The proposition from Mr. Nair arrived not by post, but through Chiman. It was a single, typed page of dense figures and clinical terms. Quantities, purity grades, and a price per drum that made Harsh's breath catch. The "small test" shipment was five barrels of a specialized industrial solvent, a key component for the struggling paint factory in Chembur. The math was clear: if he could get it to the factory, the profit would be substantial. If he failed, the loss would be catastrophic.
The delivery point was the problem. Not a dock, not a warehouse. A lonely, dilapidated jetty in a creek north of the city, used by fishermen at dawn. The timing was precise: 4:00 AM. This was how Mr. Nair's people avoided the "complications" of the main ports. They used the coastline's ragged edges.
The gold bar was gone, converted into this terrifyingly real commitment. There was no going back.
The night of the delivery was moonless, the air thick with the smell of salt and decay. Harsh, Deepak, and Sanjay stood on the rickety jetty, their hearts pounding in the silence. The only sound was the slap of water against the wooden pilings and the distant, forlorn cry of a night bird. They felt exposed, their city-bred selves alien in this desolate landscape.
Right on time, a light blinked twice out on the dark water. Harsh flashed his torch twice in response. A low, powerful engine gurgled to life, and a sleek, narrow dhow, not a fisherman's boat, glided out of the darkness. Two men worked silently, transferring five heavy, sealed metal drums onto the jetty. The transaction was completed without a word spoken. The dhow melted back into the night as quickly as it had appeared.
They were left alone with five barrels of contraband solvent, worth a fortune.
The next problem was transportation. They had borrowed a battered, open-backed tempo—a three-wheeled workhorse common on Mumbai's roads. Loading the heavy barrels onto it was a back-breaking struggle. Each dull thud as a barrel landed in the truck bed sounded like a cannon shot in the pre-dawn silence.
They drove back toward the city as the sky began to lighten from black to bruised purple. The plan was to get the tempo to a lock-up garage Sanjay had rented under a false name in a nondescript suburb. From there, they could contact the paint factory manager and negotiate the sale.
They were ten minutes from the garage, navigating the early morning traffic of milkmen and newspaper delivery boys, when they saw the checkpoint.
It wasn't the police. It was the Customs Department. A white Gypsy jeep with the department logo was parked across the road. Two officers in khaki uniforms were waving down trucks, inspecting manifests.
Officer Desai was not with them. These were his foot soldiers.
A cold dread seized Harsh. This was no coincidence. Their route, their timing—it had been leaked. By whom? Rane? Someone in Mr. Nair's organization? Or was Desai simply that thorough, his network of informants casting a net so wide it caught even small fish like them?
"Turn around," Harsh hissed at Sanjay, who was driving.
"I can't! It's a one-way street!"
There was no escape. They were trapped in a queue of vehicles slowly inching toward the inspection.
Panic threatened to choke them. They were sitting in an open vehicle with five unmarked, untaxed, imported chemical barrels. There was no paperwork. No excuse. This was beyond a bribe; this was a direct, flagrant violation that would land them in a prison cell for years.
The customs officer approached the tempo in front of them, a young man with a self-important swagger. He glanced at the driver's papers, shone a flashlight into the back, filled with sacks of vegetables, and waved him on.
It was their turn.
The officer walked over. "Papers," he said, his voice bored.
Sanjay fumbled, handing over the tempo's registration and his own driver's license. The officer glanced at them, then shone his flashlight into the back of the tempo.
The beam illuminated the five, unmistakable industrial drums.
The officer's boredom vanished. His eyes widened. "What is this?" he asked, his voice sharpening. "Bill of lading? Customs clearance certificate?"
Harsh's mind raced, hitting a wall. There was no lie that would work.
"We… we are delivering them for a friend," Sanjay stammered, his voice shaking.
"A friend?" the officer sneered. "Get out. All of you. Now." He unclipped a walkie-talkie from his belt. "Sir? We have a situation here. A tempo. Five unmarked barrels. No documentation."
This was it. The cliffhanger from the gold raid was repeating itself, but this time, there was no ghost waiting in the wings to call off the hounds. This was a low-level stop. Desai wasn't here. This young officer was about to make his career by busting them.
Harsh saw their future crumbling. The prison sentence. Their families' disgrace. Venkat Swami's cold, murderous retribution for failing so publicly and drawing heat to his operations.
As the officer raised the walkie-talkie to his mouth, Harsh did the only thing he could think of. It was a desperate, crazy gamble.
He jumped down from the tempo and approached the officer, his hands open and visible. He didn't look at the young officer. He looked directly at the senior officer leaning against the Gypsy jeep, a older man with a paunch and a weary expression.
And he spoke a single name, clear and calm, a word that held the power of life and death in their world.
"Tell Officer Desai," Harsh said, his voice not much more than a forceful whisper, but it cut through the morning air like a knife. "Tell him it's Harsh Patel's shipment."
The young officer with the walkie-talkie froze, his thumb hovering over the transmit button. He looked confused, then uncertain. He glanced back at his senior.
The older officer's weary expression vanished. He stood up straight, his eyes locking onto Harsh. He knew the name. He knew what it meant. He knew who Harsh's "partnership" was with.
A long, tense silence stretched out. The senior officer's face was a battle of protocol and fear. The law said to arrest them. The unwritten rules of the city said something very different.
Finally, the senior officer gave a sharp, almost imperceptible jerk of his head.
The young officer lowered his walkie-talkie, his face pale. He looked from Harsh to the barrels, understanding dawning in his eyes, along with a healthy dose of terror.
"A… a misunderstanding," the senior officer called out, his voice strained. "Move along. You're blocking the road."
He didn't look at Harsh again. He just turned and got back into the Gypsy jeep.
The young officer hurriedly shoved the papers back into Sanjay's hands and waved them on frantically, as if shooing away a poisonous snake.
Sanjay didn't need to be told twice. He slammed the tempo into gear and lurched forward, leaving the checkpoint behind them.
None of them spoke for five full minutes. The only sound was the sputtering of the tempo's engine and their own ragged breathing.
They had gotten through. They had used Desai's name like a magic spell. They had just learned a terrifying new lesson: in this world, a name could be more powerful than any document.
But the cost of using that name would be added to their ever-growing bill. The barrels were safe, but they were now stuck deeper in the web.
The oil was in the city. Now, they had to sell it.
(Chapter End)