Amicus-II

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Amicus, as much as he may sound and feel like the fictional alter ego of Vijjwal Singh himself, has after all a consciousness of its own, only rooting from Vijjwal’s wildest and most terrifying, while thrilling, fantasies and thoughts. Amicus is most of the things Vijjwal is, some of the things Vijjwal strives to be, and fewer things he wishes never to be, who goes through situations Vijjwal dreads. Thank you for reading and keeping up till now.

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“A hedge fund manager, then? Which particularly funds energy companies?”, the man, had shown more curiosity towards Amicus than perhaps even his parents after a night out with associates (that was what he liked to call his friends), asked, partially impressed by his perceived goals in life, partially disappointed with his uncertain attitude towards those goals, and mainly intrigued by his his acquaintance with the person sitting diagonally to them on a baith chair, hiding behind a laptop screen, in front of a bonfire the man had set up, in his garden, at his house, during a freezing midnight.

“Well, no. As I said, I want to get into venture capitalism, but a hedge fund is a little too capitalistic, if you know what I mean. Maybe advocacy of the same, I suppose?”,

“So a corporate lawyer?”, he asked, leaning forward.

“No. That would not keep me too close to the development side of things. Because-”,

“Because you want to get into the development of sustainable energy technologies as well. Yeah. We talked about that”, Aftab Hussain Siddhique, the man, said, giving only a hint of a frown for a few moments, before chuckling softly at Amicus, and gave him a bright smile, “Well, I suppose you can get into anything, Yunus Amicus, given your records, on paper at least”. Amicus liked Siddhique, after meeting him in person. He almost felt bad for stealing from him, and possibly causing him to be incarcerated for three decades, while leaving his family in debts of billions of rupees, for a crime he was only speculated to have committed.

(An hour and a half earlier)

The interior of the Thar smelled of cigarettes. Amicus recognised the odor from the time his school’s economics teacher used to commute via his father’s car. He stood by the open door, hesitant to get inside. 

“Hop in. We have tranquiliser darts in there too”, the girl in the black hoodie with brown hair, who waited outside, like a chauffeur, said, after checking him from top to bottom for bugs, and taking his phone, “Although I seriously doubt they would be any more tranquilising than the winter out here, if I stayed a moment longer. Come on, get in!”, she yelled, and he jerked into motion. He took his place in the rear left passenger seat. The girl in the black hoodie hopped in, closing the door.

“Do you smoke?”, the guy beside him with a laptop asked. He was tall, because he was of Amicus’ height, and thin. He had long, curly hair, and a fair chubby face, which did not match his frame. The two seemed to be of Yunus’ age.

“No”, Amicus replied.

“Drink? Sniff cocaine? See girls? Anything that your parents might think you were upto, in case you reach home late, after they are already up? What do you plan to tell them?”, he had a thin and polite voice.

“No”, he said, not too loudly, but a trace of disgust was apparent in his tone.

“Think about it”, an older bloke sitting in the driver’s seat interrupted. He could only see his eyes, and they were suggestive of him being older of the two, while his voice was suggestive of him being the one on the call. Amicus nodded.

“Either way, what am I doing here? I am not here willingly. Tell me what you want, and allow me to take my leave. And surely it isn’t money. You could have had ample of it by now. So what is it?”, he tried to appear calm while saying all of that, and failed miserably. A few moments transpired before the girl in the front seat started talking.

“You’ll refer to me as Themis, the douchebag beside you as Apollo, and Dev Das beside me as Hades-”,

“Wha-”, he tried to interrupt, after listening to those childish names, childish to those who wouldn’t know Greek mythology. Themis, goddess of knowledge, Apollo of truth, and Hades of the dead and underworld.

“And you’ll only speak when you are asked to”, she took a pause, and signalled Apollo to pull something up on the laptop. It was a Mac with a black skin. ‘Who does that?’, Amicus thought. 

Themis pushed back her seat, turning around to face Amicus, “Now I take it that you are aware of the Talibani occupation of Afghanistan?”, Yunus nodded, “The Talibani warlords’ logistical support is tied to a drug cartel, which operates exclusively in their region. I take it you know which one”,

“Al Kaban?”,

“Al Kaban”, Themis said, affirmingly, “Now, what you ought not to know, is that Al Kaban has a contact based here in Allahabad, which helps them launder money from directly from their profits via sales of artistic works from a prominent-”,

“Is that the police?”, Hades said, peeking out the rear windshield, “That is, indeed, the police”, Apollo added, rather calmly.

“Lose them. We’ll talk on the go”, Thmis instructed Hades, and the car accelerated swiftly into motion.

“Police? What have you been doing?!”, Yunus exclaimed.

“You speak when you are asked to! And we haven’t been doing anything yet”, she yelled, “Except stealing a car”, Apollo completed.

“Anyway”, Themis started again, “Al Kaban has a contact established here in Allahabad. And he does it with his art gallery in Ashok Nagar. His hedge fund in Lucknow also provides accountancy services and investment options to Al Kaban, acting as vertebral disk to their financial spine. The open casket you were informed about. The ability for it to be able to point at any name is the one thing that reduces its bureaucratic and legal reliability in the long run in case of a man of his stature, and the culprit, who’s name should be there, knows and understands the same”,

“Godammit!”, Hades cursed, barely cutting through a sharp corner. The siren wailed violently in the background, and it made Amicus nervous. He still listens, with all the attention he could gather, to Themis, under the sound of the roaring engine of the Thar.

“The only piece that the lead requires is raw data about certain transactions on specific art pieces, which can only be found on his home computer. Not on his Drive, Dropbox, his computer. Offline. Once we have that, we can point it directly at him, stage an expose on other contacts who work under him and his hedge fund, and possibly cut off the larger chunk of the Taliban’s logistical support. And it starts, here and now, if you infiltrate his household, get hold of his computer, and download anything that you find suspicious”,

“We have lost them, temporarily. But we need to leave the vehicle. I am positive about them not recognising our faces”, Hades said.

“Okay. Dump the vehicle at Sainik Sweets. We’ll walk to CCD”,

“Affirmative”.

“Amicus!”, Apollo called him, “We only know as much about financial fraud as you know about domestic security. It was a little too easy getting on your television control panel. We know who you are, and we know you can help us”,

“But it is not the only reason you are our primary guy”, Themis added.

“Alright. Get out”, the car stopped, and Amicus found himself in front of Sainik Sweets, “I’ll park around the corner and catch up”, and he followed Apollo and Themis out. They started to walk towards Cafe Coffee Day, which was only a few hundred metres ahead. It was something about seeing them in person that made Amicus slightly more relaxed, for he could now feel the cold winds penetrating through his coat. He clenched his teeth hard, to stop them from chittering soundly. His expression was depective of it, but it was more depictive of thought, apprehensiveness, and fear. Thought of the scale at which these people were operating, or pretending to operate, apprehensiveness of the worthiness of participating in such a thing, and that if he really didn’t have a choice, and the fear of it being a path, if legitimate in its own will, one which does not allow a way back.

The walk to CCD was slow, quiet, and awkward. They strode inside, and took a seat far from the window. They waited for Hades to join them, and he did after a couple minutes.

“I still don’t get it. It’s all well and good, what you are trying to do. Self righteous public service and shit. Okay. But what do you need me specifically for? You can hook up with any financial expert with burglary skills, minding that I am not even an expert. And who on God’s red Earth are you?”, he said, taking a sip from his latte. Apollo, pulled up three images on his laptop.

“We are”, Themis leaned forward from across Amicus, “part of the sleeper cell of a little group called the International Liberation Army. And we need you, because the man we are after, is this”, Apollo turned his laptop screen to face Amicus. He looked at it, in shock and distress, coming to realise the degree of inextricability that resided at the core of the situation he was entangled in. 

“Horseshit!”, he said, quite loudly “You are kidding”, this time with a lower voice. The man in the picture was Aftab Hussain Siddhique.

“As mentioned before, we know who you are. You are a guy who seems quite well connected to his daughter, Kalpana Siddhique. And to our knowledge, she still needs your help, and wouldn’t hesitate in allowing you through the doors of her household if you made it seem necessary for the assignment to be done”.