The Drowned Man (28 page)

Peter bought a map of the United States and tacked it to the wall in the garden shed. Peter liked puzzles and he stared at the map every so often, ranking Alida Nahvi's hiding places among the fifty states. At intervals Maddy joined him in his sanctum and they daydreamed together.

Henry Pastern called at the end of the third week. It was about time for them to check in and Peter expected a routine mutual update.

“Has Malloway visited recently?” Peter began.

“A bunch of calls, that's all. But I have news.”

“I'd welcome it.”

“We've found her,” Henry stated.

Peter wasn't in the shed at that moment. He conjured up the big multicoloured map of the states.

“Where?”

“Buffalo, New York.”

Twenty-Twenty

Perfect understanding of events only after they have happened. The ability to understand afterwards what should have been done or what caused an event, and therefore based on information that was not available at the time a decision was made. Perfectly normal visual acuity, i.e., 20/20 on the Snellen eye chart.

2009

“You would defy me?” the Sword expostulated from his side of the glass-topped desk in his vast Piccadilly hotel suite.

In fact, I would
, was Alice's immediate thought. She had no doubts that the Sword would kill her if she rejected his next assignment. I have paid for your loyalty in British pounds, he was saying, no bonuses to be expected. But it wasn't all that many pounds or rupees or Euros, she thought. She had worked for the man for four years, indeed had been constant, never turning down his wishes, yet her reward hadn't been personal wealth. She lived inside
his
wealth but the cash had never flowed in any volume to her Hong Kong account. And she often took risks for him, travelling the notorious National Highway 28 to Kathmandu with gems, drugs, and other contraband. Asking for five days off was reasonable and would not get her killed.
Taking
five days without prior approval would not cause him to kill her either, although that was admittedly moot, since she had never sneaked off before. She felt caught in a sticky trap, her minor request showing how hopeless it was to dream of earning her escape.

“You want a five-day vacation?” said the Sword.

“Attending my father's funeral may be your idea of a vacation, but it's not mine.”

She knew how to read his moods. If her master had intended to refuse he would not have sat at the desk. The Sword, half-Vietnamese and half-Pakistani, had a thing about status. He wanted respect, but more than that, he craved
business
respect. He had made a lot of money fast but remained a junior player in the demimonde of football and racetrack betting. His passion remained the horses and Alice knew that he was negotiating to buy a five percent share in the Sha Tin track in Hong Kong. She had been there on his arm many times.

The desk, rendered absurd because of the formal poses the Sword and the girl were forced to strike in the slippery steel-framed chairs, was his attempt at looking like an executive. She wanted to laugh at him but didn't dare. The Kashmiris and the Malaysians and the Chinese would never welcome him into their clan operations. He was the Rodney Dangerfield of sport touts.
That's why we click,
Alice thought,
we're both mongrels salivating for prizes at the dog show.

Alice had never fractured the Sword's trust, for good reason. He was violent and insecure and she was often the closest object to his rage. She always flattered him, since the more insecure he acted, the more important it was that he be conciliated with displays of loyalty. Actually, he wasn't doing badly. The Sword was a talented criminal. His biggest success, the one that might catapult him to the penthouse rooms of every European and Asian luxury hotel, was his recent alliance with organized crime interests. The future of sport gambling lay in the match-fixing syndicates, she knew, and he was connected.

“I have done all the things you've commanded,” Alice said. She had, too, including sleeping with football stars and Hong Kong moguls. “Give me the time.”

He frowned. “There will be a price to pay.”

“For taking five days of non-vacation?”

“You haven't heard what the price is.”

“What is it?”

“Cricket wagering. We are entering the gambling trade big-time starting next month.”

Cricket-match fixing was the most lucrative and the most corrupt of intrigues, and thus the most dangerous. The clans guarded it jealously. She had dozed through several cricket matches in her youth — Motihari was as obsessed as every other town in India — and had no interest in the sport. But she knew exactly why the Sword was interested in this gentleman's game where the players wore white and the contest moved at a stately pace. The Sword hungered to belong to this classy enterprise.

“What is my role?” She imagined having to coddle up to the overpaid, overpraised cricket stars while the boss slipped them cash bribes in U.S. dollars.

“The game is growing and changing,” said the boss, rapping hard on the desk. “Have you heard of Twenty20? It is the new form of cricket. Have you heard of spot-fixing? We are about to get into that in a big way.”

“What do you expect me to do?”

“You will play a major role. Help me with the teams. We will operate everywhere in Europe and Asia, but especially London. That should please you.”

“There's more, I'm assuming.”

He paused. “The danger is that the authorities, the police agencies, and the cricket regulators have the gambling syndicates in their sights. Scotland Yard has formed a task force. I want you to infiltrate it.”

Alice could not resist some sarcasm. “That's a lot for a week off.”

“Ah, now it's a full week?”

“No, only five days for the funeral.”

The Sword survived by observing details. He knew that Alice's father had been buried two days ago. Why did she need five days? He decided he would monitor her more closely from now on.

They agreed that Alice would report on the sixth day, upon which he would educate her in the game of cricket and the shadow world behind it. Alice recalled a review by George Orwell of the novel
Raffles
, in which the hero is said to be a fine cricket bowler as well as a cat burglar. The point, Orwell perceived, was that cricket is one of the few sports in which the amateur can exceed the professional. She astutely saw that the game risked destroying itself: in the twenty-first century the players were becoming corrupted by their professional status. Match-fixing attracted the aggressive criminals, the ones willing to bribe or blackmail players without compunction. The Sword saw an opportunity but Alice believed it to be too dangerous. As she planned for her flight to Delhi, she decided to use her week at home to plan her escape, too.

“Do what I tell you or I'll shoot you in the head,” Alice said to the journeyman mechanic, which was precisely what she would say to her uncle five minutes later.

“I will call the constable,” the boyish apprentice said, his first act of resistance in years, bursting out now only because he thought he could foil a scrawny girl.

If Hashi, the junior mechanic, holds the same status as he did ten years ago,
Alice concluded,
then he lacks a backbone.
“No, you'll give this letter in person to the police commissioner,” she replied, confident that the mention of the chief of police would intimidate him. He began to protest but she stared him down and, gripping the note, he fled the garage.

Alice strode the length of the old garage to the office, where Raji Bosh was playing
Carmageddon
on his computer. In response to her threat, indignation spread across his face, although he said nothing. Alice held the .32 to the bridge of his nose, and said, “I'll take your eyes.”

Raji Bosh calculated that she wouldn't shoot, but the gun gave him pause. It appeared deadly and new, the bluing still on the barrel. She saw him looking. “I bought it in Darra.” He understood; in Darra, Pakistan, the gunmakers would fashion any kind of firearm one needed overnight, and at a cheap price. Instead of speaking, Raji Bosh sat back in his swivel chair while a carjacker destroyed his avatar on the computer screen.

Alice forced him to drink the bottle of Thums Up Cola that contained four percent gamma-hydroxybutyrate acid. It was three times the dose he had inflicted on her ten years previous, enough to knock him unconscious. Before the
GHB
kicked in, he managed to get out, in English: “I delivered very fine funeral honours to Father Aamon.”

He did not plead, remaining arrogant. He made it sound as if he had beatified a Catholic priest — Father Aamon — in a cathedral. She had visited her father's resting place an hour ago, a sorry gravesite in a Motihari suburb. There had been no ceremony at the banks of the Ganges, no garlands of flowers.

Alice worried that the junior mechanic would abandon his resolve and bring the police around anyway. She needed fifteen minutes to search. Raji Bosh lay helpless on the office floor, knocked out by the drug but not dying. She opened the storage room at the rear of the garage and stood back to examine the pyramid of detritus within. She knew that her uncle was a pack rat, a cheapskate who never discarded anything. She considered torching the junk, shutting the windows, and allowing the smoke to suffocate him. She pondered running over him with a Tata inside the garage. Feeding him battery acid. Dropping an engine block on him using the chain pulley over the work bays.

The wheelchair lay at the back of the jumble of trash. She pulled out each item, as if she were untangling the Gordian knot. Finally, she yanked a snarl of junk out into the room, heedless of the mess. The chair, she could see, had a bent left front wheel but when she tried it out, the thing rolled well enough on the cement floor. Using an oily rag, she wiped the dust from the top of the mahogany frame; the rest of the chair would be covered for her journey.

It took a half hour to fill out her inventory. She found sufficient rope in the storage bin, and her uncle's sunglasses lay, as expected, in the desk drawer. She discovered a blanket in the boot of a customer's sedan. Hoisting her uncle, who had grown plump over the decade, proved the tougher task, but she eventually had him tied to the chair. She draped the blanket over him.

Poor invalid.

At last ready to abandon the garage, and her life in Bihar, Alice took down the portrait of the god Mithra and propped it on Raji Bosh's lap.

Alice remained calm as she wound her way along the potholed roads to the bridge. The sunglasses obscured most of her uncle's face. She encountered a half dozen locals, some of whom she knew. None displayed recognition of Alice Nahri or the invalid in the old-fashioned British wheelchair.

Such a dutiful daughter.

She reached the bridge in less than an hour. The heat of the noon sun failed to revive Raji Bosh, who drooled on his blanket. Even on the bridge, deserted at this hour, the light breeze that had floated down from the Himalayas did not rouse him.

Alice headed for the centre of the span. From the far end of the bridge, a woman came towards her pushing a baby stroller that mocked her uncle's chair. Alice could clearly see the curiosity on the mother's face, even though they were a hundred yards apart. A baby blanket hid the child from the baking sun and the woman hurried to gain the other side of the exposed bridge. Alice had stopped in the middle by now, as if to admire the view. The mother thought it odd that the figure in the wheelchair lay wrapped in a throw rug. And why did he hold a portrait of Lord Krishna on his lap? She moved on.

It was important to Alice that her uncle be awake before she toppled him into the Motijheel. She folded back the car blanket, now soaked in his sputum and puke, and slapped his jaw to revive him. Raji Bosh groaned, fighting to wake up, which he did after two minutes. She removed his sunglasses. He opened his eyes but failed to absorb where he was. He managed to turn his face up to her and recognition oozed into his teary eyes, a question flashing across his clammy face.

“The Motijheel,” Alice said. “The water trough.”

A four-foot concrete barrier lined the state highway bridge but Alice easily found the strength to unstrap the body and lever him over the rim. She was lucky that no traffic entered the bridge from either end. Raji Bosh realized what was about to happen and a reflex made him clutch the framed picture before it could fall.

“Mithra,” he whispered.

“No,” said Alice. “You always had it wrong. It is Mithridates, inheritor of Mithra. Mithridates was a real king, Persian, not Zoroastrian.” She had discovered more in her research: mithridatism was a cult, premised on the masochistic habit of building up toxin resistance in the body by steadily ingesting small, non-lethal amounts of poison. The practice was supposed to attract power to the user of the poison-cum-drug. Raji Bosh turned his face to Alice, who removed her own sunglasses. The massive dose of
GHB
had crippled the man, sealed his fate. He possessed no power and was beyond salvation.

His body hit the floating island of green hyacinth and plopped right through to the depths of Moti Lake. The chair followed, sat a while on the loose bed of weeds, and sank.

The police commissioner read through Alice's letter, which succinctly chronicled the attempted rape. She stated that she demanded justice and if the commissioner decided to come after her, he might first give some thought to his own “complicity.” The letter noted that the jumper cables had been affixed to the battery of his yellow Scorpio.