April 1992, Bombay.
The air in Harshad Mehta's office at Growmore Research & Asset Management was thick enough to chew. Not with the usual scent of ambition and money, but with the sour tang of sweat and dread. The ticker on the wall, which usually danced to his whims, now felt like a countdown.
Scam. The word was everywhere. In the papers. On Doordarshan. In the whispers of his own brokers. The great Harshad Mehta, the man who made the Sensex sing, was about to be unmasked as the conductor of history's largest financial orchestra of fraud.
His phone, the red one, rang. Not his secretary. Not his lawyer. This was the line only five people in the world knew.
He picked it up. "Bol."
A voice, mechanically altered but chillingly calm, spoke in clipped Hindi. "Swiss locker number 774 at Credit Suisse. The one with the Mauritius shell company papers. SEBI has the number. They will have the keys by tomorrow morning."
Mehta's blood turned to ice. That locker held the blueprint—the fake bank receipts, the trail of his paisa ki baarish. "Kaun ho tum?" he demanded, his voice cracking.
"A friend. Or your only exit. Air India Flight 201 to Colombo. Departure 23:50. Seat 12B. Be on it. Or be in the locker with your papers."
The line went dead.
Mehta stared at the receiver. A trap? A rival? The CBI? His mind, usually a supercomputer of arbitrage, spun uselessly. He had two hours. The airport was a gamble. But his penthouse was a gilded cage waiting to be locked.
He made the choice. One small suitcase. Cash, diamonds, a fake passport he'd prepared for a sunnier day. He took the private elevator to the basement, his driver already waiting.
"Santa Cruz. Fast."
The ride was a blur of neon and panic. At the airport, he moved like a ghost through the crowds, head down. Seat 12B was in business class. He sank into it, his heart hammering against his ribs. As the plane took off, he watched Bombay's lights recede—the city he'd owned, now spitting him out.
Two hours later, the captain's voice crackled. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are making an unscheduled refueling stop in Male, Maldives. Please remain seated."
Mehta's stomach clenched. Trap.
As the plane parked on the tarmac, two men in impeccable grey suits entered the cabin. They walked straight to him. No badges. No drama.
"Mr. Mehta. Please come with us."
"What is this? I have a connecting—"
"Your connection has been rerouted."
They escorted him off the plane, across the warm, salty tarmac, to a waiting Gulfstream jet, its engines whining softly. No markings. Inside, leather seats, soft lighting, a silent attendant offering mineral water. It felt like a corporate limo. A very expensive kidnapping.
The flight was short. When the door opened, the air was different—not the tropical damp of Male, but the salty, fish-and-spice tang of the Indian coastline. Goa.
A black Contessa waited. He was driven not to a police station or a dirty safehouse, but through palm-lined lanes to a secluded, whitewashed Portuguese-era villa overlooking the Arabian Sea. The gate opened silently. The car stopped.
"Inside, sir," the driver said, not unkindly.
Mehta walked through a courtyard filled with the scent of night-blooming jasmine. A large teak door stood ajar, spilling golden light onto the laterite tiles.
He stepped inside.
The room was a library. Floor-to-ceiling books, a slow-turning fan, the smell of old paper and sandalwood. In a deep leather armchair by a window overlooking the dark, murmuring sea, a man sat silhouetted against the moonlit water. He was swirling a drink in a crystal tumbler, the ice clinking softly.
The man didn't turn. He spoke, his voice calm, familiar, and utterly terrifying in its normalcy.
"Welcome to the real market, Mr. Mehta."
Mehta froze. He knew that voice. From television? From... Forbes India?
The chair swiveled slowly.
Rajendra Shakuniya looked at him, a faint, unreadable smile on his face. He wasn't wearing a suit. A simple white linen kurta. He looked like a poet on holiday.
"The Sensex," Rajendra said, taking a sip of his drink, "was just your kindergarten. You've been trading Monopoly money while the actual vaults of the universe were being auctioned next door."
He gestured to a vacant armchair opposite him. On a small table between them sat not a file, not a contract, but a slim, alien-looking tablet. Its screen glowed with flowing, incomprehensible symbols and graphs that moved like living things.
"Sit. Let's discuss your probationary portfolio."
Harshad Mehta, the Big Bull of Dalal Street, who had moved billions and broken banks, felt his legs give way. He didn't sit. He collapsed into the chair, his eyes locked on the glowing tablet, on the man who hadn't kidnapped him from the law, but had recruited him from a toy store.
The game hadn't ended. It had just changed boards. And he was no longer a player.
He was the newest, most confused piece on it.