‘What?’ Mahmoud asked, his face close to mine. ‘What did you say?’
‘I hope that bear got away,’ I mumbled through broken, bleeding lips as the stricken spirit began to rise from my wounded body, and sleep, like fog in morning forests, moved through my sorrowing mind. ‘I hope that bear got away.’
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
SUNLIGHT SHATTERED ON THE WATER, shedding streaks in crystal-brilliant slivers across waves rolling swollen on the broad meniscus of the bay. Birds of fire in the approaching sunset wheeled and turned as one in their flocks, like banners of waving silk. From a low-walled courtyard on the white marble island of Haji Ali Mosque, I watched pilgrims and pious local residents wend and weave, leaving the shrine for the shore along the flat stone path. The incoming tide would submerge the path, they knew, and then only boats could bring them home. Those who’d sorrowed or repented, like others on previous days, had cast garlands of flowers upon the shallower, receding sea. Riding the returning tide, those orange-red and faded grey-white flowers floated back, garlanding the path itself with the love, loss, and longing that was prayed upon the water by a thousand broken hearts each wave-determined day.
And we, that band of brothers, had come to the shrine to pay our last respects, as they say, and pray for the soul of our friend Salman Mustaan. It was the first time since the night he’d been killed that we’d gathered as a group. For weeks after the battle with Chuha and his gang we’d separated, to hide and to heal our wounds. There’d been an outcry in the press, of course. The words carnage and massacre were spread across the pages of the Bombay dailies like butter on a prison guard’s sugared bun. Calls had rung out for justice, undefined, and punishment, unremitting. And there was no doubt that the Bombay police could’ve made arrests. They certainly knew which gang was responsible for the little heaps of bodies they’d found in Chuha’s house. But there were four good reasons not to act: reasons that were more compelling, for the city’s cops, than the unrighteous indignation of the press.
First, there was no-one from inside the house, on the streets outside, or anywhere else in Bombay who was willing to testify against us, even off the record. Second, the battle had put an end to the Sapna killers, which was something the cops would’ve been very glad to take care of personally. Third, the Walidlalla gang under Chuha’s leadership had killed a policeman, months before, when he’d stumbled into one of their major drug deals near Flora Fountain. The case had remained unsolved, officially, because the cops had nothing they could take into court. But they’d known, almost from the day it had happened, that Chuha’s men had spilled the blood. The bloodshed in Chuha’s house was very close to what the cops themselves had wanted to do to the Rat and his men—and would’ve accomplished, sooner or later, if Salman hadn’t beaten them to it. And fourth, the payment of a crore of rupees, appropriated from Chuha’s operations and applied in liberal smears to a small multitude of forensic palms, had put a helpless shrug in all the right constabulary shoulders.
Privately, the cops told Sanjay, who was the new leader of the Khader Khan council, that the clock was ticking on him, and he’d used up all his chances on that one throw of the dice. They wanted peace—and continued prosperity, of course—and, if he didn’t pull his men into line, they would do it for him. And by the way, they told him after accepting his ten-million-rupee bribe, and just before they threw him back onto the street, that guy Abdullah, in your outfit, we don’t want to see him again. Ever. He was dead once, in Bombay. He’ll be dead again, for good this time, if we see him …
One by one, after weeks of lying low, we’d made our way back into the city and back to the jobs we’d done in the Sanjay gang, as it had become known. I returned from hiding in Goa and took up my position in the passport operation with Villu and Krishna. When the call finally went out for us to gather at Haji Ali, I rode to the shrine on my Enfield bike, and walked with Abdullah and Mahmoud Melbaaf across the rippling wavelets of the bay.
Mahmoud led the prayers, kneeling at the front of our group. The little balcony, one of many surrounding the island mosque, was ours alone. Facing toward Mecca, and with the breeze filling and then falling from his white shirt, Mahmoud spoke for all the men who knelt or stood behind him:
Praise be to God, Lord of the Universe,
The Compassionate, the Merciful,
Sovereign of the Day of Judgement!
You alone we worship, and to You alone we turn for help.
Guide us to the straight path …
Farid, Abdullah, Amir, Faisal, and Nazeer—the Muslim core of the council—knelt behind Mahmoud. Sanjay was a Hindu. Andrew was a Christian. They knelt beside me and behind the praying group. I stood with my head bowed and my hands clasped in front of me. I knew the words of the prayers and I knew the simple standing, kneeling, and bowing observations. I could’ve joined in. I knew that Mahmoud and the others would’ve been delighted if I had. But I couldn’t bring myself to kneel with them. The separation that they found so easy and instinctual—this is my criminal life, over here, and that’s my religious life, over there—was impossible for me. I did speak to Salman, whispering my hope that he’d found peace, wherever he was. Yet I was too self-consciously aware of the darkness in my heart to offer more than that tiny prayer. So I stood in silence, feeling like an impostor, a spy on that island of devotions, as the amethyst evening blessed the balcony of praying men with gold-and-lilac light. And the words of Mahmoud’s prayer seemed a perfect fit for my withered honour and my thinning pride: those who have incurred your wrath … those who have gone astray …
At the end of prayers we hugged one another, according to custom, and made our way back along the path toward the shore. Mahmoud was leading the way. We’d all prayed, in our own ways, and we’d all cried for Salman, but we didn’t look the part of devout visitors to the holy shrine. We all wore sunglasses. We all wore new clothes. Everyone, except me, carried a year or more of smuggler’s wages in gold chains, first-tier watches, rings, and bracelets. And we swaggered. We walked the walk: the little dance-step that fighting-fit gangsters do when they’re armed and dangerous. It was a bizarre procession, and one so menacing that we had to work hard to make the professional beggars on the island pathway take the sheaves of rupee notes we’d brought as alms.
The men had three cars parked near the sea wall. It was almost exactly where I’d stood with Abdullah on the night I met Khaderbhai. My bike was parked beyond them, and at the cars I paused to say goodbye.
‘Come and have a meal with us, Lin,’ Sanjay offered, putting real affection in the invitation.
I knew the meal would be fun, after the melancholy observations at the shrine, and that it would include a choice of drugs and a choice of happy, silly, pretty girls. I was grateful for the offer, but I refused.
‘Thanks, man, but I’m meeting someone.’
‘Arrey, bring her along, yaar,’ Sanjay suggested. ‘It’s a girl, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah. It’s a girl. But … we have to talk. I’ll see you guys later.’
Abdullah and Nazeer wanted to walk me to my bike. We’d only taken a few steps when Andrew ran up behind us and called me to stop.
‘Lin,’ he said quickly, nervously, ‘what happened with us in the car park and all. I … I just want to say … I’m sorry, yaar. I’ve been wanting to make—well—an apology, you know?’
‘It’s okay.’
‘No—it’s not okay.’
He pulled at my arm, near the elbow, leading me away from Nazeer and just out of his hearing. Leaning in close to me, he spoke softly and quickly.
‘I’m not sorry for what I said about Khaderbhai. I know he was the boss and all, and I know you … you kind of loved him …’
‘Yeah. I kinda did.’
‘But still, I’m not sorry for what I said about him. You know, all his holy preaching, it didn’t stop him from handing old Madjid over to Ghani and his Sapna guys when he needed someone to take the fuckin’ fall, and keep the cops off his back. Madjid w
as supposed to be his friend, yaar. But he let them cut him up, just to throw the cops off the case.’
‘Well …’
‘And all those rules, about this and that and what-all, you know, they came to nothing—Sanjay has put me in charge of Chuha’s girls, and the videos. And Faisal and Amir, they’re running the garad. We’re gonna make fuckin’ crores out of it. I’m getting my place on the council, and so are they. So, Khaderbhai’s day is over, just like I said it was.’
I looked back into Andrew’s camel-brown eyes, and let out a deep breath. Dislike had been simmering since the night in the car park. I hadn’t forgotten what he’d said, and how close we’d come to fighting it out. His little speech had made me angrier still. If we hadn’t just been to a funeral service for a friend we’d both liked, I probably would’ve hit him already.
‘You know, Andrew,’ I muttered, not smiling, ‘I gotta tell ya, I’m not gettin’ much comfort from this little apology of yours.’
‘That’s not the apology, Lin,’ he explained, frowning in puzzlement. ‘The apology is for your mother, and for what I said about her. I’m sorry, man. I’m really, really, sorry for what I said. It was a very shitty thing to say—about your mother, or anybody’s mother. Nobody should say shitty things like that about a guy’s mother. You would’ve been well within your rights, yaar, to take a fuckin’ shot at me. And … I’m damn glad you didn’t. Mothers are sacred, yaar, and I’m sure your mother is a very fine lady. So, please, I’m asking you, like—please accept my apology.’
‘It’s okay,’ I said, putting out my hand. He seized the hand in both of his, and shook it vigorously.
Abdullah, Nazeer, and I turned away and walked to the bike. Abdullah was unusually quiet. The silence he carried with him was ominous and unsettling.
‘Are you going back to Delhi tonight?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘At midnight.’
‘You want me to go to the airport with you?’
‘No. Thank you. It is better not. There should be no police looking at me. If you are there, they will look at us. But maybe I will see you in Delhi. There is a job in Sri Lanka—you should do it with me.’
‘I don’t know, man,’ I demurred, grinning in surprise at his earnestness. ‘There’s a war on in Sri Lanka.’
‘There is no man, and no place, without war,’ he replied, and it struck me that it was the most profound thing he’d ever said to me. ‘The only thing we can do is choose a side, and fight. That is the only choice we get—who we fight for, who we fight against. That is life.’
‘I … I hope there’s more to it than that, brother. But, shit, maybe you’re right.’
‘I think you can do this with me,’ he pressed, clearly troubled by what he was asking me to do. ‘This is the last work for Khaderbhai.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Khader Khan, he asked me to do this job for him, when the … what is it—the sign, I think, or the message—when it comes from Sri Lanka. Now, the message, it has come.’
‘I’m sorry, brother, I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I stated softly, not wanting to make it harder for him. ‘Just take it easy, and explain it to me. What message?’
He spoke to Nazeer quickly, in Urdu. The older man nodded several times and then said something about names, or not mentioning names. Nazeer turned his head to face me, and favoured me with a wide, warm smile.
‘In the Sri Lanka war,’ Abdullah explained, ‘there is fighting—Tamil Tigers against Sri Lanka army. Tigers are Hindus. Sinhalese, they are Buddhist. But in the middle of them, there are the others—Tamil Muslims—with no guns and no army. Everybody kill them, and nobody fight for them. They need passports and money—gold money. We go to help them.’
‘Khaderbhai,’ Nazeer added, ‘he make this plan. Only three men. Abdullah, and me, and one gora—you. Three men. We go.’
I owed him. Nazeer would never mention that fact, I knew, and he wouldn’t hold it against me if I didn’t go with him. We’d been through too much together. But I did owe him my life. It would be very hard to refuse him. And there was something else—something wise, perhaps, and fervently generous—in that rare, wide smile he’d given me. It seemed that he was offering me more than just the chance to work with him, and work off my debt. He blamed himself for Khader’s death, but he knew that I still felt guilty and ashamed that I hadn’t been there with him, pretending to be his American, when Khader had died. He’s giving me a chance, I thought, as I let my eyes move from his to Abdullah’s and back again. He’s giving me a way to close the book on it.
‘So, when would you be going on this trip? Roughly speaking?’
‘Soon,’ Abdullah laughed. ‘A few months, no more than that. I am going to Delhi. I will send someone to bring you, when the time is coming. Two, three months, Lin brother.’
I heard a voice in my head—or not a voice, really, but just words in whispered echoes like stones hissing across the still surface of a lake—Killer … He’s a killer … Don’t do it … Get away … Get away now … And the voice was right, of course. Dead right. And I wish I could say that it took me more than those few heartbeats to make up my mind to join him.
‘Two, three months,’ I replied, offering my hand. He shook it, putting both of his hands over mine. I looked at Nazeer and smiled as I spoke into his eyes. ‘We’ll do Khader’s job. We’ll finish it.’
Nazeer’s jaw locked tight, bunching the muscles of his cheeks and exaggerating the downward curve of his mouth. He frowned at his sandaled feet as if they were disobedient puppies. Then he suddenly hurled himself at me, and locked his hands behind me in a punishing hug. It was the violent, wrestler’s hug of a man whose body had never learned to speak the language of his heart—except when he was dancing—and it ended as abruptly and furiously as it had begun. He whipped his thick arms away and shoved me backward with his chest, shaking his head and shuddering as if a shark had passed him in shallow water. He looked up quickly, and the warmth that reddened his eyes vied with a grim warning clamped in the bad-luck horseshoe of his mouth. I knew that if I ever raised that moment of affection with him, or referred to it in any way, I would lose his friendship forever.
I kicked the bike to life and straddled it, pushing away from the kerb with my legs and pointing it in the direction of Nana Chowk and Colaba.
‘Saatch aur himmat,’ Abdullah called out as I rode past him.
I waved, and nodded, but I couldn’t give the answering call to the slogan. I didn’t know how much truth or courage was in my decision to join them on their mission to Sri Lanka. Not much, it seemed to me, as I rode away from them, from all of them, and surrendered to the warm night, and the press and pause of traffic.
A blood-red moon was rising from the sea as I reached the Back Bay road leading to Nariman Point. I parked the bike beside a cold-drink stall, locked it, and threw the keys to the manager, who was a friend from the slum. With the moon behind me, I set out along the footpath beside a long curve of sandy beach where fishermen often repaired their nets and battered boats. There was a festival on that night in the Sassoon Dock area. The celebrations had drawn most of the local people from the huts and shelters on the beach. The road where I walked was almost deserted.
And then I saw her. She was sitting on the edge of an old fishing boat that was half-buried on the beach. Only the prow and a few metres of the long boat’s gunnels protruded from the surrounding waves of sand. She was wearing a long, salwar top over loose pants. Her knees were drawn up, and she was resting her chin on her arms as she stared out at the dark water.
‘This is why I like you, you know,’ I said, sitting down beside her on the rail of the beached fishing boat.
‘Hello, Lin,’ she replied, smiling, her green eyes as dark as the water. ‘I’m glad to see you. I thought you weren’t coming.’
‘Your message sounded kind of … urgent. I nearly didn’t get it. It was just lucky that I ran into Didier on his way to the airport, and he told me.�
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‘Luck is what happens to you when fate gets tired of waiting,’ she murmured.
‘Fuck you, Karla,’ I replied, laughing.
‘Old habits,’ she grinned, ‘die hard—and lie harder.’
Her eyes moved across my features for a moment, as if she was searching a map for a familiar reference point. Her smile slowly faded.
‘I’m going to miss Didier.’
‘Me, too,’ I muttered, thinking that he was probably in the air already, and on his way to Italy. ‘But I think he’ll be back before too long.’
‘Why?’
‘I put the Zodiac Georges in his apartment, to look after it.’
‘Ooooh!’ she winced, making a perfect kiss of her perfect mouth.
‘Yeah. If that doesn’t bring him back quick, nothing will. You know how he loves that apartment.’
She didn’t answer, but her stare tightened in the intensity of her concentration.
‘Khaled’s here, in India,’ she remarked flatly, watching my eyes.
‘Where?’
‘In Delhi—well, near Delhi, actually.’
‘When?’
‘The report came in two days ago. I had it checked. I think it’s him.’
‘What report?’
She looked away, towards the sea, and breathed a long, slow sigh.
‘Jeet has access to all the wire services. One of them sent a report about a new spiritual leader named Khaled Ansari, who walked all the way from Afghanistan, and was pulling in big crowds of followers wherever he went. When I saw it, I asked Jeet to check it out for me. His people sent a description, and it fits.’
‘Wow … thank God … thank God.’
‘Yeah, maybe,’ she murmured. Something of the old mischief and mystery flared in her eyes.
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