The PuppetMaster (36 page)

Our times in the marigold fields always had a surreal feel to it, an out-of-place, modern dance in an ancient setting. I suppose that was part of the reason we loved it. Women and girls, bent to the picking blossoms in nearby fields would always straighten for a moment to watch the crazy ferenghis with the flying discs. The Bernoulli Effect can be explained by physicists, but it is still magic to anyone witnessing it.

Mej and I began unhurriedly, in a relaxed manner, the discs drifting smoothly on light winds. It was a warm-up. But then, little by little, Mej started shooting the discs lower and faster, just outside my reach so that I needed to sprint, stretch, and jump faster than in any previous runs. I returned the compliment. It had the odd sensation of a high school competition, a battle of machismo pettiness, and all the while, Uliana sat on her folded cloth and watched from behind dark lenses.

As we were nearing the end of an hour, Mej snapped both discs in succession, two or three seconds apart and twenty feet of lateral space between them--a near impossible feat to catch both, especially with fatiguing muscles. He meant for me to miss at least one.

But I was on top of my game that morning, one hundred percent.

I didn’t catch the first disc; I stretched and popped it straight up twenty feet with my knuckles. Then, with a single step in the other direction, leaped and kicked the second with my toes in a flawless roundhouse. It angled up just enough for me to step back and catch the first one and then jump over to snatch the second in a Nuryev leap behind my back. I couldn’t have repeated it in a hundred years--the grand finale of the fireworks display, a dramatic finish where the crowd roars with approval.

I looked first to Uli, who was rocking up and down lightly on the balls of her feet in some sort of dance of adulation. I cocked an eyebrow at her and shrugged with a look that indicated I made catches like that every day. Maybe she believed me.

Then I looked at Mej. He had donned a mask of non-emotion. The entire morning had felt strained with him, and his reaction to my catch was the oddest. It wasn’t like him to lose humor or be aggressive to that degree.

Then, as if a switch was flipped, he started clapping and pumping his fist into the air like a prizefighter. “Foocking incredible, Mate. Play of the week material. Where, I mean where, did you learn to do that shite? Never seen noothin’ like it.”

I shrugged. “Just sort of happened, Mej. Didn’t really plan it.” Pure Zen, I thought.

“Right-o, well you should ‘ave seen it from this side. Michael Foocking Jordan, it was. Ain’t that right, Uliana? The dogs bollocks, eh?”

Uli kept her gaze on me and answered flatly, “Yes, it was amazing. I didn’t understand why you enjoyed this game. Now I do.”

We started walking hastily back along the road to the villa, overtaking sari-clad women returning from the river with water pots balanced on their heads. The sun was above the horizon now, the pulse of the city growing in the north. Even from that distance, I noticed the odor of smoke and charred wood from the riots.

I looked at my watch and started walking faster. There was barely enough time to shower before getting a taxi to Chandragupta’s.

As we turned towards the villa, Uli slipped her hand around my elbow--a tender reminder that she was there. I slowed and touched her fingers with my hand.

Mej strolled in front and cracked a few one-liners that were intended to be humorous but didn’t have the usual timing. No one laughed. I snapped the blue disc fifteen feet up. It flattened against the breeze and drifted back to his index finger. With his back to us he spun it with his other hand, rotating it like a plate on a stick. In a show-off move, he shifted it deftly to his middle finger, then to his ring finger, and finally to his baby finger. We watched the smooth whirring in silence.

Morning sunlight refracted off a band of silver on his baby finger.

Tossing me the disc, he twirled his ring habitually with the fingers of his other hand, and at the same time Uli dug her fingers into my skin like pincers. I almost froze. We had both noticed Mej’s ring. A small owl, its wings spread and talons curved, screeched from the sky on his baby finger. We saw it clearly.

He spun on his heel and grinned at us.

“Foockin’ good sweat today, Bheemer, even though you showed me up right fookin’ good in front of Uliana ‘ere. I’ll ‘ave to repay that one sometime.”

No expression, I thought. No emotion. I grinned sloppily. “Look forward to it, Mej. Give me call when you’re up for another one.” I had the absurd realization that my cell phone was lying in four pieces on my desk.

“Yeah . . . definitely.” Hollow insincerity in his voice.

God, tell me he didn’t see my eyes. Tell me he was still looking ahead when I noticed the ring. He was, wasn’t he?

I nudged Uli towards the gate as Mej added, “but it may not be for a week or so. I’ve got some business to attend to.”

“Import/export,” I uttered automatically.

“Yea, something like that.” He tossed me the second disc. “Hold onto these ‘til I’m back, Bhimer” But I had the distinct impression that he wasn’t planning on returning anytime soon.

Fifty-Seven

I understood all too well how changes popped into a person’s life. The abrupt ones. They came with my fiancé’s last breath. They came with the murder of my adopted sister, and with shrapnel exploding against a river wall, and with finding love again. They entered whenever they wished, however they wanted, suddenly, violently, or tenderly. I understood all that, but this change was incomprehensible.

Uli spun before we were half way across the salon, anger smoldering in her eyes. “It’s him. I know it. I knew it when I first met him. I could feel it. Ist like the nord vind freezing the trees in vinter, Bhim.” Apparently it wasn’t just sleep that brought on her accent. “My heart felt cold when he touched my hand. He is . . . evil.” Her speech slowed, and without speaking I pulled her into my arms.

It’s a ring, Bhim, just a ring, not a proof of terrorism. A Shivdas witch’s twisted words about a piece of silver. That’s all it is, nothing more. The voice was trying to convince me Mej was just a lousy comedienne with good muscle tone. Uli was clearly convinced otherwise.

“You talked about the goat herder you saw in the crowd yesterday, is it him?”

I closed my eyes, forcing the memory to return. There had been a familiarity to the figure on the Ghats, a lightness in his step that seemed somehow familiar. The man had looked directly at us, but could I be certain that he, the PuppetMaster, and Mej were the same person? “I don’t know, Uli. I don’t. God, I’ve played Frisbee with Mej fifty times at least. He’s just not . . ” Had he so completely fooled me, the unsuspecting, reclusive ferenghi? Was he that good? His Hindi was excellent, his physique suggested a lot more than weekly exercise, his appearance . . . then it struck me. He had features that could be molded into anything, a face that could melt into a crowd and be transformed--American, French, Saudi, or an NRI that cranked out tasteless jokes in Cockney. There was another detail, one I had forgotten until that moment because it had seemed insignificant at the time. On one of his higher leaps, on a morning right after we had started playing together, I had noticed a piece of leather on the inside of his left calf. It was worn from use, and I supposed it to be a sheathe. Now I couldn’t stop wondering if it held the knife that killed Soma.

I shook my head. “I just don’t know,” I said again.

“Well, I do,” she replied emphatically.

Fifty-Eight

“We need better proof, Uli. I can’t go stirring up a wasp’s nest accusing some NRI of killing sixty-nine people. I don’t think the police are apt to believe a foreign Sanskrit student who marches in and claims he knows the identity of the most wanted terrorist in the country. Yes sir, it’s based my theory of an owl ring that I heard about in a séance in the red light.”

“Okay, I get your point. But maybe they would listen or at least investigate. You can’t just ignore it, Bhim.”

“I’m not going to ignore it. I’m going try to find something using other methods. There are ways to get information in this city that even the police can’t tap into” I kissed her neck. “I am going to try to find out who he is. Okay?”

She nodded, a bit reluctantly, but it was in agreement.

“And remember, we have a huge advantage right now,” I said.

A smile danced on her lips. “That you are a strong, handsome, intelligent lover who is better at Indian espionage than he thinks?”

“No. Mr. Mej Whiton doesn’t know that we suspect him. That is an advantage.”

Her arms slid around my waist. “Okay, but however you do it, you do it carefully.”

“Promise. Now, go get your magic handbag. We need to be at the professor’s in twenty minutes and I need to call a taxi without the use of my phone. Mine, as you notice, seems to be malfunctioning right now.” I pointed to the shattered chunks on my desk.

She went into the bedroom, while I went to the kitchen.

Sahr was just lifting two cheese-filled nans from the oven while Jitka peered over her shoulder. The entire back of the house was filled with the delicious odor of flatbread and paneer. “Are those for lunch? Or a post-breakfast treat?”

Sahr straightened and turned to set them on racks on the counter. “Neither, Rajah Bhim. These are gifts for Miss Jitka, who not only appreciates all of my cooking, but has memorized my best nan recipe.”

“But there are two of them,” I pleaded.

“Ya, und maybe if you are respectful, Mr. Knucklehead, you vill get a small taste of one.”

With that, I motioned Sahr to the back courtyard where I asked her to tap very discreetly into every source she had. Gather anything on Mejanand Whiton. She promised that it would not take long, and I knew it wouldn’t.

Fifty-Nine

We drove through the outer sections of the city and most appeared unscathed, like a man-o-war that had seen its battle fractures on the opposite side. The neighborhoods felt peaceful, like washed air after a mountain storm, but I sensed it was illusory. Sections to the north had been shattered. Shops had been burned, some to the ground, and the façade of the Alamqir Mosque had been the target of fusillades of rock and bottles. Most of the damage had been inflicted without reason, as I supposed was normally the case with senseless violence. Young Hindus had seized the occasion to vent their frustration in Muslim neighborhoods; fundamentalists had urged them on, inciting them to strike at any prominent targets. Few seemed to remember that it started with a blast directed at every faith.

One target had been more visible and symbolic to the Hindu youths, because it represented all things decadent and contemptibly Muslim. Haroon’s. Three of his back rooms had been torched and badly damaged.

It jolted us to think that it had happened moments after we slipped out his back door.

A mob had tried unsuccessfully to crash through the front and burn the bar to the dance floor. Frustrated by the steel shutters, they made their way to the back and set fire to the rear. The police routed them, and fortunately my friend, who was really Muslim in name only, had left right after us to feed his cats. I knew Haroon well enough to know that he would have it all rebuilt with better wood and, regrettably, larger speakers.

The beauty of the morning couldn’t prevent this news from saddening us. Uli showed amazing composure, but I knew she was imagining what would have happened had we lingered over another glass of Courvoisier.

The explosion at the Manikarnika had killed three people. In a sad twist of irony it was later discovered they were of Hindu, Muslim, and Christian--a surprisingly small number considering the size of the crowd. Fourteen more has been injured, six critically. According to our driver, a small charge of plastique had been detonated beneath a wooden box on a step ten feet above the shala. Fortunately, there was enough hardwood and concrete to limit the damage. I was also thankful to hear that no ferenghi had been hurt. Marley Chapin’s refrigeration hat, however, would be laid to rest with all due respect.

Uli and I taxied to the main gates of Benares Hindu University--the Central Park of Varanasi--a disproportionately large, open space in the middle of a very dense city. Thirteen hundred acres spread out in an enormous fan of roads and pathways from the entrance. The gates themselves rose like the portals of Mogul fort, twenty meters, and on the other side the greatest collections of Hindustani studies were housed in some of the most exquisite buildings in the city.

With a few extra minutes, I lead us along a gravel lane past the main library. Unknown by most visitors to the city, it is one of the most stunning structures in Northern India. Uli, as I knew she would, was enchanted the instant it came into view. “Mein Gott, it’s amazing. Und you have spent time inside?”

“A few hundred hours, here and there,” I replied.

“Is it as pretty on the inside as the outside?” She asked this as we strolled through the hedged gardens paralleling the facade.

“Some might not say so, but I’m partial to musty, old books with squiggles on the spines. It could probably use better air quality, but you can get lost in stacks and not be found for weeks.”

“That sounds like your kind of place, Lover. Can we sneak in and get lost together sometime?” Her sly grin had returned and I was suddenly glad I had taken us down that path. We came to the front steps and she read the wooden sign, “Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad of Baroda Library. That really is just too big a title for any building.”