Mukund looked back at the road and waited for an opening in the traffic. He didn’t care what they did. Just as long as that backpack stayed on the bus until Bangalore.
Chapter Twenty-one
The Mangalore Transport Company’s morning bus pulled into its assigned parking space at four-forty in the afternoon, ten minutes ahead of schedule. The driver wore a toothy grin as he eased the blunt nose of the bus under the corrugated tin awning, the air brakes hissing as the bus came to a stop. Unlike the airlines that kept their passengers in their seats until the captain gave the two-bell signal, the aisle of the bus had been packed for the last five miles, the travelers eager to abandon the air-conditioned comfort for the sweltering humidity of their hometown. Jason and Rachel were the last two off, the driver, happy, saying something that sounded like thank you as they passed.
There was more hustle to the crowd at the bus terminal, a greater sense of urgency brought on by the unpredictable schedules of the privately owned transports. Unlike the train stations, with their chai vendors and porters, their distinctive architecture and their panoramic rail-side views, the bus terminal was a stripped-down transportation hub, all revving engines and blue clouds of diesel exhaust, no one waiting, everyone rushing, dodging the buses that didn’t even pretend to slow down. They were making their way out the front gates to the pack of auto-rickshaw drivers and cabbies when the man approached.
“My name is Sarosh Mehta,” the man said. “May I offer you a ride to the lovely gardens at Lal Bagh?”
He was just taller than Rachel, heavy but not yet fat, pushing fifty, with a high forehead, wispy black hair covering a growing bald spot. He had a thick salt-and-pepper mustache, wide, round glasses, and a kind, cherubic face, the corners of his eyes wrinkling as he smiled.
“You are the couple looking for the ride to Lal Bagh, yes?” Sarosh Mehta said, and when they nodded the man nodded too, waving to a tall, beefy, dark-eyed man who pushed his way towards them. “Please. This way,” he said, and stepped aside to let Jason and Rachel pass, the three of them falling in behind the big man as he forged a way out.
They cut across the small parking lot where a white Ambassador waited with the doors open, the driver smoking a scrawny homemade cigarette as he leaned against the hood. “Please,” the man said, guiding them into the back seat of the car, the big man climbing in to sit between them. As the driver pulled the car out into traffic, the round-faced man turned in the passenger seat to face them. “How do you like your trip so far?” he asked.
Rachel gave a slight shrug. “It’s been okay,” she said, a nervous crack in her voice.
“You will enjoy the gardens at Lal Bagh. They are quite beautiful this time of the year.” Sarosh’s smile widened as he spoke. “Did you begin your vacation in Goa?”
“No,” she said. “Up in Delhi.”
“Then you must have gone to Agra. What did you make of the Taj Mahal? Isn’t it magnificent?”
When Rachel didn’t answer, Jason leaned around the big man to look at her, busy untying and retying a pull cord on her pack, ignoring the man’s questions.
“We didn’t get there,” Jason said, sitting back. “Maybe next trip.”
Sarosh straightened and his smile dropped. “Oh, but you must not leave India without seeing the Taj. It’s bad luck.”
“Thanks, but I think we’ve had our fill of bad luck,” Jason said. In the front seat, the driver gave the wheel a violent yank, swerving around a swarm of auto-rickshaws, cutting down a side street lined with thick-trunked trees.
Sarosh said something short and fast in Hindi to the driver, repeating it for the big man, who stretched his arms up and around the shoulders of his fellow back seat passengers, his flowery deodorant as overpowering as his cologne. Sarosh pushed his round-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose with a pudgy finger. “Now my friends, I believe you have something for me.”
Jason heard Rachel swallow hard and saw her hand shaking as she tugged open the zipper on her backpack, her hand slipping off the short metal tab. “Here,” she said, thrusting the bag at Jason. “I can’t do it.”
Jason reached out and took the bag by the straps, his hands caressing hers as she slowly let go, her lips moving, the words inaudible above the engine’s whine.
“Is there a problem?” the man said, his eyebrows arching.
“No problem,” Jason said, unzipping the bag and lifting out one of the bundles from the pack, the tan wrapping paper crinkling under his light grip. “We’re not very good at this drug-running thing.”
The round-man’s mouth snapped shut, his smile replaced by a tight-lipped scowl, the veins on his neck rising as he drew in a sharp breath through his nose. “Who told you it was drugs?” Sarosh said through clenched teeth. Jason stared into the man’s hooded eyes but said nothing. “I asked you a question,” the man said, almost shouting, his teeth still held tight. “Who said it was drugs?”
Jason felt the big man’s forearm flinch and out of the corner of his eye saw the man’s long fingers curl into a fist. “No one told us,” Jason said, the words bunching up. “I just figured….”
“That I am a drug dealer? Is this what you are saying?” His face was flushed, his nostrils flared, a double-edged knife appearing now between the front seats, slashing out at Jason, catching the bundle near the top, cutting through the tan paper and shipping tape. Rachel gasped as Jason pushed back against the seat, trapped, waiting for the knife to slash again.
The round-faced man pointed the knife at the bundle, holding it steady until he was sure they were listening. “Open it,” he said, his voice calm, almost soft.
It was several moments before Jason moved. He balanced the bundle on Rachel’s open backpack, his sweaty hands leaving dark prints on the thin paper. He started where the knife had made its cut, pulling the paper down the side, tugging loose the shipping tape. Freed from the wrapping, layers of cotton batting puffed up, the bundle seeming to grow as he unraveled it. He pulled the fabric away to reveal a block of machined parts bound in a layer of bubble wrap and rubber bands, not much bigger than a forty-ounce can of Odenbach beer. He held it out in front of the big man so Rachel could see.
“It’s part of a multi-directional joint for a robotic arm,” Sarosh said, tossing the knife back in the glove box. “A prototype. The other bundle contains the rest.”
“A machine part?” Rachel said, her voice rising as she spoke. “I did all of that for a stupid machinepart?”
“I wanted you to know that I am not a drug dealer,” Sarosh said, his cheerful voice and smile returning. “Drugs are a terrible thing.”
“I’ll tell you what’s terrible,” Rachel said, slapping the big guy’s chest for emphasis. “What’s terrible is everything I went through—we went through—to deliver a stupid damn part.” She leaned over and waited for Jason’s support.
“I’m glad it’s not drugs, Sarosh, but come on. A machine part? What’s going on?”
“As I said, it’s a prototype of a very expensive piece of equipment. Potentially it could be worth billions of rupees. Things have changed in India. The computer industry is on the rise. So is industrial crime. These parts came from a plant in Germany and tomorrow they’ll be delivered to an Indian robotics research firm here in Bangalore. Six weeks from now they’ll introduce an Indian version—smarter, better, cheaper than the original.”
Jason looked down at the two bundles, a fortune on his lap. “It’s still against the law.”
“Of course,” Sarosh said, laughing. “That is why you were paid to carry it.”
“But if we were caught?”
“You are tourists. The police seldom bother tourists. If you are stopped, all they look for is drugs. And if they did arrest you, what would you know? You couldn’t tell a Tamil from a Rajasthani, let alone pick out the subtle differences in accent. Industrial secrets? What do they care? No, tourists make the perfect people to carry these type of goods.”
“So we just helped ruin some German com
pany?” Jason said.
“You are helping to complete the circle. For two hundred years the West robbed everything from India—our resources, our wealth—and they still rob us today. Tell me, how many doctors and engineers and computer programmers in your country come from India?”
“That doesn’t make it right,” Jason said, seeing Sriram, Vidya, and Ravi as he spoke.
“No,” Sarosh conceded. “But it does make it quite profitable.”
“Well, we’re outta here,” Jason said, dropping the plastic-wrapped parts, the padding, and the second bundle in the big man’s lap. “You can drop us off right here.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Sarosh said, his smile bending as he spoke to the driver, the car picking up speed.
“But we delivered the packages,” Jason said. “We kept our side of the deal.”
“I swear we won’t say anything,” Rachel said, adding her attempt at an earnest ahcha head sway.
“I know this, but I can not let you out. You see,” Sarosh said, pointing at a series of road signs, “this is a no-stopping zone. We must circle around this block. That is the rule.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Propped up by three pillows, Jason leaned back against the headboard of the double bed and sipped a cold Kingfisher beer as he watched the Indian version of MTV’s All-Request Live. On the screen, a dozen beautiful women danced in unison through a shopping mall, part of a video requested, the show’s equally beautiful hostess explained in a mix of English and Hindi, by a loyal viewer in Mysore. Over the high-pitched singing and the rubbery thump of traditional Indian drums, Jason could still hear the shower, the steam curling up from under the door.
On the low dresser next to the television, the room service tray of fruit and croissants was picked clean, the last two beers of the six-pack sticking out of the copper ice bucket. The bouquet of tropical flowers that covered the table by the balcony doors filled the room with lush, green smells, and the rattan ceiling fan created the illusion of a warm, soft breeze. It was a bright and comfortable room, just like the woman at Raj-Tech had promised.
The driver had dropped them off near the cricket stadium, Sarosh waving as the car pulled away, wishing them a wonderful stay in Bangalore. They had wandered through a nearby park for a half hour before Jason remembered Ravi’s email.
“Mr. Murty told us there was a chance you might ring,” the woman at Raj-Tech’s Bangalore headquarters had said. “So please, feel free to make any request. You are our most welcome guests.”
On a cell phone he had borrowed from a peanut vendor, Jason had told the woman about the stolen credit card, how they had no money and no place to stay, leaving out any mention of industrial spies and festering knife wounds. With a smile he could hear in her voice, the woman assured him that she would have a new card delivered to the Karnataka Hotel on Lavelle Road, a five-minute walk from their location, where he would find a room waiting, her assistant finalizing the details with the hotel as they spoke.
“Mr. Murty has also asked me to apologize in advance,” the woman added. “His schedule is filled with meetings here in Bangalore and it is doubtful he’ll be able to get away.” Jason chuckled to himself as they walked to the hotel, picturing Ravi’s face when he had learned he’d have to come back to India after all.
After devouring half the welcoming snacks and chugging a beer, Rachel declared herself fit and announced that she would attempt to use up all of the hotel’s hot water in a scalding shower. Fifteen minutes later the shower was still running.
While the TV blared Shalini from Hyderabad’s request—a sari-filled dance with a flashing number one in the corner of the screen—Jason thumbed through the folded printouts he had kept from the train station’s Beachfront Internet Café, a half-dozen emails from potential contacts in Bangalore and the “wafty crank of a monologue” downloaded from the London comedy club, the small hole punched through the stack hinting at the role they had played in saving his life. He ran his palm across each sheet, flattening out the wrinkles, and thought about his next move.
His Air India flight back to the States was scheduled to leave in four days. Jason’s ticket was one of the things that had disappeared while he was blacked out in Goa, Rachel insisting that he was lucky that that was all they took, not sure what she meant since they had taken everything else as well.
According to his original itinerary, found crumpled at the bottom of his pack, the bus from Freedom Tours was scheduled to pull into Bangalore at noon tomorrow. He had paid extra for flight insurance, the travel agent in Corning frightening him into the pricey purchase with tales of lost tickets and bankrupt airlines. He’d contact fast-talking Danny and get it all straightened out. It would probably cost him a couple hundred bucks and there would be petty bureaucrats to suck up to and reams of redundant paperwork to endure, but those were the things, he realized with a sigh, that he did best. Sitting in the travel agent’s office in Corning, everything had seemed so simple. Fly to India, track down Sriram’s mother, give her the sari. But nothing was simple now—not India, not Sriram, not the sari.
Then there was Rachel.
In the melancholy week between Christmas and New Year’s, Jason had spent his evenings surfing on-line dating sites, filling out the personality profiles and ticking the “my perfect match” checklists, reading the computer-generated ads, closing out each website, careful not to hit the click-here-to-sign-up-now button. The questions were different but the results all sounded the same. Single white male, twenty-eight, average looks, average build, office worker, some college, good organizational skills, honest, responsible, punctual, no hobbies, likes to read magazines, stay-at-home kind of guy, non-smoking, no pets, seeks single beautiful woman with similar background.
She was beautiful, he’d give her that. Bright eyes that seemed to shift from brown to green, a toothpaste ad smile, that wild auburn hair, a tight body that was made to wear low-slung jeans and half-shirts. Standing in the road outside of the train station in Goa, fists clenched and jaw set, he knew she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever known.
But that was all he knew about her. She was reckless and unpredictable, making her life up as she went, creating a personality to fit the moment, telling people just what they wanted to hear. He had seen her passport, so the Canadian part was probably true, but the rest? Did she really win the trip? Did she honestly like trains? Did she expect him to believe that the pattern on the sari was not a stylized circuit board?
And did it really make a difference? He’d spend the next few days with her and maybe they’d fly back to North America together. There’d be promises to keep in touch, emails that first month, maybe a phone call or a lunch date in Niagara Falls, then they’d drift apart, him back to his gray-on-gray cubicle, her back to whatever it was she did. It was not the way he wanted it, but it was the way it was going to go. Her? With a guy like him? Too much even for a Hindi movie.
Jason could hear her in the shower now, her off-key version of Jingle Bells a half-beat off the dance moves on the request video. He tried not to think about her, focusing on all the things he needed to get done. Like delivering a sari.
***
“I’m gonna get the vegetarian thali, some prawns, a double stack of nan bread and a side of this coconut crab curry,” Rachel said from behind the restaurant’s tall menu. “Wanna split an order of chicken vindaloo?”
“I guess you got your appetite back,” Jason said, closing his menu, Rachel’s order enough for the both of them.
“Nothing like a hot shower and a good romp in the hay to bring a girl back to life.”
Jason cupped his hand along his eyebrows, sneaking a glance out from under his fingers. “Geeze, Rachel. Not so loud.”
Rachel waved off his complaint without looking up. “It’s not like anyone could hear me over the music,” she said, tilting the menu towards the tinny speaker that hung on the wall near their table. “And besides, they shouldn’t be listening in. Just like the people across
the hall. I can’t believe they called the front desk.”
“Well, you were a little….”
“Excited? It doesn’t make a difference. Polite people ignore those things.”
After the second verse of Jingle Bells she had called him into the shower, telling him it was his last chance for hot water that day. He had tapped politely on the door, asking her to let him know when she was decent, Rachel laughing, telling him she was a hell of a lot better than just decent.
The hot water lasted another five minutes. They dove, dripping wet, under the covers, wrinkled emails flying, interrupted an hour later when the manager phoned and asked them to keep it down, Rachel saying that she was working on it. That evening, when Jason went down to the concierge’s office to sign for the replacement Visa card, he endured the blushing grins of the women at the registration counter and the bellhop’s knowing smirk.
“The way I see it,” Rachel said after placing her order, the waiter not correcting her pronunciation or pointing out she had ordered enough for four, “your friend was a classic example of an unresolved Oedipus complex.”
A fresh pint of Kingfisher lager hung suspended in front of his lips as Jason looked across the white foam. “A what?”
“Psychology 101, Jason, hello. Hates the father, wants to have sex with the mother. It’s pretty obvious.”
Jason looked at his beer and thought about chugging it, settling for a healthy sip, motioning with his fingers for her to continue. Rachel clicked her tongue and looked up at the ceiling, letting him know how elementary it all was.
“How well do you know mythology?” she asked.
“It’s all Greek to me.”
“Cute. Well, there was this king who went to a fortune teller and he found out that one day his son would grow up and kill him and then a whole bunch of things happened and then the kid, this Oedipus, he kills the father….”
“Before or after he slept with his mother?”
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