Dehradun is the capital of the scenic state of Uttarakhand. Few kilometres away are the known hill stations of Mussoorie and Landour. Lavie’s father, being defence personnel himself, had arranged for a guest house for both of them. They had also secured an informal appointment with a senior scientist who had worked with Dr. Ahluwalia. Lavie had secured the appointment through a journalist friend of hers who reported on defence matters. She was to interview Anusha K, the head of Research Division of DEAL.

‘Rakesh was close to a genius. An IIT engineer who did his Masters and PhD from U.S.A, he came back to join DRDO to serve his country. Until recently there was nothing wrong with him,’ said Anusha. She was a dark, thin, middle-aged woman with a wide grin. Her hands and head moved a lot while speaking.

‘Why did he behave in this manner out of a sudden? Was it because of a rivalry or an undue stress on him?’

‘No, things were fine here. He had been working on biochips for us. I cannot disclose much. But as far as DEAL is concerned, he was fine. There was no drastic change in anything. You could go and ask his former maid though. She was very close to him. Rakesh was unmarried.’ Anusha spoke the last two sentences very slowly as if she was not sure whether to speak or not. Lavie looked at Rohan. Both of them thanked her for the cooperation.

*

Initially the maid would not disclose much. She was very formal to both of them. But as Lavie persisted and showed her journalistic identity, she opened up.

‘Dr. Ahluwalia was a hardworking man. He was busy day and night in his work. I took care of everything in his house. He paid me well. For many years, I was his caretaker. It was only after his friendship with this woman that his life changed.’

‘Was she his girlfriend?’

‘Yes. It was something like that. Dr. Ahluwalia started spending a lot of time with her.’

‘What was her name?’

‘Sophia.’

‘Do you know where she lives?’

‘No. Dr. Ahluwalia once mentioned that she was from Delhi. She had come to Dehradun for a few months. Maybe he went with her back to Delhi. He was very lonely.’ She said shyly.

‘Can you tell me anything else about Dr. Ahluwalia or Sophia? We are here to find him,’ asked Rohan.

‘He had changed a lot since that woman came into his life. Before that, it was only work. He would say everything to me. I also helped him in his work when he asked me to.’

‘What kind of help?’

‘My help was needed when he had to test his experiments. But since that bitch arrived in his life, he would test his experiments with her.’

‘When did she come into his life?’

‘It was around April 2022. Slowly, my contact with him faded. Within a few months, he was asked to leave his work and a few days after that he disappeared.’

They thanked the maid for the information and came back to the hotel.

Lavie had to know who Sophia was. She checked the profile by the name Sophia on social media but it was impossible to get a person by the first name as the search results threw away many Sophia’s. Rohan suggested that she could have used a pseudonym, hence it was futile searching on the social media. She contacted her boss to check if she could get the data of air travellers between Delhi and Dehradun in the first few months of 2022. Her boss managed to get it; senior journalists like him had their contacts. There was nobody by the name of Sophia in the list. In the meantime, Rohan had been pondering upon an idea.

‘We could look at the registers of some of the best hotels in Dehradun. If she is what the maid says, she must have stayed somewhere there. I have contacts in OYO rooms, the hotel management ecommerce website. Let me see if they can help us with this.’

Within a day, they knew that a Sophia had lived for a few months at the Softel Plaza. A visit to the hotel and a small bribe to the ward boy revealed that she was a high profile call girl serving rich clients at Dehradun. She had stayed for a few months and had never come back. Most probably that was not her real name. If this was the Sophia who was with Dr. Ahluwalia, then it meant the senior scientist was seeing call girls. This could be a simple open and shut case where DEAL came to know about his activities and had him removed for the fear of secret leakage of information. If this was not their woman and she had been staying on a different name, there was no way they could know it. Getting to this conclusion, both of them left Dehradun in the evening of the same day.