Rising Tiger: A Thriller (67)
“Aga Sayed!” he yelled. “It was Aga Sayed!”
CHAPTER 41
“Aga Sayed,” Vijay explained as they drove from Jaipur to New Delhi, “is a vicious, lifelong criminal. He’s into everything. And I mean everything. The worse something is, the more he’s attracted to it. I’m not surprised that he’s mixed up in all of this.”
“So G-Company provided the assassin and the Kumars provided the motorbike,” Harvath replied. “Who engaged G-Company to kill Ritter?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out,” the ex-cop had replied. “But it isn’t going to be easy. Not by a long shot. Sayed is one of G-Company’s top people and extremely well insulated.”
Changing the subject, Harvath asked, “How is it that you came to give him flying lessons?”
Vijay smiled. “Not my proudest moment. I was a young detective. Eager, filled with righteousness, and very quick—sometimes too quick—to anger.
“My partner and I were working a drugs case. A big one. We had an informant who was providing excellent information. He eventually wanted us to pull him in, to provide him protection. My partner, who was my senior, said no—not until the case was complete, we had dismantled the ring, and had made all of our arrests.
“The informant didn’t like it, but he really didn’t have any choice. He stayed in place and continued to provide us with intelligence. And then one day, he failed to make contact.
“That evening, we went to his house and found his body. He had been beaten to death. There was blood everywhere, but the blood wasn’t all his. Some of it belonged to his family.”
“Jesus,” said Harvath. “They killed his family as well?”
The ex-cop shook his head. “Worse.”
Harvath didn’t want to imagine what could be worse, but knew Vijay was about to tell him and so he remained silent and waited for it.
“Aga Sayed had been sent to deal with our informant,” the man said. “Not just to kill him, but to make him suffer. Before he died, our informant was forced to watch as his wife, then his mother, and finally his baby daughter were raped. Then, and only then, did Sayed’s crew end his misery, along with his life.”
“I would have thrown him off a rooftop, too,” Harvath asserted.
“That’s not the end of the story,” Vijay continued. “It took us a week to track him down. We worked our way up through the sewers of New Delhi and the scum he associated himself with. No matter where we went or what we did, he was always two steps ahead of us. We were working around the clock, but couldn’t catch a break. Then, we did.
“We found out that he was going to be at a gambling parlor to watch and bet on an important football match. That was where we decided we would confront him.”
“Confront him?” Harvath repeated. “How about arrest him?”
“No one would agree to testify. Not members of his crew. Not even the informant’s wife or his mother. Everyone was afraid of retribution. Without an eyewitness willing to go against him in court, we had nothing.”
“So you decided to take care of things outside of court.”
“We couldn’t let the barbarity that he had committed go unanswered,” Vijay replied. “Even if we lost our jobs, my partner and I were determined to make him pay.”
Harvath understood the impulse. He had succumbed to it more than once himself. Good, capable men who did nothing in the face of evil were just as guilty of evil themselves.
“For the first time since we had begun our hunt,” the ex-cop continued, “we were in the right place at the right time. We had him in our sights. But when we went to make our move, he bolted.
“It was monsoon season. The storm that night was horrible. You could barely see a foot in front of your face. My partner raced after Sayed and I took another route in hopes of cutting him off.
“When I got to where I thought he would be, the only thing I found was my partner, his chest and belly slashed wide open with a straight razor.
“I called for medical assistance, helped push his guts back inside his body, and tied my jacket around his midsection to act as a pressure bandage. I didn’t want to leave him, but my partner was emphatic. Sayed needed to be stopped, once and for all. So, I resumed my chase.
“He had thought by forgoing the alleys and heading to the rooftops, that he could escape, but he was wrong. Like him, I had grown up in one of the city’s rougher neighborhoods and long before I ever entertained the idea of becoming a police officer, I had run from countless cops and had used the rooftops to slip their grasp.
“He had a head start on me, but it didn’t take long to catch up to him. Everything was soaked. Every surface was slippery and he was clumsy. Sayed had made just enough mistakes for me to reach out and grab him from behind.”
“You put hands on some psycho with a straight razor?” asked Harvath. “From behind? My God, Vijay, if ever there was a reason to use your sidearm, that was it. Practically textbook.”
“I know,” the man admitted. “You’re right. But I was young, dumb, and full of rage over not only what he had done to our informant and his family, but also what he had done to my partner. Putting a bullet in him would have solved one problem, but it would have created a mountain of others. Plus, it wouldn’t have given me the satisfaction I needed.”