by Jon Evans
“Let’s hope it’s just a power cut,” Laurent says. “Not the enemy.”
Keiran nods. “I was just thinking that.”
“Jesus, I just can’t wait to get the fuck out of here,” Danielle says shrilly.
The next sound is that of glass shattering and tinkling against the hardwood floor. Keiran feels a shard ricochet off his foot. Like the onset of darkness, the crash is so unexpected that at first nobody reacts. Keiran thinks at first that someone knocked a glass over. But the sound was too loud, there is too much broken glass gleaming on the kitchen floor in the suddenly flickering candlelight, and he can taste cool fresh air, coming from the huge jagged hole that has just materialized in the big window above the sink.
“Oh shit,” Keiran says, barely aware that he is speaking.
A pale oblong shape sits amid glass shards on the hardwood floor. A rock, a paving stone from one of the walkways that leads through the exterior gardens. Someone threw it through the window. They are under attack. Their assailants are already through the exterior walls, they have cut the power, must be only moments away from breaking into the house itself.
Outside, all the neighbourhood dogs begin to howl.
Chapter 14
Danielle feels frozen, like the awful mornings she has sometimes when she wakes up fully conscious but unable to move for long minutes, like all she can do is stand here at the base of the stairs and watch, as if carved out of bronze, unable to act or defend herself when the men outside invade the house, to this maddening, coruscating soundtrack of howling dogs.
“They’re outside, they’re right outside,” Angus says, standing up. There is a crash, and a bolt of of fear hits Danielle, but she does not even flinch, even involuntary motion seems beyond her. It takes her a moment to understand this new sound was only Angus’s chair falling behind him.
Then Keiran leans forward and blows out both candles. In the darkness she can move again. As if it was the light which paralyzed her. She takes a step just to prove to herself it is possible, and freezes again. She does not know what to do.
“What are you doing, we can’t see!” Estelle says urgently.
“The light will give us away,” Laurent says, his voice reassuringly low and calm. “We have to be invisible. Stay quiet, low voices. Don’t panic. If we panic we are lost. The front door, is it locked?”
“Yes,” Keiran says. “I locked it when we came in.”
“Then we have a minute at least.”
“To do what?” Danielle asks.
“Prepare to be invaded. We need weapons, a place to barricade ourselves.”
“Knives,” Estelle says. “I’ll get the knives.”
“Careful,” Angus says. There are grating sounds as Estelle steps on the broken glass, her feet protected only by thin flip-flops, moving through the kitchen by feel.
“Wood,” Danielle says. “Everything’s wood. They’ll burn down the house.” She walks gingerly through the darkness towards the other voices, arms feeling in front of her. She cannot see anything, walls or furniture, the darkness is absolute.
Keiran says, “They would have already.”
“They still want us alive, I think,” Laurent says. He alone does not sound terrified. “They want to frighten us out. Or they wouldn’t have thrown that stone. Outside we are easy prey. Inside, a house in darkness is dangerous territory for everyone, even if they are armed and we are not.”
Danielle’s feels her way towards him as he speaks, her groping hand touches his shoulder, grips it like a liferope. He puts his hand over hers.
“They may prefer us alive,” Keiran says, “but I bet this time they’ll settle for dead.”
A sudden intake of breath from Estelle.
“What is it?” Angus asks, alarmed.
“Cut myself. That’s all. Glass. Nothing major. Here are the knives.” More crunching noises. Estelle carefully distributes kitchen knives in the darkness. Danielle winds up with the sawtoothed bread knife. She thinks this is crazy, the enemy surely has guns, these knives will be more dangerous to themselves in this darkness, but at least it feels good to have some kind of weapon in her hand, even a bread knife. It takes the edge off the bubbling panic that threatens to overflow and swallow her whole.
“Upstairs,” Keiran says. “The master bedroom.”
Laurent nods. “Yes. But first, everyone quiet a moment. Maybe we can hear them.”
But they can’t hear anything over the dogs, howling as if to warn of the end of the world.
“Never mind,” Angus says. “Let’s get upstairs. Be careful.”
They join hands into a connected line, Angus in the lead, Laurent at the back. The procession to the master bedroom, which takes ten seconds in the light, stretches to a full two minutes in the darkness. Danielle feels a little better when they are upstairs, as if a flight of stairs makes them safe. The dogs finally start to quiet down.
They all sit on the bed. Danielle and Laurent still hold hands. There is enough light to discern the windows from the the walls. To the south, across the river, they can see the city lights of Calangute, and to the west they can see the running lights of distant oceangoing ships. On this side of the river, the headlights of a single car are visible, traversing the winding road that leads past the house, and a few other houses in the area are still lit, presumably those that also have backup generators. It’s clear that power to the whole area has been cut.
Angus draws out his mobile phone. Its screen glows bright green in the dark. “No signal,” he reports.
“They must have jammed the local cell antenna,” Keiran says. “Very thorough of them. Land lines carry their own power, but they’ll have cut that too.” He lifts the telephone beside the bed. There is no dial tone. “Yes. Cut the power, cut the phones. Then what?”
Nobody answers. Danielle wonders why they bothered coming up here. The master bedroom’s door is solid wood, it’s only a short hop from the window to the roof of the verandah, and the ensuite bathroom’s door locks, but none of this will do them any good. As if huddling in the bathroom behind a locked door, then making a final stand with kitchen knives, will make any difference to the outcome. Danielle realizes that this is very likely the room she will die in. Unless they find some way out.
“We have to get out of here,” Danielle says. “We can’t just wait for them.”
Angus says, “She’s right. They may not want to come in, but they will when they know we’re not coming out. Or they’ll just burn the house with us in it. Like Jayalitha.”
Keiran says, “I’m going downstairs.”
“What for?” Danielle asks.
“Look and listen. We don’t know enough to make a plan.”
“Do we have any flashlights?” Laurent asks.
“Flashlights?” Angus asks, his voice puzzled.
“Torches,” Keiran translates. “I’ve got a little Maglite in my room.”
“I brought matches and candles up here,” Estelle says.
“Good,” Angus says. “There are more, and torches, downstairs in the closet off the TV room. Behind the toolbox.”
Keiran stands. “I’ll bring them back. How do I get into the crawl space?”
Angus says, “I think there’s a trapdoor under the stairs. But they’re down there. They cut the generator power.”
“They probably won’t have stayed down there. I might take a look.” He tries to sound casual, insouciant, but Danielle can tell by his uncharacteristically high voice how frightened he is. “Back in a jiffy.”
Nobody says anything as Keiran leaves the room.
* * *
The waiting is almost unbearable. They can hear men outside now, at least several of them, moving through the garden, talking in low voices. Danielle almost wishes they would just do something, smash down the door, throw in a Molotov cocktail, as long as it ends the waiting.
Estelle says, “I still think we should shout for help. Somebody’s bound to hear us.”
Laurent shakes his hea
d. “That will force their hand. They’ll burn us if they see help coming.”
“What are they waiting for?” Danielle asks.
Nobody answers.
“I wish I knew why I was going to die,” she says bitterly. “I’ve never done anything to them. If they read your email, they know that. I’ve got nothing to do with whatever you do. Why was I on that list in the taxi?”
“Because they’re afraid of you,” Laurent says.
She manages a tiny black-comedy laugh. “Afraid of me. Right. A billion-dollar company that apparently owns all of India is scared of me. Why exactly?”
“Because they think you know something. Or have something.”
“What something?”
She feels his shrug. “My only guess is, something Jayalitha found.”
“Angus,” Danielle says after a moment, “why did you send me to Jayalitha?”
“I didn’t send you,” he says. His voice sounds guilty. “I told Keiran we needed to get her passport to her and Keiran suggested you could do it. I thought it would be safe. We didn’t have anyone else in India. We don’t really do work on the ground, not like Laurent’s group does.”
“So what was Jayalitha doing for you?” Laurent asks.
“All the evidence she was collecting, we were going to use it in lawsuits, create litigation risk for the company, the threat of jail for its officers. And then go after them extra-legally at the same time. The more ways we hit them, the more doubts we raise in their minds, the better. But the evidence was nothing new, villager testimony, pictures, documents smuggled out of the mine. You know that, you worked with her.”
“Worked with is a strong phrase,” Laurent says. “She was fiercely independent. She never reported having found anything exceptional to you?”
After a moment Estelle says, “There was that weird phone call.”
“Right,” Angus agrees. “But that was nothing. She said so herself.”
“What phone call?” Laurent asks.
Angus says, “Jayalitha found something one day. I don’t know what. Not long ago, the same day I posted her passport to Danielle, maybe three weeks ago. Seems like a past life now. Jaya called me on the phone, which she never did, left a voice mail saying she’d found some very strange evidence, documents, she was going to email me a transcript. But then the next day she sent an email telling me that the evidence wasn’t real, she’d made a mistake. She didn’t mention it again. Not that she had much chance. The email after that was the last I ever heard from her.”
Danielle leans forward, suddenly interested. “If it was from her.”
“What?”
“They hacked your email, remember? Maybe she did send that transcript. Maybe they deleted it and faked new emails from her to cover up. You can’t trust anything that she did or didn’t email you. Kishkinda controlled your mailbox the whole time.”
Angus takes a moment to absorb this revelation. Then he says, “Fucking hell.”
“Maybe she did find something,” Laurent says.
Estelle says, “My God. She must have. Something major. That must be it. That must be why they’re after us. Even if they know about the foundation, they can’t be scared of that, not yet, we haven’t done anything yet. They think we have what Jaya found. Or we might. They don’t know what she said to you on the phone, she might have told you, or stashed copies somewhere, and it’s so dangerous they can’t take the risk. And then we flew right here to India. Right into the tiger’s mouth, like Keiran said. Jesus. We couldn’t have made a bigger mistake.”
“What could it be?” Laurent asks. “To frighten them so much. Already they’re poisoning, murdering thousands of people, brazenly. What could she have found?”
Silence falls, interrupted by noises, footsteps coming up the stairs. Danielle tenses, tightens her grip on the breadknife, but it is only one man.
“I’ve got bad news, worse news, and one faint little shred of hope,” Keiran says, re-entering the bedroom. “The bad news is, there’s at least a dozen of them surrounding the house. The worse news is, they’ve got both guns and jerrycans of petrol. The little shred of hope is, I don’t think they realize we can get into that crawl space underneath from in here.”
“Doesn’t do us any good,” Angus says. “They’ll see us coming out.”
“Unless they’re distracted.”
“By what?”
“Well,” Keiran says. “I do have one idea. I warn you now. It’s going to sound completely mad.”
* * *
It seems crazy to Danielle now that seconds before the paving stone smashed the kitchen window she was on the verge of telling Laurent that tomorrow she would go to America without him. She didn’t want to leave him; she was just convinced that the future would be disastrous, that it was better, awful but better, to leave him now. Like cutting off her arm to spare her life. Now, though, as men who want to kill her mill about outside the besieged house, any future at all, disastrous or not, sounds wonderful.
She was so worried about the future. She has always been so worried about the future, unable to choose just one of the thousand different paths available to her, because they are only available so long as she keeps her life at a crossroads, choosing just one will destroy the other nine hundred and ninety-nine. She has lamented growing old, because it too slowly walls off those roads one by one, prunes the branches of her decision tree. Now it seems she will never get to make a decision at all. She will die without having ever chosen a road to see through to the end. Or a man. Men have always been another way to sample life’s alternatives, test roads without travelling them herself, try out new lifestyles like new clothes.
Laurent isn’t like that. Their pure electric bond cannot be so casually discarded. If they leave Goa together, go to Paris or even her Manhattan apartment to live together, that choice means sacrificing all other choices. And that thought was terrifying, until the stone flew through the kitchen window and taught her once again a lesson she should have already learned. What fear really is, and how ridiculous and pathetic it is to worry about the distant unknown future.
Danielle leans over to whisper in her lover’s ear. “If we get out of this,” she whispers, “will you come live with me?”
“Of course,” he says.
They kiss. Her lips are dry with fear, but Laurent seems relaxed, confident, as if Keiran’s insane plan is bound to succeed.
They are back on the ground floor, clustered around the trapdoor that leads into the crawl space below. Above them a radio squawks in loud staticky Hindi, noise to cover the sounds of their escape attempt. Keiran has already descended. Angus and Estelle go next. Boards creak as they descend, and there is a muffled grunt as Angus bumps his head. Danielle closes her eyes. They do her no good in this darkness, and the act seems to accentuate the rest of her senses. She crouches down, feels outwards with her hands along the floor until they make contact with the uneven wooden edge of the trapdoor. She moves closer, sits on the edge, her feet dangling into the emptiness beneath. For a moment she feels like she is on the verge of a bottomless abyss, that if she descends she will fall forever.
But it is less than four feet to the rough dirt beneath. The crawl space smells of metal and gasoline. Keiran has turned on his Maglite and aimed it at the ground. The dirt swallows most of the yellow pool of light, but enough spills out that Danielle can make out the shapes of the others, and of the circular concrete pillars that support the house. The crawl space is surrounded on all side by a wooden-plank wall. There is no apparent exit, but one must exist. Keiran, more than six feet tall, is bent almost halfway, standing next to some kind of machine, maybe three feet square in profile, a curved oblong shape, with pipes and wires visible in silhouette. The generator. Of course.
Keiran passes something to Estelle, who passes it to Angus, who offers it to Danielle. A plastic canister, heavy, full of liquid, stinking of gasoline. She hesitates a moment before lifting it up to Laurent, who takes it and walks slowly away. She hears the
stairs creak as he pads upstairs.
Estelle sits on the ground, covers her face with both hands, and breathes deeply, moaning a little with each exhalation.
“We have to hurry,” Angus says urgently, kneeling behind her, hands on her shoulders, trying to comfort her. “She’s claustrophobic.”
Not a good place for it, Danielle realizes as she moves away from the trapdoor, crouched in a half-squat. The walls are far away, but the grid of columns and the darkness would make this space seem close and tight even without the four-foot ceiling. It somehow reminds her of the labyrinthine corridors of her recurring nightmare.
“We must be out of our fucking minds,” Danielle says, mostly to herself.
Footsteps on the stairs, descending. Laurent. The smell of gasoline intensifies, becomes overpowering. Danielle starts breathing through her mouth. Then he is at the trapdoor, lowering himself down into the crawl space.
“Matches,” he says, breathing hard.
Estelle has the matches.
“Estelle, love,” Angus says, his voice quiet. “I’m sorry. We need the matches.”
For a moment Danielle is afraid she is too far gone, but Estelle nods, slowly, reaches for her pockets, every movement slow and consciously controlled, raises a shaking fist and opens it to reveal a box of matches. Angus takes them and gives them to Danielle, who couriers them to Laurent.
“Get ready,” he says. “Danielle, Keiran, opposite corners. Keiran, switch off the light. It’ll be redundant soon enough.”
Danielle tries walking in a squat, but soon drops down to hands and knees and crawls, much faster in this space. Behind her Keiran is headed to the opposite corner. Their job is to rove along the interior walls, looking through cracks and knots in the planking, and find out if and where their assailants cluster when the house begins to burn.
She hears a match being struck. Then light flickers behind her. She looks over her shoulder and sees Laurent crawling to a third corner, illuminated by firelight through a trapdoor.