Exiles (31 page)

“Peter, my good friend,” said Bahadur, his voice shaky. It was the next afternoon; the family had moved swiftly.

“Hello, Bahadur.”

“You must drive to the address I give you and bring Usha. Please come right away.”

An hour later Peter, Mina, and Usha pushed open the dented steel door of an abandoned warehouse in one of the city’s old industrial districts. The concrete floor was filthy and littered with huge rusty gears and parts from old machines. The air smelled of axle grease. Sun shafts bored through holes in the roof, lighting up dust motes and patches of floor so that the room was as dappled as the shade under a tree.

At the far end stood a cluster of people. One of them broke away from the others and came toward them.

“Aama!” cried Usha, and threw her arms around her.

“Chori,”
said her mother. “Usha
chori
.”

As Peter’s eyes grew more used to the light he saw Bahadur tied out spread-eagled against the far wall. One man held a
khukuri
knife at his throat. The other had pulled down Bahadur’s pants
and appeared ready to geld him. Usha saw him and turned away. Peter and Mina walked over.

“Peter, my excellent American friend,” said Bahadur, his face beaded with sweat.

“Who are they?”

“Parents, uncles, aunts,” said Bahadur. He was pale. “It is a very close family from the hill country, if you follow my meaning.”

Peter nodded. “Do any of them speak English?”

Bahadur shook his head. He explained the situation, and Peter did his best to pretend that it came as a complete surprise.

“So you’d like me to tell them that I bought her merely as a domestic.”

“Immediately, if you don’t mind.”

“But that’s not what you were selling her for. You know that.”

Bahadur looked at him, stricken. “But Doctor …”

“Here’s the deal,” Peter said. “Mina will tell them I’m a doctor with a daughter of my own and that Usha is still a virgin.”

“Of course, that is the truth,” said Bahadur, with an ingratiating smile.

Peter went on. “After that, I’m going to buy them a couple of rooms at a hotel and pay the tab for their dinner. While they’re there, you’re going to do something for me, and if you fuck it up in any way whatsoever I’ll take you back to them and tell them the truth, that you were trying to sell her as a whore.”

“All right,” said Bahadur. “Whatever you say. Just please …”

Peter nodded to Mina, and she spoke to the family. As she did, Peter watched the father, who stood a little apart from the others with his arms crossed, staring at the ground.

There were general sounds of relief, but then Usha’s mother spoke up.

“She says she wants proof that Usha is still a virgin,” Mina said. “She doesn’t see why an American doctor should be different from any other man.”

“If Usha doesn’t mind, take them out to the car so she can
check for herself,” Peter said, knowing that this is what it would likely take to allay their fears.

Usha nodded, and the women left. The men put their knives away and untied Bahadur, who quickly pulled up his pants. In a couple of minutes the women returned. Usha’s mother spoke to them, and everyone seemed to relax. The men clapped Bahadur on the shoulder.

“Yes, yes,” said Bahadur, with a big, shit-eating grin. “All a misunderstanding! No hard feelings!”

Mina told them about the hotel, which was presented as Peter’s gift to the family in appreciation of their daughter. They gathered their things, smiling and talking excitedly, then departed.

|   |   |

Bahadur’s house was commodious and elegantly furnished. He and Peter sat in the office, Bahadur watching nervously as Peter opened a database of names on Badahur’s laptop.

“These are your clients in the army?” Peter asked.

“I can barely keep it up to date.”

“I had no idea you were so organized, Bahadur.”

“It is the only way to stay out of jail, I’m afraid.”

Peter went to the S’s, but Sengupta was not on the list. He then scrolled backward; he wasn’t hoping for much, but when he got to the P’s he nearly fell out of his chair.

“Pradhan?” he said, incredulous. “
Colonel
Pradhan? Mina’s father?”

Bahadur cleared his throat uncomfortably. “An unhappy marriage, apparently. As so many are.”

Peter closed the laptop and put it in his bag.

“You’re keeping my computer?” Bahadur said.

“Just a little insurance, so you don’t disappear, and so nothing happens to me. It will be safe with friends. Now let’s go.”

Bahadur paled. “Not Pradhan, Doctor, please.”

“Usha’s family is waiting at the hotel,” Peter said. “It’s your choice.”

Pradhan kept an office in the old British headquarters building west of the Royal Palace. He was tall and slender, his hair and mustache the sleek gray of polished steel, his eyebrows dark over dry, penetrating eyes. Peter left Bahadur out of sight down the hallway and came into the office alone.

Pradhan reached into his desk and produced a pack of American cigarettes. “They are so much better than
bidis
,” he said. “You don’t mind?”

“It’s your office, Colonel.”

Pradhan lit up. He puffed a few times, then opened the window behind him. Traffic noise from below came into the room.

“What you are asking, I cannot do,” he said. “I am retired, and because of that it is illegal and too risky. I am still in trouble over the helicopter pilot, and that was nothing compared to this.”

“You want more money,” Peter said. “I understand. I’ll get it.”

Pradhan came to the desk and put the cigarette in the ashtray. He extended his fingers and leaned forward on them, his face downward, the way a sprinter leans just before the gun.

“Money is not the issue,” he said. “It is much more complicated than that.”

“Name your terms, then. I’ll meet them.”

“Your daughter’s television appearance would make it very hard to find men for such a job,” he said. “It is a matter of honor.”

“You think it’s honorable to leave a seventeen-year-old girl out there?”

“You don’t understand,” said Pradhan. There was a picture of Mina next to the ashtray on the desk; he picked it up, regarded it absently, then put it down again.

Peter watched him and realized that in fact he had misunderstood. “This isn’t about my daughter, is it?” he said. “This is about
your
daughter.”

Pradhan shrugged. “I have a good man for her,” he said. “A Nepali man. Wealthy. I know you Americans don’t give a damn about tradition, but we still do.”

“Does Mina like him? Does she even know him?”

“That is not the point,” said Pradhan, bristling. “My wife and I had an arranged marriage, and it has worked out very well.”

“For you, maybe,” said Peter. “I’ve heard a dissenting opinion, though.” He got up, went to the hall, and brought in Bahadur.

Pradhan stiffened to attention. “What is this man doing here?”

“Hello, Colonel,” said Bahadur sheepishly. “I am sorry for this, but as you may imagine, I have been put in a most unpleasant position.”

Pradhan glared at both of them, his eyes fearful and fierce, his mouth a tight rictus of loathing. Peter pulled over a chair and sat down.

“I have a lot of respect for your expertise in military matters, Colonel,” he said. He opened up the map and spread it out on the desk. “Now explain to me exactly how you’re going to get my daughter out of that village.”

|   |   |

Once Pradhan became reconciled to his situation, he undertook the project with professional resolve. He told Peter that to do the job well and safely would take a few days. There were arrangements, logistics, things Peter knew nothing about. If he wanted his daughter alive, he must be patient. They agreed that Mina would know nothing of the blackmail, that she would be allowed to believe Pradhan had undertaken the project simply out of outrage at the rebels, and to help his daughter’s friend.

For the first three days Peter paced his house. He had too much time to think. Had he done the right thing? Was there another, less risky way that he hadn’t considered? He called Finley at the embassy, told her his plans, asked her what she thought.

“We haven’t had this conversation, and I don’t know anything about it,” she replied. “And I wish you luck.”

He called Mina and asked if he could trust her father to do it right.

“Look, he’s a traditional military man,” she said. “He’s ultraconservative and a real prick sometimes. But in this, yes—he’s just the person you need.”

That third sleepless night he lay there thinking about something that had once happened with Alex. Her sophomore year she had been making straight A’s, but she also wanted to play basketball, and she wasn’t very good at it yet. One evening Peter found her in back of their house shooting free throws, her lips pressed tight together the way they used to get when she was either determined about something or trying not to cry.

“Coach told me I can’t shoot,” she said. Her voice wavered a little. “He pulled me out of the lineup and gave my spot to Margaret Donnelly, who’s like this fucking stork and can practically dunk without jumping.”

Peter said he was sorry and asked her what she was doing.

“I’m not stopping until I can shoot thirty free throws in a row. If I miss one, I start over.”

“He made you do this?”

She looked at him as if he were clueless. “
I
made me do this.”

He decided to let her. When she finally came inside, four or five hours later, he figured she’d succeeded. Eventually she reclaimed her spot among the starters after Donnelly, who was way too thin for her own good, sprained her ACL, and an orthopedist suggested she build up some quads if she ever hoped to stabilize the knee.

It was later that year that Alex started cutting herself. Peter hadn’t realized the connection at first, but after he got her into therapy, the shrink had pointed it out. Somewhere along the line she’d invented impossible standards for herself. It was partly hardwired and partly a reaction to Cheryl, the therapist suggested, an attempt to do whatever it took so she didn’t end up like her mother.

Ironically, when it all started, it had been Cheryl who noticed that Alex was keeping her sleeves down all the time. She’d seen it before with people she knew who were heroin addicts.

Now, in the house in Kathmandu, the phone rang. Peter grabbed at it, his heart pounding. It was Mina. The clock read 2:00
A.M.

“Something’s happened,” she said, and he could tell it wasn’t good. The adrenaline swirled up and his heart fluttered, then the dizziness came. He sat up on the edge of the bed, his lungs suddenly feeling so shallow he couldn’t get air. “Tell me.”

“They found Adhiraj’s compound day before yesterday,” Mina said. “They went in yesterday before dawn, but they hadn’t allowed for the dogs. When they scouted the place they only saw a couple, but there turned out to be a whole pack that was let out just at night.”

“His great Gurkha mercenaries couldn’t account for a pack of
dogs
?”

“As soon as they were in the village the dogs attacked, and the guerrillas came out.”

“Alex,” Peter said, trying to get some air under her name. “What about Alex?”

“Listen, you’d better sit down.”

“Tell me!”

“According to the men, she was fighting alongside the guerrillas.”

It was so bizarre he wondered if he was dreaming it. “She doesn’t even know how to fire a gun!”

“The three soldiers who got her out of there were crazy with rage. They swore she’d shot one of their men. On the way back, they stopped by the road and raped her.”

He was on his feet then, shrieking. He would find them, her father included, he would kill them all.

“Peter—”

“Tell him!” he panted. “You tell him I’ll cut his fucking balls off! Where’s Alex?”

“She’ll be here soon. I’ll bring her over. Listen—”

“You told me I could trust him!” he said. “You said he was just the man for the job!”

“Peter—” she began, but he didn’t want to hear her voice. He slammed the phone down and got dressed, then began walking circles around the upper hallway as the images played like film before his eyes. What they’d done to her and what he would do to them. He saw himself bashing their heads in with a crowbar. Shooting them, first up the ass, so they could suffer awhile, then in the mouth, to finish them. Beating Pradhan, then dousing him with gas and setting him afire.