by Susan Mann
Ravi cocked his head. “Your cover is as a married couple.”
“It is,” James said.
“Are you two, uh . . .” Ravi’s head wobbled from side to side, and he looked at them in turn.
Quinn wasn’t sure if answering Ravi’s unspoken question would be detrimental to their op, so she decided to let James handle it.
“Yeah. We’re together,” James said.
“Cool.” Ravi dumped more butter chicken onto his plate. “I thought I caught that vibe.”
“What about you? Do you have a significant other?” Quinn asked.
He shrugged. “My girlfriend in California and I broke up recently.”
“I’m sorry,” Quinn said. She wasn’t able to stop herself from asking, “You tried the long-distance thing and it didn’t work out?” She hoped against hope his response would disabuse her of the notion that long-distance relationships were as horrible as everyone seemed to say they were.
“Yeah. It pretty much blows. The twelve-and-a-half-hour time difference meant we’d get about an hour a day where one of us wasn’t either asleep or at work. When we did talk, it was about things and people the other didn’t know.” He shook his head and sopped up sauce and chicken with his roti. “People who say long-distance relationships can work are blowing sunshine up your ass.”
Quinn felt like she’d been kicked in the gut. It wasn’t the rainbows and unicorns she was hoping to hear. She peeked over at James, who wore a sympathetic look.
“Sorry, man,” he said. “That sucks.”
“It does.” Ravi swiped a clump of flatbread over his plate and mopped up every last bit of sauce. Changing the subject, he said, “We’ve got an op to discuss.”
James hit the ground running. “I checked in with Langley right before we left the hotel. DHS ran facial recognition on the man in the video. His name is Samir Singh. According to immigration records, he came to the US as a child with his family from a village in Punjab in 1988. They ended up in Fresno, working a peach orchard owned by relatives. He’s lived in the area ever since. Or at least he did until two months ago, when he dropped off the face of the planet. The FBI is following up, interviewing friends and family there. They’re crawling through his email and phone records to try and track down others who might be involved. They’re also checking into his bank accounts to see if money’s changed hands, and if so, where it came from.”
“I’ll work my contacts here to see if anyone has heard of him,” Ravi said. “Maybe check out the village.”
“What are your contacts saying about what happened at the Library of Congress?” Quinn asked. “Are there any radical groups here that might be connected?” Like Ravi had done, she cleaned her plate with a hunk of roti and stuffed it in her mouth. She made a mental note to learn how to make butter chicken.
“I’m still trying to gather intel from them. None of the usual suspects have claimed responsibility. Never heard of this Falcon character before.” Ravi dipped his head toward Quinn’s empty plate. “You done?”
“I am, thanks.” When Ravi reached across the table to remove her plate, she stood and picked up it and James’s. “Let me help.”
“Sure. You want tea? Coffee?”
“I’d love some tea,” Quinn said and carried the plates into the kitchen.
“Me too,” James said from right behind her. He carried the empty bowl the butter chicken had been in and the plate that had held the roti. They set the dishes on the counter and watched Ravi fill the teakettle with water.
“He might be the leader of a Khalistan splinter group or a new one we haven’t heard about yet,” Ravi said. “Some of those groups have these young-buck Sikhs who revere Bhindranwale. To them, he was this mystical Kalashnikov-carrying hero who rocked an I-take-no-crap-from-anybody swagger.”
Quinn crossed her arms and leaned against the counter. “How could they get Sikh soldiers in on it, though?”
“Maybe Khalistan sympathizers within the regiment knew about the conspiracy and volunteered,” James offered. “Or they were recruited by higher-ups in on it and knew which soldiers would be on board. We have no idea how high this goes.”
Darvesh Singh had said he’d been instrumental in getting the Sikh soldiers the gig. He could be part of the conspiracy and could have handpicked the soldiers who carried it out. For all they knew, he was the Falcon. A knot formed in the pit of her stomach.
Ravi put the kettle on the stove and turned toward them. “I’m sure the Indian Army is investigating.”
“What about the Pakistanis?” James asked.
“I could totally see them being mixed up in this somehow. They’re always looking for a way to destabilize the area. Stirring up hard feelings about Operation Blue Star could start it, even if a lot of the older people who remember what happened don’t want a repeat.” Ravi set three teacups on the counter.
James nodded. “What have the officials here been saying? The ambassador’s kidnapping must have made the news here.”
“It did, and they’ve responded about the way you’d expect. The SGPC and the politicians both have denounced the Sikh soldiers and claim they had nothing to do with it.”
“I read about the SGPC,” Quinn said. “They’re the committee that oversee the upkeep of the gurdwaras, right? The Sikh temples?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think the SGPC is involved?” she asked.
“As a group? No. They go through the system with their grievances. An individual within the committee could go rogue, though. I haven’t seen any mention of the video or demands about the Sikh Reference Library. Since no official demands have been made public, the rumors around here are the ambassador was kidnapped for ransom and the manuscripts will be fenced.”
“Good. We want to keep the library angle under wraps so Quinn can ask around and not get stonewalled by people suddenly put on the defensive.” James ran a hand through his hair. “So the establishment claims not to be involved, and none of the extremist groups have taken responsibility. We have no idea who the Falcon is. There may not even be a connection between Punjab and what happened at the Library of Congress. If that’s the case, the whole thing was planned and executed by members of the Sikh diaspora in the US.”
Quinn smiled and winked at him. “Extra points for ‘diaspora, ’ Mr. Riordan.”
James grinned and sounded like Goofy when he said, “I’m so smart.”
Had they been alone, Quinn would have launched herself at him, pinned him to the wall, and kissed him senseless. But they weren’t and she couldn’t, so she distracted herself by asking, “Ravi, should I put the gulab jamun in some bowls?”
“That’d be excellent.” Ravi pointed to the cupboard and handed her a serving spoon from a drawer.
Quinn set three bowls on the counter. The conversation resumed as she placed several of what looked like syrup-soaked doughnut holes into each.
“Looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us,” Ravi said and set the tea to steep.
Quinn wasn’t a waitressing pro by any stretch, but she did manage to carry all three bowls to the table without dropping them. James and Ravi followed with the fixings for their tea.
Seated again, Ravi cut one of the fried dough balls in half with his spoon and took a bite. His eyes rolled back. “Dude, these are the best.”
Quinn had a similar reaction when she tried one, although she stifled her groan. “Wow.” The flavor of cardamom triggered a memory of her grandmother’s Swedish coffee bread.
“Our meeting with your boss is still on for tomorrow, right?” James asked Ravi after downing two of his gulab jamun in quick succession.
“Yeah. It’s set for ten in the morning. Don’t be late, but don’t be surprised if you have to hang for a while before we meet with you. It’s just the way it is.”
“Got it.”
“While you two are in your meeting, I’ll go to the rebuilt Sikh Reference Library and check things out,” Quinn said and sipped the tea Ravi had just poured.<
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“Not by yourself, you won’t,” James said.
“What? Why not?” Her eyebrows bunched in confusion. “I’m not gonna screw up the library part of this.”
“I know you won’t. That’s not it,” he said in a tight voice. He didn’t look at her. Instead, his stare was lasered in on a spot at the center of the table. “I don’t want you walking to the Golden Temple complex by yourself.”
Not this again. She thought his overprotective streak had improved. Apparently, the sleeping giant had awakened. “James, I promise I’ll be careful. I don’t need a bodyguard.”
“You don’t speak Punjabi,” James said, undeterred.
“If it’s a bust and I can’t talk to anybody, I’ll bring Ravi along next time.” She glanced at Ravi, who looked as if he was about to get slammed by an oncoming bus. He gave her a noncommittal shrug.
“You might get lost.”
“Come on,” she said, exasperated. “We both know you can always track me down with my phone, even if it’s off.”
“What if somebody steals your purse with your phone in it?”
“I’m sure there’s somebody inside the complex who could help me contact you if that happens.” She drew in a breath and fought the rising embarrassment and aggravation. For a brief moment, she thought of her mom. When Quinn’s dad got all weird and tense and grumpy, her mom always defused the powder keg with patience and love.
Her hurt and anger seeped away. Quinn softened her voice and said, “Look. We both know what this is about.” He was afraid history could repeat itself.
Over and over, the muscles in his jaw clenched and relaxed.
“We all know it’s better for me to go in by myself. If anyone questions me, I have the perfect answer. My husband is in business meetings all day, and I want to visit the Golden Temple while he’s busy. And since I’m a librarian, I pop into the library to look around.” She rested her hand on his forearm. The muscles under her touch twitched. “Trust me.”
Several seconds passed before he spoke again. “You can’t bring your Glock with you.”
She almost smiled. From his tone, she could hear his resolve beginning to crumble. “That’s okay. I won’t need it.” She felt the tautness in his arm relax and peered into his face. The storm that had been raging a moment before had cleared. His gaze was still glued to the same point on the table, but his lips twitched with a tiny, impish smile.
“You could take the P to Z volume of the Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary with you, though.”
She smiled and squeezed his arm.
Clearly perplexed, Ravi frowned. “The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary?”
“It’s kind of a long story,” Quinn said. She asked James, “Is it okay if I tell him about our first date?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
“Yay.” She spent the next ten minutes relaying to Ravi the story of how they’d gone to dinner in Santa Monica and later walked in on two men ransacking her apartment. She explained that while James had wrestled with one of the intruders in her bedroom, she knocked the other guy out by clobbering his head with an eight-pound dictionary.
James told the next part of the tale, where Quinn had raced into the bedroom and laid out the second man with the same dictionary-cum-weapon.
“Holy smoke,” Ravi said with the appropriate amount of awe when James finished. “I had no idea librarians could be so lethal.”
“We can be a fearsome bunch,” she said with a smile. She set her elbow on the table, rested her chin in the palm of her hand, and looked at James. “You didn’t finish the story.”
James’s head dropped back. He expelled a long-suffering sigh and grumbled to the ceiling, “I’m never going to live that down.”
Eyes dancing, she turned to Ravi and said, “So I had two unconscious home invaders bleeding all over my carpet. I wanted to call the cops, which makes total sense, right? But James told me not to. I didn’t know he was a spy at the time, so I kind of freaked out. I thought he was some kind of criminal or con man or something. I took off for the front door to get away from him.” There she stopped and let the ending hang.
Ravi leaned forward and waited. Finally, he blurted, “What happened?”
“He shot me in the back.”
Ravi slumped back in his chair and breathed out a prolonged, “Dude. You shot her?”
James dragged a hand over his face and sat up straighter. “Only with a tranquilizer dart.”
“Still, gutsy move, bro.” Ravi looked over to Quinn. “And you stayed with him after that?”
“I did.” She slid her hand atop James’s.
“She must really be into you if she stuck around after you put a dart in her.”
“What can I say?” The look James gave her nearly fried her circuits. “I’m a lucky guy.”
“And this happened during a mission?”
“Mm-hmm. Me being dropped by a tranq dart was only the beginning.”
Quinn tore her gaze away from James and smiled at Ravi when the latter sounded a low whistle and said, “I get the feeling this is gonna be one hell of an op.”
Chapter Thirteen
James slammed on the Alto’s brakes when a man on a scooter swerved in front of them. He cursed under his breath, and not for the first time since leaving the hotel. As they inched closer to the Golden Temple complex, the drive turned more nerve-wracking. The streets seemed to be congested with every form of wheeled vehicle in existence. Car, truck, and bus horns bellowed like notes belched from the pipes of a demented, off-key calliope. Bicycles, motorcycles, scooters, and mopeds dodged through stalled traffic, only making things worse. Three-wheeled auto-rickshaws called tuk-tuks added to the barely controlled chaos.
“You can just let me off here,” Quinn said. “It’s not far. With this traffic, it’ll be faster to walk.”
He frowned. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’ll be fine.”
His reluctance to let her go was obvious, but he nodded and said, “Call me if you need anything. I’ll blow off the meeting and come get you.”
“If I have a problem, I promise I’ll call. Otherwise, I’ll meet you back at the hotel. I’ll take a taxi unless you’re done with your meeting before then and want to pick me up.” Before he could argue, she gave him a peck on the cheek and said, “See you later.” She unfastened her seat belt and hopped out of the car. She closed the door and waved at him through the window. He waved back with a resigned smile.
Quinn left the Alto behind and strode down the street lined with shops and open stalls. She slowed as she passed a stall selling T-shirts, calendars, key chains, coffee mugs, and bumper stickers sporting the image of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. A number of boisterous young men loitered around the counter. Ravi was right. The man at the center of the storm called Operation Blue Star might be gone, but he was far from forgotten.
She arrived at the main entrance of the Golden Temple complex and copied the actions of everyone around her. She slipped off her sandals, checked them with an attendant, and covered her head with the scarf she’d purchased the day before. Then she stepped through a shallow trough of water to ceremonially wash her feet.
Two guards, both wearing long orange tunics and holding seven-foot-long spears, stood at the entrance and watched to ensure every head was appropriately covered. The spears were intimidating, but the guards were less so, especially the one who smiled when a tourist took a picture with him.
Past the guards and through a vestibule, she descended a steep set of marble stairs. At the bottom, she stepped out onto the parikrama, the marble walkway surrounding the square pool. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the focal point of the entire complex, the Golden Temple. It gleamed like a golden jewelry box in the bright sunlight. Around her, the devout dropped to their knees, bowed toward the Temple, and touched their foreheads to the ground.
Taking her cue from those around her, Quinn turned to the left and began to stroll along the parikrama. After
going a short distance, she found an empty spot at the edge of the pool and sat. Some, like her, gazed at the Temple. Others read or bowed their heads in prayer.
Hundreds of pilgrims packed the causeway that stretched across the water waiting for their turn to enter the golden shrine. An endless stream of people walked along the parikrama. Despite the sheer number of people inside the compound, Quinn felt a sense of tranquility.
She thought back on the briefing with Sadie Morales at headquarters. During Operation Blue Star, the serenity of this place had been shattered. Quinn stared at the Akal Takht and envisioned tanks, their weight crushing the marble parikrama under them, pummeling the pristinely white building with mortars. She imagined the blasts of staccato automatic rifle fire echoing off the walls, rather than the melodic chant now sung over the loudspeakers.
It crushed her soul.
She was so lost in her musing she jumped when she heard a woman’s voice ask, “Are you from the UK?”
Quinn craned her neck and looked up at a young woman smiling down at her.
“American, actually,” Quinn replied. The woman appeared harmless enough, although Quinn felt her guard go up.
“Do you know about the Harmandir Sahib?”
“A little.”
“Would you like me to tell you more about it and the way of the Sikhi?” She must have noticed the way Quinn’s eyebrows rose, since she quickly added, “I am a student at Guru Nanak Dev University. I come here to practice my English and explain to people what they see and hear in this place.”
That made sense, and speaking with a local couldn’t be a bad thing. “That would be great,” Quinn answered. “Would you like to join me?”
The woman’s smile widened. She sat next to Quinn on the warm marble and adjusted the emerald green scarf covering her head. “My name is Amarjit Kaur.”
“I’m Quinn Riordan.”
“It is my honor to meet you, Mrs. Riordan.”
Observant young woman, noticing my rings, Quinn thought. “Please, call me Quinn.”
“And I am Amarjit. Are you enjoying your time here?”
“I am, although I haven’t really seen much yet. I only arrived a little while ago and wanted to take it in first.” Quinn looked at the Golden Temple again. “It’s stunning. I’ve never seen anything like it.”