The Kashmir Trap (13 page)

“What about the competition … any quick visits to Pakistan, for instance?”

“No. There have been no India–Pakistan flights since the attack on Parliament.”

“Natch.”

“I could check Air India.”

“No point.”

“Trains? Buses?”

“Maybe, but we'd never know unless he travelled first class, which he wouldn't if he didn't want to be traced. He didn't mention the trip to anyone. The only thing left is the Volvo.”

“The car was in Delhi the whole time. Juliette and Béatrice used it.”

“He could've asked Luiz to drive him somewhere for a few days then bring him back.”

“He'd have to take Luiz into his confidence, but not Juliette or Vandana.” Jayesh seemed doubtful.

“Depends what he was hiding.”

 

 

F
lags
and flowers, heavy, downcast faces and dark suits — Juliette didn't know how long she could keep this up: hand extended to receive condolences from people she didn't know and whose sincerity she couldn't gauge. The ritual was just one more “must” for the ants on the diplomatic sandhill, all of them anxious to show the public how big-hearted they were. The funeral home on Laurier was the place for one to “be seen” this week, if one was to convince one's superiors of one's superior character and attachment to one's country's values.

Other majorettes and cheerleaders inhabited this senseless parade. Béatrice, for one, was reliving the death of Philippe. So was Bernatchez, who held Juliette close the moment he got there with his wife, Geneviève, and they stood on either side to keep her from collapsing or committing some gaffe or other, which would be understandable but better-avoided just the same. More crying? No way!
She held herself erect, not shedding a tear, despite her pain.

After her chaperones had left, Juliette couldn't take it anymore and fled outside. The vibration of her cellphone distracted her from her anguish while she walked around the block.

“We're on the edge of a hint of a trail,” Max said. “David didn't go to Kathmandu with Vandana.”

Juliette was lost.

“I haven't got a theory about that yet, but trust me. What about your end?”

Juliette told him about her visit to Madeleine Morency. Maybe the cops were right after all. This Rodger was none too bright. He was capable of landing in a hospital without getting up to speed, not knowing if this was a good time or not for one of his amateur capers. It was tough to imagine murderers, organized perfectionists without a doubt, recruiting such an underachiever to finish off David when he didn't have a prayer. There was silence at the other end.

“Max?”

“I'm thinking about this Rodger Morency character.”

“He's a red herring.”

“Maybe not. Put yourself in their place. They're led to believe David is at death's door and will never regain consciousness, but really, in secret, he gets gradually better …”

“Yes,” said Juliette, “but they still wouldn't have sent that jerk. He'd spill it all, wouldn't he? He'd tell the cops, ‘Someone paid me to kill David O'Brien.”'

“Not necessarily. The cops figured it the same as you, so they're expecting an Al-Qaeda hit team, and instead they get Johnny Jellybean. Their mistake was letting their imagination guide the questioning.”

“So Morency's smarter than he looks.”

“That's one possibility among many. He realizes pretty quickly that the cops don't think he's capable of anything like this, so he plays up the stupidity. He's made for the part, and he's got his bumbling record to back him up: ‘So I'm not that dumb, eh? You've seen my file.”'

“A barrel of laughs, but why go through all this to get rid of David? What's the point?”

“Anything else you learned?” asked Max.

“Luc Roberge knows you're in India and what name you're using.”

Max was unconcerned. “They can't find me now. I'm safe.”

“This guy seems like a tough one.”

Tough, maybe. Persistent, for sure. He'd latched on to Max ages ago and had never let go. Pretty ironic just the same, he thought. Except in his early apprentice days, Max had extorted huge sums without any real difficulty, and now came this undertaking, which wouldn't net him a cent, just the satisfaction of unmasking his nephew's killers, and he still had an army of cops on his tail, with this bulldog Roberge as determined as ever.

He was finding the life of a fugitive increasingly unbearable. He thought he was free, but it was just one more mirage. His criminal “career” had bought him the freedom of running farther and farther … from himself in some ways.

“Roberge blackmailed Patterson,” came Juliette's voice from the other side of the world. “He knows things about you.”

Forget about it? Tell her to mind her own business?
Max's hand passed over his face as if to get his thoughts organized. “Patterson was having financial problems, and I had money to launder, so he laundered it for me.”

Max could feel Juliette's disappointment at the other end. She was expecting something a little spicier, worthier of Roberge's delirious imagination, something to do with dark, smoky basements.
Sorry, lady, economic crimes are hardly ever that sexy
.

“But why?”

How could he explain? What should he tell her? Should he open up to her in a way he never had before? Okay, he'd saved Patterson, but only to keep an old promise to Philippe. If Patterson had been ruined, David would have suffered, too.

Juliette understood now why the former diplomat had been so cowed. Luc Roberge could bring him down along with Max.

Despite Max's help, there was still the same uneasiness between the two men. Patterson continued to keep him at arm's length from David, just as Béatrice had done. His activities were still illegal, despite the fact that Patterson had benefitted from them in his darker days. Was Patterson afraid Max would use his “slip” to blacken his reputation with David and Béatrice? Or maybe turn him in to the police, something Max would never do. Out of respect for Patterson? No, not that either. Max cared about David and didn't want to make his world any shakier than it was. David needed someone strong in his corner, like Patterson, instead of a dishrag of a shady uncle.

“Don't go by appearances,” he told Juliette, “I'm not doing this for you or even for David. I'm doing it for myself, that's all, to be at peace with myself.”

She said nothing.

“I'm not an honest man, Juliette. Everything Béatrice told you about me is true.”

Juliette replied, “She says you could've prevented your brother's death.”

There was moment's silence. Juliette felt she shouldn't have mentioned it, but she wanted to know. That was all. Béatrice hadn't gone into detail.

“I could've done things differently. I could've got involved, but Philippe asked me not to. I shouldn't have listened to him. One of these days, I'll tell you the whole story.” Then he added, “There's a plaque in San Salvador on the house that used to be the embassy.”

“Have you been there?”

“Yes. I wanted to see where it happened. I know it's dumb, but I had to be on the spot where he was killed.”

“What did you feel?”

“Nothing. I was so sure there'd be something of him left there. Call it what you want: a flame, a spirit, a sign of some kind. I stood in the office, right where he probably fell. I didn't experience a thing, except a great deal of pain, and it wasn't worth crossing the Americas for that. I went to where Pascale died, too, and it was the same. I didn't feel anything but sadness and an incredible sense of waste that just needed death to cap it off.”

There was a long silence, and Juliette realized he didn't want to say any more.

After a while, she said, “Hindus say the universe wasn't created out of nothing the way Christians think, but from the ruins of older universes.”

Up to this point for Max, Juliette had just been David's widow, his nephew's companion. Now he realized she had a life of her own, her own dreams, secrets, sadness, and beliefs. “You're interested in Hinduism?” he asked her.

“A bit, superficially, anyway.”

“Pascale swore by Shiva, Ganesh, and all those other bozos. The apartment smelled of incense all day long, and I had the feeling we were on one long pilgrimage.”

Shiva in particular was her favourite Hindu god. One day, facing a statue of Shiva Nataraja, with its four arms, Pascale explained that the lower right hand, with the palm showing, indicated, “Fear nothing. I will protect you.
Abhayamudra
.” Max shrugged. He'd never dreamt he'd need the protection of a watchful eye from a benevolent foreign god.
How do you pray to it?
he wondered.
Oh well, no matter.

“This Pascale,” said Juliette, “was she …”

“A crook like me, the best there was.”

In his most depressed moments after Pascale left, Max felt like just another pigeon on her trophy shelf. Imagining her as treacherous, faithless, and nasty like this was the only way to forget her. Yet even slandering her to himself he couldn't get her, or the memory of her body against his own, out of his head.
Eyes that never look away from one another, hers brighter than ever, that sudden glow I will never forget
. Sister Irène's call from the far corner of the globe had confirmed it for him: this was the only woman he'd ever loved or ever would.

 

 

G
oa
, 1510, and the Portuguese were on the beach, wading through the water, watched by the natives as if hypnotized. Alfonso de Albuquerque wondered: would this do as a trading outpost? Why not? It would boost Portugal's economic power and eventually compete with the British, who would need a base to the north in Mumbai and one to the east in Kolkata, and the French, who would open another post in Pondicherry in the southeast. It was an ambition that the Portuguese would take quite seriously … more than just commerce, a colony. The French and English would just wait politely on the dock, not daring to impose themselves, not for the time being, at least. They'd trade discreetly, almost apologetically, but the Portuguese had no such scruples, and from the very beginning, their machine was running at full throttle, not hesitating before the huge task of “civilizing these barbarians” and forcing the Portuguese model on them, as they were soon to do in Africa, Brazil, and Macau. All the French and the British saw in India was a place to make tidy profits for their adventurers in commerce and finance. The Portuguese would be adding soldiers and priests to the mix. Goa was a proper colony, and when the Portuguese finally withdrew, after the Indian Army invaded in 1961, they left curiously empty shells behind on the beach, in the form of Portuguese-sounding names, European-style women's dresses, and, inevitably, Catholicism.

This explained Max's sense of déjà vu as he stepped into the small Roman Catholic cemetery. It was created by the Indians from the former colony who had been exiled to the capital. Its tombstones, cenotaphs, and sepulchres scattered pell-mell over the hill, it could have been a cemetery from Douro or Algarve transplanted to New Delhi.

A woman in black stood before the family crypt. She was the mother of Luiz Rodrigues, the young High Commission clerk who'd been killed along with David. Her white hair was tied back and held in place by her shawl. Her shoulders were stooped, her hands clasped against her stomach like a Madonna abandoned by her Portuguese god. She gripped her rosary with all her might, as Max had seen Sister Irène do after Pascale died. Ten years already. What had happened to the little nun? Probably gone back to France by now to spend her remaining days in a retirement home for missionaries in Toulouse or elsewhere. Her cell would be full of exotic souvenirs, and she'd have trouble getting used to their bland-tasting food. She'd miss the bright and vibrant colours of India.

When the woman in black saw Max and Jayesh, she reacted with exasperation.
Must be two more of those policemen
, she supposed. She hated it when people kept asking the same questions over and over, and now it looked like it was happening again.

“We're not with the police,” Max assured her.

She shooed them away. “I've already told them everything I know, now get off my back.” She turned to Max. “The Hindus, the Muslims, those degenerate barbarians. Let them kill one another if they want to, but leave us alone.”

Max told her he worked for the Canadian Secret Service, and the government was taking the deaths very seriously. He even questioned the honesty of the Indian investigators. “After all, they owe their rank to the BJP, now, don't they? They all eat out of the same hand at the Ministry of Home Affairs. You don't expect them to put themselves out for an embassy clerk, do you, and a Catholic as well?”

That appeared to convince the grieving mother, who must have been thinking exactly the same thing. Her face softened, and a white lock of hair slipped out from under the shawl. As she fixed it, she asked them to follow her. They accompanied her to her home a few streets over, as she insisted on speaking to them only in the presence of her family. It was a modest but tidy house, filled with crucifixes and images of the Virgin, as well as framed photos of Luiz, each with a black ribbon across the corner. The mother of the young man sat beneath the largest frame and began to cry once again into her lace handkerchief. A young girl, timid and silent, with large dark eyes, put her hands on the woman's shoulders. This was her eldest daughter, Teresa — Luiz's sister — the only family she had now. Teresa cast an accusatory glance at Max and Jayesh, as if to blame them for everything.

Max waited for the sobbing to end, then asked, “How long did Luiz work for the High Commission?”

“Since we arrived in Delhi. He wanted so badly to find a job that he visited all the embassies on foot for weeks.”

“As a clerk?”

“As anything.”

“Did he ever mention David?”

“He loved working for him.”

She had dried her tears by now, so her daughter got up and left them alone. That was a good sign. At least it showed she trusted them.

“Did he ever mention any travel plans David might have told him about? Or any other plans at all?”

“He never talked about his job.”

“Except that he loved working for David?”

She looked up at Max and said in a strident voice, “My son has nothing to do with any of this.”

“Oh no, that wasn't what I meant …”

“But you think it. You have from the start. Luiz wanted to die in his own explosion? According to you, he was some sort of kamikaze, a martyr like those fanatics in Al-Qaeda!”

Teresa was alerted by her mother's rising voice and came back into the room. Max tried to calm things down. “As I told you, the Canadian government wants to clear this whole thing up. I haven't come halfway across the world to find just any culprit. I've come to identify and arrest the people who killed your son, or those who ordered it done.”

“Luiz never hurt anyone.”

“I'm sure he didn't, ma'am. He was close to David, and they did see each other several times before the attack, am I right? David might have told him he was afraid of something or threats someone might have made.”

She shook her head. Luiz hadn't said anything.

“Please concentrate. Perhaps some passing reference, an insignificant comment, something that might mean nothing to you, but …”

“He was a bad driver.”

“Excuse me.”

“‘Mr. David's always distracted.' He said that to Adoor one night when he came here for supper.”

“Adoor Sharma, the watchman at the O'Brien house?”

She nodded. “Good friends, they were.”

“Distracted over what, did he say?”

“He had lots of worries.”

“Did Luiz say that?

“No, Adoor did, that night, and Luiz said, ‘He's right, Mama, Mr. David's quite concerned, but the others …”'

“Yes?”

“‘They're not there for real.'”

“What did he mean by that, I wonder?”

She shrugged. “I reminded him to keep to his own business, just concentrate on work and avoid gossip, especially with Adoor.”

Well, David certainly took his work seriously, but
how
seriously?

“Perhaps it had to do with a trip?”

“He never mentioned a trip to me.”

Max looked to Teresa. She shook her head too.

“Is Adoor still recovering?”

“No, he's fine now.”