by Peter Heath
The passengers in the first-class compartments were told that there was a chance of a small hydraulic leak. They were removed quietly and efficiently to the second-class compartment, where they settled down to roost temporarily among their inferiors. The rest of the passengers were told nothing. What difference does it make either way, thought Jason. It’s a swift way to die, so why worry them.
The floor-plate seemed as though it had a hundred and fifty million screws, and everybody except the co-pilot went to work with screwdrivers and half-penny coins. Jason used an American dime. If the thing was on schedule they had fifteen minutes to find it and the remaining time to get rid of it.
It was in a small and very heavy blue bag and it didn’t tick at all. It had an acid fuse and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. It sat on the ripped-up floor, and the captain looked at Jason. When they found it, they had five minutes to get rid of it.
“You’re the expert,” he said.
“How high are we?”
“Twenty thousand and losing altitude as fast as we can without tearing the wings off,” he said.
“How slow can this crate go and still flap its wings?”
“With a full fuel load—about two hundred knots, and that’s not healthy,” he said.
“All right,” said Jason. “Get her as low and as slow as she’ll go, get me a piece of the strongest rope you can dig up, make sure the passengers are strapped in tight using their oxygen, and clear the hell out of this compartment. I’ll jettison it through the emergency exit,” he said. “And move quickly—we only have about four minutes left!”
They ripped the rope out of a life raft stowed in the overhead. As they were tying it around Jason’s waist, he felt the floor tilt even more steeply. If they could get below ten or eleven thousand feet, the sudden decompression created by the blown emergency exit wouldn’t do too much damage. If they didn’t, the pressure loss would either rip the plane to shreds or, at the very least, pop the passengers’ eardrums like wine corks.
Either way was better than waiting for his surprise package to open itself. He checked the rope again. They had tied it around one of the fuselage members exposed during the investigation of the baggage compartment. If it snapped, he would go right along with his friend, the blue bag, sucked out of the exit by the slipstream to fall toward the blue ocean and his death.
The plane shuddered and nosed up as the captain gave her full flaps. Jason could feel her wallowing like a drunken fish. His hand gripped the exit handle, and the captain spoke through the intercom.
“Now!”
Jason popped the emergency door.
First the wind tried to batter his brains out. Then it tried to snatch him from the end of his rope. It was a greedy, nasty claw, and it beat his body into a U half inside and half outside the little hatchway. The blue bag wanted to fly away from his two clenched hands and stiffened arms, but he wouldn’t let it. The slipstream would bash it against the stabilizer or shove it into the sucking maw of one of the four rear-mounted jet engines.
It had to be thrown up or down. With all of his remaining strength he forced his arms over his head. It was slow work. He felt like a diver working in a thousand fathoms. Then, in an explosion of muscle, he snapped both arms down and threw it. A half-second later it cleared the bottom of the inboard engine by a foot and went tumbling down and away into nothing.
He had just clawed his body back inside when the concussion came, shaking the big plane like it was a rat in a dog’s mouth, bringing it perilously near to its stalling speed and banging Jason’s head against the back of a seat. Then he felt the surge of power from the big engines, taking hold and accelerating them out of the danger zone.
Not a bad beginning for an amateur, Jason thought. He crept into the pilot’s compartment and let them cut the rope off and swab down his wind-bruised face.
The rest of the passengers were a little disappointed that they couldn’t guzzle free drinks and airline cigarettes for the rest of the flight. They stayed strapped in, and the big jet never did make it back up to twenty-five thousand feet without pressurization; it stayed low and flew slowly for the rest of the trip, which took twice as long as it should have.
Jason didn’t mind this small discomfort. He was glad to be alive, and he was glad that Cyber was going to be in his Bombay hotel room when he arrived. They would try again, of that he was sure. And the next time they might be successful.
The rain looked like a sure thing for at least forty days and forty nights. It was a torrent of warm water, pelting out of the billowing, gray monsoon clouds and smashing itself against the dirty roof of the Bombay City Air Terminal.
Jason was soaked to the skin by the time he reached the customs shed. He was squashed into the middle of a herd of jabbering, milling people who pushed him along past the line of sweating, gesticulating Indian officials who had a hundred different colored stamps to decorate his passport and entrance visa. The last one, an olive-skinned almond-eyed Turhan Bey type, with the purple rings of many sleepless nights under his black eyes, shoved Jason’s papers back to him.
“From the Colonies, I see. Hope you enjoy your stay, old boy,” he said in the purest Welsh accent Jason had ever heard.
He managed to avoid the mob of porters long enough to check with the arrivals desk. Cyber’s flight had been delayed by the heavy weather. He scribbled a note telling his friend to meet him in the hotel and left it with a pert-faced Hindu girl behind the information counter. Then he plunged back into the confusion of the monsoon afternoon.
A dirty arm reached out and hugged his waist.
“I am Mr. Chatterji, of extremely high caste, and my taxi will comfort your journey to its end.” The arm was attached to a wiry little man clad in a dhoti and smelling of betel-nut juice.
Jason nodded at his suitcase, and a minute later they were off in a clash of gears. The taxi plunged through a crowd of screaming women with wicker baskets on their heads and down a dirt lane through a maze of rotting, smoke-blackened houses. Mr. Chatterji was able to hit every pothole with all the skill of his trade. Great gouts of muddy water broke over the wiperless front window but the taxi’s speed never slackened.
They skirted a swamp that smelled like the world’s answer to hell and then came out on a main highway. Suddenly the mist was filled with whizzing cars and horn-bellowing trucks. A flimsy trestle loomed up. A train was roaring over it, so jammed with people that hundreds of white-clad figures were clinging like monkeys to its roofs and sides.
Now they were zooming along the rim of the bay with the old pukka playground, Chowpatti Beach, on their right and the tangled slums on their left. Bombay was built on a peninsula, and the British had reserved its tip for themselves. All this was changed now, Jason thought. India belonged to the Indians—even if they were making a mess of it.
Mr. Chatterji turned his taxi off the highway and they were again lost in the murky alleys that ran between the millworkers’ chawls, jouncing violently and scattering shrieking people right and left as if the only rule of the road was their right to kill anybody who got in the way.
I wonder if Mr. Chatterji is giving me the Texan’s tour, thought Jason sourly. After his elaborate introduction, the little Indian had been remarkably silent. Now Jason reached forward and tapped him on his bare shoulder.
“Let’s skip the short cuts—in case you forgot, it’s the Great Punjab Hotel,” he said.
“In but a few moments,” Mr. Chatterji muttered without turning his head. He hunched lower over the wheel, and Jason waited.
The taxi ploughed through more water, more twisting streets, and more people. In fact, the crowd seemed to be thickening ahead. Mr. Chatterji’s head turned from side to side. He seemed to be looking for something.
The his foot came down on the brake. Hard.
There was a soft thump against the fender, and the taxi stopped in a splatter of brown mud. A plaintive wail went up, and Jason was staring into a sea of brown faces. Mr. Chatterji was already
out the door. Jason followed.
A skinny child lay in the mud, moaning between clenched teeth. At least it’s alive, Jason sighed with relief. He started around the side of the car, intending to offer his assistance. But before he had taken a second step his arms were pinioned by a mass of steel-strong fingers. A low growl of rage went up from the crowd, and he felt himself being lifted by his ankles. A voice that he recognized as Mr. Chatterji’s shouted, “The Americans have killed our children before! Now we must pay them back!”
So that’s the game, thought Jason.
He remembered the stories told by men who had served in India during the war. Stories of mob violence kindled in a split second, stories of GI’s and Tommies being literally torn apart by angry Hindus.
Now the hands were at him again, and he could feel his arms being slowly twisted in an unnatural direction. That decided it. If people were going to get hurt, it was too bad. A man didn’t let himself be ripped to shreds without a struggle.
With all of his strength Jason smashed his elbows into the faces behind him. At the same instant, he drove his leather-soled shoes into the bare feet under him. There were crunching sounds and screams of pain. The tactic worked for the half-second that Jason had counted on.
He was momentarily back on his feet. As the crowd lunged forward he crouched and sprang, his legs driving him up and his arms grabbing. Then he was on the roof of the taxi and reaching inside of his tropical jacket for the shoulder holster and the .38.
It came out in one smooth motion and he fired, the explosion echoing through the twisted alley like it was the mouth of a cave. The crowd’s second lunge had carried it right up to the edge of the car, and Jason found himself staring into a sea of brown startled faces.
Then the human sea dissolved. It turned into a shivering broken wave of white, splattering itself in all directions. Jason stood on the roof of the automobile and watched it dissolve in a scurry of fleeing individuals. He fired his .38 into the mist again—just for good measure. Then hopped down to the ground.
Mr. Chatterji was nowhere to be seen. Neither was the injured child. It all added up to the second attempt to murder him in one day, thought Jason. Then, before he could straighten up over the empty spot where the child had fallen, he saw a movement out of the corner of his eye. Just a slight flicker of white in a doorway, farther down the alley.
Mr. Chatterji had made his first mistake of the day—he had lingered to enjoy the spectacle of Jason’s death. Or perhaps he simply wanted to take his rusted taxi away somewhere and clean the blood off it. What’s the difference, anyway, thought Jason. He gathered himself and sprinted toward the doorway.
But Mr. Chatterji was quick.
Before Jason had halved the distance, the little brown man was scampering away into the misty shadows. The muck wasn’t helping at all. Jason churned after him, his shoes slithering and growing heavier with each stride. At the end of the first alley, three more narrow passages branched off in different directions. Jason slid to a stop and listened. The street was still deserted. Then, in the alley to his right, he heard the dog growl and the whispered curse in a strange language that followed. As much as the idea repelled him, Jason knew it had to be done. Quietly and carefully he slipped his shoes off and rolled up his trousers. Then he began to stalk his quarry.
Mr. Chatterji didn’t make his second mistake until Jason had chased him through the network of stinking alleys and moldering chawls for what seemed an eternity of foot-slipping disgust. The piece de résistance came when Jason’s foot came down on something that felt like the belly of a dead woman. He didn’t stop to check. He continued to hold back far enough to convince his human deer that he was safely away . . . and close enough to keep the steady footfalls within good range of his hearing. Finally the footsteps slowed, and Jason crept forward. He was peering around the corner of a creaky set of stairs when he saw the white-dhotied form disappear through a door that slammed shut a second or so later.
Mr. Chatterji made his third mistake as soon as Jason barreled through the rotted entrance, showering the dimly lighted room with splinters. The wiry little Indian decided to stand his ground. A nasty little stiletto appeared in his right hand, and he crouched like a hairless fox, waiting for Jason to come to him.
“Well, if it isn’t Mr. Chatterji.” Jason circled. “I’ve been asking nearly everybody how to make sure you collected your fare . . .” Jason watched the little man’s eyes flicker and, as the arm with the blade flashed in and up, he was ready. His foot flashed out and kicked Mr. Chatterji’s jaw with a neat crack. It was a perfect savat blow and it knocked the small Indian into a silly grinning heap in the far corner of the room.
“Glad to see you’re being such a good sport about it.” Jason scooped up the stiletto. Mr. Chatterji’s eyeballs were each trying to find the same direction when Jason knelt down and let the sharp point tickle up a little spot of blood on his Adam’s apple. That seemed to help the eyeballs. They suddenly redirected themselves on Jason’s face, and the throat wiggled out a series of idiot sounds.
“Never mind trying to talk, Mr. Chatterji. You’re a very sick man,” said Jason. “You might even be dead in the next thirty seconds. All I want you to do is think about it.”
Mr. Chatterji thought. His eyes grew soulful, his lower lip twitched, and the fingers of his right hand fluttered. He wanted to speak.
“Just give me the whole story,” said Jason. “In nice, sweet, bite-size pieces . . . or I’ll squeeze your skinny little throat until it sings a high C.” Suddenly he was mad. Mad at being targeted for violent death by the kind of slime that has no regard for the innocent bystander. And mad at himself for forcing a member of the world’s largest underprivileged class to talk at the point of a knife.
“I, Krishna Chatterji, will tell only what I know,” the Indian began in pompous fashion. Jason realized that, in spite of the knife, the taxi driver was going to play it cool. As the Indian continued, his mind began to work furiously in other directions.
“I was told to bring you to a certain street,” the Indian continued. “The boy was to feign his injury in order to create a confusion. This was my signal to incite the people, but I assure you, sir, not to do you bodily harm!” The Indian’s voice took on the tones of a wronged child. “It is so, and I swear by holy Siva that this is the truth!”
It was a waste of his time, and Jason knew it. The Indian could spin a web of words around the Blarney Stone. He wasn’t going to talk—either too scared or too smart. But there was another way to pry open the lid on his mind, a way that Jason, himself, had once experienced.
“Okay, my brave and honest friend. I’ll take your word for it—at least until something better comes along. Now it’s time for us to trot along back to the taxicab and deliver ourselves to the hotel,” he said. He yanked the limp Mr. Chatterji to his feet and put the knife in his belt. Then he pulled out the 38.
“Oh, this,” he said, indicating the gun. “It goes off with a great big bang, and I promise you the hole it will make in the back of your head will blow you straight to Nirvana without any detours. Now move!”
* * *
Chapter †
TEN
THE GREAT PUNJAB HOTEL was a moldy old pile of Victorian bad taste with wide screen-enclosed verandas circling around each of its five floors. It sat in the middle of a square that was full of hooting, hollering Indians carrying badly printed signs which said: Food Before War . . . People of India Rise. A million people would die of starvation in the next year—perhaps twice that many except for the U.S. wheat surplus that was being pumped into the country, Jason recalled. But with the highest birth-rate and one of the lowest crop yields in the world, three-quarters of the population was always hungry.
He prodded Mr. Chatterji through the mob, concealing the .38 with a soggy newspaper. His reservation had gotten lost, and the young Indian desk clerk broke into a profuse stream of apologies. Not too many westerners stayed at the Great Punjab any more . . . it was regret
table . . . such a fine hotel . . . the British had loved it . . . He punctuated his last sentence with a kick that sent his assistant scrambling toward the old-fashioned telephone.
“Never mind,” said Jason. “Has a Mr. Adam Cyber checked in?”
He had, and a minute later Jason and his prisoner were ascending to the fifth floor on a creaking elevator. The faded old hotel had been chosen with care—the perfect place to stay out of sight and, hopefully, out of trouble.
The green-eyed, smooth-skinned man who shared Jason’s past, present and future was not inside the hideously decorated room. Jason’s eyes swept across moldy carpet to the rotting curtains that were billowing in the breeze coming through the open doors to the veranda. Shoving Mr. Chatterji ahead of him, he stepped over the threshold leading to the balcony.
Cyber was there. He was too preoccupied to bother with Jason’s greeting.
His naked body glistened under the softly falling rain. It was contorted into the most difficult of all the classic Yoga positions—the Padmasana or Lotus, with three contractions. His eyes were closed and there was no sign of respiration.
Jason tapped his friend’s forehead gently. Then he nudged Mr. Chatterji back inside the room and they waited. Three minutes later, Cyber appeared.
“It is a worthwhile discipline,” he said. “A most interesting country. And you, my friend, have been in difficulty . . . or so your appearance would indicate.”
Jason was a mess. His suit was covered with mud and worse. His face was a mass of bruises, sustained during the near disaster aboard the jet. He was exhausted and hungry . . . and there was still Mr. Chatterji.
“Adam,” he said. “Our friend here has something to tell us. Only he can’t quite bring himself to do it. Perhaps you can help him with his problem.”
“What is it he would tell us?”
“The names of his friends—the ones who tried to murder me three times in the last forty-eight hours,” said Jason, looking at Mr. Chatterji, whose brown face was in the process of losing all of its color.