His head still hurt, but the pain had become more diffuse and came in waves like the sea when the tide ran out. At least now he could breathe, and he could smell curry. He retched for a good long time, hoping he could drown all the parasites. He knew he wasn’t alone, even before his eyes were fully open. He raised the lids, which, surprisingly, didn’t hurt anymore. A familiar silhouette sketched itself against the white of the wall. An unseen guard announced that he was awake, and the silhouette turned round. He made out William Sandmill of the High Commission, not knowing if that was a good thing or bad. What did it matter, anyway? Another man appeared behind him, sweaty and wiping his brow. Sandmill bent over Max, smelling of cologne and wearing a Bulova with a metal bracelet, striped tie, and wrinkled suit. Little splashes of colour and light here and there showed that reality was imposing its presence. Max tried to get up, but his head throbbed. Sandmill put a hand on his shoulder as a signal to stop moving.
He smiled. “Mr. O’Brien. Have they been treating you well, not caused any trouble?”
Treated well? How would he know? He’d been unconscious since … um … when, exactly?
“Two days.”
Sandmill pointed to another man putting away his handkerchief. “Josh Walkins, RCMP.” So this was the Canadian government’s token presence kept on the sidelines by the Indian police. “I’ve got some good news,” Sandmill went on, “You’re being shipped home. The High Commission’s reminded the Ministry of Home Affairs that our two countries have an extradition treaty, so it got fast-tracked.”
This was Walkins’s cue. “You’re lucky, O’Brien. Here in India, counterfeiting and fraud are serious crimes, especially in a country on the verge of war and all that …”
Max still didn’t get it. “So why am I being sent home?”
“Because you belong to us,” said a third man from behind the other two, “and you won’t be going anywhere after that.” Max would have known that voice anywhere, as Sandmill and Walkins stepped aside to let the third party look him over with a triumphant grin. Max closed his eyes and his headache returned, worse than ever. There was something more repulsive than an Indian prison, after all: Luc Roberge.
The detective pointed across the cell to his suitcases. “I picked them up for you at the Hotel Oberoi. You can’t say I don’t look after you.”
The traffic was sheer hell. The road to the airport was jammed with taxis, trucks, government cars, and all sorts of vehicles — destination “some place peaceful.” The word was out since morning from every embassy. Washington, London, Berlin, and Auckland had all ordered their diplomats and expats to leave; the same with Ottawa.
“Visa-hunting season is open,” declared Sandmill, who was at the wheel. “People will do anything to get out of here.”
This explained the choked roads, cars filled with anxious families, kids jammed into backseats, suitcases hastily crammed inside and pushing up against the roof of every car in a fanfare of horns from impatient drivers.
Walkins was sitting in the front, and he swivelled round to address Roberge. “Can’t really blame these poor buggers. In Almaty, Vajpayee and Musharraf never even spoke to each other, no matter what Beijing or Moscow say.”
“China’s kicking itself for helping Pakistan build the bomb in 1998,” explained Sandmill, “and now the place is so unstable that no one’s in charge, least of all President Musharraf.”
“And that’s before you add in Kashmir as well.”
More dead, tens of dead, hundreds of dead, even thousands or millions if the two countries carried out their nuclear threats.
The day before, Minister Advani adopted a harsher tone. If Pakistan wished to avoid being bombed, it would immediately hand over twenty terrorists they were holding — extremists whom Musharraf and Inter-Services Intelligence were protecting.
Roberge shrugged. He couldn’t care less. He finally had Max O’Brien sitting right next to him. So what if the world went up in a mushroom cloud? He had his man and nothing else mattered.
“The Americans can’t do a thing,” Sandmill shot back. “There’s no point in trying to cool the situation down. It won’t happen. It never does.”
Walkins frowned. “Strategically, they need to get involved because of Afghanistan. The Pakistanis mustn’t abandon their western frontier to go fight India on the other side of the country.”
“Still, there’s no way their mediation can work. On the one hand, India wants Pakistan to stop jihadis from crossing into Kashmir …”
“As if Islamabad could control anything in the country anyway, especially in Azad Kashmir!”
“… and on the other hand, they deny even having any terrorists in their country in the first place.”
“So it’s a war of wasted words.”
“Still doesn’t stop the Americans from begging India and Pakistan to settle things without going nuclear.”
“I get why the Indians are antsy,” Walkins went on. “On the ground, they’ve got every advantage, but missiles, well …”
“All the Pakistanis have to do is take the offensive. Then …”
Traffic jammed all of a sudden, turning the road into a huge parking lot. Kids from the neighbouring jhopadpatti took advantage of the bottleneck to peddle knick-knacks. Max watched them wave their rags, running from one car to another. At least for them the threat of war was a boon, a real business opportunity. He thought about the Pakistani school kids in Kashmir on forced holiday in shelters and refugee camps.
Sandmill turned on the radio. “Maybe the airport’s closed.”
Roberge suddenly woke up. “Is there another one?”
“For local flights only,” Walkins said. But the Indian authorities had assured him there wouldn’t be any problems.
“Yeah, but they’re swamped, your authorities.” Roberge was irritated now.
Back to the pen?
Then, fortunately, traffic started moving again. On to the next slum. The radio talked about Kashmir and exchanges of mortar fire along the Line of Control. The dead were piling up, and already the clinics were flooded with wounded. Max couldn’t figure why on earth David had travelled up there for just a few days before Montreal, when the situation was critical even then. Maybe his intuition was right: going to Kashmir and taking part in a conflict that wasn’t his went way beyond David’s mandate. Maybe that was the reason “they” had got involved.
After the Kashmir junket, was it the Hindus or the Islamists? James Bond or Genghis Khan?
“I’ve become just like him. I feel just what he felt.”
So David was up to something there: some move, some kind of action, probably heroic and/or risky. He was just like Philippe, bound for the same life and the same destiny. His initiatives had been tolerated up to that point, but then he apparently crossed the line for some group or other. What was it? What hornets’ nest had David stuck his nose into? Max tried dredging his memory of the papers at the time. He vaguely remembered articles in the New York Times and other U.S. dailies, about the tension in Kashmir and renewed conflict between the two countries …