Skinner

by Charlie Huston

Jae walking briskly to the driver’s side door, a black mountaineering duffel over her shoulder.

  “Heathrow. Connecting to Kiev. That’s where he wants us to go.”

  Skinner nods, eyes on Haven.

  “Do you want me to drive?”

  Jae throws the duffel inside.

  “Nobody drives my car.”

  Cross has come out of the room now. Skinner is thinking about Montmartre. How hard it had been to leave. All that killing unresolved.

  Haven is crossing the gravel lot, raising his hands, a greeting that shows they are empty. As if, his hands free of weapons, Haven is any less dangerous.

  “I wanted to see for myself.”

  Jae climbing in.

  “Let’s roll.”

  Haven stops; hot wind stirs the dust.

  “The man risen from the dead.”

  Skinner remembers how it felt when the knife went between his ribs, the tip breaking off.

  Jae starts the engine.

  “Skinner.”

  Haven points.

  “Your asset wants you.”

  Skinner ducks his head and looks inside the car.

  She nods at Haven and Cross.

  “Stop wasting time with those cocksuckers and get the fuck in.”

  Another look at Haven, Cross, but he made his decision about them seven years ago. He gets in the Land Rover with his asset, his door not yet closed when she punches the gas and whips the rear end around, spraying gravel and sand. Haven emerging from the cloud behind them, visible in the wing mirror, waving.

  Jae pulls her seatbelt on.

  “Assholes.”

  Skinner pulls on his own seatbelt.

  “Kiev.”

  She shifts into fourth, still accelerating.

  “That’s where he wants us to go.”

  He nods in the general direction of Kiev.

  “Where he wants us to go.”

  “Wants. Yeah.”

  “Where are we going.”

  She runs her hands around the arc of the wheel.

  “Eventually, maybe, Kiev. Right now, Miami. Maker Smith. Know him?”

  Skinner remembers the slaughterhouse in Berlin.

  “Yes. Work. Several years ago.”

  “Everyone knows Smith. He’s colorful.”

  She twists her neck until it rewards her with a sharp crack.

  “I don’t want Cross to know. I don’t want him to know anything until I say otherwise.”

  He nods.

  “I go with you. Protect you. Everything else, the details, you decide.”

  She rubs her neck, as if she can feel something there that won’t rub off.

  “Okay, okay. Let’s go.”

  Dust unsettled behind them, Haven, all the past has to offer. Skinner studies the road ahead.

  PART TWO

  energy

  RAJ DOESN’T THINK they can get the truck down the alley.

  In truth, he doesn’t know how they got a truck this far from 90 Feet Road. Sections of Dharavi Main Road carry box lorries, but nothing so large as this. Yellow and black, colors of a Padmini cab, a diesel lorry with a flatbed trailer, common on the highways and the infinite construction sites of Bombay, unheard of here.

  “Is that it, Raj?”

  David presses against his back, his voice raised to be heard over the rattle of the rain falling on thousands of corrugated tin roofs, the two of them sandwiched into a rare gap where the outer walls of two shanties do not lean against one another. They are drenched by the rain, as close to submerged as one can be without drowning. Their feet are ankle deep in the muck that funnels from the alley into the space between the homes. But when are their feet not ankle deep in muck?

  Raj squeezes his ball to his chest.

  “Yes.”

  David worms closer to the mouth of the gap. If someone inside one of the two shanties leans against the inner wall the boys will either be crushed or spat into the alley like melon seeds pinched from between finger and thumb.

  David is breathless.

  “Bhenchod super cool.”

  It is super cool, of that there is no doubt. Dead of night, the truck, headlights blacked out, backing into the alley a centimeter at a time, fat tires straddling the water main that humps up from the mud, and no one out to gawk. The rains drive many indoors, equal parts shelter and the need to ensure that this morning’s wall does not become this evening’s floor in a sudden wash of sludge. But even in the most severe monsoon the inhabitants of Dharavi usually go about their business.

  The one-room factories and textile mills churn out raw materials, the recycling centers melt plastic waste, spin it into long strings and chop it into pellets, cardboard boxes are turned inside out and stapled and sold for reuse, grills are tended in doorways, dyes mixed from toxins that would not be allowed in any other residential area of Bombay, dentistry is practiced by lamplight, bodies are sold, trinkets for the tourists are made from smelted waste lead, copper pipe scrap is beaten into plate, phone card minutes brokered, hair barbered, real estate deals closed. But just here, everyone is shut away indoors. Electric light shows behind sheet plastic windows and through the million chinks in the improvised walls; and TV voices, turned up to be heard over the river pouring from the sky. In this neighborhood, business has been all but forgotten, an unprecedented occurrence in Dharavi, let alone in Bombay, let alone in India herself. Not forgotten, then, but left unattended for a few hours. A polite gesture of respect made in response to a request that went about earlier in the day, circulated by Sudhir’s men.

  They came the night after he gave Raj the ball. The night after Raj pushed the button that sent the text message on the Nokia 1100. More jungle men. Riding in on mopeds and bicycles, walking, wearing the patchwork colors and filth of the slum, shorts and t-shirts, plastic sandals.

  But they are not of the slum. They talk too softly, voices modulated to compete with a wind in the branches and the calls of birds and monkeys rather than the constant roaring drone and screech of the city. They cough too much, their eyes watering, bothered by the fumes of Bombay. They move in loping strides meant to cover dozens of kilometers in a day, not the quick steps required to negotiate space between millions of bodies. They walk single file, always one in their pack takes a lead several meters in front, always one straggles meters back of the others. They are out of place, almost out of this century, but they are not intimidated or overwhelmed.

  And with them came the Bangladeshis. Skeleton men. A dozen of them. Dark, arms knotted with muscle that looks like knobs of bone pushing up under their skin. They went immediately to #1 Shed and began to work. Like ants hauling many times their own weight, outpacing the hardiest. Talking in cracked voices, a language that sounds like nothing but curses far worse than the commonplace bhenchod, sister fucker, of everyday use in Bombay. His father says they are ship breakers, and Raj imagines these men cracking the spines of freighters on the jagged ridges of coral reefs.

  Now the alley is empty of people, the chug of the diesel and huff and squeal of the air brakes lost to the tinny thunder of the rain. The truck inches in the mud. Two of the Naxalites are at the end of the trailer, hands in the air, signaling the man sitting on the roof of the tractor cab, this many centimeters right, this many left, stop, go, stop, slow, slow, slow, stop. Their faces red in the almost constant flare of the brake lights, the men at the back of the truck hold up clenched fists, STOP! The truck’s engine idles for a moment and then dies, red and yellow running lights still illuminated on its roofline and down the length of the trailer, outlining the shape of the faded red cargo container. The men at the front of the truck want to talk to those at the rear, but over the rain they cannot be heard. With little room to slip between the sides of the truck and the walls of the shanties edging the alley, the men climb, nimble scramblers, and meet on the roof of the trailer.

  Raj squirms, trying to edge himself free of David and the wall so that he can stick his face into the alley to see more.

  “Shit
, Raj, stop moving, you little shit.”

  But Raj only squirms more fiercely. He wants to see.

  “Shit!”

  Raj is shoved into the wall, and the ball he has cradled to his chest all this time, protesting at last against being compressed into an unnatural shape, pops free and shoots into the alley, a sudden flash of white and red that bangs off a steel drum someone has left out to catch the rain. Raj and David freeze. Raj blinks the rain from his eyes, looking at his soccer ball half submerged in a puddle in the middle of the alley. It bobs there, rocked back and forth by the falling drops. Pulled by it, Raj edges forward, sliding his feet in the mud.

  “Raj. No. Raj.”

  David grabs the back of his t-shirt, a fistful of Optimus Prime, but Raj reaches out, hooks his fingers on the corners of the two buildings that sandwich them, and pulls himself free, stumbling into the open, hunching, running, scooping up the ball and jumping to crouch behind the drum full of rainwater. He waits for the jungle men to appear, but no one splashes down from the top of the truck to grab him from his hiding place. He looks up. Across the alley, in the mouth of the gap where they had both been crammed a moment before, David holds his arms up in salute, a smile splitting his round face. Raj gives a thumbs-up, trying not to laugh, but his own smile suddenly stretches into something from a movie, the expression on Preity Zinta’s face when the villain grabs her sari and pulls her close, as a shadow coalesces from the rain behind David, wraps its arms around the large boy and whips him away into the darkness of the gap.

  Raj’s scream is shoved back down his throat by the palm of a hard, smooth hand that clamps over his mouth.

  “Come inside, little Shiva, before you get wet.”

  And Sudhir hoists him, tucking him easily under one arm, using his toe to flip the soccer ball from the puddle where it has fallen, catching it in his free hand, carrying both it and the boy toward the truck.

  “Are you dry?”

  Raj says nothing, rubbing the towel over his wet hair. Sudhir found it in the sleeping area behind the seats of the truck and gave it to him, keeping the ball.

  A loud noise jolts the cab of the truck.

  Sudhir’s eyes go to Raj’s window, looking through it at the big mirrors mounted outside. Angled for the driver, Raj has to shift left to see what Sudhir is seeing: several of the jungle men at the back of the tractor, uncoupling cables, preparing to free the great latch that keeps the trailer shackled.

  “We’ll have to push it.”

  Raj looks at him, and Sudhir tilts his head toward the back of the cab.

  “The trailer. In the mud. Oh the many joys of this thing.”

  “Where is David?”

  Sudhir rests his hand on the soccer ball, drums his fingers on the muddy synthetic leather.

  “Home. Where he should have been. Instead of dragging his friend out into the rain to spy.”

  He drums his fingers again, and again, a rhythm that seems to echo the rain on the roof of the cab.

  The windows are starting to fog a little. Raj sees a shadow move past his door. The figure squeezes toward the activity at the trailer hitch.

  “He didn’t drag me. I told him to come with me. Is he really home?”

  Sudhir stops drumming on the ball.

  “Where else should he be?”

  Raj shrugs.

  Sudhir takes his hand off the ball.

  “And you also are a good friend, thinking of David. Asking first about him before anything else.”

  He nudges the ball toward Raj, and Raj places his own hand on it, drums his fingers once, picks it up and puts it in his lap.

  “I was only curious.”

  “Yes, you should be. But this isn’t for everyone’s eyes. That’s why we asked the people here to look away for a few hours. That’s why I had David taken home.”

  The tractor shudders as the weight of the trailer is pulled free by the men in the rain.

  “You did not send me home.”

  Sudhir wipes a droplet that has rolled from his thick hairline down his forehead and brings it to his lips, sucking the tiny bit of moisture into his mouth.

  “Do you want to see?”

  Raj wipes fog from the window, looks into the mirror. The men are massing at the front of the trailer. Ropes have been produced, passed up to the top of the cargo container.

  “Can they move it?”

  Sudhir holds up his hands.

  “They must. But they will need help. There.”

  He wipes at the windscreen. Down the alley more men are coming, but not just jungle men. Locals, Dalits, proudly untouchable. Also the breakers. And not just men. Women. Coming through the rain, Raj’s father. And there his mother is also, behind his father, her sari left at home, she is wearing her husband’s shorts, and one of his t-shirts, practical.

  “So we’ll move the trailer.”

  He separates his hands.

  “Will you help us move it?”

  Raj’s parents are edging past the tractor now, just outside the fogged window. He could touch them if he rolled it down.

  “I’m supposed to be at David’s, playing. They’ll be mad. I should go home.”

  “Little Shiva.”

  Sudhir is whispering, a voice meant not to be heard by jungle cats and soldiers.

  “Little Shiva, you are home. This is for you. This fire we will light. You are our Shiva. Bringer of wonderful change, and destroyer.”

  He opens his door, raises his voice to be heard over the rain.

  “I have to go help. You can do as you like. It is a free world. Much to the gods’ disappointment.”

  He swings down from the truck and slams the door closed.

  Raj sits, listens to the rain, hears shouts as the jungle men and the breakers and the Dalits of his daily life prepare to move the trailer. Something is wrong. He knows it. Something is different. Too different. He wants to know what, and why. He wants to go home and see Taji, the baby, left with one of his mother’s friends, no doubt.

  Why has life become frightening so suddenly? These choices.

  He picks up the ball, then puts it back on the seat. He won’t need it in the rain.

  Outside they are all wet, all in mud, pushing, hauling on the ropes tied at the end of the trailer, falling, getting up, pushing again. The trailer moves in centimeters, rolls back those same centimeters. Boards are shoved under the tires. People in the shanties along the alley worm out of the doorways blocked by the trailer and join them. Centimeter by centimeter, it moves.

  Covered in mud, Raj finds his mother and father. They recognize him. Dirty and in the dark, what is that to them? They have seen him this way his whole life. They look the same now. The three look at one another. How are we here? Why? And you, why aren’t you at David’s? But nothing is said. Instead they laugh, and put their shoulders back to the work, pushing the great weight.

  The fire.

  memory

  THERE’S NOTHING IN the USB.

  Just the op files. Practical detail relating to monies they can access, travel arrangements that can be made, contact protocols for Internet dead drops. Her own dossier. A timeline on the West-Tebrum power plant attack broken down by seconds. Once the lube oil pump froze up, the turbine was doomed. No time for a response after alarms started sounding in the plant control room. Some of the code from the Stuxnet variation the attackers used. A wag at some level has named it ReStuxnet. Jae grunts displeasure. The tech language gets very deep very quickly, and she bails out of that particular file. Maker Smith will tell her what it all means. Better to get a gloss, feed it to her brain, get it into the new configuration that she’s trying to build. Or is the configuration already there? She still doesn’t know. They always feel real, external, when she discovers them. Quickly turning to sham. The big configurations will sprawl endlessly if she lets them, if she doesn’t unplug her brain. Retreat to the desert or the mountains. Personal pharmacy in hand. She’s feeling prickly on the plane. Raw. She makes a point of changing what she’s
using at any given time. But she’s almost always using something. That peyote binge, trying to go deeper into the configurations instead of hiding from them, that had been atypical. Now everything is starting to feel unblunted. A necessity if she’s going to find anything. Leaving herself wide open to the world. Find the future Terrence promised her.

  But there is nothing in the USB. No treasure map. No clues that might lead her wherever it is Terrence thinks she should go. The place where the future is being made. Where there are lives to be saved.

  Just the op. Plain Jane.

  “Fuck.”

  Skinner looks over from the seat-back screen in front of him, shifting his earphones to the side so he can hear her more clearly.

  “What?”

  Jae shakes her head, closes her Toughbook, and unplugs the USB from its side.

  “I can’t find what I’m looking for in here.”

  “It looked straightforward. To me. Jargon. Nondisclosure agreement. EULA. More jargon. Plausible deniability. Money. Overview. Task assignment. Exhortation to patriotic feeling. Jargon. Vaguely worded statement that denies any and all legal responsibility for anything unfortunate that may happen related to the job. Did you expect it to self-destruct?”

  She drops the USB in a pocket on her vest and zips it closed.

  “Terrence said it was for me.”

  Skinner lets his earphones drop around his neck, tiny voices just audible.

  “That’s what he told me. It’s not?”

  She pulls her daypack from the floor, slips her Toughbook into its padded slot.

  “It’s missing something. It’s too straightforward. Not what I do.”

  She presses the heels of her hands against her eyes.

  “Tired. Look again later.”

  She uncovers her eyes.

  “How long?”

  “About two hours.”

  On the screen on his TV, a man in a suit, someone with the WTO, remarks about the European credit crisis, the protesters in Stockholm. Tiny voice from Skinner’s earphones: Venues for contraction in troubled times.

  She reclines her seat.

  “Cross doesn’t like you.”