Алистер Маклин - Borrowed Time

Mike blinked. ‘Did I say I had a special interest?’

‘You didn’t have to. When I came in just now you were staring at this picture with your teeth gritted. You do that when something you’re chasing turns up in your sights.’

‘You’re imagining things,’ Mike said.

‘Am I imagining things, Lenny?’ Sabrina said.

Lenny grinned and looked away. Ram came in through the back door wearing a tracksuit and trainers. He was panting.

‘Ram, I’ve something I want you to look at,’ Sabrina said. She went to her room and dug out the papers she had taken from Hafi. She brought them to Ram. ‘I wondered if anything here might be relevant. I majored in languages, but this is beyond me.’

Ram went through the papers, reading a little of each. ‘It’s mostly correspondence to this Hafi character from other men who call themselves Unit Commanders.’

‘Hafi was a bandit,’ Sabrina explained. ‘I understand he had a lot of satellite outfits.’

‘Was a bandit?’

‘I’ll tell you about it some time.’ Sabrina nodded at the letters. ‘What do you think?’

‘It looks mostly like bragging and gossip,’ Ram said. ‘I’ll go through them in more detail once I’ve made you breakfast.’

‘You’ll spoil me.’

‘That’s my brief.’

While Ram grilled bacon and fried eggs Sabrina sat down and studied the pictures with Mike and Lenny. ‘So what is it?’ she said. ‘A private vendetta?’

Mike looked at her. ‘Why does it have to be anything like that?’

‘Vendettas and grudges bring out that atavistic glint you get now and then. What happened?’

‘God, you’re persistent.’

‘So tell me and I’ll stop being such an aggravation.’

He told her about the wrecking of a sportsman’s career, and the casual savagery that had been the stock in trade of Seaton back in the days before he took to the Indian hills.

‘In that case I believe you’ve every right to catch him and do your worst,’ Sabrina said. ‘Just remember he’s not likely to be a sitting duck.’

‘Breakfast,’ Ram announced, putting a plateful of eggs, bacon and toast in front of Sabrina. ‘Eat.’

She was starving and she ploughed through the food with a minimum of decorum. As she dropped her knife and fork and grabbed her mug of coffee, Ram came over from the window, where he had been reading Hafi’s papers.

‘This is interesting, in a grim kind of way.’ He held up a sheet of yellow paper with tiny writing on it. ‘It’s from a Unit Commander called Sadjit. He reports that on a scouting mission in the Vale of Kashmir, one of the men in the unit caught a recruiting officer …’

‘What kind of recruiting officer?’ Mike said.

‘A man who recruited mules. This Sadjit and one of his lieutenants tortured the man to get information from him. They were too zealous, and the man died before they were able to learn very much, but before he expired they were able to learn that the upmarket drugs are manufactured in the Grotto of Moksha.’

‘Never heard of it,’ Lenny said.

Sabrina asked what moksha was.

‘A Hindu concept,’ Ram said. ‘It is taught that all people go through a series of reincarnations that eventually lead to moksha. Moksha is the spiritual salvation that frees a person from the cycle of rebirths.’

‘That’s when a person’s karma gets all straightened out, is it?’ Mike said.

‘That’s right.’

‘In that case it’ll be a few centuries before Mike gets a glimpse of moksha,’ Sabrina said. She saw Mike scowl. ‘Same goes for me,’ she added quickly.

Amrit set off before first light. By the time the sun was up and he could feel its warmth on his face he had gone fifteen kilometres. The dirty, nondescript sack swung from his shoulder and his sandals kicked up dust as he strode along at a marching pace.

Eventually he would travel without surveillance, but for probably the first third of his journey, there was no way to tell if he was being watched. Mike had told him to presume someone was watching all the time. Amrit sensibly mistrusted everyone he saw along the way. A large percentage of the surveillance provided to criminal institutions came from casual informers and paid hangers-on, the slurry of society who could whisper to lethal effect. Every tramp and low-life was a potential seeing-eye that led all the way back to the men with the power.

Amrit had been walking for three hours when he spotted a beggar he had been watching for. The man was tall and stooping, with a small red patch on his filthy grey turban. He stood by the roadside coughing against the palm of one hand while he held out the other to passers-by.

Amrit fished in his pocket as he approached the beggar and pulled out a crumpled banknote. He tossed it to the man, who caught it, brought his hands together with the fingertips touching his chin and bowed, muttering elaborate thanks.

When Amrit had gone past the beggar stood there a while longer, still coughing fitfully, still putting out his hand to everyone who passed. Finally he glanced up at the sun, mopped his forehead with his arm and began walking in the direction of Srinagar.

Hours later he reached the town and made his way through a network of back streets, several times doubling back and stopping to cough. Finally, when he had spent twenty minutes threading through variations of a route around the same seven little streets, he slipped suddenly into a darkened doorway with a sign above it advertising a motorbike courier service. He pushed open the door beyond and threw himself into a chair in front of a desk.

‘The things I do for authenticity,’ he groaned. ‘Tea, for the love of God …’

There was a rattle of cups in the tiny kitchen off the main office. A moment later Mike Graham brought in a steaming mug. He put it in front of the beggar, who pulled off his turban and revealed himself to be Ram Jarwal.

‘Mission accomplished, I hope.’ He took a gulp of tea. ‘Lord, that’s just in time. Another minute and I’d have expired.’ He fumbled in the pocket of his pantaloons and threw the crumpled banknote on the desk.

Mike opened it and spread it out flat. ‘That’s great. Hey, Lenny!’

Lenny Trent was in a small room at the back, viewing videotape of a suspected heroin peddler operating in one of the town markets. He switched off the VCR and went through to the office.

‘Your boy has done us proud,’ Mike said.

He pointed at the smoothed banknote. Stuck to its surface was a white label on which Amrit had scrawled a summary of his route to the Chinese border, with details of a rendezvous at a town called Boyding.

‘I hope nobody saw him do that,’ Ram said.

‘They wouldn’t,’ Lenny said. ‘We rehearsed that one till he had it oil smooth. The drill is first, he memorizes the details of where, what, and when, then when he’s off and walking, he slides his hand into his pocket and flattens the banknote against his leg. He pauses for a minute to get something out of his eye with one hand and uses the other hand to scribble out the message with an old stub of pencil he has in his pocket.’ Lenny winked. ‘He’s a talented fellow.’

Later, back at the cabin, Mike, Sabrina and Lenny sat round the big table in the sitting room, mapping out a plan of assault against Paul Seaton and his bandits. Ram snored quietly on the couch.

Lenny asked if they were agreed on their objective.

‘If we can be sure Mike keeps his personal feelings under control,’ Sabrina said.

‘Don’t worry about me,’ Mike snapped. ‘The objective is direct and uncomplicated. We grab Seaton and bring him in for questioning.’

‘You definitely believe he’s involved in the upmarket drug trade?’ Sabrina said.