhouse after an iris scan of the occupants.

  Despite being only a two-hour drive from Mumbai, and a shorter drive from Lonavla, a popular weekend getaway, security systems of any sort were still a rarity in Shillim.

  But then Kanchenjunga Kutir was no ordinary farmhouse. It was protected by one of the most sophisticated surveillance systems in Asia; its fences were made of crash-proof material and it housed a bank of servers which could access satellite feeds for every square mile of Indian soil.

  In one of the rooms inside the farmhouse building, a tall, imposing man was engrossed in reading by the table lamp, a cup of hot masala tea by his side.

  Sunil Gaur’s name was always taken in hushed whispers in the rarified echelons of the international intelligence community. But to the employees at the Anti-Conspiracy Group, ACG for short, he was simply the ‘Chief’. When the Indian government had formed this undercover group in the aftermath of the 2008 terror attacks, the Chief had chosen this picturesque farmhouse as its operational command centre.

  Sunil Gaur had earned his nickname many times over, not least after a particularly dramatic operation in the Himalayas where he had taken on ten heavily armed enemy agents single-handedly with just a few dry twigs for defense. That operation was still taught to new recruits as a case study on how to start a fire and set up a distraction in the shortest possible time.

  But today, the Chief was a worried man. All the signs pointed to something big brewing. He needed answers, and he needed them quickly. He hoped that Damini Thakur would not disappoint him.

  ***

  Inside the Camry, a tall, athletic woman of around twenty-nine, wearing a set of tracks, was frowning over a series of photographs on her smartphone. She knew that the photographs would automatically erase themselves in another minute, thanks to a self-destruct app that the ACG used.

  It was not in Damini’s character to be stumped very often, but this was clearly one of those times. The men in the photographs seemed to have nothing in common other than the fact that their photographs had been clicked in Mumbai, and that they seemed to be up to no good.

  She sighed, again uncharacteristic of her. As the Camry came to a halt, she paused for a second, took a deep breath and collected herself.

  ***

  Back to her usual assured self, Damini looked every inch of her very fit 5’8” frame as she stepped out of the Camry.

  Monu, the housekeeper at Kanchenjunga Kutir, was waiting in the courtyard. As she lightly patted him on his cheek as she passed through, his face turned pale.

  Damini chuckled. Back in his village, Monu was unused to dealing with women in tight track-suits, much less them touching him in any way.

  She walked past into the room where the Chief was sitting.

  She crossed her hands and looked the Chief straight in the eye. ‘This better be good,’ she said. ‘Your man interrupted me in the middle of my yoga class. I didn’t even get time to change.’

  Monu gulped at this show of irreverence. Almost everybody at the ACG, and many outside it, trembled at the mere mention of the Chief’s name.

  The Chief had a hint of a smile on his lips. ‘Don’t worry about the change of clothes,’ he said. ‘Monu has arranged for that. And I know better than to disturb one of my best agents during her rest and rehab.’

  The Chief was openly smiling now. He would not tolerate insubordination from lesser mortals. But Damini was different. He still remembered the results from her psychological aptitude test. ‘A hawk-like awareness of her surroundings, a heightened sense of justice and an insatiable curiosity’, it had said. The test report also went on to mention that she had ‘a dangerous disregard for authority and a fascination for recklessness, which, if channelised properly, could work to the ACG’s advantage, but if left unbridled, could result in disaster.’ The Chief had chuckled when he had read the last bit.

  ‘Change and be back within five minutes,’ he said, the smile fading as he heard the clock ticking.

  ***

  Stepping out of the shower, Damini paused in front of the mirror as she slipped on her clothes.

  Dragged without notice to a farmhouse a hundred kilometres away from her home. Five minutes to shower and change into clothes that did not belong to her. All in a normal day’s work.

  Damini chuckled. She had chosen this life. And the ACG had chosen her.

  Despite the late nights at her job, the irregular meal times and the ubiquitous stress, she had managed to maintain her figure. A ruthless exercise regimen, c
omplemented with yoga, had taken care of that. As she traced the outline of her toned legs all the way up her body, a tingle went up her spine.

  She hadn’t seen much action on the personal front in a while. Her job, to put it mildly, was not very compatible with any extracurricular activities.

  The only person she had dated over the last year was the guy from Pali Hill that she had met in yoga class. Their first date had been on a Saturday, and the guy had attempted to make light conversation. But Damini had spent the previous night hiding in a trash dump in a seedy part of town, engaged in a gunfight with three spies. The only image in her mind during the date was of blood gushing out of the dead spy’s head as he had shot himself.

  She had ended it after that.

  Then there had been that short-lived tryst with a US agent she had met while on joint anti-terrorism exercises two years ago. But two undercover agents working for different countries was not exactly a recipe for a stable relationship. And that was it.

  She hastily regained her bearings as a knock on the door told her that she needed to hurry up.

  ***

  There were two people in the meeting room besides the Chief and Damini. Kunal, at thirty-five, was Damini’s peer at the ACG despite being six years older, a fact that troubled him immensely. Then there was Mini, a systems and data mining expert who could navigate the world of computer networks, surveillance cameras and satellite feeds with the ease of a knife cutting through butter.

  The large LCD screen displayed an image of a man with Oriental features. ‘Recognise this man?’ the Chief asked.

  Almost immediately, Kunal held up his hand. ‘Yes, Chief. Ji-hoon Kim. North Korean agent. Their point man for striking deals for arms purchases, nuclear technology and the like.’

  ‘Bingo,’ the Chief said.

  Kunal beamed with pride as he flashed an insincere smile at Damini.

  Damini rolled her eyes. Some people never grew up.

  The Chief scrolled down to a series of photographs, the same ones which had been forwarded to Damini’s smartphone. ‘These are photographs of people from groups as diverse as the Cali drug cartel of Colombia, the Slav gang in eastern Europe, ISIS and African dictatorships visiting India. All of these have been clicked in Mumbai over the last month.’

  ‘Why didn’t we do anything over the last month?’ Damini asked, bewildered.

  ‘The vagaries of international cooperation,’ the Chief said. ‘We obtained the photos from different sources: one from the US Drug Enforcement Authority, DEA; one from Interpol; and one from MI6. The international agencies tossed the information to us only after they got nowhere with their investigations. Only Jihoon was captured directly by our cameras today.’

  He continued: ‘We need to find out what these deviants have been hatching in Mumbai. Fast. Before anything big blows up on us.’

  The Chief took a sip of water. ‘Damini, you will be the lead agent on the field. Kunal and Mini will man the control room and assist you with data feeds, satellites and surveillance.’

  Kunal groaned. He wanted to be in on the actual action on the field, not manning a desk. He glared at Damini and was just starting to speak when the Chief sharply said, ‘No arguments,’ looking directly at him.

  The Chief continued, somewhat conspiratorially. ‘This could be a pretty delicate assignment. The US DEA and Interpol will be watching us closely, and maybe the CIA, too. But the control should not slip from our hands. At any cost. If you encounter any foreign agents, you have permission to deactivate them if needed.’

  Damini’s eyes widened slightly. She knew what ‘deactivation’ could mean.

  ‘Damini, you are to report any findings directly to me, and to me only.’

  Damini understood. Certain elements in the government had a vested interest in undermining the ACG’s influence, and the Chief wanted to avoid the glare of harsh scrutiny by keeping a tight lid on information flow out of the ACG.

  Damini cleared her throat. ‘Any active clues on what these guys were up to here?’

  ‘Zilch. On Ji-hoon Kim, though, we may have gotten lucky. This photo of him coming out of Shree Motel near Metro Inox multiplex was taken this evening. Ji-hoon Kim went back into the motel at 8.30 p.m. after dinner, and hasn’t come out since. Our field operative is stationed outside the motel. Damini, you can relieve him and take over tonight.’

  Damini permitted herself a half-smile. The fun was just beginning. She knew what that meant—late nights, inadequate sleep, pounding veins, split-second decisions and near-death experiences. She was ready. And she knew it would be worth every minute.

  There was no other job in the world that she’d rather be doing.

  CHAPTER 4

  Shillim, Sunday, 11 p.m.

  The gushing rain had slowed down to a drizzle. As the Toyota Camry pulled out of Kanchenjunga Kutir, Damini found herself reminiscing as she admired the view of Lake Pavana glistening in the moonlight.

  Six years ago, she would never have dreamt of this life. After two years in an advertising agency and as a yoga instructor, becoming a secret agent was not exactly a natural career progression.

  But she had always had a vigilante streak. It had reared its head right from her schooldays, for instance, when she had found out that her brother, Sushant, was being bullied. Nobody else got to know what transpired that evening, but the bullies started avoiding Sushant by a mile, and one of them had his hand in a cast for the next three months.

  Damini chuckled. She had always had a mind of her own. When her classmates and cousins in the small town of Mirzapur had hit the marriage ‘market’ at twenty-one, she decided that she did not give a damn, and took up a job at an advertising firm in Lucknow.

  Her parents did give a damn, though, and moved around with crestfallen faces for years after that, repeatedly trying to get her hooked up with potential NRI marriage prospects.

  Meanwhile, she moved to Delhi and spent a year working as a yoga instructor, until a woman in her forties from her yoga class asked if she might be interested in interviewing for a ‘challenging’ job.

  The interview had required her to climb twenty obstacles, dodge trapdoors, outrun mock bullets, figure out how to calm an aggressive pit bull, run thirty kilometres without shoes and swim through turbulent waters, all in quick succession.

  That was how Damini had ended up with the ACG six years ago.

  That had been the proverbial nail in the coffin as far as her parents’ attempts to get her married were concerned.

  ***

  Damini’s smartphone beeped as Mini sent her a briefing memo on Ji-hoon Kim.

  The memo started with a brief history lesson. It chronicled North Korea’s nuclear tests, and the hostility with South Korea, the US and Japan. After years of belligerence and threats to use nuclear weapons, the current ruler, Kim Jong-un, dramatically changed track in 2018. He met the South Korean leadership, and agreed to halt tests and work towards denuclearisation. The turnaround surprised most observers, with some attributing it to economic reasons, some to pressure from North Korea’s long-time friend China, and some to the tactics of the US President. Some others were skeptical and felt that the turnaround was just a charade.

  The memo detailed Ji-hoon’s role as the North Korean regime’s ‘weapons’ dealmaker’ and a member of Kim Jong-un’s coveted inner circle of advisors. He was rumoured to have struck deals for designs for centrifuges, one of the key components of the nuclear weapons’ programme.

  Ji-hoon Kim had mysteriously vanished from the radar since Kim Jong-un’s peace overtures in 2018. Earlier, there would be the occasional meeting with an African dictator, or a hushed rendezvous aboard a ship with a militant group; but there was absolutely no sighting recorded since December 2017.

  One rumour was that he had been ‘neutralised’ by Kim Jong-un since he was no longer relevant in a denuclearised North Korea. Another theory was that he had been sent underground by Kim Jong-un to develop a covert weapons’ programme—a ‘Plan B’—in ca
se the peace overtures backfired.

  The theories made his sudden appearance in a seedy motel near Metro Cinema in South Mumbai all the more intriguing. Damini could not wait to get there and take up position outside the motel.

  ***

  Five hours later. . .

  Metro Inox, South Mumbai, Monday, 4 a.m.

  Metro Inox is a remodelled multiplex version of the iconic Metro Cinema in South Mumbai. Damini had parked herself in an alcove in one of the old, rather shabby buildings located in the vicinity.

  The ramshackle building was deserted at that hour, though Damini had to dodge a couple of rats that seemed to want to share her alcove. The heavy rains had eased off, giving Damini a clear line of sight to Ji-hoon Kim’s room.

  His choice of motel left no doubt that he was up to no good. Shree Motel was decidedly down-market, even by the earthiest of standards. Certainly not the kind of place in which Ji-hoon Kim would stay if what he was doing was above board.

  He was clearly sleeping. There had been no movement from the room for the last three hours. Nevertheless, Damini had not once taken her eyes off the room’s window.

  Her body longed for a quick walk and stretch. She wondered if she should attempt it, given the risk of blowing her cover. But then she looked around—at the deserted road, and the silent and dark interiors of Ji-hoon’s room—and decided that she would go for it.

  She had barely stepped out onto the street when she realised that the move was a big mistake.

  ***

  A speeding Fortuner came to a screeching halt right next to Damini.

  She cursed silently and snatched a look at Ji-hoon Kim’s window. No movement. She heaved a tentative sigh of relief.

  There were four men in the SUV. All in their twenties. All drunk, all leering at her.

  ‘Get in, baby, we’ll show you a good time,’ one of them said. Another stepped out of the front seat of the SUV and tried to take what he thought was a menacing position. ‘Get into the vehicle,’ he said, his breath heavy with alcohol.