The day after Rajendra made his deal with the Mad Scientist, Ganesh drove him to the Gorai Creek warehouse. The air inside was cool and still.
Two large, unmarked wooden crates sat in the middle of the floor. Ganesh pried the first one open. Inside, packed in dense grey foam, were dull grey bricks. They looked like industrial soap bars, but heavier. The Samarium-Cobalt magnets. Anya had delivered.
"The ship's captain said a Soviet military truck delivered these to the dock himself," Ganesh said quietly. "No papers. Just a handshake."
Rajendra nodded. The first link in the chain held.
He walked to a smaller, sealed room at the back of the warehouse. He unlocked it. Inside, on a metal pallet, sat a new piece of equipment.
It wasn't a glowing sci-fi machine. It looked, frankly, like a large, expensive medical device. It was the size of a refrigerator, clad in beige metal panels. It had a large, hooded viewing screen like an old X-ray viewer, a slot for inserting objects, and a small printer. A label in English, German, and Japanese read: "Müller & Sohn Industrial Fluoroscope & Stress-Analysis Unit, Model D-88." It looked German. Serious. Real.
This was the Mad Scientist's "Molecular Integrity Scanner," disguised as a top-tier piece of 1980s Earth technology. It even had a plug for a 220-volt socket.
"German?" Ganesh asked, impressed.
"Swiss-German. The best," Rajendra said, running a hand over the cool metal. "It can see inside metal. Find weaknesses no other machine can see."
He called in the three Soviet engineers. Viktor, Dmitry, and Alexei entered, still wary in their new surroundings. Their eyes locked onto the machine.
Viktor, the eldest, stepped forward. His professional curiosity overcame his fear. He read the label, then circled the device. "Müller & Sohn... I have read journals. They make units for inspecting nuclear reactor pipes. For aerospace. This is a D-88? This model is not for export. Not to us. Not to anyone." He looked at Rajendra, suspicion and awe battling in his eyes. "How did you get this?"
"Does it matter?" Rajendra asked. "Can you use it?"
Viktor exchanged a glance with Dmitry, the metallurgist. "We can use it. This machine... it tells the truth. A very expensive, unforgiving truth."
"Good," Rajendra said. "I need you to tell me the truth about two things." He placed a MANO Supreme pressure cooker valve on the table next to the machine. Then he placed a valve from a Vasant "VasSafe" cooker, which Ganesh had bought from a market. "Test these. I need proof. Not opinions. Proof."
Two days later, Shanti was in a frenzy of organization. She had booked the ballroom at the World Trade Centre in Cuffe Parade. The invitations had gone out: "MANO Industries invites you to a Demonstration of Quality Assurance and Technological Transparency." She'd invited the press, the Indian Standards Bureau, consumer advocacy groups, and—with a touch of spite—the entire board of the Vasant Group.
"Are you sure about this?" she asked Rajendra for the tenth time. "If this machine doesn't work, or if it's not convincing, we'll look like the biggest fools in Bombay."
"The machine works," Rajendra said, looking at the reports Viktor had given him. They were covered in graphs, stress diagrams, and dense technical German terms. But the conclusions were highlighted in simple English: "Sample A (MANO): Uniform alloy matrix, no microfissures, stress tolerance exceeds specification by 300%. Sample B (Vasant): Inconsistent density, porosity detected, stress failure point at 182% of rated limit."
"It works," he repeated. "And we're not going to show them graphs. We're going to show them an X-ray."
The day of the event, the World Trade Centre ballroom was packed. The air was thick with chatter and the smell of polish. The Vasant Group executives sat in a prim row at the front, looking smug. They'd heard about some "German machine." They assumed it was a bluff.
Rajendra walked on stage to a smattering of polite applause. He wore a well-cut suit, not traditional dress. He looked like a modern businessman.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he began, his voice calm and clear. "For weeks, our company, MANO, has been accused of making inferior products. Rumors have been spread. Questions have been raised in bad faith. Today, we stop talking. Today, we show you."
He gestured to the side of the stage. Two men wheeled out the Müller & Sohn D-88. It looked massively impressive and complex under the lights. A large viewing screen faced the audience.
"This," Rajendra said, "is a Müller & Sohn industrial fluoroscope. It is used in Europe to inspect critical components for aircraft and power plants. It allows us to see, in real time, the integrity of metal under stress. We have invited representatives from the Indian Standards Bureau to verify its calibration."
Two Bureau officials, looking nervous, came up and examined the machine's documentation. They nodded—it was legitimate, and terrifyingly advanced.
"Now," Rajendra said, "we will perform a simple test." He held up two identical-looking pressure cooker valves. "One is from a MANO Supreme cooker. One is from a Vasant 'VasSafe' cooker. They are unmarked. We will place them in the test chamber and subject them to increasing hydraulic pressure. The fluoroscope will show you, live on that screen, what is happening inside the metal."
The room went quiet. A camera crew zoomed in on the viewing screen.
A MANO technician placed the first valve into the chamber. The screen flickered to life, showing a ghostly green X-ray image of the valve's internal structure. It looked solid, uniform. The pressure began to climb. The image remained stable, a perfect lattice of metal.
"Two hundred percent of operating pressure," the technician called out. The valve held. The image didn't change.
They removed it. The Vasant executives were still smiling, but less broadly.
The second valve went in. Its X-ray image appeared on the screen. Even to the untrained eye, it looked different—grainy, with dark patches and lines.
"One hundred fifty percent pressure," the technician announced.
A murmur went through the crowd. On the screen, a thin, dark line near the valve's stem began to pulse with the pressure.
"One hundred eighty percent."
CRACK.
A sharp, clear sound came from the machine. On the X-ray screen, the thin line erupted into a spiderweb of black fractures spreading through the valve's core. It was a silent, devastating spectacle. The metal was disintegrating from the inside out, and everyone could see it.
The technician killed the pressure. "Catastrophic internal failure," he stated flatly.
For a moment, there was absolute silence. Then the room erupted. Reporters shouted questions. Camera flashes popped like fireworks. The Vasant executives were no longer smiling. They were staring at the screen, faces pale, where the ghostly image of their shattered valve still glowed.
Rajendra stepped back to the microphone. "The evidence is transparent," he said, the pun deliberate. "We trust the facts. We hope you will, too."
He walked off the stage, Shanti falling in beside him, her face alight with triumph.
"You did it," she whispered.
"We did," he corrected. "Now let the lawyers finish them."
The fallout was swift and brutal.
The next morning's Times of India front page showed the dramatic X-ray image of the cracking valve next to a photo of the stony-faced Vasant chairman. The headline: "X-RAY VINDICATION: MANO'S 'SEE-THROUGH' TEST SHATTERS RIVAL'S CLAIMS."
The Indian Standards Bureau, desperate to look competent, issued a statement that very afternoon fully certifying MANO products and "initiating a comprehensive review" of Vasant's entire line.
Shanti's lawsuit landed like a bunker-buster bomb—a massive claim for damages and anti-competitive practices. Distributors, terrified of liability and public backlash, began flooding MANO with orders and cancelling contracts with Vasant.
Even Indumati Patil, the stern landlady, sent a one-line note: "The temple construction may begin. The clinic will need an X-ray machine."
It was a total, crushing victory. The kind that changes the landscape.
Three nights later, alone in the mill office, the euphoria had settled into a steady hum of satisfaction. Rajendra opened the small, fireproof safe where he kept his most sensitive papers. Among them was the latest letter from the Moscow dead-drop.
Anya's handwriting was as precise as ever.
"The public drama was entertaining. A good cover. The first trade is complete and satisfactory. Now we move to substantive items.
Attached is a new list. These are more sensitive. Their movement requires a legitimate commercial story. Your film export business is perfect. Ship 'archival film canisters' to our designated port.
Our side requires more goods: Sony Walkmans (minimum 200 units). Levi's denim jeans (all sizes). English-language rock music cassettes. Scientific calculators.
– A."
A second sheet was clipped behind it. A short list:
Industrial-grade diamonds (0.5-2mm), 5 kg.
Palladium sponge (99.9% purity), 10 kg.
Beryllium copper rod (quarter-ton).
Rajendra sat back. Diamonds for drills. Palladium for electronics and chemical plants. Beryllium copper for springs and tools that couldn't spark. These weren't just rare earths; these were the hard currency of advanced industry.
Anya wasn't just poking around the warehouse anymore. She was guiding him to the high-value shelves. And her payment request was pure 1980s contraband—the exact luxury goods every Soviet citizen dreamed of.
He had to become a smuggler of jeans and Walkmans to pay for diamonds and space-age metals. He had to use his new, legitimate fame as a film producer to cover it all.
He looked at the triumphant newspaper on his desk, then at Anya's clinical list. He'd won the battle in the light. Now the real war, in the shadows, was about to scale up into something truly breathtaking.
And his only ally was a Soviet army captain with a taste for Western jeans and a direct line to the motherlode.