The Siege: 68 Hours Inside the Taj Hotel (35 page)

Nitin Minocha texted: ‘Injured. But moving. Are you OK, Chef?’ Thank the Gods. Minocha was a hard man to finish off. Oberoi tapped out a reply. ‘Great. Get out!!’ There was also a message from Chef Rego’s father in Goa. He did not want to read it. ‘Where is my boy?’ Urbano Rego asked. What was the appropriate response? And
finally, having contacted Karambir Kang, spelling out the disaster, the Executive Chef came to his family’s messages. They were desperate. First: ‘Dad get out!’ Then: ‘TV running a flash: Executive Chef Oberoi dead!’ He composed the same message to everyone: ‘Alive! Please don’t call or reply just yet.’

Oberoi turned his phone off and asked everyone to do the same. Darkness and silence were their only friends. Outside the footsteps drew nearer.

In an adjacent room, Gunjan Narang fiddled with his phone. Narang, who had gone to school with Bhisham and the groom, Amit, had come to the Taj with his family tonight to celebrate his thirty-second birthday in the Golden Dragon. All of them had survived the first onslaught and been led to the Chambers. But now following the stampede and the firing they had become separated, with Gunjan hiding in the store beside his father and a Taj staffer. He prayed for his sister, his wife and her parents, hoping they had made it out. ‘We are in the wine cellar,’ he texted. ‘Where are you?’ The Taj staffer beside him could hear footsteps. ‘We need a total blackout, sir.’ Gunjan ignored him. A text came in from his wife. He punched the air. She and her parents had made it. Where were his mother and sister Jharna? He messaged them again, his screen gleaming as he pressed the send key, and turned to the staffer, for the first time acknowledging him, brimming with anger: ‘If you do only
one
bloody thing,’ he said, jabbing his finger, ‘make sure this doesn’t happen again . . .’

Before he finished the sentence, the door was kicked down and live rounds pumped in, shattering hundreds of wine bottles that glugged their contents on to the floor, a fountain of glass showering the staffer, who stifled his tears and prayed as he saw Gunjan and his father slump dead on the floor.

Jharna Narang, hiding in a nearby vault, was chanting. A Buddhist, she believed that enlightenment did not come after death, but was a gift for the living, its secrets encoded somewhere deep inside her. ‘I have to believe,’ she told herself, blocking out the sounds of destruction by evoking a vision of the lotus flower. ‘I have to
live . . . my work is not finished yet.’ She pushed herself on and inwards, wrapped in the scent and blossom. ‘I have a mission to fulfil.’ Jharna enveloped herself in a profound silence of her own making and focused on the words of Gautam Buddha: ‘We must kill the will to kill.’ She should not fear the gunmen or resent them.

Click, clack. The door opened. One, two, three and four rounds pass through her hands and back, spinning her around, shattering her pelvis, sending a searing current throughout her body. ‘I cannot die. My work is not finished yet!’ she chanted, as the dead weight of another guest slumped over her.

She was conscious of someone flipping bodies and finishing the job. She had to go deeper still, almost to the brink of death. She chanted, relaxing her spasming muscles, her eyes screwed tight, erasing all external signs of life, feeling as if she had drawn a shroud over her skin, so all that could seen from the outside was her punctured, seemingly lifeless body.

Bullets released from a muzzle travel at supersonic speeds, compressing the air before them and creating a shockwave shaped like a bow, a round smooth form striking a conical sound wave that some hear as a whip crack, or even applause. A Wasabi waiter, who had just reached a junction in the corridor, where he had to decide whether to go down into the cellars or on to the Time Office, heard a supersonic snap that stopped him in his tracks. ‘Don’t go down,’ he told himself, dashing for the staff exit.

His phone rang. He muffled it with his palms, fearing it would give away his position, then pressed it to his ear, as he jogged on. ‘I’m bleeding,’ said the caller. It took a few seconds for him to realize it was his boss, Thomas Varghese. ‘I am shot in the leg, lying by the lift in the kitchen. Please send help.’

The panicked waiter stopped running. Should he go back? Rooted to the spot, he listened. All he could hear at the other end of the line was someone walking about, bare feet slapping against the wet kitchen floor, the sounds getting rapidly nearer. ‘Sir?’ he whispered.
The waiter knew that whatever he could hear, his boss was seeing. There was a metallic click and then
ack, ack, ack.

The waiter belted for the Time Office, collapsing outside. He dialled his friend Amit Peshave, the Shamiana manager, and cried into the phone: ‘Varghese Sir is finished. They have executed him.’

4.45 a.m. – Merry Weather Road

By the time Nitin Minocha had dragged himself outside, rooks were cawing, praising the dawn. Street sweepers were already at work, even on this day, after the worst carnage Mumbai had ever seen, building small mounds of fallen leaves, sluicing the road, tamping down the dust. Dazed and in pain, Minocha sat on the pavement, watching them, shivering in the cold morning air, as strangers milled about wearing confused expressions.

So much blood had run through the city tonight that one more injured man was no longer remarkable and he felt as if he were invisible. Minocha staggered to his feet. He was filled with a rage at what he had just seen. He weaved off in search of a policeman, determined to give evidence, provide a witness statement, nailing the killers to the mast. He wanted to help build the case, despite the agony of his shattered forearm.

Along the way, he found a Taj napkin lying in a gutter. He tied it around his arm, using his teeth to pull the knot, so that it became a tourniquet. Minocha could live with the discomfort. He walked with his arm held aloft, attempting to stem the bleeding, until he reached the nearest police post. Bang. Bang. He rapped on the door. ‘How could it be locked?’ he said to himself in disbelief. Dejected, he slumped down on to the pavement. All night they had waited for assistance. And now where were the cops? At home in bed screwing their mistresses? A passing motorbike stopped, with two men aboard. They looked aghast. ‘Hey, man, you look like shit,’ the driver said. ‘You need to get to a hospital.’

Minocha’s chef’s whites were scarlet and his arm was mangled. ‘Make a call for me,’ he implored, pointing with his head to his phone, inside his trouser pocket. He wanted someone to know that he had survived the bloody grinder. The driver found the phone and pressed last-number redial, getting through to Minocha’s Uncle Kamal. ‘I’m alive, going to the hospital,’ Minocha croaked. Kamal had just enough time to tell him about the dismal news reports. Chef Oberoi and many of his kitchen colleagues were thought to have died in the shootout. The motorbike riders took Minocha’s phone off him and wedged him between them to make sure he did not fall. ‘We need to go now, buddy,’ one of them said, fearing that all of the blood had drained out of him.

5 a.m. – the Chambers

Inside the Chambers, staff had worked feverishly to close the doors behind the retreating guests. Four pumped-up gunmen were still out there, circling the club like wild dogs, battering at every entrance and service hatch, rattling locks, smashing glass panes, looking for any way in. Chef Raghu Deora, who worked with Kaizad the giant in the Chambers kitchens and was one of Chef Minocha’s closest friends, had volunteered to stay outside, acting as a buffer and a distraction. He was not going to hide from anyone. As he waited, the sound of gunfire revved up like a chainsaw and several people came crashing through the doorway. As they sprawled on the floor he realized they were not gunmen but guests. He had planned his last stand but there was no time to get these people into the locked club. Instead, they would have to remain with him in the danger zone. ‘We are all going to survive,’ he reassured them, adjusting to the new reality. But he was no longer sure. ‘We have to be silent. Take courage.’ But Chef Deora was fearful.

Behind the locked Chambers doors, Bhisham and his mother were catching their breath. They had been in the fourth group to leave, and were nearing the kitchen end of the corridor, when the gunmen had
burst in from the other side. Bhisham had caught a glimpse of ‘men with machine guns’, before hurtling back inside the club. Now, as he lay on the carpet of the Lavender Room, arms wrapped around himself, trying to control his shaking hands and twitching legs, a Western man appeared in the doorway, carrying a limp body.

It was Mike Pollack shouldering Rajan Kamble, the engineer who had tried to protect the guests. ‘He’s been hit,’ the American financier whispered, gently placing the man on a couch, before heading back out. Mike knew that Anjali was just along the corridor in the library with their dinner companions, Shiv and Reshma Darshit, but he did not intend to join her. He had come to a difficult decision: this was a war. If probability is the likelihood of one or more events happening, divided by the number of possible outcomes, then why double the chances of orphaning their children? From the start he had hated the idea of pooling so many guests in a place like Chambers, transforming it into a potential silo of hostages, and he knew his white skin and accent made him a prime target. Without consulting Anjali, he had decided she had more chance of surviving without him.

‘This was never a great idea,’ he said to himself, as he set off to find a new bolthole, ‘in fact it has turned out to be a fucking terrible idea.’ Mike spotted the club toilets and dropped down into a darkened stall, listening to gunfire starting up again in the kitchens. With his head rammed between the bowl and toilet brush holder, he found himself staring into a huge pair of mahogany eyes and his heart leapt into his mouth. Guest or hunter? ‘Joe,’ a deep voice offered, by way of introduction. ‘Mike,’ he replied, breathing out. Noting Mike’s accent, Joe described himself as ‘kind of American’. Nigerian-born, he had a green card. A relieved Pollack fell back into his own world. There was much to be done.

Lying on the floor of the toilet, he texted Anjali, explaining his decision to go it alone. He hoped she had found a good hiding spot with their friends. Next he messaged a colleague in Washington DC who had government connections. Too much time had been wasted already and he asked the friend to arrange for him to get through to
the FBI. Within ten minutes he was up and running, exchanging updates and advice with agents. Mike was all set. He lay back in the dark, beside Joe, listening to the harrowing cracks of single shots that sounded as if they were just the other side of the door. With adrenalin coursing through his veins, sound travelled in weird ways, he noted. But the shock was doing wonders for his synapses, which felt as if they were firing in ways they had never done before. For the first time in years all his worries about failure and embarrassment, his pride and expectations fell away. There was nothing to lose. There was no reason now not to follow his heart.

He concentrated on the gunmen and could see them in his head. They were no longer spraying rooms but firing off single shots, as if they were selecting specific targets. Mike could see the hammer cocked, and the trigger squeezed. ‘I have total control of my autonomic functions,’ he told himself, impressed by the acuity of his hearing and his heightened sense of smell. ‘I can readjust to different things instantly.’ An image came to him: Alexander the Great riding at the front of his army. You had to feel it to understand it. He also found himself doing something unthinkable. ‘Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me.’ A man who had often felt as if there were no God found comfort in the words of a psalm.

Anjali Pollack was sitting on the library floor coming to terms with the stark reality as she saw it: Mike was dead. She had last seen him in the corridor waiting for evacuation. In the chaos of the shooting, she had lost him. She was contemplating that there was no way he could have survived that gun battle, when her phone whirred. She cupped it tightly; trying to mask the vibration, when she saw the message from Mike. She was overcome by relief and fury and began sobbing. They were on different paths now, but this was not the time to weigh up the niceties of his solo decision-making processes. She winced as more shots resounded in the kitchens. Some, she was certain, were being fired from within the Chambers. Was Mike the target? She had no idea where he was hiding. ‘I have
made peace with myself,’ she told herself and she began to pray harder than she had ever prayed before. Mostly, she prayed for Mike and the children. ‘If anyone has to die, please let it be me,’ she urged.

Gradually, she became drawn to the sound of others hiding around her, people who constantly whispered and coughed. Could they not just stay quiet? She cast about, wondering who might inadvertently betray them, her eyes settling on a bronzed, white-haired man sprawled decadently across a chaise longue, tapping on his phone, which shone out like a cat’s eye. He had not even bothered to get up during the failed evacuation. And he would not stop texting. It was Andreas Liveras. All around guests, frightened by his endeavours, tried to hush him. ‘Be quiet,’ an elderly lady urged. He carried on clicking away on his BlackBerry, determined to raise the BBC again. ‘Why are we still here, Remesh?’ he whispered to his aide. Remesh didn’t answer. He had just ducked, having seen two shadows flickering past the library door, one black and one red.
Ack, ack, ack.
Rounds smashed through the door. ‘Sir, please stop,’ Remesh whispered, touching his boss’s knee.
Ack, ack.
Another short burst drilled into the library. ‘Oh, my God,’ Andreas murmured.

Remesh groaned, feeling a burning sensation bloom across his shoulder. He investigated with his fingertips, and felt blood pooling. He had been shot twice. He slumped a little, clutching his boss’s feet, whispering: ‘Don’t worry, sir, we will make it.’ He collapsed on the floor, gritting his teeth. How could this happen? At least Mr L. had finally got the message and quietened down. Remesh lay there, rigid, for what seemed like an age.