The week of waiting was a special kind of torture. Every time the ghost appeared for his weekly collection, Harsh felt a jolt of pure, undiluted fear. He half-expected the man's dead eyes to see right through him, to the secret plan taking root in his mind. But the ghost only took his envelope, weighed it, and left with his usual silent menace. The machine, for now, ran smoothly.
Harsh threw himself into the legitimate side of the business, the electronics repair, with a feverish intensity. It was a cover, a way to project normalcy. He drove Sanjay and Deepak to work harder, to expand their wholesale client list, to make the alcove's cash flow look robust and explainable. The profits from the alcove were now the clean money he would use to fund his own, secret operation. Every rupee he saved from Venkat Swami's grasp was a bullet for his own gun.
The night of the shipment arrived, moonless and thick with a damp, salty fog rolling in from the sea. It was perfect cover. The old fishing wharf near Sassoon Dock was a skeleton of rotting wood and beached fishing boats, reeking of decayed fish and diesel. It was a world away from the organized chaos of the main docks where Venkat Swami's influence was absolute.
Harsh stood in the shadows of a crumbling shed, Prakash Rao beside him. The old scrap dealer was their lookout, his knowledge of the waterfront's rhythms invaluable.
"The Al-Habib is late," Rao muttered, peering into the gloom.
"It'll come," Harsh said, his voice tighter than he wanted it to be. His entire body was a coiled spring. This was it. The point of no return.
A faint light blinked twice out on the water. Then twice more. The signal.
A few minutes later, the dark, hulking shape of a traditional wooden dhow emerged from the fog, its engine a low putter. It moved with a ghostly silence, nudging against the dilapidated wharf with a soft groan of wood.
There was no shouted greeting. Two figures moved on the deck, throwing heavy ropes around moss-covered bollards. A narrow gangplank was lowered.
A man emerged from the cabin and walked down onto the wharf. He was not Vijay Malhotra. He was older, with a seamed, leathery face and eyes that had spent a lifetime squinting at horizons.
"You are the date merchant?" the man asked, his voice a low rumble.
"I am," Harsh replied, using the agreed-upon code.
The man grunted and gestured towards the hold. "Your dates are below. Forty crates. Unload quickly."
The "dates" were the forty barrels of diesel. The work was brutal and had to be done in near-total silence. Harsh, Rao, and the two men from the dhow formed a chain, muscling the heavy barrels up from the hold and onto the wharf, where the rented truck was waiting. The fog clung to them, soaking their clothes and masking their labored breaths. Every sound—the scrape of a barrel, the creak of the truck's suspension—seemed magnified a hundred times in the tense silence.
They were halfway through when Rao, who was watching the access road, hissed a warning. "Lights!"
A single headlight, then another. A vehicle was approaching slowly along the coastal road that serviced the wharf.
Panic, cold and sharp, lanced through Harsh. It could be the Coast Guard. It could be the Harbour Police. It could, worst of all, be one of Venkat Swami's patrols, checking on territory they thought nobody would be stupid enough to use.
"Stop! Get down!" Harsh whispered fiercely.
The unloading froze. The men from the dhow melted back into the shadows of their vessel. Harsh, Rao, and the truck driver crouched behind the truck's bulk, hearts pounding. Harsh's hand closed around a heavy wrench lying on the ground. It was a pathetic weapon, but it was all he had.
The vehicle, a jeep, rolled to a stop about fifty yards away. Two figures got out. One lit a cigarette, the glow illuminating a uniform cap. Harbour Police. They stood there for an eternity, talking, their voices a low murmur carried on the fog. One of them gestured towards the wharf.
Harsh held his breath. This was it. All it would take was for one of them to decide to take a closer look at the truck and the half-unloaded barrels.
Then, a crackle of a radio. A voice from the jeep said something. The two policemen tossed their cigarettes into the water, got back in the jeep, and reversed back the way they came. A routine patrol, cut short.
The silence they left behind was deafening. For a full minute, nobody moved.
"Let's go. Faster," the captain of the dhow said, his voice grim. "This place is bad luck."
They redoubled their efforts, muscles screaming, fueled by adrenaline and fear. The remaining barrels were loaded in a frantic, sweaty blur. The truck's doors were slammed shut.
The captain handed Harsh a piece of paper. "The bill of lading. For your dates." It was a fake manifest, listing agricultural products. "The payment?"
Harsh handed over a thick envelope of cash—the advance Vijay had stipulated. The captain counted it swiftly, nodded, and without another word, turned and barked orders to his crew. The ropes were cast off. The dhow's engine coughed to life, and it began to back away from the wharf, swallowed by the fog as silently as it had arrived.
Harsh stood there, alone with Prakash Rao and the loaded truck, the smell of diesel and fear thick in the air. The first part was done. He had stolen a shipment.
Now came the next impossible task: he had to sell it without anyone finding out.
The cage was still there. But tonight, he had just taken a file to its bars.
(Chapter End)