The black Mercedes did not take him back to the spice warehouse. It deposited him on a quiet street corner in Bhuleshwar, the driver's face a stony mask until the moment before Harsh closed the door.
"The tide goes out," the driver said, his voice low and unexpected. "But it always comes back in. Stronger."
Then the window slid up, and the car purred away into the night, leaving Harsh with a final, cryptic warning that was also a confession of doubt. The driver was Swami's man, yet he had spoken. The cracks were not just in the empire's finances; they were in its faith.
Harsh stood in the humid dark, the encounter in the Malabar Hill house replaying in his mind. He had looked into the abyss and the abyss had, for a moment, blinked. He had seen the calculation in Swami's eyes when he mentioned Sawant's jeeps. The emperor's invincibility was a myth, and myths shatter the first time they are questioned.
The game was no longer about survival. It was about acceleration. Swami would now move with absolute, ruthless finality. Harsh had to move faster.
He went not to the alcove or the spice room, but to a cramped telephone booth. He dialed a number from memory, one he had paid a great deal to acquire.
It rang twice before a wary, sleep-thick voice answered. "Hello?"
"Mr. Sharma," Harsh said. "It's Patel."
A sharp intake of breath on the other end. "I have nothing left to say to you. My son—"
"—is receiving the best care in London," Harsh finished, his voice firm. "The payments are automatic. His life is no longer a lever Swami can pull. But yours is. You are still inside that shipyard. You see things."
Silence. Then, a whisper filled with a hatred so pure it was almost comforting. "What do you want?"
"The evacuation. Where are they taking the machinery? The files? The evidence."
"Why should I tell you? So you can get more people killed?"
"So I can end this," Harsh said. "The man who held your son's life hostage is vulnerable. I stood in his house tonight and watched him realize it. Help me, and you become the man who helped bring him down, not the man he broke."
He was offering Sharma the one thing he had lost: his agency. His dignity.
A long, tortured silence stretched across the line. Harsh could almost hear the war inside the man—the terror of Swami against the burning need for redemption.
"They're not taking it far," Sharma whispered, the words torn from him. "They're scared of moving it too far. There's an old cotton godown near the Sewri docks. It belongs to a shell company called 'Coastal Logistics.' The trucks have been going there all night."
Coastal Logistics. The name from Dr. Desai's ledger. The web was connected.
"Thank you," Harsh said.
"Don't thank me," Sharma spat. "Just end it."
Harsh hung up. He had his target. Not the emperor, but his treasure. The evidence he was trying to bury.
But he couldn't raid a warehouse. He wasn't a policeman. He was a businessman. And a businessman knows that value is determined by the market.
He made two more calls. The first was to Ravi Pandey at the Mumbai Sentinel.
"Pandey. It's your ghost. Listen carefully. There's a godown near the Sewri docks. Coastal Logistics. Swami is moving the remains of his missile operation there tonight. If you have photographers who aren't afraid of the dark, now is the time."
He hung up before the editor could reply. He didn't need Pandey to break down the doors. He needed him to be a witness.
The second call was to Inspector Sawant. He dialed the direct line to his office, a number he'd extracted from a very expensive conversation with a clerk at the police headquarters.
"Sawant."
"Inspector. A tip. Coastal Logistics godown, Sewri. You'll find what's left of the Agni components. The press already knows. This is your chance to be the hero who finds the evidence, not the man who helped hide it. The choice is yours."
He hung up. He had set the board. He had given the ambitious policeman a chance at redemption and glory, and he had made sure the world would be watching.
Now, he waited.
He found a rooftop with a view of the Sewri docks, the old cotton godowns silhouetted against the night sky. He didn't have to wait long.
First came the trucks, rumbling into the compound, their headlights cutting through the darkness. Swami's men, moving with a frantic urgency.
Then, a different set of lights. The unmarked, but unmistakable, cars of the Crime Branch. Sawant had chosen his side. He wanted the arrest more than he feared Swami's revenge.
Chaos erupted. Figures scrambled. The shouts of policemen echoed across the water. And then, the flash of camera bulbs. Pandey's men were there, capturing it all—the crates being unloaded from Swami's trucks under the supervision of the police. The story was writing itself.
Harsh watched from the shadows, a ghost at the feast. He hadn't thrown a punch or fired a shot. He had simply connected two points of pressure—a policeman's ambition and a journalist's hunger for a story—and let them collide over Swami's secret.
He saw Sawant himself, striding through the chaos, his face a mix of triumph and grim determination. He was all in now. There was no going back.
The first domino had fallen. The evidence was in the hands of the law and the press. The scandal was no longer containable.
Harsh slipped away from the rooftop. His work was done. For now.
The news would break in the morning. The city would wake up to headlines of police raids and seized missile parts. Venkat Swami's name would be everywhere.
The emperor had been shown his weakness. Now, his enemies would smell blood in the water.
Harsh had not just stolen Swami's treasure. He had thrown it into the crowd and pointed at the king.
The reckoning had begun.
(Chapter End)