The Dalliance of Leopards

by Alter, Stephen;

  “I don’t know anything about poetry,” she said.

  He let his palms slide along the steel rims of the wheels for a moment, slowing down as they came abreast of the northeast corner of Humayun’s tomb, where the shadow of the dome extended across the grass.

  “You’ll have to do your homework,” said Afridi. “But I can assure you that Shelton was an interesting man. He gave Bilhana’s lyrics a modern voice. His own poems weren’t bad, either, though the American idiom has never appealed to me.”

  Anna now fixed him with her eyes, unwilling to play this game any longer.

  “Sir—” she began, but he interrupted her.

  “It’s your cover, Anna, nothing more than that. The collected papers of Dennis Shelton are stored in a library at Bromfield College in Eggleston, Ohio, his alma mater. We’ll arrange for you to travel there, as a scholar of Sanskrit poetry, working on her PhD in comparative literature. All of that will be explained to you, along with your alias and the necessary documentation. However, the real purpose is to put you in a position where you can befriend a woman who is, for us, a person of extreme interest.”

  “What’s her name?” Anna asked.

  “Daphne Shaw. You’ve probably never heard of her. But she’s the former mistress of a man named Guldaar.”

  “Guldaar?”

  “Literally, the mark of a rose but also a common name for leopards, because of the rosettes on their fur. Guldaar is the nom de guerre of a particularly ruthless and elusive warlord in the tribal areas of Pakistan, who controls a multinational syndicate of crime and corruption.” said Afridi. “Unfortunately, we don’t know his true identity.”

  “I’ve heard rumors,” said Anna.

  “Yes, that’s all we’ve had for a long time … rumors. There’s no concrete proof that Guldaar or anyone like him exists, except for peripheral and circumstantial evidence of his power and influence.” Afridi began to wheel himself forward again.

  “This woman, Daphne. She must know him, if she was his lover.”

  “Yes, she even had a son by him, named Naseem. He’s Guldaar’s only child,” said Afridi. “They lived in Mumbai until the boy was severely injured in a motorcycle accident on Marine Drive.”

  “He’s alive?”

  “Yes, but in a coma,” Afridi explained. “Brain-dead, though he’s been kept on life support for fifteen years. Daphne moved with him to the United States. He’s in a critical care facility near Eggleston, Ohio. She’s been there with him all this time. Certainly not a happy way to spend your life, but perhaps she doesn’t have a choice.”

  “How did you make contact with her?” Anna asked.

  “She’s a friend of a man I’ve known for years. Jehangir Daruwalla. He’s an arms trader based in London but originally from Bombay. Daruwalla is mixed up in some of Guldaar’s businesses. He gave Daphne my private number to use in an emergency.”

  “Why did she call?”

  “Guldaar visited her a few days ago, and it seems some agency in the US government, possibly Homeland Security, is trying to track him down. They raided Daphne’s house, hoping to find him, but by that time he had disappeared.”

  “Sir, with all due respect, it sounds as if we’re chasing ghosts,” Anna said.

  “Exactly, but the analogy I would offer comes from astrophysics instead of the paranormal,” Afridi continued. “You’ve heard of black holes and dark matter, I assume? Scientists suspected their existence long before they could prove that they were really there, the collapsed residue of stars, an invisible sinkhole of cosmic gravity. The presence of dark matter was only inferred from the responses of other phenomena that could be observed.”

  Anna shook her head impatiently, thinking Afridi was wandering off track again, but he turned to face her, with a deft U-turn of his wheelchair.

  “It’s the same with Guldaar,” he said. “For a number of years, we’ve known that someone was controlling most of the criminal activity in Afghanistan and Pakistan—the drug trade, hawala transactions, smuggling of arms, commissions from military contracts, almost every facet of the illegal economy. All of this could only be possible with the collusion of the CIA, Pakistan’s military, and the ISI, not to mention some of our own politicians and generals. If Guldaar exists, as I’m sure he does, then he’s far more dangerous than all of the underworld dons combined. We’ve been following the trail of money, murder, and extortion, which points to a central figure whose reach extends across South Asia and the Middle East.”

  “And you’re sure this woman can lead us to him?” Anna said.

  “I’m sure of nothing,” said Afridi. “What I believe is largely a matter of conjecture and faith, arrived at through a process of elimination. Guldaar may be a leopard who changes his spots. But I have to accept that he’s there, hiding in the borderlands of Afghanistan, like dark matter, because otherwise nothing else makes sense.”

  “So, you’re sending me off to America to study Sanskrit poetry but actually to find a man who may or may not exist?” Anna stared at Afridi with a look of disbelief.

  “Something like that,” he said, “though it’s bound to be much more complicated, and a good deal more dangerous than either philology or astrophysics.”

  Seventeen

  The Pakistan Army helicopter dropped them at a point where the valley broadened, next to a dusty village with a few apricot trees and barking dogs. All of the houses had been damaged by the earthquake, but most were still standing. Only one person had died here, unlike in the settlements farther on, which had suffered many more casualties. The epicenter lay somewhere to the north, but the devastation radiated down the valleys.

  A crowd of curious children followed Luke along the path but turned back after he reached a spring, where water spattered onto the rocks. Here he could see beyond the barren profiles of the nearest ridges to the snowy peaks higher up. The river below them was gray with snowmelt and writhed in an angry current. Ahead of him were three porters carrying medical supplies, stooped under their burdens. They had demanded twice the usual rate to carry the loads. Dr. Ibrahim Qureshi and his assistant, Mushtaq, both of whom worked for the Sikander-E-Azam Trust’s Emergency Relief Team, had shouldered loads, as well. Luke carried his own backpack, which he had pulled together a few hours after landing in Islamabad. At this altitude, he could feel his lungs ache with the effort of sucking oxygen out of the meager air. Strung out along the path, they looked like explorers setting off on an expedition to survey terra incognita, a small band of men walking single file into nowhere. In fact, they were trekking twelve kilometers up the valley, to the highest village in the region, which had been completely destroyed.

  After an hour they came to a wrecked bridge over a stream. The porters showed them where to ford, and the freezing water gnawed at Luke’s calves. The remains of the bridge, a narrow span of steel, looked as if it had been twisted by monstrous hands, the flimsy girders wrenched apart. Other than the bridge there was little evidence of a quake, until they came to a second village. Here, six of the fifteen houses had collapsed. The survivors were living in tents, which had been dropped from the air, along with blankets and food supplies. Ibrahim stopped to treat a man with an injured leg. The shinbone was broken below his knee, and an infection had set in. Luke helped by holding the man’s shoulders as he moaned softly, a muted prayer of pain.

  Half an hour later, leaving the village and heading on, Luke saw a pair of vultures feeding on the remains of a horse, its ribcage stripped of flesh. Feeling a wave of disgust, he averted his eyes then forced himself to watch the huge birds tearing at the rotting entrails with their beaks.

  Taking out his camera, he snapped several pictures of the flattened homes. By now, he could see a broad delta of ice filling a valley to their left. In the midday light, this glacier had a stark whiteness, contrasting with the browns and tans of the ridges on either side.

  Ibrahim dropped back to keep Luke company. They spoke in Urdu.

  “During winter this river freezes
over and men can walk on it, like a paved road,” he said, pointing into the valley.

  Luke tried to picture the tumbling rapids congealing into ice, the surface of the river slowly freezing until the flow of water finally stopped.

  “Nobody comes here in winter,” Ibrahim continued. “The passes are closed with snow. For eight months of the year, these mountains are cut off. It’s so cold your tongue will freeze if you talk too much. When a child is born during winter, they kill a lamb and make a sack out of its fleece. They sew the baby up inside to keep it warm, with only its head sticking out.”

  Farther on they spotted a herd of markhor, wild goats, that dislodged stones as they clambered up the cliffs. Luke couldn’t see any grass for them to feed on, and it seemed impossible that even the hardiest creatures could survive in this harsh environment.

  “There are wolves up here,” said Ibrahim, “and snow leopards. Shaan.”

  “Have you ever seen one?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “But I’ve seen the skin of a leopard the villagers shot. As soft as rabbit’s fur, with gray markings, like petals of soot.”

  The markhor had moved on up the ridge and out of sight. Luke could imagine an invisible predator stalking them across the cliffs.

  “What about jihadis?” he asked. “Are there any here?”

  Ibrahim looked away.

  “Perhaps,” he said, under his breath. “These days jihadis are everywhere. But many of the people in this region are originally Kalash, who came across from Bashgal in Afghanistan, during the 1930s. Most of them have converted, but they still hold onto their traditions and don’t trust the Taliban at all.”

  Several times, they heard choppers passing overhead, ferrying relief supplies. One hovered above a ridge to the east like a giant wasp. Luke wondered what he might be able to offer these people. Ibrahim was a doctor, but what could a journalist do? He was supposed to report on the earthquake and make others understand the extent of the damage and suffering. Perhaps his stories might pierce the conscience of the outside world, inured to catastrophes around the globe, but Luke felt impotent in the face of disaster. At this moment, he could report nothing at all. There was no signal on his cellphone, no Internet connection to send an email. He thought of Carlton Fletcher and their conversation in the executive lounge at Dulles, the threat in his voice, a tone of menacing insistence.

  Luke envied Ibrahim the altruistic purpose of his medical work. They had known each other for three years, and Luke had seen him operating in other crises. Calm and efficient, Ibrahim comforted his patients with assured detachment. Luke wished he had his skills and focus. Even in the face of the worst calamities, Ibrahim remained dispassionate, while Luke’s emotions surfaced at the slightest suggestion of human anguish.

  The final two kilometers of their trek were a steep ascent up the twisted spine of a ridge. Though he could hear the roar of the river, it was now hidden within a gorge. The only sign of life was a lammergeyer wheeling overhead, the vulture’s wings outstretched against the clouds. Luke ate a chocolate bar to give himself energy but also because he knew that once they reached the third village, he wouldn’t want to eat. Coming down the path toward him was a flock of long haired goats, herding themselves.

  When he finally crested the highest spur on the ridge, Luke collapsed onto a flat stone and gazed back down the valley. Tresses of smoke rose above the village they’d left behind, where the bright orange and blue tents looked almost festive amid the bleak terrain. He was afraid to look ahead, but as he turned and stumbled to his feet again, he could see their porters had reached the mounds of rubble.

  It looked as if a bomb had exploded. A two-story building, which might have been a school made of reinforced concrete, had snapped in the center and fallen in upon itself. Nothing was left but tangled steel and chunks of concrete. The trail approaching the village had sheared off and part of the hill above had slid down over a row of houses. It was like coming upon the ancient ruins of a historical site, except that all of this had happened less than three days ago, in the space of sixty seconds, the earth shifting of its own volition.

  Flying into the valley, the helicopter pilots had told them that they had counted fourteen survivors in this village. When the choppers came in low enough to drop food and blankets, the villagers had gestured frantically for them to land, their cries drowned by the drumbeat of engines. But the pilots had been instructed not to carry out the injured. Already, there were too many victims to treat at government hospitals down the valley.

  Ibrahim had climbed ahead of Luke and stood atop the debris. He was talking to an old man, who was gesturing wildly with both arms. Only five of the original fourteen survivors were still alive. The other bodies were piled together in a macabre embrace. A noisy flock of magpies were squabbling over the remains. Turning aside, Luke began to retch but stopped himself, tasting the sour saliva at the back of his tongue. The old man had dug a shallow trench beside the bodies. He pleaded with them to help him bury his neighbors.

  Two women were huddled beneath a lean-to shelter, wrapped in chadors and blankets that covered them from head to foot. When Ibrahim kneeled to see if they had been hurt, both of them drew back as if he were a threat. A few feet from them lay an unconscious man, his face a mask of crusted blood. The only sign of life was his right hand, which slowly opened and closed. A boy of eight or nine crouched beside him. Luke guessed it was his son. The child was unhurt but his eyes were blank. As Ibrahim examined the injured man, the ground shuddered with an aftershock, and the boy hid his face and wept.

  After treating the victim as best he could, Ibrahim shook his head and said there was little he could do. The man’s skull was badly cracked. Moving him would do more harm than good, so they covered him with blankets and turned their attention to the dead. The porters helped finish excavating a grave. Ibrahim, Mushtaq, and Luke put on gloves before shifting the remains to the trough, which looked like a broad furrow ready to be planted. This had been a village of thirty-five homes, the porters said, more than a hundred people altogether. By the time they piled the last stones on the grave, shadows were ascending the ridges. It was only then that Luke remembered to take photographs in the fading light, framing the grim tumuli between darkening profiles of the mountains and a vacant sky.

  Nothing more could be done for the survivors, and it was too late to go back down the valley, so they descended to a knoll below the village to pitch their tents. Any other time, this would have been a spectacular campsite, with a view of the river and a ring of snow peaks. But they were exhausted and depressed. Ibrahim persuaded the porters to spend the night and gave them a tent, while he and Luke shared the second tent with Mushtaq.

  “The old man said there were voices coming from the rubble until last night,” Luke said. “He claimed they were ghosts, but it must have been people buried underneath.”

  Ibrahim expelled his breath, as if he were angry with himself. “We couldn’t dig them out even if we tried,” he said.

  Eighteen

  At dawn, Afridi was driven across to Lodhi Gardens, where he completed his morning workout. The racing wheelchair he used was manufactured in Switzerland and designed for para-athletes. It had a lightweight titanium frame with three wheels, a low-slung seat and mesh cradle to support Afridi’s legs. Every day in Mussoorie, he did three laps of the chukkar road near his home, a distance of ten kilometers. Lodhi Gardens had a number of paths that circled through the trees, past ancient mausoleums. He completed five circuits of the garden, arms pumping with a steady, relentless rhythm. By the time he finished, the park was full of morning walkers, joggers, as well as people doing yoga and calisthenics on the lawns. At that hour of the morning, there was still a hint of coolness in the air.

  Back at the guesthouse on Aurangzeb Lane, he finished off with a series of stretching exercises that kept him limber, moving his arms as if he were climbing a rock face, clutching at invisible handholds.

  By the time he’d bathed and eaten breakf
ast, it was half past nine. Several minutes later, he heard voices coming down the hall. Major Karamjit Singh, the protocol officer from MOD, knocked and entered the library, followed by Jehangir Daruwalla, who reached out to shake Afridi’s hand.

  “Colonel, my apologies. The flight from Bombay was delayed. I’ve come straight from the airport.” Nothing in Jehangir’s manner suggested that he was under arrest.

  Major Singh asked if anything more was required.

  “Tea or coffee?” Afridi asked his guest.

  “Coffee, please. Black. No sugar,” Jehangir replied, taking a seat and glancing around. As soon as the major had left, he asked, “What is this place?”

  “A government guesthouse,” said Afridi.

  “Very nice for a sarkari setup,” Jehangir said. “Tastefully furnished.”

  “I insisted on the decor,” said Afridi. The library was wood paneled, with a flat screen television on a wall alongside watercolor sketches of Delhi monuments. The chairs were upholstered in pale leather and the tables and bookcases had been lightly stained, so the natural grain of the wood was visible. A fan was slowly oscillating above their heads, enough to stir the air without disturbing conversation. Afridi avoided air-conditioning. He could see that Daruwalla was perspiring.

  “You’re keeping well, I hope?” Jehangir asked, wiping his face with a handkerchief, and trying to act as if nothing were wrong.

  Instead of answering him, Afridi cut straight to the point. “I hear there was some trouble at the Yacht Club.”

  Daruwalla rubbed his knuckles thoughtfully. “Very nasty. I wasn’t particularly fond of the man, but nobody deserves to have his throat slit.”

  “Why was he killed?” Afridi said.

  “I really don’t know.”

  “You had dinner with him. What was that all about?”

  “Logistics,” said Daruwalla with an evasive wave.

  Afridi kept his eyes on him but said nothing.

  “He was arranging a shipment for us,” Jehangir continued, reluctantly.