Warrior Knight

by Aarti V Raman

  Timing, as they said, was everything.

  The packet had to be delivered exactly seven minutes before Wood could make an appearance, dressed as a meter-checker. Then, Wood had gone down underneath the car, God, it was a beaut, and quickly attached the device to the necessary wires, splicing where needed.

  Two minutes’ work and the remote was activated.

  All Wood had to do was wait. Wood couldn’t be caught anywhere in the vicinity, that had been drummed by Tom Jones.

  Never be caught at your scene of crime. If caught, deny, deny, deny.

  So, Wood had run. Run far and fast, and then, stopping for breath at an intersection, waited for the wail of sirens and panic.

  It had come exactly five minutes later.

  Wood smiled; a triumphant, deranged smile on the face of an officer of the law.

  Krivi Iyer was dead.

  Now, nothing was going to stand in the way of Wood achieving the truest form of greatness this world had ever seen.

  That of creation.

  And destruction.

  Twenty-Four

  Ziya woke up with a soundless gasp.

  She put a hand in front of her face and couldn’t see a damn thing.

  Her mind, still sluggish, shied away from the darkness as if it was death itself. Panic and hysteria mingled inside her throat, wanting to come out in a scream that rendered infinity meaningless.

  Ziya put a hand to her aching throat, tried to swallow. She must have made some small sound because a low light snapped on and a dark, forbidding form, silhouetted the doorway.

  Ziya shrank back against the bed, clutching the bed covers to her ticking throat.

  “It’s me,” Krivi said, gravely.

  He made no move to come closer. He just stood there, a presence, solid and immovable between this room and the rest of the world.

  Before she could let herself think otherwise, Ziya was glad. Simply glad that he was there. He was there.

  “Krivi?” she whispered.

  He nodded. “Can I come in?”

  She nodded.

  He came in, slowly, cautiously, as if he was approaching a dangerous wild creature. Or a bomb that was about to go off at any second. He stopped at the edge of the bed and looked down at her.

  Nothing visible on his face except a kind of brotherly concern. “How are you feeling?”

  She looked up at him, lost and vulnerable in a way that tore at his emotions.

  Her eyes were crazed, as her brain was waking up, slowly, slowly, making her aware of tiny things. Little things, like she wasn’t in her room at the Saiyed home on Grosvenor Street. Like the scratchy feel of the motel blanket. And the hardness of the mattress he had laid her down on with infinite care.

  Like the fact that she was not wearing her own clothes anymore, but an overly large tee shirt. So she did look like a frightened little child against the swathing material.

  “I…I don’t know.”

  Ziya put a hand up to her eyes and pressed, hard.

  The pain centered her, made her brain come alive. But that wasn’t good because with the life came memory and she didn’t want to remember. She didn’t want to remember…

  ~~~~~~~

  He put a hand on her shoulder and she startled violently. Shuddering under his brief touch.

  Krivi immediately took his hand back and sat down, gingerly on the edge of the bed. “Ziya, are you hungry?”

  She shook her head, still clutching the sheets to her neck as if it was some sort of armor against whatever awaited her.

  In the dim light, he could see the way her knuckles stood out against the white sheets. The bones sticking out under the pressure with which she was holding onto it.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “It’s quite late, Ziya. You should have something.”

  “I don’t want anything.”

  He put his hands up, as she hugged the headboard, her back sticking to it like QwikFast. She was a small lump of sheets and gray eyes. It was heartrendingly painful to see.

  “Okay. You don’t have to eat anything. Do you want to maybe…take a shower? There’s a nice clean bathroom over there.”

  Ziya swallowed, several times. The sound very audible in the turgid silence of the room. “I…”

  “It’s okay if you don’t want to,” he rushed to reassure her. “But I got you your favorite shampoo. Citrus Essence from Biolage.” He tried to keep his voice even and non-threatening. But he had trouble forming words.

  God, what had just happened!

  He was a terrible monster, after all.

  “A shower sounds good.” She was a little animated. Barely.

  Krivi nodded briskly, glad to have some sort of action.

  He couldn’t stand the lifelessness, the utter stillness in her. He had checked in on her every half an hour for the last six hours, since she’d passed out in his arms in the cab.

  The motel, which was on the outskirts of Manchester, was a safe-house of sorts and he had been aware of its existence for years now.

  He was also very worried because he couldn’t get through to Harold.

  “How about I go start the shower? You can come in when you’re ready.”

  Ziya didn’t nod, but he took her silence as assent and went about his new task.

  ~~~~~~

  Ziya sat in the middle of the bed, lethargy invading her limbs, her very veins until every breath was an effort she didn’t want to make. The pain of the truth was a pressure behind her eyelids, her brain that wanted to implode. Just implode with the awfulness of what had just occurred.

  No, not awfulness.

  The impossibility.

  What had happened couldn’t have happened because it wasn’t possible.

  Noor was getting engaged on Sunday.

  She and Sam were going to go to different Army bases in India and raise a brood of brats who had Sam’s patience and Noor’s eyes. Sam had always maintained he loved Noor’s green eyes more than anything in the world.

  More than anything in the world…

  Ziya shuddered.

  A long, continuous shudder that didn’t stop. It just didn’t stop.

  It started in her fingers, which trembled, traveled up to her shoulders which started shaking and continued down, down to her frozen heart, her frozen feet. No sound emerged from her throat as she shivered, shivered as if her bones were breaking inside of her.

  Krivi found her like that two seconds later.

  Rocking, back and forth, in a pendulum motion, her red hair a grotesque contrast to the rest of her.

  All dead.

  All grieving.

  ~~~~~~

  Tom was furious.

  He was murderously angry, and it took a lot for him to get to the point when he wanted to kill someone. Especially, Wood.

  But, right now, he wanted Wood dead.

  “Sorry, dad,” Wood said, over the bad burner phone connection.

  There was no way Wood was going to use even a secure phone to call Tom.

  “Do you have any idea what you have done, Wood? Any goddamn idea? You left a calling card, which might as well have your name on it.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me they were sending someone after me?” Wood asked back.

  “They have been sending someone after you for years now. Have I ever let you get caught?”

  “No,” Wood conceded.

  Wood paced the tiny stall at Heathrow’s restrooms, waiting for the flight to Mexico to be called. It was late by fifteen minutes. And, now, with Tom’s resounding warnings, Wood wanted to be off English soil as soon as possible.

  “Then why the fuck did you want to take matters into your own hands and go after the MI5 agent?”

  Wood shrugged.

  “Because he thought he could come after me. I am good at what I do, dad. I won’t have some two-bit, ex-spy screw up my plans.”

  “What plans?” Tom demanded immediately.

  Wood cursed silently. “No plans, dad. It was a figure of s
peech. I am sorry. I shouldn’t have acted so impulsively. But, I am bored. So damn bored. And you won’t let me take on any new assignments. And I just…” Wood sighed.

  “I am sorry.”

  “Get your butt back to Mexico and barricade yourself inside that hotel room with your pequena. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes.” Wood was peeved, but there was no arguing with Tom when he was this cold, this angry.

  “Do you understand me, Wood?”

  Wood nodded vigorously, even though the gesture couldn’t be seen over the phone. “Yes, sir, I understand. I am not stepping out till we get to Tibet. Yes?”

  “Good. And don’t let me hear of any more messes you have left in your wake. Or I swear to God I will put a bullet between your eyes myself. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Wood grinned, because the last had been said with mild exasperation and annoyance. A typical dad’s reaction.

  The flight was called, Wood dismantled the phone. Removed the battery and threw it in the waste disposal bin. Flushed the SIM card down one of the urinals and the rest of the phone, the body, was crushed under the heel of five-inch rubber-soled combat boots.

  When Wood left the toilet to walk down to the appropriate terminal, there was no triumph visible on the security camera that caught the mustached, bearded man in a black overcoat and dark glasses covering half his face. The image was a blur at best, because Wood had mapped out the cameras long before and knew how to get from point A to point B without setting off international alarms.

  Wood knew without any false pride, that a career as a terrorist required a degree of paranoia that was probably found in the deepest circles of Hell.

  That’s what made it so much fun.

  Twenty-Five

  Krivi scooped Ziya off the bed, bedclothes and all and carried her inside to the bathroom in five quick steps.

  She weighed almost nothing, as if the last few hours had leached all the substance, all the blood, bone and muscle out of her. He knew she was built; he had undressed her, taking care to avert his eyes because of the terrible gravity of the situation.

  But she had been near naked in his arms before, so he knew how perfect she really was.

  Yet, right now, she was insubstantial.

  A feather-weight.

  He stood her upright on the cold tiles and she swayed.

  He caught her, and she fought him off. Throwing his hands off her arms with a violent, animal motion. The bedclothes came off too, so she stood just in his tee shirt that came up to her thighs, her legs enticingly bare underneath.

  He was ashamed, sick, that he was even able to think of something as prosaic and lovely as her legs at this time.

  ~~~~~~

  Ziya’s eyes turned inward, and she stood with her arms at her sides, unsure of what she was supposed to do next.

  She was aware of the cold floor under her feet that was freezing her toes one by one. Shooting sharp pains up her arches and into her ankles. Was aware too that she was wearing some sort of garment that did not belong to her. It was too large, too roomy and she felt strangely naked in it.

  But she couldn’t bother thinking about it.

  She couldn’t even move, couldn’t breathe.

  Krivi reached out and put a hand to the side of her head.

  She flinched at his touch as if he had hit her.

  He didn’t react. He just slid his hand down and came away with a bit of chocolate wrapper.

  “Your head,” she said, speaking with a hollowness she was feeling. “It’s not bleeding anymore.”

  He nodded. “I took care of it while you were sleeping.”

  “Okay.”

  She still stood, staring at him. Through him. Her eyes pale and glassy, her face pasty from oversleeping, shock and grief. Her body so fragile she thought she would break into a hundred pieces if she moved wrong.

  ~~~~~~

  “You should…get into the shower. I think the water’s warm enough.”

  “Okay.”

  But she didn’t move…as if she had forgotten how to walk.

  “Ziya.” His voice was purposefully brisk, because she needed have some normalcy right now.

  Kindness would kill her. And he wasn’t even sure he had it in him to be kind.

  Even to her.

  “Get in the shower.”

  “Okay.”

  But this time she walked backwards into the glass stall and stood under the pouring, rushing water. The thin cotton tee shirt was sticking to her curvaceous body like a second skin in seconds and he was aroused despite himself.

  He made to leave, when she said his name in a low voice.

  A nothing voice.

  “Krivi.”

  “Yeah?”

  He hated that his breathing was heavy, that he couldn’t stand to look at her without wanting her. When she was this vulnerable, when she was this broken.

  He was the monster here.

  “Don’t go.”

  He turned to look back at her.

  Through the hazy curtain of water and a glass door, the black tee shirt, a vivid slash of color against the white tiles. And she stood under the water, letting it beat on her head while she looked at him, simply looked at him.

  Yearningly, silently, with such bottomless grief, there was no name, no outlet for it.

  Krivi didn’t say a word.

  He just backed to the door, slid it shut and then sat down, with his back against it. Watching her, just watching her, while she stood under the water.

  Letting it beat down on her head like the tears that were supposed to tear her eyes out and make her blind.

  ~~~~~

  Harold called at one am.

  Krivi finally slid into an uneasy doze, resting on the edge of the bed, while Ziya lay in the middle. Swaddled under yet another of his tee shirts, black, and the bedclothes.

  They had not exchanged a single word and he really didn’t know what to say to her, how to approach her. So he just let her be.

  She lay on the bed, wakeful, staring, staring at the ceiling, till her perilously thin lids flipped shut of their own accord. And he knew she was sleeping only because the covers moved with her wispy breathing.

  He himself couldn’t manage proper sleep because the events of the day were catching up with him.

  Shame and guilt, old brothers, had made their reappearance. Taken up residence in his gut where the tiniest residue of courage still remained.

  The phone, still clasped loosely in his palm, buzzed, breaking the stillness of the night. He thumbed it open before the unnatural noise could wake her up.

  “Yeah?” he murmured, in a soundless whisper.

  “It’s me. Hal.”

  “Gimme a sec.”

  Krivi moved off the bed and into the bathroom, opening the door as softly as he could manage, then he sat down on the commode, keeping the door open, because he didn’t want Ziya to wake up and find herself all alone. He knew what that kind of disorientation could do to a person.

  “Where the fuck have you been, Harold?” He kept a weather eye on the bedroom.

  “I heard. I’ve been trying to get intel on what went down, so I was unreachable. Sorry, Krivi.”

  Harold was matter-of-fact and it somehow helped steady Krivi right that second.

  “What went down, Harold? Give it to me straight.”

  “Standard ignition-delay bomb. About a pound of explosive. Placed underneath your car. Registered in the name of an Argentinean national, Maartel, Juan.”

  “They had to have tampered with it maybe twenty minutes before we came out. It’s the only logical explanation.”

  “The timer was for seven minutes.”

  “The Woodpecker.”

  Harold didn’t deny the flat statement.

  “I am going to kill him with my bare hands, Harold.”

  “We are combing airport manifests right now, bus terminals, train lists. The trail, as you can expect is stone cold. He doesn’t leave any finger
prints behind. The FRTs are looking for you. You and Miss Maarten. We need you to come in, Iyer.”

  Krivi shook his head.

  “No. I am not bringing Ziya in. I will come in, in a week or so and we can do a full debrief. Although I can tell you right now, that there wasn’t anything or anyone suspicious loitering near my car yesterday. We were secluded in the back booth of Xenia’s for about a couple of hours.” He took a steadying breath. “And Ziya doesn’t know anything.”

  “There was a stub, a tiny fragment of a meter ticket that we’re piecing together right now. It might have been stuck to your car. We aren’t sure yet.”

  Krivi sat up straighter. “Have you interviewed the shop owners, the passersby?”

  “There were about two hundred people on that block, Krivi. It is going to take some time to gather evidence and statements from every single one of them. That’s why we need you to come in. And bring Ziya Maarten too. You know as well as I do, that this was personal.”

  Krivi was silent.

  “The Woodpecker has sent you a message, Iyer. What do you think he is going to do next?”

  “I will keep her safe, Harold. You can’t expect me to believe that I can’t keep her safe.”

  “Yes, but for how long? A month. A year. Fifteen years? You need to end this. You can’t keep on looking over your shoulder forever. And you can’t make her do it. It isn’t fair.”

  “She is a strong, capable woman who has been taking care of herself all her life.”

  “She is a woman who just lost her best friend, her only real family in a horrific manner. Are you telling me she hasn’t gone to pieces yet?”

  Again, Krivi was silent.

  “Bring her in. We will keep her safe, while you and I hunt that excuse for an animal down. Jesus, Krivi. We are still at a dead end. Dammit!” Harold’s posh accent turned the words into clipped shots. “He slipped into Britain, into fucking London like a goddamn wraith, rigged your car to blow it up sky high and then slipped right back out! We need some divine goddamn intervention if we are to stop him.