Gregory David Roberts - Shantaram

Abdullah was unusually quiet. The silence he carried with him was ominous and unsettling.

"Are you going back to Delhi tonight?" I asked.

"Yes," he answered. "At midnight."

"You want me to go to the airport with you?"

"No. Thank you. It is better not. There should be no police looking at me. If you are there, they will look at us. But maybe I will see you in Delhi. There is a job in Sri Lanka-you should do it with me."

"I don't know, man," I demurred, grinning in surprise at his earnestness. "There's a war on in Sri Lanka."

"There is no man, and no place, without war," he replied, and it struck me that it was the most profound thing he'd ever said to me. "The only thing we can do is choose a side, and fight. That is the only choice we get-who we fight for, who we fight against. That is life."

"I... I hope there's more to it than that, brother. But, shit, maybe you're right."

"I think you can do this with me," he pressed, clearly troubled by what he was asking me to do. "This is the last work for Khaderbhai."

"What do you mean?"

"Khader Khan, he asked me to do this job for him, when the... what is it-the sign, I think, or the message-when it comes from Sri Lanka. Now, the message, it has come."

"I'm sorry, brother, I don't know what you're talking about," I stated softly, not wanting to make it harder for him. "Just take it easy, and explain it to me. What message?"

He spoke to Nazeer quickly, in Urdu. The older man nodded several times and then said something about names, or not mentioning names. Nazeer turned his head to face me, and favoured me with a wide, warm smile.

"In the Sri Lanka war," Abdullah explained, "there is fighting- Tamil Tigers against Sri Lanka army. Tigers are Hindus.

Sinhalese, they are Buddhist. But in the middle of them, there are the others-Tamil Muslims-with no guns and no army.

Everybody kill them, and nobody fight for them. They need passports and money-gold money. We go to help them."

"Khaderbhai," Nazeer added, "he make this plan. Only three men.

Abdullah, and me, and one gora-you. Three men. We go."

I owed him. Nazeer would never mention that fact, I knew, and he wouldn't hold it against me if I didn't go with him. We'd been through too much together. But I did owe him my life. It would be very hard to refuse him. And there was something else-something wise, perhaps, and fervently generous-in that rare, wide smile he'd given me. It seemed that he was offering me more than just the chance to work with him, and work off my debt. He blamed himself for Khader's death, but he knew that I still felt guilty and ashamed that I hadn't been there with him, pretending to be his American, when Khader had died. He's giving me a chance, I thought, as I let my eyes move from his to Abdullah's and back again. He's giving me a way to close the book on it.

"So, when would you be going on this trip? Roughly speaking?"

"Soon," Abdullah laughed. "A few months, no more than that. I am going to Delhi. I will send someone to bring you, when the time is coming. Two, three months, Lin brother."

I heard a voice in my head-or not a voice, really, but just words in whispered echoes like stones hissing across the still surface of a lake-Killer... He's a killer... Don't do it...

Get away... Get away now... And the voice was right, of course.

Dead right. And I wish I could say that it took me more than those few heartbeats to make up my mind to join him.

"Two, three months," I replied, offering my hand. He shook it, putting both of his hands over mine. I looked at Nazeer and smiled as I spoke into his eyes. "We'll do Khader's job. We'll finish it."

Nazeer's jaw locked tight, bunching the muscles of his cheeks and exaggerating the downward curve of his mouth. He frowned at his sandaled feet as if they were disobedient puppies. Then he suddenly hurled himself at me, and locked his hands behind me in a punishing hug. It was the violent, wrestler's hug of a man whose body had never learned to speak the language of his heart-except when he was dancing-and it ended as abruptly and furiously as it had begun. He whipped his thick arms away and shoved me backward with his chest, shaking his head and shuddering as if a shark had passed him in shallow water. He looked up quickly, and the warmth that reddened his eyes vied with a grim warning clamped in the bad-luck horseshoe of his mouth. I knew that if I ever raised that moment of affection with him, or referred to it in any way, I would lose his friendship forever.

I kicked the bike to life and straddled it, pushing away from the kerb with my legs and pointing it in the direction of Nana Chowk and Colaba.

"Saatch aur himmat," Abdullah called out as I rode past him.

I waved, and nodded, but I couldn't give the answering call to the slogan. I didn't know how much truth or courage was in my decision to join them on their mission to Sri Lanka. Not much, it seemed to me, as I rode away from them, from all of them, and surrendered to the warm night, and the press and pause of traffic.

A blood-red moon was rising from the sea as I reached the Back Bay road leading to Nariman Point. I parked the bike beside a cold-drink stall, locked it, and threw the keys to the manager, who was a friend from the slum. With the moon behind me, I set out along the footpath beside a long curve of sandy beach where fishermen often repaired their nets and battered boats. There was a festival on that night in the Sassoon Dock area. The celebrations had drawn most of the local people from the huts and shelters on the beach. The road where I walked was almost deserted.

And then I saw her. She was sitting on the edge of an old fishing boat that was half-buried on the beach. Only the prow and a few metres of the long boat's gunnels protruded from the surrounding waves of sand. She was wearing a long, salwar top over loose pants. Her knees were drawn up, and she was resting her chin on her arms as she stared out at the dark water.

"This is why I like you, you know," I said, sitting down beside her on the rail of the beached fishing boat.

"Hello, Lin," she replied, smiling, her green eyes as dark as the water. "I'm glad to see you. I thought you weren't coming."

"Your message sounded kind of... urgent. I nearly didn't get it.

It was just lucky that I ran into Didier on his way to the airport, and he told me."

"Luck is what happens to you when fate gets tired of waiting," she murmured.

"Fuck you, Karla," I replied, laughing.

"Old habits," she grinned, "die hard-and lie harder."

Her eyes moved across my features for a moment, as if she was searching a map for a familiar reference point. Her smile slowly faded.

"I'm going to miss Didier."

"Me, too," I muttered, thinking that he was probably in the air already, and on his way to Italy. "But I think he'll be back before too long."

"Why?"

"I put the Zodiac Georges in his apartment, to look after it."

"Ooooh!" she winced, making a perfect kiss of her perfect mouth.

"Yeah. If that doesn't bring him back quick, nothing will. You know how he loves that apartment."

She didn't answer, but her stare tightened in the intensity of her concentration.

"Khaled's here, in India," she remarked flatly, watching my eyes.

"Where?"

"In Delhi-well, near Delhi, actually."

"When?"

"The report came in two days ago. I had it checked. I think it's him."

"What report?"

She looked away, towards the sea, and breathed a long, slow sigh.

"Jeet has access to all the wire services. One of them sent a report about a new spiritual leader named Khaled Ansari, who walked all the way from Afghanistan, and was pulling in big crowds of followers wherever he went. When I saw it, I asked Jeet to check it out for me. His people sent a description, and it fits."