The Caretaker

by A. X. Ahmad

  “Hey.” Ricky pulls back. “You sound like my dad. You know how many fights I got into in high school because of my turban? You know how often the cops pull me over?” His eyes are bright with anger. “You think I don’t want to cut off my hair, like you? Just be a normal guy? Huh?”

  “Sorry. Sorry, I didn’t mean to lecture you.” He pats Ricky’s shoulder. “You’ve been a great help. I’ll call you when I know more.”

  Just then two Indian kids walk into the coffee shop, both wearing thick black-framed glasses and tight T-shirts under plaid shirts.

  “Ricky! Hey, man, what are you doing here? What’s goin’ on?”

  They head over to the table, and Ranjit squeezes Ricky’s shoulder and walks away. When he looks back, the kids are high-fiving Ricky, who stares in Ranjit’s direction, a worried look on his handsome face.

  * * *

  As the sun fades from the sky the temperature drops rapidly. Ranjit crosses the bridge over the Charles River and notices a thin crust of ice beginning to form over the dark water. He takes a left onto Commonwealth Avenue and heads down the landscaped strip in its center, walking between two rows of trees wrapped in tiny white lights. The sky turns black and the twinkling lights come on, illuminating tall statues of Revolutionary War generals, abolitionists, and mayors.

  He walks quickly, shrouded in wisps of his own breath.

  The Web site he accessed on Ricky’s computer said that IGMDP stood for the Indian military’s Integrated Guided Missile Development Program. In 1989 the IGMDP designed and built a long-range missile to carry a nuclear warhead.

  In Hindi, “Agni” means fire or flame. It is also the code name that the Indian military had given to their first homegrown missile.

  Memories flash through his mind. He was a child when the black-and-white TV showed footage of India’s first nuclear test, deep under the Thar Desert. He watched transfixed, as a bomb perversely named “Smiling Buddha” was detonated, heaving up a mountain of sand and leaving a deep, dark crater.

  India had the bomb, but they still needed some way to deliver it. The missiles they had, British- and French-made, were erratic, their guidance systems shorting out, the missiles plunging into the sea.

  It had taken Indian scientists another fifteen years to build an accurate missile. He remembers that Republic Day parade in Delhi when the homegrown missiles were revealed: first came the marching troops, then the tanks, and finally the missile carriers, the missiles lean and sharklike, their tips painted a patriotic orange. The crowds had seen them and cheered, as though greeting a Bollywood film star.

  Thrusting his hand into his jacket pocket, Ranjit feels the stiff rectangle of cardboard. He can hardly believe that this battered cardboard strip with its window of film is a blueprint for some part of the Agni missile. How has it ended up inside a doll in Senator Neals’s house?

  Walking through the twinkling darkness, Ranjit remembers Neals’s flushed face after three beers, boasting about his trip to India to negotiate a nuclear truce. The easiest explanation is that the Senator somehow got his hands on the microfilm during his trip to India.

  He had hidden it inside a doll that belonged to his dead daughter, in a bedroom that lay unused in his summer house. In the dead of winter, he had sent the blond man to retrieve it. If Ranjit and his family hadn’t been living there, no one would ever have known.

  How long did the microfilm lie hidden inside the doll? And why did the Senator need it now, right after he returned from North Korea?

  Ranjit walks on through the twinkling lights of Commonwealth Avenue, something niggling at the back of his mind.

  North Korea. He remembers something he had read a few years ago, in an article about the Pakistani nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan. Concerned about the burgeoning international trade in nuclear information, the Americans had traced the source to Pakistan. It turned out that Khan had been selling information on uranium enrichment and centrifuges to the Libyans, the Iranians, and the North Koreans.

  The international sanctions against the North Koreans were designed to prevent them from getting their hands on any nuclear information, but thanks to Khan, no one knows whether they actually have the bomb or not. The uncertainty around it helps to prop up their decrepit regime. Like Khan, is Senator Neals selling nuclear secrets to the North Koreans?

  Khan is one thing—a renegade scientist in a corrupt country. But Senator Neals is rich—he certainly doesn’t need the money—and powerful, his popularity soaring after he returned from North Korea with the hostage.

  Ranjit stops abruptly, remembering again that evening in the Senator’s house.

  Shanti had walked up to the Senator, still sipping on her orange soda, and asked him why the North Koreans had let the hostage go. He’d replied patronizingly, asking her if she knew what a negotiation was. When she shook her head, he had said, They wanted something, and I wanted something, and we worked it out. Undeterred, Shanti had asked, Huh, what did you give them?

  Ranjit walks on, passing a tall statue of Alexander Hamilton, now reduced to a dark, looming silhouette, surrounded by twinkling lights.

  His clever, too-curious daughter had asked the right question back then. It all makes too much sense: the Senator’s trip to India and the negotiations with the Koreans are a decade apart, but the microfilm hidden inside the doll may be the link between the two deeds.

  Had the Senator offered the North Koreans this microfilm in exchange for the hostage? If his guess is true, the Senator will be under tremendous pressure to get the microfilm back, will even kill for it. Ranjit shivers when he thinks of what he might be involved with.

  He realizes that he has walked the length of Commonwealth Avenue, and now stands across the road from the ornate wrought-iron fence of the Boston Public Garden. His fingers and toes are blocks of ice, and he stamps his feet and slaps his arms as he waits to cross Arlington Street.

  Entering the garden, he walks down its winding paths, deserted now, lit by soft globes of light. The huge weeping willows are brown and drooping, and the pond in its midst is frozen solid, covered with a dusting of snow.

  He remembers coming here with Shanti on a summer day. The garden had been crowded with tourists and full of excited children. Shanti had been captivated by the swan boats, long paddleboats that puttered across the pond, each decorated with a large wooden swan. He’d taken her on a ride across the green pond, past the water lotuses with their shocking pink flowers, and she’d giggled at the real swans turning themselves upside down, their webbed feet sticking comically up in the air.

  If only Shanti hadn’t taken that damn doll … but there is no use thinking like that. What the hell is he going to do now?

  The important thing is that he knows what is on this microfilm. He can use it to trade for his family’s freedom, but it is too dangerous to approach the Senator directly. There has to be some other way.

  Anna. She said that she was returning to Boston. She cannot be mixed up in this mess: he thinks of their discussions during the summer, how she seemed disgusted by the world of power and money. He doesn’t have to tell her much; all she has to do is set up a meeting with the Senator and make sure that the blond man isn’t there.

  Despite the freezing cold, the narrow iron bridge across the pond holds a pair of lovers, mouths pressed into each other. Averting his eyes, Ranjit walks past them, emerges on the other side of the garden, and cuts across the empty expanse of the Boston Common.

  As he heads toward Chinatown, he passes the old colonial graveyard at the edge of the Common, its marble tombstones sticking out of the snow. The stones have been worn smooth by centuries of weather, and all he can make out are a few words: eternity, peace, and rest.

  He walks faster, heading down Essex Street, and is glad to enter the crowded swirl of Chinatown.

  Stopping in the lobby of the Garibaldi Hotel, he asks the white-haired day manager behind the desk for a phone book.

  The man stares blankly at Ranjit. “Nobody uses those. They sho
w up and we throw them out.”

  But miraculously, there is a battered copy under the counter, from five years ago. And that is probably a good thing, because Ranjit is sure that Senator Neals’s address is not listed anymore. But there it is, in black and white: Clayton Rivers Neals, 51 Rutland Square, Boston.

  “Where is this place?” Ranjit asks the manager, who squints down at the small print.

  “South End.” The man chuckles. “Back in the old days nobody would set foot there. The place was full of junkies. You could buy a house from the city for a dollar. Now it’s all gays and yuppies and wine bars. Take the Orange Line, then walk down Mass. Ave. and…”

  Ranjit leans on the counter and copies the address onto a scrap of paper. The rich and powerful of Boston live on their estates in Wellesley and Lincoln, but not Senator Neals; the kid who grew up in hardscrabble Roxbury has stayed close to his old neighborhood. Anna is just a few miles away from him, and he will go and see her tomorrow.

  Walking up to his floor, Ranjit hopes that James is in his room, but his neighbor’s door is shut. Entering his own room, Ranjit takes down the doll from above the bathroom ceiling, replaces the aperture card, and stashes it up there again. He retrieves his knife and puts it on the dressing table, wishing he had been able to take the blond man’s handgun.

  Taking a deep breath, he reminds himself that he has the upper hand: he knows what is on the microfilm now, and the Senator badly wants it back. When he thinks of Anna, he feels a familiar flush of shame, mixed with desire. What is he going to say to her when he sees her?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The next morning, Ranjit walks down Columbus Avenue in the South End. Even with the trees bare and gray crusts of snow piled on the ground, Anna’s neighborhood stinks of money.

  He turns onto Rutland Square, passing rows of Victorian brick town houses with curved bay windows, their high brick stoops rebuilt with faux-antique iron railings. Land Rovers and Saabs are parked in the tiny service alleys, and through the windows he sees high-ceilinged rooms with chandeliers and tall, dark pieces of furniture. The richer Americans are, he thinks, the older they like their houses.

  The Dunkin’ Donuts near the subway stop was still out of tea, so he bought a cup of hot chocolate. He sips it as he walks, noticing the street numbers painted in gold leaf on the high transoms. Number 51 is at the center of the square, and a motion-activated security camera above its front door whirrs to life as he approaches.

  Cursing under his breath, he hurries past. He really should have planned this better. What is he going to do, wait for Anna to emerge? Or should he just ring the doorbell and hope that the Senator isn’t home?

  He pauses in front of a brick town house on the other side of the square. It has been gutted and is being rebuilt, its windows empty holes, its interior swarming with workers in yellow helmets. He smells freshly cut lumber and hears the crack crack crack of compressed-air nail guns.

  Moving closer, he stands on its stairs, hoping that in his blue mechanic’s jacket and boots he will fit in with the construction workers.

  Minutes pass, and soon the hot cocoa is down to a chemical-tasting sludge. He looks for somewhere to throw his cup, but there seem to be no trash cans in this neatly manicured world. He is looking up and down the block when Anna emerges from her front door and pulls it shut.

  He recognizes her long-limbed, confident stride right away. She’s wearing her blue-and-gold running sneakers and silver down jacket, her short hair hidden under an orange knit hat.

  Anna, it’s me, Ranjit, please, can I have a minute … The words are in his throat as he starts to cross the road. And then he stops.

  A black Land Rover emerges from the alley and pulls alongside her. The rear window hisses down and he gets a glimpse of the dark, shaved head of Senator Neals.

  Stupid. Seeing her has made him stupid. Ranjit walks casually back to the construction site.

  “Hey, you!” A bearded face peers down at him from a high window of the gutted house. “Yeah, I’m talkin’ to ya. Ya with the Sheetrockers? Where’s the rest of the fucking crew?”

  Ranjit nods. “They’ll be right by. They’re looking for parking.”

  “Parking? In this neighborhood? Stupid crackhead motherfuckers.” The man’s head disappears.

  Across the road Anna leans into the car. Ranjit hears scattered words above the crash of construction.

  “… nice today … going running … thanks…”

  The Land Rover roars ahead and Anna sets off toward Massachusetts Avenue at a rapid walk. He quickly follows, expecting her to break into a run at any second. When she starts jogging, what is he going to do, chase her?

  She doesn’t look back, just walks on rapidly, swinging her arms. Maybe she’s heading to the Esplanade, the park that runs along the length of the Charles River. It’s at least a fifteen-minute walk from here.

  He crosses the road toward Anna, but just then she turns and runs lightly down the stairs to the Massachusetts Avenue subway stop. Following her, he slams through the turnstiles and takes the stairs to the open-air track below. It is rush hour, and the platform is packed with office workers. Just then an Orange Line train pulls into the station, disgorging more passengers, and he loses sight of her.

  He stands, peering at the sea of people, swamped by the gray overcoats and dark business suits. Just as the doors begin to close, there is the flash of an orange knit cap, and he sees Anna pushing her way into a car at the rear of the train.

  He runs for the car nearest to him, seeing the doors sliding shut. Damn it.

  A hand appears between the doors, and they jerk open. He jumps in, hearing them hiss shut behind him.

  “Made it, huh, buddy?” A black man in faded blue janitor’s overalls retracts his arm and smiles at Ranjit.

  “Thanks,” Ranjit manages to gasp. “I was late for work.”

  “Yeah, I know how that is.”

  The man cracks open a Boston Globe and there is a photograph of Senator Neals on the front page. Damn it, the man is everywhere. The headline above the photograph says SENATOR NEALS SPEAKS AT HARVARD TODAY: HOW TO DEAL WITH A DANGEROUS WORLD.

  The train hurtles down a dark tunnel and Ranjit wipes sweat from his eyes, leaning into the motion of the train. He’ll move back to Anna’s car at the next station, but he suddenly feels wary about talking to her. It’s clear that she isn’t going running. Why the hell did she lie to the Senator?

  Looking out of the window, he watches the dark walls of the tunnel swallow up the train.

  * * *

  The train jerks to a stop at Back Bay and he quickly changes subway cars. There is no sign of Anna and he pushes to the middle of the car, feeling the panic build, then spots her sitting in the far corner. She has taken off her hat and her hair is longer now, its dark wings framing her face. Her summer tan has faded, and in the dull light of the train her skin is beige; she seems edgy, her black eyes flicking about the train, her slim body swaying with its jerky movement. He’s always thought of her as strong, but just now she seems brittle, diminished by the crowds and the darkness.

  Taking a deep breath, he is about to walk up to her when a well-barbered gray-haired man steps in front of her, raising the wooden handle of his umbrella in greeting.

  “Why, Anna Neals. I had no idea you took the T.”

  Her face brightens artificially. She is instantly gracious, dimples appearing as she smiles. “Oh, Walter. I’m just going to the gym. How are things downtown?”

  Ranjit curses and steps back. So she is going running after all, but inside, at a gym.

  He sees the back of the man’s neck redden, sees how animated he is in Anna’s company. From what he can hear, they’re talking about a dinner party, then a new play at the American Repertory Theater.

  “… wonderful,” Anna says. “What presence. But a little histrionic, don’t you think?”

  The man leans closer. “Well, it is a play by Pinter. My understanding is that he had a tumultuous life himself,
I mean, the marriages…”

  The man talks on and on, and Anna smiles and makes a show of listening, looking now and then at the phone in her hand. Ranjit does not understand what the hell they are talking about and feels dread settle into his bones. This is Anna’s world: Rutland Square, gyms with treadmills, going to the theater with men like Walter. He had probably only seen her summer personality, the one that goes with her cotton dresses and straw hats.

  The stations hurtle past, taking him back the way he had come: Tufts Medical Center, Chinatown. How far away is her gym?

  As they roll into Downtown Crossing, he sees her pull on her hat and ready herself, but Walter misses all her cues and is still talking as the train screeches to a stop. She hurries off the train with a small wave, too distracted to notice Ranjit a few steps behind her, and they are both instantly swallowed by the crowd.

  She strides toward the turnstiles, pushing past teenagers in baggy jeans, men in cheap leather jackets, and secretaries wearing bright lipstick. He is right behind her when a man in a puffy black jacket cuts in front, blocking his view. In the few seconds it takes to get through the turnstiles, she is gone.

  He stands on his tiptoes, peering into several exits leading in different directions. Has she gone to the Red Line on the lower level? Or on to Oak Grove?

  There is a flash of her orange hat going up the stairs, and he moves, following her up to a long, narrow concourse. She strides past the Africans selling incense and scarves from wooden carts and ducks into an entrance for Filene’s Basement, its door plastered with signs for discount clothes.

  Is she using this as a shortcut on her way to the gym? He enters behind her, inhaling perfume-scented air, and finds himself in the women’s section. Despite the early hour, the low-ceilinged basement is swarming with women who scour the racks of brightly colored clothes with methodical precision.

  Anna’s closets in the Vineyard were full of brand-new clothes with designer labels. Surely she isn’t shopping here, among the remainders and clothes left over from previous seasons?