The Virtuosic Spy 01 - Deceptive Cadence (15 page)

“Now that you mention it, I haven’t taken a bloody thing.” Conor straightened up, realized he was hungry, and looked hopefully at his friend. “Did you have something in mind?”

“Yes, come, come. We will eat in the garden. I have ordered already some Punjabi foods from the
dhaba
, just there.”

Bishan’s hand signaled an indefinable location for a restaurant that might have been anywhere within the city limits of Mumbai, but it was good enough for Conor. The mere mention of “Punjabi foods” had already started him salivating.

“Sounds good to me. Lead on, Bishan.”

The Ferozeshah Mehta Gardens of Mumbai, more commonly known as the Hanging Gardens, was a gentle transition from the serene atmosphere of the Jain temple. A terraced garden that sloped up Malabar Hill and provided picturesque vistas of the city and the Arabian Sea, it was a popular but still relatively peaceful gathering spot for Mumbaikers.

After eating, they rested on the grass under the hot sun. Before long, the strain of the previous hours produced their inevitable effects, and Conor found it impossible to keep his eyes open.

Without remembering how he got there, he woke some time later, flat on his stomach with his face pillowed against his arms. He rolled onto his back and saw Bishan, his arm resting on one knee, holding a large square of cardboard over Conor’s face to shield it from the sun.

“How long have you been holding that?” Conor asked.
 

“Hmm.” Bishan consulted his watch. “Some forty-five minutes now.”

Conor groaned and sat up. “Shit. Sorry,
yaar
. Why didn’t you wake me? You’re making me look like some pampered dick of a tourist.”

“A pampered dick of a tourist, I would have roused.” Bishan said with unassailable logic. “A friend who is tired and ill, I would not.”

“I’m not ill. Tired, I’ll grant you, but not ill.”

“There are many different kinds of illness, Con-ji,” his friend said, quietly.

“Just like there’s more than one kind of courage?” Conor muttered.

“
Kyaa
? What is this?”

“Nothing. It doesn’t matter.” Conor rubbed his hands over his face. “Sorry. I understand what you’re saying.”

“I will work now for a few hours.” Bishan stood up and stretched, his powerful, thick chest straining against the buttons of his shirt. “Come home with me this evening. Meera will brew a tea for you. She has many Ayurvedic skills. My daughter Aashirya will play soothing music. We will make you well.”

Conor could not answer immediately. The simple expression of friendship, coming at a moment when he both needed and felt unworthy of it, moved him to strangled speechlessness.

There was something else he needed to do that evening, though—something he needed more than friendship.

“Thank you. I’d like that,” he said, when he could trust his voice. “But there’s also another place I need to go tonight.”

Bishan gave another loud smacking chirp, its note of exasperation transparently clear.

“No, it isn’t the usual thing,” Conor reassured him. “There’s something else . . . ”

He trailed off, helplessly. He wasn’t sure himself why after all this time he needed to see Kavita Kotwal. He only knew it was important.

A
FTER
DINNER
WITH
Bishan’s family, they left for Mahim. Since Kavita was married to Pawan-bhai—whose gang was in direct competition with Khalil’s—Sedgwick had forbidden Conor to have any further contact with her. Although she was in no way involved in her husband’s activities, any relations with his family would be tantamount to consorting with the enemy.

It was an argument that had lost a good deal of its power to influence at that point. When Bishan dropped him off in front of Kavita’s building, Conor felt a sad sense of nostalgia for the whimsical innocence of his first visit and began to understand why he was there.

As he climbed the stairs to the third floor, he could hear his pulse pounding in his ears. It was not very late—a little after nine o’clock—but the apartment building seemed strangely quiet. There was the smell of something baking on one floor, something with cardamom and ginger, and on the next, someone was burning incense. The air was full of scents and seemed crowded with things he couldn’t see, but the only sounds he heard were his steps against the stone floor and the drumbeat of blood inside his head.

On the third floor landing, he looked down the hall at the Kotwal flat and saw that the door was open. The interior was lit with a soft, golden glow. He came in to the small vestibule just inside the door, and before continuing, he removed his boots and placed them with the sandals lining the wall.

She was alone, sitting in a straight-backed chair facing the household shrine. He had arrived at the end of her evening aarti, the worship service offering light to the gods. Camphor wicks—soaked in ghee and burning in front of the deity— provided the room’s sole source of light. Her hands fingered a string of Hindu prayer beads that lay in her lap, and her lips soundlessly moved to form the words of a mantra. Her face, with the candlelight flickering around it, was radiant.

He watched her for almost a full minute until she opened her eyes and turned to him with a quiet, unsurprised smile.

“There you are,” Kavita murmured, as if he had been there all along.

He crossed the room to her. Kneeling, he brushed his fingers over her feet and touched his chest. He spoke to her in Hindi. “
Namaste
. It’s good to see you looking so well,
ji
.”
   

“How nicely you greet me,” she said, with a mischievous tilt of her head. “I am also glad to see you, Con.”
 

“It’s . . . my good name is actually Conor.”

“Yes. This also is a fine name. Conor.” Kavita’s smile grew even brighter for a moment, but then her face softened. “As Con, or as Conor, you are most gladly, most tenderly welcome, but you are so much changed. What have you been doing that has made your good face this tired and sad?”

“Things I’d be ashamed to tell you, even if I could,” he whispered, struggling to control an emotion building inside him. “
Dil gira kahin per
. My heart has fallen somewhere, Kavita-ji. I can’t . . . I don’t know what to do.”

She took his hands into her lap, and holding them, wrapped the beads around his fingers. “Not fallen. Only heavy. Your heart has not gone missing,
beta
. It is just too, too heavy with love. Love that needs a river to sail on, to let it float and breathe and take it where it is meant to go.”

She continued speaking softly to him, but as soon as she’d spoken the word
beta
—the word son—the struggle had ended. He lowered his head onto her hands and wept.

14

T
HE
AUTO
-
RICKSHAW
WAS
STILL
A
GOOD
FIVE
BLOCKS
FROM
where he needed to be, but it was hopelessly mired in a traffic jam that had suddenly materialized on MG Road. He didn’t feel much like walking the rest of the way, but he was already late, and ahead in the distance, he could see a familiar figure pacing in front of the spot he should have reached twenty minutes earlier.

Conor pressed a handful of rupees into the driver’s palm with a few words of thanks and headed for the sidewalk without a backward glance. He couldn’t spare any energy for haggling—whatever he had left might be needed for an argument with his controlling officer.

The call on the mobile earlier that day—the second he had ever received—had been an unwelcome surprise, first because it was three days early. Sedgwick had left the city more than a week ago, ostensibly headed to Dubai for meetings with Ahmed Khalil and his business associates. Conor didn’t know if that story was true or not, but he didn’t care. He had been enjoying the respite, both from Sedgwick and at least one part of his undesirable duties, and he’d expected it to last until the end of the week.

His second objection to the call was that it began with a demand for a meeting with no defined purpose. It was all too reminiscent of the last time his boss had phoned him, and that episode had not ended well. His first reaction was refusal, which, not surprisingly, was an unacceptable response from Sedgwick’s point of view. Conor finally agreed to meet him in front of the Bombay Gymkhana at eight that evening, but to exercise some level of control, before leaving the flat, he had placed the Walther handgun inside a biscuit tin in his kitchen cupboard.

The packed crowd of pedestrians was moving only slightly faster than the auto-rickshaw, and when he arrived at the entrance to the city’s premier sporting club, Sedgwick was almost vibrating with impatience.

“Where have you been? You’re a half hour late.”

“Lost track of time.” Conor met Sedgwick’s accusatory glare with a diffident shrug. “I seem to recall waiting around for you more than once. How was Dubai? Business booming?” The pivot was intentional but too weak to divert the closer scrutiny he’d hoped to avoid. He didn’t want to admit he’d fallen asleep on his balcony and would still be there if a boisterous gecko had not landed on his neck. He’d assembled the elements of his bodyguard persona in something of a rush, and as Sedgwick’s trained, critical eye swept over him, Conor hoped he didn’t look as disheveled as he felt.

“Dubai was just fine. You’re looking pretty peaked there, Finnegan. Something bothering you?”

Conor rolled his eyes. He had insisted that the agent stop addressing him by his real surname, so Sedgwick’s new habit was to make use of assorted nicknames drawn from his knowledge of Irish drinking songs, which was surprisingly extensive. He’d accepted the eccentricity without further protest. It was mildly entertaining to see how many his boss could come up with, and it had been helpful in easing the discomfort between them after the incident at Sewri.

“Nothing more than the usual,” he said candidly. “Just feeling a bit fuzzy at the edges.”

Sedgwick snorted. “You should pay more attention to what you put in your mouth. The stuff I’ve seen you eat, I’m surprised you haven’t come down with amoebic dysentery before now.”

“You just haven’t my sense of culinary adventure,” Conor said with a fleeting smile. “Anyway, it’s not my stomach.”

“No?” The suspicion in Sedgwick’s voice became more pronounced. “Then what have you been up to today that’s got you feeling fuzzy?”

With an inward sigh, Conor prepared for another of the verbal sparring matches they’d been having for weeks. The truth was that he had been “up to” the same thing almost every day for nearly two months. By night, he was a demoralized amalgamation of an Irish farmer imitating an intelligence agent who was pretending to be a soldier of fortune. By day, he was finding a temporary escape and some small measure of redemption in an unlikely place—the sprawling slum-metropolis of Dharavi.

He’d sought out Kavita Kotwal without understanding why, but from the moment he reached her doorway, Conor had known he was where he needed to be. She had begun helping him the very next morning simply by giving him the opportunity of doing something useful. She had directed him to the small network of health clinics sprinkled throughout the
zopadpatti
, as Mumbai’s slums were called, and he had been volunteering almost daily ever since, going wherever she sent him or following where she led.

The work provided a productive outlet for his restlessness and offered more satisfaction than he felt about anything else at this point. The assignment of tracking his brother and coaxing him to give up his secrets was bogged down in an unproductive strategy that made less sense the longer it continued, and the strange passivity of the controlling officer who was responsible for moving it along had begun to rouse an unfocused suspicion.

Having a daytime occupation that generated some positive karma to balance against the things he did at night was a welcome diversion, but his association with Kavita was yet another clandestine activity he had to manage. He met Sedgwick’s eyes with a steady, bland gaze.

“I didn’t do much today, really. Read a book. Hung about with Bishan for a while.”

“What did you read?”

“The
Bhagavad Gita
. As you recommended.”

“So I did.” Sedgwick gave him a cagey smile. “You know it’s funny, because I ran into Bishan down at the Gateway earlier. He didn’t mention he’d seen you today.”

“Probably because I hadn’t yet. I just came from having a beer with him at the Leopold. Funny, he didn’t mention seeing you.”

Sedgwick gave in with a roll of his eyes, and Conor smiled. With lies and half-truths, they had dueled each other to a draw once again.

“Where are we going, anyway?”

“We’re already there.” Sedgwick indicated the club’s entrance with a jerk of his chin. “See? I told you not to worry. It’s the most respectable place in the whole city. Nobody’s going to get shellacked or shot up in the Bombay Gymkhana. The reservation in the dining hall is for nine, so we’ve got about thirty minutes if you want to hit the bar.”

“You mean you’re wanting to eat here?” Conor looked at the building with reluctance.

Sedgwick raised an eyebrow. “That’s generally what they do in the dining hall. You got a problem with it?”

“No, not a problem, exactly, it’s just that I . . . ehm, I’m not really . . . ” As a familiar tickle shot up through his chest, Conor turned aside and cupped his hands over several hard, barking coughs. Sedgwick flinched in surprise.

“Jesus, still? Sounds worse than it did a week ago. I would have thought you’d be over it by now.”

“I would have thought so too,” he said when he could talk again.

The cough had not particularly concerned him, at first. His susceptibility to respiratory ailments was above average, dating from a childhood bout with pneumonia and no doubt bolstered by a tenacious cigarette habit. For a while, the present bug had been no more remarkable than any other, but it seemed to be trending in the wrong direction, and that, along with a number of other symptoms—fatigue, weight loss, and a sporadically recurrent fever—had finally captured his attention.