Aadil sent Shamsul down first, with his courier bag stuffed with jewellery. In precisely twenty minutes, he and Faraj left with the cash, both Indian rupees and an unexpected roll of dollars recovered from the back of a godrej safe. Faraj wanted to kill the old couple before going. 'They have seen our faces,' he said. 'It would be safer.' Aadil cuffed him on the back of the head, and pushed him to the door. He spoke quietly to Mata-ji again, and then loosely gagged her and Papa-ji.
'Don't forget,' he said, 'that we know where your daughter works. Be quiet.' He had no idea where the daughter worked, but he was sure that was enough to keep them quiet until he and Faraj were down the stairs, past the watchman and out on the road. And so it went. They all got out safely, and there was no noise, no fuss and no killing.
The boys were overjoyed with the takings, which amounted to sixty-seven thousand in cash, two hundred dollars and the jewellery. Shamsul knew a receiver, and he had the transaction all set up. They moved the jewellery the same day, for a lakh and forty thousand. The dollars were in small bills, ones and fives and tens, so they got a low rate. But after all, the boys had never seen so much cash before all in the same place, in their hands, and they were suddenly kings. Aadil tried to convince them that they must be careful, that to be suddenly flush with cash and new clothes and sunglasses and shoes might invite suspicion, maybe a visit from the local beat constable. They agreed, and promised to be careful, but Aadil could see that they were little children with new toys, making promises that they could not keep. The next day, he moved again, to a room on the far side of Navnagar. His room here had a smooth tiled floor, which had been put in by the prior tenant, and running water. He forbade the boys from coming to see him, and met them only outside the basti. They protested at first, Bazil especially, but Aadil explained to them the need for security and discretion. 'If you want to continue,' he told them, 'you must be invisible, you must move like fish in the sea. And do what I tell you, if you want to continue.' The boys did want to continue, even then, when their pockets were heavy with money. They needed more.
Aadil wanted very little. He had his room, he cooked his own food, he drank cups of very sweet chai through the day. This was his only luxury in his new life, apart from books. He spent his days reading zoology. The books were second-hand university texts, mostly, bought from pavement dealers. He was surprised by how much of the material he remembered, and how easily it all came back to him. There was no direction or purpose in his reading other than the comfort it gave him. To follow the species to the phylum, to trace the structure in one direction and then back again, this provided meaning enough. There was no need for politics. So Aadil lived on, and lived quietly, and every month he and the boys planned and executed another job. Shamsul wanted to do more, but Aadil counselled patience and stealth. The boys wanted not only to rebuild their kholis and buy new stoves for their mothers, they now dreamt of cars. But for the moment, at least, they obeyed. One good job a month, the target carefully selected, based on good intelligence, brought in enough to satisfy them. For seven months they worked. Aadil was now occasionally reading chemistry, interspersed with the zoology. He had gone through many books on organisms and cells, and now he wanted to watch substances act against each other and make something new. There was an obscure pleasure in the elements coming together, making heat and fire and life. As far as he could see, there was not any grand purpose in these interactions. They happened, that was all. This fitted perfectly with his sense of his own life now. He had thought sometimes of suicide, in a distanced, theoretical manner, but had discovered that he wanted to live. He was not quite sure why, other than the sweetness of chai and the palliative effects of facts. Probably the reason for wanting to go on was very simple, he thought. A virus wanted to reproduce, and an insect ran from danger. So Aadil wanted to live.
So Aadil survived, in quiet and in hiding. He was, apart from his headaches, quite content. He was surprised that he did not feel lonely, after the camaraderie of the camps, but the books were consolation enough. He felt a tenderness towards himself, towards his prematurely aged body, and sometimes he allowed himself little luxuries: a new mattress, two sets of sheets, a bottle of shampoo. He did not worry too much about the future, although he had the sense that somewhere close by, disaster lurked under the deceptive ease that Mumbai had given him. He was sure of this, but when the catastrophe finally came, it was from a flank that he had grown complacent about. The boys, he thought, had settled down nicely. During operations, they were no longer jittery, they conducted themselves with professionalism and calm watchfulness. After their first big extravaganzas of spending on clothes and televisions and women, Shamsul, Bazil and Faraj had grown into careful businessmen, and invested their money in small businesses run by cousins and aunts, and took in high rates of return. They all gained weight, and looked generally prosperous. Aadil began to believe that he had, all by chance, collected a good and reliable squad. The boys were friends, bound to each other by shared interests and experience and danger.
Then Faraj and Bazil killed Shamsul. Aadil was in his room that afternoon, sleeping, when Bazil knocked. Aadil was shaken out of a dream of childhood by Bazil's frantic thumping, a dream in which he walked over a culvert and the roofs of low huts swam in the evening haze. Then he was awake, his hand on his chopper.
'Bhai,' Bazil said. 'Bhai?'
Aadil opened the door and found Bazil shaking against the wall, spattered with blood. Aadil pulled him in. 'What?' he said.
Bazil told him. For many weeks, months actually, he and Faraj had been suspicious of Shamsul and his dealings with the receiver who bought their goods. Shamsul always did the buying and selling by himself, and was reluctant to discuss exactly what prices had been paid for specific items, and he wouldn't discuss what the buyer said during a meeting, or even what the buyer said he might be able to move easily. It was all very strange. Bazil and Faraj had observed for months that Shamsul had more money than either of them, more yes, it was true than both of them put together. Faraj had joked with Shamsul, and had even asked him if he saved more than anyone, but Shamsul had always ignored the implications. He refused to defend himself, which made Faraj even more suspicious. Then last week Shamsul had bought a second kholi, a perfectly new place with four rooms and a double-sized water tanki. He hadn't told them, the bastard, about this grand new house, but Bazil had found out because his mother sometimes took in embroidery work from the builder's wife. Bazil told Faraj, and Faraj got very angry. Faraj had made a plan. They would get Shamsul drunk, and take him out near the nullah, behind the big water pipes, and confront him. They would use threats if necessary. But they would find out what was going on. Enough was enough. Bazil was to come prepared. So they invited Shamsul, very casually, to share a bottle of excellent vilayati rum. He was eager, of course. Shamsul had a liking for drink, and after some rum he always grew sentimental and sang. But this time the session was awkward from the very beginning, with Faraj fairly vibrating with tension from the moment he welcomed them into his new kholi. He had boiled eggs and salt and pepper all ready, and a plate of tangdis, and he poured them tall glasses as soon as they came in. After that everything blurred into a confusion of loud talk and lewd jokes and anger. Shamsul started to sing but then wanted more tangdis. Faraj told him, you pay for your own, you have too much money. Shamsul laughed it away, and for a while Bazil and he talked about girls. They talked about Rani Mukherjee and Zoya and Zeenat Aman, and then Shamsul mentioned Faraj's younger sister, whose name was also Zeenat and who was said in the basti to have a resemblance to beautiful Zeenat from the seventies. What he said was very innocent, that our Zeenat was ready for her first starring role now. But Faraj had been sitting silent in the corner, drinking glass after glass. 'You bastard,' he said, 'you have our money.' Bazil now realized that he was himself drunk, probably more drunk than Shamsul. He tried to stand up, to get in front of Faraj and remind him of the plan, of the walk out to the nullah. But it was too late. Faraj and Shamsul were shoving at each other already. Then Bazil was flabbergasted to find Shamsul shouting at him, who had done nothing and said very little. Shamsul refused to confess, and Faraj pulled out his chopper from behind the bed, and Bazil grabbed his own, and Shamsul was hitting out at them, thrashing his hands, trying to get out of the kholi. There was blood on his chest now. Then he was running down the lane, and they brought him down once, and again. He tried to get into someone's house. Maybe he thought it was his own. They hit him again and he fell. And it was done.