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revolver?'
    The man stopped smiling. 'The whole exercise was only to make sure you are not a policeman. If you were, you would never have fired on another of your kind.'
    Tanvir let the logic in the answer permeate into his mind. He had to admit it was an ingenious identity test.
    'Our leader saw this trick in some old film. He uses it all the time. It never fails'
    But this time it had failed, laughed Tanvir to himself. Thanks to ACP Hani's killer instinct. Tanvir took out the revolver from his waistband and handed it over to the man. The revolver disappeared into the folds of the burqa. The man turned to leave. Just as he was about to disappear, he said, 'Keep your mobile on, you will be contacted soon.' He gave Tanvir a thumbs-up. Tanvir was sure that he was grinning away under the veil.
    Tanvir had had enough of this hide-and-seek in dark alleys. He walked out into the bright sunlight.
    ◉
    The A-1 Air-Cooled Hair-Cutting Centre, aka 'The Saloon', lay in the middle of 6 th Cross Lane off Foras Road, in the heart of Mumbai's red-light district. In business for the past eighty years, it still operated in a manner that was quite anachronistic in this age of beauty parlours, hair stylists and spas. 'Air-cooled' by air-conditioners close to its own age, its rigid three-hairstyle menu appealed only to those unadventurous men that passed by it on the way to their daily sexual romps. In tandem with its age-old style of functioning, the staff took a three-hour siesta every afternoon. The third-generation owner, Mustafa Angiwala, had tried his best to make the staff give up this financially unviable habit, but to no avail. Fed up with their mutinous attitude, he had decided to let out the saloon premises to anyone who wanted a quick afternoon rendezvous, no questions asked.
    It was here that ACP Hani sat wrapped in the white barber cloth, ensconced in one of the oldest 'barber chairs'. To all appearances, he was just another man waiting for his haircut, but in fact, he had been waiting for the past hour for Tanvir to show up. His patience was wearing thin.
    Just when he was ready to tear off the barber cloth and leave, Tanvir entered the saloon. Without looking at him, the ACP proclaimed, 'They were too smart for us this time. But you didn't fail in your task. I'm proud of you, Tanvir, you would have made a good policeman.' As the acrid stench accompanying Tanvir burst across the closed air-conditioned room, the ACP scrunched up his nose in disgust. 'Have you been swimming in a gutter?'
    Tanvir paid him no heed as he slumped down in an adjacent barber chair. 'I'm just being used as a pawn by Aalamzeb and you. It's time you let me out of this.'
    ACP Hani shook his head, as if exasperated with a child's whim. 'Tanvir, you have to play out your role till the very end.'
    Tanvir looked into his eyes and said, 'I'm a gangster. Not a policeman. I don't want to die in this crossfire between you and some terrorists'
    'The role you are playing, my friend is the most crucial. You are...'
    'I'm just the bait. And the bait always gets eaten up.'
    The ACP said, with a softness not displayed earlier, 'Why did I choose you, Tanvir? Precisely because you are a gangster and could never be seen as a policeman. Even if your cover of a gym instructor was blown, it would be seen as a gangster's attempt to go straight. These Pakistanis are ruthless. They know that you are not in the police force, and they also know that you are not the honest man you claim to be. Now, they appreciate the fact that you are a killer, too.'
    Tanvir didn't say anything. The ACP shook his head and took off the barber cloth. Tanvir saw that he was shirtless. But what transfixed him was a black string with a silver cylindrical taveez around the ACP's neck. The ACP saw that Tanvir had noticed his taveez. He smiled. 'Yes, bhaijaan, I, too, am a Muslim like you. We are the chosen ones, you and I.'
    Tanvir raised an eyebrow. 'We have to pay a high price for being a Muslim in this