Rising Tiger: A Thriller (73)

He was just finishing his meal when Vijay texted and told him he’d be downstairs to pick him up in a half hour.





CHAPTER 45


“That’s your plan?” Harvath asked as he slid a Sly and the Family Stone CD into the Jaguar’s player.

The evening air was heavy with humidity. Thunderstorms were in the forecast for later. Vijay had the top down and the AC cranked.

“I take it that you do not like it,” the ex-cop replied as they pulled out of the hotel’s driveway.

“It’s not that I don’t like it. It’s that I hate it.”

The man smiled. “It’s not the quality of the trap that matters. It’s the quality of the bait.”

“Which is complete and total bullshit,” said Harvath. “If we were dropping you into a snake pit, against just one snake, that’d be one thing. You’d at least be able to focus on the danger. But what you’re asking for is to be dropped into a pit filled with God knows how many snakes. It’s a horrible idea.”

“I told you. Aga Sayed is well insulated. This is how we get to him. Now, ask me how my Diwali went.”

“In all honesty, Vijay, I don’t care how your Diwali went. I want to iron out this stupid plan of yours. Even if you were still an active cop, which you aren’t, I wouldn’t want to go into this with anything less than a whole police station full of officers backing us up.”

“We’re going to be fine,” the man replied, tapping his steering wheel to the beat of the classic funk song “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin).”

“You can say that a hundred more times, but it isn’t going to make it any more true. This is a suicide operation. Your plan is to walk into a nightclub owned by Sayed, staffed by people on his payroll, and walk out—arms around each other—like a couple of newlyweds. You’re nuts. It’s never going to happen.”

“To be clear,” the ex-cop clarified, “I don’t expect him to willingly walk out with me. That’s why I have a gun.”

“And if it doesn’t work?”

“That’s why you have a gun. The one I gave you.”

“Is there a Hindi word for lunatic? For a person absolutely around-the-bend crazy?” Harvath asked. “Because if there is, I’m going to start using it. Maybe that’ll get through to you.”

He laughed. “Chutiya is the word that comes the closest.”

“Laugh all you want, Chutiya. From the bouncers to any personal bodyguards, he could have ten or fifteen goons in there for us to contend with.”

“Then you’ll want the gift I have for you,” the ex-cop said, pointing at the glove box.

Harvath opened it and pulled out the extra pistol magazine that had been placed inside. “That’s it? One extra mag? And you waited until now to give it to me?”

“I didn’t have it until now,” the man replied. “I had to ask my mother-in-law for it. That’s her gun you’re carrying.”

Harvath didn’t believe him, not really, but there was a tiny part of him that did. The guy really was a chutiya. “Listen, Vijay, you need to think about what you’re walking into. What’s to stop them from taking you out back and putting a bullet in your head?”

“You,” he replied. “And my mother-in-law’s gun.”

“I’m going to tell you right now, if that is what you’re counting on, your movie is most definitely not going to have a happy ending.”

“The minute anything goes wrong, all you need to do is to put two rounds into the ceiling and start a stampede. Everything else will take care of itself.”

“Take care of itself, how?”

“Indians are conditioned to not only call the cops, but to also livestream everything via their phones. This place will be getting so much attention, Sayed wouldn’t dare do anything stupid. Trust me.”

It was a heavy gamble and Harvath didn’t like it. If someone had thrown him off a roof, broken lots of his bones in the process, and then suddenly reappeared in his life, he’d kill the guy with a cocktail straw and worry about the fallout later. A stampede of customers waving smartphones in the air wouldn’t make a damned bit of difference.

He didn’t like their odds—he and Vijay against an untold army of gangsters. He wished there was some other way to do this, but try as he might, he hadn’t been able to come up with a better plan. Nevertheless, this felt like a disaster waiting to happen.

As far as Harvath was concerned, his number one obligation was to get Vijay in and out alive. The man had been an absolute prince. It was obvious that he missed his old life as a detective and relished being back on the street cracking skulls, but at some point, enough could be too much. If anything happened to him, Harvath wouldn’t be able to forgive himself.

“Despite my reservations, I’m going to go along with this, but only on one condition.”

The ex-cop made a left turn, adjusted the volume, and replied, “Which is?”

“You make Sayed come to us—however you have to do it. You do not go anywhere with him or his people; not to his office, not down to the basement, none of that kind of thing. We do this out in the open.”

“Agreed.”

The man claimed to agree, but there was something about the way he said it that concerned Harvath. It sounded like he didn’t really mean it.