The Sultan's Tigers

by Josh Lacey

  Four of them had been riding in the car that hit him, and all four fought back immediately. They were armed with batons and pistols, but they didn’t need their weapons. They simply knocked him to the ground with their fists, then kicked him with their shiny black boots.

  That should be have been the end of the fight, and would have been if his wife hadn’t joined in, blood still streaming from her eyes. She charged forward and sprang onto the back of the nearest policeman.

  Another woman emerged from the car and joined in.

  The police still would have won easily if several onlookers hadn’t chosen to get involved. I can’t imagine why they did. They must have known they’d only get hurt.

  The car behind us held four more police. Now they joined in too. One pulled his baton from his belt and rained down blows on the heads and backs of anyone within reach. Another pointed his pistol into the air and fired a shot.

  The noise must have been intended to quiet the crowd and persuade them to go away, and it worked with some of them, but enraged others, bringing them out of their cars and into the fight.

  Soon the police were lost under a storm of fists and feet.

  Our driver and his passenger hesitated for a moment, glancing at us, then the fight. Then they opened their doors and ran to help their comrades.

  “Tom,” hissed my uncle.

  “Yes?”

  “This is your chance. Run.”

  “But what will—?”

  “Just run,” interrupted my uncle. “Then ring the embassy. Someone will come and find you. They’ll get you home.”

  “What about you?”

  He nodded at his wrists. One end of the handcuffs was still attached to him, but the other had been clipped around the inside door handle. With a chisel or a screwdriver, we could have freed him in a moment, but we didn’t have either.

  “What will you do?” I asked.

  “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”

  “But what if they—”

  “I told you, I’ll be fine. You’re wasting time, Tom. Get out of here. Go on. Run.”

  I hated the idea of leaving him there, but I knew he was right. I had to take my chance. I wouldn’t get another.

  Then I looked at the front seat. And knew what I had to do.

  I opened my door and jumped out of the car.

  My feet crunched on broken glass. A man barged past me, fists flailing, and threw himself into the fight that was still raging.

  The police were outnumbered, but battling hard, crunching their batons into knees and noses. None of them noticed me. They had more important things taking up their attention.

  I slid into the front seat of our police car, slammed the door after me and turned the key in the ignition.

  37

  I’d only driven a car once before. That had been in Peru, earlier in the year, and Uncle Harvey had been sitting beside me, giving me instructions. This time he was in the back, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t need his help. I could remember what to do. Driving isn’t difficult. You just have to keep your foot down and avoid hitting anything.

  That was the only tricky bit.

  I hit a lot of stuff.

  Some people, too.

  The first was our driver. The car rammed into the back of his knees, sending him flying.

  I didn’t care about him. He and his friends had just beat up me and my uncle, and I was sure he would have been happy to run me down too. But I felt bad about the rickshaw that I knocked over next, spilling its occupants onto the pavement. I wanted to stop and see if they were OK, but I knew I had to keep driving. The police were already charging after us.

  I wrenched the wheel. The car rammed into a truck and bounced aside.

  Uncle Harvey was yelling at me from the back seat, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying and didn’t have time to ask him to clarify.

  The side of a bus loomed up ahead of me. I wrestled with the steering wheel. We swerved to the right. People threw themselves out of the way.

  A bicycle crashed into the windshield. Where did that come from? Cracks wriggled across the glass. Had I killed the cyclist? No sign of him. No sign of blood, either. I hope he was OK. Would the windshield collapse on me? No time to worry about that now. Faster, faster. Down here. Up there. Through that gap. What’s that? I could see a blur of other cars and trucks heading toward me. I was on the wrong side of the road. How? Who knows! I couldn’t get out of their way, so I just drove straight ahead and hoped they would get out of mine.

  Bang! A car clipped us. Metal screeched. I saw a face, the driver, his eyes wide open, his mouth, too, and then he was gone.

  My uncle was still shouting at me from the back seat. But I had more important things to worry about.

  Crash! A truck crunched against our flank. The mirror disappeared, leaving nothing but a sprig of trailing wires.

  My window was open. How did that happen? Oh, yes. The glass had been knocked out. All over my lap.

  Two cars were coming toward me. There was no room to pass between them. I could hear their brakes screeching, but they weren’t going to stop in time. Through the windshields I could see the drivers, their faces frozen with terror.

  I yanked the steering wheel. The car swerved, skidded, bumped onto the pavement, and smashed through a market stall. Lemons cascaded onto the windshield. A watermelon crunched in half, spilling its insides. The world went red.

  “Wipers!” yelled my uncle.

  What did that mean?

  Oh, right. Wipers.

  How do they turn on?

  Dunno.

  No time to find out.

  Didn’t matter, anyway. The wind had already blown those scarlet chunks of watermelon from the windshield, clearing my view, and I could see the road ahead.

  I rammed my foot on the accelerator and sent us through a gap in the traffic. Then I lost control of the car. We must have skidded. I don’t know why. Suddenly we were on the other side of the road.

  A brick wall.

  Coming closer at unbelievable speed.

  No time to think.

  No time to move.

  Straight into the side of a shop.

  The noise!

  My body snapped forward.

  My head bounced off the edge of the steering wheel.

  I died.

  Oh, no. I hadn’t. Dying wouldn’t hurt so much. I had one blissful moment of peace, then the world returned with a vengeance, injecting pain into every corner in my body, and a voice was screaming in my ear, telling me to pick myself up and run.

  No, thank you. I don’t want to run. I like it here. I’m cozy.

  “Run!” yelled the voice again.

  I opened my eyes. I could see glass and bricks and blood and the face of a boy, not much younger than me, peering through what had once been a windshield. His mouth opened and strange sounds came out.

  “Get out, you idiot! Get out and run!”

  That wasn’t the boy talking. That was my uncle. I turned around and looked at him slumped on the back seat. Blood was trickling down his face.

  “Run!” he yelled for the hundredth time.

  I heard my voice. It sounded very distant. “What about you?”

  “Forget about me. Just go!”

  I pushed the door. It sagged open. I stepped out. To my surprise, I could stand up without falling over. I didn’t think my legs were going to work. I flexed my hands. They worked too. That was good news. Now what? Should I run? Could I? And where would I go?

  The boy grinned at me. “You drive good!”

  “Thanks.”

  “Which country are you from?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  He laughed.

  You know what was really funny?

  It was true.

  If I’d sat down and thought about things, I probably could have remembered everything about myself and my life, but at this moment my mind felt empty. As if that crash had wiped me clean.

  I heard a
siren.

  That brought me back to life, sparking ideas in parts of my brain that had previously gone dormant.

  Time to move. Time to get out of here.

  But not alone.

  38

  I went around to my uncle’s side of the car and opened his door.

  The handle had broken off and was now joined to him and his handcuffs. He was still attached to a piece of the car, but free enough that he could walk.

  We hobbled down the street.

  At the corner, I looked back. The boy had been joined by a bunch of friends and all of them were scrambling over the police car, pulling it apart, taking pieces as souvenirs.

  Uncle Harvey and I jogged down that street, then another. People stared at us. Of course they did. We were foreigners. Our faces were covered in blood. My uncle was wearing handcuffs. I’d have stared at us too.

  “We’ve got to get off the street,” I said to my uncle.

  “I know. I know. I’m just trying to think where to go.”

  “How about a hotel?”

  “I don’t have any money.”

  “What about your credit card?”

  “They got that, too. Along with everything else. I don’t know why they didn’t just take the tiger and leave us the rest. Have you still got your phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t give it to me now. First we need to find ourselves somewhere to hide. Come on. Whatever you do, don’t run. Just walk slowly and look as if everything’s cool.”

  There was a building site on the other side of the street. One of these days it was going to be become a block of apartments, but right now it wasn’t much more than the walls and the floors, the timbers exposed, the concrete unfinished. A wooden fence guarded it from the street. Uncle Harvey shoved his shoulder against the slats and made a gap big enough to get through. I clambered after him and pulled the fence shut again. Several people in the street must have seen us, but no one shouted at us and no one told us to get out. I hoped none of them were calling the police.

  We climbed up two flights of stairs and found ourselves a nice clean patch of recently concreted floor.

  “We’ll stay here till the builders arrive,” said Uncle Harvey. “Then we’ll shove off and find somewhere else. Now give me the phone.”

  “Who are you going to call?”

  “Just give it to me.”

  “Okey-dokey.”

  I handed over my phone. He rolled up his sleeve. A number was written on the skin just above his wrist. He tapped the number into my phone.

  A moment later, I heard Tanya’s voice yelling out of the phone, asking what he thought he was doing, waking her up in the middle of the night.

  He started explaining, but she ended the call.

  Uncle Harvey was grinning.

  “I’m in love,” he said.

  He called her again. This time he only managed to say, “Please don’t hang up the phone” before she hung up.

  He was still grinning. He called her once more and left a message. “I’ve got to talk to you,” he said. “It’s urgent. It really is. I’m sorry to be ringing you so early, but you’ll understand why when you talk to me.”

  He ended the call, waited a minute, then rang her again.

  “Please,” he said. “Just listen to me for a minute.” There was a pause. Then he said, “I’m on the run from the police, I need money, and you’re the only person in the entire world who can help me.” I heard laughter coming down the phone. “It’s true,” said Uncle Harvey. “I promise on my mother’s life. Yes, you’re right, she is. I promise on my own life, how about that? Just let me explain. It won’t take long.”

  He was wrong. It took ages. He told her about the letters, the tigers, J.J., and the police. I did try to stop him, but he shook his head and gestured for me to shut up. I suppose he felt he had to be honest with her if she was going to help us, and maybe he was right.

  She made him promise on his mother’s grave that he was telling the truth.

  Then she said she’d leave her hotel as soon as she was dressed and get on the first train to Bangalore.

  Uncle Harvey switched off the phone. “If she’s lucky with the trains, she’ll be here in four or five hours.”

  “Then what will we do?”

  “Borrow some money, buy a couple of new passports, and get the hell out of this country.”

  “How can you buy a passport?”

  “You can buy anything if you have enough money. Like the visas, remember?”

  “What about Marko?”

  “Forget about Marko.”

  “You’re just going to let him get away with it?”

  “We don’t have much choice.”

  “That’s terrible!”

  “Yup.”

  My uncle shrugged, then winced.

  I felt furious. And miserable.

  Marko had murdered my grandfather. Got the tiger. And earned two million dollars.

  Game, set, and match.

  I wanted to kill him. I couldn’t understand why my uncle didn’t feel the same. Yes, of course, he was worried about saving his own legs, but why wasn’t he even more worried about locking up the man who murdered his dad? We couldn’t let him get away with it. We just couldn’t.

  But what could we do? How could we stop him?

  The police weren’t going to help us. Neither would anyone else.

  We’d messed up.

  No, I’d messed up.

  Uncle Harvey had been right. I should have kept my mouth shut. We should have sold the tiger to J.J., taken the money, then called the police and gotten them to deal with Marko. I don’t know why I hadn’t done that in the first place. What an idiot. Did I really think I could blackmail a billionaire? J.J. would never have done a deal with me. Of course he wouldn’t. I’d been a fool. I should have let Uncle Harvey handle the whole thing. Then I could have gone home with a million dollars and tracked down Marko from the safety of my own home. I’d messed up everything.

  Unless . . .

  Would that work?

  It might.

  I spent a few minutes thinking it through, looking at my idea from every angle, trying to imagine how it would work and what might go wrong. Then decided I had no choice.

  I told my uncle what I wanted to do.

  He shook his head. “Don’t be an idiot, Tom. Forget Marko. Forget the tiger. We’re going to get out of India. We have to save our skins.”

  “What about your debts?”

  “I’ll find a way to pay them. I don’t know how, but I’ll think of something.”

  I thought about it for a moment. Then I nodded. “You leave India if you want to. But I’m going to break into the museum and steal J.J.’s tigers. Then he’ll have to hand over Marko.”

  “And how exactly are you going to do that?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You do know you’ll never make it, don’t you?”

  “I don’t see why not. I’ve broken into places before.”

  “Oh, yes? Like where?”

  “My school.”

  “Your school,” he said sarcastically.

  “Yes.”

  “What did you do? Climb through the window?”

  “Yes, I did, actually.”

  “Did your school have an alarm system?”

  “No.”

  “Laser beams? Motion sensors? Armed guards?”

  “No.”

  “I thought not. The museum does. Even if you manage to climb over the walls and evade the guards, you’ll be confronted by an immensely sophisticated alarm system. Then there’s the tigers, of course. You don’t want to be eaten by them, do you?”

  I shook my head.

  I’d forgotten the tigers.

  I remembered the way J.J. had laughed and said he was only joking about feeding thieves to them.

  Had he been joking? Or was he telling the truth?

  I didn’t want to be tiger food.

  Wait a minute.

  What
if . . .?

  Yes.

  I grinned.

  “I’ve got it,” I said.

  “Got what?”

  “I know how to get in there.”

  “Oh, yeah? How?”

  I told him.

  He listened in silence, then asked a couple of pertinent questions.

  I could see him thinking.

  Was he impressed by my guts? Or excited by the thought of all eight tigers sitting in the museum, waiting to be stolen? Did he think they’d make him enough money to pay off his debts?

  Uncle Harvey said, “Is there any way I can stop you from doing this idiotic thing?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’d better come with you.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I know I don’t. But I’m going to.”

  “Why?”

  “Someone has to stop you from getting killed.”

  39

  I was impatient to get moving, but we couldn’t do anything till Tanya arrived, so we sat there, watching the sun rise slowly up the opposite wall. We were both too tired and thirsty to do anything else. The heat was intense. I did go on one exploratory expedition, padded up and down the stairs, hunting for water, but the plumbing hadn’t been connected yet and every tap was dry.

  We were lucky in one way. The builders never turned up, so we had the site to ourselves. We used a room on the ground floor as a toilet. Judging by the smell, we weren’t the first.

  There was no sign of the police, either. What would they be doing now? Searching our room in the hotel? Alerting the airport and the train station? Sending our pictures to the newspapers and the TV stations? Would the news cross the world? Would Mom and Dad glimpse my face on a TV screen? Or would they be called by Interpol, eager to know more information about my previous crimes, my state of mind, my psychological profile?

  Just after midday, Tanya called my phone and said she was in a taxi driving through Bangalore. Uncle Harvey told her to dump that cab and pick up another, then come to our street. We’d spotted its name out of a window.

  We snuck out of our comfy building site and walked down the street, keeping watch for cops. There didn’t seem to be any around. Soon we came to a dingy alleyway between two tall buildings. We hid in there and Uncle Harvey texted Tanya from my phone, telling her how to find us.