Flash House

by Aimee E. Liu

The driver spoke my name. “Your mother has sent for you,” he said. When I hesitated he continued, “Memsahib has important news. Good news. It must not wait.”

  This was not the first time Mem had sent a rickshaw to the school. Before Lazarus came, she often sent Nagu this way when we forgot our lunch money. When she slept late or had an early meeting we would come on our own, and twice, when the Austin was in the repair shop, she had sent a rickshaw to bring us home. To send for us after the start of school was unusual, but I had watched other children be called away for family emergencies. That, I decided, must be what this was. Perhaps Mem’s husband had returned. Or Lawrence was back. Perhaps the American Ambassador had decided to grant my visa. Perhaps we were going to move to America, and she needed my help packing right away. It had to be something she had learned after we left the house—something that couldn’t wait for Lazarus to come back and turn around again. Good news, the driver said. I told him to wait while I fetched my brother. But no, he said, memsahib wanted Kamla only. I should have known better, yet I felt my heart soar with pleasure that she should want me alone, and chose to ignore my instincts.

  But as we got under way, doubts began to set in. What if she was calling me back to tell me she could no longer keep me? I was nearly grown now, and she had given me advantages the other girls in her rescue home could hardly dream of. Maybe she had decided it was time for one of them to take my place. I recalled her letting the cook go only weeks before. “It’s not working out,” she told him quite simply, and he packed his bags and went. But where did he go? Where would I go? I put my hand to my cheek where she had once slapped me.

  And that was the moment when I looked up and realized the rickshaw was traveling in the wrong direction. Not toward Ratendone Road at all. We were heading for Old Delhi. For G. B. Road.

  Fortunately, there was a good deal of traffic, forcing the rickshaw to slow. At the next pause I prepared to jump out, but as soon as I moved, the driver looked back. He had long dusty black hair and a purple birthmark like a scald covering one side of his neck. “If you try to escape we come after you. If you hide we take one of the sons of the bearer in the house where you live.” He rolled his head and a dreamy look entered his eyes. “Or perhaps the American boy.”

  “This is Lazarus’s doing!” I cried out, desperate to blame.

  But the driver ignored my outburst. He tossed a piece of newsprint back into my lap. It was the Gazette with Mrs. Solomon’s article, browning around the edges and stained with grease and tea. Those were my own eyes staring back at me, my own face cheek to cheek with Mem’s. A son, Mrs. Solomon had written, a little boy, who attends school with his new adopted sister, and they all live happily together. Then Surie had seen me, knew where I lived, and time had passed.

  Now, quickly, I had to find a way out. I did not believe they would dare to harm Simon, but I knew the threat against Nagu’s sons was perfectly real. Only last week, the mali’s cousin had been tracked to our compound and left with two crushed legs as punishment for his unpaid gambling debts. And Mem never even learned of it.

  I demanded that the driver tell me where we were going. He grinned and swiveled his head. My old mother wanted to talk to me, he said. I owed her a great deal of money.

  So Surie had reported to Indrani. And she doubtless to her friends the policemen. But this rickshaw boy was no hardened goonda…

  We were nearing Raj Ghat and would soon turn onto G. B. Road. My thoughts tumbling now, I asked the boy his name. Jaggu, he answered boldly. I asked how much Indrani was paying him, and when his head wobbled at the question, I told him that if he pulled over I might make him a better arrangement. We stopped by the grassy embankment, and I offered to pay him double what he was getting from Indrani if he would serve as go-between instead of taking me to her in person. I pointed out that my memsahib would surely go after Indrani if she learned of this attempt to kidnap me, and Indrani then would take her revenge on him as well as on me. I explained to Jaggu that I could earn far more if I continued my studies (I remembered Bharati once telling me that rich men preferred and would pay a premium for educated girls), if I dressed in fine foreign clothes, and especially if I was not restricted by the squalor of the flash house. I persuaded him that I understood I could never escape Indrani but also that it was in her interest to leave me with the firenghi. Each fortnight he should meet me by the entrance to Humayun’s Tomb, an easy bicycle ride from Mem’s house, and I would give him one hundred rupees for Indrani and twenty for himself. Even as I spoke these figures, the size of them alarmed me. The only money I possessed was given to me by Mem for lunch or to buy occasional trinkets at Khan Market. But I saw no other way.

  The rickshaw driver was young and greedy. He accepted the arrangement, but before turning back to school, he unsheathed the knife from his belt. “Just so that you understand.” He reached back and with the tip of the dagger plucked the top button from my blouse. Then he studied me, not lecherously, but with an eye so calculating that I shuddered. After a moment he used the same blade to stroke the birthmark along his neck. “I have always thought of this as a curse,” Jaggu said. “But your beauty is your curse. Isn’t it?”

  Strangely, although I had been told before that I was beautiful, this was the first time I believed it. The effect was not what he must have intended. For if beauty could be a curse, then, too, could power be. And one curse might well vanquish the other. “Thank you for the compliment,” I said. “Now would you kindly take me back to school?”

  Lawrence was gone. Simon was a child. And even if Lazarus had not brought my downfall, I sensed that he would rather escort me to Indrani himself than risk his little finger defending me. I did think about turning to Mem. For days I thought about little else. Surely for this Mem could not blame me. She worked day in and day out for the welfare of girls who sold their bodies. She was mistress of Safe Haven, after all. But safety was her illusion, not ours. As Mrs. Shaw she was still—perhaps more than ever—firenghi. Outsider. What could she truly understand in this? Had it not been due to her own action—that stupid, stupid interview—that Indrani knew where and how I was living? This had not stopped Indrani; no, in fact it must merely have whetted her greed. I remembered Bharati telling me of girls who escaped the flash house, moved to faraway places and lived for years in the care of husbands or well-meaning employers, only to be brutally murdered when their gharwali tracked them down. The goondas would tie up the girls’ protectors, vandalize their homes. Here and now a threat had already been made against Simon. And with that unforgotten slap Mem had made it abundantly clear that her true allegiance was to Simon. If she learned of this threat, I did not doubt she would abandon me.

  3

  As Lawrence entered Battersby’s new office, he took a quick inventory: arched windows, northern light, matching mahogany furniture and paneling, oriental carpet and club chairs. The vast desktop held nothing but a telephone. He said, “Been demoted again, eh, Jack?”

  Without rising, Battersby reached forward and received Lawrence’s outstretched hand, rotating his wrist with a forceful flick. A condensed arm wrestle, which Jack invariably won.

  “Have a nice time trekking the Himalayas?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Lawrence flexed his fingers and settled himself in front of the desk. “Fucking fantastic holiday, thanks.”

  As Jack ran his tongue over his upper teeth, his mustache rippled. His hair had gone grayer than Lawrence realized in the darkness in Delhi. “I should have reined you in months ago,” Battersby said.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because I wanted to give you enough bloody rope to hang yourself.”

  “My blood or yours?”

  “Look, there’s a loose piston in Washington. This McCarthy bugger’s turning the State Department inside out. CIA’s next. Our mates are starting to fret about him connecting the dots to your joe.” He folded his hands in front of him. “This is not a good time for them to be nervous, Larry. In case you’ve been too busy on holiday
to read your briefing sheets, we ’re about to sign a treaty with the Yanks that the Prime Minister’s rather keen on. Regional peace and partnership. Be a bloody shame if the ANZAC alliance was torpedoed over your fuck-up.”

  “You told me the Yanks didn’t know it was Aidan.”

  “They figured it out.”

  “I’ll bet they did.” Lawrence looked pointedly at a photograph on the credenza, of Jack with his two young sons, taken in front of the Washington Monument. Jack’s only interest in ANZAC was its effect on his future as Australia’s first spymaster. Lawrence could practically hear him salivate as he spoke the letters, CIA.

  Jack brought a pipe, ashtray, and pouch of tobacco from his desk drawer and began a preparation for smoking as elaborate as a Japanese tea ceremony. “What’d you turn up on this bloke Eldon?”

  “Might as well be a dog marking his territory from Singapore to Beirut. At every stop he whips out that ‘smuggled’ candid of Aidan and Chou En-lai, talks about the terrible tragedy of his old war mate the turncoat. And he makes lots of stops, this Eldon. Buyers for Kodak all over the world. It’s a bang-on cover.”

  Jack struck a match and lit his pipe, puffing his weathered cheeks until the tobacco glowed and the smell of burned cherries filled the room. Then he picked up the phone and asked his secretary to bring in a couple of glasses. She obliged within the minute, a sturdy blonde with good legs and thick lips not unlike, if memory served, those of Jack’s wife. Along with the glasses, she brought a bucket of ice and a bottle of Glenfiddich. Jack barely acknowledged her as she came and went.

  “How far back have you traced him?” he asked, handing Lawrence his drink.

  “When Aidan saved Eldon’s life in Burma, they were both working for OWI. And when the CIA was formed in ’47, guess who was standing in line with an application in his hot little fist?”

  “Why would Central Intelligence advertise your man’s defection when their State Department’s marked it top secret?”

  “The object is to protect Aidan’s pose as a leftist. And make sure no one traces him back to his true source. Playing one hand against the other may be part of the exercise. They fed you his name, didn’t they? He wasn’t your idea at all.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “We were set up, Jack. We’re the stupid younger brothers who were had by a turncoat. By routing through my friendship with Aidan, then setting up a smoke screen of accusation and denial within their own ranks, your mates at the old CIA have laundered themselves right out of the mission.”

  “Which is?”

  “He’s a news writer. The Yanks knew all about that Soviet A-bomb test in Semipalatinsk. How? How did they know to send their B-29s on a flyover, getting aerial pictures at just the right time?”

  “They’re an intelligence machine, Larry. It’s what they do.”

  “Precisely. And for the moment I’m betting Aidan’s a critical cog. Troop movements, new air bases, Soviet aid and advisors floating in over the Sinkiang border. Not to mention the Chinese hand in Korea and four hundred Americans trapped behind the Bamboo Curtain. Plenty to occupy a double agent, I’d say… He left behind an insurance policy with a disappearance clause that no commercial insurer in their right mind would agree to.”

  “How so?”

  “Death benefits payable after he’d been missing nine months. At the ‘Company’s’ discretion. This company happens to be the same firm that covers the CIA.” Lawrence continued talking as he opened his valise and placed a manila envelope on Jack’s desk. “Joanna, of course, would have had to declare him dead, which she couldn’t bring herself to do, so now, as we all know, he’s been proven alive.” He arranged ten news photographs for Jack’s inspection, the results of a pre-Christmas search through the archives at the University of Delhi, which he’d managed to conduct without Joanna’s knowledge. “These are from various Chinese publications since the Communist takeover. Aidan’s in every one, somewhere in the background. Note how the crowd is holding up banners, posters, the usual slogans. Our loyal cadre, right there with them.”

  Jack pulled a magnifying glass from his drawer and briefly pored over the pictures. “I don’t read Chinese. What are you saying?”

  “Hide in plain sight. I haven’t cracked it yet, but I will.”

  Jack lifted his glass noncommittally and drank. “And the hell with his wife?”

  “Perhaps out of necessity. I’m not sure if Aidan realized going in that he was going to stay in. His initial assignment may well have been simply to tail Alice James.”

  “They were quick to pop the news of that crash.”

  “Sometimes it’s easier—cleaner—to bring someone back from the dead than to make them disappear among the living. If only Jo had played along.”

  “Maybe.” Battersby leaned back in his chair. “You’re working too hard, Larry. Maybe you just don’t want to admit you were had. Not me. Not us. You.”

  “That’s why I’m going stateside,” Lawrence said evenly.

  “I warn you—”

  “I know, the bloody ANZAC alliance.”

  They drank in silence for several minutes. Jack seemed to be waiting. Finally, Lawrence said, “Aidan’s a mixed-breed. He can sustain loyalty to two opposing beliefs, ambitions, even women at once. Weller’s wife actually quoted him…what was it? China Hands see the world in gray as opposed to red and white.”

  “Opposing women?”

  “Apparently he had a serious affair in China at the end of the war.

  Jack smiled at Lawrence. “Who didn’t?”

  “Difference is, he told his wife.”

  “Can’t be much of a spy in that case.”

  “He’s also a reporter.” Now it was Lawrence’s turn to smile. “Like I said, he saw no contradiction between living a secret and telling the truth. But he didn’t tell her the whole story. I did some checking. Turns out the other woman was Special Operations. Irish, but working for the Brits in Chungking. She ran afoul of some of the less sympathetic generals in Chiang Kai-shek’s stable. Caught them selling arms to the Japs—theoretically for use against the Communists. Aidan’s affair with her may or may not have been real. He may have simply been protecting her. Unfortunately for her, she didn’t think she needed protecting. One night she went out by herself, and a couple of thugs dragged her into an alley. They left her paralyzed, unable to talk.” Lawrence wiped his palm on his trouser. “She died back in Ireland a few months after the war ended.”

  Jack’s face appeared motionless through the blur of smoke. He took one last pull on his pipe and emptied the bowl with a smack on the edge of a silver ashtray. “What’s the wife doing this time around?”

  Lawrence looked straight into Jack’s eyes. “Planning to divorce him.”

  “You haven’t shared your theory with her?”

  “No.”

  “And she hasn’t tried to contact him through the Chinese?”

  “She’s understandably angry.”

  “No benefit of the doubt? No impulse to stand by her man till death do them part?” Jack’s tone was mocking. “Ironic that just when she quits on him, you take up the cause.”

  “We don’t have quite the same investment.”

  “Not anymore?”

  “No.” He continued to hold Jack’s gaze. “Not anymore.”

  “My condolences.” Battersby refilled their glasses. “You realize you’re making a better case against him than for him.”

  “The Reds will be marking the same scoreboard, Jack. That’s to his advantage as a double agent.”

  “Talk to me about Alice James.”

  “I think she was one of the Left’s starry-eyed true believers, headed for the Soviet border with a trove of names and numbers she’d picked up in Washington.”

  “And what do you think happened to all those names and numbers?”

  “I’m betting she was clean by the time Aidan’s rescuers reached the site.”

  “Why are you working so hard to defend him?”


  “Tell you the truth, Jack, I wish he had gone over. If I’m going to be made a fool of, I’d rather it were done all out. For real. This is like being stabbed in the ribs by one of your own teammates. Maybe the right side wins but you’re lying bloody on the side of the field and all the glory’s gone out of you.”

  “Better side of valor’s to expose his game, eh?”

  “Could be this is all part and parcel of your bloody treaty negotiations, Jack. Price we pay, a little hazing to qualify for the fraternity.”

  “What if you’re wrong?”

  “Then I’m in the wrong business, aren’t I?”

  Jack smiled. “You don’t seem to quite understand, Larry. The current regime Sydney-side isn’t any keener on Communists than the Yanks are. And your affiliation with a known defector places you in a rather precarious position. I’ve been protecting you as best I can, but it seems about time I got something I can really use in return.”

  “I don’t need your charity or your protection.”

  “Oh, I think you do,” Battersby said. “Fact is, you like playing my game. It suits you. And you suit me—that is, when you haven’t got your head up your arse. You’re a charmer, you are, and you speak in tongues. Those are two useful attributes for a spy. You also have an obstinate streak, which I admire. You’re determined to see this theory of yours through, which is why I’m paying your way.”

  He stood and handed Lawrence back his clippings. “However. I don’t have to tell you, these are serious charges. I don’t like being played for a fool any more than you do, but the Yanks are technically our allies. Rather powerful allies.” He paused while Lawrence got to his feet. “If you’re wrong about this, Larry, and you go too far, we’ll all be lying bloody on the side of the field. Some of us may not get up again.”

  4

  Though it was only two o’clock the sky was like gunpowder, the city beneath it subdued. The ancient compasses and sundials of the eighteenth-century observatory loomed like gargantuans from a Jules Verne novel. Rising to heights of up to fifty feet and styled from the most basic geometric shapes—triangles, circles, spheres, and squares—these red sandstone instruments were reputed to measure time, space, and the zodiac with exquisite precision. They also functioned as massive sculptures, with convex and concave and leaning surfaces that turned the vast court into a maze of screens against prying eyes.