Using the laces from a pair of shoes in the closet, he tied the man’s hands together, then took a pillowcase off one of the pillows and tied it across the man’s mouth. All the jerking around caused the manager to stir, and after a few more moments, his eyes opened to find Sanjay crouching nearby with the gun in his hand.
“You will do as I say, do you understand?” Sanjay asked.
The man tried to speak, but all he managed through the gag was a muffled jumble of sounds.
“Do you understand?” Sanjay said again.
The man’s eyes narrowed, but he nodded.
“I know about the spray, and what it really is.”
The man’s expression remained unchanged.
“You are going to kill my countrymen with a disease like what happened in America.”
This time one of the man’s eyebrows twitched.
“If I could stop you, I would. But I know that’s not possible. I don’t understand how you can live with what you are doing, but I can’t worry about that right now. You are going to help me.”
A muffled huff.
“If you don’t help me, I will kill you and find someone else who can.” Though killing was against almost everything Sanjay believed in, he would be able to justify it in this one instance.
The man apparently didn’t see the resolve in Sanjay’s eye, because he laughed.
Without hesitating, Sanjay jammed the muzzle of the gun against the man’s left shoulder and pulled the trigger. The sound was loud, but not as loud as he’d expected.
The man screamed through the pillowcase. His eyes squeezed shut for a moment, then opened again in disbelief as he twisted back and forth in pain.
“I will say it again. You are going to help me.”
This time there was no laugh, just a nod.
“You will take me to the vaccine.”
The man looked surprised.
Sanjay shifted the gun to the man’s other shoulder. “You will take me to the vaccine.”
The man nodded again, the look on his face pleading with Sanjay not to pull the trigger again.
THE GUNSHOT HAD not gone unnoticed.
When Sanjay opened the apartment door, he found two men standing in the hallway. Thankfully, they were not other managers, but Indians like him. Their aprons and grease-stained shirts identified them as the men from the kitchen. As soon as they saw the gun, they started to run.
“Stop!” Sanjay ordered.
They froze where they were, no doubt thinking they might get shot in the back.
“I am not going to hurt you.”
“Then let us go,” one of the men said.
“If I do, you will die.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Exactly what it sounded like.”
“Please,” the other man said. “We have families. Just let us go.”
Sanjay knew the task ahead would be difficult to complete on his own, if not impossible. Who knew how many managers were still downstairs.
“Come back here. I promise I won’t shoot you if you do,” he lied. He had no intention of shooting them at all. They had done nothing but take work in a kitchen to support their families.
“Why should we?”
“Because there’s something you need to know.”
It took a bit more persuading, but finally the men came back to the manager’s apartment. When they saw the injured man lying on the floor, gagged with his hands tied behind his back, they almost ran out, but Sanjay had already moved between them and the door, his gun convincing them to stay where they were.
“So what do you think we need to know?” the first man said.
As quickly as he could, Sanjay explained what was really going on with Pishon Chem and the spray. The men looked at him skeptically.
Sanjay stepped quickly to the manager and knelt down beside him. He pulled the gag off the man’s mouth, and shoved the gun back into the man’s uninjured shoulder. “Tell them.”
“Tell them what?” the manager said defiantly.
“Tell them it’s the truth.”
“That there’s a disease we’re trying to distribute through Mumbai? That’s crazy.”
“Tell them!” Sanjay moved the muzzle of the gun over to the man’s wound, and shoved it against the bullet hole.
The man cried out.
“Tell them!”
The manager began panting deeply, his eyes flicking from Sanjay to the others. “He isn’t…lying. It’s true. But we’re…only trying to make this a better world.”
“By killing our countrymen?” Sanjay said.
“By killing everyone.”
The last seemed to do the trick. The two other men looked horrified as the manager’s words sunk in.
The first man turned for the door. “I need to get home. I need to save my family.”
“Wait!” Sanjay called out. “The only way to save them is to help me.”
The man looked back. “What are you talking about?”
According to the manager, the remaining vaccine was locked in a storage closet near the main conference room on the ground level.
One of the two cooks went down the stairs first, checking to see if the way was clear. Once he gave them the signal, Sanjay, the other cook, and the manager joined him.
They could hear voices from farther down the main hallway. It sounded to Sanjay like the guttural language most of the managers spoke. Unfortunately, it was also coming from the same direction they needed to go in.
Every few steps, their captive manager grunted behind his gag in obvious pain. Sanjay didn’t care what the man was feeling, but he did care if the noise gave them away.
“Quiet,” he whispered.
Ahead, the hallway took a ninety-degree turn to the right toward the conference room and, just beyond it, the locked room where the vaccine was stored. Sanjay held up a hand for the others to stop, then leaned a few inches around the corner for a look.
While the corridor was empty, the voices were clearly coming through the open door of the conference room. Sanjay could make out at least four people.
“What are we going to do?” one of the cooks whispered.
Sanjay thought for a moment. The managers had never seemed particularly threatening to him — not physically, anyway — relying more on their leadership positions to get what they wanted from the men they’d hired. He had also never seen more than two or three guards patrolling the compound, all local hires. Since the public and the government had been more than happy to have Pishon Chem in India, the company apparently never thought it’d face a threat.
It was wrong, Sanjay thought.
Glancing back at the other men, he said, “Follow me.”
He stepped around the corner, hauling the manager right beside him, and walked straight to the conference room. Just before he got there, he turned the manager over to one of the cooks, and moved into the open doorway.
There were five of the Europeans inside, not four. They were laughing at some unknown joke — something that caused Sanjay’s anger to intensify — and it took them a moment to realize he was there.
It was the manager named Dettling, the man whose name Sanjay had been dropping, who spoke first. “Can we help you?” Before Sanjay could say anything, the man’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “Sanjay?” Then those same eyes widened as he seemed to remember that Sanjay had gone missing after paying an unauthorized visit to his dying cousin.
“Mr. Dettling, you and your friends will stay here,” Sanjay said.
“What do you mean, ‘stay here’? What are you talking about?”
Sanjay lifted his hand so they could see his gun. “I would rather not hurt anyone else.”
“What?”
Two of the men jumped up from their chairs.
“Sit,” Sanjay ordered, pointing the gun toward them to emphasize the point.