The Assassins

by Jeremy Trafford

  ‘Surely Narayan sees the laws of physics as purely human hypotheses,’ Clare suggested.

  ‘Yes, they don’t exclude the possibility of divine purpose, of ultimate spiritual significance,’ agreed the Professor. ‘Nor do they exclude the possibility of human goodness, such as we need so much in these bad times of terror and fanaticism. That young how could he have been so cruel? Narayan has never lost his beloved Hindu faith, as Tammy seems to have, the poor dear fellow. And which of them is the happier, I ask you? Which is the more understanding and secure? Does Tammy think we can save this ancient country with all these soulless forms of modern knowledge?’

  While Subramaniam was speaking, Clare looked from time to time through Maria’s binoculars. She saw Max lever himself up and stand on the summit with Narayan – and then she saw them put their arms around each other. She felt a sudden stab of exasperation, although she knew she was being jealous. Eager for distraction, she turned to catch Maria telling Subramaniam about Antonio, much to her surprise.

  ‘He is an animal?’ asked Subramaniam, determined to take Maria in his gentle stride. ‘Well, many of our gods take the forms of animals. We find it a very touching notion.’ He looked at the sea for a while. ‘Look at the tide coming in so fast; the sea so rough.’ He turned back to Maria. ‘So what kind of animal is your husband?’

  ‘A cross between a rabid tiger and a lecherous great ape.’

  ‘Well, you joke about him, but even a tiger has its gentleness, and even the ape possesses a kind of beauty that is not immediately apparent to our human eyes. If he’s your husband, though – animal or otherwise – why did he not come with you to these shores?’

  ‘Because he deserted me for another woman,’ said Maria flatly. ‘Actually, I’ve a new theory to account for his philandering. I suspect he’s a repressed gay. Not only repressed but very chauvinistic, and macho, hence his pathetic attempts to prove himself by being such a compulsive lady-killer.’

  ‘The human spirit has always been repressed,’ observed Subramaniam. ‘It is the very condition of the finite, earth-bound soul. As for being gay, that is very marvellous! Every bit of gaiety brings us ever closer to the soul divine – and that is of a boundless happiness.’

  ‘What I meant by gay is homosexual,’ Maria apparently felt required to say.

  ‘Oh,’ said the old man. ‘Homosexual? I didn’t know that was especially gay. We have little of it in India.’

  ‘You might think that,’ Clare said on impulse, immediately regretting it.

  ‘A great shame, in my opinion,’ said Maria. ‘It might solve some of your population problems. Far more fulfilling than vasectomy.’

  ‘Vasectomy’s no more the answer than being gay is. All this frantic desire, this pursuit of sheer physical sensation, when chastity is what is needed: more restraint and quiet contemplation.’

  ‘Chastity!’ exclaimed Maria. ‘That’s asking far too much. No, you ought to have loudspeaker vans touring the villages, advertising the joys of all non-reproductive sex.’ She carried on, although Clare rather hoped that she would stop.

  ‘Homosexuality should be positively encouraged,’ she said, ‘at least up to its natural limits. Seven per cent or so, I think it is. A most effective and natural means of birth control at a time when your population is over the billion mark.’

  ‘You mustn’t think I’m intolerant,’ the old man replied, blinking mildly, ‘but all forms of love are an aspect, however partial, of the divine love that is in us all. Abstinence, though, doesn’t mean misery. Chastity can be very gay. The triumph of the soul over the body is a very happy thing indeed. The power of chaste love is infinitely greater than that of mere carnality, which can be so frustrating and tormenting.’

  Clare was still intermittently looking at the temple, around the base of which the tide was now swirling. She saw Tammy clinging to the stonework. The sun dazzled her eyes for a few moments. The scene seemed to tremble and was lost to her, but then she found it again. Tammy looked to be about six metres up. He suddenly moved his head sideways, as if intending to look up at Max and Narayan.

  There was a violent burst upon the stonework, just where Tammy’s head had been. He lost his handhold. There was another explosion of stone dust. Tammy’s body swayed across and was left hanging from only one hand.

  Another explosion. He lost his grip entirely, his arms flew backwards, and he began to fall. Horrified, she heard his sudden cry.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Clare ran. It took a minute for her to reach the water that now surrounded the temple (she later learnt it had been an abnormally high tide). As she ran, her thoughts were whirling. Were those bullets that had struck the temple? There’d been no noise, but a rifle could have been fitted with a silencer. Some fishermen and children were also racing towards the temple, stumbling in the loose, wind-driven sand.

  Tammy had fallen into the water. He appeared to be unconscious, his head bobbing limply up and down as the water rose and fell. Had a bullet hit him? Max was climbing back down, fast; Narayan too. The fishermen had reached the temple, and Clare wondered if the marksman was among them. The waves surged on, and Max dived into them, ignoring any risk of danger to himself. Narayan followed. Both of them vanished, as if sucked down by a cascading wave. Seconds later, Clare saw them farther out, their arms beating hard in the driving surf. She watched as they desperately sought to save Tammy.

  She scanned the fishermen. They were moving frantically about, pointing and shouting. There was a tall man noticeable among them, his back to her.

  Twenty metres out, Max and Narayan converged. A wave seized hold of Tammy’s body, and his head disappeared below the water. Above the spray, the gulls shrieked and wheeled about in fierce excitement. Clare heard a voice calling from behind her; it was Subramaniam, who was holding his hands together in prayer.

  The sea was running even higher. Clare saw Max emerge from one of the waves and then saw Tammy’s body slide down another before being thrown to the top of a splitting breaker. It was there that Max managed to get hold on him. With one arm around his chest, he began to tow him back to shore. Narayan joined them moments later and helped to keep Tammy’s head above the water.

  Clare felt an enormous surge of gratitude to both men. It coursed through her body like electricity. She wanted to keep her eyes on them as they approached the shore but something, some instinct, compelled her to turn her head.

  She saw the face of the tall man, lined, bearded and frowning intensely. Then she saw the crutches. She believed it was the cripple. Were the two youths with him? She looked around, searching frantically, but the group was breaking up. She couldn’t make them out among the excited, moving fishermen. She looked back, but the cripple had disappeared. The number of onlookers was growing. People were hurrying from all directions, gathering in little awed clusters, as they watched Max and Narayan bring Tammy back.

  A terrifying thought seized hold of Clare. What if someone on shore was waiting for Tammy? What if they would try to kill him in some other way?

  Max and Narayan reached the shore. Max took Tammy in his arms and carried him a little way up the beach before placing him gently down by a clump of seaweed. He put his mouth to Tammy’s and began to breathe into it. Clare and Narayan crouched down next to them. Subramaniam stood a short distance away, chanting his prayers, while the temple, silhouetted against the sky, threw its long, twilight shadow across the beach.

  Maria had stayed behind with Sam, but now she advanced towards them, holding his squirming, protesting body tightly in her arms.

  Clare concentrated on what Max was doing. She knew he’d been trained in First Aid resuscitation. She watched as he breathed hard into Tammy’s mouth, and then leant his hands on his sternum, pressing several times in measured sequence. There was no response. Fervently she wished for that inert body to revive, for even a flicker of breath to stir his chest. Tammy had a cut on his forehead and it was oozing blood. His hand, now stiff and pale, rested on the straggling s
eaweed.

  ‘Let me help,’ Clare said, involuntarily recalling Violet’s fight for air.

  Max pulled back, allowing Clare the space to put her mouth to Tammy’s and breathe into his lungs. Max positioned himself so that he could continue the compressions on Tammy’s sternum. Between breaths, Clare put a hand to his forehead. It was a cut, not a bullet hole. It was bleeding profusely, though. She tried, ineffectually, to stem the flow with her hand, feeling his blood pulse beneath her fingers. She kept up the breathing, aware of Subramanian chanting his prayers, and the idea helped her. It served as an antidote to her bemused feelings about the cripple. She hadn’t seen him again. She wondered why he’d tried to kill Tammy in that extraordinary way. She supposed he’d been watching Tammy for some time and had seized his chance when he saw him climb the temple. He’d be separated from her, alone and totally exposed.

  There was still no response, still no movement of Tammy’s chest. Lifting her head, Clare saw the fishermen and children in a circle around them, now watching silently. There were two or three youths among them, although she couldn’t make out their faces in the fading light. She couldn’t let herself think of the assassins, or the cripple. She couldn’t afford to be afraid of them, not there and then. She had to focus all her energy, everything she had to give, on reviving Tammy. His lips felt cold and hard, but she kept going. She felt her own heart thud as she thrust all her breath into Tammy’s saturated lungs till her head began to ache.

  Tammy’s eyelids flickered.

  ‘Tammy!’ Clare exclaimed, feeling the tears welling in her eyes.

  His eyes began to open, his head jerked back, and water spurted from his mouth. He coughed convulsively. His back arched, and his hands beat at the sand. Clare watched with awe and pity as he fought for air, for life; it was as if he was struggling to return to her. Eventually, the coughing slowed, and his breathing grew more regular and strong. His eyes seemed to focus in dim bemusement and he mumbled a few incoherent words. Max moved forward, and Clare moved away to allow him to turn Tammy onto his side.

  Clare remembered something Narayan had said to her about falling in love against one’s own will.

  She looked around and noticed that the two youths had now gone. They were probably innocent onlookers. If they were conceivably the assassins, they might still attempt to murder Tammy, although they were unlikely to try when so many people surrounded him. She realised they might make a move later on, when he was quite alone, and that must be prevented at all costs. The cripple still hadn’t reappeared and she began to wonder if, in her fear and confusion, she’d imagined him.

  It was only then they noticed Tammy’s leg wound. His thigh was streaming blood. Narayan tore a strip from the towel he’d brought, and Max found a piece of driftwood with which they made a clumsy tourniquet. He tightened it around Tammy’s upper thigh and the bleeding stopped. He tore another strip from the towel, which he used to secure the folded remainder tightly against the leg wound. He then loosened the tourniquet a little. The cut on his forehead had stopped bleeding.

  ‘We can’t move him,’ Max said. ‘Not for quite some time.’

  It was another half-hour before Tammy sat up. Vaguely he asked what had happened. They told him but, not surprisingly, he didn’t take it all in at first. As they walked slowly back to the hotel, a curious levity seemed to overcome them. This was partly helped by Maria’s jokes, especially about The Putto. Strangely, he did not seem to have been upset by all the drama. Indeed, he seemed to approve, as if assuming it had all been put on for his entertainment. He waved his chubby hands in cherubic blessing and, after some gurgles of satisfaction and an appreciative belch or two, fell fast asleep in his mother’s enfolding arms.

  Subramaniam limped back, leaning heavily on Narayan’s shoulder. Tammy, now being carried with in Max’s strong arms, still appeared stunned, although he too laughed a little. It was only when they reached the hotel that Clare felt the full force of her shock, and she laughed and wept in relief. She knew now that she was in love with Tammy, but Narayan’s gaze of curiosity made her see the need to control her feelings.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  A doctor arrived within an hour. He attended to Tammy’s leg wound and the cut on his head and gave him a shot of penicillin. Tammy’s concussion was such that he couldn’t remember anything from the time he’d begun to climb the temple, and the doctor advised him to stay in bed for a day or two. It seemed to Max a strange coincidence that both he and Tammy had been concussed and nearly drowned, Max from his failed attempt to save a couple in Malibu, and Tammy from a failed attempt upon his life at Sandeha, the latter assuming Clare’s suppositions were correct. Max didn’t know what to make of Clare’s idea that Tammy had been shot at as he climbed the temple. Max and Narayan, being further up the temple wall, hadn’t seen or heard anything. Maria, meanwhile, had been too involved with her demanding little boy to notice. Clare said she’d seen the cripple standing among the fishermen, and possibly the two youths as well, while she and Max had been resuscitating Tammy. Characteristically, though, she was not without her doubts in view of the panic she had felt. Max had always admired Clare’s ability to admit she might be wrong.

  Max had phoned Inspector Veerapan in Chennai, and he’d issued orders to the local police to provide the group with protection. A police guard arrived that same night. He was a smart young man, with a pencil-thin moustache that he touched with concern from time to time, as if worried it might not be sufficiently admired. He fulfilled his duties with disconcerting zeal, vigorously saluting Max and the others on every possible occasion. He enjoyed ceaseless radio communication with his headquarters, the excited sounds of which leaked past his headset in a series of shrill jabberings.

  The following morning, the police guard announced, with awe and enthusiasm, that a senior inspector was coming out to see them. It turned out to be Veerapan, of course. He arrived by helicopter. Clare and Max met him in the lobby of the hotel. Max well remembered him from Madurai; how could he forget his meticulously combed hair and woeful manner. This time, Veerapan was pleased to be able to set their minds at rest. He had surprising news.

  ‘The evidence you gave at Madurai proved most useful,’ he told Max and Clare. ‘We deduced the assassins were part of a new, small group of hit men. Informed by a rival of theirs, we raided their headquarters yesterday. Four of them were killed, including the two we believe were Venkataraman’s assassins.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ asked Clare.

  ‘We made an identikit picture of the boy,’ Veerapan went on. ‘It was based on your description, madam, and’ – he turned to Max – ‘on your photo of him, good sir, albeit having been in quarter-profile.’

  There was an awkward pause then, as if Veerapan weighing up what he would say next.

  ‘The boy had a bullet hole in his face,’ he said, glancing at Clare.

  ‘Don’t mind me,’ she replied. ‘I can handle the gory details.’

  The Inspector gave an embarrassed cough.

  ‘It made identification difficult, you understand. We cannot be absolutely certain.’

  He brushed at his immaculate grey hair with his fingers, as though nervous of a single strand being out of place.

  ‘About this shooting you’ve told us of,’ he now said. ‘I understand it happened at the sea temple. Shall we go there now and you can tell us what you saw.’

  ‘Terrorism’s getting worse in India,’ Veerapan went on, as the three of them walked down to the temple, ‘as it is in the whole world. The Twin Towers, for example. There were only twenty suicide men involved – as few as that.’

  ‘What that crime has done to the whole planet… it seemed to change everything, in a single day,’ Max said.

  ‘Yes, it was most terrible,’ said the Inspector. ‘These militant extremists! People prepared to commit horrifying murders in the cause of a fanatical ideology.

  ‘When most religions are supposed to be forgiving and pacific,’ Max declared.

>   ‘Oh yes, the horrible things done from religious rivalry. Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jews and Sikhs… even Buddhists. None of them should believe in retaliation, but people seem driven to get their own back, both personally and communally.’

  ‘But we don’t have to think it’s instinctive and inevitable,’ suggested Clare. ‘Tell me, do you have any idea who hired the assassins?’

  ‘Not yet, but we’re working on it. It’s more difficult now the assassins are surely dead. The mastermind is still alive, though. You think it was he who shot at this friend of yours? May I ask where he is now?’

  ‘He’s not yet fully recovered,’ said Max. ‘He’s back at the hotel in bed.’

  When they eventually reached the temple, Veerapan asked Clare to show where she was standing at the time she thought she saw the bullets strike. She was unable to do this easily, as the tide had obliterated any marks upon the sand, and the change in the position of some driftwood was confusing. They examined the surface of the temple for bullet marks, but the stone had traces of erosion all over, having been scoured and pitted in many places over the years. Veerapan seemed not to believe that Tammy had been shot at but he didn’t like to say so at first.

  ‘The government’s trying to upgrade the country’s anti-terrorist activities,’ he said. ‘There is a need to stop these mad conspiracies in time.’

  ‘More should be done to penetrate terrorist groups,’ asserted Max. Which should be far more effective than these Western crude military interventions. So, what do you think about the crippled mastermind? Do you think he was the marksman?’

  The Inspector fastidiously polished his already glistening spectacles, as if to emphasise the need for clarity in his reply. He sighed and gave a weary smile.