Vanalika listened intently to what Sam had to say. He was grateful to see the undercurrent of disbelief dissipate and be replaced by a look of shock and fear. She had evidently agreed to accept the fundamental truth of what he was telling her.
“What can I do?” she asked, when he had finished.
Sam pulled William Christiansen’s brand-new passport out of his jacket pocket and laid it on the table between them.
“I need a visa for India. And I need it quickly. Lena’s in trouble.”
Vanalika picked up the passport and flipped it open to the page with Sam’s picture and the data for William Christiansen. Then she slipped it into her purse.
“Is that all?” she asked.
“No. I need a plane ticket for Mumbai. I don’t dare use my own credit cards, and if I bought a ticket for India with cash . . . even if I had the cash . . . it would trigger all sorts of unwelcome alarms with Homeland Security. They pay special attention to those kinds of purchases. It would be better if the flight isn’t leaving from Dulles. I don’t know how carefully Argus is looking for me, but if they’re watching any airport, they’re watching Dulles. It would be better to fly out of Chicago or even Atlanta, one of the really busy airports. Can you help me?”
Vanalika reached out and took his hand, abandoning all pretense that they were nothing more than professional colleagues.
“Of course, my friend,” she said, with an expression that managed to convey both concern for Sam and disappointment that he would ever have doubted her. “It may take me a couple of days to fix the visa, and I’ll book us on the first flight to Mumbai out of Atlanta. We can fly out of Baltimore to make the connection.”
“We?”
“Sam, my dear, you don’t think I’d let you do this alone. I’m going with you.”
• • •
It took two days, forty-eight hours that to Sam seemed to stretch out into years. The waiting was painful, but Sam did not know what else to do. He had a plan, once he made it to Mumbai. Until then, however, there was nothing he could do but wait.
Between the tension of the long wait and the strain of the twenty-hour trip from BWI in Baltimore to Atlanta to Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai, Sam was completely drained by the time he and Vanalika deplaned. That Vanalika had booked business-class tickets helped. She never flew steerage. Vanalika had invented a family emergency to explain her absence to the embassy. She had laughed when Sam had asked her what she had told her husband. “Rajiv doesn’t care what I do as long as I don’t embarrass him,” she said.
There was one more hurdle ahead of them. The United States did not check the passports of outgoing international travelers against the computer database. Both the airline and TSA looked at the picture and matched the name on the passport with the name on the ticket, but that was it. Here in Mumbai, the immigration official behind the Plexiglas screen would actually run the passport through a scanner linked to a computer that would verify the legitimacy of the travel document. There was no reason that William Christiansen’s passport should not show up in the system as valid. But Sam had not had the chance to test it.
He and Vanalika had to queue separately, Sam in the line for foreigners and Vanalika in the line for returning Indian nationals. When it was his turn, he stepped up to the booth and presented his unused passport to the Indian immigration officer with what he hoped was a studied nonchalance. He watched with trepidation, however, as the official flipped through the brand-new passport, studied the visa with what looked to Sam like suspicion, and then placed it on the scanner. Sam could see the bright light shining through around the edges as the computer read the lines of code printed at the bottom of the page with his picture and compared it against the information in the traveler database. Sam could not see what information appeared on the computer screen.
The immigration officer looked at him and compared his picture to what was in the passport.
“Are you here on business or pleasure?” he asked.
“Business. Just a few days.”
The official hesitated. Then he stamped the passport and slipped it back through the shallow gap in the glass.
“Enjoy your stay,” he said.
Sam had made it to India.
• • •
He met up with Vanalika at baggage claim. Sam caught a glimpse of his reflection in a mirror that he suspected was one-way glass with Indian customs officials on the other side looking for drug mules. He looked like hell. Vanalika looked like a billion rupees.
“How can you look that good after a twenty-hour flight?” he asked.
“Sleep, Sam. You should try it sometime.”
“I can’t sleep. All I can think about is Lena.”
She took his hand.
“I know.”
The Mumbai airport was the same wild mix of people that Sam remembered with such fondness from his time at the consulate. An elderly Tamil woman in an ornate gold sari stood guard over a brood of half a dozen grandchildren as their parents struggled to manage a small mountain of luggage. A gaggle of businessmen in Western suits and ten-thousand-rupee haircuts checked their messages obsessively on multiple devices. And an enormous Sikh with a tangerine-colored turban and a thick black beard leaned against a pillar as though he were propping it up.
This was Mumbai. Ancient and modern. Spiritual and material. A contradiction wrapped in a paradox inside an oxymoron.
Sam saw the big Sikh again at customs. He was in the express lane for travelers without luggage. So what had he been doing waiting in baggage claim?
But by the time Sam and Vanalika had cleared customs, the Sikh was nowhere to be seen. Sam chastised himself for jumping at shadows. He was just nervous. He needed to stay focused. He needed to find his girl.
The terminal was air-conditioned and looked like the international arrivals area at any major airport on the planet. The moment the door to the outside opened, however, Sam knew they were in India. The heat and humidity and India’s incomparable layers of smell—diesel fumes, spices, and raw sewage—hit him in the face like a blow. Even Vanalika wrinkled her nose.
“I’ve been in Washington for too long,” she said.
“You’ll get used to it again quickly,” Sam promised.
They took a cab to the hotel. The cab had its own unpleasant odor that it layered on top of Mumbai’s. It smelled like someone had lit a fire in a diaper pail. India had its sensual pleasures, but few of them were olfactory.
Vanalika had wanted to book them a room at the Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai’s icon of luxury. Sam had wanted something much lower profile and had been able to talk her down as far as the Holiday Inn. Camping, she called it.
They checked into their room. Mumbai was such a big city and far enough from Vanalika’s social circles in New Delhi that they did not feel compelled to book separate rooms. Sam showered and changed into khaki slacks and a light cotton shirt with short sleeves. When Vanalika finished her shower, she laid a green linen shift out on the bed.
“You’re going to want to wear pants for where we’re going,” Sam warned. “And boots.”
“And just where is that?”
“Dharavi.”
“How interesting.”
• • •
They took a cab to the slum. The class of cabs that the hotel called for guests was a notch or two higher than what they would have been able to flag down on the street. This one had air-conditioning. Unfortunately, it also had a working radio and the driver made no move to turn down the volume on the Indian pop music he seemed to favor.
Sam rolled down the window. Vanalika looked at him quizzically.
“My daughter is out there somewhere,” he explained. “I can’t wall myself off from this city. I used to know it well, but it’s been too long. I need to get back in touch with it if I’m going to find her.”
Vanal
ika did not say anything in response, but she rolled down her window as well and let the smells and sounds and the feel of Mumbai waft into the cab.
The driver did not protest. He just turned off the air-conditioning and turned up the music. It would save him a few rupees.
In the rearview mirror, Sam caught a flash of tangerine in a car following two or three spaces behind them. But when he turned for a better look, he could not see anything.
“What is it?” Vanalika asked.
“Nothing. I’m just jumpy is all.”
The cab let them off at the entrance to the slum that Sam had specified. They crossed a shaky wooden bridge over a canal filled with scum and garbage. At the far side of the bridge, a beggar boy with no legs plied his miserable trade. Sam knew that Lena crossed this bridge regularly on her way to work. No doubt, she passed this boy every day. Sam put some rupees in his bowl for luck.
Vanalika was putting on a brave face, but she was clearly discomfited by the squalor of the slum and the garbage piled up along the side of the narrow alleyways. This was a different India than the one she knew. An India that the elite would just as soon pretend did not exist.
“Do you want to go back to the hotel?” he asked. “I can do this next part alone.”
“No,” Vanalika said, visibly trying to adjust to the unfamiliar environment in her own country. “I can handle this.” She lengthened her stride. Where she had been mincing on the balls of her feet, now she was walking. She loosened her shoulders, which had been tensed up. Vanalika was wealthy and privileged, Sam thought, but that did not mean that she wasn’t tough too.
When Lena had decided to move back to Mumbai, she had told Sam that she wanted to live in Dharavi. Sam had tried to talk her out of it. It was no place for a young American woman, or even a half-American woman, to live. In truth, it was no place for anyone to live. The apartment right on the edge of the slum district was a compromise of sorts. Sam understood the pull of Dharavi and the hold that the district had on her sense of self. Her roots were here. Roots that she needed to explore.
He felt her absence so powerfully that he wanted to scream. That was not what Lena needed from him, he knew. She needed him to find her. I’m coming for you, baby.
It had been years since he had been on these streets. He had been meaning to visit Lena, but something had always seemed to get in the way. There had been changes, of course, but the basic feel of the slum was the same and the route he took was a familiar one. He had walked it many times when he had been responsible for human rights reporting in the American consulate in what had then been Bombay.
The three-story building was made from an eclectic mixture of materials, and if it had an architectural style, it would have been called “Indian Expedient.” It was the home and office of his friend Jarapundi Ramananda.
“What is this place?” Vanalika asked, when Sam stopped in front of the building. “Was this where Lena was living?” The Brahmin in her clearly had trouble believing that anyone would subject themselves to these kinds of conditions voluntarily.
“No. Lena’s apartment was probably not as nice as this. This is a friend’s house. I think he can help us.”
“Really?” she asked, with undisguised skepticism. “What does he do?”
“He’s a criminal.”
“How interesting.”
Ramananda was sitting at a table on the first floor when Sam and Vanalika walked in. There was a glass of water on the table in front of him and a half-empty bottle. It was hot and stuffy inside. A pedestal fan in one corner tried heroically to circulate the air, but succeeded only in buffeting the flies. Sam thought Vanalika looked like she might be sick.
Ramananda had not changed much. He had put on more weight and his bald spot had expanded to creep down around his ears, but otherwise he looked pretty much the same. Sam was not surprised to find him in. It had been years since Ramananda had been outside.
When he saw Sam, Ramananda’s eyes widened.
“Sam? Is it you?” he asked. The underworld boss rose from his chair with some effort and embraced his friend. Sam returned the embrace. Ramananda had been a professional contact, but he had also been a genuine friend and Sam was glad to see him.
“It’s been a long time. It’s good to see you, old friend.”
“And who is your new friend, if I might ask?”
“Ramananda, let me present Vanalika Chandra of New Delhi.”
“Charmed,” the Dalit said, taking her hand and shaking it up and down as if he were painting a fence.
Ramananda sat back down at the table, and Sam and Vanalika joined him.
“Nandi,” he shouted. “Bring water for our guests.”
A young boy of maybe ten popped his head in from the back room.
“Right away,” he promised.
Moments later, the boy brought two dusty glasses and another plastic bottle of water over to the table.
“So you got my message,” Ramananda said. “I was worried when I couldn’t reach you.”
“What message, Rama? Was it about Lena? Do you know what’s happened to her?” Sam had hoped desperately that Ramananda could add something, anything, to what Sam already knew that might help him find his daughter. It was a vain hope.
“I only know that she seems to have gone missing. She stopped coming to the school. She hasn’t been home and one of the street boys says she was being followed. The Gummadi brothers swear up and down that they had nothing to do with it, and I have a few people in their organization on my payroll who back them up.”
“Lena’s in trouble. She was taken. But not by the Gummadis. Someone much scarier.” Sam did not even try to hide his disappointment. But there had been no reason to believe that Ramananda knew any more than he did. What mattered was what the Dalit crime boss could find out.
“What’s happened to her? Tell me. And tell me who.” Lena’s godfather was no longer smiling.
“I’ve made some enemies back home. People who are doing some things that I opposed. They are trying to get to me through Lena. Someone who calls himself Zeno has kidnapped her and he’s holding her here in Mumbai.”
Ramananda looked at Sam thoughtfully. His expression was grim. This was a language that he understood.
“How do you know that she’s here?”
“I got a message from the kidnappers. They let Lena speak as proof of life. She said that she was okay, and she was able to communicate to me that she was here.”
“What did she say exactly?”
“She called me Papa Bear,” Sam explained.
“And what does that mean?”
“When she was little and we were living here, we used to play a game. I was Papa Bear and she was Baby Bear and she had to sneak back into the cave when I wasn’t looking. If she made it, she was supposed to shout: Papa Bear, Papa Bear, I’m home. This is the only time that she called me that other than in the taped message from Zeno. She was telling me that she’s home.”
“Are you sure that she didn’t mean Washington?” Ramananda asked.
“No. Mumbai is her home. She’s here. I know it. I need to find her.”
Ramananda did not even bother to ask why Sam didn’t go to the police. It would never have occurred to him to do that either. For those who made Dharavi their home, the police were just one more source of trouble. Sam left out of his story his supposition that militants were planning to explode a nuclear bomb in an Indian city. It was too far-out to present without proof and expect to be taken seriously. All Sam wanted to do was to convey to Ramananda that Lena was in danger and needed his help.
“What can I do?” his friend asked.
“I need you to lend me your network.”
“What will you do?”
“I’m going to find the people who have kidnapped and threatened my little girl.”
“And then?”
/> “I’m going to kill them.”
HILL STATION PRODUCTIONS
MAY 1
Kamran Khan was praying, and he was not succeeding. From the time he found the path to Islam, prayer had offered solace and certainty. It had always been easy for Khan to slip into a state of grace through prayer, freed from earthly worries and cares, secure in the love of Allah. Now the peace and calm of prayer eluded him. He went through the motions and he said the words along with his brothers in jihad, but it was all by rote. His heart was not in it. Worldly thoughts intruded on his efforts to commune with the divine.
Lena.
As he prostrated himself in sujud in the direction of the Kaaba at Mecca and placed his forehead on the prayer rug, it was not Allah he thought of. It was Lena. As he reached out to God, it was Lena’s face that he saw.
Khan had never experienced anything like this. It was more than disconcerting. It was terrifying. He had come to rely on prayer to keep him on the straight path, to guide him through the murky moral swamp of his mission. What was right and what was wrong? How could he know if he could not speak to God if God could not hear him?
He struggled to understand what was happening to him. It was with some chagrin that Khan, who considered himself to be fully Pakistani, or at least fully Baluch, was forced to rely on a purely American idiom.
Lena Trainor was kryptonite.
She made him weak. Uncertain. She made him feel things that he could not afford to feel, things that could endanger his mission.
He thought the others must surely see the confusion on his face as plainly as it was written on his heart. But they could not. Of course, Allah knew. The Quran said: Truly Thou dost know what we conceal and what we reveal: for nothing whatever is hidden from Allah, whether on earth or in heaven. And Khan had so much to conceal.
When the prayers had concluded, Jadoon called Khan aside.
“You and I have a job to do this afternoon,” he said.
“Yes, Jadoon.” Khan did not ask what the job was. When he needed to know, Jadoon would tell him. Asking would only have made him angry.
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