The Sultan's Tigers

by Josh Lacey

  “Thanks,” said Marko. “Now get out of here.”

  I could hear Uncle Harvey’s voice coming from behind me. “Don’t worry. We’re going.”

  I was watching Marko’s face. I saw his eyes lift from my face and look over my shoulder, focusing on my uncle. He couldn’t watch both of us at the same time, and he must have decided that I was the lesser threat. He was right, of course. But I did have one definite advantage over my uncle: I was standing next to a kid who was carrying a bucket full of tea.

  I turned to face my uncle, tipped my body to one side, reached into the bucket, and grabbed the teapot. Then I whirled back again, swinging the pot at Marko’s face.

  That’s for Grandpa.

  If I’d been thinking straight, if I’d been less furious and upset, I’d never have done it. If Marko had happened to glance in my direction and seen what I was doing, he could have shot me before my fingers even clasped around the handle of that teapot. But I was lucky. His attention was on my uncle. He wasn’t bothered about me. I guess he didn’t take me seriously because I was just a kid.

  Big mistake.

  I don’t know how much tea was in that pot, but it must have been enough to fill several cups, because it splashed all over Marko’s face, covering him with scalding liquid. He screamed and clawed at his eyes with both hands, dropping his gun on the floor. All around us, people turned to stare. I could hear shouts. Someone pushed me. I stumbled. Reached down. Grabbed my uncle’s bag. I didn’t bother with mine—or the gun. Then I turned around and started running.

  Someone was holding my arm.

  I turned, expecting to see Marko, and found myself face-to-face with the kid whose tea I had just stolen.

  He was shouting at me.

  I couldn’t understand him, but I knew what he was saying.

  Who’s gonna pay for my tea?

  I yanked my arm away.

  He wouldn’t let go.

  Behind him, I could see Marko, doubled over, one hand holding his face, the other scrabbling around on the floor for his gun. Then his fingers closed on the handle.

  The kid and I struggled, me pulling and him refusing to let go.

  I was screaming. He was screaming.

  Suddenly he was stumbling backwards.

  Uncle Harvey had shoved him away.

  The kid tripped over Marko, who was just raising himself upright. They fell to the floor in a mess of arms and legs.

  Now Uncle Harvey pulled the bag out of my hand and flung me forward. I didn’t know which way I was going, but it didn’t matter. We just had to get away from Marko.

  We’d almost reached the exit when I heard someone shouting. I risked a quick glance over my shoulder. There was Marko, divided from us by the crowd, his face scarlet, his eyes murderous. He raised his hand. I could see the gun.

  Would he risk a shot?

  I didn’t want to wait around to find out, just ducked my head and kept moving, waiting for the sound of a gunshot, the feeling of a bullet ripping into my shoulder or thudding into my back, knocking me to the floor.

  Fear drove me onward. Knocking people aside. Ignoring their anger.

  My uncle took us through a high doorway. A line of people were waiting for taxis. He marched straight to the front of the line.

  A young, smartly dressed couple was about to climb in a yellow taxi. Uncle Harvey pushed ahead of them and took the taxi for himself.

  I arrived just in time to hear the man complaining. “You cannot queue-barge like you own this place!”

  “I’m in a hurry,” said Uncle Harvey. “Tom, get in!”

  “We are hurrying also! Please, will you return to the back of the queue.”

  Other people had begun shouting and gesticulating, telling Uncle Harvey to take his turn. The driver got involved too, hopping out of his seat to grab my uncle’s sleeve. “You must wait. There is a queue.”

  “Will you take us to Mysore?” said Uncle Harvey.

  The driver smiled. “Mysore is a very long way.”

  “If you don’t want to take us . . .” My uncle looked down the line of taxis, searching for another driver. I don’t know how he could be so cool. Why didn’t he just shout at the driver and tell him to drive?

  But his coolness seemed to do the trick, because the driver said, “Wait, sir. I will take you. But it will cost one thousand rupees.”

  He was probably just plucking a price out of the air, imagining that we would try to bargain him down to something more reasonable, but my uncle didn’t even hesitate. “Done.”

  The driver could hardly believe his luck. “Get in, sirs. Please, take your seats. My car is your car.”

  We jumped into the back of the cab and slammed the door. The couple stared at us open-mouthed. The driver slammed his foot on the accelerator and we were away.

  Just as our taxi screeched up the road, I saw Marko emerging through the doorway. He ran to the taxis and tried to grab the first in line for himself, but the young couple wouldn’t be pushed aside so easily again. The man struggled with Marko. An arm went up. Then we turned a corner and I saw nothing more.

  18

  My uncle and I peered through the taxi’s little rear window, scanning the streets behind us, searching for Marko. Had he escaped from that crowd? Had he found a taxi willing to take him? Would he suddenly appear in the road, raising his pistol and taking a shot at our tires?

  We turned one corner, then another. He wasn’t following us.

  Uncle Harvey leaned forward and offered the driver an extra five hundred rupees if he could drive faster.

  The driver nodded confidently. “We will be there double-quick.”

  Uncle Harvey flopped against the seat and grinned at me.

  “You’re good,” he said. “I liked your move with the tea. How did you know how to do that?”

  For once I didn’t feel like joking around with my uncle. “He killed Grandpa,” I said.

  “Did he say so?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “He might have been lying.”

  “Why would he?”

  “To scare you.”

  “No. He was telling the truth.”

  Uncle Harvey nodded. “It does make sense. I didn’t really understand how Dad had died in his armchair. That wasn’t his style.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because there’s nothing we can do.”

  “We could call the police.”

  “They won’t help. No, we’ll just carry on as we’d planned. We’ll get the tiger. Go home. Then we can think about Marko.”

  “That’s it? We’re just going to carry on as if nothing is different?”

  “Exactly.”

  From the way he smiled at me, I could see there was no point arguing with Uncle Harvey. He wasn’t going to change his mind. All his attention was focused on the tiger, the money, and paying off his debts. I couldn’t understand it. “I know you don’t want to get your legs broken. I wouldn’t want to either. But what about Grandpa?”

  “What about him?”

  “Don’t you want to get revenge? What about the honor of our family? Isn’t that more important than money?”

  “No.” Uncle Harvey grinned. “Our family doesn’t have any honor. We’re just interested in money.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is, actually. What’s the point of honor if your legs are broken? If my father were here, he’d say the same thing. You didn’t really know him, Tom. I did. I know what he was like. I know exactly what he would have said in this situation. Forget honor. Forget revenge. Forget Marko. Get that two million. That’s why you came here and that’s what you should be thinking about.”

  “What about—”

  He interrupted me. “I’ll make a deal with you, Tom. We’ll find the tiger and get the money. Then we’ll track down Marko. Agreed?”

  “I suppose so.�
��

  “Good.”

  We roared out of the city and onto the Mysore road, a two-lane highway thronged with traffic. Our driver drove as if he were auditioning for Formula One, ramming his foot on the accelerator and whistling from one side of the road to the other, careening around other cars, bombing past buses and trucks, overtaking everything, never worrying about his own safety or anyone else’s. He had no fear.

  My uncle and I didn’t talk. I was thinking about Marko. I remembered the expression in his eyes, the way he’d told me about Grandpa. I hated him. If I’d been alone in that taxi, I would have told the driver to turn around, gone back to Bangalore, and tried to find him. I wished I weren’t a kid. I wished I could have come to India alone. I wished my uncle was different. Why didn’t he care about honor and revenge? What was so important about money?

  We’d been driving for about an hour when Uncle Harvey told the driver that we’d changed our mind about our destination. We didn’t want to go to Mysore after all. Instead we were heading straight for Srirangapatna. “You don’t have to worry,” added Uncle Harvey. “You’ll still get the same fee.”

  “No problem,” the driver said, and rammed his foot even more enthusiastically on the accelerator, swerving into the middle of the road to overtake a bus. A truck was heading straight for us, but the driver didn’t seem bothered, serenely passing first one bus, then another, before pulling back in. The truck’s slipstream shook us from side to side.

  To my surprise, we arrived in Srirangapatna alive. As we approached the city through some anonymous suburbs, the driver asked us where we wanted to be dropped and Uncle Harvey said, “Right here.”

  “You want here?”

  “Yes. Here. Pull up here.”

  “But here is not Srirangapatna. Here is nowhere!”

  “That’s perfect.”

  The driver swerved and parked by the side of the road. We must have been on the outskirts of Srirangapatna, nowhere special, just a suburban road lined with cheap houses. I could see a shop selling satellite dishes and a café with a few old men sitting outside at flimsy wooden tables. Traffic roared past, heading into the city center. No one else was stopping here.

  Uncle Harvey counted out fifteen hundred rupees, as agreed.

  The driver took the money, then asked, “One tip?”

  “You’d be lucky.”

  “I am very lucky,” said the driver with a cheeky grin, and I couldn’t help liking him, even if he was a suicidal maniac. My uncle must have liked him too, because he handed over another grubby bill. The driver thanked him and jumped back into his car. He executed a nifty U-turn, narrowly missing a bus coming the other way, and accelerated back toward Bangalore.

  Once he’d disappeared down the road in a cloud of dust, my uncle said, “Now let’s find another taxi.”

  “Why didn’t we just keep that one?”

  “Taxis are easy to trace. I don’t want to leave a trail for Marko. Or J.J. Or anyone else who might be following us. Shall we walk into town? I think it must be this way.”

  My uncle led the way along the wonky pavement. The houses looked as if they’d been recently bombed or experienced an earthquake. Cracks shimmied up the walls, and some of the windows had no glass. Two nervous dogs skittered out of our way. A man hurried across the street and smiled at us. “You want a Tipu guide?”

  “No, thank you,” replied my uncle.

  “I am all-knowing Tipu Sultan. You will come with me and see the remains of his fort and palace?”

  I couldn’t see any ruins and ancient monuments, let alone other tourists, so I couldn’t imagine this guy was a real guide. If he wanted to take people around the fort and the palace, wouldn’t he be waiting there, meeting them as they came off their coaches? Why would he be out here in the suburbs?

  My uncle didn’t bother asking any of these questions. “We don’t need a guide,” he said. “We just need a taxi.”

  “Come this way. Follow me. I will guide you for taxi.”

  I wouldn’t have followed some random guy who came up to me in the street, but my uncle seemed perfectly happy to trust him, so we let the guide lead us around the corner to a shady spot where a yellow auto-rickshaw was parked by the side of the road. I could see a pair of bare feet poking out of the window; the driver must have been having a nap inside his vehicle. Our guide whistled. The driver sat up and poked his head out. To my surprise, he was just a kid. He looked about the same age as me, and maybe a year or two younger. I’m thin, but this guy was so skinny that his bones would have snapped in a strong breeze. “You want one taxi?” he called to us. “I am ready and available for hire! Please to come aboard!”

  My uncle gave a few rupees to our guide, who bowed his head gratefully. “Thank you so much, sir. If you change your mind and wish for full Tipu tour, you will please come to find me. I have expert knowledge of all relevant historical monuments.”

  The kid was already ushering us eagerly toward his rickshaw. “Welcome in my taxi,” he said. “Please, you will go where? To the Tipu Palace? The gardens? You will have one stop for restaurant? You are hungry? You are thirsty? You want to buy good jewels? I know best shop.”

  “Calm down, kid. We don’t want to buy anything.” Uncle Harvey’s phone had a map. A flashing blue dot showed our current position. He pointed to where we wanted to go. “Can you take us here?”

  “No problem, I will take you anywhere, you just tell me where.” The kid peered at the tiny screen. “What is the name of this place?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You do not know where you are going?”

  “We want to head north. Somewhere around here,” said my uncle, gesturing vaguely again at the tiny map on the tiny screen of his tiny phone.

  Unsurprisingly, the kid was confused. “Round there means round where?”

  “Don’t worry about that,” said Uncle Harvey. “We’ll know when we get there.”

  “No problem. We will find it. If you please to come aboard.”

  We clambered inside his rickshaw, which wobbled under our weight. A long crack ran across the entire length of the windshield. Stuffing wisped through slashes in the seats. There were no doors and no seat belts, just a rail to hang on to. It looked decrepit and dangerous and entirely fantastic. I wanted to drive it myself. Later I’d have to ask our driver if I could give it a shot.

  Once the motor was puttering away and the rickshaw was ready to go, the kid turned around and grinned at us. “You are comfy?”

  “Yes, thanks,” said my uncle.

  “The cushion is good?”

  I nodded. “Perfect.”

  “Good. My name is Suresh.”

  He waited for a moment as if he was expecting us to tell him our names in exchange, but my uncle just said, “Could you switch on the meter?”

  “Meter no working,” said Suresh.

  “Oh, yeah. I’ve heard that one before.”

  “It is true, sir. But not a problem. You will pay what you want.”

  “No, thanks,” said my uncle. He swung one leg out of the rickshaw. “If you won’t switch on your meter, we’ll find another cab.”

  “But I am telling you already, the meter is not working!”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come on, Tom. We’re outta here.”

  “Wait a minute.” I turned to the kid. “What did you mean, we’d pay what we wanted? How would that work?”

  “Like I say, you pay what you want. You like my service, you give me good money. You no like, you no pay.”

  “You mean, we’d get a free ride?”

  “Yes! India is a free country. Free economy. Free enterprise. You pay what you want.”

  “That’s crazy,” said Uncle Harvey. “What if you drive us for the whole day and go a hundred miles, but we only give you ten rupees?”

  “It is for you to choose. I am telling you, sir, this is the best system.”

  “Fine. If that’s how you want to play it, that’s how we’ll play it.” My uncle shifted himself ba
ck into the cab. “It sounds insane to me, but it’s your cab. You can do what you like.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Suresh revved the throttle. The rickshaw jerked forward, spluttered down the road, and swept us into the lines of traffic toward our tiger.

  19

  We soon left the town behind and drove through the countryside, heading north. Palm trees sprang out of the earth like big hands gesturing at the sky. White bullocks pulled wooden plows through the fields. We passed a man on a horse, clip-clopping slowly up the road, and I had a vision of Horatio Trelawney riding this way more than two hundred years ago, the sounds of the battle still ringing in his ears.

  I turned to my uncle. “Can I see the letter?”

  “Which letter?”

  “The last one. The one about the hill. I’d like to check what Horatio said.”

  “Good idea.” He unzipped his bag, pulled out the treasure box, and unfolded the final letter so we could both read it.

  I might have ridden twenty, or I might have ridden thirty miles, it was not easy to know. The landscape was so hilly and the roads so rough that any accurate figure is beyond me.

  Horatio had left only the vaguest directions for us to follow: head north for something between twenty and thirty miles. Stop when you come to a small hill topped with a rickety stone shrine. Then climb to the top.

  To my astonishment, I found a small shrine on the top of the hill.

  We just had to hope it was still there.

  Our rickshaw whizzed us through a village of small houses with straw roofs. Suresh blasted his horn, scattering children and chickens, then the dust whirled and they were gone.

  The road went on and on. My throat was dry. My butt ached. Only a finger-thin cushion lay between me and the hard seat, and the uneven surface bounced us about mercilessly.

  My hands hurt too. I had to cling on to the metal struts or I would have been thrown out of the rickshaw whenever we went over a bump.

  But I couldn’t stop grinning.

  Driving in a funny little vehicle halfway between a van and a scooter, heading into a strange landscape, baked by the sun, hunting for treasure—what could be better than this?