The Kashmir Trap

by Mario Bolduc

  The ambassador, Don Miguel Ferrer, seemed built to match. His long, emaciated El Greco face was topped by a tangle of wayward grey hair that was borne every which way by the draft from a fan that seemed to pursue him wherever he went, even by the bar near the kitchen door where a group of Sikhs in evening wear stood.

  Max stopped a young Indian serving girl, snagged a glass of champagne from her tray, and then went out into the garden. Some of the hardiest were out there defying any possible sniper and seemingly the more excited for it. Guests, fuelled by alcohol, were talking loudly, punctuated by the occasional belly laugh. He’d expected more restraint from David’s colleagues, but the vocal display was part of their bluff: “Terrorism won’t stop us from enjoying ourselves and indulging in curried shrimp.”

  There were representatives of other embassies there, as well as Indians, all of them fully decked out for the occasion, downing Scotch and Rioja with typical Western self-assurance and good humour, as if they were saying, “We were present at the end of the world.” Around the bar were small groups of entrepreneurs who had shown up, as Max had done, without invitations in order to escape the solitude of the Intercontinental Hotel or an intimate dinner with themselves at the Parikrama. Under other circumstances, Max would have had no trouble at all choosing “pigeons” among these rootless ones and latching on to them for his own profit. For now, he had other things on his mind: finding someone, and that someone was Vandana. But she was nowhere to be seen.

  He took another spin around the garden, where groups of Japanese were handing out stacks of business cards, before going back inside. The Sikhs had split up, and the ambassador was now discussing the Afghan situation with a Polish diplomat, while his wife, Ana Maria, was describing the feria in Pamplona to an enthralled Indian. Two Australian businessmen wondered if they shouldn’t leave the country like their compatriots, especially now that Pakistan had announced missile tests in order to show the Indians that two could play at that game. Their Indian companion simply smiled.

  “Vajpayee is away on holiday in Manali. If it were that serious, don’t you think he’d stay here in New Delhi?”

  The Australians seemed even less convinced.

  A fresh glance at the door revealed that Vandana had just arrived, resplendent in a burgundy sari, and she wasn’t alone. Henry Caldwell and William Sandmill were with her in Bernatchez’s place. He was probably in Canada by now. Sunil Mukherjee brought up the rear. Max would rather have been alone with her, so, disappointed, he headed once again for the garden, where the darkness would afford him better protection. He kept his eyes on Vandana and her escorts, who were now the centre of attention. Don Miguel dropped his conversation with a chubby Argentinean to welcome the new arrivals. Renewed courage — “We won’t be cowed by terrorists.”

  The ambassador took Caldwell by the shoulder and drew him to one side, treating him like an old friend from way back, a confrere at an escuela ecuestre in Madrid or Jerez. Sandmill made a beeline for the bar, while Mukherjee was cornered by an Indian journalist, judging by the notebook the man whipped out of his jacket pocket. Max took the opportunity to pounce on Vandana, who was taken aback. “What are you doing here? They know who you are now. The police were tipped off.”

  It had to be Luc Roberge. He was quicker than expected. Max would have to act swiftly. He dragged Vandana behind a banana tree. He knew his brusqueness was off-putting, but there was no time for politeness and etiquette.

  “What is this charade, and who exactly do you think you’re fooling?” he said.

  Vandana looked up at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “David and his inner conflict, feeling torn and clamming up …”

  She frowned. “What …?”

  “Your little trysts at the foot of the Himalayas. Kathmandu.”

  “There’s never been anything between David and me.”

  “You rushed over to his place the day after the attack, and you knew about the safe under the stairs. It wasn’t the first time you’d been there.”

  “What safe?”

  “You were in a real hurry to open it. What were you looking for? Letters, notes, messages? Things to implicate you personally with David, things that would compromise you with the police if they started rifling through the young diplomat’s past.”

  Vandana stared at him in amazement. “You’re out of your mind!” She started to leave, but Max blocked the way.

  “An affair? A little slip-up, maybe? But it was still going on when you went to Kathmandu. Otherwise, David would have postponed the trip till after Montreal.”

  Max heard a murmur behind him and turned to see two security agents blend into the crowd. Don Miguel was already hurrying over to them, his hair flying. Max couldn’t hear what they said to him, but he could guess: they couldn’t have been admitted without his government’s permission. They were explaining to him while sweeping the room with their eyes. There was no doubt about what they were looking for. Max. He grabbed Vandana’s arm and rushed her out to the garden.

  “I want to know what happened between you and David in Kathmandu.”

  “Nothing happened … nothing at all.”

  “Look, David’s dead, so please stop lying to me, okay? I’m not here to preach at you.”

  By now, the Indian police were being accompanied by embassy employees, as they jostled their way through the crowd, which was intrigued and entertained by it all. In a few seconds, they’d be here.

  “What happened in Kathmandu?” he repeated.

  Vandana stared fixedly at him and appeared to hesitate. He’d been right to insist.

  “I went by myself,” she confessed after a long pause. “David didn’t come with me.”

  “He stayed in Delhi?”

  “I don’t know, but after the bombing, when Juliette started saying he’d changed after Nepal, I realized he hadn’t been with her as I thought.”

  “Did you tell the police?”

  “No. I didn’t want Juliette to get involved.”

  “Another woman?”

  She shook her head. “Juliette and David were in love. He’d never do that. Never. Not with me or anyone else.”

  Max looked at her for a long time. He felt sorry he’d accused her.

  “Does the name Tourigny mean anything to you?”

  “No, nothing. Who’s that?”

  Loud voices emerged from the crowd as three policemen joined the others to everyone’s delight.

  “You haven’t a hope of getting out of here,” Vandana said, but Max just smiled.

  “Don’t worry. I’m used to this.” And he snaked through the guests at the bottom of the garden and out to the alley by an opening he’d spotted in his previous reconnaissance. It was deserted and dark, and though he wanted to run, he settled into a brisk walk and never looked back. At the corner, he wondered which way to go, but then his attention was caught by the coughing of a rickshaw motor drawn to its potential customer.

  “Aray! Rickshaw, sahib? Rickshaw?”

  Max climbed inside and sat down without even dickering about the fare, something the Lonely Planet he bought at Heathrow had expressly told him never to do.

  No way Max was going back to the Oberoi, of course. The cops were certainly sitting on it. It was by showing his photo to taxi drivers that they had probably traced him to the Spanish ambassador. The rickshaw skirted India Gate and headed for Tilak Marg.

  “Do you want to stay at my place?” asked Jayesh over the phone. That could work, but it would compromise the young Indian. He’d thought about hiding out at the inn on Akbar Road, if it still existed, but the police would certainly check there.

  “Some place discreet, Jayesh. Better if it’s one where Westerners hang out.”

  After a moment’s silence, Jayesh said, “Ask the driver to let you off near the Jama Mosque. Facing it is a small alley leadin
g to the Chawri Bazaar.”

  Max relayed the address to the driver, who then branched off onto a side road. Suddenly the landscape was different, as Embassy Row and the Ministerial Quarter yielded to a true Indian city, offhand and neglected, a sort of random set of building blocks that, by some miracle, barely held together. Here, unlike the new city, the people were in control of the streets, families sleeping outdoors on charpai, a sort of bed they put away in the daytime. Then the avenue narrowed imperceptibly and became a long and winding thread of mud past the shops all barred up for the night. Occasionally they encountered a beggar, one of those who slept in the train station until the police turfed them out to wander the streets in search of shelter. This city was the complete opposite of what one saw in the daytime, astonishingly silent and tranquil, and it would stay that way until the mosques called the faithful to prayer just before dawn: “Never forget, neighbours, that Delhi, Old Delhi is, above all, Muslim!”

  Max pictured Bhargava, the “James Bond of Hindu­ness,” dreaming that he could silence these muezzins forever. Send these circumcisees packing to their brothers and accomplices in Pakistan, or anywhere!

  There was no missing the red door, Jayesh told him. Behind it was a bright — too bright — illumination, probably neon, and a hand-painted sign announced LIVERPOOL GUEST HOUSE: CLEAN SHEETS. CLEAN SHOWERS. The night watchman was napping on a worn-out mattress behind the reception counter, an older man with ruffled hair and teeth reddened with betel juice. Max signed the tea-stained register but didn’t even have to present his passport. The porter showed no surprise that this guest looked utterly unlike his usual customers, whom Max saw early next morning on the sun-flooded terrace. The hotel was a refuge for hippies in wraparound longyis and oversized pyjamas — escapees from the West, bigger than life, hairy, and probably fried, smoking bidis and nodding incessantly. Max smiled. Jayesh was right. The police couldn’t even imagine this place.

  18

  “Rodger Morency?” wondered Sergeant Demers in amazement. Juliette felt like an idiot. What was she doing at Montreal Police Headquarters? Shouldn’t she be holed up at her place, veiled with black lace instead?

  “It wasn’t his intention to go after your husband. I mean, Morency and Al-Qaeda are not exactly in the same ballpark, are they?”

  Still …

  He was right, Al-Qaeda and Rodger were worlds apart. Rodger’s file was that of a petty delinquent with a monotonous train of police reports that nevertheless became weightier as time went on. He’d woken up one morning as a child who decided he didn’t want to be an astronaut or a star hockey player, just a public pain in the ass. His special talent was an alarming ability to get himself into trouble with the justice system, the kind that spared no effort to get nailed by the police: Getting caught at the wheel of a stolen car with a six-months’-expired licence, for instance: “I was just on my way to get it renewed, Your Honour.” Then an arrest for being found in the basement of an underground parking lot in the company of a minor: “She showed me her papers. I was sure everything was okay, Judge.” There was also a failed attempt at loan-sharking with Haitian drivers at Lasalle Taxi: “Honest, I’m not racist, Your Honour.” Little jobs and misdemeanours here and there, none of them worth bothering about.

  A very small-time crook with small-time ambitions: corner stores, service stations, metro wickets … and what about the hospital? Well, sure, he was there to do the rooms, and he admitted it freely: “Cardiology, now, that’s my fetish floor.”

  Something didn’t sit right in this story for Juliette, but what? The admission was weird coming from someone who always had an excuse for everything, but none for this. He was practically glad to confess for once: “Sure, I went there to steal.”

  “Can we talk to this Rodger Morency?” she asked.

  “Between now and his trial in July …” Demers shaped his fingers to form a bird in flight.

  “I thought he was in jail.”

  “Out on bail, angel that he is.”

  “But …”

  “His mother came to the rescue, as usual.”

  Without a word to Béatrice, and especially not to Patterson, Juliette rented a car, crossed the Champlain Bridge, took the highway through the Montérégie, and had no trouble finding the farm belonging to Morency’s mother in Marieville. The father had left the family when Rodger was still young, as she would find out later. For now, she was headed out there to question Rodger, though she had no clue what she would ask him. Mostly she wanted to confirm he was not the mindless idiot that Sergeant Demers depicted: a small-time thug out to rob patients despite the top security.

  The other possibility was that Juliette was on the wrong trail, and that was why she’d said nothing to Béatrice or Patterson, though she had mentioned it to Max when he’d phoned the day before. He wasn’t convinced either, and Juliette was beginning to doubt her theory. She had to be wrong. A trip to the South Shore would just confirm it.

  Born and raised on Chambord Street in the east end, Juliette’s only experiences of the countryside were the greenhouse at the Botanical Gardens and pedal-boat rides on Beaver Lake. Outside Montreal lay a hostile world of shady puppy mills, septic ditches, and an anachronistic universe of drunk drivers, incest, and Ski-Doo races. Never mind. A first glance told her Madeleine Morency didn’t earn her living from farm produce. The buildings were tumble-down, the fields had gone to seed, and there was a rusted-out truck with no wheels in the yard. In the back, she found the usual bric-a-brac country-dwellers couldn’t do without, apparently: mismatched furniture, abandoned tools, an old bike, and two water heaters.

  Juliette parked her rental car near a plastic mailbox. Next came a streaking, barking dog trained to eat mailmen. She was confused. Here in this backwater, she felt even more lost than in the alleyways of Old Delhi. How could she let someone know she was here? Yell, maybe, and alert the whole neighbourhood? Suddenly, a woman appeared at the door.

  “Brutus, Brutus, here, Brutus!”

  Juliette wished she’d prepared them for her visit, and now she was bound to be sent away. The woman — she had to be Madeleine Morency — was already stepping toward the gate. Close up, she looked a lot less hardened than her surroundings. One couldn’t tell her age — sixties, maybe — erect and dignified, not the kind to give ground easily. Most fascinating was the long grey hair that fell to her waist. Once blond, she refused to dye it. An aging hippie, maybe?

  Without opening the gate, she called across, “What do you want?”

  “I’d like to see Rodger.” No point beating about the bush. I guess I should have been cooler, Juliette thought. Invented some waterproof pretext, maybe. Well, too late now.

  Madeleine thoroughly examined the visitor’s clothes, more curious than aggressive. Perhaps this was the country way. First impressions were everything.

  “He’s not here.”

  “Do you know where I can find him?”

  Madeleine Morency sighed and opened the gate. Brutus put up some more barking, which she silenced with a wave of her hand. Juliette followed her to the house, mindful of where she stepped. The kitchen was immense and modern, nothing like the outside of the house.

  “He promised me he’d get in touch with you,” Madeleine said, taking off her shoes.

  Juliette wondered if she should do the same, but she hadn’t brought anything else.

  “No, it’s okay, keep them on,” Madeleine said, signalling her to sit down at the table. “You prefer coffee, or is it tea, like your partner?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Aren’t you with the police?”

  “No.”

  Her face hardened at once, and the respect, or rather deference she showed to the authorities was no longer called for.

  “What do you want Rodger for?” Madeleine asked aggressively.

  “I need to talk to him, ask him some questions.” Juliette was getting in over her
head, and she knew it.

  “What kind of questions?”

  Time to think fast. “Oh, questions about his life … you see … I work at the university … in criminology … on what happens to delinquents … that is …”

  “You’re here to help him?”

  Juliette was on the point of saying, “No, I just want to get to know him, that’s all,” but it sounded desperate, so she said, “Yes.” Now, where to go from here? She had no idea. “Just putting him back in prison every time won’t solve anything.”

  “Exactly what I’ve been saying for years,” replied Madeleine, “but the police aren’t interested. All they care about is filling their quota of arrests each month, period.”

  Juliette was relieved. “At the university, we think there’s another way.”

  “The cops don’t care.”

  “But I’m not them, Mrs. Morency.”

  “Rodger never had any luck, sure, but that’s no reason to be on his back all the time.”

  “Mrs. Morency, I’m here to help him, not to put him down.”

  Rodger’s mother watched her without moving, and all of a sudden Juliette felt despicable for making this woman believe she could “fix” her son’s criminal tendencies.

  “But to do that, I have to get to know him, understand what got him into this in the first place.”

  Not once did Madeleine Morency shift her gaze from Juliette.

  There was more silence.

  “So, what’ll it be, coffee or tea?”

  The life of Rodger, according to his mother, followed the same path as the police reports, but her voice somehow gave it a more personal, intimate hue. According to Demers, Rodger had plunged headlong into crime on purpose, but his mother preferred to talk about his repeated bad luck, one incident leading to another, no matter how hard he tried. There were unscrupulous accomplices, but, according to her, they were opportunists who’d taken advantage of his naïveté and good nature. His long slide to hell had a few bright moments when Rodger could have split from his “negative milieu,” but they didn’t last. Although his mother kept sending out “positive energy,” his lucky star didn’t shine bright enough or long enough.