Rising Tiger: A Thriller (76)

“I’ll have to talk to my manager.”

The ex-cop nodded and drained his second drink. “You do that,” he said, holding up his empty glass. “In the meantime, I want that Johnnie Blue. It would be a shame if your business got a reputation for being anti-police.”

The threat was unmistakable. The bartender poured him a Johnnie Blue on the rocks and then waved the manager over.

They met at the other end of the bar, where Harvath was, and discussed the situation. Even though Harvath didn’t speak a word of Hindi, he could sense the general gist of the conversation.

The barman then handed over Vijay’s business card and the manager disappeared through a curtain of green, plastic jewels, presumably to head to the office and call someone higher up the food chain. Hopefully, that person was Aga Sayed.

While they waited for a response, Harvath was relieved to see Vijay barely sipping at his whiskey. He had no doubt the ex-cop had a pretty healthy tolerance for alcohol, but he was already two in. They both needed to keep their wits about them.

His Godfather beer all but gone, Harvath ordered a Bira 91, so named for India’s telephone code, and even though it was a much lower alcohol content, reminded himself to go slow. Even with a couple of drinks, he could still handle things, but there was no use in taking on too much unnecessary risk.

He could only imagine what his after-action report might look like if things went south. We had a shit plan, with no backup and zero support, which we thought adding alcohol to would improve.

There was no way that was going to fly. Not anywhere. Harvath, though, got an internal chuckle out of it. A dark sense of humor, after all, was a sign of high intelligence and Harvath’s was pretty dark.

When the DJ launched into “Sympathy for the Devil,” one of his favorites, by the Rolling Stones, he had that feeling again that he’d had in Kabul, that somebody up above liked him and was smiling down. Then, Aga Sayed appeared.

Before pulling away from the hotel, Vijay had shown him the man’s arrest photo, as well as the photos taken of him shortly before he was released from prison.

The five years inside hadn’t been kind to him. They had really aged him, thinning his hair, carving deep grooves across his otherwise unremarkable face, and hollowing him out. Looking at him now, his time on the outside hadn’t done much to restore his vigor.

He sported a potbelly that strained the buttons of his shirt. The belt beneath his gut was under such strain that it was rolling, trying to get away from his flab.

His records stated that he was forty-nine, almost ten years younger to the day than Vijay. But he looked ten years older. That’s what the streets and prison were known to do to a person.

He wore lots and lots of gold. He even had a gold tooth. He made Vijay look like a piker by comparison.

The man moved slowly, deliberately. He was trying to put on the air of a badass, like a shark circling his prey, but Harvath knew what was going on. The barometric pressure was dropping outside. The man’s body was killing him. And the person responsible for his pain was sitting behind a glass of Johnnie Walker Blue, right within his sights.

Harvath felt pretty certain that this scumbag Sayed had never seen Casablanca, but he couldn’t help but wonder if a special form of one of its most famous lines wasn’t tumbling through his mind: Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, Vijay Chabra walks into mine.

Behind Sayed trailed a couple of knuckle-dragging gorillas. Much bigger than the dynamic duo at the door, they wore matching, poorly tailored suits. Pistols, in shoulder holsters, could be seen bulging beneath their coats. Harvath did the math.

The bartender was lippy but didn’t strike him as a fighter. If he had to guess, the drink-slinger wouldn’t have pissed on his boss if the man were on fire. He didn’t get paid enough. The two bouncers, however, had no choice. They were paid enough and, more specifically, they were paid to get physical. They would do what they were told. That made the odds five to two.

What Harvath and Vijay continued to have in their favor was that no one knew they were partners. They also had Sayed out in the open. The next phase of the plan was where things were going to get complicated. Extremely complicated.

Harvath had to give Vijay credit. The ex-cop had not only dangled the most irresistible piece of bait ever; he had also picked the right pond in which to dip his pole.

But this was where the real work started. Harvath had agreed that if Vijay stumbled into the club, appeared to be hammered, and found a way to work his business card up the ranks, he might be able to smoke Sayed out.

It was what was supposed to happen next, however, that was going to be the hardest part. And it was where Harvath and Vijay had parted ways on the plan.

There was simply no way Aga Sayed was going to walk out of there with him. Even if the ex-cop put a gun to his head and tried to force him out, there was always a chance that the guy could do something nuts like tell his men to open fire and let the chips fall where they may. That was the bravado of the gangster, after all. It was the sine qua non of the underworld.

No, as far as Harvath was concerned, the only way to successfully navigate the situation was to split the proverbial baby.

Vijay had wanted to get the drop on Sayed, seize the upper hand, and force him out of the club. His backup plan, if things went sideways, was what he had instructed Harvath to do—start a panic. In a flash of inspiration, Harvath had decided to do both.

In his estimation, the greatest obstacle they faced was Sayed’s bodyguards. The pair needed to be incapacitated quickly and to the degree that they couldn’t interfere and give chase. It was going to call for some pretty dramatic action.