“What did he go out for?” asked Jack.
“He had several meetings lined up,” replied Nisha. “One was with Thakkar, the CEO of ResQ. He also had a meeting with someone called Iqbal Ibrahim near Jama Masjid.”
“I have some bad news,” said Neel.
“What?” asked Nisha.
“I tried to find the IP address of the person calling himself Dr. O. S. Rangoon,” said Neel.
“Wouldn’t he have been using a proxy server?” asked Nisha.
“Exactly,” replied Neel. “He was using a proxy server to hide his IP address from the administrators of the systems that he was posting on. But all individuals who hide behind proxy servers always leave a trail of digital breadcrumbs. I tried following the breadcrumbs.”
“And?” asked Jack.
“Dr. O. S. Rangoon used a single proxy server to mask himself. I figured that if I could access the proxy server logs, I would be able to find his connection requests to the target server.”
“Go on,” said Nisha.
“The proxy server is located in Russia. Usually such companies would demand a court order to reveal their logs but the idiots had left their own server exposed and I was able to access their logs.”
“Excellent,” said Jack. “You have the source IP?”
Neel nodded. “It belongs to Iqbal Ibrahim, the man Santosh went to meet. Dr. O. S. Rangoon and Ibrahim are one and the same.”
“But the phone number Santosh asked us to trace — which turned out to be that of Ibrahim — was not the same as the number listed on the website by Dr. O. S. Rangoon,” argued Nisha.
“He’s obviously using two phone numbers,” said Neel.
“Is Santosh’s RFID chip working?” asked Jack. “I’m authorizing you to track it.”
All employees of the Private organization across the world were required to be fitted with a small locator chip embedded under the skin of the upper back. It enabled the Private team to locate them during emergencies. In order to prevent misuse, only Jack Morgan had the power to authorize tracking.
Neel logged into a laptop that generated an email to Jack. Jack clicked on the authorization link and entered his password.
“Can’t locate it,” said Neel after a minute. “He could be in a basement or a vault, preventing the signals from being picked up.”
“He took his spy glasses with him, Neel,” said Nisha. “Don’t those glasses have GSM? Can you track the signal?”
“No luck,” replied Neel after a minute. “He’s definitely in an area without signal.”
“Did the camera in his glasses send in any feed?” asked Nisha.
“Let me check,” replied Neel, quickly accessing the secure server of Private Delhi from his notebook.
Jack and Nisha hunched behind Neel to look at the video footage that had been sent in by the glasses to the server. The first ten minutes were uneventful. Santosh had simply stood, waiting for Ibrahim, near the Jama Masjid. The footage showed hundreds of worshipers emerging from within the mosque after prayers.
The footage soon focused on one particular man, removing his prayer cap as he walked toward the camera. “Mr. Iqbal Ibrahim? Could I have a few minutes of your time?” — words spoken by Santosh and recorded in the audio.
The words of Ibrahim had also been picked up: “Please don’t be formal, Mr. Wagh.” Ibrahim was smiling. Suddenly the camera jerked. The view seemed to oscillate all over the place until it settled on the blue sky above.
A few seconds later, Ibrahim’s voice could be heard again. “Put him in the van and give him a high dose of midazolam,” he said. Two burly men lifted Santosh and placed him inside a black van. “Inshallah, it should be sufficient to keep him asleep for four hours. Also, discard his broken cell phone.”
One of the men could be heard asking if he could keep the walking stick for himself.
Then Ibrahim’s voice: “He doesn’t need it. Dead men can’t walk.”
Nisha froze. Did that mean...?
“He can’t be dead,” said Neel.
“Why?” asked Nisha.
“Midazolam is a sedative,” said Neel. “Why sedate someone who is already dead?”
Nisha sighed with relief. “Let’s review the rest of the tape.”
The audio was punctuated by the sound of a van door being slammed shut. The next forty minutes were blank because a white sheet had been placed on top of Santosh, covering the glasses he was wearing. The audio contained traffic noise and honking.
The Private Delhi conference room remained silent as Jack, Nisha, and Neel watched the video intently. Then there was the sound of the van door being opened. The sheet was removed as a couple of orderlies peered over Santosh’s face. They only seemed interested in removing valuables from his person — watch, pen, wallet, shoes, and eyeglasses. The video blanked out as one of the orderlies pocketed the camera glasses. The moment he folded the glasses, the transmission had stopped.
“He could be anywhere,” said Neel. “That’s anywhere within a forty-minute radius of Jama Masjid. And that’s a lot!”
“Just play the last bit again,” said Nisha. “The orderlies who removed the stuff were wearing white shirts with a logo on the pocket. Can you zoom in on the shirt?”
Neel tried but it was of no use. The image was just a pixelated mess. “Let me try something else.” He left the conference room for his lab to have a go with SmartDeblur, a software program that could partially restore and enhance blurred images.
“Thank God you’re here, Jack,” said Nisha as they waited in the conference room. “I just hope Santosh is safe.”
“The man knows how to look after himself,” said Jack. “Stop worrying.” He was not very convincing.
“He obviously received a blow from behind,” said Nisha. “But that doesn’t explain why he remained motionless in the van. I’m praying he isn’t...” The word “dead” was still on her mind but she was unable to bring it to her lips. Neel’s observation about the midazolam had given her hope.
Neel came back a couple of minutes later. “I’ve successfully zoomed in on the shirt logo,” he said, handing Nisha a printout. “The logo says DMH.”
“Delhi Memorial Hospital. Let’s go,” said Nisha, running out.
Chapter 64
Santosh opened his eyes. He blinked a few times, struggling to see, but his world remained dark. What’s happened to me? Have I gone blind? Or am I dead?
His body was wracked with an involuntary tremor. He realized he was shivering. It was freezing cold. He tried moving his arms but his body seemed to be confined within a tightly restricted place.
He tried to wiggle his feet. He was able to but just for a few inches in either direction. His back felt frozen solid. It seemed to be resting on cold metal. He desperately wanted to curl up into a fetal position but there simply wasn’t any space to do that. The realization suddenly hit him: I’m in a morgue.
Santosh attempted to calculate how much time he could survive inside the refrigerated coffin. He remembered reading somewhere that body heat is lost twenty-five times faster in cold water than in cold air. Most morgues are kept at around four degrees Celsius. At that temperature in water, a person would survive around an hour. Theoretically, he had several hours left provided he remained conscious and kept some movement going.
He succeeded in lifting an arm but there was simply no way to bend it. There was a metal ceiling above him that was only a few inches above his nose. He touched it with the back of his hand. It was just as cold as the floor on which he lay. He touched his thigh with his hand. He was pretty certain he was naked even though the freezing temperature had reduced the sensation in his body. Then the panic attack set in.