An Imperial Affliction

Chapter 37- fight an enemy

It makes no sense.

So he pushed his IT department, telling them in loud voice that he does not care if they were not successful in getting the IP address of the hacker, he needs everything they could get their hands on. After finishing the command, he had gone out of his cabin, mingling with colleagues and tried not to get a headache with another discussion of foreign policy and revenge talks, which seemed like an default topic of discussion from a few weeks. He excused himself from seniors, eavesdropping on a conversation of junior field agents about the Delhi serial killer case. Apparently that killer was in Mumbai now.

The juniors were exchanging theories among themselves, oblivious to a senior Agent standing less than 3 feet away. Rahane wondered maybe that's how it looks like in ETF, and maybe they would handle it if this killer is really in town. He was confident they will succeed, with a leader like Director Kapoor and her doggedness.

"How is it even possible that police could not identify one victim out of so many?" One female agent was asking. Rahane pursued his lips before taking a sip. It's not unlikely, not to judge the work of police but digital identification had not reached every nook and corner of country. He remembered how he literally hit a wall when he tried to gather leverage over Riya and stumbled across Neel Sahaay, having no idea who was he back then.

"It's police." One male agent snickered, amending himself as the former gave him a look, "If they are not criminal, police will have hard time to identify. Do you have any idea how many people gets missing every day? Many people don't even own Adhaar or voter ID. It's not impossible."

"Maybe they are not from country." A third voice, male, spoke nonchalantly. Rahane narrowed his eyes, now on full attention, and the voice hurriedly explained feeling the stares from his companions, "What? It may be true. It might not have even crossed the police's mind to cross check Interpol or something."

"Well Genius, they looked very much Indian." The first male voice mocked.

"The world have people except blacks and Americans." The former argued, "They might not be Indian, maybe South Asian? NRIs? Who even knows? Just a theory." He shrugged.

For some unknown reason, the conversation was stuck in Rahane's head. Maybe because it was a nice distraction from upper level politics, something normal. Variety is spice of life after all.

He found himself settling on his chair inside his cabin and pulling up articles about the case on his laptop. The death toll was 31, barring the latest killing in Mumbai. The pattern was similar, face ruined by acid and dumping a body in gutter, injury on the back of head with a heavy object which resulted in victim's death within seconds. The bodies had no way of identification, no scars or tattoos, no papers or luggage with them, no witness who can tell who are they or where they came from. A literal dead end in every killing. Rahane could only imagine the frustration Delhi Police might have felt, he could feel headache coming up just by looking at news articles. Usually media gets something on high profile cases and run it, showing how incapable Police is. In this case, even their hands were tied.

The rookie agent's words came back to him and he wondered maybe they were not really Indians. His eyes went over the same lines on article over and over again, a voice on his head nagged he was missing the obvious thing here.

Then he did something he had never done in his life - Going with gut feeling. It was a stupid thing, there is no gut feeling. It's evidences and facts, no sixth sense or taking chance. Taking chances lead him nearly getting killed and 9 other agents being dead in the heart of capital. He never believed in gut feeling, never will. And yet, he was accessing RAW database after opening a new tab in his web browser, at the same time calling IT department so that they send someone up here with the necessary information he needs.