Invisible Armies (7 page)

    "She won't be long now," Estelle says, "They're in shivasana."
    Keiran glances at the yoga class, whose members are now lying back on their mats, arms and legs splayed out to the sides, eyes closed, silent. It reminds him of the famous picture of the Jonestown victims in the 1970s, hundreds lying dead in neat rows.
   "I've been doing my due diligence," Angus says to Laurent. "Reading up on your group. You have an impressive track record. I think we could do good work together."
   Laurent nods. "I was thinking that too. Common cause."
    "You've got the organization there in the field. We've got money, and contacts, and certain other advantages. Like him," he says, indicating Keiran. "Your ground war, my air war, together we might beat these bastards."
    The yoga class disperses, its members glowing with sweat and endorphin bliss. When Danielle sees Keiran, her face stretches into a wide grin and she pelts across the field like a delighted child. She rushes to him and he hugs her, tightly at first, until she grunts with pain and pulls away.
   "Easy," she gasps, "I'm still a bit bruised."
   "Shit. Sorry." He backs off. "Is that from…"
   Danielle nods awkwardly as Laurent casually drapes his arm around her.
   "Oh Jesus," Keiran says. "Those fuckers. Dani, I don't know what to say. I am so sorry."
   "What did they do to you?" Estelle asks, her voice soft.
   "They just hit me the one time. That's all. This little tinpot dictator with a lathi. But then Laurent showed up and saved the day."
   "After she released my handcuffs," Laurent says. "It was a joint effort."
   "It was entirely my fault," Angus says. "I sent the passport. I told Keiran it would be perfectly safe. You have every right to be absolutely livid at me. I had no right to ask you to go. I never imagined they might do that to you, but obviously I should have. I'm, fucking, I don't even know the right word, abashed and mortified and grovelling don't even come close to my level of guilt."
   "Mine too," Keiran mutters. "For believing you weren't full of shit."
   Angus gives him a weary look.
   "Well," Danielle says. "Just don't let it happen again, okay? Once in a lifetime is more than enough. Trust me. But, you know, as long as you can get us out of the country, all's well that ends well." She smiles faintly. "There were even certain fringe advantages." She looks up at Laurent, who leans down and kisses her.
    "Speaking of getting out of the country," Keiran says, trying to hide his annoyance at the way Laurent is pawing Danielle, making it clear she is his property. He digs in his penguin-pack and produces a digital camera. "I need pictures of the both of you. Laurent, over there, with the sky behind you, that will be easy to edit out."
    "What's this for?" Danielle asks.
    "Your new passports."
    Laurent blinks as the camera flashes. "You can give us passports?"
    "Fake ones. But good enough to fool Indian customs on the way out."
    "What about when we land?" Danielle asks, taking Laurent's place.
    Keiran snaps a picture of her. "You just can't imagine how it happened, but somehow you lost your passport in the airport in India. It's not hard to prove you're American. They might put you in a holding cell overnight, that's all, until they confirm your identity."
    "And they might call the Indian embassy to see if we're wanted by the authorities here," Laurent says skeptically.
    "Indeed they might. But the Indian embassy will say they never heard of you."
    Laurent looks at him. "How can you be sure?"
    "Trust me."
    "Keiran, I don't mean any offense, but trusting you is how Danielle got into trouble in the first place."
    Keiran looks at him expressionlessly.
    "Don't worry," Danielle says. "If he says they won't know, they won't know."
   Keiran explains, "It's what I do."
* * *
    Keiran, Angus and Estelle decide to visit Anjuna's beach before returning to the house. Anjuna's meandering main road, lined by restaurants, hostels, shops, Internet cafes, travel agencies and money changers, extends for two miles from the highway junction to the sea. At the waterfront, beachfront cafes overlook the surf, and a nightclub hidden behind tall fences stands on a high bluff. The town is far more easy-going than Calangute's seething chaos. White people are everywhere, most of them young and very fit, on foot, on motorcycles, eating in cafes, throwing Frisbees on the beach. As they descend the sandy path that leads to the beach, Angus is twice offered ganja and Ecstasy by local men ostensibly selling souvenirs and psychedelic paintings. Keiran supposes Angus's dreadlocks make him a magnet for drug dealers.
    "So what do you think?" Estelle asks Keiran, as they walk over rocks and onto the long strip of soft, golden sand.
    "Of what?" Keiran says.
    Angus says, "Our new friend."
    "I think he's a dangerous idiot."
    Angus looks at him. "His shagging your ex-girlfriend wouldn't make you a wee bit biased here, would it? And besides you think everyone is a dangerous idiot."
    "So do you. It's one of the wonderful common threads that makes our friendship so rich and vibrant."
    "I'm touched. But it's not true. I only hate most people. The useless, selfish cunts who grow up rich and turn a deliberate blind eye to the dying poor all around them. Ordinary people. Laurent, however, happens to be a member of the tiny minority that actually works to help them."
    Keiran says, "Danielle was born very rich indeed, and I don't see her slaving away to save AIDS patients in Zimbabwe. How do you feel about her?"
    "Sod off, straw man. By 'rich' I mean everyone ever born in a First World country, as you well know. Don't waste my fucking time with all these petty class distinctions among the haves. We're all haves. And I think she has potential. I even, and this really makes me a starry-eyed dreamer, think you have potential."
    "Better check into the hospital, mate. I think you're having an aneurysm."
    "Ever the comedian. What do you think of Laurent?" Angus asks Estelle.
    She says, "I like him. But what matters is that he can help us."
    "Help you or help the poor?" Keiran asks.
    Both of them look at him bewildered.
    "Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot. They're one and the same. How convenient."
    "What exactly are you saying?" Angus asks, an edge in his voice. "You think we're in this for our own good? You've seen how we've lived for the last ten years. You've seen the bruises. You've visited me in prison. You sell out to work at an investment bank and then you have the fucking nerve to suggest that I'm the hypocrite?"
    "I couldn't have sold out. I never bought in."
    "Always quick with the smooth contemptuous one-liner. Dodge the question. Maybe I'm wrong about you after all."
    Keiran says, "It's not your noble goals I question. Yes, you want to make the world a better place. The problem is, you're totally fucking wrong about how to do it. You want to save the world? Be my guest. But you're going about it in exactly the wrong way."
    "Meaning what?" Estelle asks.
    Keiran thinks a moment, then shakes his head. "Never mind. What do I care? What do you care what I care? Nothing to both. I owe you my life, and I'll pay my debt, and then I'll go back home. No sense fighting over politics while we're at it."
    They walk in silence for a little while. Then Estelle says, "Keiran, it's fine if you don't want to talk politics. But if you ever do, I'm always interested in hearing the views of someone as smart as you are."
    Keiran nods. "All –"
    "Even if you are needlessly abrasive."
"All right. Maybe we can talk politics when I'm in a better mood." He pauses. "And I'm sorry."
    "Answer me this," Angus says to him as they walk. "What is it you want out of life, mate? What lives in your dream world?"
    Keiran doesn't miss a beat. "Rolls-Royces stuffed full of twenty-pound notes. Non-unionized people with dark skin scurrying to obey my every whim because they know they'll starve to death if I sack them. Huge dams flooding vast tracts of old-growth rainforest. Perpetuating the Chinese iron fist in Tibet. A world full of people who eat nothing but genetically modified McDonald's french fries, and Chiquita bananas they bought at Wal-Mart. Helping plan the American invasion of Iran.
Fifty-year patents
."
    "Very funny," Angus says sourly.
    Keiran grins. "I try."/p>

Chapter  
12 

<    Estelle comes to join Danielle for yoga the next morning. Still basically strangers, they are a little skittish around each other, and Danielle is glad when small talk ends and the class begins. She clears her mind, focuses on her breath and body, as they move through the
namaskaar
series, the warmups before the Primary Series begins.
    The class is gruelling and fast-paced, and though Estelle is fit and experienced, she has to stop and rest a few times in
balasana
, child's pose. Danielle pushes herself through the strain, past the sweat and hoarse breaths and aching limbs, until the rhythmic powerful
ujjayi
breathing at the core of the practice manages to extinguish past and future, until she is entirely in the now, all body and no mind.
   At the end of the class, they lie back in
shivasana
, which Danielle privately calls naptime. She feels sore and wrung out, but deliciously loose and relaxed, at peace with the world. Whatever happens will work out, somehow, she is sure of it. She tries to ignore the nagging voice telling her that that's just endorphins talking, that real problems aren't fixed just by going to a yoga class for an attitude adjustment.
    After the class Danielle and Estelle sip tea in the ashram's open-air cafe.
    "Thanks for having me here," Estelle says. The remains of her Southern accent are more palpable now; she seems to have let down her social guard. Danielle feels more at ease too, now that they have sweated together.
    "No problem."
    "Did you like living here?"
    Danielle looks around and chooses her words carefully. "It was a valuable experience. I think it's best that it didn't continue much further."
    "What are you going to do next?"
    "I haven't really thought past getting out of the country in one piece."
    Estelle nods. "Understandable. Here's one option you might want to think about. Angus and I, we don't know you well, obviously, but we do like you. Keiran speaks very highly of you. And you're obviously tough as old nails. We'd like you to think about working with our movement in some capacity."
    Danielle's instinct is to immediately decline. This is what she always does, when she is asked to join or support a political group, a gallery, a movement. She assumes, whenever asked, that she is being approached for her and her family's wealth. But Estelle probably doesn't even know she is rich, Keiran isn't likely to have mentioned it. And besides, Estelle is right. Danielle has been tough and resourceful. Their desperate escape from Kishkinda feels far enough behind her now that she can feel proud of it. It feels good to be approached because of what she is, what she can do, rather than her ability to write fat cheques. Danielle isn't sure it's ever happened before.
    "I'd have to think about it," she says.
    "Of course."
    "What capacity do you have in mind?"
    Estelle says, "Depends on what you're comfortable with. But we might, for instance, have you help organize protests. We're considering a possible major protest in Paris in two months' time."
    "That's what you do? Organize protests?" Danielle says disbelievingly. "That's why you hired my ex-boyfriend the uber-hacker?"
    "No." Estelle hesitates, then says, "Our inner circle does more challenging work. But we can't ask you to join that yet. That's not a decision either side can make lightly. We have to completely trust the people we work with. You understand, we don't necessarily play within the rules set down by governments."
    Danielle looks at her. "What does that mean exactly?"
    "Well. I can give you a lot of soothing euphemisms, but what it really means is, we break the law. No violence against people, unless absolutely necessary, and it hasn't been yet. But we can't afford to play nice. Not in a world where ten percent of the population holds the other ninety in chains." Estelle's voice turns grim as she speaks, her eyes harden, she seems to change before Danielle's eyes from a friendly, playful woman into a vengeful angel. "Strong preying on weak, rich feeding on poor, like fucking vampires, everywhere you look. And it's the strong and rich who make the laws. We can't be bound by the law if we want to break the chains. Legalized slavery and mass murder, that's what it boils down to. You were there. You saw them dying in Kishkinda."
    Danielle doesn't say anything. Estelle's sudden transformation is unnerving, as if the pixieish purple-haired woman has been possessed. Danielle isn't ready for a heavy political conversation, or this kind of righteous passion.
    "Sorry," Estelle says, reading Danielle's reaction. She smiles sheepishly, lets her fury dissipate. "Didn't mean to go into lecture mode. But if you think you want to do something about what you saw, let us know. We can help you set up in Paris, we've got friends and places there, or wherever else our next action is. We take care of each other."
    "Everyone's trying to recruit me," Danielle says. "Laurent too."
    "We're hoping to work with him too. He seems like a good man."
    Danielle nods. "So does Angus. How long have you known each other?"
    "Since my divorce. Three years, I guess. Not like it sounds, I was already separated when we met. I married a Brit when I was twenty-one and stupid. I was all packed up, ten days away from flying back to Alabama forever, when I met Angus. At a protest, appropriately. And ten days later I decided, at Heathrow, at the gate, I didn't want to get on the airplane."
    "Wow. Like a movie. Romantic."
    "Maybe a bit like you and Laurent, if you don't mind me saying so." Estelle pauses. "You want to know something I haven't told anyone else yet?"
    Danielle looks at her warily. "Okay."
    "Maybe I shouldn't, but, honey, you give good trust vibes."
    "If it's something legal, maybe you shouldn't –"
    Estelle laughs. "No," she says, "don't worry. It's not like that. Angus asked me to marry him, before we came here."
    "Wow."
    "Yeah. Wow."
    Danielle wishes Estelle hadn't said anything. She hardly knows this woman. She isn't ready to discuss her marriage proposal. But she can hardly ignore the topic now. "What are you going to say?" she asks.
    "I told him I couldn't answer him yet." Estelle sighs. "Not that I don't want to spend the rest of my life with him. I do. I love him desperately. But marriage, having seen how it goes wrong…I'm divorced, my parents are divorced, my brother is divorced, it's not a great family track record, is it? And let's face it, with what we've devoted our lives to, what are we going to do, settle down in a house in the country and raise a brood? There's a famous poem in the UK, it starts, 'They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do.' I mean, the whole concept of marriage is…suspect, I think. For people like us, anyway. I'm sorry. I've been brooding like crazy. Picking at it like a scab. As if we haven't got enough else going on, he had to spring this on me too."
    "He seems like a good man," Danielle says inadequately.
    "Yes. Yes, he is. I'm sorry. I don't mean to drop this on you. But I haven't had anybody to talk to. It's not like I can have a heart-to-heart with Keiran."
    Danielle smiles at the notion.
    "How long did you date him?" Estelle asks.
    Danielle thinks. "Four months? Five? Not that long. But he's about the only ex I ever stayed friends with."
    "How did you meet?"
    "In California. He was working for some dot-com cyberpunk startup that went nowhere. I was living in an Oakland, in this warehouse squat we called a collective loft, doing a lot of drugs and pretending to be an artist." Danielle half-smiles. "A match made in counterculture heaven."
    Estelle says, after a moment, "He has a very strong personality."
    "At first he often seems like the world's biggest asshole," Danielle agrees.
    "And then?"
    Danielle sighs. "With him it's a matter of respect. It's almost childish. His problem is he's too smart. I mean, I've met a lot of smart people, I'm sure you have too, but take it from me, Keiran's on a whole different level. He's so smart he feels total contempt for just about the whole rest of the human race. He assumes people aren't worth talking to and it's up to them to prove otherwise. So at first he treats you like dirt. But then if he sees you do something smart or interesting or valuable, whatever, he turns into a pretty decent human being. I mean, he's still sharp-tongued, you have to grow a thick skin, but he's not as bad as he seems at first. He's totally trustworthy, if that's what you're worried about. He'd walk through fire for his friends. Complaining loudly the whole way."
    Estelle nods. "That's more or less what Angus says."
    "Maybe he's different now. I've seen him maybe five times in the last four years. People do grow up. But he doesn't seem to have changed much."
    "I think his emotional age got stuck at twelve," Estelle says, and then looks dismayed by her own words. "Sorry. That just came out. Maybe he'll grow on me."
    "He usually does," Danielle agrees. "Like a cancer."
* * *
    That afternoon, Danielle sits in their hut and stares at her Certificate of Completion, verifying that she has successfully finished the Satori Ashram's prestigious yoga teacher-training program, and tries to feel some sense of accomplishment beyond that of a Girl Scout who has received a merit badge. She can turn this piece of paper into a career, if she wants, go back to America and teach nine or nineteen classes a week. The idea does not appeal. She adores yoga for itself, but the notion of teaching it to stressed-out yuppies who will never devote themselves to it like she has is repellent.
    The door opens and Laurent enters their hut. He is mildly surprised to see her. "Shouldn't you be away bending yourself into a pretzel?"
    "I'm done," she says, showing him the certificate.
    "Congratulations. Does that mean we're supposed to leave?"
    "No. The next group hasn't arrived yet. And anyways I'm sure I could stay as an assistant teacher if I want."
    "Do you want to?"
    "No."
    Laurent nods. "You know, I think I will miss this place."
    Danielle looks around. Their home for the last week is exceedingly spartan; two-by fours hammered into an A-frame shape with visible cracks between the planks, a misshapen table, folding chairs, and a crude bed with a lumpy mattress and flower-print sheets, canopied by a tattered mosquito net. But she will miss it too. Despite the uncertainty, the constant spectre of danger, this has been one of the best weeks of her life.
    "Let's celebrate your graduation," he suggests. "Go for a ride."
    "We're supposed to meet Keiran and the rest tonight."
    He smiles. "That leaves all day."
    They rent a motorcycle from a teenager in Anjuna with a Limp Bizkit T-shirt. Laurent rejects the first machine they are offered and settles on a battered but smooth-running Yamaha. Danielle thinks for the first time of the man in Hampi who never regained the Bajaj Pulsar that the Kishkinda men stole, and makes a mental note to find some way to repay him.
   First they go to the beach, which extends for almost a mile between rocky headlands. Westerners, Indians, dogs, and a handful of cows roam and play on its sand, which is fissured by a winding tidal river. Several fishing boats are stationed above the high-tide line, dark wooden hulls about thirty feet long and six wide, each with a single outrigger pontoon the size of a person, attached by ten-foot-long wooden struts. The boats are full of folded nets that smell of fish. The water is warm and glorious. Laurent and Danielle frolick, body-surf, playfight, lean back and float and let the waves wash them where they will. When they walk back onto the beach, the hot sun dries them within minutes.
    They remount the Yamaha and zoom through Anjuna, past its cafes and tattooed young Israeli backpackers, fill up at the local Bharat Petroleum station, and ride northwards on the coastal highway, the glittering blue of the Arabian Sea to their left, vivid green jungle to the right. Danielle rides with her arms wrapped tightly around Laurent, her head on his shoulder, wind in her face, the Yamaha engine rumbling contentedly beneath them, and thinks:
This is happiness. I am happy.
She knows they are still in danger. She does not know where she and Laurent will go next, or if he even wants to stay together. But she manages to expel all that from her mind. It is only the future. This is the present, and in it she is happy.
    They stop for fresh coconuts and pineapple and cool-drinks, the Indian term for sodas, in a small, dusty village an hour's drive away. They stop again when they spot an empty beach on the way back. There they find a secluded nook, in the shadow of a huge rock, where they have long, slow, tender sex that brings tears to Danielle's eyes. They return to Anjuna and wander its vast, kaleidoscopic, twice-weekly market that attracts thousands of tourists and hundreds of locals. Finally they ride south to Calangute as the sun sets, casting a rosy glow on all the world before it dips into the ocean's warm darkness. Danielle is blissfully exhausted by the time they finally reach Calangute's Le Restaurant, where Keiran, Angus, and Estelle wait for them.
* * *
    "What I'd like to know is why they're after us in the first place," Danielle says.
    "Yes," Laurent agrees. "My whole organization, arrested and jailed. Danielle and I captured, and who knows what they might have done to us. Just as your group sends Danielle to Jayalitha. I can't believe this is just coincidence."
    Angus shrugs apologetically. "And I can't believe it's not. Jayalitha was collecting evidence for us, we wanted her to come back to the UK with it, but no bombshells."
    "No point in speculating," Keiran says decisively. "We simply don't have sufficient data for any conclusion. Let's get everyone out of here safely, then try to find out what happened."
    "How long do we have to wait here?" Danielle asks.
    "Your new passports should arrive in 48 hours. Mulligan's finished with them, visas, stamps, everything. He's DHLing them tonight. Two-day delivery or your money back. You should be safe enough until then. Just avoid anyone who might ask for ID. And try to blend in, stay in places with lots of other tourists. Kishkinda might have sent their own people to look for you. Don't go anywhere that you stand out."
    Laurent eyes Keiran. "I thought you were a computer security expert."
    "Good hackers understand all security systems," Keiran says. "Hardware, software, wetware, meatware."