Seven Wonders (18 page)

“Unless you want to go for an encore,” Sloane hissed in his ear, “I think you can put me down now.”

Jack glanced sheepishly at the small throng that had gathered around them on the crowded sidewalk. Nobody else seemed bothered by the snapping mutant rodent, still hurling itself repeatedly into the air toward every errant calf that seemed within a fang’s length of the end of the creature’s chain.

Then again, Jack shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, this wasn’t his first time in Delhi.

“Sorry,” he said, gently returning Sloane to her feet. Then he pointed past the rat, at the storefront. “Heck of a marketing gimmick. Nothing like a little rabies to make you feel right at home.”

Sloane brushed dust from the street off of her slacks. The crowd around them had returned to its normal pace, which meant it was like trying to stand still in torrential floodwaters. Arms and knees and elbows everywhere as a continuous stream of humanity buffeted by, taking up nearly every inch of the cobbled sidewalk. The street was no better. They had been lucky that it was just one rickshaw going the wrong way that had almost decapitated
them. The crumbling pavement was so thick with traffic, it was impossible to know where one lane ended and another began.

“This is the place?” Sloane asked, straightening up. She looked at the broken window, and then at the rat. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Jack grinned. Despite the look on her face, Sloane had actually been taking things in stride since they’d landed at New Delhi International, which was really the only way to face India. The country in general, and Delhi in particular, was a place of such violent extremes, you either went with the flow, or you went crazy trying to swim against it. From the minute they’d stepped out of the modern airport into that thick blanket of oppressive heat and fought their way past a sea of beggars, street salesmen, and taxi drivers to the pair of three-wheeled vehicles Andy had hired to squire them about town, it had been like diving into a sea of perpetual motion. The deeper they’d gone into the old city nestled in the heart of the throbbing Eastern metropolis, the more frenetic the pace had become. Everything in Old Delhi
moved
; winding spaghetti twists of streets pulsing past slums built right in the shadows of fancy condominiums, outdoor markets teeming with salesman selling anything and everything, seedy alleys crawling with beggars, pickpockets, and packs of wild children. The place was alive, beautiful and horrible and terrifying and thrilling, all at once.

Jack had been to India a half a dozen times before he’d learned to just breathe—no matter how thick and pungent the air seemed. But Sloane hadn’t seemed fazed at all. There were no cracks in her cool façade, no matter how hot it had gotten around them.

“A souvenir shop?” she said.

“Something like that,” Jack said, leading her to the door on the other side of the broken glass, keeping a healthy distance away from the leaping rat.

As he opened the door, he took one last glance down the street behind them, not sure what he was looking for in a mob of strangers, most in
traditional Indian garb, flowing white, brown, and gray shirts and pants tied at the waist. But since leaving Brazil, his paranoia had continued to grow. It was part of the reason he’d decided to split his team up upon landing in Delhi, and had sent Andy and Dashia out on their own to make arrangements for the next leg of their journey. Truth be told, he’d rather have been alone at the moment. And it wasn’t just the thought of what had happened to Jeremy that had him on edge.

“Just follow my lead,” he whispered to Sloane as he stepped into the shop. “And let me do the talking.”

“I thought this guy was supposed to be a friend of your father’s,” Sloane whispered back. “I thought that’s why we were coming to him for information.”

“I didn’t say he was a friend, just that he and my father spent time together out in the field.”

“What sort of field?”

Jack didn’t answer, instead shutting the door behind him, effectively cutting off the sound from the street outside. The shop was deserted, the cluttered shelves around them much more towering up close, some of them seeming to be on the verge of collapsing under the weight of so many wares. Jack counted at least thirty Buddhas to his right, of assorted sizes and poses. The shelves, filled with statues depicting various other gods, were almost twice as crowded, the diversity of shapes, creatures, and stances almost mind-numbing.

“So many gods,” Sloane said, her voice echoing off the bare cement ceiling and floor.

“So many religions,” Jack said. “Most people think of India as divided between Hindus and Muslims, but there are actually over a hundred different religions here. As well as eighty-five indigenous languages—eleven of them official. People say that America is a melting pot, but we’ve got nothing on this place.”

“Melting’s the appropriate word. I think it’s hotter in here than it was outside. Is this place even open? I don’t think anybody’s home.”

Jack looked past the farthest shelving unit, which was only about five feet in front of him, to a small desk and cash register stuffed into a corner beneath a poster of some famous Bollywood star decked out in bright red robes. Sloane was right, there didn’t seem to be anyone manning the place. Jack was about to suggest that they return later when he noticed a discoloration in the wall behind the register—and realized he was looking at a door. Well, half a door; it couldn’t have been more than two feet wide, and there was no knob.

“Stay here,” Jack said. “I’m going to check something out.”

He hadn’t taken more than two steps toward the cash register when a buzzer went off somewhere above his head, and suddenly, the half door swung open and a man with wild eyes came barreling out of the opening toward him. The man looked disheveled and unshaven, except for his head, which was as shiny as blown glass. The man was average size, a little smaller than Jack; but there was a gun in his right hand, aimed directly at Jack’s chest. The gun looked like a museum piece—a German Luger with a pencil-neck tip and an ink-black grip—but it was coming toward Jack faster than the rat outside on the sidewalk.

Again, Jack let his reflexes take over. He stepped into the attack with his left foot, putting himself out of line with the gun barrel, while in the same motion his right hand slid around beneath his jacket and withdrew his iták. Before the man’s wild eyes even saw what was happening, Jack had the blade out, caught the man by the wrist, and slammed the iták’s hilt down on the back of the man’s extended hand.

The man screamed, his fingers opening as the gun clattered harmlessly to the floor. He yanked his wrist free, then stepped back and looked wildly from Jack to Sloane. Jack lowered the iták, holding up his free palm.

“We’re not here to cause any trouble.”

“I got nothing worth stealing,” the man spat back in a heavy, down-market English accent. “And if you’re with Interpol, I ain’t the man on the posters. It’s a goddamn case of mistaken identity, it is.”

“We’re not thieves and we’re not cops. This is Sloane Costa, and my name is Jack Grady.”

The man’s eyes got a little less wild.

“Grady?”

“Kyle Grady is my father.”

A wide smile broke across the man’s unshaven face. There was a tooth or two missing, but overall, it made him look almost friendly.

“Little Jacky. I remember you when you were just a tow-headed shit. Why the hell didn’t you say something?”

“Didn’t really get a chance.”

“Sorry about that,” the man said, still grinning as he rubbed the growing bruise on the back of his hand. “You’ve got your dad’s reflexes, that’s for sure. Can’t tell you how many scars I’ve got from wrestling with your old man, back when we were hopping freights along the Trans-Siberian.”

The man pointed at the iták that was still hanging from Jack’s grip.

“Visayan Islands. I’d say Kalip Tribe, up the Northern Shore. You looking to sell? The grip alone’d probably get you three grand.”

Jack shook his head, both impressed and unnerved by how accurate the man’s guess had been. Then again, from what his father had told him, Gordon Unger had an eye for antiquities. Especially objects from Southeast Asia, although his focus had primarily shifted to the Indian subcontinent in recent years. Kyle Grady had referenced Unger a number of times, back when Jack had been spending time with him; he was supposedly the man you went to when you needed information that involved Southeast Asia. Jack’s father had also warned him that information from Unger often came with a price—but Jack needed an expert, and he didn’t have time to go touring museums.

“We’re not here to sell anything. We’re here to ask you a few questions about the Taj Mahal.”

Unger laughed, then saw that Jack was serious. He waved his unbruised hand toward one of the nearby shelves, which was loaded with miniature plastic and wooden models of the great Indian Wonder of the World.

“You came to the right place. I’ve also got posters and some tourist maps, if you’re keen.”

He shifted his gaze from Jack to Sloane. His eyes lingered a little too long as he looked her over, then he pointed his finger back at Jack.

“But something tells me you’re not here for a poster or a map.”

He grinned, and suddenly bent forward to retrieve the gun from the floor. He jammed it into his belt, then turned and headed to the half door behind the cash register.

“Follow me, Little Jacky. We’ll see if I’ve got something in the back that can help you out.”

• • •

“Quite simply, it’s the greatest love story ever told.”

The teeth weren’t quite as bad seen through the neck of a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, but there was still something unsettling about that grin, halfway between wolf and weasel, which were two of the words Jack’s father had often used to describe Unger, his former expedition partner. Kyle Grady had never been clear about where, or for how long, he had traveled with the Brit; but it was clear the two had spent some quality time living in the wilderness of at least two former Soviet republics before Unger had turned his focus toward Southeast Asia.

The minute they’d entered the back room of the souvenir shop, Unger had begun to regale Jack with stories about his father, most of which
involved drinking, women, and violence; from the time they’d nearly been beheaded because Unger had made a pass at the daughter of a Kyrgyzstani warlord, to the moment Kyle and he had parted ways, due to a “misunderstanding” involving a pair of emerald daggers they’d liberated from a Mongol tomb. According to Unger, they’d remained friends—even though both bore matching inch-long dagger scars hidden somewhere under their clothes.

But Jack wasn’t in Delhi to reminisce about his father. It wasn’t until Unger led him and Sloane through a second door—this one much more substantial than the first, thick redwood lined in what appeared to be plates of iron—and shifted his dialogue to the great mausoleum, the subject of “the greatest love story ever told,” that Jack’s focus snapped tight.

The change from the front of the shop to the back was night and day; all pretense of the place being a common souvenir market disappeared the moment Unger flicked on the fluorescent ceiling lights, revealing a windowless, rectangular room lined with pristine glass shelves and oversize, backlit onyx cabinets. The fixtures alone looked like they’d cost a fortune, but it was the items on the shelves that immediately drew Jack’s attention. In just the first few shelves, he counted three Buddhas carved from pure jade, a pair of gold statues of Ganesh, the Hindu elephant god—each of her eight hands holding what appeared to be a perfectly formed opal, sparkling ocean-blue in the harsh light—and an Indo-themed Fabergé egg, lodged in a Plexiglas cube.

The collection only grew more exceptional the farther Unger led them into what could only be described as a warehouse for precious antiquities. A second shelving unit displayed more gold statues of a dozen different Hindu gods, spaced between cabinets filled with glistening antique jewelry—necklaces, bangles, anklets, rings. Next to that, a cabinet was filled with a variety of swords, daggers, and other ancient weapons of war—spiked maces, halberds, and spears, as well as various antique torture
devices, including brass thumbscrews, steel-tipped flails, even a miniature iron maiden in perfect condition. Another cabinet contained more of the traditional masks that Jack had seen out front, but these masks weren’t made of cheap plaster. They had been carved from the finest bronze, gold, and silver, their features accented with semiprecious gemstones.

Jack knew, from the first item to the last, that none of these objects had been acquired legally; you didn’t store a legally acquired Fabergé egg in a backroom in a slum in Old Delhi. This wasn’t a souvenir store, it was a one-stop shopping mart for black-market antiquities. No wonder Unger had come at Jack with the gun; just one of the golden elephant gods, no doubt pilfered from a local tomb, could land Unger in an Indian prison for the rest of his life.

But Jack kept his thoughts to himself as Unger showed him and Sloane to a small circular table at the back of the room, right in front of the glass cabinet of weapons and torture devices, and directed them to a trio of metal folding chairs. While they took their seats, he rummaged through a large crate tucked behind the cabinet; when he returned to the table, his grin had doubled in size, revealing a few more missing teeth—and in his hands was a long cardboard canister about the size of a poster mailer, sealed on both ends with plastic knobs.