Jani and the Greater Game (The Multiplicity Series Book 1) (32 page)

The thin man ceased his nail-paring with a businesslike nod, smiled at Anand and stepped forward.

Jani leapt at Mr Knives with no plan other than to prevent him from hurting Anand. No sooner had she approached the knifeman than Durga Das, showing surprising speed for a man of his size, lashed out and punched her in the stomach. She cried out and fell to the floor, doubled up in pain, as Mr Knives grabbed the boy.

Anand struggled, shrieking in fear, and the look in Mr Knives’ eyes as he prepared to kill the boy was one of sadistic delight.

Behind the holy man, the door swung open. Jani stared in disbelief.

Durga Das and Mr Knives turned, but too late to prevent the intrusion.

What happened next took place in a blur of motion, confusing Jani with its speed. Two figures burst into the room, one of them bearing a familiar rubber bulb. He raised it to the face of Mr Knives, sprayed, and the knifeman fell to the floor with a clatter of dropped steel. Then the intruder pivoted and pumped the anaesthetic into the horrified face of Durga Das, who cried out and collapsed like a tranquilised elephant.

Then it was the turn of Jani and Anand to suffer the same fate.

She cried out as the atomised mist enveloped her face, choking her. She sank to her knees, and as unconsciousness claimed her she stared up at the smiling face of the Russian, Volovich.

J
ANI SURFACED SLOWLY
from unconsciousness as if through fathoms of ocean.

She opened her eyes, aware of the dull headache that pounded in her occipital region. She was lying on something soft and very comfortable in a small, beautifully furnished room, all polished mahogany fittings and brass embrasures. A high-backed armchair stood opposite the
chaise longue
on which she lay. The walls were decorated with maroon and silver flock wallpaper and... She stared. Between two watercolours of the English countryside was the round brass frame, studded with bolts, of a porthole.

She was aboard an airship, but evidently still on the ground; she detected none of the turbulence that would have denoted flight. She sat up and snagged her right hand on something. Her wrist was encompassed by a manacle affixed to the curved leg of the
chaise longue
, which was bolted to the floor. She leaned forward as far as she was able and peered through the porthole.

It was dark outside and she made out the running lights of other airships, big and small, moored across a busy yard. She saw fuel bowsers beetling across the apron and British soldiers patrolling the perimeter. Beyond, she made out the last faint glow of daylight behind a range of hills.

She looked around the room for Anand, then called his name. There was no sign of the boy, nor of her captors. A terrible thought seized her mind. Had the Russians, in reprisal for Anand’s rescuing her from the warehouse in Delhi, already dealt with him? She struggled against the metal encircling her wrist but succeeded only in chafing her skin.

The headache affecting the base of her skull was wearing off and a new pain was taking its place. The skin of her face felt tight, as if badly sunburned. Intense pain needled her brow, cheeks and chin.

She gasped and slowly, as if fearing what she might find, raised a hand.

Her fingers encountered a grid of metal wire half an inch before her face. She traced the reticulation, wincing as her touch caused pressure on the supporting spokes that had been drilled into her brow, cheek bones and jaw. She gasped, more in horror than in pain, and turned towards a bulbous brass plant holder. In its convex surface she made out her face and the silver grid, and her shocked expression behind the nexus.

She called out Anand’s name, hoping against hope that he might return her cry. Only silence met her call.

Judging by the dimensions of the lounge, the airship was small. She guessed that the control cabin was located beyond the green baize door. Surely, if Volovich and Yezhov were aboard, then they would have come running at the sound of her cries?

She gained a scintilla of hope from their non-appearance, followed by a grim thought: perhaps they were elsewhere, attending to Anand.

She peered through the porthole. The patrolling British soldiers seemed a long way away. Would they hear her if she cried out loud? She smiled at the irony of her situation. Hours ago she had feared capture by the British; now she would have greeted them with cries of joy.

She was about to call for help when, across the tarmac, the engines of a British India cargo airship started up, deafening her and drowning out any sound she might have made. The drone went on for an age, a steadily mounting crescendo as the bulbous airship rose slowly into the air, turned sluggishly, and moved off over the perimeter fence.

She heard another sound, the opening of a hatch beyond the baize door and an exchange of Russian voices. The gondola rocked as they climbed aboard.

Jani attempted to compose herself as the door opened and Volovich, sporting a black eye and a stitched forehead – courtesy of Anand and the Mech-Man – ducked into the lounge. Mr Yezhov followed him in, his broad face no longer wrapped in a bloody bandage. His wound had received professional attention, with a track of ugly black stitches crossing his face.

They stood over her, speaking in Russian. Something had changed in their attitude; they seemd less playful now, and more business-like, and Jani found the transformation frightening.

Volovich glared at her. “How delightful to see you recovered from your little ordeal with the Hindu. Who knows what depravities he and his henchman might have visited on you.. No, you don’t have to thank me. I considered it my duty to save you from your fellow countrymen.”

Volovich wedged his bulk into the armchair opposite Jani, while Yezhov stood beside him. The young man was carrying the device that resembled the innards of a radiogram – the working end of the CWAD that encaged her face. He placed it on an oak-panelled occasional table and smiled at her.

She looked from Yezhov to Volovich and, determined to keep her voice from trembling, said, “What have you done with Anand?”

“The boy?” Volovich said dismissively. “We have disposed of him.”

“What have you done with him?” she cried.

Volovich cast a glance at Yezhov and snapped something in Russian.

The young man nodded and said to Jani, “The tradition of revenge is old and honoured in our country. If someone is foolish enough to slight you, then it is incumbent upon the recipient to pay back in kind. Do you understand what I am saying?”

She remained staring at him, not giving him the satisfaction of responding.

Yezhov went on, “So in the fine tradition of revenge, I slit your little friend’s throat and watched the blood drain from his body until he was quite lifeless.”

“And might I add,” Volovich said, “that he died calling your name, Miss Chatterjee?”

At all costs, she thought, she must not break down and exhibit the terrible emotion that tortured her mind and soul. She would not, could not, allow them the satisfaction of seeing her broken. Surely, in the next few hours left to her – before they could dispose of her, too – she would have the chance to attack one of them, perhaps both, and have the satisfaction of doing them lasting physical injury. The notion was all she had now, and she clung to it.

Volovich said, “You will have noticed that we took the opportunity, while you were unconscious, of affixing the CWAD net to your face. The effect is rather fetching; the brutalist reticulation of the wires points up and emphasises your natural beauty. It could almost be a work of art. I would add that you shouldn’t worry about the possibility of scarring – the supporting spikes are so thin that the punctures would heal without leaving a trace... Although in this case we have elected, after much thought, to terminate your existence after we have finished with you.”

“We debated long and hard,” Yezhov said, “but could really see no reason to keep you alive and risk you completing the mission – the quest? – that the creature, Jelch, started you upon when he gave you the disc. Your encounter with the injured beast was almost... touching.”

“The reciprocation of the gift,” Volovich said, “the disc for the offer of diamorphine... most poignant.”

She stared from one to the other of the Russians. “You... you’ve read my thoughts already?”

“We took the liberty,” Volovich said. “Why waste precious time? There you were, fitted with the fetching nexus, and sprawled unconscious, and it occurred to me that we might as well...
indulge
ourselves, hm?”

“But there was a slight problem,” Yezhov went on. “You see, the subject’s thoughts are never as clear, as readable, when the subject is unconscious. The thoughts are a little diffused, blurred, if you like. Oh, we read random memories of your time after the airship disaster, your meeting with Jelch, your horror at the loss of life and, with great fidelity, your loathing of my fellow Russians... which I thought rather harsh. But the precise information which we were seeking – to wit, the whereabouts of the disc – we could not read. So we must subject you to the process one more time – on this occasion, while you are fully conscious and can respond to our questioning.” He smiled at her. “War is war, after all.”

Her left hand was free. She would feign submission, and when one of the Russians approached she would pick up the closest object to hand and, with all the force she could muster, attempt to stave in his skull.

Volovich unplugged himself from the armchair and crossed the lounge. From his pocket, as if reading her thoughts – what irony! – he pulled a second pair of handcuffs and grabbed her left wrist. She struggled, squirming and kicking out, but Yezhov held down her ankles. Volovich shackled her left wrist to a leg of the
chaise longue
, and then assisted Yezhov in binding her legs with a thick rope. She was soon immobilised, able only to move her eyes as she watched Yezhov lift the table closer to the
chaise longue
. Volovich leaned forward and picked up the lead that dangled from the nexus pinned to her face.

He was about to jack it into the CWAD when he paused and said, “And I thought her grief for her father rather touching, too. Though her romantic feelings for young Sebastian were a little ambiguous... Does she love him, or does she not?”

“But more fascinating than all that,” said the younger man, “was her ambiguous sense of
self
, or personal identity. She seemed to vacillate between thinking herself a worldly-wise, liberated English gentlewoman and a somewhat more nebulous Hindustani... though without quite being able to define herself in a cultural context as the latter. A dilemma I’m sure Dr Fraud – sorry, Dr Freud – would find endlessly fascinating. How terrible it must be, not to know where one belongs, or to whom? But what a choice! The British have a saying, do they not, ‘Between the Devil and the deep blue sea’... Poor Miss Chatterjee is caught between considering herself a repressed stuffed-shirt and an ignorant savage!”

“Not that she will be perplexed by the dilemma for much longer,” Volovich said. “When we leave here, and climb into the air, I will take great delight in putting the girl out of her misery by pitching her from the ’ship.” Volovich smiled. “Perhaps then, as she hurtles towards impact with her homeland, will she realise where she truly belongs.”

Yezhov laughed.

“But enough idle chatter. Shall we proceed?”

Volovich looked into Jani’s eyes. “And now, if you would concentrate on the disc given to you by the creature called Jelch, and recall what you did with it...”

Jani stared at the ribbed ceiling of the lounge, her only comfort the thought that the Russians would never discover in her memory the whereabouts of the disc. She thought of her father; she was five again, and holding his big, warm hand as he walked down Chandni Chowk towards her favourite burfi stall.

“All set,” Volovich said.

“Very well. Now, here we go.”

Yezhov turned a dial on the radio-device, and a sudden, painful heat shot through Jani’s skull. She gritted her teeth and tried not to cry out.

“Now, Miss Chatterjee... what did you do with the disc that Jelch gave you?”

“He gave me no–!” She screamed as Yezhov turned the dial further and the pain intensified, her face burning.

She heard a sound, a smart rapping on the outer hatch of the gondola. The Russians paused and glanced at each other, then Yezhov spoke a few words in his harsh mother tongue. He turned a dial on the radio-device and the pain in Jani’s head abated.

He moved from the
chaise longue
. The knocking sounded again. Yezhov slipped through the baize door into the control cabin and a moment later Jani heard the outer hatch open.

“Awfully sorry to bother you,” she heard someone say in English. “Routine identity inspection. If you’d be kind enough to allow me aboard...”

Before she could scream for help, Volovich clamped a sweaty hand across her mouth, crushing the wire grid into her flesh as he did so.

She heard Yezhov reply, and the gondola rocked as someone climbed into the control cabin. A second later the gondola swayed again, and the green baize door stood open. Jani lifted her head, despite the pressure from Volovich’s hand, and stared through the doorway.

She noticed three things almost at once. Yezhov sat upright in the pilot’s couch, his head twisted horribly to one side; a tall, gangling British officer, in a pith helmet, stood in the entrance to the lounge – and bundled on the floor to one side, trussed like a Christmas turkey and gagged, was Anand.