The Grand Tour: Four International Mysteries

by Michaela Thompson

  “I want to talk to Catherine.”

  “You will talk to Catherine. You see how easily wishes are granted? Yet granting one wish is like brushing one gnat from a piece of overripe fruit. What is one gnat out of a swarm?”

  “When can I see her?”

  He made a sweeping gesture. “Whenever you choose. Now. Tonight. Tomorrow. All of these. You have simply to ask her.”

  Marina got to her feet. “I’ll do that.”

  He bowed over his pressed-together palms. “Welcome to Halapur.”

  ***

  “You are sad?” said Vijay.

  Marina finished her beer. The combo was playing “The Isle of Capri.” “I was thinking about when I first went to the ashram. I should have known Catherine would be beyond my reach. The problem wasn’t my having a chance to talk to her, but her being willing to talk to me.”

  “She was lost to you already.”

  “Lost.” She shook her head. “My God, Vijay. What if Nagarajan is alive?”

  “You must not speak like this.” Frowning, he fidgeted with the red foil matchbook from the ashtray.

  “You’re thinking it’s time to call Mr. Curtis.”

  “Yes.”

  She considered, then said, “Can’t you give it a little longer? We haven’t tried to figure out who the others mentioned in the register are. Anand Kumar, the one who made the call. Vincent Shah, too. We won’t push the Nagarajan angle. Let’s see where the rest lead.”

  Vijay shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Vijay, if it weren’t for you we wouldn’t have gotten this far. Don’t call a halt now, before we know what’s going on. Please.”

  His consent was grudging. “All right.”

  Good. The two of them would concentrate on Anand Kumar and Vincent Shah. She didn’t have to tell him about any private plans she might make. Those she could keep strictly to herself.

  24

  Marina sat cross-legged on her bed in the Rama. Enough moonlight sifted into the room for her to be able to see the dial of her watch. It was three in the morning. Her packed suitcase sat next to the door with her canvas shoulder bag and her sandals on top of it. She’d decided to go barefooted, to cut down noise. An hour had passed since she had heard anyone stirring. The throat-clearing of the other guests had ceased, and the radio downstairs was silent. The bed groaned as she slid off it and crossed the room to the dressing table, where her flashlight, screwdriver, Swiss Army knife, and the plastic card for her automatic bank teller were laid out. She put the screwdriver and knife in separate pockets of her loose cotton pants so they wouldn’t hit against each other. The flashlight and card she kept in her hand. She stood for a few moments gazing at her barely distinguishable reflection in the blistered mirror, then left the room, leaving the door unlocked and slightly ajar.

  A feeble bulb cast a pool of yellow light in the stairwell at one end of the hall. At the other end was an open window that led, she had discovered a few hours ago, to a fire escape whose bottom few steps had rusted away. She moved silently toward the stairwell, feeling the rough material of the carpet runner under the soles of her feet. The smell of insecticide reminded her of bugs, and the thought made her toes curl.

  Climbing the stairs earlier, after leaving Vijay, she had noticed that the fifth stair from the top creaked loudly. She avoided it on her way down. At the foot of the stairs she could turn left toward the door to the lobby, from which a faint night light was shining, or go right and make her way down a now-unlit passage that led to the office and, beyond that, to what she guessed were the quarters for the staff. She had looked into the passage earlier, when the lights were on, and had seen three empty Campa Cola bottles along one wall. She stayed clear of them. When she was well into the passage she pushed the button on her little flashlight and the beam showed her the closed door of the office.

  She allowed herself an instant to hope nobody was sleeping on the other side before she maneuvered the door’s flimsy lock open with her bank card. The door opened almost noiselessly, and she felt the day’s trapped heat on her face. She stepped quickly into the room, shone the light around to make sure nobody was there, and closed the door behind her.

  Her light flickered over wooden crates stacked along one wall, a desk piled with papers, a bicycle frame without wheels. Next to the desk was the battered tin trunk where the old woman had said Raki kept his papers. She knelt beside it. Locked, of course, but is that a problem for a lady engineer? She propped the light to shine on the lock and got out her screwdriver. No problem at all. This is something I can deal with, for a change.

  Screws tight. Put a little body English on it. There. Now the other one. She removed the lock, placed it on the floor, and opened the trunk.

  The pages from the register on top. Get those out of the way, and we’ve got— more paper. The trunk was jammed with file folders. She pulled one out. Bill receipts, with “Hotel Rama” imprinted at the top. Have I gone to all this trouble just to rifle the Rama’s back files? Another folder, and another, held more of the same. Marina pushed moist hair off her forehead and sat back on her heels.

  Try here at the back. This folder had more paper, more incomprehensible notations, but these were written on sheets headed “Elephanta Trading and Tours” and decorated with a sketch of the head of a smiling elephant. There’s a poster for Elephanta in the lobby, too. I could make some inquiries about Elephanta Trading and Tours.

  None of this was what she really wanted, but soon she found it. A folded piece of paper was half-wedged in a crack where two sides of the trunk met the bottom. She unfolded it and found herself staring into the eyes of Nagarajan. It was a copy of the poster that had hung on the walls of the San Francisco ashram, the larger version of the picture Catherine had in her bedroom. Under the beam of her light, first one eye and then the other flashed at her, then the full mouth was illuminated. She switched the light off and refolded the poster in the dark, not wanting to look at it any more.

  What does this mean, really, Vijay will say. You knew he stayed here. He left a poster. So what. I’ll say, so Raki kept it. Here, where he keeps important things. Raki told the toothed rope. Raki keeps a picture of Nagarajan.

  She switched the light back on and, fumbling, suddenly in a hurry, screwed the lock back into place. Damn that picture. In her rush to get away, she bumped into the bicycle frame, which thudded against the wall. Oh no.

  As she was going out the door she heard another door close, and Raki’s scraping steps in the passage. She rushed toward the stairs. Forgetting the cola bottles lined up near the wall, she kicked one, knocking over the others. Raki’s steps quickened, and she ran. At the top of the stairs she glanced over her shoulder and saw him at the bottom. He glared at her, his face distorted, and started to haul himself laboriously up by the bannister. She ran down the hall, accompanied by the sound of his thumping climb. From behind one of the doors came sleepy, inquiring voices. She reached in the door of her room, grabbed her suitcase, bag, and sandals, and ran for the window at the opposite end of the hall as Raki reached the top of the stairs and started toward her.

  Pushing her suitcase through the window ahead of her, she climbed out. Raki shouted, a hoarse roar in a language she didn’t understand. The rusting steps scraped the bottoms of her feet as she ran down.

  Raki cried out again, and a light came on in the window next to the bottom of the fire escape, but the curtain didn’t move as she dropped her suitcase to the ground and jumped down behind it. White-clad figures, huddled asleep in the alley, stirred as she passed. Finally, she was out on the street. Barefooted, her suitcase banging against her legs, she ran as fast as she could away from the Hotel Rama.

  25

  The mother and baby who had been sleeping near Marina on the floor of the Victoria Terminus stirred, and the baby began to fret. Other sleepers, too, made tentative, restless movements. Dawn was coming. Marina leaned her head back against the wall.

  She had stumbled through the unfamiliar
streets a long time before she dared stop even to put on her sandals. When she slowed to a walk, panting, convinced at last that nobody was following her, she happened across the extravagant, minareted railway station. It would be as good a shelter as any. She chose a place next to the wall, propped her suitcase beside her, wrapped her arms around her bag, and settled down to wait out the night. Sometimes she dozed for a few moments. More often she tried to think, her brain circling ceaselessly, monotonously.

  Nagarajan escaped from the Halapur jail. He’s alive. I should’ve realized he’d never kill himself. Not if there was anybody left he could con. No, he’s out there, somewhere. On Elephanta, maybe. Catherine is with him, or he knows where she is.

  Marina was supposed to meet Vijay at ten o’clock at the Rama. She’d have to alert him not to go there, and that meant telling him what she’d done. He wouldn’t be pleased. I’ve screwed this up, just like I screwed up the Loopy Doop investigation. She looked at her scratched and filthy feet, the smudges of dirt on her pants. Pathetic.

  A train came in, causing a flurry of activity among the lounging porters, and in a few minutes the disembarking passengers streamed past. One of the men hurrying by, gray-haired, wiry, clutching a bulging briefcase, reminded Marina of Professor Chaudhuri.

  That was back in the days when she still thought Catherine could be swayed by rational argument. She had seen the professor in his office in the Institute for Asian Research at Berkeley. Hoping for ammunition, she had asked him if he had ever heard of Nagarajan.

  “Most certainly I have heard of nagas,” the professor said, in a precise British accent. “They are an ancient and powerful part of Indian religion and culture. As for this fellow calling himself Nagarajan—a common name in South India—I have not heard of him. That means very little. I don’t investigate every so-called holy man who comes searching for followers and money in the gullible West.”

  “You sound as if you don’t approve.”

  He shrugged. “Some are sincere, some are outright charlatans. From what you tell me of this Nagarajan, he has picked a few elements out of Indian tradition, mixed them with a great amount of mumbo jumbo, and is using it to snare unwary searchers such as your sister.”

  “So there’s no basis—”

  “Indeed there is a basis,” he said, sounding annoyed. “That is what exists. A basis. Serpent-worship was one of our earliest religions, and it continues today.”

  His eyes unfocused slightly, and Marina thought he was moving into a lecture he had given before. “Nagas are associated with water— pools, wells, and so on. Supposedly, they live beneath the earth in a kingdom called the Nagaloka, where they guard a huge treasure of gold and precious gems. They take human form when they choose, but they are most definitely animal, and belong to the serpent world.

  “Consider the serpent,” said Professor Chaudhuri, now intent on his subject. “Where else but in the serpent do you find such a combination of the dangerous and the auspicious? The serpent is deadly; his bite kills. Yet, he sheds his skin, a symbol of rebirth. He raises himself, like the phallus, and so is a symbol of fertility. He is feared, yet considered a good omen. The naga, then, is the cobra who has become a divine being.”

  “And there are people who really believe—”

  Professor Chaudhuri held up his finger to silence her. “In art, you will recognize the naga by the hood or umbrella of serpents which frames his head like a halo. The upper body is human, the lower is snake. In Hindu religion, the cobra is associated with Shiva, the destroyer, and Shiva is often depicted as garlanded with snakes. Shiva’s symbol, the lingam, is a stone of phallic shape, another serpent association. We have also Sesha, the World Serpent, who holds the earth in his coils. There is a great deal more besides.”

  He looked as if he would be glad to continue, but Marina didn’t encourage him. She had gained one paramount impression from his remarks. “It sounds as if Nagarajan has tapped into something with real power behind it.” She felt let down, as if Professor Chaudhuri had destroyed one of her most cherished illusions.

  “Indeed he has,” the professor said.

  ***

  Light from outside was getting stronger, and the station was beginning to bustle with early-morning activity. Marina rubbed her face. Her eyes felt gummy, her body weary and sore. She dragged her suitcase to the rest room and rinsed her face and hands, then drank a cup of tea at the tea stall while she considered her next move.

  She felt a great longing for comfort, for insulation, for something that was the opposite of the Rama. Once, on a day she wouldn’t think about right now, she had taken a bus tour of Bombay. Herded out of the bus with her fellow tourists at the Gateway of India, she had looked across the road to a palace, all curved lines and arcades, that seemed, in her state of wound-up anxiety, to represent an unattainable, dreamlike tranquility. Marina picked up her suitcase, left the station, and got a minicab to the Taj Mahal Hotel.

  26

  Several hours later, she had showered and washed her hair in copious hot water, taken a nap, and eaten breakfast. As she dressed, she looked out the window of her room in the Taj toward the imposing stone arch of the Gateway of India overlooking Bombay harbor. The area around the Gateway was swarming with hawkers, food-sellers, and tourists. Crowds waited at the water’s edge to get on tour boats for excursions to Elephanta. Watching the brightly painted, open-sided boats come and go, she thought about Raki’s Elephanta Trading and Tours papers with their jolly elephant logo. She wouldn’t know what to look for if she went there, but maybe— The phone rang, Vijay calling from the lobby. Now she’d have to explain why she’d moved, as she promised she would when she’d called him earlier.

  She found him looking at a scribbled-over piece of paper, tapping the end of his pen against his teeth. He was as sartorially perfect as yesterday, this time in beige linen, and seemed excited and pleased with himself. “I have discovered something,” he said. “I have been all morning with the map of Ahmedabad, where Anand Kumar wrote in the register that he lived, and with the telephone. I have discovered conclusively that the address this Anand Kumar put down is false. Such a street does not exist in Ahmedabad. What I am thinking is, perhaps the name is false also.”

  Marina sat beside him. “You mean it’s a dead end? We won’t be able to trace the call?”

  “Not at all, not at all. You remember that underneath Anand Kumar’s name, in Raki’s hand, was written the name Vincent Shah, of Delightful Novelty Company. Now, I believe that this man registered as Anand Kumar, but that Raki discovered that his real name was Vincent Shah, and he wrote it underneath. Do you see?”

  “How would Raki find out he’d given a false name?”

  “The man wanted to call the States. Raki was worried about payment. Perhaps he searched the man’s room, or somehow found a piece of identification. From what we’ve seen of him, I’m sure he would be capable of learning such a thing.”

  Of course he would. “What you’re saying is Anand Kumar is Vincent Shah, so we look for Vincent Shah.”

  “Yes. I have found already that Delightful Novelty Company exists, and that a man named Vincent Shah works there.”

  “Fantastic.” He looked so triumphant, his dark eyes shining behind his glasses, that she had to smile. The expression felt odd, unaccustomed. It was pleasant, this moment when she and Vijay beamed at each other. It was a shame to spoil it.

  “I got into some trouble last night.”

  His face clouded. “What happened?”

  He looked increasingly pained as she described breaking into Raki’s office and going through his files. As she described her flight from the hotel, he removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “This is very bad, Marina. I won’t say you shouldn’t have done it, since you know that. It puts me in an awkward position.”

  “Surely you don’t think Raki’s going to complain to the consulate?”

  “No, but you have gotten into a dangerous situation, which is exactly what I was assigned to prevent.
I think I must ask Mr. Curtis to have someone else take over.”

  She’d expected remonstrations, warnings, but not desertion. What was this wrenching sensation, the pleading tone that entered her voice so unexpectedly? “You can’t, Vijay! We’re getting somewhere. In Raki’s chest there’s a picture of Nagarajan. I know there’s a connection. You can’t deny that, can you?”

  He put his glasses back on and studied the knee of his slacks, with its crisp crease. “I don’t deny anything, but I don’t want to encourage you on this course.”

  “It isn’t a question of encouraging. What you say isn’t going to change what I know is the truth. If you back out now, and get Mr. Curtis upset, you’ll make things harder for me than they were before you started to help.”

  Vijay said nothing and didn’t look at her. He’s going to dump me. All the frustrations of the past weeks seemed to have rolled themselves into a ball and lodged in the back of her throat. To hell with him. I never wanted him around in the first place, with his pretty-boy clothes and his enthusiasm.

  “You weren’t honest with me,” he said.

  She shook her head, staring at her clenched fists in her lap.

  “I can’t help you if you do things behind my back, can I?”

  “No.” She flung the word out. Marina didn’t believe in excuses and she hadn’t intended to speak again, but she heard herself adding, “I was— desperate.”

  Another silence. Then he said, “Suppose we do this. You will tell me your plans, which will not include breaking into places, and I won’t report to Mr. Curtis just yet. We’ll continue just a while.”

  She wasn’t sure she’d understood. When she looked at him he met her eyes with a small, inquiring smile.

  It seemed silly to feel so relieved. “All right.”

  “Now, what shall we do?” he asked.

  “Let’s call the Delightful Novelty Company and get an appointment to see Vincent Shah. Then, let’s take a trip to Elephanta.”