Дэвид Даунинг - The Dark Clouds Shining

Mirza looked inquiringly at McColl, as if expecting an explanation.

“Where is Sayid Hassan’s house?” McColl asked.

“You will see it. Come.” Mirza turned and led the way up the crumbling steps. “Look out for snakes,” he said over his shoulder.

As they neared the top of the flight, Mirza advised that they should both keep low, and the two of them made their way half-crouched along a short stretch of passable rampart to the protruding remains of a guard tower. Here another of the detective’s “irregulars” was sitting and dozing with his back to the wall, a pair of British army binoculars reposing in his lap.

Mirza gave him an affectionate cuff. “The house is straight ahead, about two hundred yards away,” he told McColl. He pointed to a large gap in the brickwork and passed him the binoculars. “Don’t push them too far forward, or the light will reflect on the glass.”

McColl took his first look with the naked eye. Sayid Hassan’s house looked like a small estate, with several buildings set within spacious grounds alongside the old Circular Road. A magnificent banyan stood on the eastern edge of the gardens, and a man was sitting in its shadow.

McColl raised the binoculars and brought the figure into focus. A white face, Slavic and handsome, slightly cadaverous. Sergei Piatakov.

Gandhi’s would-be assassin. Caitlin’s husband and lover. According to her, yet another victim of the war.

Weren’t they all?

A pair of legs walked into view beneath the canopy of leaves. And then the familiar figure, face, and shock of hair. Aidan Brady. Laughing about something.

McColl wondered what he would have done with a decent rifle.

“That is them?” Mirza whispered in his ear.

“Oh yes,” McColl said. He lowered the binoculars and edged away from the gap. “Let’s go back down.”

Getting down the broken steps was harder than getting up.

“You can keep watching?” McColl asked when they finally reached the bottom.

“Of course. As long as you wish it.”

“It won’t be for long.” One way or the other, he thought, climbing back aboard the tonga. They turned back toward the city center close by the Turkman Gate, and passed through a succession of unusually lifeless bazaars. McColl was puzzled. “It’s not Sunday, is it?” he asked.

“No… Ah.” Mirza realized what was puzzling his companion. “A hartal—a shop owner’s strike—has been called by Gandhi’s supporters,” he explained. “Many are closed. Many Hindu shops, in any case; the Muslims are not so keen.”

“I see.”

“Gandhi will be here himself in a few days,” Mirza added.

“What’s your opinion of him?” McColl asked the detective.

Mirza shrugged. “An unusual man, certainly. Half saint, half Artful Dodger. A rare combination. But I will offer you a prediction, my friend. One day India will be ruled by Indians—perhaps better, perhaps worse—and Mohandas Gandhi will probably hasten that day. But in the end his only legacy will be a faint whiff of guilt hanging over future generations. The time for spinning wheels is past.”

It was late in theafternoon, the shadows lengthening almost visibly, but even in the shade, the heat was still intense and, to Piatakov’s taste, unpleasantly humid. He would have been cooler indoors, sitting beneath the efficiently whirring fans, but over their five-day stay, Piatakov had grown to love the views at this particular time of day. There was something quite magical about the mix of light and color: the dark palms framing the distant silver river, the towers and domes of the city slowly catching fire in the brilliant sunset. Delhi seemed to glow with inner light, as if its walls were hung with a million burnished icons.

Piatakov smiled ruefully at the image. He felt at peace with himself, more so as the day grew nearer. It was funny how people took to such situations differently: Chatterji was like a spring coiled tighter and tighter; Brady had become relaxed to the point of avuncularity. Their two reactions seemed symbiotic, as if each had taken half of the other’s personality.

Piatakov could hear them now, inside the house, talking in English. If they survived the next few days, he could imagine them going off somewhere as partners. Well, good luck to them—he had no idea what he would do. He had, he realized, not even given his possible future a moment’s thought. Returning home was out of the question and would remain so until true revolutionaries seized back control of the party. Which could happen only with help from abroad—a new revolutionary wave to lift their stranded Russian boat. It was why they were here in India.

That morning they’d taken a rickshaw into the city for a look at the killing ground. Driving down Chandni Chowk, he’d gone through it all in his imagination: the seething crowds, the bands playing, the people hanging from windows; the squeezing of the triggers, the cracks, the wailing panic. The two of them hurtling down a flight of steps and onto the flat roof in full view of the watching crowds. White men with guns, the snapshot of guilt.

And then with any luck they would be gone, into the British cantonment, where their faces wouldn’t stand out, and they’d be no more at risk than thousands of other white men caught in the chaos of a broken empire.

Piatakov smiled to himself in the gloom. It was a wonderful plan. He slapped at and missed a mosquito on his forearm. It was time to go back in. The sun was gone, the sky rushing through the spectrum as if each color were clamoring to replace its predecessor, fearful that darkness would come before they all had time to shine.

Caitlin sat on the edgeof the bed while McColl went over what he had seen. His portrait of Sergei alone in a garden almost made her cry, but knowing how he would misread them, she managed to keep the tears in.

“And now all we have to decide is what we intend to do,” he concluded wryly.

“I’ve been thinking about that while you’ve been out,” she said. “It’s simple really.”

He gave her a doubtful look. “Go on.”

“Your government wants Gandhi dead and Sergei and Brady to take the blame. I expect they have some plan for twisting things around the other way. But your people can’t afford the connection to be exposed, can they? If we can find a way to expose it, then the whole thing falls to pieces.”

“Yes,” he said, in a tone that suggested she’d merely stated the obvious. “The problem is how.”

“All we need is a good modern camera. And to get, say, Cunningham and Brady to the same spot at the same time.”

That got him thinking. “It would have to be Sergei. He’s the Russian Bolshevik.”

She realized he was right. “I suppose it would,” she concurred reluctantly.

“But they’re not going to agree to pose for a group photograph,” he continued, as much to himself as to her.

“No, Jack,” she said, surprised at him for being so slow. “We trick them. You ask Cunningham to meet you. And you fake a message from Cunningham to Sergei asking him to the same place.”

He shook his head. “Not quite. The first part would work, but not the second. We don’t know how they’ve agreed to communicate with each other in an emergency, and if we get it wrong, which we probably would, Brady will smell a rat.” He looked at her. “The note must come from you.”

“Oh…” She stood and went to the window, angrily brushing away an unexpected tear. “You’re right,” she almost whispered, still looking the other way.

“If it’s too hard, we’ll think of something else,” he said, walking across and putting an arm around her shoulders.

She was grateful for the offer, but knew this was something she had to do. She gently untangled herself. “Once we have the photograph, what do we do with it?”