by Sean Platt
Amit waited for Jones to finish, then nodded once. It was hard to blame the manager for holding out on the questioning, but that didn’t stop his being complicit, or make Amit feel bad for setting back the manager’s typing skills for several weeks at least.
Jones seemed to be waiting for Amit’s response, but the former monk had nothing to say. Jones didn’t know about the courier’s connections, or even where the courier lived or worked. The number would be a dead end; there were probably ways to use computers to investigate those who used various phone services, but Amit didn’t know them.
He stood, then spontaneously removed his parrot tie, hanging between the lapels of his new white suit. He’d liked the tie, but it was ruined. If there was no longer a cosmetic or joyful reason to wear it, he did not wish to. Amit tossed the tie into Jones’s wastebasket. Above the trash was a tiny basketball hoop with the Cleveland Cavaliers logo. Amit wondered at the story that had brought a Cavs souvenir to this humid Caribbean office, but didn’t ask.
“Thank you for your help.” Amit looked at the manager’s shattered hand and chuckled. “I am afraid you will need to write with your other hand if that is the one you use. Regardless, I would suggest immediate medical attention.”
Jones looked up at Amit with a helpless expression. His anger had gone; his indignation had gone; his pomposity had gone; even his reticence to divulge everything he knew about his client’s private affairs seemed to be gone. For the moment — perhaps due to shock — the man didn’t even appear to be in pain. He looked only tired and confused. Amit had mentioned his hand issues as if Jones himself might not have noticed, delivering instructions in the tone of someone mildly suggesting ice for a slight blow to the head.
Amit smiled and waited for Jones to respond, but he didn’t. Nor did he stand from his desk. He did nothing but hold his wrist and watch Amit’s eyes.
He walked to the office door, turned back to look at Jones, gave the man a small bow, thanked him again, then left.
Chapter 18
ANOTHER JET. ANOTHER LONG JOURNEY spent in the belly of a plane, with the landing gear, meditating through the engines screams, which seemed to reverberate through the jet’s aluminum skeleton.
Some distant part of Amit was hungry. But he had his small bag, and because he’d changed back into his robes and tossed his suit, he’d been free to stock a few snacks and bottles of water. He didn’t think to bring a book. Amit realized — while clinging to the landing gear — that he was bad at air travel. Frequent fliers probably brought all sorts of ways to entertain themselves. They probably didn’t feel like their heads might explode from internal pressure as the plane gained altitude, and probably had heat. He promised himself that someday he’d take a trip the normal way, to see what it was like.
Amit still had his mind for company, and in the end that was all he needed. He made himself relatively comfortable, then closed his eyes and gave his spirit permission to stretch the cosmic tether binding him to his body. Soon, the noise of the engines and the uncomfortable sensation of metal pressing into soft parts of his body began to fade into a different part of his awareness. He knew they were there — not too far from his cold or lingering sense of boredom — but they had ceased to matter. He was only mind, and mind was in want for thought alone. For now, it required his body and brain, seeing as they were the vessels he was currently poured into, but some day he’d die, and then he’d be free. Free to reincarnate into something else or free to float, he did not know. The order had its thoughts on what happened after a person died, but Woo had taught Amit to question even the things that were taught by his teachers.
Question even me, Woo had said. Question my instructions to question what you are taught.
It was a paradox that Amit had spent many meditation sessions puzzling over in his youth. If he listened to Woo, he’d question Sri teachings as much as he’d question workings of the modern world, laws, morality, concepts like ownership, the fact that he himself existed, and so on. But if he listened to Woo, he must also question every word from his sensei, including the instruction to question everything. Did that mean that he should, as a matter of course, sometimes accept things blindly, without question? How could you question everything if you never questioned the questioning? Without that final step, were you not conforming to a system of nonconformity?
It had the simple, repetitive nature of a koan. Which, Amit realized after enough time pondering koans and simple riddles, really must mean it was confusing for the sake of confusion. Meditation riddles were circular, questions without answers. It was almost stupid. Most mantras meant nothing. That was mostly the point. If you were to repeat something over and over while meditating, you didn’t really want it to have meaning. You wanted your mind and breath occupied by a blank slate, so they would be unencumbered.
Was there reincarnation after death? Amit thought so, but was open to all answers, conforming to none.
Was it proper to kill for peace? He could see each side, and was constantly riddling both arguments.
Could good be bad?
Could black be white?
Could his enemy be his friend?
That last seemed a stretch, but whenever Amit met resistance in his meditation, he knew it was a sign to consider things further. If an exercise was difficult, the difficulty rendered the exercise worthwhile. A devoted trainee knew to work on his weaknesses more than his strengths, and an enlightened fighter knew to wonder if he should be fighting.
Amit didn’t want to consider that Nisha’s murderers might not be evil personified. As Amit opened himself to the possibility that they’d had their own motivations, which surely made sense to them, he decided that they were wrong, that he was right, and that he’d entered his enemy’s mind to find it as polluted as he had believed. Perhaps the world held no true right, wrong, good, or evil, and maybe the mortal sphere was merely a performance where nothing truly mattered. Nisha was good, and had been his. She was an innocent, but snuffed like a candle. For now, Amit’s enemies were as “evil” as evil could be.
But what about the other side? Could his friend be an enemy?
Curled in the plane’s belly, his muscles screaming across the sea, Amit thought of Suni, the abbot.
“The official doctrine of Sri is that we never engage and use what we have been taught,” Woo had told him. “But why would we train to be deadly rather than disciplined if we were never meant to use our skills? And why is there a back door in our training? The abbot tells us at Gathering that we must never harm another living being, then he says we cannot be harmed — not because we are Sri, but because we are humans. We are spirit first and body second, and spirit is eternal. Only the body can be harmed, and the body is merely our vehicle. Does it not follow that we, as warriors, could never truly harm anyone even if we’d been allowed to fight?”
At the time, Amit hadn’t understood what Woo was saying. The idea that the spirit — a person’s essence — could not be harmed by anything on the mortal plane was a back door, to use Woo’s term. The abbot ordered that they never use their skills to harm another. Hypothetically — in the nature of questioning everything, including the unquestionable — if a being’s true spirit was safe from harm, could shadow monks commit violence with impunity?
What if his friend was his enemy?
With fright in his eyes, Jones, the bank manager, had said, It was almost as if he could dodge bullets.
No one could dodge bullets, but a trained Sri monk could appear to do so. If you spent most of your day learning the nuances of human behavior and honing the most subtle of skills, it wasn’t especially difficult. The way a person held a gun communicated many things about that person’s personality, their demeanor and temperament, even their childhood or personal history. How they situated their finger on a trigger belied the strength of their muscles. How a person breathed told an astute observer how they were feeling, how accustomed they were to battle, how hardened they were to the idea of harming or killing, and so m
uch more. You didn’t have to dodge the actual bullet. You only had to put yourself somewhere other than where the bullet would inevitably be.
The ability to invade a foe’s chest cavity without killing him, avoiding essential clusters to inflict maximal psychological damage.
The deceptively difficult ability to engage in a multi-person fight without becoming drunk on adrenaline.
The ability to fight through might, battle with the mind, and anticipate with logic.
Raul, as Jones described him, was Sri. But was he a rogue as Amit had become? It was possible, but now that he’d started asking the right questions, the former shadow monk’s mind began to properly piece the puzzle that had been rattling in his head since he’d started investigating the Right Hand. The organization operated in shadow. They had obvious muscle, but always in the form of predictable bodyguards — big men with guns. There were few accounts of assassinations, yet Amit knew they’d happened, based on his discoveries. They were quiet, with none of the shock and awe that often accompanied gangland violence. Amit found no drive-by shootings, axe murders, incidents with ice picks, or dark enforcers with black hats and names like Vinny the Knife. Somehow, the organization’s affairs were handled with nary a splash. It was operation without ego, and for that simple reason Amit had almost missed its oddity.
It was possible that Raul was a rogue, but not likely. The organization’s enforcement arm felt like Sri to Amit. Only shadow monks would plainly admit to what they were doing, as Raul had, because there was nothing to hide. You couldn’t harm a spirit by harming a body. It wasn’t a far leap toward justifying anything.
Why is there a back door in our training?
Had Woo known all along? Was he bound to secrecy, or coerced into it? Had he, all those long years, encouraging his protégé to question everything so that one day, he would see through the abbot on his own? Woo had seemed reticent when leaving the Sri, uneasy, as if he hadn’t really wanted to go. Was he being forced out, forced to remain silent?
Unbidden, thoughts of Jason Alfero rose in Amit’s mind.
Follow the money. Follow the virgins.
Amit had followed the money to the Virgin Islands, and now he knew where to find his next boss. Still, Alfero hadn’t wanted to give up his superiors, even in the moment of his impending death. Why? Had he believed what the Sri did, that loyalty was rewarded in the next life? Alfero hardly seemed spiritual. Yet he’d helped Amit without helping him, withholding what he knew while also winking and pointing his killer toward the back door.
Like Woo seemed to have been doing all along.
Like the abbot had been doing to the entire order. He could tell them to never harm on one hand, then imply that harm was impossible on the other. Creating that loophole — a maneuver worthy of a sleazy lawyer — would allow the abbot to have his cake and eat it, too. He could keep most of the monks in the dark — safe, neutered, and unwilling to use their training — all while building killing machines that could be turned on with the flip of a switch after realizing that they could never do any harm, no matter how many throats they pierced.
What of the money that laid in the Sri’s vaults? Amit had stolen a large stack of cash before leaving the monastery. The monks understood that the order had the money required to operate — to build and maintain its walls and grounds, to purchase the food it did not grow, to provide beds and facilities and chapels and weapons — but no one ever asked how. Now, Amit did. The order sold nothing to the outside world. They did not wander airports to pawn flowers on travelers; they did not host bake sales or run charity races.
Where did that money come from?
In the plane’s hold, with metal vibrating through his robe and into his bones, Amit’s floating mind filled with the order’s teachings. There was always a greater good and a need to restore karmic alignment. It was vital to obey superiors: accepting instructions and appreciating superior wisdom. Sri doctrine was filled with triggers and loopholes. Now that Amit was asking if it was possible to turn peaceful monks into assassins, he saw truth plain as day. They were trained; they were the necessary assistants of karmic realignment; the spirit could never be harmed; evil people were victims of their mortal existences and could only be washed clean in their next life. And of course, the moral and spiritual judgments of the elders were unquestionably correct, no matter how odd those judgments might seem to younger monks. If the elders said that something must be done, all disciples would follow.
Question even me.
Woo, with his silver-white hair. Refusing to shave his head even when the unwritten rule said that everyone should.
Woo, who’d left the monastery on a promotion, yet had seemed reluctant to leave, as if he’d been pushed.
Woo’s biggest lesson had always been that of challenging assumptions. The Sri ordered Amit to banish his anger, but Woo encouraged him to hone it, to use it, to focus it instead. Woo had subtly encouraged Amit’s insubordinations. He never did so openly, but once alone Woo chastised him half-heartedly. You really shouldn’t do that, wink-wink. It was almost as if Woo was pleased that Amit lived as a fly in the monastery’s ointment.
The plane touched down in Mumbai an impossible time later. Amit waited for his moment, then sneaked away. He hit the streets, his robes no longer out of place. Only their color — and the icy look in Amit’s eyes as his fingers and thumbs rolled over his prayer beads — gave the passerby pause.
Chapter 19
THREE MONTHS AGO
THE GIRL entered the monastery wearing shoes that were battered to nothing, simple white socks with specks of something that looked like spilled dye, and a pretty floral print dress that had become dirty from the rough path and the climb. Amit couldn’t help but be impressed. The monastery was well-known in the town below, and although the people did not know much about what happened above, they knew that the monks who lived there were warriors. Every once in a while, men from the town (and a few of the heartier women) would come to the monastery and want to learn from the warriors. They were always turned down — adults were too shaped by life to accept the conditioning required of a Sri monk — but the path’s perilous nature was a deterrent in itself. Most pilgrims couldn’t make the climb, and some fell to their deaths while trying. Yet this young girl — and her even younger brother — had made the climb alone.
The abbot stood before the girl like a sentinel. His arms were not crossed, unlike everything else in his manner. Here was a man who would not be passed, even if the transgressors were two children, clearly terrified and in need of help. Amit met the boy’s eyes first. He wasn’t much older than Amit had been when he’d first come into the mountains — maybe 8 or 9 — and he had a hollow, scooped-out look that clanged against Amit’s should-be-stoic heart. The boy had been through something horrible; the shadow monk couldn’t help but feel ancient anger at the abbot’s denial.
His eyes moved to the girl, whom he’d only glanced at before being captivated by what looked like his younger self. She seemed to be in her late teens or very early 20s and had thick, jet-black hair, pulled into a long braid that ran down her back, almost to her waist. The braid was tight, and her hair was thick enough to hold it, but the climb had it frazzled. A halo of loose, sweat-scared hairs fell around her dirty face, and the braid itself was frayed, like a rope.
Her stare broke something inside him. She had large, liquid, brown eyes that even from 10 paces felt wide and deep enough to fall into. They looked pristine compared to the rest of her, covered with dust and grime. Those eyes sparkled, wet, and streaks from past tears had washed the dirt from the corners. As she faced the abbot, easily a foot taller, she didn’t flinch. Tears — for what, he did not know — had been shed and continued to fall, but not from fear of the big, stolid monk.
“Please,” she said.
Amit stepped closer. The girl didn’t look over; she knew who was in charge and where to aim her appeal. She hadn’t even seen him. It was impossible to believe, as much as Amit felt himself standi
ng out. It was equally impossible to believe that the abbot was denying her. She was terrified; the boy was terrified; she claimed to have been sent here to find their leader. “Woo,” she kept saying. “I need to find Woo.”
The abbot said that Woo had been gone for years, and that she was in the wrong place. He asked more questions. She refused to answer, saying that she could trust only Woo — the man the townspeople had told her was in charge of the monastery in the mountains.
For a logical man, the abbot seemed overly perturbed by the implication that Woo was — or had ever been — in charge. His body language became more closed. He stepped toward her, causing the girl to move backward. She said she needed solace. Still, the abbot insisted that the Sri had none to give.
Amit’s eyes fell to the girl’s simple floral dress. It was a childish pattern, younger than her years. Most girls would not wear such a dress. It was too carefree and did not pay respect to the hardships a city girl such as she would surely face. It was not a rich town below, so her life would not be easy. Yet she’d worn this simple flowered dress as if strolling a meadow on a sun-washed day, a dress that a relative had probably given her for a special occasion. Below the hem, her legs were scandalously bare. But skin on this girl was as innocent as spring grass.