Invisible Armies (8 page)

    "Wetware? Meatware?"
    "Brains. Human beings."
    Laurent nods. "These brand-new passports of ours – what happens when we pass through outgoing customs, and the Indian officer types the fake visa number into his computer?"
    "Define fake," Keiran says shortly.
    Laurent has to think about the answer for a moment. Then he says, "Not issued by a legitimate authority."
    "Define legitimate authority."
    "For a visa, the national government in question."
    Keiran gives Laurent a patronizing look. "Can you be more specific?"
    Danielle suppresses a sigh. It's apparent that Keiran has decided to dislike Laurent. Apparently he hasn't grown up any in the last four years. He doesn't look any different, either; still a tall, slender man with pale skin, spiky dark hair, and almost disturbingly luminous green eyes. And he still wears impatience as his default expression.
    "The foreign ministry?" Laurent suggests, vexed by Keiran's questions. "What are you getting at?"
    "No. When embassies issue visas, when customs officers check them, they don't call the foreign ministry. They punch the number into their computer. The legitimate authority is not the foreign ministry but their database. Your visas are as real as anyone's."
    "You're saying you broke into the Government of India's computer databases?"
    "Please," Keiran says scornfully. "It wasn't even hard. Their security is shockingly inept. Patches years out of date. Their network was reasonably hardened, but once I got onto it, a script kiddie could own that database."
    Laurent nods slowly. "I'm impressed."
    "We still have to buy your plane tickets. Where are you going from here?"
    Danielle and Laurent look at each other. They haven't discussed this at all. Danielle quails at the thought of talking about it in front of the others.
    "We'll get back to you tomorrow," she assures Keiran.
    "Do you want to come stay with us until you go?" Estelle asks. "We've got a lovely huge house, five bedrooms, more than enough space. And Angus cooks. Good thing, too, 'cause all I can make are grits and boiled peanuts."
    "That's nice of you," Danielle says, smiling at her. She decides she likes Estelle, who seems much more relaxed, more comfortable in her skin, with Angus beside her. The same seems true for Angus; they are one of those couples who seem to take the jittery edge off each other's personalities. "But it's too much hassle to move our things tonight, and then tomorrow there's no point in moving for just one night." And, she doesn't say, the ashram is safer.
    "Also," Angus says, "there's some kind of party tonight, if you'd like to join us."
    She blinks. "A party?"
    "A beach rave up by Arumbol," Keiran explains.
    Danielle chuckles. "You're here twenty-four hours and you've already found a party. Keiran, you'll never change."
    She means it fondly, but she can see, by a wince that quickly vanishes from his face, that he is genuinely stung. She guiltily wishes she could take her comment back.
    "Everyone needs a little playtime now and then," Estelle says. "Come by the house at eleven if you're interested."
* * *
    Danielle is quiet on the ride back to the ashram. This last week, living in the ashram, waiting for Keiran to arrive, spending every moment living with potentially imminent danger, has been awful, yes, but also thrillingly intense. She and Laurent have clung to one another like children in a storm, barely let each other out of their sight. Being separated was inconceivable. Now their time here is almost over. They have never even talked about what they will do if they make it out of the country. Danielle supposes it was a silent mutual agreement not to jinx their escape. But now they have to talk.
    She still knows little about the man she has spent almost every waking moment with for the last ten days. They have traded plenty of colourful anecdotes, from his life in the Foreign Legion and hers as an American counterculture nomad, but no actual history, and he tells his stories like they are of no more importance than amusing tales from a dusty old book, like they happened to someone else. She has told him about some of her exes, but he has never once mentioned any other women, though she is sure there must have been many. Nor has he spoken of any friends. She knows he is gracious, considerate, strong, brave, smart, funny, and devastatingly good in bed, but she has never seen any real emotion in him – the closest he has ever come is his annoyance at Keiran tonight. It is almost like he is a robot, built to be the perfect boyfriend, with enough of a dangerous past to make him romantic, but no actual baggage.
   She doesn't know why Laurent has made such an impact on her, why the thought of leaving him makes her feel sick. It isn't just the intense, romantic nature of their first encounter, the way he saved her from some awful fate, their escape from peril like a knight and a princess in a fairy tale. It isn't just that, unlike most of her relationships, he rather than she is the prize, it's Laurent who is more beautiful, glamorous, untameable, exciting. It's that when he's away from her, she feels old, dull, forgettable, but when he's with her – she has never felt so intensely alive.
    "You're quiet," he says, as they walk back to their hut after passing the ashram, nodding to people they recognize as they pass. All the women smile extra brightly at Laurent. Everyone likes him.
    They re-enter the hut and he relaxes back on the bed. Instead of joining him and letting him wrap his strong warm arms around her, as she normally would, and as she wants to, she sits on one of the folding metal chairs and says, "We should talk."
    He cocks his head. "Something wrong?"
    "Yeah. The future."
    "What's wrong with it?"
    She says, "Does it even exist?"
    "Is this a metaphysical question?"
    "No. What happens the day after tomorrow?"
    He looks puzzled. "We get our passports and leave the country."
    "Yes. But where are you going? And where am I going? Are we going to the same place? Are we going together? What happens to us now? We haven't talked about this at all." Danielle is breathing hard as she speaks. She realizes she is clutching her thighs tightly with her hands and forces them to release.
    It takes Laurent an agonizingly long moment to answer. "No. No, we haven't talked about it. I confess I thought, I suppose I just assumed, that we would both go to the same place, and we would be together there like we are here. If –" He takes a deep breath. "I know this has been strange and sudden between us. Are you saying –" He stops again. Then he says, simply, "Do you want it to end when we leave? Is that what you think is best?"
    "No! No. I want – I don't know what I want. But I know I want you to be there."    Laurent looks at her and says, "I want to go to whatever place you go."
   She blushes with relief and begins to smile.
   "But I don't know if that will be possible."
    Her smile vanishes. She feels like someone just poured a bucket of ice into her stomach. "Why not?"
    "I have duties. You know that. My friends and colleagues have been arrested. Jayalitha has been murdered. Kishkinda continues to poison thousands. I can't give up the fight and go back to America with you."
    Danielle can't argue with that. Laurent is a knight. He cannot abandon his cause in the midst of battle.
    "If I wasn't here, where would you go?" she asks.
    "It doesn't matter. The important thing is, I would work to come back here."
    "I don't think I can live here. I don't think I can live like you do."
    "I know."
    They look at each other.
    "Come with me tomorrow," he says. "Come to Paris. I think I will go there with Angus and Estelle, find common cause, perhaps bring our groups together. Come with me."
    "But you just said –"
    "Please. Worry about the distant future when the distant future comes. Come with me. We'll go together. Please."
    She aches to say yes. But as much as it would hurt to end things, maybe it would be better now than later. Even if the very thought is like imagining tearing her own arm off. "I have to think it over."
    He nods. "I understand."
    They look at each other.
    "Come here," he says.
    It isn't a request. She walks to the bed and stands over him for a moment, smiling slightly, before he pulls her down, draws her beneath him, almost rips her clothes as he tears them off, then entwines her hands in his and pins them above her head, kisses her passionately as he slowly lowers himself to her, careful as ever of her fading bruise.
   "Stay with me," he whispers.
   Danielle arches her back, presses herself against him hungrily. Sex with Laurent is amazing. He is almost too good in bed. She knows she is only the latest in a long string of women. It is ridiculous to think of a future with him. Maybe here in India they make sense together, but back in the real world, it will be like trying to tame a wild animal. He isn't the kind of man she should fall for. But it is much too late for that. All she wants is to be with him. She decides not to think about it, not now. Instead she closes her eyes and allows raw animal pleasure to extinguish all rational thought.
* * *
   They hear the party before they see it, in an isolated bar between the beach and the spiny headland that protrudes into the water at its end. The space is little more than a large open wooden floor with an L-shaped bar in one corner and an impressive sound system on the other, at which a shaven-headed DJ plies his trade, his face as intent as that of a surgeon doing tricky work. Lines of tables outside the bar proper, on the beach, are laden with stubby bottles of Castle beer, plastic water bottles, Marlboro Light packets, purses, day packs, discarded clothes. Most of the chairs are empty. The crowd is here to dance. About two hundred people, mostly in their early twenties and in exceptionally good shape, maybe a dozen of them Indian, writhe to the fast-paced
thumpa-thumpa-thumpa
beat. Tattoos, dreadlocks, bare-chested musclemen, women in sarongs and bikini tops, the harsh smell of cigarettes and the sweet smell of pot.
   Danielle didn't think Laurent would be interested in the party, but it was he who roused her at ten-thirty and suggested, all but insisted, that they go. Further unwelcome evidence that she doesn't actually know him. She dressed in a short skirt and a tight shirt that leaves her midriff bare. She wouldn't have dared this in Bangalore, but in hedonistic touristic Goa, it is tame. Laurent wears white yoga pants and no shirt, like when she first saw him, without the handcuffs. Estelle is in a bright sarong and a blue bikini top, Angus in cargo shorts, his slender torso bare. Keiran, dressed in black jeans and black T-shirt, leads them onto the floor. He is obviously looking for someone.
   They have to push through the crowd; very few people make way for them. The noise is sufficiently loud to preclude most conversation, but Danielle hears harsh glottal noises that she recognizes as either Arabic or Hebrew. Of course. Travelling through India for a few months is a rite of passage for young Israelis after they complete their military service, which explains this crowd's youth, fitness level, and fuck-you attitude. Danielle supposes that if this was her first chance to cut loose after two years spent looking for suicide bombers on the West Bank, she wouldn't be much inclined to worry about the well-being of strangers either.
   The people Keiran knows – friends of friends, apparently – number half a dozen, all male, all with shaved heads and tattoos. The rest of the crowd gives their group more space than most. After a quick shouted conversation in incomprehensible English, Keiran takes something from one of his friends and leads Angus, Estelle, Danielle and Laurent back onto the sand, far enough away to hear one another.
    "How do you feel about chemical enhancement?" he asks.
    Danielle frowns. Laurent raises his eyebrows. "What sort?"
    "I believe the American slang is 'rolling'? My friends just dropped ten minutes ago. If you want to get in sync…" He holds out an upturned palm, on which are five gel capsules. "Work hard, play hard, that's my mantra."
    Danielle shakes her head instinctively. She hasn't touched drugs for years. She has walked out of parties solely because people started passing joints around. Not that she isn't tempted. Ecstasy was always her favourite drug. But she doesn't do that any more.
    Laurent takes two of the pills and offers one to her.
   "Come on," he says, smiling. "Moderate excess might do you good."
   "I gave it up."
   "One night won't kill you. No need to be a puritan. You can enjoy life and still live it the way you want."
   Danielle looks at the drug in her lover's hand. She knows that the experience of doing Ecstasy together is, or can be, a powerful emotional bond. But she knows this from damaged, drug-dependent relationships.
   "Come on, Dani," Keiran says. "All the cool kids are doing it."
   She wants to slap him. But instead her hand reaches out, as if self-propelled, takes the pill from Keiran. It doesn't occur to her to wonder about safety or purity until a moment after she swallows it. Laurent follows her example. Keiran offers the last two to Angus and Estelle, who look at each other, obviously tempted, but politely decline.
   "Israeli-made, top quality," Keiran assures them. He takes his own pill and passes a bottle of water around to wash down the drugs.
    They return to the dance floor. It seems uncomfortably remote, now, its denizens menacing, the music harsh and too rapid. Danielle wishes they hadn't come, that she and Laurent had stayed in bed. She dances, but her heart isn't in it. She wants a beer, but no. One drug at a time. She even wants a cigarette, which she quit years ago. It's as if this night all her old vices have returned to haunt her.
    Time passes. Laurent seems to be enjoying dancing, and anyway it is too loud to talk. Keiran has a long conversation with his Israeli skinheads, and then they are back on the dance floor, throwing themselves around with graceful rhythmic abandon, their faces glowing with bliss. Not Keiran. It hasn't hit him yet.
    Then Danielle starts to feel the drumbeats grow more powerful, vibrating through her, through everything, seemingly shaking the air, the floor, the earth itself. Time seems to slow down. Or maybe she has sped up. The drums keep pounding out their staccato demands, but space has somehow grown between the beats, she can easily pick out every element of their complex rhythm. She feels very warm, but comfortably so, and her surroundings have become somehow deeper, more present, as if thickened in some barely perceptible fourth dimension. Both time and space feel warped, distended, but at the same time ordered with crystalline perfection. Colours seem more vivid, sounds are clearer, the warm wind is delicious on her skin, and every human face and form around her seems impossibly beautiful. Danielle feels a wave of energy surge within her, filling her whole body with throbbing strength and power.