A Walk Across the Sun (34 page)

The following morning, Tatiana fetched Sita for breakfast. Before leaving her room, Sita glanced out the window and saw that the van and the Audi had returned. The riddle of the girls' destination deepened when she met Ivanna in the kitchen, preparing the meal. The girl looked no different from the night before. Sita helped her serve the food and watched her for any sign of distress. The girl's blue eyes were vacant, but she didn't miss a step.

Sita spent the next few days in the same manner, performing the duties of a household maid, laundering the girls' sheets and underwear, and helping Ivanna in the kitchen. Each evening the van left the courtyard at ten o'clock and returned before dawn. On Sita's second night—a Sunday—Ivanna and another girl accompanied Dmitri in the Audi. On Monday and Tuesday, only Natalia went with Dmitri. Sita watched the nightly muster from her window and tried not to think about where the girls were taken or what they were forced to do.

On Wednesday after breakfast, Sita was summoned to the sitting room where Vasily was waiting. Soon thereafter, Uncle-ji and Aunti-ji came in with Dmitri. The Indian couple took their seats without looking at Sita. She stared at them in confusion. She had been told nothing about the purpose of the meeting.

“Here are the documents,” Vasily said, opening a folder on the coffee table.

In the folder, Sita saw passports and airline tickets. Her heart lurched. Had Uncle-ji and Aunti-ji decided to leave France? What did they intend to do with her?

“How much will this cost us?” Uncle-ji asked in a quiet voice.

Vasily shook his head. “I told you before. It will cost you nothing. We are helping you, and you are helping us. It is an even exchange.”

“And when we get there?”

Vasily shrugged. “That is up to you.”

“Merci beaucoup,”
said Uncle-ji. “You have done us a great favor.”

He glanced at Sita and she saw guilt in his eyes. She inhaled sharply. Suddenly, she was certain the meeting had to do with her.

Vasily handed the documents to Uncle-ji, and the men shook hands.

“Thank me tomorrow,” Vasily said. “Until then, watch your step.”

Part Three

Chapter 19

The heart has its reasons which reason does not know.
—B
LAISE
P
ASCAL

Mumbai, India

Thomas sat in the Air France lounge at Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, sipping a glass of red wine. It was just after midnight on Wednesday, one week after the deputy commissioner of police had released Navin. His flight wasn't scheduled to depart for another hour and a half. He considered reading a newspaper, but he knew the articles wouldn't hold his attention. He was a bundle of nervous energy. He closed his eyes instead, breathing steadily, remembering.

It had been an eventful week. He'd talked to Greer the day after the raid, expecting the field office director to tell him he was crazy and that CASE couldn't spare him while he gallivanted around Paris in search of Sita. Greer, however, had surprised him. Beneath his world-wise exterior, Greer, it seemed, was an idealist. He grilled Thomas only long enough to see that he was serious. Then he imparted his blessing, asking only that Thomas keep in touch.

Priya had been a different story. After the meeting with Greer, Thomas had called her mobile number, thinking she wouldn't answer. It was a Thursday and she was at the hospice facility in Breach Candy spending time with her grandmother. When she picked up on the first ring, he knew something was wrong. Her tone confirmed it.

“Thomas,” she said, “my grandmother just passed away.”

He took a deep breath and let it out. “I'm so sorry.”

She took a while to speak again. “She was chatting two days ago. The nurses said she started slipping during the night. By the time I got here, she couldn't talk. She looked at me like she wanted to say something, but she couldn't. I was holding her hand when she died.”

Priya broke down and began to cry.

Thomas left the office and climbed into a rickshaw. “Does your family know?”

“I was about to call my father.”

He raised his voice above the throb of the rickshaw's two-cylinder engine. “It'll take me an hour to get to you.”

“Come to my grandfather's house. They're taking her there for preparation.”

It took him eighty dizzying minutes to reach Malabar Hill. He paid the fare at the gate and entered the grounds. The garden was cool and filled with the scent of jasmine and the chirping of birds. He stood for a moment and surveyed the sanctuary of Vrindavan. Three cars were parked on the stone drive. Priya's convertible was among them.

He braced himself for the inevitable confrontation with Surya. He hadn't spoken to the Professor since the mendhi event. He had no idea whether Priya had informed her father of the time they had spent together. The whole thing felt like déjà vu. It was as if he and Priya had been sneaking around in Fellows Garden again. Except that now they were married.

No one was on the veranda, but he saw movement beyond the windows. He knocked cautiously at the front door, hoping that Priya would greet him. He was not so fortunate.

The Professor opened the door and frowned. “Priya is with her grandmother,” he said.

“She asked me to come,” Thomas replied.

When Surya didn't respond, he thought the man was going to force him to wait outside. Then Surekha appeared and extended an olive branch.

“Thomas,” she said, rebuking her husband with her eyes, “Priya will be out in a moment. Why don't you wait in the sitting room?”

Surya glared at him but stood aside. Thomas took a seat on a couch, listening to the sound of distant female voices speaking Hindi. After a few minutes, Priya appeared and beckoned him to follow her onto the terrace.

“How are you?” Thomas asked.

“I don't know,” Priya replied. Her eyes were red-rimmed and teary. “I didn't expect it to come so soon.”

“What can I do?”

“Nothing,” she said, shaking her head.

“What happens next?”

“Her body will be adorned and laid in state. There will be an open house tomorrow for people to pay their respects, and then she will be cremated by the sea at Priyadarshini Park. After that, my father and his brothers will fly her ashes to Varanasi. We will mourn her here.”

Thomas was silent for a long time. “I'm sorry. I know you loved her.”

“I loved her as a child. I barely knew her as an adult.”

“I am much to blame for that.”

Priya looked across the grass toward the fountain. “We're both at fault. But blame is useless now. All we have is the future.”

Thomas took a breath and let it out. “I keep wondering how this is going to work.”

Priya shook her head. “You can't think your way through it.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?”

Priya looked at him. “Why do men persist in asking that question? You're not supposed to
do
anything. You're supposed to be yourself. We'll figure it out together.”

“Why do women persist in speaking in riddles?”

“Because love is a riddle,” she replied. “As is life itself.”

The Hindu funeral rites that followed were elaborate, and the public wake drew a crowd of nearly five hundred. The family garlanded Sonam's body with flowers and placed her on a bier with her feet facing southward, toward the abode of the dead.

On the evening of the second day, Surya and his brothers carried the bier to a hearse and drove their mother to Priyadarshini Park, where a pyre was lit and her body was cremated. A group of Brahmins chanted mantras to the percussion of the sea, and both the elite and commoners of Bombay paid their last respects.

After the cremation, the crowd dispersed and the family returned to the bungalow. While Priya tended to her grandfather, Thomas drifted along on the periphery of things, wondering when he would get a chance to talk to her about Paris. He felt guilty thinking so much about Sita. But as the hours passed, he grew more certain she was within reach and more afraid that time was against him.

At last, three days after Sonam's death, he took Priya aside after supper and led her onto the terrace beneath a darkening sky.

“You look troubled,” she said. “Is something wrong?”

Thomas told her about the capture and release of Navin.

Priya was scandalized. “The commissioner is a family friend! He and his wife were at the open house. If one of his deputies is working for the
goondas
, he should know about it.”

“I'm not sure it would help,” he responded. “Anyway, I'm less concerned about the deputy commissioner.”

“You're worried about Sita.”

He nodded.

She looked thoughtful. “Do you know why Navin took her to France?”

“His uncle owns a restaurant in Paris. She's working for him.”

“Are the French looking into it?”

“The CBI hasn't told us anything. What the French will do is anyone's guess.”

She eyed him closely. “That isn't the end. You have something more to say.”

“The CIA should hire you. You're better than a polygraph.”

She smiled. “It's only
your
mind I can read.”

“I need to go to France,” he said. “I think I can find Sita.”

She stared at him, her dark eyes shimmering in the torch light. “You mean that.”

“Yes.”

“My father won't understand.”

“Of course he won't.”

“It's too bad. He was just starting to like you.”

Thomas's eyes widened. “What?”

“His exact words were ‘You picked yourself a smart one.'”

“Ah, but respect is not affection.”

“Neither is it loathing.”

He laughed. “I think it was I who picked a smart one.”

She reached out and touched his arm. “Go to Paris,” she said. “I'll deal with my father.”

Thomas checked his watch and saw that he still had thirty minutes before the plane boarded. He took out his BlackBerry and placed a call to Andrew Porter at the Justice Department. Porter picked up on the first ring. The ten-and-a-half-hour time difference meant that it was early afternoon in Washington.

Thomas briefed him on the situation and asked if he knew anyone in the French government who could offer assistance.

“Our relations with the French are always a bit sensitive,” Porter said. “But a friend of mine works at the legal attaché's office in Paris. The legats know the diplomatic ropes and have the respect of the government. I could give Julia a call if you'd like.”

“How good a friend is she?” Thomas asked. “What I'm doing isn't exactly orthodox.”

“Julia and I were at Columbia together. She's one of my favorite people. Anybody else at the FBI wouldn't give you the time of day. But she'll do me a favor. Besides, she'll be intrigued. Her sister was abducted when she was a child.”

“Okay,” Thomas said. “Give her a call.”

“Good. Wait twenty minutes and then dial this number.”

Porter recited an eight-digit number with a Paris exchange. Thomas wrote it on the palm of his hand. After signing off, he read a copy of the
Times of India
and watched the clock.

When twenty minutes elapsed, he placed the call. Julia answered the phone in French. Although Thomas spoke the language passably, he identified himself in English.

She changed languages easily. “I'll do anything I can to help. Where do we start?”

“I want to know if the French police have heard from the CBI in Bombay.”

“We have contacts at the BRP here in Paris. I'll ring them tomorrow morning. How familiar are you with Paris?”

“I spent a semester at the Sorbonne in college. Why?”

“I'm guessing you're going to want to do a bit of gumshoe investigating. It's better if you know your way around.” She paused. “When do you get into Charles de Gaulle?”

“Seven thirty tomorrow morning.”

“Take the RER Line B to Châtelet–Les Halles. I'll meet you outside the Église Saint Eustache at nine o'clock.”

“How will I know you?”

“I'll be wearing a red coat,” she said.