The Grand Tour: Four International Mysteries

by Michaela Thompson

  She was alone, caught in something she understood only vaguely, en route to a destination she could not imagine. Her bag, with the tools that had seen her through, with her passport and money and even her clothes, had been taken away. What remained? Her sandals and underwear and the sari she had bought to bribe Hari to talk, which was now filthy and impregnated with dust.

  The men seemed to relax slightly now, and talked among themselves, although they still watched the road behind them closely. Aside from curious looks, they paid little attention to her. She had noticed the guard from the compound glaring at her, but even he made no aggressive move. She guessed it would be up to Baladeva, who must be in front of them in the other truck, to decide what to do about her.

  They continued to climb, and the road narrowed. She tried to remember what she had read about Baladeva’s gang. They camped in these hills, moving from place to place, sweeping down to carry out raids, presumably on the rich. The ease with which they got away and their increasing popularity among the poor were turning them into a political embarrassment. That must have been the reason for the police action today. Still, the attack could have been window-dressing. If the police were serious about capturing Baladeva they would follow, and there was no sign of them. She thought for the first time about the young man who had guarded her, remembered the blood spurting from his neck. That had been serious enough.

  It was well after nightfall when the truck stopped. The road had become an all-but-impassable track. The headlights briefly illuminated the gray face of the rock they had pulled up behind, and the other, now-empty, truck. Then the lights went out and the darkness was almost total. Someone’s hand jerked her to her feet as the men jumped to the ground. She jumped in her turn, still in a strong grip. When her eyes adjusted, she could see the dark forms of the men disappearing over the side of a hill, and could make out the face of the man holding her. As she had thought, it was the guard from the compound. The two of them followed the rest.

  She could see no path, and the men had spread out through the rocks and scrub. She heard their running feet. Occasionally, the heavy sound of their breathing mingled in her ears with her own labored gasps. As they gradually descended there were trees, and plants with sharp spines that caught at her sari. The descent became steeper and the vegetation more dense; eventually the group consolidated into single file to pass through a narrow opening between boulders. When Marina went through, she could just make out that she was in an open area where tents had been pitched. Aside from the occasional brief flicker of a flashlight, there was no illumination except the moon, high and silver in the starry black sky.

  Figures hurried through the encampment, speaking in hushed voices. Marina’s captor pulled her down behind a rock where he crouched with his rifle at the ready. Marina struggled to catch her breath. They’re waiting to see if the police are coming, if they’re going to be attacked.

  She wasn’t sure what determined the moment when the threat of an attack was considered to be over. People began walking around the encampment, a lantern was lit in one of the tents. Someone approached and handed Marina and the guard a cold chapati and an orange. Marina ate while she watched the camp come cautiously to life. A few more lanterns were lit and hung in trees, and a small fire was teased into life.

  Spitting out the last pits of the orange, Marina said to the guard, “I didn’t intend to hurt anybody. I saw a woman come into the compound. Do you know her? She has yellow hair, and she’s wearing a red-and-white sari. I think her name is Catherine.”

  The guard grunted. “It is for Baladeva to say. You have brought the police down on us like a herd of jackals.”

  “I didn’t. I swear I didn’t. I had nothing to do with it. I don’t know why the police came.”

  “Our brother is dead because of you.”

  “I wasn’t spying. I was looking for my sister. I swear.”

  “Baladeva will decide.”

  He stood and hauled her to her feet and led her through the dimly lit camp, past groups of men speaking in low tones, chewing on their cold bread.

  They reached a tent in the center of the clearing, outside of which stood a tall man with a rifle. The guard left her under the tall man’s surveillance and entered the tent. After some low conversation Marina heard a voice say, in lilting, musical English, “Yes, yes, you must bring her to me now. Immediately.”

  The next moment, she was entering the tent.

  44

  Light from a swaying lantern cast increasing and diminishing shadows of Marina and the guard on the side of the tent. It played on the barefoot man in the long, loose, V-necked shirt and pajama-style trousers who sat cross-legged on a rug richly patterned in blue and gold. When he saw Marina, he placed his palms together and bent low over them. There was mockery, Marina thought, in the depth of his bow.

  Nagarajan’s once-luxuriant hair was roughly clipped close to his head. Without it and his flowing robes, and with the moustache that now shadowed his upper lip, his aspect was more conventionally masculine than when she had known him before. His face, with its dark eyes and exquisite bone structure, showed no sign of the passage of ten years. Just above the neck of his shirt, she saw the scar she remembered. She had always tried to touch it, just to see if she could. He always pushed her hand away.

  He spoke briefly to the guard, and when the man withdrew he gestured for her to sit on the rug in front of him. She lowered herself slowly. When they faced one another he smiled the familiar amused smile.

  “You have reached me after all, Marina,” he said. “I would have thought it simpler to come directly from Halapur with the men I sent to fetch you. Now I recall that the simple way never appealed to you.”

  “Where is Catherine, Nagarajan?” How often had they played this scene? Had nothing changed at all?

  “Please to call me Baladeva now. In India, you know, we believe in many incarnations, many lifetimes. Nagarajan was another life. But you do not know, do you, that Baladeva is also the name of a nagarajan. Taking that name was a tiny game I played.”

  “And Catherine?”

  “It is strange how things do not change.” He knew, she felt, that he was echoing her own thought. “When you came to see me first, it was to search for Catherine. Now you have come again, and still you search for her.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She is dead, as you know, yet she has led you to me. It is a paradox. How can the dead lead the living? Yet you have followed her all these years, and not these last days only.”

  “You say she’s dead. I got a letter, a phone call.”

  “What are those? Words on paper, a voice in the air. They have significance only when mingled with your own need.”

  “I saw her come into the compound.”

  “Suppose you see a white dove fluttering in the top of a tree. When you look again closely, it is a white cloth caught on a branch, blown by the wind. The dove is not real, you will say, but was it not real in some sense when you saw it? You must ask yourself, more important, why out of harmless cloth you have created a flapping bird.”

  Perspiration stood on Marina’s forehead. “Where is Catherine?”

  “Have you not understood? Catherine is with you only. Nowhere else, except in the dust of Halapur.”

  She could see nothing but Nagarajan’s bland, unreadable eyes. “There is a woman who has yellow hair and who wears a sari. I didn’t imagine that.”

  “No, you did not.” He called, and the man outside the tent looked in. Nagarajan spoke to him, and the man replied and left. “We must wait a short while,” he said.

  Nagarajan uncrossed his legs and reclined on the rug, leaning on one elbow. The gesture made Marina’s breath catch. “Baladeva,” she said. “You got out of jail and became Baladeva. How did you convince Joginder and Baburao to help you?”

  His lips curled. “Joginder was frightened out of his wits, and more than ready to get me out of Halapur or do anything else I asked. Convincing Baburao to let me out of ja
il was a matter of even greater simplicity. More than anything, Baburao wanted to own a field. I offered him the chance to have what he wanted, which is what I have always offered those who came to me.”

  “Whose body was cremated?”

  “A homeless wanderer who slept on the sidewalk near the prison.”

  “You killed him?”

  “I? Locked in a cell, how could I kill him? Baburao brought him in and gave him something to drink, and when his eyes became heavy Baburao twisted the cord around his neck.”

  “All for a field.”

  “It made him happy, I believe.”

  “Until you had him summoned to that field in the middle of the night and killed.”

  “You accuse me, I see. Yet had you yourself not thrown us out of balance Baburao would still be alive.”

  Marina shook her head. “You threw things out of balance when you sent those letters and had someone call me from the Hotel Rama. That’s what made me believe Catherine was alive, and put me on your trail.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Undoubtedly those things put you on my trail, but if you think I was behind them you are mistaken. I sent no letters. I knew about the telephone call because Raki, one of the few people who knows of my former life, told me after it happened. I assure you I had nothing to do with it.

  “Consider, Marina” —he held up a forefinger— “Nagarajan has been cast away, like a snake’s old skin. Baladeva is strong, and loved, and famous. Do you realize how powerful I am now?” His face was radiant.

  “Is Elephanta Trading and Tours a front for moving what you steal?”

  “It is clever, is it not? Boats come to Elephanta from the opposite coast, and from there go to Bombay. I myself go sometimes. I move freely in Bombay because I have many, many friends there. What I am saying, however, is this: The elements of my past life are of no more use to me than a snake’s old skin is of use to him.”

  She wondered if he was lying. “If you didn’t contact me, who did?”

  He shrugged. “For the answer, you must search your own mind. Certainly I would not disturb you with letters and calls about your dead sister. When I learned you were here, I wanted to avoid you. Failing that, I wanted to capture you. I could do neither. Only your own utter determination, which I remember quite well from before, has brought you here.”

  It made a weird sort of sense. As a guru, Nagarajan sought power, wanted to have people in his grasp. As a dacoit, he wanted the same thing. He might have shed his skin, but the essence was unchanged.

  “It’s too bad these men you lead don’t know what you really are,” she said.

  “Do you know what I really am, Marina?”

  Voices came from outside. A woman in a red-and-white sari entered, knelt, and touched her forehead to Nagarajan’s feet. She straightened and looked at Marina.

  Her yellow hair, thick and shining, fell past her shoulders, framing a long, serious face sprinkled with freckles. Her lips were thin, her eyes light brown. I want always around me women with hair the color of mustard blossoms. The woman regarded Marina without expression, but when her gaze shifted to Nagarajan Marina recognized the adoration of the devotee.

  “This is Sylvie. Sylvie came here from Paris to write about me for a magazine,” Nagarajan said.

  Catherine had been taller, blue-eyed, bigger-boned. Sylvie didn’t look any more or any less like Catherine than a cloth caught in a tree resembles a fluttering dove. Marina bent her head, and felt the air stir slightly as the woman left.

  “Sylvie became convinced that we represent a genuine movement of the people, and she has dedicated herself to our cause.” Satisfaction was evident in Nagarajan’s voice.

  Catherine was dead. Catherine had been mixed with the dust of Halapur for ten years. Tears slid down Marina’s cheeks and dropped into the pattern of the carpet. She is with you, nowhere else. She had found Catherine after all.

  After a while, Nagarajan stirred. His voice pulled her back to awareness of her surroundings. “There is an expression, is there not, that one who has died has ‘gone before’?” he said. “Catherine has gone before, and you have followed her to this point. Now, you must join her where she is.”

  He couldn’t let her live. Marina was part of the skin he had cast off, and she must be cast off as well.

  “You’ll sacrifice me the way you sacrificed Agit More,” she said.

  He took a pistol and holster from a pack in the corner of the tent and strapped them around his waist. Over his shirt he slipped a sleeveless vest long enough to cover them. “You have misunderstood the case of Agit More,” he said. “His death was a ritual sacrifice, the holiest of acts. To kill you is a necessary act, not a holy one. For a sacrifice, the victim must be a boy, unblemished, never a woman or an enemy. Catherine understood this, even if she did not approve.”

  “Catherine didn’t help with the ritual?”

  He shrugged. “She did not approve. She did not attend. But she did nothing to stop it from happening. I count her as one of the faithful who perished for the cause.”

  Catherine didn’t approve of the ritual murder of a child. That was something, but it wasn’t enough. Marina, too, if she lived, would from now on count her sister Catherine as one of the deluded faithful who had perished for a horrific cause.

  “As far as my men are concerned, you are a police informer who precipitated the raid on our compound in Goti,” Nagarajan said. “They will not question what happens to you. It will be best, however, if they do not know too much. I think you will simply come with me.”

  She stood. Nagarajan motioned toward the entrance of the tent, and she started on her last walk with him.

  45

  The silent stares of the men Marina and Nagarajan passed as they left the camp were almost tangible— cold, impenetrable, unyielding. Sylvie stood impassively in the shadows. They’ll watch me go to my death. They’ll do that because it’s what Nagarajan— Baladeva —wants.

  Nagarajan’s face was solemn. His hand was gentle on her arm, almost as if he touched her only to keep her from stumbling.

  When they left the camp and passed a patrolling sentry, Nagarajan took the pistol from his belt and pressed it against her side. “You will walk ahead of me slowly. We will not go far.”

  She took a step. “Nagarajan?”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t shoot me without warning. Let me know when, all right?” She didn’t know why this was important, only that it was.

  “Yes, yes. Walk on.”

  They wound over a rough path through precipitous terrain. There are vultures here, Marina thought. She remembered the tour of Bombay she had taken the day Agit More was murdered. The bus passed by the Parsee Towers of Silence and the guide told how, with solemn ceremonies, dead bodies of the faithful were placed there for the birds to clean.

  My bones will tumble and splinter among these rocks. Her mouth tasted of salt. The grit beneath her eyelids, the itching in the palm of her hand, the stones in the path seemed infinitely precious. She breathed and smelled her own body, and Nagarajan’s, and a hint of smoke from the camp, and a dry aroma of dirt and vegetation that was the earth. Catherine is dead but I’m not.

  “This is far enough.” Nagarajan turned to face her. They stood by the rocky, sloping side of a gully that seemed, in the darkness, to have no bottom. Nagarajan’s eyes reflected moonlight. The pistol, in his right hand, was by his side.

  He drew her to him as if for an embrace.

  “You’ll really kill me, Nagarajan?” she whispered.

  His arm tightened. “You have been a great bother to me, although you gave me much pleasure also.”

  Much pleasure. She remembered their nights together in the ashram. She reached toward his face, not knowing why exactly, perhaps in supplication, and realized in mid-gesture what she must do. She stroked the scar, the mottled scar at the base of his throat.

  His right hand, as she knew it would, as it always had, moved to brush hers away. In that reflexive instant she
threw herself to one side and clung to his wrist.

  The gun went off with a muffled explosion. Nagarajan bent, dropped the gun, and stumbled into the gully. She heard scrambling noises as he slid downward. Had he been hit? She wasn’t sure. She picked up the gun and, standing on the gully’s edge, she fired toward the sound.

  If he wasn’t hit he would be back, but surely he would first go to the camp for another gun, and perhaps reinforcements. She ran frenziedly, then crouched, panting, in a sheltering crevice of rock to catch her breath.

  The first shots had about the same volume and rhythm as the sound of a woodpecker pecking a tree. She shrank back against the rock, certain, even though they were far away, that they were somehow directed at her. She strained to hear. The noise remained distant. Then she understood. The police had attacked the encampment after all.

  Comprehension brought her to her feet. She started toward the noise. If she could find the police, she could get away.

  As the firing got louder she could hear shouts as well, and see an unearthly glare. She gripped the gun more tightly and slipped from rock to rock in the increasingly illuminated landscape. Amid a confusion of shouts, groans, and cries, the firing stopped. On a rise ahead, she saw running figures silhouetted against the light, which she realized must come from searchlights the police had trained on the camp. Through the babble, she heard a motor and saw, off to one side, a jeep pull up next to a patch of scrub. A man vaulted out of it and paused to light a cigarette. The flame of the match glared briefly on his open khaki shirt, his pudgy face and hands. He stared at her, startled, and then she realized that the shrill voice calling for help had been her own.

  46

  The surprised policeman, who told her his name was Sergeant Aziz, placed her in the front seat of his jeep after gingerly taking her gun away. “We have heard of the missing American lady,” he said. “It is lucky you were not with these dacoits. They were determined to fight, and now they have had the worst of it.”