One more time : Where Oblivion meets Obsession

#5 — PHASE ONE

—Laccadive Sea—

The huge cruise ship moved rather slowly, irritating Myra. She kept looking through the window every now and then in annoyance.

“You people don’t know who you’re messing with.” Malcolm said hoarsely struggling through the metal cuffs holding his hands at the back. “What do you think Don Shahmeer will not know about this? About you people? No. he will hunt you down and kill-”

“Shut up! You talk too much old man. So this is it?” Myra said holding his laptop pathetically in front of his face. “The ‘Parcel’ you invented is a ‘satellite manager’ which can manage, organise, change, hack or dysfunction any satellite worldwide without getting tracked, or known by its government. Wow, impressive I must say.”

“Yes, it is impressive, and fools are the people who think it is worthless. I am going to sell it to a person who realizes its worth. I was a loyal patriot. I cared about my country and its people. That’s why I first approached my government to buy it but they were too proud. They said they had the best servers and didn’t need ‘trash’. ‘Trash’?”- He laughed hysterically. “Now let’s see when this trash hacks their secrets and compromises their security.”

“Why is he talking in the past tense?” Bryan asked. “All this ‘was’… going to happen. Now it’s not.”

“What was done to me was wrong. They snatched my work from me and placed it in the museum for people to ogle and criticize. They were afraid I would misuse it. So I staged my death, then stole, no no, RECLAIMED my work back and made a deal with a person worthy of my investment.” He spat venomously; his voice filled with anger.

“Do you have any idea of the havoc this piece of shik can wreck? We are going to take care of this software and hand you back to your government. They can do whatever they want with you.” Shermon said exiting the conversation.

“You don’t know who you’re messing with. You think Don Shahmeer will take it that easy? He will go to hell and back to find me.” Malcolm said.

“Well he may have you but you don’t have the software anymore. Destroy this every bit.” Myra said handing over the laptop to Yousuf.

“What! No! You can’t do that! It’s my lifetime of hard work. You just can’t do it. This is unacceptable. It is…” he kept on shouting uptil sedated again.

“Boys, put him in a box and place the box downstairs. As the ship nears the shore, tip off Singaporean police of his whereabouts. It’s a huge cruise ship. They can’t investigate each one of them. By the time they arrive, we’ll be gone.”

“1000 bucks he wakes up in the Psych ward.” Bryan said to Yousuf.

“2000 bucks for Jail.” Yousuf said, getting a chewing gum from his pocket.

“Deal.” They gave a HI Five and went back to work.

After a while, Myra asked “Yousuf, the laptop?”

“I thought you asked me to destroy it.” He said amused.

“Oh, you’re smarter than that.”

He smirked and gave a pen drive. “I extracted all the data before doing it. We’ll deliver it to the base.”

“Good. Now if there’s nothing else I’d like to go to my suite, have some sleep.”

“Yea but wake up in an hour. We have to abandon the Cruise and get on a smaller boat. We can’t be seen on the same ship with an unconscious Malcolm when the police find him.” Yousuf reminded her.

“Sure.”

***

—Shimla—

The dining room was filled with laughs and giggles, and the talks of what happened earlier.

“Man! The best thing about this country is its cuisine. Really I forget all my dieting.” Rose said stuffing some fried chicken in her mouth.

“Thank you.” Nisha said happily. Cooking and baking were her best interests. After she lost a leg in an accident, she was posted here for managing all the missions of ‘the wolf pack’ as they nicknamed themselves and this place. Even though she continued her Psychiatric career from here but UDF called her to report the least. She was a precious asset, to be used in extreme times. She wasn’t sad, angry or feeling worthless about what happened. She was content that she had given enough to this team and UDF selflessly.

“Nisha you should really hear it from Myra and Shermon. The way the scientist behaved, oh God! We had to work so hard to get him out of his boat, then carry his weight to our ship, really.” Bryan said.

“Fellas, we shouldn’t forget Ronn and Yuka’s contribution too. When Shahmeer's men investigated us, they even tried to rub clear my skin with alcohol at the place of the tattoo but it still wasn’t visible. Just a pigmented spot. How did you do it guys?” Yousuf asked, impressed.

“Aww. Thank you. Actually when you guys told us you had to go underwater, we made the fake skin strips covering your tattoos in such a way that…” Yuka looked at Ron, “that it won’t come out by any liquid.” Ronn completed half of the sentence.

“Then how do we get it off the skin?” Yousuf asked.

“Anhydrous powder. I’ll give you after dinner. Rub it on the spot.”

“BTW Myra what did that man want to talk to you in private huh?” Rose asked with a teasing smirk.

“I’d rather not talk about it.” Myra said getting uncomfortable.

“As you wish.” she shrugged.

“Okay. What happened to the eulogy you were writing? Did you reach the point where you met any of us?” Rose asked.

“Almost.”

After finishing the dinner, closing the door of her room, Myra changed into something casual and stood in front of the mirror.

“Shahmeer!” The words came out of her mouth as she stared at her palm.

—A few hours ago—

“Evening Sir. M-12-A here. Target on board. Parcel secured. Team off cruise ship Queen. Mailmen tipped. Mission accomplished. Over.” Shermon informed the senior.

“Shermon what do they teach at training? Mission accomplished ‘after’ we arrive at the dinner table, at our home.” Rose reminded him.

“Come on we are almost there. Stop being so worried about everything.” Shermon said casually.

“Uh-oh! We have some people waiting to ‘receive’ us.” Bryan said in his softly fluent accent putting down the binoculars as they saw some odd-looking men waiting at the shore watching them.

“Why after us? We left the ship, didn’t we?” Rose asked.

“Maybe they saw us leaving or something.” Yousuf guessed.

“Okay we can’t be at the mercy of maybes. Let them come. How many Bryan?” Shermon said, preparing to make a move.

“About 20 people upfront but that shouldn’t be trusted. Most of the time, it's only 10% of the total strength.”

“I’ll get the guns.” Rose said walking inside the cabin.

“No! Think about it.” Myra said, analysing the situation. “Hide the weapons and the Pendrive. We are just tourists, some divers who are here to explore. Get the fake IDs Rose not weapons. If something goes wrong, we’ll deal with it. Keep your IDs and passports near, cover up the tattoos, debug the boat, put scanners and trackers away. No panic, just behave. Don’t give them any reason to turn their doubts into truth.”

Everyone seemed to agree.

“Myra we’ve worked too hard for this. We can’t lose it now. We won’t get another chance. Are you sure?” Rose panicked. She wasn’t used to moving around without weapons. They were her pride and confidence. She felt helpless and unworthy without them.

“Yes I am. Go now!”

“Act panicked everyone. Look scared. Don’t look into eyes and look at guns like you’re observing them for the first time.” Yousuf hissed seeing everyone’s confidence.

“Oh yes.” All averted their gaze.

Soon enough, men gestured them to climb out of the boat at gunpoint. As planned, they acted panicked and tried to reason with them but all they said was, “someone wants to meet you.”

They were guided to a Limo which travelled for a certain distance before big iron gates opened for them. Now everyone was curious about who it was. As they kept walking behind those men, they reached a large empty hall with just a glass table and a large tufted chair facing the other side. The room had a tall ceiling and the traditional architectural design, wooden door and no windows made it dependent on small electric lights for all the light. Even the lowest voices would boom because of the emptiness.

“Sir, here they are.” One of them said to the man sitting on the chair.

He got up and walked away from the chair revealing his face. To their shock and disbelief, he was, the Don Shahmeer, the warlord who was backing Malcolm.

“Searched them?” he asked the tall man who brought us here.

“Yeah found nothing.”

“Can we ask why we are here?” Rose asked, hardly covering her rapid heartbeats.

“I believe I don’t need an introduction. Still, I’m Shahmeer – Shahmeer Zamán Khan, the face of the automobile industry in this country. A man who doesn’t believe in coincidence. So I have a hard time accepting the fact that… It is a coincidence that the same group of people arrive in Singapore, then Srilanka, then India. Who are you? What are you up to?” He asked straightaway, his coal black eyes never leaving them, analysing their actions, body language.

Everyone looked angrily at Bryan. It was his idea to travel together. It would save a lot of hectic scheduling, travelling and meeting. This is what happens when you break the code. They glared.

“We are tourists. Explorers to be precise. You can check our bags, passport, IDs.” Myra replied. He wasn’t easy to fool.

“Im...pressive. Then how come I never heard about you?” he retorted in his dark, intimidating voice. The way he accentuated the word ‘impressive’ made her fall in love with the word.

“Because we don’t do it for being heard. We do it for money and our interest.” Myra replied calmly. Nothing but their fear could ruin this.

“People spend a fortune to travel first class in a Ship like the Queen, and you ditched it? May I know why?” he asked again.

“The ship was going extremely slow and we had a flight from here. We were afraid we would miss it.”

“International flight?”

“Yes.”

“Which company?”

“Jet airways.”

He asked a few more twisted questions everyone kept quiet and let Myra answer them. She knew how to entrap people with words and how to deal with people who do the same.

“Everyone can leave except this girl.” He said pointing towards Myra and turning around. By everyone, he meant his men too. Now they were standing all alone in this huge hall. He kept covering the distance between them while Myra kept moving backward until he stopped.

Thousands of questions and possibilities came to Myra’s mind. She had heard about his men’s s******c ways, how they strolled around looting shops, taking women and nobody to stop them. What would she do if he tried something like that? For all he knew, she was a tourist, weak and alone and he was a criminal, who owned most of this country and didn’t bother about what others think.

She kept her eyes fixed on the floor but as he moved closer, an irresistible fragrance of his cologne hit her nostrils making her go weak. It was something different, fruity, spicy and dusky altogether, a combination perhaps. She was engrossed in her own pleasant thoughts when she felt his thumb and forefinger lifting her chin up and it stimulated something strange in her body. “These dark blue eyes are a universe woman. Like a never-ending vortex, they speak so much and so loud. And your lovely voice makes me want to believe every word you said but my instincts say I shouldn’t. I want to trust my instincts which go against your words but I can’t. Im...pressive.” he said softly in a soft, mild tone. Again, he accentuated the word.

It was after a long time someone had this effect on her. She was having this twist and turn in the pit of her stomach and a gush of blood through her body. What was he doing to her? She involuntarily spoke out, “nobody ever said that to me before.” She said breathing heavily.

“Well they should have. I’ve never seen anything more beautiful, more mysterious. More im…pressive.” He said, pulling out a marker from his pocket.

He took her palm and wrote a few digits on it and kissed it. “The country code is 91. Call me.”

She didn’t know what to say. It was totally unexpected. “Rajat!” Shahmeer called again. The tall, young but muscular man from earlier came inside. He had a thick beard and a blue turban completely encompassing his head. Nisha had told her about a community ‘Punjabis’ in India. Maybe he belonged to that. “Yes Boss?” he said in a hoarse, confident voice.

“Drop them to the Airport.” He was rather confused but did as ordered. Myra walked away but kept turning around until he disappeared from the view.

***