The truck, heavy with stolen diesel, felt like a rolling tomb. Every checkpost they passed, every glance from a traffic policeman, sent a fresh jolt of adrenaline through Harsh. Prakash Rao sat silently in the passenger seat, his face grim. The bravado of the scrapyard was gone, replaced by the sober reality of what they had just done.
They couldn't go to Ghorpade. That was the first and most ironclad rule. Ghorpade was Venkat Swami's outlet. Moving forty barrels of unexplained diesel through him would be like handing the ghost a signed confession. The news would travel up the chain before the last barrel was unloaded.
They needed a new channel. A shadow market for their shadow goods.
"The textile mills," Rao said, breaking the tense silence as they navigated the empty, pre-dawn streets. "In the industrial belt. Parel, Lalbaug. Their generators are ancient, thirsty. They are always looking for fuel. And their managers... they are practical men. They ask fewer questions than fuel depot owners."
It was a risk. These were legitimate businesses, but Harsh knew desperation often wore a suit and tie. Power cuts were rampant. A production line stopped by a lack of diesel cost a fortune.
They drove to the outskirts of a sprawling, century-old textile mill. Its brick smokestacks were silent sentinels against the lightening sky. Harsh left Rao with the truck and approached a small side gate, where a night watchman huddled over a small stove.
"Need to see the shift manager," Harsh said, his voice firm, projecting a confidence he didn't feel. "Tell him it's about a reliable power supply."
A bribe of a fifty-rupee note got him through the gate. The shift manager was a harried-looking man in his forties, with ink-stained fingers and tired eyes. He looked at Harsh with open suspicion.
"Do I know you?"
"No, sir. But I understand you have a generator that drinks diesel like a sailor drinks rum," Harsh said, getting straight to the point. "I can provide a consistent supply. No paperwork. No taxes. A significant discount from market price."
The manager's eyes narrowed, but Harsh saw the flicker of interest. "Significant discount' is a phrase that gets men like me fired or jailed. What is the catch? Is it water? Is it mixed with kerosene?"
"It is pure. You can test it yourself. Right now. My truck is outside. One barrel. If it runs your generator for an hour without a hitch, we talk business. If it doesn't, I drive away and you never saw me."
The gamble was bold. It offered proof and minimized the manager's risk.
After a long, tense moment, the manager nodded. "One barrel. And if it's bad, you'll be the one they find in the river."
The test was conducted in a dimly lit generator shed. The mill's diesel engineer, a man who looked like he'd been born with grease under his fingernails, sampled the fuel, sniffed it, and finally fed it into the hulking generator. The machine coughed, sputtered, and then roared to life, settling into a steady, powerful rhythm.
The engineer gave a grunt of approval. "It's good."
The shift manager's demeanor changed instantly. The suspicion was replaced by a calculating greed. The discount Harsh offered was too good to pass up. He bought ten barrels on the spot, paying in cash from a locked drawer in his office. It was a fraction of the shipment, but it was a start.
Over the next two days, they repeated the process. A plastic factory in Chembur. A printing press in Dadar. They never sold more than ten barrels to a single buyer, fragmenting the risk. They became ghosts, selling liquid energy to the night shifts of Mumbai's industrial heart, always for cash, always with no questions asked.
The profits were staggering. Even after paying Vijay Malhotra his fifty percent cut, what remained was pure, untaxed, and—most importantly—theirs. It was more money than Harsh had ever held in his life. It was freedom, condensed into stacks of soiled rupee notes.
He hid the money in a new hiding place, away from the garage and the alcove, buried deep within Prakash Rao's chaotic scrapyard. It was their war chest.
A week later, the ghost appeared for his regular collection from the legitimate kerosene run. Harsh handed him the usual envelope. The ghost took it, weighed it. For a fraction of a second, his dead eyes seemed to linger on Harsh. It was nothing, probably. A trick of the light. But it felt like an icicle down Harsh's spine.
"The next shipment is delayed," the ghost rasped, his voice unchanged. "There are... disturbances in the supply chain. The ocean is restless."
Harsh kept his face a neutral mask. "I understand."
The ghost left. Harsh stood frozen. Disturbances in the supply chain. The words were innocuous, a standard business problem.
But were they?
Had the Al-Habib been noticed? Had Vijay Malhotra's operation in Dubai attracted attention? Or was this simply the natural chaos of a world preparing for war?
He didn't know. And that was the most terrifying part. He was playing a high-stakes game on a board he couldn't see, against an opponent who might already be moving his pieces in the dark.
The sale was a success. The money was his.
But the silence from the ghost felt less like a reprieve and more like the calm before a hurricane.
(Chapter End)