SANTOSH WALKED THROUGH the congested by-lanes filled with vendors selling kebabs and waited for the man to appear. Neel had double-checked the records and confirmed that the cell phone number dialed from Thakkar’s desk phone belonged to someone called Iqbal Ibrahim, whose residential address was near the Jama Masjid.
As it turned out, Ibrahim was praying in India’s most famous mosque, the Jama Masjid. Built in 1656 by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, the mosque was vast. Three great gates, four towers, and two forty-meter-high minarets constructed of red sandstone and white marble overlooked a gargantuan courtyard that could accommodate more than twenty-five thousand faithful for prayer.
Neel had given Santosh a photo of Ibraham he’d managed to retrieve from a database. He’d also supplied Santosh with the latest gizmo he’d developed. It was a pair of regular-looking eyeglasses that accommodated a camera and mic capable of transmitting to the Private Delhi office.
Reaching the mosque, Santosh put on the glasses. He noticed a crowd of people exiting. Prayers seemed to have ended. Then, after ten minutes, Santosh saw a man who resembled the picture he had. He continued staring in his direction, knowing that the camera would be relaying the image to Neel. Santosh watched as the man walked toward him, removing his prayer cap as he approached.
Santosh took a few tentative steps in the direction of the man and held out his arm for a handshake. “Mr. Iqbal Ibrahim? Could I have a few minutes of your time?” he asked.
The man smiled at him. “Please don’t be formal, Mr. Wagh,” he said courteously. Santosh had half a second to register the fact that the man knew his name, because Ibrahim’s statement was accompanied by an almost imperceptible nod of the head. A baton slammed into the back of Santosh’s head and he crumpled to the ground, his cane and phone falling along with him, the handset shattering.
Chapter 61
JACK HAD A stopover in Dubai on his way from LA to Delhi. Unfortunately, his Emirates flight from Dubai to Delhi had been delayed. The result was that he arrived at terminal three of Indira Gandhi International Airport almost two hours after the scheduled time.
He cleared immigration, collected his single suitcase from the luggage carousel, passed through the green channel of customs, and emerged expecting to be greeted by Santosh. Instead he saw another familiar face: Nisha.
He rolled his baggage cart toward her, pecked her on the cheek, and asked, “Where is he?”
“He had to meet someone,” said Nisha as she led Jack toward the parking lot where her car awaited. “He asked me to do the honors instead.”
“My lucky day,” said Jack with a smile.
They stowed the suitcase in the trunk and took their seats inside. “Where to?” asked Nisha. “We’ve booked you at the Oberoi Hotel.”
“No, not yet,” replied Jack. “We had better go directly to the conference. My session starts in ninety minutes. In the meantime, fill me in on this case.”
They set off, and as Jack relished the sights and sounds of Delhi once more, Nisha explained their theory.
“And it is just a theory at this stage,” she clarified when she had finished.
“Give it to me as a percentage.”
“Santosh is almost certain.”
“Shall we say ninety percent?”
“We could.”
“So, you’re ninety percent certain that some kind of war has broken out over an organ-harvesting operation. That about sums it up?”
“It does.”
“Do we know who’s involved?”
Nisha blew out her cheeks. “Well, now it gets really interesting. As you know, Ram Chopra and Mohan Jaswal are at war anyway—a political war, I should add. Chopra’s name is connected to the house in Greater Kailash where the bodies were found, and we think he’s been doing deals with a medical corporation called Surgiquip, run by Samir Patel—the recently deceased Samir Patel. Somewhere in the mix we have an insurance company called ResQ—a company run by Jai Thakkar, a friend of Jaswal’s, who’s fallen out with Chopra.”
Jack cleared his throat. “You realize you’re going to have to run this past me again when I haven’t just stepped off a plane.”
Nisha laughed. “Yeah, I understand. Okay, look, the short version is that all the signs point to Chopra, but Santosh feels it’s a bit too convenient.”
“Sometimes the obvious answer is the right one.”
“Tell that to him.”
“Either way, it sounds like there’s a mountain of political dog shit we need to avoiding stepping in. How is the police investigation proceeding?”
She shrugged. “At the moment it feels as though the police couldn’t care less. As you know, the general feeling is that Sharma is running things in a way that benefits Chopra. And if Chopra is involved in the organ-harvesting scheme…”
“If they’re fighting we could just leave them to it. Let them all kill each other and let God sort it out.”
Nisha gave him a sideways look. “Do we want to do that?”
Jack chuckled. “Tempting though it is, no, Nisha, I suppose not.”
Chapter 62
THE MORGUE OF the Delhi Memorial Hospital was like most other morgues in the city: understaffed and overstuffed.
Located in the bowels of the hospital, two-thirds of its area consisted of a refrigerated section that contained individual drawers kept at a constant temperature of four degrees Celsius, while the remaining third was made up of a stark autopsy room tiled entirely in white, with two stainless steel operating tables in the center. A scale for weighing body parts hung from the ceiling over each table, much like a butcher’s shop, in addition to a trolley that held Stryker saws for ripping bone, suturing materials, knives, and scalpels.
A hosepipe fitted with a washing nozzle was at hand to sluice blood and tissue down the drain and into the septic tank. Unfortunately it wasn’t used often enough. There was always a long queue of gurneys waiting with bodies that needed to be autopsied or refrigerated.
Patel’s mutilated body was wheeled into the morgue along with another gurney. Patel’s body was transferred to a surgical table, waiting to be dissected like a laboratory rat. The autopsy technician placed a block of wood under the corpse’s shoulders, making it look as though it was sitting. He then made an incision from the top of one ear to the top of the other and pulled the skin from the top and middle of the head down over the face. Patel’s face was now grotesquely inside out. The technician used the Stryker saw to cut the skull and expose the brain for tissue sampling and weighing.
In the meantime, the second body was uncovered and placed on the nearby surgical table. The autopsy technician took a quick look. He knew who it was. He had received a call from Ibrahim about him. Whenever Ibrahim needed to eliminate someone without having the headache of body disposal, he would send the case to him.