One of the newer businesses in the Fort was the travel agency owned through proxies by Khaderbhai and managed by Madjid Rhustem. The agency handled the travel arrangements for thousands of men and women who worked on contracts in the Gulf States. On the legitimate side, the agency organised plane tickets, visas, work permits, and hostel accommodation in the Gulf. On the black market side, Madjid's agents arranged for most of the returning workers to wear from one to three hundred grams of our gold, per person, in chains, bracelets, rings, and brooches. The gold arrived in the Gulf ports from many sources. Some of it was obtained in legal bulk purchases. Much of it was stolen. Junkies and pickpockets and housebreakers from all over Europe and Africa stole gold jewellery and then sold it to their drug dealers and fences. A percentage of that gold, stolen in Frankfurt or Johannesburg or London, found its way through black marketeers to the Gulf ports. Khader's men in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, and every other Gulf capital melted the gold into thick bracelets and chains and brooches. For a small fee, the contract workers wore the gold jewellery on their return to India, and our men collected it from them at the international airport in Bombay.
Each year, the travel agency in the Fort area handled travel arrangements for at least five thousand contract workers. The gold they carried in was re-worked, when necessaiy, at a small workshop near the agency and then sold throughout the Zhaveri bazaar, or jewellery market. The profit from that one part of the gold operation was greater than four million American dollars a year, tax free, and Khader's senior managers were all wealthy, well-respected men.
I checked in with the staff at the Transact Travel Agency. Madjid was out, but the three managers were busy. When I'd learned how the gold-smuggling operation worked, I suggested that Khader's agency should computerise its files, and maintain a database on the contract workers who'd successfully completed one mission for us. Khader had approved the suggestion, and the men were busy transferring hard copy paper files onto the computers. I looked over their work, and was satisfied with their progress. We talked for a while, and when Madjid didn't return I went to look for him at the small gold workshop nearby.
Madjid looked up with a smile when I entered the factory, and then concentrated on the scales once more. Gold chains and bracelets, sorted into various grades, were weighed as individual pieces and weighed again in lots. The amounts were entered into a ledger and crossed-checked against a separate ledger kept for sales in the Zhaveri bazaar.
On that day, not two hours after Khaderbhai had talked to me of good and evil, I watched the heaps of gold chains and heavy home made bracelets being weighed and catalogued, and I felt myself plunging into a dark mood that I couldn't shake off. I was glad that Khaderbhai had directed me to leave Madjid and to begin work with Abdul Ghani. The golden-yellow metal that excited so many millions, in India, made me uneasy. I'd enjoyed working with Khaled Ansari and his currencies. I knew that I would enjoy working with Abdul Ghani in the passport business: passports were, after all, the main game for a man on the run. But working with gold in such huge quantities was unsettling. Gold fires the eyes with a different kind and colour of greed. Money's almost always just a means to an end; but, for many men, gold is an end in itself, and their love for it is the kind of thing that can give love a bad name.
I left Madjid for the last time, telling him that Khaderbhai had other work for me. I didn't volunteer the information that I was set to begin work with Abdul Ghani in the passport business.
Madjid and Ghani were both members of Khader's mafia council. I was sure they knew the substance of every decision affecting me before I knew it myself. We shook hands. He pulled me toward him in a clumsy, stiff-armed attempt at a hug. He smiled, and wished me luck. It was a false smile, but there wasn't any malice in it.
Madjid Rhustem was simply the kind of man who thought that smiling was an act of will. I thanked him for his patience, but I didn't return the smile.
When I made my last round of the jewellers at the Zhaveri bazaar, there was a quivering, agitated restlessness in me. It was the random anger that attaches itself to a sense of futility: the wide-eyed, fist-clenching anxiety that flares up often in a wasted life. I should've been happy, or at least happier. I had Khader's assurance of safety. I was making good money. I worked every day with hoards of gold a metre high. I was about to learn everything I needed to know about the passport business. I could buy whatever I wanted. I was fit and healthy and free. I should've been happier.
