Adrian McKinty - Hidden River

Take from me my sins.

And I see her.

Ma. She dies. Her cold fingers. Her fingertips. They let her die. His words of comfort, meaningless. All of it, meaningless. How stupid not to know that lesson. You can’t save her. No one can save her.

And I’m here.

At last.

This river of death. This continent of death. My feet stand on the mud. My sins have been ones of omission. I have let things happen. Sure, you could say that I saved Da, that he would have fallen apart if they had killed me, but it was cowardice. I was afraid. And I took the easy way out and let things happen. And to cap it all, I slandered John to save my neck again.

And now all I have to do is open my lungs. Open my lungs and let the river cleanse me.

And my body will writhe and my trachea will scream — water there instead of air — and my heart will beat but there will be no oxygen in the blood returning from my lungs. No place for the CO 2to be expelled. And my heart will beat; but it will eventually cease to work. My brain will soldier on for a minute, perhaps two, starved for oxygen, crying out for it, for air. And then it, too, will slow and the chemical reactions will cease and I will lose consciousness, perhaps seeing that white tunnel that people see when the neurons fire random images in the cortex.

I will float there and in another ten minutes the last of the electrical activity in my brain will stop forever. And I will be nothing. Appropriate, wasn’t it, the Hindu mystics who invented the concept of zero?

I reach down and grab the mud between my fingers.

The river flows and my smile widens and my mouth opens. Thick filthy water pouring over my tongue and into my throat.

I gag and force open my jaw with my fingers. I expel the last of the air and I breathe in.

The pain is terrible. Like an electric shock. My lungs howl and my body bucks against this terrible intrusion. I war against the pleading of my lungs and brain. I fight against the urge to surface.

And again I swallow.

I am coming to you.

Mum and Victoria, John.

That holy trinity of loss.

I am coming to you.

Even though I know what awaits is not you, not sleep, but annihilation. In this brown filthy water. Dirt on my teeth. Fire in my nostrils.

But I’m coming anyway.

This place, this is the time.

The river pours in.

Yes.

To you.

John.

Victoria.

Ma.

My hair.

A hand.

The sun.

A hand pulls me up out of the water by the hair.

A voice:

“You must not be fooling around in this water. You are catching dreadful things. Do not be believing stories about the purity of this water. It is foul. I am Muslim. I am above such superstition. This town is called Allahabad. There is no God but Allah. There is no God but Allah. There are no spirits. There is no magic water. There is no Hidden River.”

“No?” I sputter, coughing, puking, spitting the water from my mouth.

“No, come, I will pull you in.”

Before I can reply, his big hands tug me into the boat, and I cough and vomit water and gasp for air.

He looks stern, shakes his head.

“You are seeing what I am explaining?” he says with disgust.

“Uh—”

“Very dangerous, very dangerous, you are not seeing the dead cow?”

“No.”

I spit some more, cough. He wags his finger.

“So what do we do now?” I ask him after a while.

“You are sitting in the boat and drying off in the sunshine and I am rowing you to shore. No. We are not doing that. I am rowing you to hotel, where you are showering that filthy water off your body. Insh’Allah, you are unharmed. Insh’Allah. ”

“Ok,” I say.

The ocher river. The yellow sky.

I lie back in the boat.

Ali looks at me and laughs at my foolishness.

He doesn’t know it, but he’s given me my life back. I lie there and I am at peace, lullabied by oars and the gentle harmonic motion of the boat, drifting on the golden waters of the Ganges, on the edge of sleep. Saved. Alive.

Ali is still talking:

“Those Hindus are crazy men. There is no vanishing river. The Saraswati was a real river long ago that dried up. They do not know their history. The Prophet, may his name be blessed, cured us of such pagan superstition. The Hindus see magic where there is no magic, they see—”

I sit up suddenly in the boat.

“What did you say?”

“I said that they are crazy men who—”

“No, no, about the Saraswati?” I ask.

“A real river. It dried up centuries ago.”

“Dried up. A drought, of course. That was why I survived the Platte. A drought. The creek. Pat tried to tell me it’s only two feet deep at the best of times. She wouldn’t know that. She despised the place, thought a river was a river. Don’t you see? Don’t you see?”

Ali looks at me, uncomprehending.

“I am rowing you to shore,” he says.

“Yes, yes, yes,” I say excitedly.

The Patawastis were still asleep. Their twelve-year-old servant boy making tea. He ignored me when I grabbed the phone and dialed the international operator. I talked to her for a while and finally she gave me a number in Colorado. I dialed it, got through to the switchboard.

“I’ll put you through to his voice mail, ok?” the switchboard woman said.

“Ok,” I said.

“This is the voice mail of Detective David Redhorse. At the tone, please leave me a message and a number and I’ll get back to you.”

I spoke fast:

“Redhorse, you don’t know me, but I’ve got information. On June fifth, 1995, in Denver, on the night of that freak snowstorm, Victoria Patawasti was murdered. Her killer was Amber Mulholland, the wife of Charles Mulholland, who is running for Congress. Amber killed Victoria and walked the gun down to Cherry Creek and threw it in. Probably the closest part of the creek to Victoria’s building. Amber thought it would get washed down to the South Platte River. But there’s been a drought. She doesn’t know the city, doesn’t know Cherry Creek is only a couple of feet deep, and now it must be completely dry. It’s a special gun, a Beretta, with her initials on it. Do you see? The gun is still there. It’s got to be. El Niño’s brought freak weather. Snow in June. A bone-dry spring and summer. Look in the creek, not too far from Victoria’s building. Find the gun. The forensics will match. The gun dealer in Italy will tie it to Charles Mulholland. What else? Yes, motive. Amber killed Victoria because Victoria found out her husband was stealing millions from the charity to pay a blackmailer named Alan Houghton. He’s disappeared, but there might still be something in CAW’s computers. Anyway, the important thing is the gun, find the gun, find the gun, find the bloody gun.”

I hung up the phone. Yes, goddamnit, yes.

I got myself a drink. I went onto the balcony overlooking the Ganges.

Dozens of men and women doing Puja, letting the holy water trickle through their fingers for the rising sun. And the Ganges itself a vast trunk road. Kids, priests, metalworkers, water buffalo herders, cycle rickshaw drivers, boatmen. I sipped my nimbu pani, sat down, watched it all.

And I don’t know — maybe it was escaping death or maybe it was being in India — but just then I saw how it could be. How it should be.

The final act….

Seven time zones west of Belfast, twelve time zones west of Allahabad, two policemen check their arrest warrant and extradition papers and board a plane from Denver to Atlanta to the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The plane lifts off from Denver International Airport, circles to gain altitude, and heads east. For the policeman in the window seat it’s his first time ever in an airplane. David Redhorse is afraid to fly. But this is too important. Time is of the essence. The Mulhollands are taking a well-needed break on a luxury yacht. At the moment they’re in U.S. territory, but tomorrow they’re going on to the Bahamas. You couldn’t solve every case. That Klimmer one had gone dead, but this, this was a juicy high-profile murder.