Rising Tiger: A Thriller (19)

Arriving at the Blind Relief Association with a few minutes to spare, she found Raj already waiting for her near the front desk.

He didn’t smile. He didn’t greet her. He merely tilted his head toward a hallway and began walking. Asha followed.

The walls were lined with photographs of famous celebrities, sports figures, and politicians who had visited over the years. All of them showed the visitors meaningfully engaged with the students or staff. There were no autographed vanity headshots provided after the fact by a press or media relations person.

In one photo was a Bollywood actress whom many of Asha’s friends thought she resembled, Chitrangada Singh. In it, the actress could be seen helping students make candles by pouring wax into small clay molds. In another photo, the wife of Japan’s foreign minister had paused to admire the school’s foundation stone, which had been laid by Helen Keller.

There was a shot of a famous cricketer who had been blindfolded and was being taught how to navigate using a support cane. A well-known industrialist could be seen trying his hand at one of the machines in the sewing school, while all three mayors of Delhi—North, South, and East—were shown, together, preparing and serving food in the association’s kitchen. Asha took it all in as they walked.

At the end of the hall was a locked metal door. Raj removed a set of keys from his pocket and opened it. Three flights of stairs led down to the basement level and another corridor. This one was different from the one above.

There was no ornamentation. The lights were simple and much dimmer. Everything was gray—the walls, the floor, even the ceiling. The doors were metal, like the one at the top of the stairs, and also gray. A letter and a number had been painted in white upon each one.

When they arrived at D7, Raj reached back into his pocket for his keys. As he did, Asha detected the faint scent of some sort of smoke coming from the other side. Opening the door, Raj stood back and allowed her to step inside.

It was a long, low-ceilinged storage room that had been turned into some sort of makeshift operations center—and it appeared to have been done on a very low budget.

There were plenty of desks and desk chairs—none of which matched. Dented, and in some cases rusted, steel bakery shelves had been used to mount aging flat-panel monitors around the space. The workstations, printers, and telephones also appeared to be at least ten years out of date.

At one of the desks, under a lamp that looked like it had come from a charity shop, was the source of the smoke. Asha recognized the man immediately.

Gopal Gupta was a legend. In his day, long before he had retired, he had been considered one of RAW’s most brilliant thinkers. His understanding of India and its enemies was said to have been unrivaled. He had served for decades, and rarely did a general or a prime minister make a major move without consulting him for his analysis.

There were two additional things he was also known for. The first was for his pipe smoking. Long after government workplaces had gone smoke-free, he was the only person who had continued as if the rule had never been enacted. So valuable was he that RAW created a special exemption for him. He was the only government employee in the whole of India to be allowed to smoke in any government building.

The other remarkable item about Gopal Gupta was his appearance. The joke had been that his thirst for knowledge was equaled only by his hunger for food. He possessed a quite robust double chin. He also had an unusually long and pointed nose. This combination of features, coupled with jealousy over his special position in the Indian intelligence community, had earned him a rather unkind nickname. Behind his back, he was referred to as the “Pelican.”

Asha had never met him. As she was working her way up the ranks at RAW, Gupta was preparing for his retirement. By the time she came into her own, he had already left. Even though he had been out of the game for several years, it was incredible to see him sitting there, poring over maps of some sort, puffing away on his pipe.

“Senior Field Officer Asha Patel,” Raj began. “I’d like to introduce you to—”

“Special Secretary Gopal Gupta,” she stated, finishing his sentence for him. “I am honored to meet you, sir. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Which, depending on what you’ve heard,” Gupta said, smiling as he stood and walked over to shake her hand, “is probably true.”

Despite his girth, and his age, there was a power in how he moved. His hand was large, but as it enveloped hers, he applied just the right amount of firmness.

He was measured and confident. His eyes were bright, and in them she could see a bit of the Machiavellian gleam that had allegedly made him so good at his job.

“I have heard a lot about you, too,” he said, releasing her hand. “We’re lucky to have you here.”

Her eyes shifted from Gupta to Raj. “Now that I’m here, what is all of this? What’s going on?”

“Let’s sit,” Raj replied, pointing at a ramshackle wooden table. “And I’ll fill you in. As promised. On everything.”





CHAPTER 12


Gupta poured tea as Raj started his PowerPoint briefing via the large flat-panel monitor hanging from a set of shelves at the head of the table.

“Because of repeated Chinese provocations along the Line of Actual Control, we worked with the Army to make sure that drone operators were embedded with all units of the Ladakh Scouts. The footage I am about to show you comes from an attack at the river in the Galwan Valley. Even recorded in night vision, it is extremely difficult to watch.”