JOHNNY GONE DOWN Read Free

squat, inconspicuous, of indeterminate ethnicity - as likely to be South American as Indian. He blended into the crowd easily; his eyes, intent and sharp, took in everything like a chameleon ready to pounce on his prey. He was trained by the best, and I knew that beneath his bulky, baggy shirt lay hard, taut muscles trained in advanced hand-to-hand combat and sharp shooting. He spotted me simultaneously and raised his left eyebrow. I responded to his gesture and walked up to him.
    ‘Good journey,’ he said, more an assertion than a question.
    In our world, any journey you came back from alive was a good journey. Expertly, he guided me through the crowds. A cut here, a turn there and we were out of the station and into the waiting car. The car, nondescript from the outside, was fitted with all the equipment an operative needs to perform successfully. He rolled up the dividing screen between the driver and us, made a quick phone call in an unknown language from the phone affixed to the door, punched a few keys into his custom palm pilot, and we were on our way.
    ‘You’ve played before?’ he asked, his voice raspy, guttural and laboured.
    I looked at his neck closely and spotted the wound. The bullet had probably punctured his lungs.
    I shook my head.
    ‘It’s just like in the movies, except there is no need for drama,’ he said. ‘Don’t put on a performance. Just take the gun when it’s your turn, pull the trigger and pass it back.’
    I nodded.
    ‘No drama,’ he repeated. ‘They’ve paid to see blood, they get blood. Nothing more, nothing less. This isn’t a circus.’
    ‘Okay,’ I said, glancing out the window to see roads and highways, large, cold buildings, faceless cars and the absence of shantytowns under the bridges. Twenty-five years, I reminded myself, things change.
    ‘Delhi has changed,’ I said.
    He didn’t reply. Small talk wasn’t a part of his job description.
    ‘Two million rupees,’ he said after a while.
    ‘What?’
    ‘The stakes,’ he said. ‘You take half a million, those who bet on you double their money; we take the remaining.’
    ‘If I win, that is. If I lose, I get nothing except a bullet through my head.’
    He shrugged. Life is tough, get over it.
    They would pick up the money either way, I thought, though I suspected that the game was organized less for money and more for the entertainment of important clients - a morbid modern-day joust.
    ‘The Donos says you are the first man he has met who is genuinely unafraid to die,’ said the handler. ‘Two million rupees isn’t a joke in India. Do you know why the stakes are so high?’
    I didn’t know, nor did I care.
    ‘Indians seem almost as afraid to die as Americans and Europeans. Elsewhere in south-east Asia - Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, even Hong Kong - it’s easy to organize. Here, we can’t find two people we can trust to play the game till the end. Every time, one or both of them chickens out after the first shot, or they shiver so much that they can’t even hold the revolver straight, or else they cry likebabies. It’s embarrassing. Why are Indians so afraid to die?’ he asked rhetorically.
    ‘Family ties, perhaps,’ I said disinterestedly.
    I didn’t know. I didn’t care. I had no ties in India or, for that matter, anywhere else. I was better dead than alive, and would have done the honour myself except for my irrational belief that suicide was morally wrong, a direct violation of the laws that the Buddha had taught me. Or maybe I was just a yellow hypocrite. I neither knew nor trusted myself any more.
    ‘This time is going to be different, I know,’ he said, studying me closely. ‘Your eyes are steady.’
    I didn’t say anything. Blowing your brains out for money was cowardice, not courage.
    ‘The other man is also a great find. He is dying of cancer but looks as healthy as an ox. It wouldn’t work if he looked as if he were about to die.’
    I didn’t want to think about my opponent. It was