“Do you know much about computer programming? Well, it doesn’t make a difference. This is not about computers.” Narvin’s smile looked sad and he took a deep breath before continuing.
“We were developing a business-to-business program…niche market stuff. We were getting ready to run all these complex simulations, really test the program. All of a sudden Sriram says he’s found a problem, something with the security protocols. Nothing to worry about, he said.”
He cracked the seal on his water bottle and took a long drink.
“Now at this point we’re all exhausted—we’d been working non-stop for the better part of a year. Some of the guys were ready to…well let’s just say that tempers flared a bit. Naturally we all wanted to dig in and solve the problem but it was security related issues, Sriram’s department. He said he’d be better off without our help.”
“Was it true?” Jason said.
“Depends. Some security systems are extremely complicated—layers on layers, blind alleys, false trap doors, firewalls. Others? I’ve been hacking in since elementary school. But the only person who could get around our system was the one who designed it. In hindsight, of course, we should have been more involved.” Narvin shrugged. “He said give me a weekend to fix it. We gave him a weekend. He said trust me. We trusted him.” He shook his head and downed the rest of the bottle.
“A few days later we start the trials. Sriram seemed different, nervous. We knew he had been on the phone a lot with Ravi and we assumed he was on edge because he was hoping to land a job in the States. But it was hard to tell with Sriram. He could talk all night but if something was bothering him he kept it to himself. Bottled it in.”
The story in the newspaper had told of a rambling, angry suicide note and for the first time Jason wondered if Sheriff Neville had been right after all.
“One day Sriram and Vidya are gone. Off to America. It was only a week later that our computers all crashed.”
“Did you ask him about it?”
Narvin gave the same sad smile. “He said it was coincidental. He offered to help fix it but I told him he had done enough already. That was the last time I talked to him.”
Jason thought about the last time he had seen his friend and the strange package that brought him to this place.
“All the evidence points to Sriram,” Narvin said. “The breach of the computer system, the sudden running off to the States, the total system collapse, him selling us out. But you know something, Jason? I still don’t believe it.”
“Maybe you just don’t want to believe it,” Jason said, surprised by the words he heard himself say.
Narvin shook his head. “You didn’t know him like we knew him.” He turned his head to look out the window. “Most days I don’t think about it at all. Then all of a sudden I’ll see something or hear some song on the radio and that’s all I can think about.”
“You seemed to do all right anyway.”
“You’re missing the point. Anyway, I wanted to show you something,” Narvin said, swinging his legs off the desk. He typed a few words on the keyboard and the computer hummed to life. “You met Attar Singh up in Jaipur, right?”
“We spent some time together,” Jason said, remembering now how the man smiled as the monkey leapt over the balcony with the backpack.
“I got a call from him today. He told me to check out this chat room.” Narvin entered a coded password on a website then scrolled down the long list of entries, dancing icons and thumbnail pictures shooting past. “Most of the guys we went to school with hang out here. That would include the Bangalore World Systems team. Here, read this.” Jason leaned across the desk and Narvin angled the flat screen to cut off the glare. He had placed the blinking cursor in front of a short paragraph, the only one not bracketed by multicolored graphics. The time stamp said the entry was posted at two that morning from Mumbai.
“I’m hoping someone in this chat room can help me out,” the entry read. “I’m trying to get in touch with an American traveling in India. His name is Jason Talley and he was a friend of Sriram Sundaram. It’s very important and I’ll pay $100 US for accurate information. But do me a favor, don’t tell him I’m looking for him. I want it to be a surprise.” There was no name, but a phone number followed the entry.
“I checked with the phone company. It’s one of those pre-paid mobiles.”
“Jesus,” Jason whispered as he read between the lines of the entry.
“Oh, it gets better.” Narvin tapped the down arrow on the keyboard. Line by line a picture rose into view. “If I’m not mistaken,” he said, “that’s the Holiday Inn in Delhi, near Connaught Place. And I think you recognize this guy.”
Jason blinked several times as he looked at the screen but the picture remained the same. It was his first day in India and he stood waiting in line behind old Mr. Froman as the members of the Freedom Tours group filed onto the bus.
“Seems like you’ve got yourself a stalker,” Narvin said, and Jason felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise.
“I wanted to call the number, find out who it was, what they wanted.” Narvin leaned back in his chair again as he spoke, leaving Jason to stare into the screen. “But I figure that would only pull me in and I don’t want to get involved in your business.”
“My business?” Jason said, turning away from the monitor. “It’s not my business.”
Narvin smiled. “Unfortunately for you, someone doesn’t see it that way.”
“But what are the odds someone is going to see me here in Mumbai and see this entry.” He pointed a limp finger at the screen.
“I saw it,” Narvin said. “So did Attar, way up in Jaipur. In a city of sixteen million the odds probably aren’t as long as you’d wish. Then you add in the reward….”
Jason swallowed hard. “What do you think I should do?”
“If I were you,” Narvin said, running the wireless mouse across the desktop, clicking on the small box that closed the screen, “I’d watch my back.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Unfortunately my research has been focused on the effects of advanced transportation methods on traditional market patterns,” Rachel told the two men sitting on the bench seat across from their own. “But Dr. Talley here is the economics expert.”
The two men looked over at Jason, who squinted out from under the sweat-soaked towel that balanced on his head. He forced a weak smile before closing his eyes, the sweat burning as it seeped under his lashes.
It was sometime after midnight and most of the other benches in the second-class rail car had been converted into beds, thin blue curtains offering a limited degree of privacy and darkness. Unlike the first-class car, where the compartments consisted of two bench seats that opened to create a pair of bunk beds, Indian Rail engineers managed to squeeze in a third pair of beds that hung two feet from the car’s ceiling, suspended by thin chains wrapped in the same blue vinyl that covered the seats. Without checking their seat assignments Jason knew that that was where they would be spending the night.
“I’m afraid your friend doesn’t look well,” one of the berth’s other passengers said to Rachel, who turned sideways to see for herself. Jason pried open an eyelid and watched as she did a quick assessment. She noticed the dark sweat stains on his collar and the waxy sheen on his cheeks, but the light in the alcove was too dim for her to see the glazed look in his eyes. He was surprised that she didn’t notice that his left arm, which was right in front of her, was on fire, the stitches straining to contain what had to be molten lava that churned just under his skin.
After his chat with Narvin, Jason had lost interest in lounging by the pool and spent the rest of the evening packing and repacking the sari among his freshly laundered clothes. The banner-waving dance number in the movie had forced him to see the sari for what it really was, an elaborate scheme to smuggle computer secrets out of the U.S.
He had spread all six yards of the sari out on the king-sized bed in his room, the patternless portio
n trailing across the floor. The embroidery was limited to a yard-long section of the fabric, and Jason had noticed that for most women, this was the part of the sari that was draped over the left shoulder to hang at waist level. The pattern was far more intricate than he had recalled, with strand-thin lines jutting back and forth, all right angles in Etch-A-Sketch patterns. At random points the lines doubled back or stopped or shot across the fabric. Gold wire knots appeared sprinkled atop the silver embroidery, and here and there glass beads were worked in with asymmetrical care.
It would be easy to mistake the complex design for the traditional needlework that appeared on the more elaborate saris he had seen, easy to bring it out through customs without a single question asked. An Indian guy with a sari for his mother. What else could it be?
He knew what he was looking at, but he still didn’t know what it meant.
By the time Rachel came back from her shopping trip—hands filled with tiny bags of who knew what—Jason had finished with his packing. Head pounding, he slumped in a deep chair in the sitting room, his appetite gone and a queasy feeling settling in his stomach, certain it had nothing to do with his arm and everything to do with Narvin’s warnings. He perked up for the goodbye at Narvin’s front door but felt weak as the driver raced them back to Victoria Terminus. Inside the station, Rachel had left him propped up against a neo-gothic stone arch as she scurried about the tracks, taking pictures and gawking at grimy diesel engines caked with black grease and dirt. He guzzled down bottles of water but it took three cups of masala chai, served steamy hot in red clay cups, to quell the nausea. His arm was stiff and he was sure he heard it creak as they carried their bags aboard the second-class car of the Konkan Kanya Express that would run through the night to the seaside resort city of Goa.
It was more crowded here than it had been in first class but, even with his head swimming, Jason sensed that there was a camaraderie here that had been missing in the more expensive car. People laughed more, made room for each other in the tight passageway, treated strangers to more cups of tea or instant coffee. White-jacketed vendors squeezed past travelers crowding the aisle, stretching their legs before retiring for the evening. He smiled and nodded as people introduced themselves, but left the conversations to Rachel, who spun tales of foundation grants and doctoral theses.
It took five minutes and the help of his compartment mates for Jason to climb onto the shelf that was his assigned berth. A dim light burned in the passageway and in the half-darkness Jason could see Rachel in her bunk, her eyes wide as she chewed on her lower lip.
“We need a plan,” he thought he whispered.
“Shhh. It’s okay. You don’t have to yell, I can hear you fine.” She held her hand out across the compartment. He wanted to reach out to her, to touch her, hold her hand, maybe tell her the things he’d wanted to tell her for days, but the hot lava shot up his arm and his elbow refused to unbend.
“We need a plan,” he said again, not sure if he had heard the words himself.
Rachel leaned out of her bunk, her fingers brushing his cheek. “How you feeling?”
“We don’t have a plan. We gotta have a plan.”
He watched as Rachel sniffed and rubbed her eyes, the dust probably getting to her, he thought. “I’ve never had a plan and things have always worked out,” she said.
“You need a plan. Always have a plan. Plans are….” He paused and waited for the words to catch up. “Plans keep you from doing stupid things.”
From the bunk below he could hear the nasal snoring of a heavy sleeper, and down the passageway a tea vendor made one last silent pass. Rachel touched his cheek again, her fingers so cold he wanted to hold them to his lips to warm them. She drew her arm back and pushed her palms against her eyes.
“Sorry,” he heard her say, the words falling between the rhythmic clacks of the tracks.
“Yeah,” he mumbled. “All ’cause of a damn sari.” He patted his backpack and pulled the makeshift pillow tight against his head.
Chapter Fifteen
Keeping his eyes closed behind his sunglasses, Jason felt around in his backpack until he found the plastic tube. He flipped open the top with his thumb and poured the sun block directly on his nose, rubbing it in with his fingers before snapping the container shut. He wiped the excess off on the back of his neck then patted his hand dry on the soft cotton bandage that covered his left forearm. Behind him, just above the sound of the waves, Bob Marley sang about redemption.
He tanned easily, a genetic flaw that meant he ended up spending more time in the sun than he really should. After three days on the beach, one and a half if you only counted the time he could remember, he had the dark tan of a winter-long German tourist. His arm still ached, but not as much as the spot where they had jammed in the needle, his knees tended to buckle a bit when he stood up and he needed a shave, but as he sat in the rented beach chair, his feet buried in the sand and a half-gallon jug of pineapple juice at his side, he knew he hadn’t felt this good in months.
He cracked open an eyelid, checking to make sure the view had stayed the same. Ahead of him, twenty yards of open beach ended where the low waves petered out at the shore. To his left, over the heads of the vacationers lined up in rented beach chairs, he could just make out a double-trunked palm tree that angled towards the sea. To his right and a few feet behind, a row of dark-haired European women sat topless reading paperbacks, their pointed breasts baking in the equatorial sun. Except for the cows that wore garlands of marigolds and lounged like royalty under the largest umbrellas, it could be a resort beach anywhere in the world.
Out in the water, too far out really, Rachel rode the waves on a Styrofoam boogie-board.
He closed his eyes again and tried to piece together the last hundred hours of his life. There were things he remembered with a clarity that frightened him—the early morning auto-rickshaw ride from the station to the beachfront hotel, the sight of his arm when Rachel removed the bandage, the wide-eyed look the little boy gave him when he collapsed on the roadside, the bat that fluttered against the window screen late at night, the tall blonde woman, her hair in fat dreadlocks, who came in to use their shower, toweling off at the end of his bed, knowing that he was watching.
And there were things he half remembered, images pulled from a dream that may never have happened. A bus ride somewhere, the passengers all staring at him, the smell of marijuana in a dark room, thick accents and Rachel giggling, another ride, this one flat on his back, Rachel again, shouting now, I’m telling you I’m a doctor, more rides, Rachel holding a sari up to the sun that slanted through an open window, tinting her face red, then on a cell phone, looking at him, cupping her hand over the mouthpiece as she spoke, the hot flashes and tearing off his clothes, the ice-cold sweats, shaking the covers off, Rachel crawling up tight behind him, her naked body warm against his, that magical moment when the sweating stopped and his muscles unwound and he felt himself drifting off to sleep, Rachel’s face next to his, wet with tears.
And there were things he’d never forget. Like how they made love that morning as the sun broke over the horizon.
He took a long swig of the pineapple juice, crushed fresh at the reggae bar behind him. His strength was rushing back and he felt that convalescent’s urge to get out and do something. Rachel hadn’t mentioned any plans as they walked down the beach, hadn’t really said much at all before grabbing a rental board and heading out to the Arabian Sea. It had been a while since he had shared his bed with a woman, if only for an hour, but Jason recognized the sullen silences and the way Rachel avoided looking at him when she spoke. Guys weren’t allowed to feel guilty the next morning, a biological nonchalance that helped populate the planet, but women were…different. He hadn’t had a long-term relationship since his teens but he worked in an office of chatty women and had seen enough episodes of Friends to have an idea what was going on in her head. Either she wanted to be held and told how special she was and that he wanted to stay by her side forever or s
he wanted to be left the hell alone, it was just sex and the last thing she needed was for him to get all clingy.
The hard part was guessing which one.
He opened his eyes to see Rachel walking out of the surf, shaking the water out of her ears. She wore a black bikini she had bought on her shopping expedition in Mumbai, all strings and small patches of fabric. She walked with the easy athletic grace of a gymnast and Jason knew that every guy on the beach was watching her approach. The beat picked up behind him and after a couple of measures Toots and the Maytals sang about true love being hard to find.
“How was your swim?” Jason asked as she stood next to his chair, seawater dripping off her hair and into his pineapple juice.
Rachel picked up her towel and wiped her face dry before wrapping it around her waist, the men at the bar turning back around to watch the post-goal celebration on the bar’s TV. “We’re gonna need to get moving if we’re going to catch the train to Mangalore. It’s going to take us a half hour to get to the station and I have to make a stop along the way.” She looked over his shoulder at a bare patch of sand as she spoke.
So it was going to be like that, he thought. “Another night train? You’re going to miss all the scenery.”
“I hope you didn’t get anything from the bar.” She shifted the towel and rolled down the edge of her bikini bottoms to reveal a tiny pocket, pulling out a soggy hundred-rupee note. “We’re going to need this to eat on the train.”
“Why are you in such a rush to go?” Jason said, patting the open seat next to him. “This is beautiful. It’s like we’re not even in India.”
She sighed and rolled her eyes before looking at him for the first time since they had made love. “One, we’re low on cash. It’s a resort town so all the prices are higher and we can’t afford to stay here another night. Two, I have to meet someone in Mangalore tomorrow. Three, you made me promise I’d get you to Bangalore on time so you can catch your precious flight back to the States. Four….”
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