The Caretaker

by A. X. Ahmad

  Walking next to him, wearing a deep orange suit, her hair freshly cut, is Anna. With a shock, Ranjit realizes that she’s wearing makeup, her eyelashes darkened with mascara, a dab of color on each cheekbone. And right behind her is the blond man, his neck swiveling, his gaze passing over Ranjit without a hint of recognition.

  Anna walks to within a few feet of Ranjit, so close that he can smell the musk of her perfume. She sits in the front row, the Senator next to her, his large hands clasped together. The blond man stands at the entrance to the room, rocking back and forth on his heels.

  “Very impressive person, the Senator. Experienced with realpolitik in a way that other politicians are not.”

  Ranjit turns to the Professor Emeritus next to him. “What do you mean, sir?”

  “It is a mistake to assume that the world is any different now than during the Cold War. Power is power. We need to move beyond ideology, all this good-and-evil nonsense, and support our own interests. All this talk about nation building. Pshaw.”

  The man lectures on in his sonorous voice. As the minutes pass, more people pour into the room and the murmur turns to a dull roar. Ranjit glances at the back of Anna’s head, seeing how stiffly she sits, her shoulders pulled back. Every few minutes she glances at her phone, then thrusts it back inside her small purse.

  A tall man in a suit makes his way onto the stage and turns to the crowd, his round glasses gleaming.

  “I’m Charles Dorr, head of the African-American program here at Harvard. And today we have a man of remarkable ability to deliver the first Huggins lecture of the season. The man who won the famous Harvard-Yale football game of 1968, a graduate of Harvard Law School, a politician who rose from the projects of Roxbury to the heights of Washington. Senator Clayton Rivers Neals.”

  There is loud applause as the Senator bounds up to the microphone. He leans forward, his large hands gripping the podium, and a hush falls over the room.

  “Seeing so many young faces, it makes me feel old.”

  As the laughter fades away, he continues. “Professor Dorr here mentioned the football game, back in 1968. That’s ancient history. It should be long forgotten. But even now, I run into Yalies from back then—I’ll be in a restaurant in Washington, and some sixty-year-old will come over to me, and we’ll shake hands, and then he’ll ask me, Speedy, how did you win that game? You guys were down by sixteen points, and there were just forty-five seconds left. How in God’s name did you do it?

  “Some of them insist it was brute force. Well, I was a few pounds heavier back then, but that’s not it. Some of them say it was speed—yes, I was so fast, I could stop on a dime. I was so fast, the Yale team had to practice by chasing a chicken across the field—”

  The crowd erupts with laughter, and the Senator waits for it to subside.

  “—but no, speed and brute force didn’t win that game. I’ll tell you what did. Other players, they saw that wall of defenders, but I saw the gaps, the holes, the opportunities. That game was won by vision.”

  The Senator stops and takes a drink of water.

  “Now, let me talk about our country, and its leadership. I’ve been a Democrat all my life. Three terms in the State Senate, been in the U.S. Senate ever since. I served with Ted Kennedy, and he taught me one thing I will never forget. Politics is politics. Forget about slogans, forget about trying to change the way that power works. Use the system. And if you have vision, you can do so.

  “Now, I found a way to get the Indians and Pakistanis to back away from a nuclear war. Hell, I even negotiated a deal with the North Koreans, and those people are tough, let me tell you…”

  The crowd claps loudly, and the Senator pauses. Ranjit sees a flash of orange as Anna rises and walks rapidly out of the room, stepping over the students sitting on the floor. A shadow crosses the Senator’s face as he continues, his deep voice filling the room, but no one else seems to have noticed Anna’s departure.

  Ranjit sees her walking through the empty atrium, heading for the open stairway to the second floor. He hesitates for a few seconds. The blond man’s eyes are still scanning the crowd, but then he turns to the podium, his fingers fidgeting under the wing of hair that covers his ear.

  Murmuring an apology, Ranjit rises and follows Anna into the atrium, just in time to catch a glimpse of her orange suit. The huge chandelier throws her shadow against the wall as she climbs the open staircase and disappears through a door on the second floor.

  He follows her, taking the stairs two at a time. Pushing open the door at the top, he walks down a dim hallway lined with mahogany doors, professors’ names stenciled on them in gold paint.

  Anna is at the far end of the corridor, silhouetted against a large Palladian window. She hears his footsteps and whips around, her teeth bared, clicking her phone shut in one movement.

  “What the hell?”

  “Anna, it’s me. Ranjit Singh. From the Vineyard.”

  Her dark eyes stare at him. She blinks, recognizing his voice, but distrusting his appearance.

  “I cut off my hair and shaved my beard. It’s me.”

  She relaxes a little, but confusion still clouds her face. She is quivering with tension, the smell of her perfume mixed with the tang of fresh sweat. Up close he sees that her dark eyes are dull with tiredness.

  The phone in her hand buzzes again, and she silences it with a jab of her thumb.

  “Ranjit. What the hell are you doing here? Looking like this?”

  “Anna, I have to talk to you…”

  “Not in the corridor. Come inside.”

  Apparently professors at Harvard don’t lock their offices, because when she tries a door handle, it opens. The room is large, one wall lined with books, the others painted a deep red and hung with African masks. A large desk is in the corner, a crystal ashtray on it holding a half-smoked cigar, and the small room smells of rich tobacco.

  Anna sinks into an overstuffed leather armchair and kicks off her high heels.

  “God, these things are killing me.”

  She tilts back her head, closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath. When she opens them, she looks directly at him, and despite himself, he feels the slow burn of desire.

  “Ranjit. You chose a hell of a day to show up like this.”

  He leans against the closed door. From here, he’ll be able to hear anyone coming. “Is something wrong, Anna?”

  “I’m tired of all these bullshit speeches. Ever since he got back, all he’s been doing is giving speeches. I think he wants to be the next Secretary of State. He’s even talking about running for President one day.” She stops and catches herself. “But you, Ranjit. Clayton told me that something happened … that you’d stolen the dolls? I didn’t believe him, I told him he was mistaken, but he insists it’s true.”

  Ranjit leans against the door and unbuttons his suit jacket. The stale tobacco smoke that fills the room has a strangely narcotic effect.

  “I came here to talk to you about it. I’m not a thief. Shanti picked up an old doll from the pink bedroom downstairs. I wanted to return it, but—”

  “Betsy? Your daughter took Betsy? That was my doll when I was a child.” Anna frowns in confusion. “Clayton said that you’d taken the Meissen dolls from the cabinet.”

  “Shanti just took that old doll. The others are safe, I promise you.”

  “So it’s a mix-up, right? I’ll talk to Clayton, I’ll straighten the whole thing out.”

  He shakes his head. “Things aren’t that simple. That man who works for your husband—the blond man downstairs—he’s after me now, he won’t stop.” He pauses, then his words rush out. “You see, our visas had expired, and he called Homeland Security, and they’ve taken Preetam and Shanti away. They’re both going to be deported—”

  “What? Your little girl?”

  “Homeland Security picked her up, in front of my own eyes.”

  Anna leans back, her face tight with anger. “Fucking Matti Kohonen. How dare he do that.”

  �
��Who is he? I was right behind you today at Filene’s Basement when he showed up.”

  She laughs, an abrupt, bitter burst. “You were there? In the women’s section? And I didn’t see you?”

  Ranjit nods, his cheeks reddening. “What does he do for the Senator?”

  Slumped in the leather chair, she looks up at him. Underneath the orange suit jacket she wears a pale cream camisole. He can see the swell of her chest as she breathes, smell the heat rising up from her.

  “Kohonen’s ex-CIA, he washed out of SAD.” She sees the confusion on his face and continues. “It’s a euphemism. ‘Special Activities Group’ means covert operations. He was hired to head up security, but now he’s Clayton’s chief of staff.”

  She shakes her head in disgust. “He’s very ambitious. Clayton spends more time with him than with me.”

  “What was he talking to you about? Today, at Filene’s.”

  “He said he wanted to warn me about you. Said you were a thief, that you’d stolen all the dolls. I told him that I didn’t believe him, but he was very insistent, said that you might try to contact me. But I don’t understand. Why does that old doll interest him?”

  Ranjit can hear raucous laughter from below, followed by loud applause.

  He has to trust her.

  “That doll—Betsy—has a hidden compartment. You have to push down a certain way, and the head comes off. And I found something hidden inside it.”

  She sits forward, her fingers digging into the soft leather armrests. “What are you talking about?”

  “A frame of microfilm for an Indian Army missile. What was the Senator doing with it? Giving it to the North Koreans in exchange for the hostage?”

  Rising abruptly from the chair, she walks to the tall window, its thin mullions casting a grid of shadow across her face. “Crap. That’s what it’s all about.”

  “You knew what he was doing?”

  Her voice is soft and emphatic. “I knew but I didn’t want to know. I’ve been so stupid.” She pauses, and the grid of shadow wavers across her face. “Ranjit, you have to promise that you’ll … you’ll trust my judgment on this, okay?”

  He nods. Her voice grows softer, and he has to walk closer to hear her.

  “Clayton has won every election since he ran for State Senator. He’s survived so long because he knows how to cut a deal. When the nuclear crisis happened between India and Pakistan, they were looking for someone to go there and negotiate, and he was the perfect man for the job.”

  She laughs, a bitter, abrupt sound. “But the Indians just stalled him. Poor Clayton, he was so frustrated. He’d call me late at night from Delhi and rant about the heat, the diarrhea he was getting from the spicy food. It looked like he would fail. Then, a week later, he told me, Kohonen says he can help, he still has some CIA contacts here. And that was it. It took Kohonen just a month to break the deadlock.”

  “How did he do it?”

  “Clayton was very proud of what Kohonen did. He’s deaf, you know. With hearing aids, he can hear a little, but he’s an expert at reading lips. During the breaks in the negotiations, the Indians used to huddle across the room and talk amongst themselves. Kohonen turned off his hearing aids and just watched them. He realized that they were talking about a new long-range nuclear missile they had developed.”

  “The Agni. That’s what it is called.”

  She pauses and frowns. “I think that’s it. Anyway, this missile was so accurate, the Indians could hit many targets at once. They were now confident that they could win a nuclear war. Once Kohonen knew that, he got to work. I don’t know how he got the blueprints for it, but he did, and Clayton showed them to the Pakistanis. It scared the hell out of them, and they backed off.”

  “The Senator just kept the blueprints? Gave them to the North Koreans, in exchange for the hostage?”

  She looks at the closed door, and her voice drops to a whisper.

  “No. That’s not exactly what happened. I don’t think he meant to—”

  Through the thick door, Ranjit can hear the cadences of the speech below. How much longer will it last?

  “Go on, Anna, I’m listening.”

  “You have to understand the context. When Clayton came back from India in oh-two, he was a hero for a while. But then the new President was elected, and people became tired of politics as usual. No one remembered what Clayton had done. The voters wanted something different, and he began to realize that he might just lose his Senate seat.”

  Her voice is so soft that he strains to hear her.

  “It was Kohonen—I’m sure it was him—who saw the hostage crisis as a great opportunity. The President of the United States couldn’t talk to the North Koreans and get the hostage released, neither could the Secretary of State. But a senator could fly down to North Korea and call it a ‘humanitarian mission.’”

  “How did the deal work?”

  “There is a trade embargo against North Korea, you know. They desperately needed grain, machine parts, medicine. Kohonen was going to have it trans-shipped through Dubai, it was all untraceable.” She shrugs her slim shoulders. “Clayton told me that we do business through back channels all the time with Iran, Libya, Syria, and I was okay with it. I’m not a big fan of people dying of hunger or disease, just because of politics—”

  “But once the Senator got there, the North Koreans changed their terms?”

  “Of course. Clayton was expecting that. Maybe more machine parts, or more medicines. But as soon as he reached Pyongyang, he called me. The line was crackling, I could barely hear him, but he was cursing, calling them a bunch of two-faced fucks. They want something else, he told me, or else they’ll hang the hostage. He knew that it would end his career to bring her back in a coffin.”

  Anna’s voice drops to a whisper. “He told me I’d find an envelope in his desk in the Vineyard. I didn’t look inside, I just took it to his secretary in Boston. The envelope was sent through the diplomatic pouch to North Korea. Two days later, the hostage was released.” She pauses and takes a deep breath. “I suspected he gave them something he shouldn’t have, but I never made the connection with India.”

  Downstairs, the speech seems to be winding down, but Ranjit needs to know more.

  “If he gave them the microfilm, why was that one frame hidden inside the doll?”

  She shakes her head as she rises from her chair. “I don’t know. Clayton’s been on tenterhooks ever since he got back. He’s frightened of something.” Her dark eyes scan his face as she moves closer. With her fingertips, she traces the scar on his neck. “What happened to you? I didn’t notice this before.”

  He feels the blood rising to his face. “It’s an old wound. Anna, please, I need your help. I need to talk to the Senator soon, without Kohonen around. I’ll give him the microfilm back, but I want my family released—”

  She takes a deep breath. “We’re planning to go back to the Vineyard this weekend. Come by the house on Sunday evening, and you can talk to Clayton alone. Just bring the doll, bring the damn microfilm or whatever.”

  “You’re sure? That man, Kohonen, he’s after me—”

  “I’ll make sure he won’t be there. I have to go now, but—”

  She holds his face with both hands. When she kisses him, he tastes the sweet, waxy taste of lipstick. Her body presses into his, and her scent is dizzying.

  From down below there is the sound of clapping, and a voice shouts, “Tell it like it is!”

  She pulls away. “There. I’ve wanted to do that since I saw you.”

  Digging into her small handbag, she pulls out a tube of crimson lipstick and deftly applies it. She smiles at him, the door clicks shut, and she’s gone.

  He can hear her heels ticking down the corridor and descending the stairs. Gradually, the smell of her musky perfume is replaced by the harsh odor of tobacco.

  Leaving the office, he hesitates at the top of the stairs. The crowd is giving the Senator a standing ovation, and there is no sign of Kohonen. Ran
jit runs down the stairs, slips through the atrium, and heads out of the main door.

  It is very cold outside. There are two police cruisers parked outside the Barker Center, and he sees a pair of cops standing by them, sipping hot cups of coffee. As he passes them, more applause drifts through the cold night air.

  One cop turns to Ranjit and grins. “Some speech, huh?”

  “Yes, it seems to be well received.”

  “Yeah, we need a guy like that in the White House. He gets things done. Have a good night, sir.”

  The cop turns back to his coffee, and Ranjit hurries on. He turns from the darkness of Quincy Street onto brightly lit Massachusetts Avenue and heads for the subway station.

  So he had been partially right: the North Koreans had blackmailed the Senator into giving them the blueprints for the Agni, all except that one frame of microfilm stuffed inside the doll. Ricky had said that it was some sort of circuit, and he wishes he knew exactly what it was.

  A group of giggling girls in tight jeans and boots emerges from the Grafton Street Grill, and Ranjit steps aside to let them pass, smelling beer and perfume. He walks past the brightly lit Harvard Bookstore, seeing students browsing inside. More students sit inside ice-cream parlors and coffee shops, talking and drinking, cocooned in their own reality. Across the road, the homeless settle into the darkened portico of the Harvard Coop, swathed in coarse gray blankets.

  Before Ranjit descends into the subway he glances over his shoulder. Massachusetts Avenue is empty and no one seems to be following him, yet he feels a shiver of fear, and the feeling intensifies as he waits on the freezing platform. He is going up against a man who has been playing a secret, high-stakes international game, a man who will do anything to fulfill his ambitions. And now Ranjit has agreed to return to Martha’s Vineyard. If the Senator sets a trap for him, this time there will be no way out.

  He has one more day before leaving for the Vineyard; enough time to find an army surplus store and buy a snowsuit and a pair of powerful binoculars. More important, he’ll go to the Boston Public Library and research all he can about the Senator’s activities. He is sure Anna is telling the truth, but that one hidden frame of microfilm unsettles him. The second rule of combat: know everything about your enemy.