The Breath of God (26 page)

How do they steal our fucking jobs?
he wondered, shaking his head. These people had no respect for themselves or their city.

Garbage littered the sides of the street, in places three feet deep. The aroma of this teeming city was a far cry from the clean pine scent of his home. As the van rounded a bend, he spotted two young children, standing in a heap of garbage by the side of the road. The older child, a girl of seven or eight, was dressed in a tattered dress that hung loosely off her shoulders. Tim watched her search through the trash, perhaps for something to eat. The younger child, a boy about four with greasy black hair and no shirt, probably her brother, squatted on his heels while lifting his hand to his mouth.

Tim swallowed back the acid taste of bile when he realized the boy was scooping brackish water from a stagnant puddle to drink. No sign of parents anywhere: they were like stray dogs on the street. As the car passed within a few feet of the children, the girl lifted her head and made direct eye contact with Tim. Behind the unwashed bangs that fell in front of the young girl's face, Tim saw only a vacant look in her eyes.

“Not even human,” he muttered.

As if to confirm his thoughts, the slow movement of a hulking shape twenty meters down the road from the children caught his attention. As the car drew closer, Tim recognized the shape to be two large pigs rooting through the same continuous line of garbage that the children had been digging through down the road. Both were heavier than the boar he was used to hunting in the Alabama woods, and their wiry gray coats were covered in the same mud covering the people who lived along the road.

This place turned his stomach. He felt himself losing focus on the task ahead, so he closed his eyes and went through his mental checklist. Once he unpacked, he would reassemble the Glock. Then he would need to find some ammunition. Despite his feelings that most baggage screeners were complete morons, he wasn't confident he could adequately conceal the chemical trace of gunpowder or the unmistakable shape of a bullet. But he knew that anything
could be bought in a place like this, for the right price. Forty-caliber bullets would be a cinch.

In addition to the gun, Tim's pack contained one of his most creative ideas. Just thinking of his cleverness made him grin. Inside a nylon case were six EpiPens, plastic shots of self-injectable doses of epinephrine delivered via a concealed spring-activated needle. Tim had easily obtained them from a drugstore with a forged prescription he'd photoshopped. Many people carried these singleuse shots in case of emergency allergic reactions to bee stings or food items.

But Tim didn't have any allergies. Allergies were for sickly people. Instead, Tim had modified the EpiPens, none of which contained epinephrine any longer. Three now contained Versed, a benzodiazepine drug doctors often injected into patients immediately before surgery to induce a twilight state of consciousness. He recalled his own experience with Versed in his twenties when his wisdom teeth were removed. He'd pocketed the vials the day he was excused from his hospital job.
You never know when certain drugs might come in handy
, he'd thought, and Tim was nothing if not patient. So many of the things he'd done over the years, not knowing for what outcome, were starting to fall into place, further convincing him that God had held this plan for him for many years, perhaps his whole life.

Tim smiled when he thought about the effects of jabbing someone with one of his modified EpiPens: the person would be rendered helpless within seconds. Barely conscious, his victim would follow his instructions clumsily and, owing to the drug's amnesiac effect, remember nothing once the drug wore off.

The other three EpiPens were marked with a red line. He'd used a Sharpie so he wouldn't mistake them for the Versed-filled ones. The red-lined shots would act as quickly as the other three, but with far more dramatic results. These were filled with hydrocyanic acid, a chemical related to cyanide but with an even higher toxicity. The victim stabbed with one of these would go into immediate cardiac arrest. This chemical had been even easier to obtain than the Versed; he'd ordered it from an online chemical supply company.

Within a day's time, he anticipated testing both types.

G
RANT GAZED OUT the car's window at the flat, arid land whose sandy soil was tinted with red. He wondered whether Issa had crossed this land on his way to the Himalayas. The car jolted as it hit a pothole. Calling the road to Agra a “highway” was someone's wishful thinking. Its lanes needed a complete repaving, instead of haphazard patch jobs. The bumpy ride might have bothered him were his attention not drawn to the inevitable head-on collisions their driver miraculously avoided every few minutes when he swerved into incoming traffic to pass a slow-moving tractor or an even slower-moving camel-pulled cart.

They'd spent no time at all in New Delhi, where they'd arrived yesterday after eighteen hours of flying, including a layover in Paris. The road conditions combined with their jet lag made the four-hour drive between cities seem even longer than it was. Grant marveled at the large diversity of travelers on the streets of the towns they'd passed through—cars whose drivers seemed oblivious to the rules of the road, buses with as many passengers riding on the roof as inside the vehicle, three-wheeled rickshaws whose drivers peddled furiously in the heavy traffic, camels pulling carts loaded with construction materials, and swarms of motorbikes darting in, out, and around like hornets circling their nest. Neither traffic signals nor the concept of right of way existed here, yet in the chaos, these travelers somehow managed to dance around each other as if they were performing an elaborate ballet to the sounds of the ever-present symphony of car horns.

“What're you thinking about?” Kristin asked through a yawn.

“You're awake. Oh, nothing. Just the symphony.”

Kristin gave him a confused look as she stretched her arms over her head. As if on cue, their driver blared his horn and swerved around an emaciated spotted cow standing in the middle of a busy village intersection, one of many their driver had blazed through in the last three hours. The cow seemed stoned, perhaps from breathing in too many exhaust fumes, and it didn't bother to look up at the SUV as it passed within inches of its hindquarters. The aggressive maneuver pressed Kristin into Grant's side.

Before righting herself, she whispered into his ear, “There's a saying in this country that drivers only need three things: horns, brakes, and good luck.”

“Fortunately, we've had an abundance of all three,” Grant replied. He leaned forward and asked their driver, “Hey, what's the deal with all the cows in the road?” On his previous trips to India, he'd been quite amused by the cattle who roamed freely in the middle of the road and slept on the medians.

Their driver, whose collarless white shirt contrasted with his dark complexion and jet black hair, explained in accented English, “People keep cows for milk. Use dung for cooking fuel. But the cow is sacred animal to Hindus. We do not butcher them for meat. When the animals are too old to make milk, the owners let them go into the streets.”

“Instead of stray dogs, you have stray cows?” Grant smiled.

“Oh yes. Many stray dogs here too.” The driver chuckled.

Although Grant had witnessed in India the most abject poverty he'd ever seen, he also marveled at the energy of the people and the richness of the culture. The people they'd encountered so far had been extremely friendly and helpful.

Kristin checked Grant's watch. “We should be in Agra soon.”

“Well, tonight's the night.” He rubbed his palms on his khakis. They had replied to Jigme that they'd be there at eight PM under the full moon—the one night a month the Taj Mahal was open—but Jigme hadn't responded. Now Grant hoped for the best. He couldn't help but wonder whether the cloakand-dagger charade was really necessary. The frenzy of publicity surrounding the initial publication of the Issa translation had died and been replaced by
headlines highlighting Grant's humiliation. But then he thought about Kinley and all the trouble he must have gone through to make a reunion possible.

“You think they'll be there?” Kristin asked.

“Let's hope so.” Grant felt confident about their interpretation of Jigme's email.
But what if we're wrong?
They didn't have much time, and they would deplete Kristin's travel money within a week.

T
HE SHADOWS OF DUSK concealed the small skiff motoring east down the Yamuna River. Tim's fingers tingled from the vibration of the throttle on the fifteen-horsepower outboard attached to the stern of the flat-bottomed boat. Finding a boat for hire had not been a problem: finding one with a motor instead of an old man with a pole had taken some effort, and four thousand rupees—just under a hundred dollars. Fortunately, Tim had been given a generous cash allowance for this mission. He was thankful again for his foresight and well-planned operation. Had he not left early for India, he never would have had time to prepare after he'd intercepted the coded email and its translation. One of the key lessons from his military training had been the importance of preparation and planning.

With the skiff humming across the placid water, Tim removed his phone from the backpack by his feet. The one redeeming aspect of this filthy country, he thought, was its kick-ass digital cell service. In under thirty seconds, he connected to the Internet through the phone's browser and had access to a color map of the city of Agra. Tim tapped the screen, zooming in until he saw the flashing red dot. Matthews's cell phone. He marveled at how easy it was to follow someone's every move. The government claimed the mandated E911 chips were for public safety: a panicked motorist calling 911 after an accident could be instantly located. The cell phone companies also pitched the technology as an additional benefit to those who enjoyed using GPS, and they even sold a service to parents to make their kids safer. For a small monthly fee,
parents could log on to a website at any time and pull up a city map showing their children's exact location. But Tim knew what the technology was really for—just another way for the government to control its citizens. And tonight he would use it to his advantage.

Tim's pulse quickened. His targets were on the street, near the entrance of the Taj Mahal. An hour earlier than their eight PM meeting time. He cranked the throttle to the full open position.

As the skiff rounded a wide bend in the river, Tim caught his first glimpse of the immense sixteenth-century Agra Fort with its monumental sandstone walls rising from the far riverbank. Tim allowed himself to admire how the medieval Muslim fortress was strategically located along the banks of the river, making one flank impervious to attack, while also providing outstanding views across the flat land on the other three sides—a textbook military location. Seeing the Agra Fort, Tim knew that the Taj was close; his anticipation grew.

Then the itching started. He scratched his arms.
Damn
, he thought. Why did his fucking eczema act up at times like this? While his right hand continued to steer the skiff around the river bend, he used his left hand to scratch furiously, even though he knew that scratching only made the itching worse.

The moment the river straightened, however, he forgot about the itching. The Taj Mahal itself came into view on the southern bank. Its marble, onionshaped dome rose over sixty meters into the night sky, glowing an iridescent bluish white from the light of the full moon.

Then Tim encountered his first unexpected problem. He slowed the motor, unconsciously scratching his arms again. In addition to the full moon, floodlights illuminated the two stone plazas surrounding the Taj. Unfortunately, the bright lights also glared on the flat grassy bank that extended from the red walls of the lower sandstone plaza to the river's edge like a giant stage set.

During his scouting trip the previous afternoon, he'd chosen the river as his access point because of the Kalashnikov-toting security guards gathered at the main entrance gate. But how was he to complete his mission illuminated by these spotlights?

After enjoying a hurried dinner of chicken and vegetable curry, along with ample helpings of rice and naan to calm the effects of the spices in their stomachs, Grant and Kristin walked past the closed merchant stalls lining the narrow road leading from their hotel to the main entrance of the Taj Mahal complex. Grant enjoyed the relative peacefulness of the cool night. Only a few dogs barked in the distance. As they stepped over the papers that fluttered across the paved road from the stalls, Grant imagined the chaos during the day: merchants hawking fruit, bottled water, T-shirts, and cheap plastic models of the Taj. Now that the shop owners were at home with their families, only the debris from the day's activities was left.