Chapter 4: Espresso Ke Saath Jasoos

## Chapter 4: Espresso Ke Saath Jasoos

ZARA

I am elbow-deep in a batch of polymer clay earrings shaped like tiny samosas when my phone buzzes.

Unknown number. I answer, because I am a person who answers unknown numbers on the principle that the universe is trying to tell me something and I should at least hear it out before deciding whether to block it.

"Zara? This is Jai. We met at the dog park."

The man with the leather jacket. The man who asked me questions and walked away without looking back. The man whose jacket smelled of something metallic.

"Hi, Jai. How did you get my number?"

A pause. Not someone who is embarrassed to have obtained a woman's number through questionable means. The pause of a man selecting from several possible answers and choosing the one that is most useful.

"I looked it up. I need to tell you something. Can we meet?"

"You looked it up? That's... not an answer."

"I know. It'll make more sense when we meet. I promise I'm not a creep."

"That's exactly what a creep would say."

"Fair. Let me try again: I'm not a creep, and I can prove it. I work for the Indian government. I'm an intelligence operative. And I need to talk to you about something that involves your friend Omkar."

The name stops me. Not because the name is unusual, Omkar is as common as chai in Pune; but because the combination of "intelligence operative" and "Omkar" is so incongruous that my brain needs a moment to process it. The water ran between her fingers, cold and insistent. Omkar. The man who orders the same chai every morning. The man who sits at the same table. The man who has a colour-coded spreadsheet for his highlighters and who looks at me like I am a complicated equation he is trying to solve.

"Omkar? What about Omkar?"

"Not on the phone. Can you come to Vaishali? I'm here now."

I should say no. I should absolutely say no. A stranger who obtained my number through unspecified means wants to meet me at a restaurant to discuss a man I have feelings for; feelings that I have not examined closely because examining feelings closely is the kind of thing Lavanya does and I prefer to let feelings exist in their natural, unexamined state, like wildflowers.

"I'll be there in fifteen minutes," I say.

Because I am a person who says yes to things. It is both my best and worst quality.

---

Vaishali is Vaishali, eternal, unchanging, the restaurant equivalent of the Deccan Plateau. I find Jai at a corner table, back to the wall, leather jacket, the whole setup. He looks like a man who has been sitting in corner tables with his back to the wall since birth.

I sit across from him. A waiter materialises, Vaishali waiters have the specific Pune quality of being simultaneously invisible and omnipresent — and I order a masala dosa because if I'm going to have a conversation with a spy about a man I might be in love with, I want carbohydrates.

"Talk," I say.

Jai talks.

He tells me about the money laundering operation. About the shell companies in Dubai and Singapore. About the transactions flowing through Joshi & Kulkarni, Omkar's firm. About the person inside the General Accounting department who is facilitating it. About the fact that he has recruited Omkar, Omkar, the man who can't deviate from his chai order; to help identify the person responsible.

"Why are you telling me this?" I ask. "He said you told him not to tell anyone."

"I did. And he hasn't. He's been working on this for a week and he hasn't said a word to you, which—" Jai's mouth does something that might be a smile, "must have been difficult for him, because the man talks to you every morning like you're the only person in the world and the rest of us are just furniture."

My dosa arrives. I tear a piece off, dip it in the coconut chutney, and eat it while I process this information.

"You said he's been working on this for a week. What has he done?"

"He's been accessing accounts. Copying transaction records. Looking for the pattern: the specific person who's creating these fraudulent entries. He's good at it. Better than I expected. He sees things in numbers that my team's analysts miss."

"So why are you here? If he's doing the job, why do you need me?"

Jai leans forward. "Because tomorrow night, there's a charity gala at the Marriott. The evening air was layered with the smell of incense from the neighbour’s puja and the distant, greasy warmth of street food being fried. The Dashera Business Excellence Awards. Every major business figure in Pune will be there, including the clients of Joshi & Kulkarni who we believe are involved in the laundering operation. Omkar has been invited; his firm is a sponsor."

"Okay."

"I need Omkar to plant a listening device, a bug — in the private meeting room where the suspects will be having a conversation after the gala dinner. The bug will allow us to record the conversation and obtain the evidence we need to make arrests."

"And you need me because..."

"Because Omkar can't do it alone. The meeting room is on the third floor. There'll be security. Omkar needs to get to the room, plant the bug, and get out without being noticed. That requires a distraction. A partner. Someone who can move through a social event with the kind of natural ease that Omkar—" He pauses, choosing his words with diplomatic care. "That Omkar does not possess."

"You want me to be his spy partner."

"I want you to go to the gala with him. As his date. And while he plants the bug, you create the diversion."

I eat another piece of dosa. The situation is absurd. A week ago I was making chai and crafting earrings and wondering whether to move to Pondicherry. Now a spy is asking me to attend a black-tie event as an accountant's date so that we can plant a listening device in a room full of criminals.

"Why me? You must have trained operatives."

"I do. But my operatives don't have a relationship with Omkar. You do. He trusts you. And, this is the part I'm not supposed to admit: he performs better when you're around."

"When I'm around? We talk for five minutes every morning over chai."

"I've been watching him for three weeks. When he leaves Rustom's, his stress biomarkers drop. His posture improves. His decision-making in the office is faster and more accurate on mornings when you draw the smiley face on his cup versus mornings when Nisha takes his order." Jai pauses. "I have data."

"You have data on his stress biomarkers?"

"I have data on everything. It's my job."

I stare at him. The spy who has been monitoring my morning chai routine for three weeks. The dawn smelled of wet earth and the faint sweetness of neem flowers opening. The spy who has noticed that I draw a smiley face in the O of Omkar's name. The spy who has, apparently; observed that this smiley face has a measurable effect on Omkar's stress levels.

"This is the most unhinged thing anyone has ever said to me," I tell him.

"I know. Will you do it?"

I think about Omkar. About the way he holds his chai glass — both hands wrapped around it, cradling it, the way you'd hold something precious that you were afraid of breaking. About the way he leaves exactly one centimetre of chai at the bottom because the last sip is too bitter (except yesterday, when he drank the saffron chai all the way down and I noticed and my heart did something stupid). About the way he says "Bye, Zara" when he leaves, every morning, the two words carrying the weight of everything he doesn't say.

"Yes," I say.

"Just like that?"

"Just like that. I'm a person who says yes. It's my thing."

Jai looks at me with the appraising look again. A man whose job is to read people and who has just read something he didn't expect.

"There's a risk," he says. "I won't pretend there isn't. The people we're investigating are connected. Dangerous. If anything goes wrong—"

"If anything goes wrong, I'll improvise. That's also my thing."

"And Omkar?"

"Omkar doesn't know I'm involved?"

"No. I told him to tell no one. He's been following that instruction. Rigidly."

"So when I show up at the gala—"

"He'll be surprised. I'll brief him tomorrow morning. Tell him I've arranged a partner for him. I won't tell him it's you."

"You're enjoying this."

"A little." The almost-smile again. "But mostly I think it's the right call. He needs someone he trusts. And you're the person he trusts most in the world, even if he's never told you that."

The dosa is finished. The chutney is gone. The conversation has shifted something inside me, a gear engaging, a mechanism clicking into place, the distinct feeling of a person who has been drifting and has suddenly found a current.

I'm not drifting anymore.

"One condition," I say.

"Name it."

"Don't tell him I said yes before he asked me. Let him think he's the one who convinced me."

Jai's almost-smile becomes an actual smile. "You understand people."

"I make chai for a living. Understanding people is the job."

I leave Vaishali and walk home through the Pune evening. The streets are different now, not the streets of a city I'm thinking about leaving, but the streets of a city where something is happening. The chai-wallahs on their carts, the students on their bikes, the old man on the corner selling jasmine garlands for the evening puja: they're all the same. But I'm different. I'm a woman who has agreed to be a spy, and the city feels larger for it.

Badshah is waiting when I open the door. He sniffs me, the thorough, investigative sniff of a dog who can detect the emotional state of his person from the chemical composition of her skin — and tilts his head.

"I met a spy today," I tell him. "And I said yes to something insane."

He barks. The bark of approval.

"Good boy," I say. "That's exactly what I wanted to hear."