The sound of children’s voices came floating through the window, but she couldn’t see anyone. They were probably in that courtyard she and McColl had been shown. Why not go down and see? Harry Sinha hadn’t objected to her meeting his wife.
She dressed in her Russian clothes, which she had finally managed to wash and dry in the serai the previous day. The long skirt and linen blouse seemed modest enough, as did the leather sandals she’d been wearing since Kabul.
It took some time to find her way down to the courtyard because the house—houses, really—seemed like a labyrinth. The young voices rose and fell, coming from this direction and that, until she turned the handle on a large wooden gate and found herself the object of many astonished eyes.
One of the women—a girl, really; she couldn’t have been much more than fifteen—broke the spell by walking forward, smiling, and ushering Caitlin to one of the seats. “You must be our father’s guest,” she said slowly in English, before unleashing a torrent of Urdu at the other women and children.
Caitlin introduced herself.
“I am Maneka,” the girl said, bringing her hands together in a namaskar. Like all the other girls, she was wearing a white muslin shift with a colored border. Bangles carved from bone circled her forearms. “You are English?” she asked.
“American. I grew up in New York City. Have you heard of it?”
“Yes. There’s a picture in one of my books—the Statue of Liberty.”
“That’s the place. Now can you tell me the other girls’ names?”
Maneka introduced everyone in turn, starting with Katima, whom Caitlin knew was Sinha’s wife, and then presumably working her way down through the family pecking order. The three adult women smiled and brought their palms together; the seven other girls giggled and did the same. The big bright eyes in the dark brown faces made them all seem astonishingly beautiful.
Katima’s English was not very good, and after sharing a warm but halting conversation with Harry’s wife for several minutes, Caitlin was claimed by one of the girls, who shyly asked her to come and see a pair of lizards resting on a rubbery leaf on the other side of the courtyard. Then another child demanded attention, and another, until Maneka pulled rank and asked for help with her English. By the time an hour had passed, Caitlin was feeling almost part of the family.
On those rare occasions when she had some time for reflection, she felt the gentle pull of two contradictory emotions: on the one hand, the old anger at women’s position in the world—these women sequestered in their courtyard, while the men ran the world outside—and on the other, a slight hint of envy.
What was she envious of? The simple camaraderie, perhaps. And knowing your place in the world rather than having to fight for it every day. Which was no more than she should have expected—no one knew better than a Zhenotdel worker how hard it was for women to set aside those expectations learned in childhood and reinforced each day thereafter.
Watching one of the smaller girls rocking a doll to and fro in her arms, Caitlin wondered, not for the first time, whether she wanted children. Maybe later had always been the answer, but she was in her thirties now, and she didn’t want age to decide the matter for her.
Something of this must have shown in her face, because Maneka’s next question was on the button. “Children,” the girl said tentatively, waving an arm at the ones all around them. “You have?”
“No,” Caitlin said. She still could. She could turn her back on Russia, stay with Jack, hope to bear their children. Was that a life she wanted? Was that the life she wanted most?
Deep inside the heavily perfumed bush, McColl removed the kurta, dhoti and turban he had been wearing on top of his European shirt and trousers. That was the trouble with the British Empire, he thought, rolling the trouser legs down—if you didn’t want to stick out like a sore thumb, you had to swap outfits every time you changed social circles.
After stuffing the Indian clothes into a carpetbag, he emerged from the bush, lingering in its shadow until he was sure that the dark road was empty. Once convinced, he started walking. Ahead and to the left, the Delhi ridge was silhouetted against the stars; on either side of the rutted road, large, sprawling bungalows nestled beneath the trees.
He walked on, following the road around the base of a low, forested hill until he saw the familiar shape of the visitors’ bungalow. McColl had lodged there himself in 1916 and, during his reconnaissance that afternoon, had not been wholly surprised to find someone he knew in residence. The fact that it was Alex Cunningham, whom McColl had worked and often sparred with in 1915, had been something of a bonus. The other man was bright enough, but he was also one of Five’s less industrious agents.
There were no lights shining. Cunningham, McColl knew, was rather partial to a social drink, and would probably still be at the club. And, like any prudent intelligence agent, he had always insisted on the servants living out.
As McColl walked up the path, the breeze rose, stirring the branches of the tamarind trees and scenting the air with jasmine. Above the bungalow roof, a crescent moon was hanging in the eastern sky.
The front door opened to McColl’s push. He went in, down the short hall, and into a large but sparsely furnished room. In the reflected moonlight, he could make out a gramophone with a huge silver trumpet perched on a tea chest. A low table bearing a brass tray with whiskey decanter and glasses stood next to a familiar armchair. Beside it, on a chest of drawers, sat a large, ornate paraffin lamp and a box of safety matches. A writing table stood against the opposite wall, flanked by two upright chairs.
McColl poured himself a whiskey and sat down to wait, the Webley within easy reach on the writing table. As his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, the room began to look more familiar, like a photograph in a developing tray. He had spent several weeks living in this bungalow, but it felt like aeons ago.
An hour or so had passed when he heard a tonga coming up the road. The rattle of hooves slowed and stopped; a barely audible spoken exchange gave way to the sound of footsteps on the front path. McColl put down his glass and picked up the gun.
Cunningham stumbled slightly as he came through the door, and his efforts to light the paraffin lamp—burning his finger on the first match—made it clear that he’d been drinking. His success with the second augured rather better for the conversation McColl hoped was at hand.
“Evening, Alex,” he said softly.
The Five man spun around, almost too fast for his impaired sense of balance. There was nothing wrong with his brain, though: recognition of both man and gun was instant. An ironic smile flitted briefly across his face.
“Sit down,” McColl said, indicating the armchair by the low table. He stayed where he was, in the upright chair with his back to the wall, out of sight from either window.
“Bonnie Prince Charlie in the flesh,” Cunningham said distinctly. “You made it. I suppose congratulations are in order.”
“Probably,” McColl said dryly.
“Want another drink?” Cunningham asked.
“No thanks.”
“Mind if I do?”
“Not so long as you keep a clear head. I have some questions for you.”
“What makes you think I’ll give you any answers?” Cunningham asked as he poured himself a generous measure.
“I may shoot you if you don’t. I’ve got nothing to lose, as I’m sure you know.”
“True.” Cunningham took a sip of whiskey. “But since you’ve managed to get this far in one piece, why not just keep going?”
“I intend to. But first—and just between us—whose bright idea was Good Indian?”
Cunningham considered. “The idea came from here, originally. Given the Russian involvement, they thought about asking your lot for help, but came to the conclusion that Cumming wouldn’t approve. Much too old-school for this sort of caper. So they came to us in
stead.”
“And Cumming still doesn’t know?” McColl asked.
“Oh, I’m afraid he does, old boy. He was still in ignorance when you set off for Moscow, but he knows all about it now. The PM insisted he be told. I hear he kicked up a bit of a fuss at first, but, well . . .”
It was McColl’s turn to consider.
Cunningham put the thoughts into words for him. “Yes, even Lloyd George. So there’s no last court of appeal, no one you can go to. Look,” he said, easing some fake sympathy into his voice, “I can understand how you feel, but it was just bad luck that you ended up in the firing line. You know how it is. Just disappear; that’s my advice. Start again somewhere. If there’s one thing you learn in this job, it’s how to be someone you’re not, and you must know a dozen places in India where you can pick up a set of false papers.” He grunted. “And you won’t have any problems with the lingo, will you?”
McColl sighed. Not too dramatically, he hoped. “You may be right. But whose idea was it to use Brady, for God’s sake?”
“Brady’s, of course. He suggested it to us.”
“What makes anyone think he can be trusted?”
“No one does, old man.”
“Then why?”
“Let’s just say there were no other viable candidates. The theory was—is—that they’ll do it for their own ends and because they think they can fix it on us. We let them do it, then fix it on them. And we’ll have the easier job. This is our country—so to speak—and there are more of us. They’re under twenty-four-hour surveillance.”
“I still don’t like it,” McColl said, realizing how easy it was to slip back into this kind of detached risk appraisal.
“Look,” Cunningham said, with a gesture that suggested his last glass of whiskey was taking effect. “Aidan Brady may be a bastard of the first order, but he’s brought us a bona fide Bolshevik to kill Gandhi with. What more could we ask?”
So they were in Delhi, McColl thought. “I can’t believe the political situation is that bad,” he said.
“Isn’t. But it soon will be if we let the old scarecrow keep at us in the way he’s been doing. The stakes are just too high. Can you imagine where we’d be without the empire? Just a small island on the edge of Europe. Another Ireland, for Chrissake!”
McColl sighed again, more genuinely this time. “Maybe,” he said, standing and gesturing with the gun. “Come over here, will you?”
Cunningham emptied his glass and obeyed. “Turn around,” McColl said when they were both invisible from outside.
“At least I won’t feel . . .” Cunningham was saying as the gun butt came down on his head. He crumpled onto the carpet, and McColl left him there, faceup.
“God save the King,” he murmured, as he blew out the paraffin lamp.
Outside, the moon was high in the sky. He was walking down the road, still wondering where it would be best to change his clothes, when an empty tonga materialized out of a side road.
“Where to, sahib?” the driver asked. “The club?”
“The railway station,” McColl said, climbing aboard. If the IPI traced the driver, it would look like he’d followed Cunningham’s advice and taken off for points unknown.
The tonga rattled along the mostly empty roads of the British quarter. A dead city, McColl thought, an alien city. He hadn’t enjoyed his time here in 1916, and then he’d felt a lot less alienated from his fellow countrymen.
Komarov had been right, at least in that. There was no going back. And, despite what Cunningham had said, no running away either. One way or another, McColl was going to see this through.
They entered the Indian city by the Mori Gate, and McColl paid off the tonga driver at the northern entrance to the station. Relying on five-year-old memories, McColl bought tea in an empty room of a first-class restaurant, retired to the toilet to change back into the Pathan clothes, and walked brazenly out through the kitchen. He left the station via the southern entrance and walked through the Queen’s Gardens to the still-throbbing Chandni Chowk.
The contrast to the Civil Lines was hard to ignore. Nasal songs blared out of doorways; children scampered and shouted. In the distance a clashing cymbal or a reverberating gong occasionally split the night. Lights flickered like fireflies in each twisting alley; the glow thrown by oil lamps filled most open doorways. Fathers and children ate from brass trays on the doorsteps, the mothers often standing behind them and scanning the street, as if taking the chance to get out.
Another alien world, but somehow more inviting.
At Sinha’s house the servant let him in and told him the master had retired. McColl was glad—he didn’t want a barrage of questions from his friend.
Caitlin was waiting anxiously in their room, and he wasted no time in telling her what he’d found out. “Right to the top. Right to the bloody top.”
“As we expected,” she said quietly, putting her arms around his neck. “But what about you?”
“I’m a potentially dangerous loose end. If I don’t disappear myself, they’ll do it for me.”
“Oh, Jack, maybe you should.”
“We’ve been through that. If I didn’t owe it to others, I’d owe it to myself. And I know you feel the same.”
She sighed and let him go. “I do,” she agreed, walking across to the window and leaning back against the sill. “So how are we going to find them?”
He smiled for the first time that night. “I saw a sign outside a shop this afternoon.”
Soon after nine on the following morning, McColl paused in the shadow of another doorway, this one on Ballimaran Road, a few hundred yards from its junction with Chandni Chowk. The day’s heat was still building, and the light seemed preternaturally bright, turning each passing tonga’s dust into a whirl of flashing specks.
Across the street, a professional letter writer was seated at his folding desk, taking dictation from the client who sat cross-legged in front of him. Ten yards to his left, a group of young boys, the oldest no more than twelve, were sparring good-naturedly in the mouth of an alley. Between these two centers of activity, a doorway opened onto a flight of stairs, and above it hung the sign that McColl had noticed the previous day: ahmed mirza—consulting detective. The same words appeared on the larger board that fronted the balcony above, and there was movement in the windows behind.
Glancing up and down the busy street, McColl saw no sign of fellow Europeans or Indian policemen. He waited for a gap in the procession of tongas, then sauntered across the sunlit road at a suitably Asian pace and started up the stairs.
A woman kneading dough on a wooden board was sitting on the top step, and after squeezing past her, McColl found himself facing a door bearing another notification of Ahmed Mirza’s profession. He knocked, and a voice called, “Enter,” in Urdu.
The room was spacious and surprisingly cool. Like most Indian rooms, it seemed half-empty to a European, but the detective’s desk almost made up for the lack of other furniture—it was at least six feet long and more than half that wide.
There were two men present. The one behind the desk presumably greeted most of his clients Indian-style; shaking hands across it, as he and McColl discovered, was a serious test of balance. “I am Ahmed Mirza,” the man said in English. He was in his forties, McColl guessed, but looked physically fitter than most Indians of that age. His hair was cropped quite short, unlike his mustache, which seemed in serious danger of running riot. As if in recognition of this fact, the detective began stroking it back into submission the moment he had reseated himself. His clothes were European; a lightweight white suit, white shirt, and red bow tie.
“And this is my friend and colleague Dr. Din,” Mirza added, gesturing toward the other man. The doctor was older than Mirza and dressed in traditional Indian clothes. He brought his palms together and flashed a smile full of golden teeth at McColl. “You may say before this ge
ntleman anything you say to me,” Mirza added. “He is completely deaf.”
McColl sat back in the upright seat. “My name is Stuart,” he began spontaneously. “Charles Stuart. I assume that anything I say in this room will be treated with the utmost confidentiality.” He was speaking Urdu, hoping to show the detective that he wasn’t a complete beginner where India was concerned.
“Of course, Mr. Stuart,” Mirza said. “I must say, your Urdu is excellent,” he went on in English. “Which language would you prefer to use?”
“Your English is also excellent,” McColl said.
“I was in the army for eighteen years. Subahdar-major, Sixty-Sixth Punjabi Rifles.”
McColl was impressed, which was presumably the intention. “May I inquire as to why you changed careers?” he asked, thinking it a good idea to find out as much as he could about his prospective employee.
“It was time for a change,” Mirza said, not at all disconcerted by the question. “And—perhaps I should not say this; I do not wish to be political—but I had risen as far as is possible for someone like myself, and it is not a good feeling to pass down orders to brave young men knowing that those orders are not sensible.”
“The Sixty-Sixth were in Mesopotamia, yes?” McColl asked. They seemed to have settled on English as their lingua franca.
“Indeed so.”
“Then I can sympathize with your feelings.” Compared to the Mesopotamian campaign, the one on the Somme had been almost inspired.
The Indian nodded absent-mindedly, as if the memories had taken over for a moment.
“And so you became a ‘consulting detective?’”
“Yes. I’m sure you recognize the phrase.” He smiled brightly. “I read my first Holmes omnibus in Kut-al-Amara, during the siege, and it was the only book I had in the Turkish prison camp. Which turned out to be a good thing. But that is often the case, is it not? The darker the place, the easier it is to see the light.” He stroked his mustache again. “So, to business, Mr. . . . I assume Stuart is not your real name, and I assume you’re in trouble with the British authorities?”
The Dark Clouds Shining Page 34
