The Mountain Shadow (115 page)

‘Not so far, today, but twenty-one hours yesterday, and the day before that,’ Blue Hijab said before her voice faded, and Karla shut the door.

Jaswant, Ankit and I were staring at the closed door.

‘That’s one very scary woman,’ Jaswant said, wiping sweat from his neck. ‘I thought Miss Karla was scary, no offence, baba, but I swear, if I’d seen that woman in the blue hijab coming up the stairs in time, I’d have been in the tunnel.’

‘She’s okay,’ I said. ‘She’s more than okay, in fact. She’s damn cool.’

‘I noticed a liquor store not far from here on our arrival, sir,’ Ankit said. ‘Might I presume to buy the ingredients for your special cocktail, and prepare a portal or two for you, while we await the ladies?’

‘Buy?’ Jaswant said, throwing the switch and opening the panel to his survival store.

He threw the next switch, and the lights began to flash. His finger hovered over the third switch.

‘You know, Jaswant –’ I tried, but I was too late.

The stomp and shake jive music of Bhangra banged from the desk speakers.

I looked at Ankit as he inspected the goods in Jaswant’s secret store. His grey hair had been cut to Cary Grant sleekness, and he’d grown a thin moustache. A thigh-length, navy blue tunic with high collars and matching serge trousers replaced his hotel service uniform.

He looked over Jaswant’s goods with a scholarly eye: a debonair affair examining baubles in adultery’s window.

‘I think we can work with this,’ he said.

Then the Bhangra got to Ankit, and he backed away from the coloured window and started to dance. He wasn’t bad: good enough to get Jaswant out of the chair and dancing with him until the end of the song.

‘Want to hear it again?’ Jaswant puffed, his finger over the switch.

‘Yes!’ Ankit said.

‘Business before pleasure,’ I essayed.

‘That’s true,’ Jaswant conceded, coming around to the secret window. ‘Let me know what you want.’

‘I need to do a little chemistry,’ Ankit said. ‘And I believe that you have all the right chemicals.’

‘Alright,’ I said. ‘Let’s get these drinks under way. We’re in for the night. Karla and I have nowhere to go, and all the time in the world to get there. Do your stuff, Ankit.’

Bottles poured, lime juice filled a beaker, coconut dessicated, bitter chocolate was grated into powdered flakes, glasses appeared, and we three men were just about to test the first batch of Ankit’s alchemy when Karla called out to me.

‘Start without me, guys,’ I said, putting my glass down.

‘You’re leaving the cocktail party before it starts?’ Jaswant objected.

‘Save my glass,’ I said. ‘If you hear gunplay while I’m in there, come and rescue me.’

Chapter Seventy-Six

I
FOUND
B
LUE
H
IJAB AND
K
ARLA
sitting cross-legged on the floor near the balcony, the carpets around them a pond of knotted meditations. There was a silver tray with rose and mint flavoured almonds, slivers of dark chocolate and chips of glazed ginger, beside half-drunk glasses of lime juice. Red and yellow lights flashing at the signals below blushed their faces softly in the darkened room. The slow overhead fan fretted incense smoke into scrolls, and a slow breeze reminded us that the night, outside, was vast.

‘Sit here, Shantaram,’ Karla said, pulling me down beside her. ‘Blue Hijab has to go soon. But before she does, she’s got some good news, and some not so good news.’

‘How are you?’ I asked. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine,
Alhamdulillah
. Do you want the
good
first, or the not so good?’

‘Let’s have the not so good,’ I said.

‘Madame Zhou is still alive,’ Blue Hijab said. ‘And still free.’

‘And the good news?’

‘Her acid throwers are finished, and the twins are dead.’

‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘Can we back this up? How come you know about Madame Zhou? And how come you’re here?’

‘I didn’t know about Madame Zhou,’ she said. ‘And I wasn’t interested in her. I wanted the acid throwers. We’ve been hunting them for a year.’

‘They burned someone you know,’ I realised. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘She was a good fighter, and she’s still a good comrade and a good friend. She was on leave in India, from the war. Somebody hired those two acid throwers, and they made her face into a mask. A protest mask, I suppose you could say.’

‘Is she still alive?’ Karla asked.

‘She is.’

‘Is there anything we can do?’

‘I don’t think so, Karla,’ Blue Hijab said. ‘Unless you’d like to help her punish the acid throwers, which she’s doing now, as we speak. It will go on for some time, yet.’

‘You caught the acid throwers?’ Karla asked. ‘Did anyone get burned?’

‘We threw blankets on them, and kicked them until they shoved their acid bottles out from under the blankets, and then we dragged them away.’

‘And the twins jumped in to help them,’ I said, ‘thinking you were a threat to Madame Zhou.’

‘They did. We didn’t realise they were protecting Madame Zhou. We didn’t care. We wanted the acid throwers. Madame Zhou ran away, and we let her run. We stopped the twins, and grabbed the acid throwers.’

‘You stopped the twins for good?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did you do with them?’

‘We left them there. That’s why I have to leave soon,
Inshallah
.’

‘Whatever you need, it’s yours,’ I said. ‘How did you think to tell me about this?’

‘We took the acid throwers to a slum. Four brothers and twenty-four cousins of the girl they burned are all living there. And the girl is living there, with a lot of other people who love her. We questioned the acid throwers. We wanted a list of every girl they’ve ever burned.’

‘Why?’

‘So we could visit the families, later, one by one, and tell that them those men are dead, and will never do it to another girl. And then to visit every one of the clients who paid them to burn girls, and make them pay in cash for the hell they spat on them, and give the money to the girls they ordered burned,
Inshallah
.’

‘Blue Hijab,’ Karla said, ‘I know we only just met, but I love you.’

She put her hand on Karla’s wrist.

‘When the acid throwers started talking,’ she said, turning to me, ‘we heard your name on their list. They told me they’d been following you for the Madame, that woman in black who ran away. I got the acid throwers to tell me where you live, and I came to warn you about the woman.’

It was a shock, a lot of shocks, and one of them was the thought of the acid throwers, being tortured to death by people they’d tortured. It was too much to think about.

‘Thanks for the heads-up, Blue Hijab,’ I said. ‘You’re leaving tonight. How can we help you?’

‘I have everything I need for myself,’ Blue Hijab said, ‘but I must be far away from here, by morning. My problem is Ankit. I can’t go on with him, because the sudden change in plans allows for only one of us to be smuggled at a time. I know he will insist on staying, and letting me go on, and that is what I have to do, but I’m afraid to leave him.’

‘No-one will harm him if he stays here with us,’ I said.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid to leave him, because he’s so violent.’

I thought of the amiable night porter with the delicate anticipation of others’ needs, the debonair moustache and the perfect cocktail, and I couldn’t put it together.

‘Ankit?’

‘He’s a very capable agent,’ Blue Hijab said. ‘One of the best, and most dangerous. Not many made it to grey hair in this war. But it’s time for him to retire. His last assignment was almost three years as the night porter in a hotel, where every journalist enjoyed a drink, and liked to talk. But he’s too well known now. That was his last assignment. I was supposed to take him to contacts in Delhi, where he can find a new life, but shooting the twins changed the plan.’

‘Is he wanted?’ I asked. ‘Should we hide him?’

‘No,’ she frowned. ‘Why would he be wanted?’

‘Two dead twins come to mind.’

‘My comrades and I shot the twins. He’s not involved at all.’

‘The twins were hard men to stop. You shot them with that little gun?’

‘Of course not,’ she said, taking the small automatic from the pocket of her skirt and holding it in her palm. ‘I only shoot my husband with this gun. That’s why he stole it from me.’

‘But you had it in your hand when you said hello,’ I smiled.

‘For a different reason,’ she said, her thoughts dreaming into the pistol in her hand.

‘Can I see it?’ Karla asked.

Blue Hijab passed the small pistol to her. Karla looked it over, finding the place in her palm where lines of intent meet the power of consequence. She allowed her eyes to drift slowly upward until they met mine.

‘Nice,’ she said, passing the gun back to Blue Hijab. ‘Wanna see mine?’

‘Of course,’ Blue Hijab replied. ‘But I want you to keep this pistol. I’m going to meet my Mehmu soon,
Inshallah
, and I know I won’t need it this time, or ever again. We’ve been talking, and things are very good now,
Alhamdulillah
.’

‘You want me to have it?’ Karla asked, taking the small automatic back.

‘Yes, I was planning to give it to Shantaram, but now that I met you, I think it should go to you. Do you accept my gift?’

‘I do.’

‘Good. Then I would like to see your gun.’

Karla had a matt black snub-nosed five-shot .38 revolver. She took it from beneath a flap of carpet beside her, flipped the chamber open, let the cartridges fall into her lap, and snapped the empty chamber back in place.

‘No offence,’ she said, handing the gun to Blue Hijab. ‘Hair trigger.’

Blue Hijab examined the small, deadly weapon expertly, and handed it back. She felt the heft of her own gun again reassuringly, closing palm to fingers, while Karla reloaded the snub-nosed pistol.

For a few seconds they both looked up at me, guns in hand, their expressions thoughtful, but strangely blank at the same time. For me, it was a wall of womanness in their eyes, and I had no idea what was going on. I was just glad to be a witness; to see two wild, strong-minded women meet.

‘Blue Hijab,’ Karla said, after a while, ‘please let me give you a gift in return.’

She pulled the long spike from the curl at the back of her head, shaking panther-paws of black hair free to prowl.

‘For when you’re
not
wearing a hijab,’ she said, offering the hairpin. ‘Be very careful. Only ever hold it by the jewel, as I am. Hair trigger.’

It was a blowpipe dart. There was a small ruby fixed into a brass collar at the blunt end.

Karla stood up quickly, skipped to her bedroom, and returned with a long, thin bottle in red glass. There was a Mayan design set into the screw cap.

‘Curare,’ she said. ‘I won the dart and the bottle in a word game with an anthropologist.’

‘You won this playing Scrabble?’ Blue Hijab asked, holding the bottle in one hand and the dart in the other.

‘Something like that,’ Karla replied. ‘You leave the dart soaking in the Curare overnight, once every full moon. And hey, wear it carefully, I scratched myself once and had wide-awake dreams for a couple of hours.’

‘Wonderful,’ Blue Hijab said. ‘Is it so fast acting?’

‘Jab it into a man’s neck and he’ll only follow you six or seven steps. Overcomes the disadvantage of high heels.’

‘I love it,’ Blue Hijab said. ‘Can I really keep it?’

‘You must.’

‘Thank you,’ Blue Hijab said shyly. ‘I’m very pleased with your gift.’

‘What do you and Mehmu fight about, when you’re duelling at dawn?’ Karla asked.

‘The hijab,’ Blue Hijab said, sighing memories of past fights.

‘He thinks it’s too orthodox?’

‘No, Karla, he doesn’t think it’s cool enough. He’s so much into fashion. He has twelve pairs of jeans, and fights for the poor in all of them. He wants me to take the hijab off, and look as cool as the others, who come from Europe, and have long blonde hair.’

‘You do look cool,’ Karla said. ‘That’s a great blue, by the way.’

‘But not as cool as the other comrades,’ she growled.

‘The other comrades?’

Blue Hijab looked at me, then back at Karla.

‘Shantaram didn’t tell you anything about me, did he?’

‘I don’t know anything,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what colour your flag is, and I didn’t ask.’

‘You don’t have loyalty to a flag?’ Blue Hijab asked, frowning.

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘But very often to the person holding one.’