Warrior Knight

by Aarti V Raman

  “You know that. I know that.”

  “I am not putting her in any danger, Harold,” Krivi said evenly. “I will pull out of any mission before I hurt her for a second.”

  “You already hurt her, Krivi. You accused her of being a terrorist’s sister. And now she has lost the closest thing she has to a family. How the hell do you think she is feeling?”

  “The FRTs are not going to question her. She has nothing to do with this anymore. My report, hell, your report, cleared her,” he ended, intractable on this one thing.

  He knew, god, he knew, he had hurt her. But he wasn’t going to compound his considerable litany of sins by dragging her down to the depths of hell with him.

  No, he was going to make sure she was all right, really all right, and then he was going to stash her someplace so deep no one could find her.

  Then he was going to hunt that thing down.

  “Krivi.”

  “No, Harold, you don’t understand. I won’t be responsible for my actions if something happens to her. Get that?”

  Now it was Harold’s turn to think.

  “Give me a week’s time,” Krivi continued, planning, thinking, sifting through the details. “By then, you should have your first-person witness accounts. Ballistics and forensics should have come through with initial reports. And the bodies…” He trailed off, swallowing against a constriction in his throat.

  “We can make funeral arrangements for them, Harold. Get all these details sorted. I will keep her someplace safe, and then I will come. I will come in.”

  “Krivi—"

  “No arguments on this, Harold. You want me to put my fate on the line, I will. Of course, I will. But I have to ensure her safety first.”

  Harold sighed. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “And, while you’re at it, get me all the data we have on him. Every last single thing. I don’t care how untrue, fragmented or unconnected it is. Jobs, pulls, anything. Known, suspected and alleged associates, suppliers, clients, and scouts. Get me everything you can manage. I think even someone as lowly as you on the pecking order can manage that.”

  “Yes, boss.” Harold’s dry answer belied the gravity of the situation.

  “Yes, boss,” Krivi shot back. He snapped the phone shut, fury rising inside him like a blazing sun.

  He looked out and saw a black, ghostly outline against the toilet door.

  Ziya.

  ~~~~~~~

  “Was that your boss on the phone?”

  He stood up in a hurry, shoving the phone in the waist band of his jeans.

  “What are you doing up, Ziya? Go back to bed.”

  She didn’t move, even when he took her arm and tried to lead her back there himself.

  “Was that your boss? The one you reported to? The one who asked you to find out if I was really a terrorist’s sister?”

  Ziya asked the questions as if they weren’t about her at all. As if he was a stranger, and she was one, and the questions were about someone else, totally unrelated to them.

  “Ziya—"

  “Answer me, Krivi.”

  He ran a hand through his disheveled hair.

  “Yeah,” he admitted. “That’s my boss. Harold.”

  “Does he know who did this?”

  He didn’t answer, just grabbed her arm hard and led her back to the bed. She sat down, unresisting, but her flinty eyes were stone-hard in the dim light coming in through the window.

  She didn’t look devastated, he thought inanely. She looked like a warrior queen about to go into battle.

  “Does he know who did it, Krivi? Does he?”

  “Ziya, I don’t think—"

  “I saw the most horrible, heinous thing I could possibly see in my entire life, Krivi,” she cut in, imperiously. “You don’t get to think. You get to talk. Because you know things, I know that.”

  He was silent for a long, charged second. “Yes. They might have an idea who it might be.”

  Ziya closed her eyes, her lovely face fragile in its purity.

  “Who is it? Which organization claimed credit?”

  “No one’s claimed credit. No one’s going to. They are calling it a random act of senseless violence.”

  “Random act of…” Her voice broke. Then she straightened her spine, opened her eyes and nailed him with a certain glare. “But it’s neither random nor senseless, is it?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Is it, Krivi? That bomb was meant for you. For you and maybe me.”

  “Not you, Ziya,” he denied instantly, going down on his haunches and clasping her cold hands between his own.

  They were so fragile too. Disturbingly fragile. How could someone want to hurt something this fragile?

  “You are not involved in this at all, Ziya. And you’re not going to be. Not ever.”

  His quiet words had the conviction of a solemn vow.

  She tilted her head and gave him a look full of bottomless grief. But not one tear slipped out.

  That look grabbed at his already open heart and jabbed hooks there. That look stayed when nothing should have.

  ~~~~~

  “They took Noor, Krivi. They took all I had left in the world. There isn’t anything left of her.”

  Ziya looked down blindly at their clasped hands, one so brown and firm, supportive. Her own, so soft and feminine.

  She thought of the last time Noor had hugged her.

  When she had been languishing in a bathtub, thinking about how unfair life was.

  Oh, how wrong she had been. How violently wrong she had been.

  Life wasn’t unfair.

  Life was merciless.

  “There isn’t anything left for me but to go and make the…the…demon responsible for doing this pay with his life. For taking the best person I know out of my life. Noor and Sam they were…they were…”

  Ziya choked. As a hot ball of tears and grief threatened to rise out of her like lava, spewing all the hurt and grief and anger out until nothing would be left.

  She couldn’t let that happen. She needed the hurt, the anger. She needed the cold purpose of revenge.

  So Ziya opened her eyes, those dry, burning, grief-filled eyes and said, as calmly as she could through a convulsing throat.

  “I am going to help you hunt the animal that destroyed my life. And if you don’t let me help you, I will talk to your boss. I’m betting he will be willing to help me all he can. If it’s the last thing I do I want to kill that monster.”

  Twenty-Six

  Ziya didn’t know how she got through the next couple of days.

  Two days after the explosion, Krivi hailed a cab and took her to the Saiyyed residence, which looked devastated, desolate. Death lived in the Victorian at Grosvenor Square and she couldn’t process the disparity of a life in which she was alive and Noor…Sam… But, she straightened her shoulders and walked on in, through the gate, with Krivi trailing her, watchful as ever.

  Ziya went into a house that still had party decorations hung on walls and ceilings. A white satin runner ran through the stairs, in accordance with what Noor had wanted.

  Krivi followed her, a silent but solid presence who held her together, held her whole as she encountered Noor’s mum, Aliyah. Her dad was locked in Noor’s room, and Sam’s family was all gathered in the dining room. Identical expressions of inconsolable grief on their faces.

  Aliyah just held Ziya tightly as tears poured down her face. Relentless, uncontrolled, ugly.

  No one spoke a word, because there wasn’t anything to say.

  No one knew what to say.

  Ziya went upstairs to her room to collect her clothes and walked out half an hour later, because there was nothing she could say to these people that could make anything better.

  And the things she wanted to say to them, it about vengeance and making someone bleed for destroying their world and they wouldn’t understand that either.

  They just wanted Noor and Sam back.

  And there was no br
inging them back.

  ~~~~~~

  Krivi spoke with Sam’s father, an ex-professor from Trinity and told him that the funeral arrangements would be arranged for them, and paid for by the government. The bodies…what remained of them… would be available to them inside of a week.

  Their burial plots had been chosen, in a quaint little place on the outskirts of the city, again, already paid for.

  He let them live with the illusion that it had just been a terrible accident of fate that had killed Noor and Sam. Not the vindictive mania of an international psychopathic terrorist.

  He hadn’t wanted to see the unbridled hates in their grief-stricken eyes when they came to know that their beloved children were dead because of him. Because he was responsible for bringing that ugliness and horror into their lives.

  And throughout, he was aware of Ziya.

  Moving upstairs in her room, packing up whatever it was that she needed to get debriefed by the First Response Team and then to go back to Kashmir.

  No one had said anything because right now they didn’t care about the living.

  He wasn’t sure that sometimes it was possible to care about the living when there was so much death around.

  They cabbed it back to the motel in Manchester where Ziya spent another sleepless night, lying rigid on the uncomfortable bed, trying to not sleep, not breathe if she could because everything hurt.

  Everything.

  The next day, Krivi reluctantly let her meet Harold Wozniacki, who had finagled his way into the FRT investigation.

  ~~~~~~~

  Ziya’s first impression of Harold was that of an average man who could blend in anywhere, because of his nondescript features. He had gray hair, a pleasant face and unremarkable blue eyes. He wore no jewelry save a wedding band that had seen better days and a watch that was most certainly not fancy.

  His clothes were cotton worsted, a decent suit, again nothing flashy or extravagant. His shirt was white cotton and his tie was blue with muted red stripes.

  A regular paper-pusher type.

  ~~~~~~~

  They met at a diner on the Manchester motorway, because Harold did not want to bring Ziya in so quickly, without making certain he knew the entire story first.

  Besides, he was genuinely curious to meet the woman who Krivi Iyer put before the mission that was his life’s dedication.

  He too wasn’t disappointed.

  She was about average size and, dressed in department store clothes bought recently, was a Pashmina shawl with the word Goon embroidered on the edges in Devanagari script. Her hair, though, was very conspicuous, and she had a very lovely, if blank face, but that he attributed to the stress of recent events.

  It was her eyes that made him reassess her.

  They were gunmetal gray and filled with the reckless determination of the very lost.

  “Krivi.” He sat down, facing the door.

  From past experience, he knew that the man sitting opposite him would never leave his back turned for a second. Not now, when he had this lovely, damaged woman to protect.

  “Harold.”

  “Ziya Maarten.” Ziya held her hand out and Harold shook it, faintly surprised at the strength of the grip. “I am going to help you get the murdering bastard,” she announced, as she took her hand back.

  To his credit, Harold didn’t blink so much as an eyelash at the cool announcement. He smiled in an avuncular fashion at her and said, “Would you like some coffee, some breakfast, love? You look a bit peaked.”

  “I don’t want to eat,” Ziya answered. “I want information. And you’re going to give it to me, Mr. Wozniacki.”

  Harold shook his head.

  “You told her my full name?”

  Krivi didn’t answer him. But he did smile at the waitress who came to take their orders and ordered two of the day’s special and one coffee and one green tea.

  The waitress smiled back perfunctorily, his charm wasted on her hardened attitude.

  ~~~~~~

  Ziya wanted to smile too at the little byplay but she was busy trying to get a read on Harold Wozniacki, who did not look like anyone’s idea of a spymaster. Except, Krivi had assured her that he was. The best of the very best.

  Harold smiled at the waitress when she bought their orders and Ziya tapped her fingers impatiently on the cheap Formica tabletop. She waited, her eyes cool and determined as Harold doctored his coffee, cradled the mug in his gloved hands and took that first delicious sip.

  Just the thought of food had her stomach pitching uneasily. As if her insides wanted to come out, intestine and muscles and tendons in one ugly, congealed mass.

  She was aware of the fact that she hadn’t eaten anything in a very long time. Like, she was aware of the fact that two of the best people on earth didn’t walk anymore.

  “Mr. Wozniacki,” she began again, in a business-like tone. Having figured out that he may have been a spy but he was a suit too. Suits liked formality. And were skilled at negotiation.

  Not like Krivi. Who shot first and asked questions later.

  “I meant what I said, Mr. Wozniacki. I would like to volunteer my services to catch the terrorist who has killed…killed…” Ziya took a deep breath and made herself say the words out loud.

  Because, if she said them out loud, they would become real. Never to be taken back again and she would have to start dealing with the disastrous aftermath of it.

  “Noor Saiyyed and Major Sameth Qureshi.”

  Harold laid a sympathetic hand over her drumming fingers.

  “Ms. Maarten, I understand what you’re going through…”

  “Have you ever lost your family, Mr. Wozniacki?” She turned to Krivi. “He has. He told me he has. So he knows what I am talking about. He knows how it’s like to not sleep, not eat and not be able to just breathe because you can’t deal.” Ziya took another deep breath, and continued dispassionately. “I am willing to join your organization in whatever capacity I can, provided that I am part of the manhunt you lay for The Woodchucker.”

  “Pecker,” Krivi put in absently.

  “Pecker.” She waved a hand imperiously, her lovely face set in cold, harsh lines. Lines that hadn’t been there a week ago.

  “Are you really willing to let someone who could be a very valuable asset go, Mr. Wozniacki?”

  “Aah. Food,” he said, eying the waitress behind Ziya. The waitress served them all, efficiently, quickly and left.

  Ziya controlled her temper with effort, because she knew that’s exactly what he wanted. Passion. Anger. Grief.

  And she was unwilling to give anyone any of that.

  She didn’t deserve to grieve till this was all over and done with. She couldn’t. Just couldn’t. Not till the acid and the shrapnel were cut out, bled out. Or she died trying.

  Harold cut into his bangers and mash and forked in a bite before he looked at Krivi who was cutting a mound of pancakes into tiny, bite-sized pieces.

  Then he watched as the other man pushed the plate before the woman and commanded, “Eat.”

  Ziya shook her head.

  He took a fork, speared a bite in and held it to her mouth.

  “Eat,” he said.

  ~~~~~~

  Ziya took the fork and shoveled the food in. It tasted like ashes and grief. She swallowed, even though spitting it out would have been the better course of action. She took another bite in, then another, poured some syrup over the pieces and ate half the pancakes.

  Then she pushed the plate away and declared, “You know I am right, Mr. Wozniacki.”

  “There are proper channels and protocol to be followed, Ms. Maarten,” he said slowly. “I do sympathize with you and you have no idea how sorry I am that you and yours had to become involved in this affair at all. Collateral damage is…” He sighed heavily, took a sip of coffee gone cold.

  “Collateral damage. And I can’t …I won’t add to it by allowing you to become part of something this dangerous.” Harold shook his head. “I am sorry. I just
cannot, in all good conscience give you any help, except to assure you that we will hunt the motherfucker down and burn him out. Pardon my language.”

  There was a distinct, savage gleam to his calm, blue eyes that hadn’t been there a second ago.

  The cultured side of her brain, protested against the use of that ugly profanity, but she knew there was no curse word powerful enough for the monster that had destroyed Noor and Sam.

  None.

  “Your word’s not good enough.” She shook her head too, the red highlights gleaming in the harsh lights of the diner. She shrugged, unconcerned. “It’s all right. I will just post a video on YouTube asking for information about The Woodpecker. On Facebook. Twitter.” She smiled, and it was a terrible smile because it held the knowledge of certain death.

  “Social media is a huge help in today’s times, Mr. Wozniacki…A subReddit account is probably bound to turn up more info than you and your spy network can.”

  Harold barely stopped his jaw from dropping. He looked at Krivi’s grim countenance, and the muscle ticking in his jaw. Signs of an awesome temper.

  “You will do no such thing, young lady,” he breathed. Ordered.

  Ziya shrugged again, her shoulders brushing against Krivi’s solid warmth. “Watch me. Besides, I am a civilian, with civilian rights and freedoms. I can do whatever the hell I want. Unless you are planning on renditioning me, which, believe me, will not be easy. I may be all alone in the world, but there are people who care about me,” she finished coolly.

  Her heart thudded in her throat, as she tried to make the serene expression on her face.

  “No one is going to rendition anyone,” Krivi said quietly.

  “Then you can’t stop me.” The words were a low murmur, but heard perfectly clear by the two men.

  ~~~~~

  Harold dabbed his mouth with the napkin provided and finished the rest of his cool coffee. It tasted bitter and dark, like the choice he was faced with right now.

  He finally looked at Krivi, assessing, planning, thinking forward.

  “How long are you planning on staying at the Huntington?”