The Dalliance of Leopards

by Alter, Stephen;

  By now, Bhandari had unstrapped himself. He went across with Anna to see where the others were waiting with the injured. Within five minutes, the two Air Force helicopters arrived with a deafening roar of engines, kicking up a sandstorm on the riverbank. They had a medical team on board, who quickly took over, carrying stretchers and first aid equipment. Afridi spoke to the squadron leader who was piloting one of the rescue choppers. They agreed that the casualties would be taken to the nearest hospital in Dehradun. Two Air Force personnel would stay with the chopper until the police arrived. A short distance from the crash site was a Gujjar settlement, and several boys from there had gathered. They had been herding buffaloes nearby. Squatting on their haunches, they studied the scene with nonchalant curiosity, as if this sort of thing happened all the time.

  Afridi watched the injured pilot and the American agent being carried onto the chopper. They were lucky the Sikorsky had gone down where it did. Another hundred yards to the west, and they would have crashed into a jungle of kikad trees. Minutes later, Anna led Daphne over to the Lama. Afridi recognized her immediately. He was surprised how calm she appeared. Her clothes were barely rumpled, and it looked as if she’d even combed her hair. When Anna introduced them, Daphne held out her hand.

  “I’m sorry you’ve had such a terrible experience,” said Afridi. “I hope you’re all right.”

  She gazed at him with a look of relief.

  “I’m fine, thank you,” she said. “Colonel Afridi, it’s good to meet you at last.”

  “My pleasure. I only wish it was under different circumstances.”

  He began to explain that the second Air Force chopper would ferry them to Dehradun, where HRI vehicles would pick them up and drive them to Mussoorie, but Daphne interrupted.

  “I was hoping you’d offer me a lift,” she said.

  “Of course,” he said. “There’s room for just one passenger at the back. It’s a little cramped, but the flight takes only twenty minutes.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll manage,” she said, as Anna helped her climb into the jump seat. A few minutes later, they were airborne. Though the noise from the engine was too loud for them to have a conversation, Afridi pointed out the town of Mussoorie spread along the top of the ridge, the profiles of the higher Himalayas in the background catching the last rays of sunlight in a magenta glow.

  Forty-Eight

  Every Thursday at 8:00 a.m. a barber arrived at Ivanhoe to give Afridi a haircut and shave. It was a ritual that his father had instilled in him from an early age. As a boy, Afridi had never enjoyed getting his hair cut, but he was always fascinated by the way the barber performed a rapid-fire scalp massage with all sorts of sound effects, the snapping of knuckles and vertebrae, the clap of palms after kneading shoulders and neck. Now, years later, it was still part of his weekly ritual. The head massage lasted ten minutes, with the grand finale of a double karate chop that sounded as if Afridi’s skull had cracked, leaving him blinking with momentary amnesia. The barber, Iqbal, trekked all the way up from New Bombay Hair Dressing Salon in town. He understood that Afridi was a punctual man, and he always arrived a few minutes early, carrying an attaché case with the tools of his trade.

  Afridi shaved himself most days, but Thursday mornings he enjoyed the luxury of sitting back and letting Iqbal lather his cheeks. It was also a chance to catch up on gossip from the town, the latest scandals, which Iqbal related with relish—whose daughter had run off with whom and which court case was coming up for a hearing. Iqbal was critical of every politician in town, from the ward representatives to the local member of the state legislative assembly. He had stories of bribes being paid and contracts awarded to cousins and nephews. All of this was recounted as the straight razor stroked Afridi’s throat, its sharp blade scraping away lather and beard with lethal delicacy. Afridi closed his eyes and threw back his head as if surrendering to an executioner’s blade.

  He often thought how a small town like Mussoorie mirrored the country at large, with its corruption, ineptitude, cronyism, and lack of civic norms. Sometimes he despaired, as when he heard from Iqbal how an engineer in the electricity department had filched all the light bulbs from streetlamps or about the contractor who paved the same road every other year, mixing ten times as much sand as cement so that it washed away in the monsoon. Exactly the same things happened in Delhi but on a larger scale, whether it was kickbacks on defense procurements or tainted political donations. He often wondered if there was any hope for the country when everyone took corruption for granted. Afridi’s determination to bring Guldaar to justice was fueled by a conviction that if the source of corruption, the motivating evil, was uprooted, it might be possible to destroy the parasitic culture supported by cynicism and greed. But if he did succeed in capturing Guldaar, would it really make any difference?

  After the shave was finished, the barber rinsed Afridi’s face in a basin of warm water and offered to trim his mustache. This was a weekly argument between them. Afridi insisted that any man who let someone else trim his mustache didn’t deserve to grow one. The other debate they had each week was whether Iqbal would be allowed to color Afridi’s hair. The colonel refused to give in. He was content with natural gray, though it had been slowly getting whiter. Afridi also insisted on using his own aftershave, a subtle scent he got from a perfumer in France that bore a hint of citron and bergamot, unlike the attar of jasmine and roses that Iqbal doused on the faces of most of his clients.

  As the barber began to snip his hair, Afridi wondered if Daphne was awake. Yesterday, she had retired to her suite soon after they landed at HRI. The two of them had agreed to meet this morning at 10:00 a.m. in his office. Anna had come up by jeep the evening before to brief him. Though it was unfortunate that the American agent had been injured—she was still in the hospital—Afridi felt relieved not to have her around.

  The haircut itself never took more than five minutes. Iqbal worked quickly with a comb in his left hand, scissors in the right, taking off a centimeter each week. He held up a mirror for Afridi’s approval, showing him the back first, then the sideburns and front. With the sheet draped around his neck and covering the wheelchair to his knees, Afridi thought for a moment he looked the same as he did when he was a boy, trussed up in a chair and squirming to get free. But now the massage began. Iqbal’s steady stream of stories ended as he cracked his knuckles and gripped Afridi’s head, like a potter centering a lump of clay.

  Closing his eyes, the colonel tried to forget Guldaar, though it seemed impossible. In his mind he could see the bandaged face from thirty years ago, the bruised eye watching him. Over time, he had researched and uncovered so many details about this man. Yet Guldaar remained a disturbing enigma, more of a “metaphor than a man,” as Afridi had described him to Anna. That was the worrying part. He couldn’t be sure his assumptions were true, whether Guldaar was motivated by criminal instincts or something larger and more sinister.

  The barber was now working his way up either side of Afridi’s cranium, kneading his hair at the roots. A head massage stimulated blood flow, and Iqbal swore that his weekly champi was the only reason Afridi hadn’t gone bald.

  Iqbal’s deft fingers unknotted his anxieties and doubts, loosening the tangled calculations in Afridi’s mind. The barber was now gently pinching both eyebrows between forefinger and thumb, which made Afridi’s eyes water. Soon a furious drum tattoo was performed on every hemisphere of his scalp, beaten by an expert touch. With a final flourish, the percussionist accelerated the tempo. For the next three minutes, his mind went blank, and the menacing specter of Guldaar was completely erased by the pulsing rhythm of the barber’s hands.

  Forty-Nine

  “How many of these mountains have you climbed?”

  “Only three that we can see from here.”

  “Which are they?”

  “That first one to the west, shaped like the dorsal fin of a fish. It’s called Swargrohini, which means light of heaven.”

  “A beautiful shape,
more like a wave than a fin.”

  “If you go across to the right, moving eastward, there’s a sharp peak called Sri Kantha and beside it a cluster of summits in the Gangotri group. One of those is Rudragaira. That was the first peak I climbed, back in 1961. That was a lucky year for me. I’d just joined the army and climbed four major peaks in one season, including Trishul. Of course, the next year we went to war with China, and everything changed after that. The Himalayas lost their innocence and became a strategic battleground instead of a place of unspoiled beauty and romantic myths.”

  “Can you see Trishul from here?”

  “No, it’s farther to the east, hidden behind that lower range of hills.”

  “Which was the third mountain you climbed?”

  “Chaukhamba. It’s over there, in among those peaks to the east beyond Kedarnath, 7,138 meters above sea level.”

  “Seeing them from here, it’s hard to imagine anyone climbing to the top.”

  “The closer you get, the more complex and challenging they appear, until you’re on the mountain itself, and then you just keep going because it’s too late to turn back.”

  They were outside, on the terrace of the main building at HRI, looking out upon the Garhwal Himalayas. It was a clear morning for this time of year, though a haze of dust, rising from the plains, obscured the farthest peaks. Daphne seemed rested and at ease, despite the events of the day before. Armed commandoes were standing guard, two of them at the gate and another positioned at the edge of the verandah.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to keep you standing out here. Please come inside.” Afridi gestured toward his office and wheeled himself up a ramp as she followed.

  “It’s nice to be outdoors,” she said. “I’ve never been to Mussoorie before. Back in the seventies I visited Simla once, and every summer when I was a girl we’d spend a month in Darjeeling, riding the train up from Siliguri with my father. He was in the Railways.”

  Afridi opened the door for her. He was glad to escape the attentive gaze of the NSG commandoes. Instead of wheeling himself behind his desk, he offered Daphne one of the chairs near the bookshelves and positioned himself so he was facing her.

  “Your father was with the Eastern Railways?”

  “Yes, he was posted in Cal for years as a freight inspector at Howrah Station. That’s where I grew up, mostly. Later, we moved to Jamshedpur for a while. But originally, our family is from Mughal Sarai.”

  “So, you’re not Greek, are you?” he said with a knowing smile.

  She laughed, tossing back her head and brushing a hand through her hair.

  “No,” she said. “Cent percent Anglo-Indian. But my mother used to enjoy Greek mythology, which is probably why she named me Daphne. It was only when I got to Bombay that people suggested I might be Greek, part of the fiction they create in films.”

  “Nobody is ever who they say they are.”

  She looked at him with mischief in her eyes.

  “I suppose that applies to you, as well,” said Daphne.

  “Perhaps,” said Afridi. “But I’m too old to wear a disguise.”

  “Who knows?” she said.

  There was a pause in their conversation, and Daphne looked around the office, noticing the mountaineering pictures on the walls and a framed map of the Himalayas, stretching from Kashmir to NEFA, as it used to be called. She could tell it was an old Survey of India map, printed long before independence.

  “I’m afraid I have some sad news,” Afridi said, in a muted voice.

  She looked at him with a pensive expression, ready to hear the worst.

  “We’ve received a report that Jehangir Daruwalla has been killed.”

  He could see her wince, though she tried not to show it.

  “When? How did it happen?”

  “About a week ago. Of course, it’s still not confirmed, but I have no reason to doubt our sources. From what we’ve learned, it seems he was shot by Guldaar himself.”

  Daphne looked away, her lips tightening and the color draining from her face.

  “I’m sorry,” Afridi said.

  She shook her head but kept silent.

  “The truth is, I’m probably to blame for it,” Afridi continued. “I offered to protect him, and we could have forced him to stay in India.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s my fault completely.”

  “He was a close friend of yours.”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice shaking. “The only person I could trust.”

  “Jehangir was involved in a very dangerous game.”

  “Maybe. But that wasn’t the reason he was killed,” she whispered.

  Afridi reached toward his desk and offered her a box of tissues. Daphne took two and dabbed the corners of her eyes, then blew her nose.

  “Jehangir told me that you were being forced to keep your son alive,” Afridi said.

  “Nothing is ever as simple as it seems,” she replied. “But yes, it wasn’t my choice. Sometimes you realize it’s better to let go of life.”

  “Did Guldaar come to see you often?”

  “Once or twice a year,” she said. “It was always a surprise.”

  “How did he travel to the United States?”

  “The government helped him, the CIA. He once showed me that he had a US passport. He was always boasting about the people he knew in Washington and how he could enter the country without anyone knowing he was there. He’d even been to the White House for some dinner in honor of a Saudi prince. Jimmy always made it seem as if nobody could touch him.”

  “You call him Jimmy?”

  She glanced at her nails for a moment, and Afridi could see they were cut short but painted a pale salmon color.

  “Yes, that was a nickname I gave him when we first met in Bombay. Jamshed Khan sounded too formal. I’m the only one who called him Jimmy.”

  “It’s not a name that suits him,” said Afridi.

  “What’s in a name?” she said. “Bombay. They call it Mumbai now. It seems so silly.”

  “And you became Daphne Shaw, with a ‘w’ instead of an ‘h’.”

  “Yes, but ‘Shah’ wasn’t the name I was born with,” she said.

  “Really?” Afridi was surprised.

  “No. It was Murphy. When I came to Bombay, the first producer to cast me in a picture told me that nobody would go to see a Hindi film in which the heroine was called ‘Daphne Murphy.’ He said it sounded like a transistor radio, and people would make a joke of it.”

  “What made you choose Shah?”

  “It seemed a neutral choice. Could be Hindu, Muslim, or Christian, and I didn’t feel like explaining too much about myself. The producer wanted me to change my first name, too, but I refused. I hope you haven’t watched any of my films,” she said, the tissues still clutched in one hand. “They’re all so dreadful. Jehangir used to tease me, calling me a vamp because of the dresses they put me in with cleavage showing and slits up the thighs. I can’t tell you how awful the costumes were.”

  “You don’t miss acting?” he asked.

  “Not at all. I didn’t like the celebrity or the innuendoes, either,” she said. “But I loved Bombay, particularly when Jehangir would take me out for dinner at a seafood place in Juhu. We’d eat crab curry and laugh all night.”

  “I asked him if you were lovers,” Afridi said.

  She paused for a moment and caught her breath.

  “Forgive me,” Afridi said. “That was tactless.”

  “No,” she said with a shake of her head. “I’m curious. What was his answer?”

  “He laughed at me and said you were close friends, that was all.”

  “A true gentleman,” said Daphne, “to the end.”

  “How did you meet Guldaar?”

  “He came on the sets of one of my films. I didn’t know who he was. Later, he invited me to dinner. It took a while for me to fall under his spell,” said Daphne, her voice echoing a note of regret. “He can be charming and generous when he wants. Even now,
if you meet him, he’s personable and witty, a very likeable man. It’s only when you realize the things he’s done that you understand how cruel and ruthless he actually is. In fact, it makes it worse, because he puts on such a civilized mask.”

  “What about the Sikander-e-Azam Trust?”

  “I don’t know much about that,” said Daphne. “Jimmy started it while I was in America. It sounds as if they do good work. He’s very proud of it, and when he’d come to see me, he’d talk about the schools and medical centers he was opening. To be honest, I found it odd, because he isn’t a charitable man, but it seems as if he really wants to help develop that region and improve the lives of those who live there. Maybe it’s just guilt, a form of atonement.”

  “Do you have any photographs of him?” Afridi asked.

  Daphne shook her head. “He was always camera shy,” she said. “After a while it became an obsession for him. Jimmy guards his anonymity. Even Jehangir never met him, though he worked for him for almost twenty years.”

  “You kept in touch with Jehangir, after you moved to the United States?”

  “Yes. As I said, he was the only person I could trust,” Daphne replied. “We would talk on the phone once a week. Jimmy often used him to send me messages or money, when I needed it.”

  “What exactly was his relationship with Guldaar?”

  “Jehangir was a go-between, his personal emissary, and they often spoke on the phone. Jimmy used to say sometimes that you need to keep a distance from those you trust, hiding your identity to protect each other. Quite often, if there was a business meeting, he sent Jehangir in his place, as his double or stand-in. Of course, nobody knew it wasn’t Jimmy. This was after he’d left Bombay and moved to Dubai, then back to Pakistan, when he began to really earn his fortune. He happened to be at the right place at the right time when the Russians invaded Afghanistan. I remember, I was worried about him being so close to the border, but Jehangir told me that Jimmy was probably the safest man on earth because everybody needed him. He was like a croupier at a roulette table, who was taking all the winnings for himself.”