Secrets of State (31 page)

Vanalika did not say anything in response, but she rolled down her window as well and let the smells and sounds and the feel of Mumbai waft into the cab.

The driver did not protest. He just turned off the air-conditioning and turned up the music. It would save him a few rupees.

In the rearview mirror, Sam caught a flash of tangerine in a car following two or three spaces behind them. But when he turned for a better look, he could not see anything.

“What is it?” Vanalika asked.

“Nothing. I'm just jumpy is all.”

The cab let them off at the entrance to the slum that Sam had specified. They crossed a shaky wooden bridge over a canal filled with scum and garbage. At the far side of the bridge, a beggar boy with no legs plied his miserable trade. Sam knew that Lena crossed this bridge regularly on her way to work. No doubt, she passed this boy every day. Sam put some rupees in his bowl for luck.

Vanalika was putting on a brave face, but she was clearly discomfited by the squalor of the slum and the garbage piled up along the side of the narrow alleyways. This was a different India than the one she knew. An India that the elite would just as soon pretend did not exist.

“Do you want to go back to the hotel?” he asked. “I can do this next part alone.”

“No,” Vanalika said, visibly trying to adjust to the unfamiliar environment in her own country. “I can handle this.” She lengthened her stride. Where she had been mincing on the balls of her feet, now she was walking. She loosened her shoulders, which had been tensed up. Vanalika was wealthy and privileged, Sam thought, but that did not mean that she wasn't tough too.

When Lena had decided to move back to Mumbai, she had told Sam that she wanted to live in Dharavi. Sam had tried to talk her out of it. It was no place for a young American woman, or even a half-American woman, to live. In truth, it was no place for anyone to live. The apartment right on the edge of the slum district was a compromise of sorts. Sam understood the pull of Dharavi and the hold that the district had on her sense of self. Her roots were here. Roots that she needed to explore.

He felt her absence so powerfully that he wanted to scream. That was not what Lena needed from him, he knew. She needed him to find her
. I'm coming for you, baby.

It had been years since he had been on these streets. He had been meaning to visit Lena, but something had always seemed to get in the way. There had been changes, of course, but the basic feel of the slum was the same and the route he took was a familiar one. He had walked it many times when he had been responsible for human rights reporting in the American consulate in what had then been Bombay.

The three-story building was made from an eclectic mixture of materials, and if it had an architectural style, it would have been called “Indian Expedient.” It was the home and office of his friend Jarapundi Ramananda.

“What is this place?” Vanalika asked, when Sam stopped in front of the building. “Was this where Lena was living?” The Brahmin in her clearly had trouble believing that anyone would subject themselves to these kinds of conditions voluntarily.

“No. Lena's apartment was probably not as nice as this. This is a friend's house. I think he can help us.”

“Really?” she asked, with undisguised skepticism. “What does he do?”

“He's a criminal.”

“How interesting.”

Ramananda was sitting at a table on the first floor when Sam and Vanalika walked in. There was a glass of water on the table in front of him and a half-empty bottle. It was hot and stuffy inside. A pedestal fan in one corner tried heroically to circulate the air, but succeeded only in buffeting the flies. Sam thought Vanalika looked like she might be sick.

Ramananda had not changed much. He had put on more weight and his bald spot had expanded to creep down around his ears, but otherwise he looked pretty much the same. Sam was not surprised to find him in. It had been years since Ramananda had been outside.

When he saw Sam, Ramananda's eyes widened.

“Sam? Is it you?” he asked. The underworld boss rose from his chair with some effort and embraced his friend. Sam returned the embrace. Ramananda had been a professional contact, but he had also been a genuine friend and Sam was glad to see him.

“It's been a long time. It's good to see you, old friend.”

“And who is your new friend, if I might ask?”

“Ramananda, let me present Vanalika Chandra of New Delhi.”

“Charmed,” the Dalit said, taking her hand and shaking it up and down as if he were painting a fence.

Ramananda sat back down at the table, and Sam and Vanalika joined him.

“Nandi,” he shouted. “Bring water for our guests.”

A young boy of maybe ten popped his head in from the back room.

“Right away,” he promised.

Moments later, the boy brought two dusty glasses and another plastic bottle of water over to the table.

“So you got my message,” Ramananda said. “I was worried when I couldn't reach you.”

“What message, Rama? Was it about Lena? Do you know what's happened to her?” Sam had hoped desperately that Ramananda could add something, anything, to what Sam already knew that might help him find his daughter. It was a vain hope.

“I only know that she seems to have gone missing. She stopped coming to the school. She hasn't been home and one of the street boys says she was being followed. The Gummadi brothers swear up and down that they had nothing to do with it, and I have a few people in their organization on my payroll who back them up.”

“Lena's in trouble. She was taken. But not by the Gummadis. Someone much scarier.” Sam did not even try to hide his disappointment. But there had been no reason to believe that Ramananda knew any more than he did. What mattered was what the Dalit crime boss could find out.

“What's happened to her? Tell me. And tell me who.” Lena's godfather was no longer smiling.

“I've made some enemies back home. People who are doing some things that I opposed. They are trying to get to me through Lena. Someone who calls himself Zeno has kidnapped her and he's holding her here in Mumbai.”

Ramananda looked at Sam thoughtfully. His expression was grim. This was a language that he understood.

“How do you know that she's here?”

“I got a message from the kidnappers. They let Lena speak as proof of life. She said that she was okay, and she was able to communicate to me that she was here.”

“What did she say exactly?”

“She called me Papa Bear,” Sam explained.

“And what does that mean?”

“When she was little and we were living here, we used to play a game. I was Papa Bear and she was Baby Bear and she had to sneak back into the cave when I wasn't looking. If she made it, she was supposed to shout: Papa Bear, Papa Bear, I'm home. This is the only time that she called me that other than in the taped message from Zeno. She was telling me that she's home.”

“Are you sure that she didn't mean Washington?” Ramananda asked.

“No. Mumbai is her home. She's here. I know it. I need to find her.”

Ramananda did not even bother to ask why Sam didn't go to the police. It would never have occurred to him to do that either. For those who made Dharavi their home, the police were just one more source of trouble. Sam left out of his story his supposition that militants were planning to explode a nuclear bomb in an Indian city. It was too far-out to present without proof and expect to be taken seriously. All Sam wanted to do was to convey to Ramananda that Lena was in danger and needed his help.

“What can I do?” his friend asked.

“I need you to lend me your network.”

“What will you do?”

“I'm going to find the people who have kidnapped and threatened my little girl.”

“And then?”

“I'm going to kill them.”

HILL STATION PRODUCTIONS

MAY 1

K
amran Khan was praying, and he was not succeeding. From the time he found the path to Islam, prayer had offered solace and certainty. It had always been easy for Khan to slip into a state of grace through prayer, freed from earthly worries and cares, secure in the love of Allah. Now the peace and calm of prayer eluded him. He went through the motions and he said the words along with his brothers in jihad, but it was all by rote. His heart was not in it. Worldly thoughts intruded on his efforts to commune with the divine.

Lena.

As he prostrated himself in
sujud
in the direction of the Kaaba at Mecca and placed his forehead on the prayer rug, it was not Allah he thought of. It was Lena. As he reached out to God, it was Lena's face that he saw.

Khan had never experienced anything like this. It was more than disconcerting. It was terrifying. He had come to rely on prayer to keep him on the straight path, to guide him through the murky moral swamp of his mission. What was right and what was wrong? How could he know if he could not speak to God if God could not hear him?

He struggled to understand what was happening to him. It was with some chagrin that Khan, who considered himself to be fully Pakistani, or at least fully Baluch, was forced to rely on a purely American idiom.

Lena Trainor was kryptonite.

She made him weak. Uncertain. She made him feel things that he could not afford to feel, things that could endanger his mission.

He thought the others must surely see the confusion on his face as plainly as it was written on his heart. But they could not. Of course, Allah knew. The Quran said:
Truly Thou dost know what we conceal and what we reveal: for nothing whatever is hidden from Allah, whether on earth or in heaven.
And Khan had so much to conceal.

When the prayers had concluded, Jadoon called Khan aside.

“You and I have a job to do this afternoon,” he said.

“Yes, Jadoon.” Khan did not ask what the job was. When he needed to know, Jadoon would tell him. Asking would only have made him angry.

Khan knew that he had been dismissed, but he did not leave.

“What is it?” Jadoon asked impatiently.

“You have seen what is in the box? And the . . . modifications . . . that Adnan and I have made?”

“Yes,” the HeM leader acknowledged reluctantly.

“You have seen the timer?”

“I have.”

“And you know what will happen when the numbers reach zero?”

“
Allahu Akbar.
I do.”

“Do you see any advantage in all of us traveling together to meet Allah?”

“What are you getting at?”

“I would volunteer to stay behind and guard the bomb while you lead the others back to Lahore. This will surely be but the first great blow in the coming battle with the Hindus. There will be other blows to strike, and there is no need for the Hand of the Prophet to lose all of its finest fighters at the outset of the struggle.”

Jadoon considered this. Khan could read the eagerness on his face. He wanted to accept the proposal. He wanted to live. But he would have to be led to that conclusion gently so that he would not consider himself a coward.

“We have our orders,” Jadoon insisted.

“Our orders are to carry out the mission, and to die if we must. But if we do not have to die, then it is simply suicide, and suicide is sinful.”

Jadoon took his time thinking this over.

“It would be unfortunate to sully this great triumph with even a hint of sin,” he offered finally.

“That's right,” Khan agreed, letting the HeM commander reach the conclusions himself.

“You are the most qualified among us in matters related to the box,” Jadoon said, seemingly unable to say the word
bomb
.

“Yes, I am.”

“Very well. At the twelve-hour mark I will lead the rest of the team out of the city. We will go to Lahore. You will stay behind with the box. Your sacrifice will echo with honor through the centuries.”

Khan bowed his head. This was his mission. This was jihad.

•   •   •

Whatever Jadoon's
mystery job was, it involved leaving the studio. Khan had not been outside since he had persuaded—no, he corrected himself, kidnapped—Lena from her apartment and brought her here. He blinked in the unaccustomed sunlight as his eyes adjusted to the brightness. The colors of everything around him seemed intense and vivid as though he had just crawled up from underground.

The same gray panel van that Khan had used in his surveillance of Lena was parked in a garage attached to the studio. Khan drove, following directions from a GPS unit fixed to the dashboard. It took them more than an hour to reach their destination, a two-story brick house in a leafy, residential part of Mumbai. High brick walls surrounded the property.

A gate slid open to admit the van. Khan parked alongside the house.

“Stick close to me,” Jadoon instructed. “You may need to translate.”

Jadoon knocked on the door with his knuckles. The sound was dull and heavy. The door was painted to look like wood, but it was made from steel.

An older man with a shaved head answered the door wearing a long
sherwani
jacket embroidered in gold thread. There was a bulge under the jacket that Khan knew was a firearm.

“Welcome,” he said in English. “You are expected.”

The door opened to a foyer with a set of stairs at the far end. There were rooms to both sides, a living room to the left and what looked like a library to the right. The house was tastefully appointed, but it was all impersonal. There were no photographs, nothing that indicated the house was lived in rather than used.

The bald man ushered them into the library. A dark-skinned man in a Western suit was sitting on a straight-backed wooden chair. Khan recognized him. This was the man he and Masood had met with on their visit to India. He was the one who had provided the HeM with the information that had allowed them to acquire the bomb.

If the man recognized Khan, he gave no sign of it. Khan reciprocated.

There was another wooden chair and a sofa in the room. Khan took the chair. Jadoon sat on the couch. It was, Khan thought, a mistake on his part. He should have mirrored the host. The couch would make him feel soft and inferior. He thought he saw the dark-skinned man smile slightly as though some prediction had been confirmed. But perhaps he only imagined it.

“Thank you for coming on such short notice,” the man said. “We will speak English. We will not use names.” These were the same ground rules he had established for the meeting with Masood.

Khan translated for Jadoon.

“I am not used to being summoned like an errant schoolboy,” Jadoon said irritably. “I would therefore skip the pleasantries and get to the point. What is so urgent that it calls me away from our operation?”

“This is about your operation,” the man answered, when Khan had translated. “Some information has come to the attention of my organization that we must share with you.”

•   •   •

Although he listened
attentively to the translation, Khan suspected that the man understood Jadoon's Urdu perfectly. He had the advantage of listening to what Jadoon had to say twice and then having the time to formulate his response. Moreover, speaking English would help disguise any regional accent and preserve anonymity.

The bald man in the embroidered jacket entered the library with a tray of spiced tea. The dark-skinned man remained quiet while the bald man served the tea.

“The issue concerns your young guest, Ms. Trainor. You were most efficient in the way you brought her under your protection.” He looked at Khan as he said this, as though he knew who had been responsible for the kidnapping. “We also appreciate the speed with which you responded to our request for a proof-of-life recording that could be shared with her father. Perhaps you know why you are holding her and perhaps you do not. It is immaterial. There have, however, been some . . . complications . . . of which you should be aware. Various members of the Dalit community in Mumbai, the group you might know better as untouchables, have been searching for her. Evidently, this young woman had an unusual group of friends and associates. The intensity they are bringing to this activity is really quite remarkable, unlike anything I have ever seen. They have a few leads, including the make, model, and license plate of your van. I do not know how they acquired that information.” Khan did. It was, he was certain, the legless beggar boy. Maybe he had been wrong to let him live.

“It would be my pleasure to dispose of your vehicle for you,” the man continued. “I have another car parked out front that you can take with you. It is a sensible precaution.”

“Yes,” Jadoon interjected. “I agree.”

“Do not underestimate the Dalit,” the dark-skinned man said. “Many of those conducting the search are well known to the police. Some are well connected. The line between crime and policing in Mumbai is somewhat elastic.”

“So what would you suggest?”

“Give them the answer they seek. Give them Ms. Trainor.”

“Let her go?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Kill her?”

The dark man shrugged.

Khan was translating faithfully and he kept his face an icy mask, but his emotions roiled just below the surface.

“Wouldn't that just make them redouble their efforts?” Jadoon asked. “Only this time, instead of looking for the girl, they'd be after the people who killed her. I don't see the difference.”

“The action would shift from the Dalit community to the police. The authorities would open a formal investigation and begin the slow, methodical work that leads to arrests. Before the lead detective had so much as filled out his first time card, the death of one American woman would be . . . overtaken by events.”

Khan knew what that euphemism meant. The smoking glass crater that would be downtown Mumbai would make any murder investigation superfluous. What was it Stalin had said?
The death of one person is a tragedy; the death of a hundred thousand is a statistic.

Jadoon understood as well.

“We will take your recommendation under advisement,” he said carefully.

•   •   •

They drove back
to the studio in silence. Their new car was an inconspicuous dark green Tata Manza. Outwardly, Khan was calm and controlled. Inwardly, he seethed. He was angry with the dark-skinned man and fearful for Lena. While Jadoon had promised only to consider the recommendation, that was likely to save face. It was closer to an instruction than a suggestion.

Traffic was heavy and the trip back to the studio was taking longer than the trip out. He realized that they were close to Dharavi, not far, in fact, from Lena's apartment. An open-air market on one side of the road covered almost half a city block. Impulsively, Khan pulled the car up on the sidewalk and parked. He did not allow himself to think about the possible consequences of what he was contemplating. If he did, he might not have the courage.

“What are you doing?” Jadoon asked, with a note of impatience in his voice.

“We need tea and rice and sugar. It will not take more than a few minutes. You can watch the car.”

“Be quick about it.”

On the backseat was a small pile of things that Khan had transferred from the van. He grabbed a canvas bag from the pile and slipped his wallet into its side pocket. The market was crowded, even by the generous standards of Mumbai. Here in the heart of the city, the sea breeze was too light to help break the heat. The by-now-familiar combination of alluring and repulsive smells assaulted his nostrils. A Rajasthani man with a magnificent handlebar mustache and a saffron-colored turban was selling rice from a stall not far from the entrance to the market. Different varieties of rice were displayed in woven baskets and measured out on a hanging balance scale that used metal weights. Khan picked a style of basmati rice that was similar to the Pakistani staple. He haggled over the five-kilo bag, not because he cared about the money but because it would have been strange—and memorable—if he did not. They settled on sixty rupees a kilo. It was a fair price.

It took Khan ten minutes to find the section of the market where the tea dealers set up shop. The proprietress of one of the stalls was an older woman wearing a dark-colored Indian
shalwar kameez
with a bright yellow
hijab
.

“As-
s
alamu alaykum,”
Khan said.

“Wa alaykumu s-salam,”
she replied with a beaming smile.

“I am looking for black tea,” he said in Urdu.

“You are certainly in the right place,” the old lady said in Hindi.

Khan set the shopping bag down next to him on the market's concrete floor.

“You look like a strong young man. I recommend a strong tea from a Himalayan hill station in the Mahabharat Range near Darjeeling. This is a rare tea, but I have my own supplier, so I can give you a good price.”