Kafirs
I CALLED TO PHOEBE. “What does it mean?”
“Infidels,” she shouted back.
We were struggling through the crowded train, searching after the bandit. Pushing through from car to car, calling out for help, I began to think we were the only human beings on the train. No one seemed to pay us any mind. Thievery was either too common an occurrence, or accosting a Taliban too dangerous a risk. Not a soul came to our aid. Having apparently finished his walk-through and collected his quota of tickets, the conductor had conveniently vanished. No security guards appeared. Even the army officers gambling in the dining car sucked their cigarettes and ignored us.
Reaching at last the tail of the train, we entered a first-class sleeping car lined on one side with two-berth compartments. We peered into each, sliding open every unopened door we passed. Nearly half of the cubicles were empty. The rest contained travelers stacked like corpses in their bunks, with arms and feet projecting from under crumpled ivory sheets. In one compartment, a dot-headed Indian in frayed socks lay reading an ancient Kindle with a penlight. In another, two young Chinese men brooded over a Go board littered with black and white stones.
Just as we were about to give up our search, an open door in the last compartment revealed the pilfering Pashtun. Perched on the edge of the bottom bunk, he was rifling through my duffel bag on the floor between his feet.
“Hey—what the hell!”
He glanced up at me, growled some Pashto epithet and went back to digging through my bag.
“We’re not carrying any drugs,” I said. “Nothing. No soma. No seeds. Understand?”
The man ignored me and continued his search, tossing out a pair of cargo shorts and examining the contents of my First Aid kit.
I turned to Phoebe. “Go find the conductor, will you?”
She turned to leave and came face-to-face with another black-bearded Taliban. A black turban hovered like a storm cloud on his head. He blocked the narrow corridor.
“Excuse me,” Phoebe said.
The man stood firm.
“Out of my way,” she demanded in her most muscular, masculine voice.
The man’s eyes narrowed. A smile cracked open the forest of his beard, revealing grim shards of rotted teeth.
Phoebe backed away. I saw it was more than his teeth that deterred her: at her belly the cretin poked a wedge-shaped dagger. He forced her back into the room.
I followed behind him. “Leave my friend alone. He’s got nothing to do with—”
The man swung around and pinned the dagger under my chin. I went cold with sudden fear—then hot with sudden anger. “What is it with you people and your knives?”
“Jack—”
The man’s smile tightened as he raised the dagger’s tip, lifting my chin. To avoid being cut I had to rise up on my toes. He held me there, throat stretched, trembling, completely unable to move.
“Point…taken,” I muttered.
The tip poked through my skin.
“Please, stop it!” Phoebe cried, her true voice cracking through. She turned to the beard on the bunk. “Make him stop, please.”
The man was browsing the stack of pages from Dan’s dismembered Buddha book. He barked out something in Pashto, and the dagger man lowered his knife. Another command sent him out of the room, sliding the door shut behind him.
Phoebe and I glanced at one another. “He’s bleeding,” she said to the Pashtun.
I used the back of my hand to stem it. The man continued his search.
Phoebe dug into my medical kit. She unwrapped a Band-Aid and applied it under my chin. As she did, she gave me a look that said, Get ready to take this bastard. I subtly nodded agreement, though I had no idea just how we’d take him, given his friend outside the door was standing guard with a knife.
The Pashtun had finished with the Buddha book and was leafing through Dan’s Rig Veda text. He paused when he discovered Maya’s stationery note. After scanning the dig site map directions, he glared at us, as if the note confirmed his worst suspicions.
“There was nothing there,” I told him. “The seeds have all been stolen.”
Phoebe glared back at him. “He’s been there,” she said. “He knows that.”
With a smirk he tossed the note aside and shut the Vedic text. Again he searched the duffel bag, this time extracting the “spiritual lightning bolt,” the bronze, two-sphere, Buddhist Vajra. Cryptic, occult, probably a form of idol worship, or worse, Satanism, it was further evidence, he must have assumed, of our sinful infidelity to Islam. But the object didn’t appear to be what he’d seen us take from Woolsey, so he set the thing aside and delved again into the bag.
Next he pulled out Woolsey’s Hashishin dagger. I had wrapped it in a T-shirt and buried it near the bottom. As he unwound the shirt and his eyes fell on the blade, he glanced at us again suspiciously. But the beauty of the knife provoked his admiration. No doubt we had stolen this shining crescent of Islam. He set the knife down solemnly beside him.
I exchanged a furtive glance with Phoebe: The knife might be our chance. But Phoebe’s eyes evinced a more immediate concern: The Pashtun was pulling out her bag of recent purchases.
He peered into the bag, then eyed us once again, his suspicion now shadowed with confusion. Reaching in he drew out a pair of leather pumps, a white cotton nightshirt and a black satin blouse. Then, plucking delicately, he lifted by its spaghetti strap a black-lace, demi-cup brassiere.
His baffled gaze shifted to us, then zeroed in on Phoebe.
Phoebe snatched the bra from him and stuffed it back in the bag. “Gifts for my wife,” she declared. “Unless you continue to insult your faith by stealing these as well.” She huffily re-bagged the blouse and shoes.
If I had harbored any doubts about his comprehension of English, the jihadi’s look of loathing made them vanish in a flash. He slowly rose to his feet. Standing just in front of her, he towered over Phoebe.
She lifted her gaze and gulped. “I hope you don’t exp—”
He brushed the cap off her head. Phoebe tried to strike him but he knocked her arm away. Violently, with both hands, he clawed open her shirt.
I went for the knife. Grabbing it off the bunk, I turned to drive him back—and froze.
The jihadi was standing with his back to the door, aiming a revolver at us.
Outside, the dagger man called to him. The gunman shouted back, some word or phrase in Pashto. Then he made some other comment and the man in the corridor laughed.
I looked to Phoebe. Beneath her open shirt, a wide band of stretched cloth tightly wrapped her chest.
The gunman smirked, nodding toward my dagger. “What with you people and your knifes, Kafir?”
I had no answer for him. He wagged the gun at the dagger and angrily spat a gruff command.
I glanced at Phoebe in defeat. Knife at a gunfight, nothing we could do. I set the blade back down on the bunk.
He eyed me with contempt. “She—like man,” he said. “You? Like woman.”
I stared at him in frustration, voiceless.
The jihadi took a step toward Phoebe. Aiming the revolver at her, he patted her various pockets, finding her passport, sunglasses, some cash. None of it interested him. An object in the pocket of her suit jacket intrigued him, until he discovered it was her cell phone and threw it aside.
Next he stuck the gun in my chest and started patting me down. He extracted my wallet and passport, and when he felt the lump in my right pants pocket, he backed off and gestured for me to empty it.
Out came the black jade camel.
A glimmer lit his eyes. He made some remark in Pashto and snatched the camel away. But looking it over, he grew perturbed and swung the gun between us. “What is?” he asked.
Phoebe glanced at me before giving him an answer. “It’s a chess piece,” she said. “From a game named after Tamerlane.”
He frowned, still puzzled, then peered at us again. “Why the dead man give you?”
; Phoebe shook her head. “We don’t know,” she said.
The man continued turning it over in his hand, growing increasingly upset. He jabbed the revolver at me. “You say. Why he give?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
He pressed the muzzle to my forehead. “Tell me why!” he shouted.
I clamped my eyes shut. The cold steel barrel seemed to suck the life right out of me. “Please. I told you. I don’t—”
A cry from the corridor interrupted me. Someone thumped the door.
With the muzzle still pressed to my forehead, the jihadi called to his companion. No answer came. He slowly backed away toward the door, training the gun on the two of us. Again he called to his friend. Again no answer came. He swung the pistol toward the door and slowly slid it open.
A body lay slumped on the floor. The jihadi, moving carefully, pointed his revolver through the opening.
In a flash, a hand grabbed the gun, and the door slammed shut on the jihadi’s wrist. He cried out. The door flew open.
A portly, middle-aged, dark-skinned Indian now held the pistol and aimed it at the Pashtun. The red smudge of a Hindu tilak faintly marked his brow. I recognized the man as the fellow down the hall who’d been reading alone in his compartment. He was standing shoeless in frayed, floppy socks. He had a bald pate and multiple chins, bulbous eyes in an impish face, with a grin baring nicotine-stained incisors.
The jihadi backed away, still clutching the jade camel.
In a calm, high voice, the Indian spoke reassuringly to him, holding out his hand for the stolen merchandise while leveling the revolver at the Pashtun’s heart. I assumed the language was Pashto, for the jihadi had no problem understanding what he said, and in fact tried to argue with him, pointing a finger at us.
The Indian wasn’t buying. He continued to address him in his high, lilting voice, every other word accented with a cheery, upward swing, until finally, after much back and forth, the Pashtun acquiesced. He handed over the chess piece, and the Indian passed it back to us.
I thought that would be the end of it. But the Hindu wasn’t done.
He ordered the jihadi out of the compartment and prodded him toward the back of the train. Stepping over the body of his fallen companion, Phoebe and I followed at their heels. Behind us, passengers withdrew into their quarters. The two Chinese men in the next compartment quietly shut their door.
The Indian forced the Pashtun to open the rear hatch.
A gust blew in, and the clatter of the wheels on the rails made a roar. Out in the darkness, the pale, stubbly farm fields swiftly receded, while the moon hung unmoving in the sky. The Indian, pointing the gun at the Pashtun, ordered the jihadi to jump.
Phoebe called out, “Please, don’t!”
“I’m not sure about a bullet,” the Indian said. “But he’ll survive the jump just fine.”
The man pleaded with him in Pashto. The Indian responded with a bobble-head shrug and targeted the pistol at his crotch.
With that, the jihadi made his exit. We watched him tumble headlong down the slope to the side, a ghostly white pinwheel of pajama limbs.
The Indian brushed past us, but not without noticing the look on our faces. “Much the kindest thing to do, I assure you.” Crouching beside the man on the floor, he lightly slapped his face. “Wake up!” he said. “Wake up!”
Blood brimmed the Pashtun’s nostrils. His eyes remained a blank.
“You think he’s dead?” I asked.
“Good heavens, no,” the Indian said. “I merely broke his nose.” Taking hold of the Pashtun’s ankles, he dragged him toward the hatch. “We don’t need to kill the man, just get him off the train.”
Phoebe looked appalled. “Shouldn’t we wait for the police?”
The Indian paused to catch his breath. “Trust me,” he said in his high-pitched voice. “I am quite familiar with the Uzbek police. Far better we dispatch of him ourselves.” Again he started hauling.
Phoebe and I looked at each other. Long way to Samarkand—why wait until he wakes?
“I beg your pardon, would you be so kind?” Standing at the doorway, the Hindu needed help.
I looked again at Phoebe.
“We really are kafirs,” she said.
All three together, we jettisoned the jihadi.
64.
Delhi Man
THE INDIAN was actually of Nepalese descent. His name was Anand Pandava. Staring at the faint red tilak on his brow, I remembered that I’d seen him at the university that morning. “You’re the guy who directed me to Baghestani’s office!”
He was lifting fried dumplings from a brown paper bag and distributing them individually to our plates. “I hope you like the samsa,” he said, ignoring my remark. “Lacks the spices of our Indian samosa, but exhibits some remarkable flavors of its own.”
The Uzbek version looked close enough to Maya’s to remind me that I’d thrown them up in that toilet stall in Rome.
Anand noticed the expression on my face. “Perhaps it’s the scent that deters you,” he said. “The nose is always on guard with unfamiliar grub.”
“In my case,” I said, “the grub’s all too familiar.” I downed another swallow of Shiraz.
The truth was, I still felt much too shaken up to eat. Just half an hour earlier I’d had a dagger at my throat. Like Phoebe, who seemed hyper, I was gulping down the wine.
“I’ll take his samsa,” Phoebe said, directing them to her plate. She had changed unbound into her black silk blouse and heels and was now engaged in a devastating impression of a woman. “Forgive me, but I’m starving and I absolutely love these little devils.”
Anand forked over the dumplings, looking very pleased. “Love is a word quite properly applied to your delight.”
His high, lilting accent tickled Phoebe. “Spoken like a true gourmand, Anand.” The unintended rhyme—or the wine—made her giggle. She raised her glass. “To love and delight!”
The three of us happily clinked.
Our host had picked up the food and wine before leaving the station in Kagan. It was more than enough to feed us all, which made me suspect that Anand Pandava must have planned our little picnic all along.
Guffaws erupted at a table behind us—the disheveled army officers merrily gambling away their wages. Our booth in the smoke-filled dining car seemed set amid every race and tribe in Asia: Uzbeks, Turkmen, Mongols, Tajiks, Afghans, Chinese, Koreans. Most were working-age men and migrants—farmers, pickers, laborers, traders—but several elderly Chinese women shuffled mahjong tiles, a clique of drunken college students loitered by the door, and packs of shrieking children ran repeatedly down the aisle. At the far end of the car, a duet of male peasants plucked some sort of long-necked lutes. Their song was consumed by the babble. Even we had to shout to be heard.
“On the other hand,” Anand was saying, “I much prefer their garlic plov to our saffron pilao.” He began dishing out the rice concoction. “This was stewed with the mutton for several hours, I was told.”
I considered eating it despite my lack of appetite.
Phoebe saw my hesitation. “It’s just a form of pilaf, Jack. Pilaf probably originated here. Alexander ate it when he conquered Bactria.”
Anand piped in: “And betrothed himself to Roxana, the Bactrian princess.”
“By all means then, let’s have it,” I said. The wine had begun to take.
Anand filled my plate. “The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Phoebe said. She helped herself to the wine. “You could say the same thing about this.”
The two of them fell into a discussion of Shiraz.
I pecked at the plov and thought about Anand. He must have picked the door lock to Baghestani’s office: he was leaving and the door stood ajar when I arrived. I wondered if he’d followed me from that point on—Baghestani’s funeral, Woolsey’s apartment, the travel agent, the minaret, the killing, the camel. He pr
obably saw the Taliban were tailing me as well. On the train, he had taken the compartment right beside theirs, then waited until the very last second to finally intervene.
At the moment, he and Phoebe were debating the quality of viticulture in Central Asia following the departure of the Soviets.
I interrupted. “Anand? Excuse me, but… Who is it you work for?”
He chased down his mutton with a mouthful of wine and dabbed his double chin. “I am a humble servant of the government of India.”
“What department?” Phoebe asked.
“Research and Analysis,” he said.
“Good one,” I said. “Tell me: What you just did to the jihadi—was that research or analysis?”
“Jack—”
“What happened was unfortunate, but necessary,” he said.
“And probably saved my life, which I do appreciate. So why not just tell us who you really work—”
Phoebe cut in. “He works for the RAW, Jack—the Research and Analysis Wing. India’s version of the CIA.”
“Oh,” I said. “I see.”
Phoebe asked, “Did you know Maya Ramanujan? She came to our dig site in Turkmenistan. Jack said she was killed in Rome.”
Anand leveled a sober gaze. “Maya’s death was most unfortunate. And quite unnecessary.” He looked at me. “A tragic lack of coordination between your country’s intelligence service and mine.”
“So the flower peddler was CIA,” I said. “Have you been sent to avenge Maya?”
“My efforts are in counter-terrorism and the collection of intelligence. Vengeance, I have found, is extremely unproductive.”
“Are you looking for my brother?”
“I am looking for the lotus plant, a legacy of my country.”
“Is that why you broke into Baghestani’s office?”
He sipped his wine. “I wonder if you would be so kind as to allow me a look at the chess piece in your pocket.”
I glanced at Phoebe. She shrugged.
“Of course,” I said, retrieving it.
He turned the piece in his hand, curious.
“Are you familiar with Tamerlane chess?” Phoebe asked.
“A bit,” he said. He set the piece down on the table. “If I remember correctly, the camel moves two spaces diagonally and two spaces straight.”
The Assassin Lotus Page 27
