When a Sentinelese arrow plunged into the water and struck the boat’s hull, Rowan snapped his full attention away from Talia and lifted the shield. The way she stood in the prow would make shielding her difficult. He’d have to wrap it around her from behind, which could be awkward, or sit on the prow in front of her standing form, which could be even more awkward.
“We don’t need that yet,” Talia said, looping the bow string around the bent wood and letting it go taut. She took an arrow from the case, nocked it on the outside, drew it back and aimed toward the shore.
Rowan watched as the two Sentinelese men froze. The one with a bow, moments away from launching another arrow, lowered his aim.
“Are you seriously going to shoot one of them?” Winston asked.
“They’ve been shooting warning shots,” Talia said. “I’m going to do the same. But better. The man with the bow; he’s wearing a skull atop his head.”
Winston shifted in his seat, camera raised and aimed at the man. “Geez, a skull? Are they cannibals?”
“That was the rumor Marco Polo spread,” Chugy said, revealing that her knowledge of the Andamanese tribes extended far beyond local lore and tradition. “It kept the colonial English out for a long time. The human skulls and bones sometimes worn are those of ancestors, to absorb the dead’s knowledge, wisdom, or social status.”
Talia nodded. “Striking that symbol of power might get the message across.”
Might, Rowan noted, imagining that it could also start a war…but if they failed, a war the Sentinelese could not win was in their future. It was a risk worth taking.
“Of course,” Talia said. “If they hit one of us, then yes, I’ll shoot one of them. Eye for an eye. That’s how this works. It’s an Old World rule of law that they should understand. But let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
It won’t, Rowan told himself, readying his shield and bracing for action. He’d tackle Talia into the sea if he had to.
“Have you ever had to shoot someone?” Mahdi asked, looking up, careful to keep his eyes on her head.
“Just once,” Talia said, and she let the arrow fly.
The boat fell silent as the arrow arced up over the light blue water. Rowan raised the binoculars to his eyes and focused on the target just a moment before the projectile descended and shattered the skull atop the man’s head.
Holy shit.
Of all the surprising things Rowan had experienced since stepping aboard the dinghy, Talia’s skill with a homemade bow and arrow now topped the list. It was a marksman’s shot, from an unsteady boat bobbing in gentle waves. He’d been hired to keep her safe, but now he doubted she needed protecting. She hadn’t lived among forgotten tribes without being able to handle herself, and learning a few tricks.
The man with the bow lifted a hand to his head, feeling the remnants of the skull he’d been wearing. He then looked down at the shattered bits resting on the beach behind him. He shared a few words with the man who had rolled onto the beach. Then they turned away and walked back toward the protective jungle shade, casual, like not much had happened.
“That’s it?” Winston lowered the non-recording camera.
“What more do you want?” Talia asked, stepping out of the prow and into her shorts. She dressed quickly, as though suddenly aware the crew could see her. “They sent a message. I replied. It’s a dialogue.”
“Then they’re done talking?”
Talia tied her bikini top back in place. “For now. These things take time. Life out here doesn’t move as fast as you’re used to. We can wait. See if they come back. But I don’t think we’ll see them again for another day or two.”
They waited for six hours, sharing a tube of sunscreen to avoid burning in the sun, and seeing no sign of the Sentinelese. Rowan kept his eyes on the tree line and his shield in hand all day long, but Talia was right, the Sentinelese were ghosts. Even the shadows had stopped moving.
But, Rowan thought, that doesn’t mean they’re not watching.
When the sun began its downward arc toward the horizon, they rowed a few hundred feet out and then let Chugy motor them the rest of the way. After a day in the sun, the Sea Tiger was a welcome sight, but even as they started the thirty-mile voyage to the Sandal-Foot Resort, Rowan couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched.
10
Today, Mahdi thought, was a good day.
He could never tell anyone that. His image was important to maintain. The very few people left in the world willing to help him would never understand. In fact, they would likely join the forces already seeking his life. Not just because he had joined a foolhardy expedition, or agreed to work with an American, an Indian, and a Jew, but because he had enjoyed it.
Every moment of it.
The sun and the sea. The unpredictable and intellectually stimulating company. The mysterious island and the people who populated it. Even, or perhaps especially, Talia’s naked primitive display and the arrows being shot toward him. He had never witnessed anything like the day’s events before. He felt seduced.
And conflicted. Though he didn’t believe in any god, he felt the guilt of religious tradition and cultural bias. At the very least, he should distrust these people, if not loathe them and the countries they represented. But they had shown no such distrust toward him.
He knew that was, in part, because they didn’t know his true past. But it still said a lot about who they were, and he owed them the same courtesy. Talia was still something of an enigma, either a genius anthropologist, or a woman who had lost part of her mind in the jungle. He had yet to decide, but she was kind and unpredictable in a way that made him anticipate the dawn.
First, he needed to sleep, which turned out to be difficult after the day they’d had. While the majority of the day had passed without further incident, the morning’s encounter had awakened his mind. He’d spent so many years on the run, he hadn’t had time to think about what had once been his passion. Could the Sentinelese be communicated with? Could he learn their language, or even just a few words of it? And if they really could save those people from government intervention, perhaps he could atone for past mistakes?
Mahdi sat in his bed. Compared to his shared apartment in London and his small home in Palestine, his villa at the resort was a mansion. The bed was plush and comfortable. The light felt easy on the eyes. The wood all around, and the way it smelled, made him feel connected to the world.
I’m not going back, he decided. No matter the outcome of this expedition, he was done with the modern world, its prejudices, and any hope that his old life and the few people in it who might welcome him back, could be regained. The only thing waiting for him was emotional and physical torment.
And them…
He looked at the room’s phone. This was goodbye. Forever goodbye. He owed them an explanation, to remove all hope of his return. He could be mourned, as in death, but with the knowledge that he was someplace safe, without her, but alive. Then maybe she could move on. Find happiness again.
He picked up the phone, dialed nine numbers, hesitated, and then finished. The phone line clicked, rang twice, clicked again, rang three more times, and then she answered. It had been years since he had heard her voice. He felt both soothed and cast into a sandstorm.
“As-Salaam-Alaikem,” she said. Then again, irritated. “As-Salaam-Alaikem.”
“Wa-Alaikem-Salaam.” The natural response slipped out. I shouldn’t have said anything, he thought. I’m putting her in danger.
“Mahdi?” There was a squeak of hope in her voice that asked the unspoken questions: Is it over? Can you come home? Can you be my husband again?
He wished he could reply in the affirmative to all three questions, but there was only one reply he could give that would answer everything, let her know he wasn’t coming home, and that might keep her from trouble. “Goodbye.”
“Mahdi…”
He hung up the phone, eyes damp, and he still heard voices. He held his breath, not because he was
afraid, but because he was hopeful. The pain of his previous life was now, and permanently, in the past. He could focus on the present once more, and it filled him with excitement. The tears dried and he wiped them away.
It was eleven o’clock, and they would be leaving early the next morning, but he didn’t think he would sleep until he spoke to the others again. He needed to fully exorcise his excitement, which he had kept largely contained throughout the day, and all through their trip back and during the exquisite meal of local seafood prepared for them by the resort’s master chef.
As the voices grew louder, Mahdi recognized them as the two people to whom he had no desire to speak: Winston Rhett and Rattan Ambani.
Winston’s personality wasn’t just abrasive; it was steeped in something filthy. Whether or not that had anything to do with their work, he had no idea, but of all the people he’d met thus far, he trusted the filmmaker the least. As for Mr. Ambani, his surface motivations appeared pure, but a man like that doesn’t pursue anything that doesn’t somehow benefit his own interests. Mahdi had known men like him, zealots of the self, disguised in cloaks of national, religious, or social interests.
Spurred by distrust, Mahdi decided to funnel his energy by spying on the two men. He turned out his villa’s lights and slowly opened his window a crack. The two men were walking along the path between villas. Mahdi strained to hear what they were saying, but they were now whispering.
Though he couldn’t hear the words, Winston’s tone was unmistakable. He was irate. But what would the expedition’s cameraman have to complain about to their resort host? While Mahdi might not like the man, he had provided them with excellent accommodations, food, and transport. Perhaps Winston was provided a villa without air conditioning, Mahdi wondered with a hint of a smile. The man was rather unkempt, yet he still managed to act like a prima donna. Whatever the cause, Mahdi’s awakened thirst for adventure drew him to the door.
He watched the two men stroll past, their body language tense, Winston the far more animated of the two. What stood out most was their proximity to each other. These were not two men who had met just yesterday.
As Winston and Ambani walked around a bend in the path, heading toward the resort’s conference center lobby, Mahdi slipped from his villa and carefully closed the door behind him. As he tip-toed in pursuit, his heart began to pound. He had been sneaky only once in his life before, and while that day had ended in tragedy, he couldn’t help but smile now. Spying was fun.
He followed the pair to the resort’s lobby, crouching behind a large leafed plant he couldn’t identify. So much of this part of the world was new to him. The people, the landscape, the wildlife. Everything about it felt alive.
The two men paused by the lobby doors. Winston tried to open the door, but it was locked. He stepped aside while Ambani punched a numbered code into the key panel beside the door. While Winston’s view of the keypad was blocked, purposefully, by Ambani, Mahdi could clearly see the old Indian man punch in four consecutive nines.
Ambani opened the door and stepped inside, leaving Winston to catch the door and follow.
They know each other well, Mahdi thought, but they are not friends.
When the two men had moved deeper inside the large building, Mahdi crept across the open courtyard separating the facility from the thicker jungle, where the villas had been built. He paused to look up at the night sky. Beauty surrounded him, made him reconsider what he was about to do. This life was good. Why risk aggravating their host?
Because I want to be free of myself.
Like Talia.
In that moment, he realized how he truly felt about Talia: inspired. She was free, more than he had ever imagined possible. He had no desire to strip naked and dance the way she had—certainly not in front of onlookers or a man with a camera—but he craved the freedom she represented. To go where he wanted, say what he thought, and to follow his instincts.
She would follow them.
He scurried to the door, checked over his shoulder for onlookers, and punched four nines into the keypad. The lock clicked. He pulled the door open, slipped inside, and eased the door closed behind him.
Inside, he could hear the men talking, no longer whispering. He crept closer to the conference room doors, which had been left open, listening to the conversation.
“This isn’t that bad, still,” Winston said.
Mahdi peeked around the door and saw Winston standing at a buffet table. Cut fruit from their dinner remained piled on a platter, the excess of luxury on full display.
Winston plucked a toothpick-speared pineapple chunk and put it in his mouth, mulling over the flavor as he chewed. “A little slimy, but still sweet.”
“I did not hire you to assess the fruit plate, Mr. Rhett.” Ambani stood still, hands clasped behind his back, a frown bent down in the same shape as his mustache.
“I told you, I’m doing my job.”
“Not fast enough.”
Winston picked up a plate and piled it with cut mango, papaya, sapota, jack fruit, pineapple, and banana. “I’m not the one you should be talking to. That bitch wouldn’t let me take the coconuts, and I don’t think she’s going to. She thinks shaking her poontang around is going to smooth things over. Who knows, maybe if it works, if they welcome us onto the island, I can hand the coconuts over. But who knows how long that will take.”
“They’re not going to welcome anyone on the island,” Ambani said. “They never have.”
“Then you’re shit out of luck, aren’t you?”
Ambani took two long strides and swept a meaty arm through the air. Winston’s plate of food burst upward, a colorful spiral of wet chunks. Winston watched the food fall, unfazed by the violence and the loss of his late night snack. “You are being paid well to do a job, and I expect you to do it.”
Winston picked up another plate and began refilling it with fruit. “It will get done.”
“How?”
“You said the Sentinelese are active at night, right? And Talia’s going to figure that out. She’s bat-shit, but she seems to know a lot. When she figures out that we need to spend a night anchored off the island, I’ll bring the coconuts to the beach and dump them.”
“They need to be found within twenty-four hours,” Ambani said.
“I’ll spray them before leaving them behind, but if the Sentinelese are as protective of their island as everyone seems to think, they’ll find them first thing in the morning. Then we just need to wait for the island to go quiet.”
Go quiet? Mahdi thought. He had no concrete idea about what these men were up to, but he knew it was not good—not for the expedition and certainly not for the Sentinelese, whom they’d been sent to help, not harm.
He took a slow step back, his mind already made up to tell the others what he’d heard.
“Of course,” Winston said. “Everything would be a hell of a lot easier if I had some help.”
“It is too much to ask of Sashi,” Ambani said. “Even she has her limits.”
“Sashi and her bleeding heart can stay on board the boat,” Winston said.
“Then who?”
“I was thinking maybe the guy lurking just outside the door.”
Mahdi’s pulse hammered. Is he talking about me? It seemed unlikely as the man hadn’t once glanced in his direction, but who else could he be talking about. Mahdi turned and ran, his bare feet quiet on the hallway rug. He reached the door and pushed. He nearly collided with the glass when the locked door didn’t budge. He reached for the manual lock on the side of the door, but he was stopped by a hand on his shoulder.
He turned to find Winston, smiling at him, his gray eyes squinted through his thick glasses.
How had he caught up so fast? And without making a sound?
“Hi,” Winston said. “Welcome to the team.”
Mahdi felt a sharp pain in his arm, and then nothing at all.
He woke on time the next morning, his alarm chirping. He sat up in bed, confused, until he
saw the manila folder resting on the room’s small desk. Sitting beside the folder was a plate of fruit.
11
Something felt off. Talia couldn’t say what, but her instincts said to keep her head down, and they had yet to even reach the island. After the previous day’s activity, she had slept well and woken with the sun, adjusted to the new time zone without a trace of jetlag. There was a time when such a dramatic shift in time might have left her with a migraine and seated beside a toilet for a day. Life in the jungle, unlike the day and night schedule followed by the agricultural modern world, was less rigid. She had learned to sleep when needed, and to stay awake for as long as a task—like hunting elusive prey—took to complete.
Seated at the Sea Tiger’s luxury dining room table, crafted from a single slab of redwood, she observed the team. Rowan sat across from her, as far from the saloon as he could manage, eyes glued to a laptop that he occasionally chicken-pecked with his two index fingers. He occasionally glanced up, looking out the window at the rain falling in sheets and shaking his head.
No one was happy about working in the rain, on a boat, and most of them blamed her for the inconvenience. She had all but insisted that they return to North Sentinel Island, despite the inclement weather. It was important that the Sentinelese see them again, recognize the Sea Tiger, and grow accustomed to their presence.
It was bullshit. She enjoyed the rain. It cleansed the body and soul. Made her feel at peace.
Mahdi, the poor man, looked ill again. He clung to the saloon’s bar, half-cheeking a stool. He looked ready to run to the head, as six foot swells heaved them up and down.
Winston sat beside him, beer clutched in his sausage fingers. He occasionally whispered to Mahdi, somehow making the man feel worse and then chuckling when Mahdi closed his eyes and lowered his head. Rowan had noticed as well, but when he caught Winston’s eye to glare at him, the ‘filmmaker’ had raised his beer in a toast, forcing Rowan’s gaze away.
She didn’t know whether or not Rowan was truly an alcoholic, or just the kind of man who sometimes drowned his pain in alcohol. Either way, his stalwart resistance to imbibing was impressive, especially since they were surrounded by unique brews, pricey hard liquors, and fine wines while at the resort, and on the yacht. The only place truly free of temptation was the dinghy, which might be why Rowan had agreed to join her on a second trip to the island’s fringe. That, or he was trying to sleep with her, though she didn’t think so.
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