The message was delivered. Harsh felt it in the air the next day. A subtle shift in the currents of the city's underworld. The usual, lazy predation of Swami's men was replaced by a sharper, more focused tension. They were looking for something. For someone.
They were looking for him.
But he was no longer hiding. He was observing. He had become a student of his enemy, and his classroom was the teeming, chaotic streets of Mumbai.
His first move wasn't an attack. It was a withdrawal. He needed to vanish from the board completely, to become a true ghost. The chawl, the docks, the alcove—these were places of Harsh Patel, and that man was dead.
He found his sanctuary in the last place anyone would look: a tiny, rented room above a noisy, fragrant spice warehouse in Kalbadevi. The air was thick with the dust of turmeric and cumin, a pungent cloak that hid his scent. The landlord, a wheezing old man with no interest in anything but the rent, asked no questions. Harsh paid for a month in advance with the last of the physical cash he had kept separate from his bank account. It was almost nothing. He was down to his final few hundred rupees.
He sat on the thin mattress on the floor, the sounds of the city a constant rumble below. He had no tools, no electronics, no starting capital. He had nothing but the clothes on his back, a broken hand that was slowly healing, and the vast, terrifying library of the future inside his mind.
Swami's empire was a fortress of corruption and violence, but it was also a business. And every business, no matter how powerful, has a bottom line. It has cash flow, investments, and vulnerabilities. Harsh couldn't fight the thugs or the politicians. But he could attack the money.
He needed a lever. A small, precise instrument he could use to apply pressure to the entire, bloated edifice.
He spent his days in the public library, devouring newspapers. Not the headlines about the scandal—those were already fading, replaced by new dramas. He read the business sections. The stock pages. The tiny announcements about government tenders, import licenses, and commodity prices.
He was looking for a pattern. A tremor. A piece of the future he remembered that he could use.
And then he found it.
Tucked away on page seven of The Economic Times was a small article about rising tensions in the Persian Gulf. Iraq was making noises about Kuwait. Oil analysts were nervous. Prices were jittery.
A cold, sharp smile touched Harsh's lips for the first time in weeks. He remembered this. It wasn't just noises. It was the prelude to the first Gulf War. And when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, oil prices would not just rise; they would skyrocket. And then, when the world intervened, they would crash just as spectacularly.
It was a rollercoaster of unimaginable profit and loss. And Venkat Swami, with his fingers in shipping, smuggling, and God knew what else, would be heavily exposed. His entire operation ran on diesel fuel and bribes, both of which would get exponentially more expensive.
Harsh didn't need an army. He needed a bet. A big, audacious, perfectly timed bet.
But to place a bet, you need a chip. And he had none.
He thought of the thousands he had wired to London. That money was gone, but the account, "Arun Patel," was still a ghost. A ghost with a history. A ghost who had just made a large, legitimate international transfer. A ghost who might, just might, have a little credit left.
It was a desperate, insane gamble. But it was the only chip on the table.
He went to a broker's office near the Bombay Stock Exchange, a small, frantic room filled with the smell of sweat and cheap paper. He didn't look like a man who could play the market. He looked like a beggar.
"I want to open an account," he said to a harried young clerk.
The clerk didn't even look up. "Minimum deposit is five thousand rupees."
"I don't have a deposit. I want margin. Credit."
Now the clerk looked up, his expression one of pure ridicule. "Get out. We are not a charity."
"My name is Arun Patel," Harsh said, his voice flat. "Check your records. I just wired over one lakh rupees to London from the Bank of India, Nariman Point. I have liquidity. I need leverage."
The name, the specific detail of the transfer—it gave the clerk pause. He was low-level, but he understood money. A man who could move that kind of money internationally was a man to be taken seriously, no matter how he looked. He picked up a phone, made a low, questioning call.
He hung up, his attitude noticeably changed. "How much margin?"
"Everything you can give me," Harsh said.
An hour later, Harsh walked out of the broker's office. He didn't have cash. He had something better: a line of credit. A tiny, fragile key to a vast fortune.
He went straight to a public phone and placed a call to the broker.
"Sell oil futures," he said, his voice calm, certain. "Every rupee of margin you will give me. Sell it all."
The voice on the other end was shocked. "Sell? Sir, the market is nervous, but it's trending up. Selling is—"
"Just do it," Harsh said, and hung up.
He had made his move. He had just bet everything he didn't have on the memory of a war.
He stood by the phone, his heart thumping. It was out of his hands now. He had planted a seed in the financial markets, a tiny, toxic seed that would grow into a vine to strangle his enemy.
He wasn't Harsh Patel, the electronics whiz. He wasn't even Harsh Patel, the rebel.
He was a speculator. A prophet of doom. And he had just shorted the entire empire of Venkat Swami.
The first move was made. The debt collection had begun.
(Chapter End)