Lying For A Living

18

The room was in stunned silence for a minute. Vansh's experiences brain was trying to find any other explanation to the recent developments, but his mind reached only the one he had just said. Sure, it could be the US or Russia, both more than capable of making and using nanotech, but they were allies. China wasn't. When the man had blurted out about nanotech, Vansh's brain had immediately made the connection. He proceeded to scan the faces of the other men sitting in the room. Markande was looking as if he would burst in rage and start giving orders to assassinate the Chinese, Kabir's face revealed nothing while Avnish looked down, unable to control his fear of the situation that was sure to come. Nowadays countries did not fight wars on the battlefields. 'Civilised' people believed that wars were now fought on economic grounds, trade wars, to be precise. But they did not understand that now, shadows fought wars. Away from media coverage and international accountability. Nearer to crime and closer to the vest. Picking up guns and shooting soldiers on the border was a concept of the old. You hit where it mattered. Leaders, monuments and obviously, the economy. Never before had international issues been do hushed-up. Because if stories of people like Vansh would get out, the world would go mad, since what they did was in no condition of the brain or heart, justifiable. Vansh broke the silence. "All right. It may be a lead, but there's not a b****y thing we can do about it. All of our conclusions are based on assumptions. For now, we take the one lead we were constantly missing."

Kabir was the first man to understand. "The woman who was killed," he said.

Vansh nodded. "I want every single detail of her in a file. Also, her official records, and address. We'll go and give her house a visit. See if there is anything. Then we'll report back here," he said.

Markande made a few calls and in a few minutes, every single possible detail on the woman rested on the desk.

"Let's go partner, we got a house to visit," Kabir said.

...........................................................................

In the car, Vansh read the woman's file out loud so that Kabir could hear. She was a moderately old agent at RAW. She was one of the people who had been hastily admitted to RAW after a considerable ramp up in job transfers after 26/11. She had basically spent her whole life in Delhi where she had first attended a session about RAW in her college. She had later joined as an intelligence officer in the ethical hacking department.

Kabir took a left to enter a small set of two buildings in Behala, one of the most crowded places in the city. The two small buildings were beautiful. Showing their credentials wherever required, the used the master key to get in her house, which had not been searched by the local police yet because they had received the intel from RAW that it would sent it's agents and that they were not supposed to interfere.

The house was a small two roomed apartment and had only minimal luxuries. A small TV, a computer in the corner, a small dining table and a kitchen. Vansh walked around the house and tried to see anything conspicuous. There was nothing in her bedroom drawers, cupboards and under her bed in the first room, where apparently she lived. As they entered the second room, Kabir inhaled sharply. The room had a state-of-art system of computers, all connected to each other and projectors all around the room. Vansh headed to one corner where there was a professional looking microscope. He glances in and called out to Kabir, who was looking at the world map pasted on one wall of the room, with red lines and dots all over it.

Kabir looked in the lens of the microscope and turned to Vansh with a flabbergasted expression. He sighed and asked, "Not nanobots?"

Vansh nodded and replied, "Yes, nanobots."

Confused by the recent developments, Vansh gazed out of the window. He ducked when he saw three burly men enter the building, one of them punching the security guard so hard on the face that the men fell like a sack of sand. He took out his g*n and signalled Kabir to switch off the lights. Then, he waited, the adrenaline pumping so efficiently in his body after almost a decade. He waited for his first blood after ten years.