The Mountain Shadow

All life orbits that sun, Fate’s heart. Ranjit, Vikram, Dennis the Sleeping Baba, Naveen Adair, Abdullah, Sanjay, Diva Devnani, Didier, Johnny Cigar, Concannon, Vinson, Rannveig, Scorpio, Gemini, Sri Lanka, Lisa: my thoughts, a voyager, sailed from sea to sea, with one star in the black-ink sky, Karla.

Lisa was still asleep when I left, at dawn. I walked, contrition-brisk, to a taxi stand on the causeway. My shadow played like a laughing dog in the yellow morning. A sleepy taxi driver reluctantly accepted double the fare. The empty streets we drove were bright, cleaned by light.

The station, Bombay’s pagan cathedral, urged porters, passengers and burdens into passageways of crucial consequence, every seat precious; every seat important; every seat essential to someone’s destiny.

And when the Madras Express pulled out, at last, my window woke the streets for me, all the way through rain-stained suburbs to the tree line of green mountains and valleys, beyond the city’s grey hunger.

Again-and-again, again-and-again, the train’s rhythm chanted. I felt good: bad and good at the same time. My heart was a question; my head was a command.

Sri Lanka was risky. Lisa was right about that. But Abdullah had spoken to Sanjay, wresting my freedom from him in exchange for the mission I’d promised to do. And one job, like fifty others I’d done, was a small price to pay for a clean exit from the Company.

I was happy for Lisa, happy that she was free of me, if that was what she wanted. I was still feeling the same worried affection for her, but I had to start getting used to the fact that she was already gone: she was gone, and I was on a war train.

Lisa found her truth, and I found mine. I was still in love with Karla, and I couldn’t love anyone else.

It didn’t matter what intrigues Karla was plotting, with Ranjit or against him. It didn’t matter that she’d married someone else, or that I’d tried to love someone else. It didn’t matter if we couldn’t be more than friends. I loved her, and I always would.

I felt good, and bad: one bad mission away from good.

Again-and-again, the train wheels sang, again-and-again, again-and-again, as farms and fields and towns of dreams streamed past my window, and a shawl of sky misted distant mountains with the last of that year’s rain.

Part Six

Chapter Thirty-Three

There was no moon. Clouds hid, afraid of the dark. Stars were so bright that whenever I shut my eyes they burned sparks on the dark inside. The wind was everywhere, playful, happy to see us out there on the surface of nowhere, and the ship plunged and rose gently, as if swimming through the waves, rather than floating on them.

I’d waited three days in Madras for just such a night, as had the seventy-seven others with me. Those waiting days had shrunk to minutes: minutes before midnight, minutes before leaving the danger of the ship for the greater danger of small boats, on the open ocean.

Waves licked at the prow, streaming in salted mists all the way to the stern where I stood, dressed in dark blue fatigues and jacket, one more camouflaged bundle on the camouflaged deck.

I looked at the stars, as the ship sighed through the waves, drifting between dark night and darker sea.

Most ocean-going cargo ships are painted white, cream or pale yellow above the waterline. In the event of an emergency at sea, such as dead engines or a ruptured hull, they can be seen from far by search and rescue vessels, or aircraft.

The Mitratta, a Panamanian coastal freighter of fifty thousand tons, was painted dark blue, everywhere, and dark blue tarpaulins covered the cargo and rig on the deck.

The captain ran the bridge on instrument lights. The ship was so dark that the forward running lights seemed like tiny creatures, diving into and out of the waves.

Figures huddled together like bundles of cargo, which, of course, we were. Smuggled people smuggle their dreams with them, and they whispered to one another often, but no word could be heard. Their whispers were always just softer than the lush of the waves. Victims of war become masters of silence.

I suddenly needed company. I made my rolling way along the deck to the first of several groups. I smiled at them, teeth in the darkness. They smiled back at me, teeth in the darkness.

I sat down beside them. They began whispering again.

They were speaking in Tamil. I couldn’t understand a word, but I didn’t mind. I was in the bubble-murmur of their voices, the gentle music of it dripping shadows around us on the painted steel deck.

A figure approached, and squatted down beside me. It was Mehmood, nicknamed Mehmu, my contact on the ship.

‘It’s a young war,’ he said softly, looking at the faces of the Tamils near us on the deck. ‘The Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka is an old idea, but the young are dying for it. Can you come with me now?’

‘Sure.’

I followed him until we reached the afterdeck.