Out of Order (5 page)

What he did have were emails from people who seemed quite eager to help, any one of whom, Ravi had warned, might be waiting to kill him.

Chapter Six

“This is why I came to India,” Rachel said as she leaned over Jason to get a better view of the Jaipur train station. Despite daylong temperatures in the eighties and the dirt blown in through the open windows, her hair still smelled of citrus shampoo. “Forget the tourist crap, give me trains.”

“From what I’ve seen,” Jason said, looking between the bars on the window as the grimy walls of the station’s outer buildings came into view, “you can have ‘em.”

She pulled her thick guidebook from her pack. “Cute. But you’ll learn to love it yet.”

The locals began jumping off the train as it was still pulling into the station, a good way to twist an ankle, Jason thought. He kept his seat, watching the crowd that stood waiting on the long concrete platform, everyone scanning the windows of the incoming train for a face they knew. A white-haired old man pulled his extended family down the line, laughing, crying, shouting greetings to someone Jason couldn’t see while nearby a teenaged boy stooped down to touch the cuff of his father’s trousers, the man placing his hand on the boy’s head to complete the silent greeting. A young bride, holding a naked infant, waited as her husband pushed through the crowd, their public greeting limited to an exchange of smiles. There were dozens of men watching the train, any one of whom, Jason realized, might be waiting for him.

Jason sat until the train came to a complete stop, stood up, stretched and made his way to the door, Rachel close behind him.

“It says there’re lots of places to stay, some with their own toilets. Remember,” she said, bumping into him as the train gave one last jolt, “we’ve got to keep it on the cheap. Any way we can save a few rupees will help us out in the long run.”

Jason ran several responses through his head, deciding it was best to say nothing. He stepped off the train and turned to wait as Rachel stopped to take one last interior shot. As he watched her camera flash light up the empty compartment, he sensed someone step up behind him.

“This is for you, Mr. Jason Talley,” the man said and Jason spun around, expecting the point of a stiletto or the black hole of a gun barrel.

In his right hand the man held a small bouquet of fresh flowers.

“Not for you so much as for your wife,” the man said, nodding as Rachel joined them.

“They’re beautiful,” Rachel said, accepting the flowers.

The man smiled a nervous smile. “I am afraid that they will wilt before long in this heat.” Despite his concern for the flowers, the man was wearing a navy blazer, white shirt and a striped tie, the sandals that poked out from under the cuffed khakis his only concession to the weather. His hair was jet black, parted on the side, the sharp lines of recent haircut visible around his large ears.

“Then I’ll enjoy them while they last,” Rachel said, closing her eyes as she inhaled their fragrance.

Jason lowered his backpack, holding it so that it hid his shaking knees. He forced a dry swallow before saying, “How did you know my name?”

The man smiled again, thin lines appearing at the corner of his eyes, hinting at his age. “You sent an email saying you would be coming to India. I am cyberchief twenty-two at Hotmail dot com, also known as A.S. Singh, but you can call me Attar.” He held out his arm as he spoke, and Jason had to drop his backpack to shake his hand.

“Well, you know who I am,” Jason said. “But I wasn’t supposed to be on this train. How’d you know I’d be here?”

Attar held up a finger, excited to explain. “I received a text message from my friend in Delhi, Bahadur Godara. You may know him better as B underscore godara at Inrail dot com. He, too, was one of the people you emailed before arriving in India. He met your tour bus at the sandalwood carving center this morning—it was listed as today’s first stop on the Freedom Tours website—but a Mr. D. P. Satyanarayan explained that you had left the tour. He told my friend that you were traveling by train. After that it was a simple matter of hacking into the India Rail system. There you were, Mr. Jason Talley and his wife, Rachel Moore, Pink City Express, chair car number seven. And,
ahcha
, here you are now.” His head bobbed as he spoke, a gesture somewhere between a nodded yes and a shaken no.

“And now that you are here,” Attar continued, “you are my very special guests. Come, I will take you to my apartment where you and your wife are free to stay as long as you wish.”

Jason laughed. “Oh, we’re not….”

“We’re not going to pass up your kind hospitality, Mr. Singh,” Rachel said, stepping in front of Jason. “My husband and I would be honored.”

“Please, call me Attar,” he said. “I hope you are hungry. My wife is a most excellent cook.”

“That’s so kind of you,” Rachel said as they crossed the concrete platform to the soot-stained brick station. “Tell me, Attar,” Rachel said, stepping ahead to look around her new husband, “would you know where a girl could get a copy of the India Railway timetables?”

***

Attar pushed in the clutch and downshifted, the engine revving as he passed a bicycle stacked high with empty burlap bags that inched up the winding, hillside road. He tapped the horn as he went by, tapped it again when he reached the open road and again for no apparent reason.

They were twenty miles out of Jaipur and, other than the bicycle, they hadn’t seen another vehicle in miles. Still, Attar kept one hand on the horn, tapping out cautionary beeps as he drove.

“Amber Palace is only eleven kilometers from the city center,” Attar had said when they had climbed into his bulbous white Ambassador after lunch, “but on such a beautiful day I would be a poor host if I did not take the scenic route.”

Jason let his arm hang out the open window, reaching now and then for the steering wheel that should be in front of him but instead was far to his right, his foot slamming down on the missing brake pedal.

“Left-handed driving,” Attar said, chuckling each time Jason flinched. “One of the lasting legacies of British rule.”

Jason leaned back in the seat catching both the cooling breeze and the warming rays of the sun and took in the scenery. The rolling hills reminded him of Corning but the desert rock formations and the patchy greenery looked like pictures he’d seen of New Mexico and Texas. When the road dipped down into a ravine or when they passed a small pond, the vegetation was lush and thick, and Jason caught glimpses of handholding couples strolling in the cool and secretive shadows. There were no maniacal auto-rickshaw drivers, no ancient donkey carts, and the pungent aroma that slapped him in the face as they left the station—a curdling blend of diesel fumes, cooking spices, piss and dirt—had dissipated, leaving the air as fresh as it was going to get. He saw his face in the shiny metal dashboard, surprised to see the smile.

The area around the train station in Jaipur had looked like the area around the train station in Delhi, with the same pack of noisy auto-rickshaws and, Jason was sure, the same pack of noisy auto-rickshaw drivers. The buildings were just as dirty, the signs just as indecipherable, and the pedestrians just as suicidal. Attar beeped his way around the congestion, steering his car onto the wider streets that led through the city.

It had taken them twenty minutes to reach the six-story Vina Yak apartment building, located in what Attar was proud to point out as the better part of the city. The mounds of trash were less frequent here and streets were devoid of the squatters’ shanties and half-naked beggar children that infiltrated other neighborhoods, but the same covered sewer ran down both sides of the street, the slabs of cut stone offering little protection from the wafting smells. Single-family bungalows of concrete and brick ducked from view behind chest-high walls while boxy two-story apartment blocks crowded near the intersections. Clustered at the end of the street with other recent additions, the Vina Yak apartment building towered over its neighbors.

Characterless architecture and shoddy construction methods allowed the building to look both almost completed and ready to be condemned at the same time. The natural tones of the gray concrete bled through the cheap white paint, and reinforcing rods poked straight out at irregular intervals, rust-colored streaks washing down the walls. In the windows of the rented apartments, drying laundry hung limp out of half-open windows and rows of potted plants served as a warning track on the rail-less balconies. Through open windows he could see Ikea-style entertainment centers and from one he could hear the roar of an F-16 fighter as it gunned down PlayStation bogies in surround sound.

In the lobby, carts loaded with ceramic tiles and bags of cement gave the impression that the construction crew had just stepped out for lunch. The peeling paint, the busted window frames and the elevator door that refused to close as they rode up six flights suggested a much longer break.

When they entered the apartment there was little doubt about Attar’s background in computers. A jury-rigged workbench ran the length of one of the living room’s long walls, and a dozen computer towers in various states of repair sat cracked open among miles of cables and reams of schematics and photocopied instruction manuals. On the glass-topped coffee table Jason spotted a pair of laptop computers, while on the dining room table twin monitors ran tranquil images of a cyber fish tank, complete with a screen-sucking plecostomus. Two small boys peeked through a crack in the bedroom door, giggling every time they were spotted. A slight woman in a blue
shalwar kamiz
came out from the kitchen long enough to be introduced as Attar’s wife, Pravi, before disappearing back through the swinging door, only to return moments later with tin plates laden with spicy foods. As soon as they finished eating, Attar had them back in the car and heading out on his scenic ride to Jaipur’s main tourist attraction.

“I guess the jetlag has caught up with your wife,” Attar said, pointing at his rearview mirror as the car swerved along the hillside road. Curled up on the back seat, Rachel wore her hat down over her eyes, her head resting on the soft spot that six yards of silk made in his backpack.

Jason was tempted to tell him that they weren’t married, that they weren’t a couple, and that he didn’t even know her last name was Moore until Attar had told him at the train station. But through lunch Rachel had explained to their hosts how she and Jason had met at her cousin’s wedding, how they dated for a year while she finished her degree, explained all about the big wedding and how they bought the farmhouse where Jason had grown up, and why they decided to travel to India before settling down to start a family in Corning. And, when Attar mentioned family members in nearby Binghamton, Rachel took down their names, promising to look them up.

Jason had been amazed at the effortless way she rambled on, sounding as if she were recalling vivid memories instead of making it up as she went, creating in the process a fictitious life that was far more interesting than his reality. He laughed along with Attar and Pravi as she described how they had both been tossed into the icy Black River while whitewater rafting on their honeymoon, and how she had talked him into climbing onstage to sing along with the Tragically Hip at a concert in Hamilton, adding in the appropriate “my crazy wife” shrugs and smiles.

Jason looked back at Rachel. Her mouth was just visible under the bill of her cap, her hands balled up under her chin. Even asleep and half hidden, Jason found himself drawn to her and he wondered what their wedding night had been like.

“She can sleep anywhere,” Jason said, turning back to watch for traffic coming down the wrong side of the road. “So how did you know Sriram?”

“Five years ago. We were in university together down in Bangalore earning our masters degrees, learning to make magic, as Sriram used to say. After uni we were together in a business venture, Sriram and I and a few others from our class. Bangalore Worldwide Systems, L.C.C.”

“Yeah, I remember hearing something about it,” Jason said, thinking about his memorial service conversation with Ravi. “But didn’t he leave just as you were about to make it big?”

Attar laughed, his head bobbing. “Oh, I do not think we would have ever made it big. There was a great deal of immaturity and hotheadedness in that group. But yes, Sriram disappeared one day and we learned that he had taken a job in America.”

“At Raj-Tech. So you knew Ravi Murty, too.”

“We were in several of the same labs. He was a few years ahead of me, a bit aloof but he could be fun. He was more of Sriram’s friend, his mentor, really. Still, it was quite a surprise when Sriram decided to go to work for him. But we were happy for Sriram. At first anyway.”

Jason looked over at Attar and waited for the explanation Ravi had warned him he would hear.

“He had not been gone a week when a computer virus wiped out all the files at BWS. Our backup files as well, most unusual. When the virus showed up on our home computers we knew that something was going on. Sriram of course denied everything and for several months we were willing to accept that it was just an unfortunate accident, the cost of doing business in the Information Age. But then we heard that some of BWS’s innovations were turning up in Raj-Tech’s programs….” He let the sentence trail off, its meaning clear.

A clump of flat-roofed houses appeared on the right. Jason could see a dozen women, all in bright saris, filling water jugs at a communal tap, then hoisting the full containers on to their heads for the walk back home. A cow strolled down the center of the road, withered and bony with a narrow hump on its shoulder that flopped to one side like a jaunty beret. Attar gave the sacred animal a polite beep and sped past while Jason sat thinking about how little he knew his dead friend.

“I was quite angry with Sriram.” Attar tapped his horn, harder this time. The traffic—animal and vehicle—picked up, and the beeping became more consistent. “Whether our ideas were any good or not makes no difference whatsoever. And it is not just the money I had invested in BWS that he robbed me of. No, it was the intellectual spirit, my creativity, which he stole. I felt violated, raped in a way that only would make sense to another program designer,” Attar said, his words rushing together as he spoke. “That work was my world—my
religion
—and he reached in and snatched it away.”