Chapter 2
SAMRAT
I wondered what my men were doing right now. Was my unit deployed on a mission currently?
There was no alcohol allowed on base, which meant that our poison of choice was usually a cup of spicy, steaming chai. Any commando not out on a mission was probably crawling back to the Shed right now after a long day of the most gruelling training.
I smiled at the memory of many an evening spent unwinding with my band of brothers - Sid, Rumi, and Mani.
If I’d been back home right now - my real home, not the palace where I grew up - I’d probably be looking for earplugs when Sid began to squall his favourite qawwali numbers.
He liked to claim it was singing, but the unholy sound that emerged from his throat was not even remotely related to singing.
He sounded more like an angry baby denied its evening bottle.
And considering how much Sid missed his Scotch, you could say that description was on point.
My big baby was definitely crying for his bottle.
Rumi was probably preparing to launch his standard army issue shoe at Sid’s head in a bid to get him to stop his wailing.
Meanwhile, Mani…I released a sharp breath at the thought of Mani, my 2IC and best friend.
The four of us were supposed to grow old together and terrorise the other residents of whatever retirement home we ended up in, but Mani had ditched us. Asshole.
I threw back the whiskey in my glass and slammed the empty glass on the table, wincing as the liquor made its way down my throat.
I tried telling myself it was the whiskey that was burning a hole in my gut, and not the knowledge that I was responsible for Mani’s death.
But I knew that was a lie. I carried that knowledge deep in my heart, and the guilt that came with it had seeped into my very bones.
It would never leave me. No matter what anyone said.
Mani was supposed to go on a month’s leave when his local informant dangled a juicy carrot under his nose.
“Sir Ji, khabar aayi hai,” he declared, striding into my office the day before he was to go home. “We have a special guest from across the border, who brings with him a lot of presents.”
I knew what he meant. We were currently trying to crack down on arms being smuggled into Rajasthan from across the border by the local mafia through deep underground tunnels.
“Who is it?” I asked, trying to tamp down on my excitement.
“Nadeem Qureshi.”
Qureshi used to be a low-level thug for one of Mumbai’s biggest underworld dons, until he moved to Dubai with his boss.
Or so we’d thought, until our intelligence agency informed us that he had turned arms dealer and was now based in Pakistan.
He was also on the list of India’s most wanted criminals.
“According to my informant, he snuck across the border last night and is hiding in a derelict haveli in Munabao. He has four armed guards. A convoy of camel riders was supposed to pick him up tonight, but they’ve been delayed.
They won’t get here before tomorrow,” said Mani. “Let’s grab him tonight, sir.”
“We will grab him, but you won’t go with us,” I said. “You’re taking the night train to Chennai, Mani. Did you forget?”
“With due respect, sir, this is my intel. And Qureshi is a very big fish. You can’t leave me out of it,” he argued. “I’ll leave as soon as we bring him in.”
I couldn’t argue with him because I knew Mani was dying to make his mark in the Special Forces. He was extremely ambitious, and his courage was unparalleled. As his Commanding Officer, I could order him to go home, but as his best friend, I couldn’t rob him of this opportunity.
It was supposed to be a simple extraction.
All we had to do was make our way to Qureshi’s hideout under the cover of darkness as part of a convoy of passing camel riders.
We’d break away from them and commando crawl to the haveli in the dark, neutralise the guards, and grab the man when he was still asleep.
At least, that was the plan. It was a hastily assembled plan, but it was a good one. Until it went bad.
A knock at the door pulled me out of the past.
“Hukum, there’s someone to see you,” announced the butler, Hira Singh. “He refused to give his name.”
“I don’t want to see anyone,” I grunted, but Hira Singh did not move. There was a peculiar insistence in his silence.
I shot him an irritated look.
“Send him away, Hira Singh. I don’t have to see anyone if I don’t want to. Being Maharaja must count for something, surely,” I said, with a bitter smile.
I never wanted to be a Maharaja. I was happy being the younger brother.
It gave me the freedom to live my life as I wanted.
As the spare, my life was mine. I could throw it away on a foolhardy mission if I wanted to, and nobody could stop me.
But then my brother died, and it turned out that as the new Maharaja, my life and my identity were tied to the title.
It was apparently unthinkable for the Maharaja of Deorangir to risk having his head blown off in a black op.
Who knew that my life was suddenly more valuable because I held a useless title?
My brother had taken sick soon after the investigation into our botched mission, and since I took the blame for our failure squarely on my own head, I was sent home to cool my heels while the army decided the fate of my unit.
I should never have come home, I thought ruefully.
Because I had walked into an even bigger ambush than the previous one.
“I’m on my way out,” Bhai Sa had said, with a game smile on his face. “My body has finally given up on me, Sam. It seems to have rejected the new kidney, and my liver’s failing.”
“There has to be a way to save you, Bhai Sa,” I’d said desperately, but he shook his head.
“I don’t mind dying. It’s better than this cursed existence. And after I’m gone, all this will be yours. Which means you need to be around to make sure Nilanjana doesn’t sell it behind your back.”
My lip had curled at the thought of my brother’s wife.
She was the most disgusting specimen of humanity I’d ever known.
She knew Bhai Sa’s medical history when she married him, and she had taken that to be an unspoken permission to stray.
I didn’t care about their personal arrangement, but I had no intention of helping her cuckold my brother.
Unfortunately, Nilanjana didn’t seem to understand the word no, and kept trying to seduce me every time she set eyes on me.
I knew I was going to be very rude to her very soon, because the very sight of her sickened me.
Clearly, Bhai Sa had no illusions about his wife. She had only married him for money, and she was capable of selling our ancestral palace just to spite our family.
“I’ll make sure she doesn’t get her hands on anything but her share,” I promised.
“The only way to do that is to quit the army, Sam. You have a responsibility to your heritage,” he said softly. “The family will need you here after I’m gone. You will have to hold them all together. And you’ll need to take care of Navya because her mother acts like she doesn’t exist.”
Nilanjana was an awful mother who neglected her three-year-old daughter just because she wasn’t the son she had wanted. Navya was the apple of Bhai Sa’s eye, and I knew he was worried about her.
“I’ll make sure she’s cared for, Bhai Sa. You know I’ll always be there for Navya,” I promised.
He struggled to sit up, agitatedly.
“How the hell will you do that if you’re out on some bloody mission, Sam?
You go radio silent on us for months when you’re at one of those forward posts.
Navya will be alone in the palace with nobody to protect her from her mother’s schemes,” he said, before a loud cough wracked his body.
“You need to retire from the army, Samrat.”
“I can’t retire under a cloud, Bhai Sa. I need to get back and prove my worth before I quit the army. If I quit now, I’ll never outlive the shame of having failed this mission,” I said desperately.
“What shame? You’re a fucking hero, Samrat Singh Deora,” he yelled hoarsely. “One bad mission does not define you.”
“You don’t understand, Bhai Sa,” I began, but stopped when a bitter smile crossed his face.
“You’re right. I don’t understand. I don’t understand how you can be a hero to the world and still let down the one person who depends on you. There will be other heroes for the country, Sam. But you’re Navya’s only hope.”
Bhai Sa passed away that night, but his words echoed in my ears long after I completed all his last rites. Long after my Rajyabhishek. He was right. I couldn’t abandon Navya to her mother’s care because Nilanjana would just pack her off to a boarding school and forget all about her.
So I did the right thing. I quit the army and tried to settle into my new civilian life.
But I was never meant to sit at home and twiddle my thumbs.
Thanks to a well-trained staff, the palace ran itself, as did our family chain of luxury hotels.
They didn’t need any input from me. Which meant I had all the time on earth to brood about my last case.
About the disaster that led to Mani’s death.
Hira Singh cleared his throat loudly and dragged me back to the present.
“Why are you still here?” I snarled.
“Pardon me, Hukum. But it’s not healthy to cut yourself off from the world like you have. Not for you, and definitely not for our little princess. This palace needs a new queen. And you won’t meet anyone if you’re locked in your study for the rest of your life,” he said firmly.
I would have liked to fire him for his insolence, but Hira Singh would just snort at me and go about doing his own thing.
That was the disadvantage of having staff who had served your family for generations.
They became more like your family than your real family.
Hira Singh was more of a grandfather to Navya than Nilanjana’s own father, who hadn’t bothered to check on the child since Bhai Sa died.
“Hira Singh, is my new queen standing on the other side of that door?” I asked dryly.
“No, Hukum,” he replied.
“Then leave me alone until she is. And tell whoever it is to get out of my palace!”
“Is that any way to talk to an old friend?” asked a familiar voice from the doorway, and I whirled around in surprise.
My old Commanding Officer, Col. Bhagat, smiled and nodded at Hira Singh, who slipped out of the room as silently as he had appeared.
“Sir, this is an unexpected surprise,” I said, rising to my feet immediately.
Col. Bhagat returned my salute.
“I hope it isn’t an unwelcome one,” he said, as he lowered himself onto one of the comfortable wingback chairs in the centre of the room.
“Not at all,” I murmured, wondering why the grand old man of 10 Para was here at all.
Col. Bhagat was my CO when I was first deployed to the unit, and from there, he had gone to better and greater things.
He leaned back in his chair and looked around my study appreciatively.
“I expected to find you surrounded by scantily-clad concubines feeding you grapes by hand,” he said.
“You’re a hundred years too late for that, sir,” I replied, pouring him a patiala peg of my best single malt. “My grandmother kicked out the last of the concubines when she married my grandfather. The only person who feeds me grapes is my three-year-old niece.”
He looked me up and down critically and raised an eyebrow in enquiry.
“Are you done playing Maharaja, Deora?”
“I’m not playing at anything, sir. I made a promise to my brother and…”
“What about the promise you made to your country?” Col. Bhagat broke in sternly.
“I’ve paid my dues to the country, sir.”
“And what about the promise you made to your unit the night you lost Mani?” he asked, and my knees almost buckled with grief.
I had made a promise to my men that night. Across Mani’s remains.
“I will find the man who did this,” I had growled. “And I will make him pay.”
That unfulfilled vow was the reason I spent every night in this bloody palace tossing and turning on the Mulberry silk bedsheets, awaiting the break of dawn. But Col. Bhagat had no way of knowing that. And I didn’t appreciate him using Mani’s death as a tool to get me back in the Special Forces.
“With due respect, sir, I know you mean well. But if you’re here to offer me a job, then…”
Again, he didn’t let me finish.
“I’m not here to offer you a job, Deora. No! I’m here to offer you something much more valuable.”
“And what is that?” I asked sceptically.
“A chance at redemption,” he replied.