The Virtuosic Spy 01 - Deceptive Cadence (14 page)

“It is long time since I am seeing you, Con-ji.” She turned her kohl-rimmed eyes on him with reproachful sadness and continued twirling in slow, languid circles. She insisted on speaking to him in English, which despite her lack of formal education was quite good.

“I was here just last week,” he said. “You don’t remember?”
 

“I remember that it seems long ago,” she sighed, with a melodramatic toss of her head. Conor raised an amused eyebrow.

“So, we’re being a bit
filmi
tonight, are we? Rehearsing for your Bollywood debut? Stop spinning around like that. You’re making me dizzy.”

Radha came to a stop and giggled. She stood undulating in place in front of him, her hands placed on her small, thin hips in a childish imitation of seduction.

“Yeah, and stop doing that as well,” he said sourly. “Makes me want to throw a blanket around you. Come here now. Have your dinner.”

She slid onto the couch and tried distracting him with a flirtatious pout, which Conor greeted with bland indifference as he pointedly moved the package of
jalebi
away from her groping hand. He began opening the tiffin canisters but then jerked in surprise as an unfamiliar buzz tingled against his chest. The government-issued mobile phone in his shirt pocket was ringing for the first time.

He punched at the keypad and listened, uncertain what sort of greeting was expected. After several seconds of silence, Sedgwick’s nasal twang crackled in his ear.

“McBride? Are you there?”
 

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“Well, why didn’t you—oh, never mind. Where are you?”

“Kamathipura. The Monroe. Where are you?” Conor asked.

“Good. That’s not far. Tell Raj he’s on his own and get your ass over to the Shalimar Hotel. We’ll meet you in the lobby in ten minutes.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

He swore as Sedgwick hung up without answering that question either, and turned back to Radha. “Sorry, I’ve gotta go.
Biriyani
before
jalebi
, right? Promise?” He ruffled her hair.

He went to the bar to give the news to Raj, who was visibly relieved. Despite Conor’s numerous attempts at reassurance, he’d continued to display an attitude of barely contained terror in his presence.

“Make sure Radha eats,” Conor instructed without conviction as he headed for the door. It was unlikely the timid young man would be any match for her spirited obstinacy.

Arriving in the lobby of the Shalimar, he found his boss accompanied by Abdul Hassan and two of his
taporis
, who were common street thugs from the lower ranks of the Khalil operation. Conor made no comment until the two of them were alone in the SUV, following Hassan’s car on the road north out of the city.

“What’s going on?”

“Disciplinary action.” Sedgwick’s voice held its customary hints of irony, but Conor noted lines of strain furrowing the skin around his eyes.

“Hassan got a tip. One of his suppliers has been stealing from the organization and holding back hashish to sell on his own. Needless to say, it’s got them perturbed.”

“What’s it to do with us?” Conor asked.

“Hey, all in for the team, right?” Sedgwick glanced at him and looked quickly away. “He asked us to come along. I couldn’t think of a reason to say we wouldn’t.”

“What are they going to do?”

“I don’t know. It’s Hassan’s deal. I guess we’ll see what he has in mind when we get there.”

Conor took a steadying breath. “Not the answer I wanted to hear.”

“Sorry, dude. It’s all I got for you.”

T
HE
SMALLEST
TRACE
of a breeze trickled in through a six- inch opening in the battered metal door of the godown. Not enough to be refreshing. He nudged the door further ajar, trying to coax in a stronger gust to ease the stifling atmosphere inside. He also hoped the expanded view might offer distraction from the activity going on behind him.

The warehouse was an old, abandoned wreck. It sat close to the water a few miles south of a seventeenth-century fort in Sewri, one of the northern, east coast suburbs of Mumbai.

A movement along the shore caught at the corner of his eye, and he moved into the doorway, peering through the darkness for a closer look. At first, he thought it was an animal snuffling through the refuse being nudged up the beach by lapping waves, but then he realized it was two small boys, no doubt engaged in a bit of nocturnal garbage picking.

He wished he could still feel astonished that two tiny children would be out alone in this desolate spot at such an hour, but the capacity for that sort of bewilderment was long gone. He thought of Radha and other variations of the tableau: children in places they ought not to be, doing things they should never have to. He hoped the boys weren’t looking for food amidst the rubbish but thought it likely that they were; and he even more fervently hoped they would stay on their current course, which was taking them farther away from the warehouse. He didn’t need that particular headache added to his skyrocketing stress level.

As they’d discovered soon enough on arriving at the deserted godown, what Hassan had in mind for his disciplinary action was in keeping with his limited intelligence and imagination. When the hapless thief appeared, there was an initial false heartiness that put him at his ease, followed by a progression of subtly cutting remarks until all pretense was gone, and the man’s uncertain smile melted into stark fear. Only then, when his apprehensive terror was at its peak, only then did the torture begin.

Conor leaned against the door way and lit another cigarette. He had thankfully drawn the long straw when Hassan began barking orders. As the appointed lookout, he was as far away from the center of activity as he could get, but it didn’t feel far enough.

The beating had been going on for more than twenty minutes now. He had not once turned to look at it, but he could not as easily ignore its sounds: the sickening, wet crunch of the blows as they landed; the screams that subsided into sobs and whimpering groans; and the heavy, labored breathing of Hassan’s men as they finally began to tire from their efforts.

It stopped eventually, and there was a brief, exhausted silence. After some inaudible discussion, he heard footsteps approaching and turned to meet the haggard eyes of Sedgwick. He straightened and tossed the cigarette aside with a curt nod. “All clear at this end. Can we get the hell out of here, please?”

“Not yet,” Sedgwick said hoarsely. “Abdul Hassan has . . . an order to give you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? You’re the man who gives the orders, I thought.”

Sedgwick attempted a smile but failed to bring it off with his usual conviction. “The organizational dynamics are complicated. I’ve already talked him down as much as I can.”

“Talked him down from what, for God’s sake? What’s he want me to do?”

The question was met with several seconds of tense silence before Sedgwick responded. “You’re the only one carrying a gun.”

Conor stared, stunned into speechlessness.

“Are you crazy?” he finally hissed, lips barely moving. “Are you out of your mind? Do you think I’m going to kill a man just because that fat lunatic—”

“Calm down. You don’t have to kill him, just kneecap him.”
 

“Just kneecap him?” Conor struggled to control his voice. “No. I bloody well won’t. He can have the gun and do it himself. Or maybe I’ll shoot him instead. It’s bad enough we’ve just been standing around for the past half-hour while—”
 

“Get a grip, goddamn it,” Sedgwick said. “We’re both under a microscope here, and this is already taking too long. It’s a test of loyalty and courage. If you refuse, we’re both blown, and once we’ve been blown, the next thing we’ll be is dead. Your call, but he’s waiting.”

Conor had only a few seconds to make a decision. Once he’d reached it, a cold, unnatural calm settled over him. He felt the muscles of his face arranging into an inexpressive mask. Before forcing his eyes to assume their flat gaze, he drilled Sedgwick with a look of contempt. “Tell me, boss. What kind of courage does it take to shoot a man with his arms tied behind his back and his face so filled with blood that he won’t even see me?”

He stepped around Sedgwick and strode across the building, his boots striking the cement floor with clipped, echoing cracks. With one smooth motion, he opened his jacket and ripped the Walther from the holster, chambering the first round as he walked. Ahead of him, he watched the fat, sweating face of Abdul Hassan freeze in fear and then relax again as he moved past him. He stopped in front of the ruined figure that lay slumped on a stack of pallets; pointed the gun at one thin, brown knee; and pulled the trigger.

A burst of blood and tissue exploded from the shot and spattered onto his jeans. With the man’s screams filling his ears, he slammed the gun back into its holster and turned away. Conor strode back toward Sedgwick, who shrugged an apology as he passed on the way to the door.

“There’s more than one kind of courage, Conor,” he said softly.

“Fuck you,” he replied and kept walking.

13

S
HE
LOOKED
LIKE
A
LITTLE
BANDIT
,
A
DIMINUTIVE
BANK
robber, with an enormous white triangle of cloth covering her face. The point of it swung back and forth with each movement of her head, reaching down almost to her stomach. Her wide brown eyes, peeking out above the cloth, had been watching her mother solemnly, but suddenly she noticed she was being observed.

She tilted her head back, and a mass of waving brown hair fell away from her face as she peered up and saw him. She stared with the fearlessness of a six-year-old, and without hesitation, she raised both arms above her head and waved them energetically. Conor smiled and put his hands to his chest, pretending to swoon against the marble railing that surrounded the circular opening to the floor below. Instantly, her eyes crinkled with delight. She laughed aloud and called out to him.

“
Bhaiyya
!”

What was left of his heart was lost again.

There had been many such scenes since his arrival in India, instances of unreserved affection and generosity that took his breath away. His wrists had grown crowded with woven bracelets and wooden beads pressed on him by men and women, rich and poor, young and old. From every kind and color of person, he had received tokens of benevolence, but the little girl’s cry of greeting was particularly sweet to his ears. It sounded good to hear someone call him “brother”.

He’d been lingering in the Jain
mandir
since early morning, first wandering around on the temple’s lower floor, keeping a respectful distance as the devotees chanted mantras. He watched them anoint their deities with sandalwood, their mouths ritually shrouded with the cloth
muhapatti
to protect the sacred texts from the moisture of their breath.

Later, he retreated to the greater solitude of the second story, alternating his gaze between the colorful temple dome above, depicting the zodiac and other celestial scenes, and the main floor of the sanctuary below. In a dreamlike stillness, he looked down at the meditative movements of the worshippers and offered his own silent prayers of penance, hoping they might resonate with whatever enlightened presence was on hand to receive them.

It was not his first visit to the temple. Bishan Singh had introduced it to him on one of their many excursions around the city. It was within walking distance of the Jyoti Apartments, and he was repeatedly drawn to it as a haven of peace and tranquility, far removed from the frenetic din of the city and the jangling clamor of his thoughts.

He had hesitated before entering it t his morning. Following the drive back from Sewri—an excruciating ride during which he had rebuffed Sedgwick with a stony, unapproachable silence—he’d spent the remainder of the night in a sleepless stupor, roaming through the streets and winding lanes of the Malabar Hill neighborhood before coming to a stop in front of the temple as dawn was breaking.

After the night he had just spent, the brutality he had witnessed and the violence he had committed, Conor wondered if even his presence on the temple’s threshold might be a polluting influence, an outrageous insult to the Jain religion’s prescriptive path of peace and nonviolence. He had almost convinced himself that it was when a single phrase of prayer came to mind.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. a broken and a contrite heart, Oh God, thou wilt not despise.

It was a line from one of the psalms his mother often recited, a prayer of penance and of praise for an all-powerful, endless mercy. His knees buckled with the sensation of homesick loneliness that flooded over him. He wondered how she was and how much further the cancer might have progressed, and he ached for the comforting rhythms of her quiet voice.

He wouldn’t have called her now, even if Frank had not forbidden it. It was too painful to consider how his evasions and awkward silences would affect her, but as he stood on the steps of the temple, he could almost hear what she would tell him. Seek refuge. Accept mercy. Grant the forgiveness you ask for yourself.

He couldn’t talk to her directly, but he could still feel a transcendent circuitry connecting them in a way that was as mysterious as it was powerful. Without understanding it, he knew it would always be there. In obedience and relief, he climbed the temple steps and entered into its sanctuary.

He felt a greater sense of composure now than when he’d first arrived and watched as the little girl and her mother completed their
puja
ritual. He gave an answering wave to her salute of farewell as they headed for the street and moved out of sight.

“How was I somehow knowing that I would find you here, my friend?”

Conor turned at the sound of the rich, baritone voice and smiled. “Becoming a creature of habit, I guess. How are you, Bishan Singh?”

“I am well. You are not well.” The burly Sikh positioned his tongue against his teeth to produce a sound somewhere between a chirp and a smack. “This whatever-it-is nighttime work is not good for you,
yaar
. You have eyes that are sinking into your head, and you are becoming thin. What have you taken for food today?”