The Dark Clouds Shining

by David Downing

  “What makes you think so?” McColl asked, thinking he already knew the answer. What other reason would a European have for visiting an Indian private detective?

  “There is a faint line around your head dividing two areas of skin, one slightly darker than the other. Since the exact curvature of this line is unique to those wearing Afghan turbans, I must assume that you have been disguising yourself as a tribesman, and since you have come to me for help, it seems unlikely that you’ve been dressing that way in the service of the king-emperor.”

  McColl smiled. “I’m impressed,” he said. “But I’m afraid I have only a straightforward task for you. I want you to find some people for me.”

  Mirza picked up his pen and pulled a sheet of paper onto his blotting pad, looking slightly disappointed. “Very well. Who are they?”

  “Three men. An American named Aidan Brady, a Russian named Sergei Piatakov, an Indian—a Bengali—named Durga Chatterji. They are probably staying somewhere together—the American and Russian almost certainly so.”

  “A group like that should not be hard to find in Delhi,” Mirza suggested.

  “They will not be making themselves obvious. They’ll probably be staying in a private house and rarely, if ever, going out.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I would rather not say.”

  “Ah. But you are certain they are here in Delhi?” The detective seemed more interested now.

  “Yes.”

  “Very well. Can you give me descriptions?”

  McColl did so, relying on memory for Brady, Caitlin’s account for Piatakov, and the photograph that Cumming had shown him for Chatterji. Mirza wrote it all down in bright blue ink, his British-made pen scratching at the rough Indian paper.

  “I very much doubt they’ll be staying in the Civil Lines,” McColl added. “They’ll be avoiding any contact with the British authorities.”

  Mirza looked even more interested. “Curiouser and curiouser. But that will make my job easier,” he went on. “White faces stand out anywhere else.” He put his pen down.

  “May I ask how you intend to proceed?” McColl asked, hoping he wasn’t breaking some arcane rule of etiquette. “Speed is important, I’m afraid.”

  “Of course. Did you happen to notice a group of boys outside?”

  McColl nodded.

  “They are my ‘Baker Street Irregulars,’” he said with a wide smile. “Or ‘Ballimaran Road Irregulars’ might be more correct. They will scour the city for your friends. One day, perhaps, two days at most. If these men are still in Delhi, the boys will find them.”

  “Good. When they do, I want the men watched. I want to know who comes to see them, where they go, and whom they meet if they do go out. Can you manage all that?”

  “Of course.”

  “Excellent.” McColl removed a tattered wallet from his pocket. “Now, what are your fees?”

  “We can settle accounts when the case is concluded.”

  McColl demurred. “I would feel happier if you accepted a deposit. As you can see, I’m not wearing a turban today and rather more visible than I want to be.”

  Mirza grinned at him. “Very well. My rates are fifteen rupees a day.”

  McColl counted out three ten-rupee notes from the money Sinha had loaned him. “Take this for now,” he said, passing it across. “And you will need to know where I am staying,” he added with only the faintest of misgivings. If he wanted Mirza to do the job, he had to trust him that much.

  “I was about to ask that very thing,” Mirza told him.

  McColl gave him Sinha’s address, which caused the detective to raise an eyebrow. He said nothing, though.

  “When you leave a message, leave it for Mr. Stuart,” McColl said.

  “That is most clear.”

  McColl got up. “Thank you,” he said. “I hope to hear from you soon.” He turned to wish Dr. Din farewell, but this Holmes’s Watson was fast asleep.

  The Indian Mrs. Hudson was still vigorously kneading her dough on the staircase. Komarov would have been more than a little amused, McColl thought as he went down the stairs.

  “You checked with the railway authorities?” Colonel Fitzwilliam asked Nigel Morley.

  As far as Alex Cunningham could tell, the IPI chief hadn’t moved since the previous day. Fitzwilliam was sitting in the same chair, wearing the same clothes, and seemed to be halfway through the same drink. His copy of the Eastern Mail, however, though lying in much the same position, boasted a different front page. And his mood was undoubtedly darker.

  “Yes, sir,” Morley replied, glancing at Cunningham for corroboration. Cunningham was more concerned with the throbbing headache that a surfeit of port and the Webley butt had left him with.

  “And?” the colonel asked with exaggerated indifference.

  “Nothing. Only seven Europeans bought tickets at the booking office in the last twenty-four hours, and they’ve all been accounted for. If he’s traveling in native disguise, then no one noticed.”

  “They wouldn’t,” Cunningham said, stirring himself. “McColl spent three months in Afghanistan and Turkestan in 1916 without getting caught. He knows the languages, knows the area, knows how to blend in. He’s very tanned. And there are so many different communities in Delhi that anyone looking at him twice would assume he came from one of the others. If he’s gone, there won’t be any traces.”

  “But has he?” the colonel wondered out loud. He turned his gaze from the garden to Cunningham. “Do you think he has?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What if he hasn’t?” the colonel insisted. “You talked to him. Is he likely to do anything with his knowledge? I mean, is he the sort of chap to take things personally?”

  Things like your ordering his execution, Cunningham thought sourly. “Not in the way you mean,” he said, thinking back over the conversation. “He seemed more curious than anything else, and there weren’t any threats. But he was a bit of an Indian lover back in 1915; I remember how impressed he was by Bhattacharyya and Jatin Mukherjee. He always did his job, though—I have to give him that.” He shrugged. “People do change.”

  Fitzwilliam shook his head. “Rarely in my experience. Could he stick his oar in if he wanted to?”

  “He’d have to find them first.”

  The colonel grunted, apparently in agreement.

  “There’s no way he could know about Sayid Hassan’s house,” Morley added. “That business happened after he went back to England.”

  “Are we going to tell the Good Indian team?” Cunningham asked Fitzwilliam.

  “Good Lord, no. What would be the point?” The colonel sighed and closed his eyes. “I’ll be glad when this business is over.”

  Snapshots

  Having set the search underway, McColl and Caitlin spent almost all of the following forty-eight hours together in their room. They reminisced and read, ate leisurely meals, and took naps in the fearsome heat, and tried not to let their fears for the next few days drown out everything else.

  It was midway through the second morning when a rap on their door announced the head servant, bearing a sheet of the consulting detective’s personal stationery. Mirza’s message was brief and to the point: “Success. Rendezvous, Central Post Office, Noon.” McColl passed it to Caitlin, who read it and took a deep breath. He could only guess how hard this was going to be for her.

  “I don’t suppose it would be a good idea for me to come,” she said.

  “No, it wouldn’t,” he agreed, looking at his watch. He had plenty of time to get into costume and walk to the post office.

  She came across to him, and he thought she was going to give him an argument, but she simply held him close for a minute or so. “I suppose you want me to wind your turban?” she said playfully, releasing him.

  “If you would be so kind.”

>   An hour and a half or so later he was climbing aboard Mirza’s tonga.

  “An excellent disguise,” the detective said, studying McColl’s outfit with interest. Mirza was also dressed in Indian clothes—a simple white shirt and dhoti.

  “You have found them?” McColl asked.

  “Of course. Did I not announce ‘success’ in my message? We are going there now.”

  “How far is it?”

  “A mile? Perhaps a little more. They are staying in the home of one Sayid Hassan. He is not there, but it was arranged with him before he went away. No one seems to know where he has gone, but”—Mirza looked at McColl—“perhaps he is putting distance between himself and something particularly unsavory?”

  “I don’t know,” McColl said, somewhat disingenuously.

  The tonga rattled south down Faiz Bazaar, driven by a young boy whom McColl thought he recognized from the “Ballimaran Road Irregulars.” Did Mirza picture himself in a London hansom hurrying toward some leafy suburban scene of derring-do? McColl hadn’t read a Holmes story since before the war, but he remembered that several had Indian roots. Monkeys and mutiny treasure, or something along those lines.

  After about five minutes, the Delhi Gate loomed ahead, but rather than pass through it, the tonga took a sharp turn to the right, heading west along the inside of the still-impressive city wall. A few minutes later the boy pulled the pony to a halt beside a semiderelict flight of steps.

  Three of Mirza’s “irregulars” were sitting on the bottom tread.

  The eldest reported to Mirza. The three men staying in Sayid Hassan’s house had been out for most of the morning and had only just returned. The two white men had simply driven around the city, up Faiz Bazaar and Elgin Road, along Chandni Chowk, and back through the Lal Kuan and Sitaram Bazaars. The Bengali had left the tonga in Chandni Chowk, walked to a house in a nearby street, and rented two rooms for a week, saying he and two friends would move in on the following day.

  Mirza looked inquiringly at McColl, as if expecting an explanation.

  “Where is Sayid Hassan’s house?” McColl asked.

  “You will see it. Come.” Mirza turned and led the way up the crumbling steps. “Look out for snakes,” he said over his shoulder.

  As they neared the top of the flight, Mirza advised that they should both keep low, and the two of them made their way half-crouched along a short stretch of passable rampart to the protruding remains of a guard tower. Here another of the detective’s “irregulars” was sitting and dozing with his back to the wall, a pair of British army binoculars reposing in his lap.

  Mirza gave him an affectionate cuff. “The house is straight ahead, about two hundred yards away,” he told McColl. He pointed to a large gap in the brickwork and passed him the binoculars. “Don’t push them too far forward, or the light will reflect on the glass.”

  McColl took his first look with the naked eye. Sayid Hassan’s house looked like a small estate, with several buildings set within spacious grounds alongside the old Circular Road. A magnificent banyan stood on the eastern edge of the gardens, and a man was sitting in its shadow.

  McColl raised the binoculars and brought the figure into focus. A white face, Slavic and handsome, slightly cadaverous. Sergei Piatakov.

  Gandhi’s would-be assassin. Caitlin’s husband and lover. According to her, yet another victim of the war.

  Weren’t they all?

  A pair of legs walked into view beneath the canopy of leaves. And then the familiar figure, face, and shock of hair. Aidan Brady. Laughing about something.

  McColl wondered what he would have done with a decent rifle.

  “That is them?” Mirza whispered in his ear.

  “Oh yes,” McColl said. He lowered the binoculars and edged away from the gap. “Let’s go back down.”

  Getting down the broken steps was harder than getting up.

  “You can keep watching?” McColl asked when they finally reached the bottom.

  “Of course. As long as you wish it.”

  “It won’t be for long.” One way or the other, he thought, climbing back aboard the tonga. They turned back toward the city center close by the Turkman Gate, and passed through a succession of unusually lifeless bazaars. McColl was puzzled. “It’s not Sunday, is it?” he asked.

  “No . . . Ah.” Mirza realized what was puzzling his companion. “A hartal—a shop owner’s strike—has been called by Gandhi’s supporters,” he explained. “Many are closed. Many Hindu shops, in any case; the Muslims are not so keen.”

  “I see.”

  “Gandhi will be here himself in a few days,” Mirza added.

  “What’s your opinion of him?” McColl asked the detective.

  Mirza shrugged. “An unusual man, certainly. Half saint, half Artful Dodger. A rare combination. But I will offer you a prediction, my friend. One day India will be ruled by Indians—perhaps better, perhaps worse—and Mohandas Gandhi will probably hasten that day. But in the end his only legacy will be a faint whiff of guilt hanging over future generations. The time for spinning wheels is past.”

  It was late in the afternoon, the shadows lengthening almost visibly, but even in the shade, the heat was still intense and, to Piatakov’s taste, unpleasantly humid. He would have been cooler indoors, sitting beneath the efficiently whirring fans, but over their five-day stay, Piatakov had grown to love the views at this particular time of day. There was something quite magical about the mix of light and color: the dark palms framing the distant silver river, the towers and domes of the city slowly catching fire in the brilliant sunset. Delhi seemed to glow with inner light, as if its walls were hung with a million burnished icons.

  Piatakov smiled ruefully at the image. He felt at peace with himself, more so as the day grew nearer. It was funny how people took to such situations differently: Chatterji was like a spring coiled tighter and tighter; Brady had become relaxed to the point of avuncularity. Their two reactions seemed symbiotic, as if each had taken half of the other’s personality.

  Piatakov could hear them now, inside the house, talking in English. If they survived the next few days, he could imagine them going off somewhere as partners. Well, good luck to them—he had no idea what he would do. He had, he realized, not even given his possible future a moment’s thought. Returning home was out of the question and would remain so until true revolutionaries seized back control of the party. Which could happen only with help from abroad—a new revolutionary wave to lift their stranded Russian boat. It was why they were here in India.

  That morning they’d taken a rickshaw into the city for a look at the killing ground. Driving down Chandni Chowk, he’d gone through it all in his imagination: the seething crowds, the bands playing, the people hanging from windows; the squeezing of the triggers, the cracks, the wailing panic. The two of them hurtling down a flight of steps and onto the flat roof in full view of the watching crowds. White men with guns, the snapshot of guilt.

  And then with any luck they would be gone, into the British cantonment, where their faces wouldn’t stand out, and they’d be no more at risk than thousands of other white men caught in the chaos of a broken empire.

  Piatakov smiled to himself in the gloom. It was a wonderful plan. He slapped at and missed a mosquito on his forearm. It was time to go back in. The sun was gone, the sky rushing through the spectrum as if each color were clamoring to replace its predecessor, fearful that darkness would come before they all had time to shine.

  Caitlin sat on the edge of the bed while McColl went over what he had seen. His portrait of Sergei alone in a garden almost made her cry, but knowing how he would misread them, she managed to keep the tears in.

  “And now all we have to decide is what we intend to do,” he concluded wryly.

  “I’ve been thinking about that while you’ve been out,” she said. “It’s simple really.”

  He
gave her a doubtful look. “Go on.”

  “Your government wants Gandhi dead and Sergei and Brady to take the blame. I expect they have some plan for twisting things around the other way. But your people can’t afford the connection to be exposed, can they? If we can find a way to expose it, then the whole thing falls to pieces.”

  “Yes,” he said, in a tone that suggested she’d merely stated the obvious. “The problem is how.”

  “All we need is a good modern camera. And to get, say, Cunningham and Brady to the same spot at the same time.”

  That got him thinking. “It would have to be Sergei. He’s the Russian Bolshevik.”

  She realized he was right. “I suppose it would,” she concurred reluctantly.

  “But they’re not going to agree to pose for a group photograph,” he continued, as much to himself as to her.

  “No, Jack,” she said, surprised at him for being so slow. “We trick them. You ask Cunningham to meet you. And you fake a message from Cunningham to Sergei asking him to the same place.”

  He shook his head. “Not quite. The first part would work, but not the second. We don’t know how they’ve agreed to communicate with each other in an emergency, and if we get it wrong, which we probably would, Brady will smell a rat.” He looked at her. “The note must come from you.”

  “Oh . . .” She stood and went to the window, angrily brushing away an unexpected tear. “You’re right,” she almost whispered, still looking the other way.

  “If it’s too hard, we’ll think of something else,” he said, walking across and putting an arm around her shoulders.

  She was grateful for the offer, but knew this was something she had to do. She gently untangled herself. “Once we have the photograph, what do we do with it?”

  “We send a copy to Cunningham and friends, I assume. It’s your plan, my love.”

  She made a sweeping gesture with her hand, as if brushing aside the endearment. “And Sergei and Brady? What will your people do with them once they know the plan won’t work?”