Masques
The tinkling sound of glass breaking shattered the tranquility of the warm summer night.
Maira’s eyes flew open as she leapt to her feet. In an instant, the walkie-talkie was at her mouth, crackling. Footsteps thudded away from her as she tried to figure out their owner’s bearings. “Darsh — we have an intruder heading towards the main gate. Apprehend them. Over.” She ran as she talked, trying to follow the echoes of the footsteps. They were receding fast, and had all but subsided when she bumped into Darsh at the door.
“Got away, he did,” snarled Darsh, “jumped into a car and vanished as I came.”
“He? You’re certain it was a he?”
“Footsteps that heavy, I’d bet half my wage on it.”
“And the car? Colour? Model? Number? Anything?”
“Well, all cars look black and vicious by night, don’t they?”
“Damn it. They’re gonna have us by the throats when they get to know. And if anything’s gone missing, well, we’d better leave our heads here right now.”
“Security!” came a thin, reedy voice from within. “Here! Now!”
Darsh and Maira glanced at each other, sighed together, and trudged off towards the voice.
Vaidik Anand was not one of the longest-serving executives at Livingstone Industries, Ltd., but he was known to be one of the most relentless. He was a tall, lanky man, with a square head, grey eyes and close-cropped hair. The state Darsh and Maira found him in was, to say the least, not befitting of a Deputy Research Manager. His glasses were askew, the silk tie looking as if it had never seen an iron; the shirt untucked and creased. The cast on his left leg framed his flannel trousers; the boots had shoeprints all over. To complete this picture of ignominy, he was on the floor beside his wheelchair, grimacing.
The two guards picked him up slowly and carried him to his office. They sat him down on his revolving chair as he heaved and spluttered incoherently. “Files… he took the files… I recognized… the secret formula… top secret… Norton’s wanted them… corridor… he grabbed me… kicked me… ran.” He looked up weakly. “Did you catch him?”
“Well, no, sir. He was too fast.” said Maira, hanging her head.
Vaidik stared at them icily. “Oh, was he, now? How convenient. I turn up here every day, with a broken leg, working twelve hours daily. You imbeciles let the one robber you encounter in your entire career slip away with some of the company’s most valuable documents!”
He paused to catch his breath. Neither of the guards dared to speak.
“Call my chauffer. You’ll be staying here tonight. The H.E.O. will deal with you tomorrow morning, I expect.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And don’t even think about trying to escape. If you do, you’ll regret it for the rest of your lives, I assure you.”
Lakshya Anand, the Head Executive Officer at Livingstone Industries, Ltd., was a placid man.
Lakshya lived at number nine, Rook Street, just opposite his office. Reaching the workplace sharp at ten every weekday, as he did, was hence never a harrowing affair. He always arrived dressed immaculately in white shirt, blue coat and black shoes that reflected the contents of the ceiling when he stood. His eyes were grey, his shoulder-length hair as black as his beard, framing his otherwise rather thin face. He had a spotless track record on every aspect of the company’s governance one could care to name, and had steered it safely through multiple regulatory and financial obstacles, always avoiding any skirmishes with the powers-that-be. Yet he never seemed to overwork himself; he always left the office sharp at seven.
He also happened to be Vaidik’s elder brother.
Not that many could figure it out without being told, though: apart from the few physical similarities, the two brothers were like ice and fire; as different as two people could be from each other.
Right now, Lakshya Anand had a vein twitching in his temple. And that was terrifying Maira out of her wits.
“So, here, we looked at the available footage — ”
“You don’t have the complete footage?” someone called from behind.
“No, ma’am, the cameras inside the building were all switched off — ”
“Very well, get on with it.” Jay, the Head of Security, interrupted loudly.
“And the car… it was most probably a Jaguar S-Type, dark grey, but we couldn’t read the number-plate. Darsh reckoned the robber was a man, medium build —Mr. Anand confirmed— ”
“What’s missing?” Lakshya cut across her.
“The files pertaining to the design of the Rennervator,” Vaidik answered from his leather sofa. “I’d told you to move it down to the lockers, but, hey, how much is a Deputy’s advice worth to the great Head?”
The reproach drew some quickly-stifled sniggers from the assembly, but Lakshya did not flinch or react. His cool grey eyes moved to meet Vaidik’s for a second, and then back to Maira’s brown ones. “Very well. Is there anything else you wanted to say, something that slipped your mind, perhaps?”
Maira glanced at Darsh. “N-no,” she squeaked. “That was all, I think.”
“I see.” Lakshya inclined his head downwards for a moment and then back up, surveying each man and woman in the hall. He put the tips of his fingers together as he did so, drinking in the expression on each face and perhaps trying to gauge some reaction from it.
“The way I see it,” he began, “this was not something planned and carried out by Norton’s… or by any outsider, for that matter. For one, no one knows about the existence of the Rennervator prototypes other than the senior administration, who are all gathered here.”
“Systems can be hacked and information may leak out accidentally, that possibility always remains.” said Vaidik pointedly.
“Further,” continued Lakshya, as if there had been no interruption, “I had personally seen to it that misleading information about our current research was disseminated, to throw the competition off-course.”
Sporadic whisperings broke out in the conference room, accompanied by a smattering of claps and a few chuckles.
“I believe that this break-in was organized by an insider. A high-level insider, who knew exactly what to steal and where to steal it from.”
The muttering grew louder and more ominous as the atmosphere in the room shifted perceptibly. People exchanged looks, suddenly unsure of each other’s leanings, afraid that those who flanked them might have betrayed the firm. Some of them shrank back into their seats, as if someone might jump up and attempt another robbery then and there.
“Moreover,” he went on, raising his voice slightly, “there have clearly been multiple lapses in security prior to and during this incident. The most glaring of these, as I see it, is the deactivation of the internal CCTVs. Tell me, Jay, why is that so, and why did you try to gloss over it when Maira was speaking?”
Jay shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Four days back, the video feed was glitching, so I ordered them to be shut down and inspected. Turns out that one of the main wires had been severed partially. I got it fixed within the next day, but…” He trailed off.
“It was a Saturday, and you did not deign to return to the office to turn them back on.” finished Lakshya. “Is that correct?”
“I’m — I’m sorry. I apologize.” Jay could no longer look his chief in the eye.
“Moving on,” said the H.E.O., “why were there no personnel at the gates?”
“He had called in sick. The reserve guard was unresponsive to calls, so we were a man short yesternight.”
“How convenient,” remarked Lakshya coolly. “So elegant… guards missing… cameras disabled… you all do see, don’t you, the simplicity of the plan? And yet its nuances point us to the conclusion that the attack was executed by one of us. The question is, who?”
More uneasy and furtive looks passed around the room.
“Darsh. You shall analyse the records of the arrival and departure times of the employees on each of the seven preceding days. Report any discrepancies to me. That may well hold the key to our little mystery.”
Darsh sat on a bench in the parking lot. On his lap was a thick, battered register, and his fingers moved slowly across it as he looked through each of the five hundred entries that accumulated in its pages every day. It was mind-numbingly boring, yet Darsh kept at it. He’d not been suspended or fired — yet — and he was determined to keep it that way by extracting something useful from this task.
There was nothing amiss in the first three days’ records, but when he reached the fourth day — the day on which the camera wires had been cut — and the following three days, one name jumped out. “You see this?” he asked Maira, pointing to the entries he’d highlighted.
Maira’s eyes widened. “But she’s a Research Manager! Only one level in the hierarchy below the H.E.O himself! Are you sure you want to accuse her in front of all the company management?”
“I’m almost certainly losing my job either way,” Darsh replied brusquely. “Might as well do something to try and salvage it.”
He snapped the register shut and stood up. “Let’s go.”
The conference room was cold, and it was not because of the air-conditioning.
“Aarohi Acharya,” Lakshya repeated, “left the office at midnight, four days ago, you say. Is that all? Any other person, who stayed back in the office till late at night, according to the records?”
“No, sir,” replied Darsh.
“And when does the primary security force depart?”
“Ten o’clock, sir.”
“Interesting. You know what this means?”
Aarohi stood up and raised a trembling finger at the pair. “I never touched any wires. I was in your chamber till midnight, for heavens’ sake, Lakshya!”
“Calm down, Madam Acharya,” said Lakshya, holding up a hand. “Where was I? Oh yes. What Darsh says implies that the attendance records have been meddled with.”
“What do you mean?” said Aarohi, confused.
“What I mean is that there was another person who was here till midnight, whom the records do not mention as doing so. Darsh, when does it say Mr. Anand left the office that day?”
“Mr. Anand… as in… you?” ventured Darsh, equally confused.
Lakshya waved an impatient hand. “Of course not. I mean my dear brother.”
“Excuse me?” cut in Vaidik sharply. “What is the meaning of this?”
Darsh opened the register and traced a finger down the long list until he reached Vaidik’s entry. “Departure at five to eight, sir.”
“How very curious indeed,” said Lakshya, a hint of steel in his voice now, “when I myself saw his car leave the street at half past twelve that night.”
“How dare you accuse me of such a heinous crime without a shred of proof? Is this the way long hours of toil are rewarded in this firm?” Vaidik was fuming.
“If you did not wish to mask your movements, why did you have falsities entered in the attendance list?”
“I don’t know what happened there, maybe the guy made a mistake — ”
“ — Not to mention,” Lakshya talked over him loudly, “that you were the only person in the office at the time of the robbery apart from Maira and Darsh.”
Vaidik threw his head back and snorted. “You say I, a Deputy Research Manager, am selling top-secret documents to Norton’s. That, on the basis of some flimsy evidence and the hour-long research conducted on an old notebook, by the scum who were the reason the files were lost in the first place! I admire your audacity, sir, really, I do.”
“Do not call the guards scum, Mr. Anand,” said Aarohi, her eyes blazing. “More often than not, it is a person’s circumstances of birth and upbringing which shape their lives, not their talents. It does you no good to insult them so.”
“I’ve had enough of this farce,” announced Vaidik suddenly. “I’m leaving.” He began to turn his wheelchair around.
“No, you’re not.” Lakshya’s voice, though not loud, cracked across the room like a whip. “Stay where you are.”
Vaidik was seething, but he complied all the same. “Look at this fool,” he remarked to one of his colleagues directly beside him. “Branding an honest man, with so much dedication as to come to work every day with an injury, as a traitor. This is what all my efforts have brought me!”
“Oh, I’d say you’re wrong on both counts there, Vaidik,” said Lakshya, standing up. “Honesty was never your forte, right since you learned to talk. As far as your leg is concerned, I have half a mind to actually break it now, in front of all these people.”
“You hear him?” Vaidik was sounding more and more hysterical with every sentence he uttered. “You hear him? Threatening bodily harm! I don’t want to be near this madcap! Stop him!”
Lakshya had reached the front of his desk. He paused and lifted a large paper envelope. Drawing out the large, dark, translucent sheets, he held them up to Vaidik’s face. “Do you recognize these?”
“Those are — my X-rays?” spluttered Vaidik. “Why are they — what did you — ”
“This reached me from the headquarters today morning, along with a very interesting letter.” said Lakshya. “You’d sent this when you’d applied for a fortnight’s leave a month ago, hadn’t you?”
“Yes. I suffered an accident and my leg broke.” The tone was sullen, the face pale.
“The Medical Secretary says that these X-rays are doctored.”
“Baloney! I’ll call the doctor, you ask her — ”
“SILENCE!” bellowed Lakshya. He stepped back and took deep breaths to calm himself. “Another thing. The letter said that any trained medical professional could have told you that these” — he shook the sheets — “are not original X-rays. Since you sent a doctor’s certificate along with them, it follows that your doctor may not be a doctor at all.”
A stunned silence followed these words.
“I have a penchant for believing in human goodness, however, so I tried to trace the doctor through her registration number and the hospital’s name. I was most disappointed. The registration number was in the wrong format; the hospital and its address were both fictitious.
“Now, in the light of all the evidence the “scum” and I have presented here, what do you have to say for yourself?”
Vaidik looked broken, defeated, slumped in his chair with his head bowed. “All right, then.” He thrust his arms up in the air. “I confess. I stole the files.”
Angry voices broke out in the room like the buzzing of bees near a hive. Lakshya motioned them to keep calm.
“And could you care to fill us in with the little details?”
“I snapped the CCTV wires that night just before I left. I’d turned off the corridor lights one by one so that no one would see. I slipped five hundred rupees to the sentry and bid him write my departure time as 19:55. The old fool complied gladly, of course, and didn’t suspect a thing.
“Then I waited and bided my time, looking for a suitable day. The day before yesterday, I overheard Jay calling up all of the security force and asking after their welfare and such. I learnt that the reserve guards had gone on some sort of strike and weren’t cooperating. I saw my chance. I kept three thousand rupees and a note half-hidden near the gate, asking the reader to remain off-duty for the day after, and made sure that the gatekeeper found it.
“The rest was easy. I threw a stone at the glass pane and seized the file, stuffed it and the stone into my briefcase, ran back to the corridor, made myself look a bit ruffled, and lay down on the floor for the guards to find me.”
“And the footsteps? What of the car?” Maira, who’d as yet been silent, broke in.
“The guy in the car was the one who was to seal the deal. He crept in up to the door, keeping his face covered, and ran back out to the car when he saw Darsh approaching, making sure he was seen. He drove the car two miles down the street and waited for me to come with the documents.”
There was a stillness in the room when Vaidik stopped speaking. No one seemed to know what to do or say.
Lakshya climbed down from his elevated dais. “Thank you for your honesty, Mr. Anand. Can I walk you down to the entrance?”
“Why?”
“I suppose your employment is hereby terminated, isn’t it?”
“Tell me one last thing, Vaidik,” began Lakshya as they approached the main door, “why?” His eyes were filled with mingled sadness and disgust.
“Five crore rupees, for all the good the money did me.” His expression was weary. “Damn you and your nightly walks.”
A burly man pushed through the door. “We’ll handle it from here, sir, thank you.” He shook Lakshya’s hand.
“Thank you, Inspector. Please try to ensure he’s not ill-treated. He may be a crook, but he is, after all, my brother.”
Terror danced in Vaidik’s eyes once again as he stared at the pair. “You’re handing me over to the police? How could you? I’m your brother!”
Lakshya was already striding away, but he hesitated for a moment and turned back to face his brother.
“This is what all your efforts have brought you.”
