by Vaseem Khan
‘It’s not as if he’s lying low,’ observed Haq.
‘I think he keeps himself out of sight until he has to act. And then he does it boldly. I think he relies on that façade of self-confidence. It was something Hitler used, a tactic of war. Besides, few people will challenge a man who presents himself with authority.’
‘So what do we do?’ said Haq.
‘We should get his description out there,’ offered Fernandes. ‘In the newspapers, on the radio. Make it impossible for him to show his face.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘That might drive him away. Do that and we’ll never catch him.’
‘We can’t just let him wander around the city killing innocent people.’
‘There’s only one more person he might need to kill,’ she said, softly.
It took them a moment to understand what she meant.
A hiss of breath escaped Birla. ‘You intend to use yourself as bait? Did you wake up in a suicidal mood this morning?’
‘Does Seth know about this?’ Haq asked.
Only George Fernandes remained silent, his expression thoughtful.
They were interrupted by Gopal. ‘Madam, there’s a man here to see you.’
She frowned, then looked behind him . . . and froze in astonishment.
Zubin Dalal nodded at her, his hands tucked into the pockets of his jacket. ‘Do you have a moment? I’d like to speak with you.’
She closed the door to the interview room – and the curious faces of her colleagues – then turned to face him.
‘What are you doing here?’ Anger tightened her voice.
‘I’ll be leaving Bombay for a while. I’m going south, to Bangalore. I have an old friend who’s asked me to come in with him on a business venture. He’s supplying the capital; I’ll be the face of the business.’
‘I expect he’ll be penniless soon.’
He gave a pained smile. ‘I suppose I deserve that.’ He lowered his head, assuming the posture of the damned. ‘I came back to Bombay for you, Persis. I know that I disappointed you. Hurt you deeply. But that’s in the past. I can’t do anything to change that. All I ask is that you find it within your heart to forgive me.’ He stepped towards her. ‘I chose her over you because I was penniless, not because I loved her. My father made some bad investments. What kind of life would I have been able to give you? I reasoned that it was the best thing for both of us. I was wrong.’ Another step forward. ‘I never stopped thinking about you. You could say it poisoned my marriage.’ Another step, and now she could smell his cologne, see the small mole on his left earlobe, the way his dark eyes caught the light. His words seemed to whisper along the inside of her ear. ‘Won’t you give me another chance? Have you forgotten how in love we were? How it felt when we held each other? When we . . .?’ He stopped, gazing at her with an intensity she found unbearable.
Feelings that she’d long suppressed came rushing to the fore. She wanted to deny them, but couldn’t. She had loved this man, his charm, his intelligence, his charisma. She’d given him everything. And, in return, he’d wounded her more deeply than she would ever allow anyone to know.
She turned away. ‘There’s nothing for you here.’
A silence like the ringing aftermath of an explosion.
He stood there a moment, then said, ‘I understand.’
Time passed and then she heard him walking away. It took every ounce of self-control to stop herself from turning around.
‘Persis.’ He’d paused by the door. ‘I’ll be waiting at the Café Eden. My train is at ten-twenty. I hope you’ll come.’
She slumped back into her chair, anger bubbling from her like molten lava.
What right did he have to do this? To say those things? How could he expect her to – to simply forget?
She grabbed her glass and drained the lime water, then thought about throwing the glass at the wall.
She needed to take her mind off Zubin Dalal.
She picked up the folder Lindley had given her and went through it again, focusing on Otto Skorzeny.
It was on the second look that something snagged.
A covert operation, conducted back in July 1943.
A few weeks after the Allies invaded Sicily, the Italian Grand Council of Fascism voted a motion of no confidence against Benito Mussolini. The Italian king immediately ordered his arrest. Mussolini was taken to the Hotel Campo Imperatore, a ski resort in Italy’s Gran Sasso massif, high in the Apennine Mountains.
Hitler sent Otto Skorzeny to rescue the embattled Italian dictator.
On 12 September, Skorzeny, together with sixteen SS troopers, set out on a high-risk glider mission, landing ten DFS 230 gliders on the mountain near the hotel. Skorzeny’s crack troops, together with Luftwaffe paratroopers, overwhelmed Mussolini’s captors without a shot being fired.
Ten minutes after the beginning of the raid, Mussolini left the hotel, accompanied by German soldiers. He was subsequently flown to Pratica di Mare, and then to Vienna, where Mussolini and Skorzeny stayed overnight at the Hotel Imperial.
The next day Skorzeny escorted Mussolini to Munich, and on 14 September, they met a triumphant Hitler at the Führer’s Wolf’s Lair headquarters near Rastenburg.
Something about this curious incident bounced around her mind.
This was the missing piece of the puzzle, she was suddenly sure of it, at least insofar as Skorzeny’s involvement in the theft of the Dante manuscript was concerned. She didn’t know exactly how the jigsaw fit together, but she felt certain the answer lay in Skorzeny’s encounter with Benito Mussolini, the man who had once offered a king’s ransom for Dante’s masterwork.
All she had to do now was find out where John Healy had hidden the manuscript.
She took out her notebook, and looked once again at the Englishman’s final riddle.
The road to salvation has many gates,
That which you seek in Cutters embrace awaits,
’Neath Sun and Moon and unchanging skies,
Watched over by God, in litteral disguise.
’Twixt Jerusalem and Mecca, it lies.
Between Jerusalem and Mecca? Had Healy somehow managed to smuggle the manuscript out of Bombay?
She knew, from poring over atlases as a girl, that there were any number of small towns between the two great centres of worship – the reference to the manuscript being watched over by God and the road to salvation would make sense in this context. And the desert skies above the region were usually dry and cloudless; in that sense, they were unchanging.
But why would Healy send the manuscript so far away? Who had he entrusted to get it out of Bombay?
She returned to her notebook, focusing on the first line. The road to salvation . . . Could that be a reference to the contents of the manuscript? The Divine Comedy was, quite literally, a story about how man might achieve salvation. And that salvation was possible in a variety of ways – through many gates – depending on the nature of the sin.
She went to the next line. That which you seek in Cutters embrace awaits. Cutter’s embrace. Who was Cutter? It certainly wasn’t a common name and no one of prominence in Bombay’s history possessing that name sprang to mind.
She quickly confirmed this by calling Neve Forrester, followed by an equally fruitless call to a prominent Bombay historian that Forrester had recommended.
The historian did, however, send her thoughts spinning in a different direction.
‘Perhaps Cutter isn’t a name?’ he’d suggested. ‘For instance, a cutter is also the word for a small sailboat.’
Could Healy have hidden the manuscript inside an old boat?
A call to the Royal Bombay Yacht Club, and the club’s ‘commodore’, Captain Homi Daruwalla, threw up nothing.
She all but slammed the phone down.
Seeking to clear her head, she decided to take a walk, stopping at the corner of the road for a glass of chai from Afzal’s tea stall. In his characteristic white dhoti, the reedy old man had run a brisk trade from
that spot for as long as anyone could remember. He kept his ear to the ground and was a source of both scurrilous gossip and, occasionally, useful information. Rumour had it that, in a former life, he’d acted as an informer for the British; counter-rumours suggested that he’d been a double-agent for the revolution.
The only thing that could be said with any certainty was that he made the best cup of tea in the city.
She ran the problem by him. He considered it from all sides, then said, ‘You’re trying too hard to find hidden meanings. Perhaps you should simply take the facts at face value.’
What did he mean? But he’d already turned away to his next customer.
She walked back to the office, sipping on her tea.
Cutters embrace. What if she took Healy’s words at face value? Cutters embrace.
A pair of cutters? Could Healy have meant a pair of bolt cutters? Or scissors? Scissors’ embrace?
No. That was patently ridiculous.
What about those who performed the act of cutting?
Leather workers, for instance? Or carpenters? Butchers? She shook her head. The list could go on endlessl—
A boulder crashed through her thoughts.
She stood on the spot, allowing the idea to unfurl itself, like the wings of a newly hatched butterfly . . . Yes! That could be it.
Immediately, doubt assailed her. Was it too bold a leap?
There was someone who would know, someone she could ask.
Someone she trusted implicitly.
She turned on her heel and headed for her jeep.
Chapter 46
‘Must you take so long over every move?’
‘Chess is a game of patience, my friend. It cannot be rushed.’
‘I’ve seen more animated corpses.’
‘A man of your vintage should be less concerned with haste.’
Her father was in the bookshop, sat at his counter, playing chess with Dr Aziz.
He looked up as she entered. ‘Persis. What are you doing here?’
‘You’re looking well, dear,’ said Aziz. ‘Which is more than I can say for your father. If he doesn’t want to fall flat on his face, he really should adhere to the dietary regimen I’ve prescribed him.’
‘Your dietary regimen consists of bitter gourd juice and lentils. I may as well be dead.’
‘You soon will be, if you don’t listen.’
‘I’ll outlive you, you deranged old quack.’
‘Not according to my rectal thermometer, you won’t.’
‘Be quiet, the pair of you. I have something important to ask.’ She looked around. There was only one other person in the shop, an elderly white woman at the very rear, in the Botanicals section.
She lowered her voice. ‘When I was young, a couple of years after Mama died, I walked in on the pair of you playing dress up.’
They stared at her, her father examining her over the top of his half-moons with an expression that could have curdled milk.
‘What I mean is that you were both dressed in outlandish costumes. You told me they were for some fancy-dress ball you were going to, and shooed me out of the room. You never spoke of it again.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I want the truth. Why were you dressed like that?’
‘Why the sudden interest?’ asked Aziz. He seemed unperturbed by her accusation.
She hesitated, then plunged on and explained everything she had learned about Healy’s final riddle. ‘The word Cutters could refer to a profession. And it occurred to me that it could mean stonecutters. In other words, stonemasons.’ She looked squarely at them. ‘Are you both members of the Freemasons?’
They glanced at each other. Aziz shrugged. ‘Yes.’
‘In that case, there’s something I’d like to ask you.’
The building, despite its central location near Victoria Terminus station, had always remained invisible, hidden in plain sight, in keeping with the tenets of its builders.
Freemason’s Hall was situated on the corner of Murzban Road. Evening traffic roared past as she parked the jeep and made her way to the front entrance where she was met by a tall, slightly stooped elderly man in a plain white shirt and dark trousers. His name was Tariq Shah and he was the Grand Secretary of the District Grand Lodge of Bombay.
‘The hall is actually closed at present for renovations,’ he said, shuffling under the sandstone porch towards the front door. ‘But your father and I have been friends for a long time.’ He took out a set of keys and unlocked the door, then ushered her inside.
They entered a grand entrance hall.
Shah waved a hand expansively around. ‘Sam said you wished for a guided tour. We don’t usually do this sort of thing for the uninitiated, but your father would never let me hear the end of it.’ His eyes wobbled behind bottle-bottom glasses. ‘That’ – he pointed to the corner of the room – ‘is the foundation stone, located at the north-east corner of the building, in line with the edicts of Freemasonry. How much do you know about us?’
‘Not a great deal,’ she said, more to keep his curiosity at bay. Sam had brought her up to speed with all she really needed to know.
Shah immediately launched into a rendition of the history of Freemasonry on the subcontinent. ‘The Masons in India go back to the early 1700s, when officers of the East India Company began to meet in Calcutta’s Fort William. The first Indian lodge was constituted in 1729. Within two decades, lodges had appeared in Madras and Bombay. Bombay’s first Grand Master was Brother James Todd.’ He nodded at an austere portrait of a red-faced white man who seemed to be suffering from severe constipation. ‘In 1775, the first Indian Mason was initiated, but it wasn’t until 1872, when the first Hindu Freemason was initiated – a P.C. Dutt – that the doors were flung open to native members.’ He swept a hand over the portraits and statues crammed around the entrance hall, historically some of the country’s most accomplished men. ‘As you can see, the Masons have always attracted men of high worth.’
But no women, she couldn’t help but notice. An enlightened institution? Not so enlightened, after all.
A carpeted staircase led in both directions. ‘Downstairs, we have our banquet hall and offices,’ said Shah, noting her gaze. ‘Upstairs is the main temple.’
‘The basement,’ she said. ‘I’d like to see the basement.’
He seemed confused, then shrugged. As they padded down, she couldn’t help but say, ‘Isn’t it true that the British used Freemasonry to strengthen imperial rule in India?’
His cheek twitched. ‘It’s true that the British employed the bonds of Masonry to bind networks of influential Indians to their cause. But Indians benefited too by such association.’
She decided against probing further. She hadn’t come here to debate the rights and wrongs of Freemasonry. Her focus had to be on John Healy and his last act before he had killed himself. And she now believed that some part of that final curtain had taken place here, at Freemason’s Hall.
The basement proved to be a warren of rooms.
They walked along a low-ceilinged, carpeted corridor, Shah flicking on light switches as they went. At the end of the corridor they entered a banquet hall – a large, open space with oak panelling and wooden cross-beams, lined with sturdy oak trestle tables. More portraits decorated the walls; a legion of unsmiling busts sat on sideboards. Chandeliers hung overhead, interspersed with ceiling fans. Cast-iron sconces held Gothic candles.
It was a distinctly male redoubt, she couldn’t help but think; an excess of pageantry and a dearth of good taste.
On one side of the room was a stage with a lectern. Red curtains covered what she presumed was a screen.
She walked to the stage, climbed a short flight of steps, and made her way to the lectern. Bending down, she swung open a small door built into its base, then took out a wrapped bundle.
Shah looked at her quizzically. ‘What’s that?’
‘An artefact of immense value. This manuscript was stolen from the Asiatic Society and hidden here.’
A hiss of breath escaped his teeth. ‘You’re talking of the Dante manuscript? The one that’s been in the newspapers?’
‘I am.’
He seemed astonished. ‘What would it be doing here?’
‘It’s my belief that John Healy, the man who stole it, was a Freemason. I believe he couldn’t think of any better place to hide it.’
‘May the Grand Architect be praised,’ murmured Shah.
‘Thank you for your help,’ she said. ‘I have what I came for.’
He nodded and turned to limp back towards the door, stopping short as a shadow detached itself from the darkness beyond and entered the room.
Otto Skorzeny, dressed in a sharp black suit, pointed a pistol at the old man.
‘What is this?’ said Shah. ‘Who are you?’
‘Forgive the intrusion,’ replied Skorzeny mildly. He waved the pistol at Persis. ‘I’ll take that, Inspector.’
She stared coldly at him. ‘You followed me here?’
‘Persis – may I call you Persis? – I must commend you. You have been magnificent! But that is my prize, not yours.’ His English was impeccable.
‘You expect me to just hand it over to you?’
He moved forward. ‘I really don’t want to hurt you. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. It was supposed to be a simple operation.’
‘Tell that to Franco Belzoni. To John Healy. To Francine Kramer.’ The names arrowed out of her.
‘I had nothing to do with John Healy’s death,’ he said. ‘As for the others: regrettable. Especially Francine. I really did like her. But she couldn’t let go of the past.’
‘You mean her own rape and torture? The murder of her countrymen?’
A hard edge entered his eyes. ‘A regime is a powerful locomotive, Inspector. Once it begins to move, you either hop aboard or it cuts you down. For the record, I was never that type of Naz— Stop!’ He aimed the gun at her hand which had drifted towards her holster. ‘I really don’t want to shoot you, Fräulein. Please don’t make me.’
He moved towards Shah, stuck the pistol in his stomach, and pushed him back on to a dining chair.
