The information from Rao was a key, but the lock was still hidden. Shipbuilding. The word echoed in Harsh's mind as he hauled cargo. Was it literal? Was Venkat Swami, the king of the grey market, going legitimate in heavy industry? It seemed absurd. The docks were for unloading ships, not building them.
His new focus sharpened his senses. He stopped merely moving cargo and started truly seeing it. He noted the manifests, the shipping labels, the origins and destinations of the containers he handled. He listened to the crane operators and the ship officers, piecing together fragments of conversation.
The precision parts from Eastern Europe were not a one-off. More shipments arrived, always under the watchful eye of the new, efficient foreman. But it was another, more mundane delivery that finally gave him the first piece of the puzzle.
A container from Taiwan was filled not with machine parts, but with flat-pack furniture and office supplies. As he unloaded boxes of chairs and desks, he saw the shipping manifest clipped to a pallet. The consignee wasn't a company name he recognized. It was a numbered holding company, but the delivery address made his breath catch.
It was for an old, largely abandoned shipbreaking yard on the far northern end of the Mumbai coast, a place not fit for even the rustiest freighter anymore. A place nobody went.
Shipbuilding. Shipbreaking. The words were opposites, but the location connected them.
He needed to see it.
Using his next day off, he took a series of slow, rattling local trains north, getting off at a lonely station that served the industrial hinterlands. The air here was different—not the salty bustle of the commercial docks, but a still, chemical-heavy silence broken by the distant cry of gulls.
He followed a weed-choked road toward the coast. The skeleton of the old shipbreaking yard emerged from the haze: the ghostly ribs of half-dismantled tankers, mountains of rusted scrap, and the dull, polluted sheen of the water.
But there was a new sound. Not the explosive crack of cutting torches, but the steady, industrial thrum of generators and the shriek of power tools coming from a large, newly built warehouse at the heart of the decay. The building was windowless, surrounded by a high, new fence topped with razor wire. Guard towers stood at each corner.
This was no shipbreaking operation. This was a fortress.
He circled wide, keeping to the cover of rusted hulls and scrap piles, his loader's clothes blending perfectly with the grime. He found a vantage point atop the carcass of an old cargo ship, giving him a view over the fence.
Inside the compound, it wasn't ships being built. It was something else.
He saw the precision components he'd handled being unloaded from a truck. He saw teams of men—not dockworkers, but technicians in clean overalls—assembling them into larger, unfamiliar machines. The scale was immense. He saw long, articulated mechanical arms being calibrated. He saw what looked like giant, industrial printers being wired together.
This wasn't a factory. It was a laboratory on a monstrous scale.
Then he saw them. A group of four men, standing apart from the technicians, observing the work. They were all Eastern European, dressed in cheap suits that couldn't hide their military posture. And leading them, pointing at the machinery and issuing instructions in fluent Russian, was Yevgeny.
Harsh's heart stopped.
Yevgeny. His secret weapon. The key to his phantom rebellion. Here. In the heart of Swami's most secret project. He looked healthy, well-fed, and was treated with obvious respect by the other Europeans.
The betrayal was a physical pain, a knife twisting in his gut. He had saved Yevgeny from despair, given him a purpose, a home. And the Russian had traded up at the first opportunity. Swami had simply offered him a better deal, a bigger workshop, and Yevgeny had walked away without a backward glance.
The last ember of defiance in Harsh's heart threatened to sputter out. He had nothing. No allies, no secrets, no leverage. He was truly alone.
He was about to climb down, defeated, when he saw something that made him freeze. Venkat Swami himself arrived, stepping out of a black car. He was followed by Mr. Dalal, who held a blueprint.
Swami didn't go to the Europeans. He went to a large worktable where a team of Indian engineers was working. Dalal unrolled the blueprint.
From his perch, Harsh couldn't see the details, but he could see the title block at the bottom of the plan. It was written in large, clear letters:
PROJECT: AGNI-1 SUB-ASSEMBLY: GUIDANCE SYSTEM FIN ACTUATOR
The world seemed to tilt on its axis. Agni. India's first intermediate-range ballistic missile, a crown jewel of its fledgling defense program. The project was highly publicized, a symbol of national pride and technological prowess.
Swami wasn't building ships. He wasn't just laundering money through defense contracts anymore.
He was building a crucial part of the nuclear missile itself.
The precision parts, the Eastern European engineers with military backgrounds, Yevgeny's expertise in guidance systems—it all made a terrifying, brilliant sense. The Indian government was pouring billions into its missile program. The contracts were enormous, the scrutiny was high, but the need for cutting-edge technology was desperate. Swami was using his smuggling network to illicitly acquire foreign expertise and components the country couldn't get otherwise, and was selling it back to the government at an astronomical mark-up.
He wasn't just touching the government. He was touching the very spear tip of India's strategic defense. The risk was beyond imagining. The profit was beyond counting.
Harsh slid down from his perch, his mind reeling. This was the apex. This was where all the currents of power—money, politics, intimidation, technology—flowed together. Swami wasn't an emperor. He was a demon, and he was building his throne inside a nuclear warhead.
The scale of it made Harsh's previous ambitions of gold and electronics seem like child's play. He had been playing checkers while Swami was playing a game that moved continents.
He stumbled back toward the train station, the image of the blueprint burned into his mind. Agni-1. Guidance System.
He had stumbled upon the empire's deepest, most dangerous secret. And knowing it made him a mortal threat to the most powerful man in the city.
The ghost's punishment hadn't been a demotion. It had been a death sentence. He was a loose end, working at the docks, waiting to be tidied up.
He had to get out. But there was nowhere to run. The only way out was through.
He had the blueprint now. Not on paper, but in his mind. He knew the target.
Now he had to find a way to make the demon bleed.
(Chapter End)