Exiles (30 page)

She shook her head. “We’re doing our best to stay out of it, because Prachanda and his armies are strong enough now that soon they’ll be able to force elections. We
want
them to force elections, in fact, because it will probably end the monarchy, and you know how we feel about monarchies.”

“Monarchies that aren’t Saudi Arabian and sitting on a ton of oil, you mean.”

She eyed him a little disapprovingly. “Nevertheless,” she said, “we want to bring them into the legislative process and end this disaster of a war.”

“Why can’t you contact Prachanda directly and get him involved?”

“Because first, he won’t talk to us. Second, because despite everything I’ve told you, the State Department still considers him a terrorist. It would torpedo our leverage with the legitimate government.”

“For Christ’s sake, Alice.”

She sighed. “Also, your daughter will probably turn into a PR bonanza for these guys, and releasing her would be admitting that she’d been captured instead of converted. So they’d lose both the human shield and the propaganda bonus.”

Peter stared at her. “You can’t be telling me there’s nothing to be done.”

She sighed. “I’m telling you there’s nothing
we
can do. I already know what you’re thinking, and we can’t send in any sort of military personnel, for the same reason we can’t send in aircraft.”

He tried to keep his voice down, but he was frustrated and angrier by the second. “Alice, this is unbelievable.”

“Look, I can call my best contacts in the RNA, and with any luck they’ll meet with you this morning. It’s their duchy; they’ve got to handle it.”

“You have kids?” he asked.

“Don’t start the ‘You have kids?’ thing with me, Peter, please. In fact I have a son and a daughter. They go to the international school here, and I know exactly how murderously crazed I’d be if a bunch of thugs with AKs overran the place and I found myself in your shoes. I think you’re being a model of civility, frankly. But the situation would be exactly the same.”

“For Christ’s sake, we’re the most powerful nation on earth—”

“We can’t nuke them, Peter. We need a flyswatter, not an H-bomb, and the RNA has all the flyswatters.”

He stood up. “Call them,” he said. “While I’m standing here, I want to hear you do it.”

“Of course.”

She arranged for him to go later that morning.

“One thing,” she said. “Bear in mind that she’s probably safe.”

He turned to face her. “She has dysentery, and they have no medicines or water filters there, so she’s not going to be getting over it anytime soon. Every guy in the place was giving her the eye when we walked in, that lovely feral teenage-guy look that says, ‘I might just decide to fuck you sometime and you won’t be able to do shit about it.’ So don’t tell me she’s safe, because she isn’t safe. I brought her here to
make
her safe. Great how that worked out, huh?”

“All I’m saying is that they’re going to want her to look good,” Finley said. “No scabs, no bruises, no hollow, haunted eyes. They’ll feed her and probably even find her something to wash her hair with. So yes, do what you have to do to get her out. But don’t scream at the RNA and don’t fall apart, because then you won’t be any good to her. Okay?”

Peter borrowed a detailed topographical map of the area, went back to his house, and called Sangita again. Ramesh had come home, so she brought him over. Ramesh knew the name of the guerrillas’ village, but it wasn’t on the map. Nevertheless, by finding a couple of towns he knew, then triangulating, he was able to show Peter about where the compound should be. Peter folded the map and put it in his pocket.

When he arrived for his meeting with Colonel Sengupta, Peter found the man and his assistants standing in a room, watching television. The colonel eyed Peter coldly and gestured toward the set. Peter turned to look.

Adhiraj had moved swiftly. On the screen, set against a neutral backdrop of forest, was the image he’d been dreading. Alex was dressed in clean, pressed camouflage fatigues and a headband. A Kalashnikov sat on a table in front of her. She spoke briefly in Nepali, then repeated herself in English.

“This struggle is not about ideology, it’s about income disparity,” she said, and Peter realized where he’d heard those words.
He’d written her first speech for her the night he’d been pontificating on the way to the pizza parlor.

His daughter was unthreatening, convincing, and extremely telegenic. Peter was relieved that Finley had been right in one way, at least; Alex looked like she’d been fed and reasonably well cared for. Adhiraj had obviously figured out one way to get more attention in the United States.

“When you have ninety-five percent of the population living on less than three hundred dollars a year, and the other five percent rolling around in Bentleys, this is what you get,” Alex continued, stopping briefly to adjust the microphone on the table in front of her. She rested her right hand on the stock of the rifle; then, tellingly, she pulled it away. It was her one misstep, but she quickly hit her stride again. “I’ve joined this cause not because I hate the king, and not because I love violence. I have joined because I love the Nepali people, and I hate what the royal family and its minions in the RNA are doing to them. This is a call to all Americans and all people of the international community, to see which side is in the right here and take a stand.”

Jesus Christ
, thought Peter.

“Turn it off,” said Sengupta, and one of the others did. Sengupta turned to face Peter. “This is who you want us to rescue? A stupid girl who is killing our own soldiers?”

“She’s not killing anyone.”

“Words like this encourage the enemy, and the enemy kills us. We lost two hundred in raids last week. She might as well have pulled the trigger herself.”

“She is a hostage doing what hostages do, which is
cooperate.
”

The colonel and his adjutants exchanged glances. “Come with me,” he said. “Captain, join us.” The two men escorted Peter down the hall to another room. They led him inside and shut the metal door.

The room held an old Steelcase table and several battered chairs. The only light was from a frosted-glass window at the end,
which made it feel chilly even though it wasn’t. Sengupta extended his hand toward a chair, and Peter sat.

“That was far more than cooperation,” Sengupta said. “That was commitment, revolutionary fervor.”

“With all due respect, Colonel, that was acting,” said Peter. “If you’d seen her in drama club, you’d understand.”

Sengupta exhaled in exasperation. “Where is the compound?”

Peter was about to pull out the map, but something in the way Sengupta had asked the question gave him pause. “What are you going to do when you find out?”

“These people are terrorists. It is now clear that your
daughter
is a terrorist.”

“For God’s sake, she’s been there less than a week,” Peter replied. “She’s seventeen years old.”

“Seventeen is young in your country but not here,” Sengupta said. “She is probably older than half the guerrillas there. I ask again, where is this village?”

“So you can send in gunships and kill anything that moves? Is that your great plan?”

“Adhiraj is one of Prachanda’s best operatives,” he said. “We will take whatever action we deem appropriate.”

Peter started for the door. “Then I’ll get her out without your help.”

“This is impossible.”

“We’ll see.”

“You don’t know the situation, Doctor.”

It occurred to him that they might actually arrest him to find out what they wanted to know. He couldn’t take the chance.

“What I don’t know is where the compound
is
, Colonel!” he said. “There were three or four ridges, a couple of rivers, and rhododendrons so thick a goat trail was the only way through them. At the embassy we got it down to fifteen hundred square miles! I thought you’d be able to help with that, but thanks anyway.”

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By Peter’s back porch, a dozen parrots were hanging upside down from the branches of the jacaranda, squawking at one another. They’d been eating fermented berries from the bush next door, and they were drunk. Peter watched them, exhausted but appreciating the lunacy of it.

Could he pray? he wondered. Was it just a matter of pride? He thought if there were a sort of trickster god, a drunken-parrot god, some sidelong, wisecrack aspect of God, to that god he could now conceivably pray. What such a supplication might bring he didn’t know, and even answered prayers often seemed to come with a price. It didn’t matter anymore what the price was, though. He sat still and took a long, slow breath and offered up his prayers as honestly as he could, for at this point there was nothing else to do. He wasn’t sure if he had ever really prayed before, at least with any sincerity. It was humbling and scary, the feeling of relinquishing the reins.

When he had finished, he took another breath. He didn’t feel much of anything. The parrots began a minor avian orgy, then all at once there was a green explosion of wing beats and they flew off together, their dozen thrumming hearts synchronized in air.

It was an old belief, of course, that if God wanted to talk to you, he might give you some sort of idea. But Peter sat there, trying to find his way through it all, bereft of inspiration.

He decided to go to bed. He didn’t imagine there was a lot of time, but he would take some of it. He lay down. His heart thudded quietly. The room faded around him, and feeling as tiny and powerless as he ever had, finally he went to sleep.

When he awakened a couple of hours later, at sunset, he leaned on his elbow and looked out at the mountains, pink and beautiful in the evening light. Something had welled up as he slept, something that hadn’t occurred to him before. He sat up, pulled on his pants, shoved his feet into his shoes, and called Mina.

|   |   |

An hour later he sat in his living room with Usha and Mina, who was translating for her.

“So her mother didn’t know?” Peter asked.

Mina shook her head. “It turns out her mother thought they were selling her as a domestic slave to a rich family, which is still pretty odious,” she said. “But the prostitution was her father’s idea, because there was more money in it.”

“Is there a way to get ahold of her mother?”

Mina spoke to Usha and told Peter that there was a phone in the village. “She’s afraid, though, because she has a lot of relatives who will be angry if they learn the truth.”

“Angry at her, or at her father?”

Mina asked her. “She says partly at her father but mainly at Bahadur. Their whole relationship is built on trust, and if he lied to her mother and her aunts it won’t go down well.”

“Get the number, will you? We’re calling her mom tonight.”