With some theatrics, Soma lifted the mantle from her head, liberating a braid that swung like a thick cable to her waist. We had arrived at the heart of her message, which I was certain she had painstakingly memorized. “Masterji expects you to meet him at seven AM precisely at the corner of the Grand Trunk and Chaitganj Roads. From there you will ride in an autorickshaw to your destination.” She hesitated and I saw it was from embarrassment. “I am also instructed to tell you to bring exact fare for the driver. And the tip.” That didn’t surprise me. Generous in every other way, my teacher wouldn’t impart with a single rupee, or even a few paisa, outside his home if it could be avoided. The practice of tipping was as foreign as equal rights, and as his student—his vidyarthi--it was expected that I pony up for transportation, meals, and all amenities whenever we ventured out. He rarely failed to take advantage of the custom.
“Very well,’ I sighed. “Please inform Masterji that I will be there on time, with everything he requires, including my full and bottomless pockets.” At which point I reached into one of those pockets and extracted a five-hundred rupee note. Taking care that no passerby or neighbor saw the transaction, I folded the bill and tucked it discretely into Soma’s palm. With a wag of my finger I said, “Not for betel or new bangles. It is to be put in a safe place and saved. And if you wish, come Thursday evening and we will practice the newspaper again.”
Had she not watered the dust of her mother-in-law’s courtyard every night with her tears, Soma would have wept onto the stonework at my feet, but her eyes were like dry wells now—no moisture within. Instead, they shone with gratitude, and the smile, the big one that told me I’d thwarted Fate’s plans, bloomed upon her face. That made my morning.
Fate, however, was taking notes, paying close attention to my silly attempts to change his plans for Soma. Within the fortnight he would alter all the features of that beautiful face and radiant smile.
Two
Twenty minutes later I was rocking in the rickety chair at my desk in the salon, watching Sahr, my housekeeper, with the usual fascination. She had just ordered Lalji to market for ingredients for the weekend meals. The list was accompanied by a stern warning that if he tarried or neglected a single duty—fractured pinky or not--she would raise sizable welts about his head that would make all his friends laugh at his condition.
Sahr was in every way a contrast to her creatively lazy son. Where he appeared thin and frail, she was filled with limitless energy and possessed a bosom so full it clearly contradicted Newton’s laws of physics. The architects who designed the erotic temples at Khajuraho two hundred miles west of our city had never met my housekeeper, but if they had, her breasts would have been duplicated on the statues there.
Each day she spun about my house like a small top, sweeping, scurrying, washing, and cooking, all the while appearing as if she might topple if she tilted too far to one side. I had often glanced up from my desk and leapt to my feet from the mistaken notion that I needed to catch her before she tumbled into a corner where neither of us would be able to get her vertical again. What I eventually learned was that her center of gravity was in fact located below her navel, somewhere between her upper pubis and generous bottom. The folds of her sari mysteriously slimmed all of that lower flesh, creating the illusion of a ripe, brown pear walking illogically about on its stem.
Sahr had sharp, intelligent eyes and curved cheeks set in a moon-shaped face that made her look Nepalese. Her most prominent feature (after her bosom) was a smooth, ivory-colored birthmark that tapered from her left temple across to the center of her forehead. It stood out like a bleach-stain on a dark carpet, and I often remarked that it looked like an elephant’s trunk. It appeared that way even more so when she scowled, which she did whenever she told me it was not a trunk but a swan’s wing. I couldn’t see it. She stated with visible pride that it was the source of her clairvoyance. That, I could see.
Sahr was an exceptional cook, frugal, and proud of all aspects of her culinary skills. In the mornings she would prepare plain American breakfasts of toast, coffee, and sliced fruit, all the while grumbling that her skills were squandered on that effortless meal, and what Master Bhim really needed was a healthy portion of samosas and pakoras for his long hours of turning pages of the large books upon his desk. I tried once, with no result, to explain that hefting those pages didn’t require as many calories as she might imagine.
I took the first sip of a second cup of Nilgiri coffee and peered over the rim as she spun about the room. After sending the dust outside with a brisk warning not to return, she unhooked the sandalwood mats that hung on the window frames and leaned them against the doorjamb. With water from the garden hose she saturated them. In an hour, when the sun rose to a higher angle, the light would evaporate the moisture and cool and perfume all the front rooms of the villa--an ancient and still effective method of air conditioning.
I set my mug next to a stack of legal pads that represented six months of work--a translation one of the classical plays of the eighth century. My teacher had guided me on the project at times, but the opus was primarily mine, and one that I was proud of. It had been tedious work, and only a few people had actually heard the rendering, but I thought I'd done a decent job bringing a cast of twelve-hundred year old royals back to life.
I cleared my throat—the signal that I was announcing something of importance.
“Sahr, I will be traveling outside the city tomorrow. I won’t need anything but coffee in the morning and a sandwich for the afternoon, something that won’t go foul in the heat, cucumber with paneer cheese, perhaps. I will also need two Nalgenes of ice-water, a clean kerchief, my flashlight, and my camera.”
Sahr normally relished these organizational chores, but a frown creased her face as soon as I’d begun. Something was amiss, and I was fairly certain I knew what it was. My trip wasn’t in line with her psychic predictions.
Sahr was a clairvoyant, a seer, and everyone in Nagpur and nearby neighborhoods conceded that she was a good one. A damned good one.
Her belief system was a jumble that I could never quite figure out--baptized Jesuit, she practiced the Catholicism in a perfunctory, Hindu style manner. Portraits of Jesus, Mary, and Saint Francis sat in a small niche in her room. That’s where the Christianity stopped. She performed puja to them each daybreak, lightening incense and adorning them with floral wreaths and fruit. But they took a distant backseat to a chatty green parrot, a ghost, and a pack of ornately designed astrology cards. The parrot, ghost, and cards were her tools for determining all the important decisions in her life . . . and mine, and most of the people in that part of the city. They also provided sufficient income that she probably could have done without housekeeping for me.
When I first arrived in the villa three years earlier, there had been a steady stream of clients tromping through the rear courtyard. All manner of people arrived for consultations about barren wombs, un-marriageable daughters, or aging parents. By the end of the second week I’d had to ask her to move the readings elsewhere. She did so immediately and without complaint.
Sahr leaned the last of the mats against the doorframe and rotated to face me, hands coming to rest impatiently on her hips. “And will Bhimaji be gone the entire day?” Just a hint of irritation in this.
“Well . . . yes, I would expect so, though if Master Devamukti tires too quickly, we might return earlier. I really don’t know all the details. Actually, I don’t know any of the details, but I assume we will be doing some research in the Sanskrit, which as you know doesn’t ever seem to tire him, while I fatigue like an overworked carthorse.”
“So you do not know if you will return for supper or not?”
I wasn’t keen on how this was going. “No Sahr, I do not.”
“And you do realize that tomorrow is the worst day of this month for Bhimaji to be traveling?” Her hand sliced the air like a knife. “The worst!”
Ah, I thought. So that’s the cause of her tetchiness. She
had evidently forecast my entire month cusp to cusp and the journey didn’t bear good prognostications. Compound all of it with not knowing whether to prepare my dinner or leave me to forage for leftovers, and she was ill-tempered about all of it.
I knew better than to tease her much about her psychic powers, but I couldn’t resist a few innocent jibes. “So, this prediction, Sahr, are you sure you have the right Bhimaji? Tall man, very neat, blond hair, twenty-seven years? Rents a nice villa near the river with a perpetually irritable cook? You’re sure you have his correct birthday? That could cause some serious miscalculations you know, having the wrong birth date.”
Her eyes narrowed and, with her hands still clamped like lobster claws at her hips; she pulled her shoulders back thrusting those mountains of bosom towards me. Just shy of five feet, she suddenly looked taller. “Oh yes, Sahib”—she only used that title when I was in trouble—“I have the correct man, a stubborn ferenghi who pays too little attention to matters of the heart, wades in the Ganga at the wrong hours of the night, and walks alone without a hat in the wrong hours of the day. He loses his writing pen too often from forgetfulness and doesn’t send letters to his mother often enough. Yes, I have the correct Bhimaji. He is the very fortunate young sahib with a cook who sees to his every need, and that cook would weep to the end of time if he were ever hurt from his own foolishness. Oh yes…his birthday is the sixth of October.”
Damn. She’d gotten it right, all of it. “Sahr, can you tell me how it will be dangerous for me to ride in an autorick with a seventy-four year old pundit, stroll through an airy cave, have a picnic, and return that afternoon?” I really hoped that was the way it would be.
She peered at me just as the sun rose above the top of the mango. Squinting, I saw her expression. She was truly troubled. “I consulted my bhuta last night, Bhimaji. The spirit told me that it is not the journey itself.” Her voice trailed off. “It is what you will find on the journey that will be of danger to you.” Seeing me squinting, she stepped to one side and added, “It will be of danger to you and many others. I have been told.”
Not exactly a convert to her methods, I was nonetheless not a total skeptic. She had been correct on too many occasions for me to ignore it. I dropped my teasing manner.
“What sort of danger?” I also wondered how she knew of my trip a half day before Soma had come to the gate. That I chalked up to the best communication system in Uttar Pradesh--gossip, known thereabouts as gupchup.
“That is not being revealed, Bhimaji, only that your journey will bring you and others into grave danger.”
“And which of your esteemed agents told you of this peril? Megadhuta the Parrot? Your cards? Tea leaves? Or maybe Durgabal, the all-seeing ghost of the Ganges?”
She didn’t smile. She set her fingers upon the pulse of my wrist and looked at me anxiously. “All of them, Bhimaji. All of them”
I sighed and turned from the intensity of her gaze to stare out the window. In the street a figure passed slowly by my gate. The face turned in my direction and I recognized it. It was the face of a young man I hadn't seen for more than three years. I remembered it from the first night I entered the city, couldn’t attach a name to it, but that face had left an indelible impression on me.
Habitually I reached for the thin cord that circled my neck--my namaghanda, the name string the man had given me as he announced that I would no longer be called Martin Scott. I would be known only as Bhim. The string and the name both remained.
Absently, I tuned back into Sahr’s voice. “And in case you haven’t heard the latest news, there was another bombing yesterday. It is in the morning paper I set on your desk.”
I glanced at the newspaper folded trimly on my desk and squeezed my eyes shut. “Mother of God, where now?”
“A hundred miles down the rail line, outside Lucknow. The Varanasi police have pulled in people for questioning, mostly Muslims leaving the Gyanvapi Mosque. Imam Nomani is protesting it loudly, claiming it is another attempt to harass the good followers of Islam. But even worse, that fool Quereshy is ranting again, this time calling for a march down Luxa Road on Monday.”
I groaned. The news of the imam’s complaints didn’t concern me much. His messages were, by and large peaceful, often with the goal of trying to bring Hindus and Muslims closer together. Protests were part of the expected rhetoric of a religious leader tending to the affairs his mosque. Udmir Yakoob Qereshy was another matter entirely, and his rants did concern me. He was a hothead, a Muslim cabinet member in the provincial government with enough influence to be quoted in the newspaper once a week. He could cause problems.
Neither of their reactions was as important as my next question. “How many died this time?”
“Nine,” she answered quietly. Her fingers touched my wrist again. “Take caution, Bhimaji.”
Three
Sutradharak, the Puppetmaster, squatted on the floor of a small loft near Beniya Park on the Lahurabir Road. The attic, located above a furniture warehouse, had a single window on the east side. It was interminably hot and coated with dust, but suited his purposes well. The building below was a disorganized mass of charpai cots, tables, and woven lamps, but normally empty of people.
The loft also had a wired Internet connection, four chairs and a table made of raw board.
He read the two lines on his laptop again, committed them to memory, and with a tap on the keypad, deleted them. The message contained no data that could connect his employers to him, no names, no subject, only a date and an amount in dollars moved into a corporate bank account in New Delhi. The planning and implementation of the next bombing, like all previous ones, would be left up to him. His employers granted full autonomy and conceded his ability carry out their objectives. Indeed, over a fourteen-month period, Sutradharak had orchestrated five bombings without detection or capture--his most recent being the explosion the previous day that had killed nine people near Lucknow.
His employers had been pleased with the results, but the PuppetMaster considered them trifling. As always, he envisioned something larger.
His fingertips slid over the letters of the keyboard and hovered as if above a Ouija board. The message had come to him less than a minute earlier, so the details weren’t even considered yet, but he had a date, and the details would come. They always did.
The Indian media, based primarily on reports provided by the intelligence agencies, declared that he was an Islamic extremist—the leader of a fundamentalist Pakistani unit operating along the rail lines between Delhi and Kolkuta. The Research and Analysis Wing—RAW—India’s foremost investigative agency, issued a statement after the third bombing declaring he was the leader of Taweel Churi--The Long Knife. Many doubted this for the simple reason the group had never claimed responsibility for any of the attacks. Computer bloggers theorized he was everything from a Maoist Naxalite to an Al Quaida insurgent. One blogger even suggested he was a renegade CIA agent operating with a Special Ops team. That drew the best readership and most comments, but it was all speculation. What was clear to everyone was that he was well funded and had excellent resources. No one could describe him physically, but everyone could described his psychiatric profile correctly. He was, as they stated, an exceedingly vicious murderer. In that respect, they were all correct.
Sutradharak imagined himself differently. An masterful opportunist, geinus of disguise and diversion dwelling in the center of the flock. A bird of prey with a shadow no one saw even in the brightest sunlight.
He snapped the computer shut, disconnected the wires, and reset the baseboard that hid the high-speed connection behind the wall. Then he slid the laptop into a zip-lock, water-tight envelope and into a goatskin pouch. It appeared—for anyone caring to investigate—to contain only goat’s milk. Clever design, he thought to himself.
He rose quickly from the floor and stepped to the shuttered window. The loft was vacant of furniture other than the table and chairs, decorated only with cobwebs and the u
biquitous dust. Sutradharak hated the loft, as he hated the city, the noise, the stench, and all the people that moved like cattle within it. But hatred, like money, was an acceptable, if not desirable, commodity. Hatred created purpose.
Through the slats he peered down at the crush of humanity below. A corpse wrapped in shrouds of orange floated by on a platform of shoulders, the loved ones singing dirges and spreading flower petals along the path. With a turn to the east, the funeral snaked down a lane to the Ghats and the river. The PuppetMaster sneered. Another foul procession to the pyres. He had the urge to spit, but thought better of it. The less one left behind, the less one could be traced.
Just another rotting corpse. A rare smiled etched his lips. Well, he thought, soon there will be more, hundreds, perhaps thousands.
With that thought, he placed a felt hat upon his head and a jerkin about his shoulders. He lifted the goatskin pouch and climbed down the ladder to the warehouse.
Four
I saw my teacher well before he saw me.
Master Devi was bent over a rosewood cane on the sidewalk beneath a withered acacia tree on the left side of the Grand Trunk Road. He wore a white dhoti folded into his waist to reveal two knobby knees and a pair of hideously green plastic sandals. A white kurta and a black vest, shiny from use, hung on his shoulders. Foot traffic flowed like river on the sidewalk behind him. He paid no attention. He was peering into every black and yellow autorickshaw that sputtered down the road, and as usual, he wore an expression of impatience.
Jatanaka Devamukti, Devi as I called him, had an uncanny resemblance to a bird of prey, more specifically, a vulture. His nose was large and curved like a bow from the center of his eyes to a point just above his upper lip. With bifocals, it gave him the appearance of a bespectacled condor.
The PuppetMaster Page 2