by Fritz Galt
Lena shuddered in Mick’s arms and fell limp against him. She was dead.
He rose slowly to his knees and released her shoulders. Her blonde hair fell splayed out like a sun’s rays radiating from her face.
After several seconds, Rajiv and Swamiji lifted their heads and the three looked numbly at each other.
“We can’t just lie here,” Mick said. “Let’s catch the bastard!”
He marched down to the shore, grimly grabbed the high, pointed stern of the remaining boat and slid the craft into the water. Angrily, Rajiv, Swamiji and two tribal men jumped in with him, and they all grabbed paddles.
Ahead, in the dappled reflection of the setting sun, Abu’s boat floated briskly with the current.
Chapter 31
Alec’s sailboard shot over incoming waves as he steered out toward the sunset. He needed time to say good-bye to the island and to clear his mind before his final meeting with Camille.
The warm sea was choppy, but the further he sailed away from the island, the calmer it grew. Soon he was alone, gliding across the ocean, practically in the Antarctic Sea, with his feet absorbing the bumps and the wind trying to tug the rainbow-colored sail out of his grip.
He sailed parallel to the shoreline and followed Mauritius’ green coastal plain for twenty minutes, his balance good and his arms barely tiring.
He would miss his island posting despite its isolation from the rest of the world. Every place occupied an equally unique position in the world, even if most people didn’t choose to live there. Several events in history had turned Mauritius from a valuable asset into a mere speck of dust in a forgotten backwater. Mauritius was so important in its heyday, that the newly born America had opened its second-ever embassy there on the tiny island. Now the world was waking up to Mauritius all over again.
And yet, he didn’t wish it so. Every diplomat or spy living abroad liked to think that he or she was living in the most important place on earth, where world history turned on the fate of that nation. He was guilty of the same self-aggrandizement, even in Mauritius. In truth, no country was the engine of history, not even the United States. His two years in Mauritius had been a humbling experience.
In the end, he had learned how unimportant it was to let any one country form his identity. As cosmopolitan as he was, he still tended to ally with his current surroundings. In truth, he was no nation, and no nation was him. He was rootless, like a lone sailor drifting on the sea.
No person should strive to be the center of the world, nor should any nation. He didn’t want the world to concentrate its ruinous attention on tiny Mauritius any more than he wished notoriety for himself.
At last, he swung his sail around and headed back up the coast toward the beach, and the dangerous woman who awaited him.
Rajiv sat with his bare feet planted squarely on the bottom of the dugout, and his jaw planted squarely in his fists. His lab coat was smudged into a dusty pastel red.
Darkness enveloped the hushed, hard-working crew. Abu’s boat had already disappeared on the widening, dusk-blurred river.
Swamiji seemed in a trance, his old arms mechanically paddling with the others.
Meanwhile, Mick pulled back the river water as if it were the final feverish two minutes of a workout.
At last the electric lights of civilization loomed on the horizon, and Mick directed the boatmen toward land.
“Where might we find your brother?” he asked Rajiv.
The distraught young researcher shook his head. “We have no house in Trivandrum. Abu might be anywhere: a hotel, an automobile. Maybe he has friends here. I’m finding out how little I know about my brother.”
“Then let’s alert the police,” Mick said.
The three of them left the boat and its crew on a grassy bank. The two tribal men didn’t demand payment for their services.
After following several people’s directions, Mick spotted a sign that read “Police Station.” A cloth held up by sticks formed a roof. Underneath the cloth, a uniformed policeman in bare feet typed on a clattering typewriter that rocked the candle on his makeshift table.
Mick started to talk.
The policeman held up a dark, fleshy hand for quiet while he completed his report.
They waited awkwardly, Swamiji in his dhoti, Rajiv in his lab coat, and Mick sweating through his safari suit.
When the policeman finally looked at them, his bushy black eyebrows shot up in astonishment. Then he leaned forward and touched his forehead with prayerful hands.
“Master, how are you?”
Swamiji pressed his fingertips together and touched his forehead. “Not at all well. A dacoit has gone missing.”
“I might have a free second to help you.”
“Oh, wonderful. His name is Abu Khan, this man’s brother, and he’s traveling with a young American woman. We were stuck up and couldn’t catch him ourselves.”
The conversation was going a little too slowly.
“We’ll do it on the morrow, Swamiji. First fill up this form.”
“Let me throw up an idea,” Swamiji suggested. “Mightn’t we look downtown whilst you check out the suburbs?”
“I’m not getting you.”
“Abu Khan is amongst us somewhere, and we can’t go sitting on our fingers forever.”
“I must attend this station. Nonetheless, I will request my partner to look into it. I’ll send a boy after him straight away and let you know soonest what he says.”
“Ask him if he needs a phone,” Mick prodded, handing Swamiji his cell phone.
“Would you be needing a mobile?” Swamiji asked the man.
He waggled his head and gave a bucktooth grin.
“You can give my man a tinkle on his mobile. Here is his number,” Swamiji said and read off the number illuminated on Mick’s phone.
The policeman scribbled the number on the palm of his hand with a ballpoint pen.
“Will we hear from you in the course of the evening?” Swamiji asked.
“If not this hour, then the next. Ta.” He creased the crown of his khaki cap and placed it carefully on his head. Then he slipped a two-foot-long bamboo stick, called a lathi, through a belt loop and stepped into the darkness to hail a boy.
The threesome left the policeman’s office and stepped onto the ill-lit street. As they waited for a cab, Swamiji shook his head in disbelief. “Well, that’s a turn-up for the books, wouldn’t you say?”
“What was?” Rajiv asked.
“He was one of my first students at the ashram. Damned if I can’t remember his name.”
“What the hell were you talking about back there?” Mick spat out. “Some lost wallet? We have a full-blown crisis on our hands.”
“I know. I was using the official chitchat necessary to deal with the bureaucracy. But he’ll check the suburbs whilst we look downtown. We’ll get results, you’ll see.”
Within an hour, Mick’s phone chirped. “Hello?” he answered.
“We’ve got the chap spotted entering the Handicraft Market.”
“Are you armed?”
“What? I’m not getting you.”
“He and his men have guns,” Mick tried again.
“That’s quite unnecessary, sir.” The phone clicked off.
It was another one of those half-understood exchanges in foreign lands. Unfortunately, it was the wrong time for miscommunication.
Mick and the others had been cruising through the center of town in a taxi, not exactly sure where to look. Now they knew. “Take us directly to the Handicraft Market,” he ordered.
A few minutes later, the creaky old Ambassador squealed to a gradual halt. Mick was staring at the illuminated façade of a Gothic church.
“The Handicraft Market is becoming,” the cabby said, and pointed to the church.
“I thought I said ‘Handicraft Market,’” Mick whispered.
“The Handicraft Market is inside the old church,” the man said.
Mick had to see this for himself. He jumped out of
the taxi and crept with his two comrades to one of the front entrances and peered in. Sure enough, vendors stood expectantly behind their counters.
“Okay, so it is a Handicraft Market,” he said, glancing back into the black night. “But where are the police?”
Across the dark parking lot, a man in a green uniform tipped his cap.
As Mick mounted the steps of the church, he passed two enormous wooden elephants with price tags on their trunks. Abu was not in the bric-a-brac of the vestibule.
Mick grabbed a brass candleholder just in case.
“Three hundred and fifty rupees,” a vendor said.
“One moment,” Mick said, gripping it like a baseball bat. “Let me test it first.”
He stepped into the sanctuary alone. There, he crept past tables with sailboats carved out of ivory and figurines of sandalwood. Abu and Keri might be at the altar.
“Is there an American woman ahead?” he whispered to a sales clerk.
“Yes, just there, sir,” she said in a ringing voice.
Mick saw two people suddenly duck behind the altar table amid woven straw hats and mats. He dropped to his hands and knees, just as Swamiji and Rajiv drew near.
“I saw him by the altar,” Mick reported. “He’s got Keri with him. He most likely has his gun.”
“We only need the vial,” Rajiv whispered. “Don’t harm my brother.”
“I’ll try. You two wait here in case I run into trouble.”
He crept on his knees up the aisle and approached the crucifix. For a moment, Natalie’s admonition rang in his ears, “You are not a crusader.”
A straw fan slid back on the altar. He ducked just as a burst of light spouted from Abu’s gun. The bullet bored into a table just behind him.
A roomful of store clerks shrieked and dropped to the floor. Several women began to sob.
Mick advanced several more tables, past cotton fabrics to the low altar steps. He transferred the candlestick to his left hand and grabbed a bolt of purple cloth in his right.
Feet scampered down the altar steps in the opposite aisle. Mick lunged up the steps and tossed the bolt of cloth across a table of antiques in front of the people running. The cloth spun free like a ribbon and floated down over Abu and Keri. They sprawled against several stacks of hand-painted dishes.
Mick lifted a glass case of jewelry and tossed it down at the pair, littering the marble floor with diamond and sapphire rings. Abu scrambled to his feet.
Several chandeliers hung from wooden rafters above. Mick hefted his candlestick, then hurled it at the lights above the pair. It plunged the room in darkness and rained broken light bulbs on them. He scrambled toward the far pulpit and peered down the aisle where Abu and Keri squatted with their heads covered.
Looking around, he found a heavy book on the pulpit and slung it toward Abu’s head. It struck him ineffectually on the shoulders. Abu whirled around and fired a bullet past Mick into the choir seats.
From his position, Mick saw a massive wooden elephant being slid into Abu’s aisle, blocking his exit.
A chalice and brass bowl stood on the altar table. He dodged across from the pulpit and grabbed them. Holding the bowl as a facemask, he slung the chalice at Abu.
The heavy brass goblet hit Abu on the forehead, and he fell back with an anguished cry, a bullet flying astray and shattering a stained-glass window.
Mick had to maintain the barrage. He threw two antique clocks, another jewelry case and stone statues of the elephant god at Abu.
Keri scrambled laterally between tables toward the unblocked aisle. How had she broken free?
Both Abu’s hands were busy. He was carrying not only the gun, but also the vial of vaccine.
The young terrorist pursued Keri, scattering tables in all directions. Brass oil lamps toppled one against another. Rows of carved animals clacked together like blocks. He took aim at anything that moved.
As Mick bolted back across the altar, he picked up whatever he could find to throw. Both hands were full of mirrors, bangles, pietra dura trays and wooden toys.
He flung them one by one in an angry charge down the altar steps.
An ivory tusk extended across Abu’s escape path. Abu was running backward and didn’t see it. Keri vaulted the tusk and sprinted for the exit.
Abu whirled about to chase her, holding the vial precariously before him. At the last moment, the tusk withdrew, and Abu was free.
Rajiv stood up holding the tusk. “Abu,” he shouted after his brother. “Don’t do this to me.” And he took off after him.
Mick heard a woman scream. Moments later, grasping Keri’s collar with one hand and the vial with the other, Abu ran on top of tables set up in the vestibule.
Several policemen with the standard, police-issue lathis charged the pair head-on, bashing everything in sight to clear away the tables.
Abu and Keri reversed direction, their feet slipping on the wobbly tables.
Gold chains rained down onto broken jewelry cases. Wind chimes clanged against each other with a horrifying din.
Abu and Keri landed on the marble floor, their feet in motion. They fled out the side entrance into the warren of streets, Rajiv just behind.
A warning shot rang out from Abu’s gun.
Mick slid to a halt just before the doorway and leaned gasping against an elephant’s face. Below him, the policemen milled around the parking lot, unwilling to chase an armed man in the pitch-black night.
Behind him, the mass of brass, glass and ivory lay tangled like junk on the floor. A purple shroud sliced across the pews like a huge, bloody gash. Men and women were just getting to their feet and beginning to survey the damage. Sandalwood incense wafting out the door into the still, humid night.
Swamiji joined him and asked, “Has Rajiv returned?”
“Not yet.”
As they waited for Rajiv to return, Swamiji smiled at Mick. “Have you ever heard the parable of the missing man?”
Mick had no time for another of Swamiji’s long stories.
They peered into the night. With every passing second, his hopes of finding a cure for Mariah further evaporated.
At last, Rajiv came limping back from the inky stillness.
“Abu’s gone,” he said with a dejected shrug. “And he’s got the vial.”
“I drove by your apartment today,” Camille admitted, sitting in the sand beside Alec. The lurid lights of a distant séga band flashed over her anxious features. “I saw a truck and shipping crates with your name stenciled on them. What’s happening?”
He sifted fine white sand through his fingers. “I’m leaving,” he said simply.
“Moving to a new apartment?”
“To a new country,” he said, looking her straight in her unforgettable eyes. “I won’t see you any more.”
She blinked and turned away, leaving only her bushy black hair to study. Her normally strong voice acquired an unfamiliar quaver. “Are you leaving because of me?”
“If you want to know, yes.” He frowned. “I’ve been an abysmal failure here, largely because of you.”
Her voice sounded timid in the darkness. “You know I may not be as strong inside as you think.”
This evoked a short, empty laugh.
Yet she continued. “When I was fourteen, my mother and I were living alone on Mayotte.”
He could picture the isolated French-influenced island in the Comoros chain.
“It was during the time of another insurrection, and Grand Comoros sent troops to put the movement down.” She stopped to see if he was following her.
He nodded. He knew something of the history of the Coup-Coup Islands.
“I was defending our island when a boat came ashore. My father was leading the charge against us.” She paused, unable to continue.
He sucked in is breath. “You shot your father?”
“You don’t know how difficult it is to kill someone you love. Nor how easy.”
“Did you have to shoot him?”
&
nbsp; “I was defending both my island and my mother,” she said simply, as if she had no choice.
“I see.” He examined the tortured frame beside him. It explained a lot. For one thing, the distinction between right and wrong must have become somewhat blurred by the incident. “So you’ve killed people ever since.”
She nodded.
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” he said.
“It’s the only way I know,” she said, full of despair and certainty.
“Try saving someone’s life for a change.”
“I have never had the chance.”
He sighed. “Try helping someone out for starters.”
“Alec, I want to help you,” she said, her voice choked with emotion. “Is there anything I can do?”
It was exactly what he had hoped she would say, but he had to take her offer with a grain of salt. Of course she could help him. She could make his whole career if she wanted to turn her back on Multan Malik and cooperate. “It’s probably too late,” he said at last.
Her eyes followed him as he stood and headed up the beach toward the dancing crowd.
He felt her hand on his shoulder.
“Let’s dance,” he said. “At least we can enjoy our last evening together.”
She took his hand, her fingers limp, her lips fuller than ever.
A young crowd shuffled in the sand. Their bodies gyrated to a Latin American pop song.
He snapped his fingers to the strong beat and pressed her against him. Her orange blouse separated from her tight-fitting jeans. She thrust her pelvis against him and their feet ground deeper and deeper into the sand.
When the song ended, her blouse hung loose around her, and she looked as disheveled as he had ever seen her.
“Alec, I don’t want you to leave me,” she said, following him to a beached Fiberglass catamaran. “It’s time to tell you something important.”
“It won’t help anything,” he said, and sat on one of the hulls.
“Listen to me. There are things I can tell you.”
“Give an example.” He wasn’t in the mood for bargaining.
“The name of the Islamic extremist in India, and how he intends to carry out his plan.”