The Bankster (Ravi Subramanian) (20 page)

Raymond called Jacqueline again that evening. ‘Jacqueline I desperately need to see Indrani. It’s important.’

‘Sweetheart, Indrani is in a photo shoot. It’s a
Business Today
cover photo shoot. I can’t disturb her.’

‘Will she be free after that?’

‘Not sure. At 6.00 p.m. she has a CSR activity planned with some differently-abled kids and after that she will be at Taj Lands End where she is attending an event where the Finance Minister himself is speaking.’

‘Can you block some time for me tomorrow morning?’

‘Raymond, why don’t you speak to Juliana or Vikram and let them handle it with Indrani.’

‘Oh. So that is the issue. You will not let me speak to Indrani till I have Juliana’s or Vikram’s blessings.’

‘No. It’s not that. It’s just that Indrani is too tied up and hence it might be easier for you to go to the two of them.’

‘Thanks Jacqueline. I got the message,’ and Raymond hung up. Jacqueline was not going to allow him to meet Indrani without the concurrence of Juliana or Vikram. Juliana didn’t care about what he had to tell Indrani and if he told Vikram, he would manipulate the situation in his favour. He didn’t trust either of them.

Barely did he get off Jacqueline’s call when his mobile started ringing. The frown on his face was a trademark reserved for his wife. If only he could erase the last few years of his life. His wife was at it again. This time she wanted him to call up his mom in Ernakulum and ask her to put on hold her travel plans to Mumbai. She had been harassing him about this for the last one week, without realizing how difficult it was for a son to ask his parents not to come to their son’s home. But his wife was adamant leaving him with no choice. He felt he was hitting a new low in his life. A career going nowhere, a boss who didn’t listen to him, a business leader who manipulated things to such an extent that he was rendered toothless, five role changes in four years, a wife who was seeing someone else, and no friends to show for. Even the one who he considered a friend and was reasonably close to had gone away from him—dead in an alleged accident in Vienna. Was this life worth living? He would ask this question in various forms every single day of his life, and the answer was, give it one more day. It will change.

That particular morning had started in a great fashion for him, lulling him into a false sense of comfort. Little did he know that it would end like this. On his way to work that Monday morning, he was fiddling with his phone, when he saw that there was a small red circle on top of the Skype logo, indicating that he had a missed call. He touched the Skype logo and it opened up on his screen. There was a message from someone dear to him. He opened the message to listen to it.

‘Hi Raymond. How are you? Wanted to just let you know that we are now back in the hotel. I completely forgot that tomorrow we are going to Eagles Nest—Hitler’s hideout. It’s on the Austria-Germany border. I’ll only be back late in the afternoon. Sid recommended that we finish your work today itself. I’ll go and check out the place in a while. In any case, I’ll call and update you around 6.00 a.m. Vienna time or else late in the evening. Talk to you then. Ciao. . .and by the way, Sid also says hi to you.’ It had brought a smile on his face.

He had been looking forward to Harshita’s call in the evening all day, but then he heard the news of her death in an accident, which had shattered him completely. He had called Malvika, who had requested that he should not come to offer his condolences in person. She sounded too distraught and broken. After all she had lost her only sister, and her best friend.

21

Devikulam

Early afternoon, 30
^th
January 2012

The Devikulam police station had turned into a virtual fortress. The constables manning the gates recognized the two of them as the ones leading the charge and making the speeches. They walked straight into the station in-charge’s cabin, virtually unstopped. Heldrich was sitting there. Next to him were two uniformed policemen. There was also a third guy who looked a bit different. Tall, middle-aged, sculpted cheek bones, and a properly trimmed moustache, he was wearing a tailored suit. His accent was impeccable and he was trying to speak with Heldrich. The latter was struggling to answer him back seemingly because he was a German. Krishna was surprised because back at the resort and earlier on the Skype call, Heldrich had spoken reasonably good English. It seemed as if he didn’t want to answer too many questions and so was putting up a façade.

‘Why have you held him here? He hasn’t done anything wrong,’ Krishna announced to everyone in the room.

‘What was he doing in Devikulam?’ one of the uniformed guys asked him.

‘He was in India holidaying and simply came along with us to the rally.’ When Krishna said this, the suited guy looked at him.

His Oakley glasses glinted, a poor attempt at giving himself a menacing look; he appeared to be irritated and angry. ‘This gentleman here was in town holidaying?’

‘Yes sir,’ Krishna replied innocently.

‘And how long has he been in town?’

‘Only for a week. After spending a week in Kovalam, he came to visit us.’

‘Do I look like a fool Mr Menon?’

‘Sorry?’

‘How do you know this gentleman here and why did he come here? I want to know the truth.’ Suddenly his tone became aggressive.

‘He has a legal visa to visit this country and I am sure with a visa, unless one is a Pakistani, one can visit any part of the country that he pleases.’

‘Let’s not get into technicalities Mr Menon. It would be better if you answer my question.’

‘We had spoken to him a few weeks back on prospective issues which could arise in case nuclear reactors are built on hilly areas in terrain with seismic imbalance. We sought expert advice from him. That’s how we know him. And now that he was on a holiday here, he visited us today and we invited him to come along.’

‘And where was he when you spoke to him?’

‘Germany. We held a video conference with him?’

‘Is that right?’ the guy in the suit asked sarcastically. And who is this “we”?’ The cynical stress on the word ‘we’ was unmistakable.

‘Jayakumar and myself,’ he said pointing towards Jaya who was standing just behind him.

‘Hmm. . .maybe then you could explain this,’ and he threw Heldrich’s passport towards Krishna.

‘What about this?’ Krishna picked it up and looked at the officer. It was clear by now that the gentleman was a senior officer who was there to oversee things. Krishna, by virtue of being in that area for long, knew most of the senior cops around, but he had never seen this person before.

‘Heldrich Kohl,’ said the officer, ‘Eminent American nuclear scientist of German origin. He holds a dual citizenship and has helped commission a number of nuclear plants in his home country and in the US, France and UK. He’s one of the most knowledgeable scientists on nuclear reactors in the world today. He travels to India on his German passport, lands up at the site of India’s latest nuclear plant, participates in a protest, as you insist, from the fringes.’ And he stopped. He looked at Jaya and Krishna and continued, ‘and you say he is here on a holiday in Kovalam. You expect me to believe it Mr Menon?’

‘Yes of course. Why don’t you ask him?’ and Krishna looked at Dr Heldrich. ‘Why don’t you tell him Dr Heldrich? Why don’t you tell him?’

‘He has nothing to say. And if you carefully look at that,’ and he pointed towards the passport in Krishna’s hand. ‘If you look at that you will know. Dr Heldrich has been in India for the last three months. If you spoke with him three weeks back, he was very much in India then. Right here, in the vicinity of Trikakulam Nuclear Power Plant. Like you and this gentleman next to you, he was covertly lobbying with parties interested in making sure that India does not commission a world-class advanced nuclear facility, feeding negative information so that there is public outrage and the reactor doesn’t go live.’

‘What?’ Krishna was dumbstruck. He looked at Jaya. Jaya was looking in the other direction, avoiding eye contact with Krishna. So this was a ploy! A ploy Jaya used to get him on board with their plans. Heldrich was working with Jaya and they chose to piggy-back on his reputation to further their cause.

‘Dr Heldrich, the CBI has been trying to get information about you and your activities for some time now. Unfortunately, we couldn’t lay our hands on you earlier. . .’ The officer’s phone rang, interrupting him. He walked to the other room and took the call.

When he came back inside three minutes later, there was a dirty smirk on his face. He looked at Dr Heldrich and said, ‘You are coming with me. To Chennai from where you will be put on a plane to Frankfurt tonight. Immigration authorities in Chennai will have your deportation papers ready. If you resist, you will be booked for carrying out prohibited anti-national activities in the region. Where do you want to pick up your bags from?’

Dr Heldrich Kohl got up and looked at Jaya. There was not a hint of remorse on his face. Turning to his right, he faced the officer and thundered, ‘Let’s go,’ and he walked out of the cabin.

‘You cheated me,’ Krishna said once they had stepped out of the cabin and were not within the earshot of anyone.

‘No I did not Krishna. Heldrich was just helping us. And I had no clue that he was in India or what his agenda was, for that matter.’

‘It doesn’t look that way. An individual trying to help us with his own knowledge to fight a righteous and just battle is one thing. A country using the two of us, more so me, to fight a battle against my own nation is a very, very different thing altogether. You knew that Dr Heldrich was here to shut down the facility. Jaya, I do not want the nuclear plant to shut down. I just want the Centre to satisfy all the impacted people that this is a safe reactor. People need to be relocated to safer destinations; their lives need to be taken care of. That’s all I want. Forget our means Jaya, our objectives are not aligned. There is no convergence in what we want. In what was an internal matter of a nation, you let a third party with vested interests in. The difference Jaya, is that you worked with people who did not want India to build this nuclear reactor. I worked with my conscience. There is a wide chasm between the two.’ And he walked out. Jaya followed him, without uttering a word.

On their way out, as they reached their car, they saw Madan Mohan head towards them. The local MLA had disappeared from the protest site, at the first sight of trouble. It was a touchy issue and he didn’t want to get impacted by anything negative that was linked to it.

‘Four people are now dead. Twenty-six are critical. I am just coming from the hospital.’

Krishna just clutched his head in his hands and sat down on the seat of his car. The door was open and his legs were hanging outside the car. Jaya came up to him.

‘Don’t worry Krishna, we will do something.’

‘What can we do? We can’t bring them back from the dead. Can we? Big mistake.’

‘We will do our best Krishna. We will rehabilitate their families. We will take care of their children. We will set aside ten lakhs in a corpus for each of the families. We are morally bound to take care of them.’

‘It’s only money that counts eh?’

‘No. But for these families that have lived in poverty all their lives, money does mean something. And ten lakhs is something they will never ever see in this lifetime.’

‘Where will the money come from?’

‘Leave that to me. Tomorrow morning we will go and visit the families. There you can announce the grant from all of us for families who lost their near and dear ones in this battle for the survival of the human race,’ Jaya was extremely good at histrionics. He paused and put his hand on Krishna’s shoulder and continued, ‘Though, as you said, we cannot resurrect them, we can atleast try and soften the blow. You go home now. I will pick you up tomorrow morning.’

That was when Krishna realized that he needed Jaya to fight this battle. He needed the money that Jaya had the ability to mobilise. He needed his energy to fight. But it came with associated baggage. Henceforth, he had to be a lot more vigilant and not be naïve and expose himself to manipulations.

It was a long night for Krishna. Sleep deserted him. The thought of the four families that had lost a dear one was very traumatic for him.

22

Mumbai

Evening, 30
^th
January 2012

Sitting in the first class compartment of a Mumbai local train, Raymond was lost in his thoughts. Whenever there was turbulence in his mind, or stress at work, he would call Harshita. Talking to her would help him calm down. The value of a five to seven minute chat with Harshita everyday was becoming clearer now. The day just gone by had been particularly bad for him. The only thing that he had done that day was to try and get in touch with Indrani. It pinched his conscience that he hadn’t done any other work. So obsessed was he about getting an audience with Indrani, that he had not even checked his voicemail at work. Feeling guilty, he dialled into his office voicemail. Since he was accessing it from outside, he was required to key in a password—it would not have been required had he been dialling from his extension. He diligently keyed it in.

‘You have one new message, to read press 1.’ He pressed a button as instructed by the IVR, and listened to the message. All of a sudden he perked up. It was a strange message. When it ended, he replayed it all over again. A strange fear set in.

He called the only person who he could think of.

‘Hi Raymond.’

‘Hi,’ there was a strange shiver in his voice. ‘I wanted to tell you something. There seems to be a serious problem.’ Raymond felt ill. His whole body was shaking and he was sweating profusely. He took hold of himself and narrated everything he knew. Even though the compartment was quite noisy, it being a first class compartment, he was able to move to one corner and talk without running the risk of someone else overhearing the conversation.