Alan Foster: Sagramanda, a Novel of Near-Future India

And while he might have preferred it to have turned out otherwise, at least he would be spared the need to produce irrefutable evidence at a trial.

He straightened. Overhead, the first of two backup choppers was descending toward the water hole clearing on noise-cancelled blades. "Pack her up. Make sure Forensics handles the weapon carefully. There might be indicators present: blood, DNA, hair. Like sins, evidence is not easily washed away. Minute amounts can get caught between blade and hilt, or on the decorated handle."

"Yes, Chief Inspector." Turning, Johar gestured in the direction of the two unknown dead men. "What about them?"

Keshu was only mildly curious, but wholly professional. "Full body workup. Might be some kind of connection that can be established later. In a case like this, when you can't be sure quite what's going on, you don't want to overlook anything."

The lieutenant nodded. Pulling his spinner, he began establishing contact with the arriving teams. Walking slowly away from the increasingly busy site, Keshu halted at the place where the clearing gave way to dense undergrowth. The tiger had vanished within, swallowed up as if it had never been. A specter, a wraith, a phantom of the jungle. But one that had left behind all-too-graphic evidence of its presence.

They would have to notify Wildlife and Game of the incident, he knew. He did not think he would have to remind Johar to do so. The lieu tenant was very efficient. Standing there in darkness increasingly filled with the noise of men and their machines, an old rhyme came to him.

Tyger, tyger, burning bright, In the forest of the night.

Turning, he looked back to where specialists were now swarming around the broken body of the foreign woman. Was she truly, for certain, inarguably, the serial murderess? Or were the improbable events of this night no more than a fantastical sequence of misattuned coincidences, and the real mass murderer was still out there somewhere, stalking the depths of the city?

Well, there was one way he would know for certain. If the killings stopped. In that event, he did not know whether to thank the tiger or condemn it. If the woman lying dead on the ground behind him was in truth the one responsible, then victims unknown and unnamed should give thanks to the big cat. If not…

He decided he was confident. The circumstantial evidence might not be conclusive, but it was credible. There would be no court trial, no summoning of witnesses, no lengthy parade of long-winded authorities. The thing was done.

Sometimes, he reflected somberly, in spite of what its tens of mil lions of fractious, exuberant, milling inhabitants might want, or even just one very weary police inspector, India went ahead and took matters into its own primordial, indomitable hands.

Finding a restaurant that was open all night was not a problem. In a city the size of Sagramanda, there were hundreds of establishments of every variety that never closed their doors; not for Holi, not for Ramadan, not for Christmas. Finding one that offered privacy booths required a little more searching.

Hesitant to head for any of the dining spots in the neighborhood where he lived in secret with Depahli lest they were being watched, Taneer led his fiancée and his middleman to another busy part of the surging metropolis where they were likely to find what they needed. The Uzbek fast-food eatery met their needs admirably. Furthermore, a restaurant was a good location in which to hold their final meeting, because in addition to being exhausted, fearful, and in a hurry, they were also all ravenously hungry.

Over a meal of vegetables, potatoes, and Uzbek horseburgers, they discussed their final business behind the shimmering privacy screen the booth provided. Looking out through the light-distorting waveforms was like trying to see through melted glass. Not trusting even a restaurant he had never visited before, Taneer used his own portable instrumentation to check out the booth's security before settling down to business.

"Will not that European gentleman and his associates come looking for you?" Sanjay asked him as he sipped his Kanacola.

Taneer worked on the briefcase he had placed on the table between them. Beneath the case, the tabletop displayed a constantly shifting panorama of scenes from Uzbek legends. The display could be tuned for adult, juvenile, or child consumption, but no one was paying any attention to the built-in diversion. All eyes were on the case.

"Why should they?" Taneer ran through the specified sequence required to open, rather than explode, the case. "Our Mr. Karlovy got what he came for." He smiled as a soft beep indicated that he had entered the unlocking sequence correctly. "And we got what we came for."

In an age often defined by its universal use of credit, it was a strange sensation to set eyes on so much actual money. Though little more than stamped-out rectangles of electronically embedded paper and plastic, it still had real presence. Cash still stood for something, which was why it remained in use.

"Got your bag?" Taneer asked the man seated across the table. Next to him, eyes very wide, Depahli was clinging to his left arm with one hand while the delicate but strong fingers of the other were moving along his leg. Though it was difficult, at the moment he would not let anything distract him.

Wordlessly Sanjay placed on the table the takeaway bag he had requested when they had entered the restaurant.

"How would you like your fee?" the scientist inquired politely, his hands resting on the case's implausible contents.

A captivated Sanjay hardly knew how to respond. Even after all the time and effort he had put into this piece of business, even after enduring and surviving all the very real risks, not to mention nearly being shot, and nearly being eaten, he had never really believed, deep down, that he would be faced with something as solid and real as the contents of the case that rested on the table before him. He felt like a character in one of the movies he had so loved as a child, the viewing of which had been such a special treat for himself and the dirt-poor family out of whose unrelenting poverty he had slowly managed to raise himself.

"I… I suppose I will have it just as you wanted yours. A little of each."

Nodding amenably, Taneer began passing large wads of currency across the table, riffling briefly through each bound packet before surrendering it to his middleman. Dazed, Sanjay did not even bother to count the money. Three percent of the total agreed-upon price that Chhote Pandit had negotiated. In return for one standard-size molly-sphere and a small packet of material whose contents, Sanjay realized with a start, he had not even had a chance to see clearly for himself. But he could see the money plainly enough.

When he had finished counting and distributing, Taneer carefully closed and relocked the case. "There you are, Mr. Ghosh. Three million in U.S. dollars, euros, and rupees. Three percent of the total payment due me. I thank you for a job well done and for assistance far beyond what was originally agreed upon."

Sanjay regarded the takeaway bag, with its colorful external designs promoting Uzbek fast food. His gaze shifted back to the case lying in front of the scientist. Without a word, he slipped his right hand inside his bogus hitman-style vest. Alarmed, it abruptly occurred to Taneer that in asking this shopkeeper to emulate a bodyguard, to render the illusion complete the shopkeeper might actually have brought a weapon with him. And neither he nor Depahli had one.

Seeing the sudden shift in their expressions, the perceptive Sanjay divined the reason behind their reactions. He did not have a weapon on him-but they didn't know that. Already this night he had bluffed his way through a much more nerve-racking confrontation. What if he chose to take the whole case, and all the money? They were in a very public place. If they thought he had a gun, would they still try to stop him? Could he not walk out with the entire ten million?