Aarti Raman - Kingdom Come

Wood came forward with a cigar trimmer. An unlit cigar was clamped to the terrorist’s lips. The room in which the man, the pizza boy, was tied in was large. Airy. It had plenty of natural light and white curtains. There was a huge white bed on a raised dais with fluffy curtains on the four posts shielding it. A dream cloud of a bed. The sheets were made with military corners because Wood didn’t allow anyone to touch them. The Woodpecker was odd like that.

The pizza boy, Hank was his name, was still dully crying, holding his broken hand to his heart, his thin shoulders moving with the force of his sobs. There was blood on the lower part of his face, pouring down in a thick trickle and a gap where Hank’s nose had been. The Woodpecker moved forward and yanked the thin blond head back in a sharp, painful movement, “If you don’t stop crying, I will reach down and yank your voice box out. You understand?”

Hank cried harder, beyond mere fear now.

“I wanted pizza, you know,” Wood ruminated. “An American specialty, even though it originated in Italy in the nineteenth century. I even specified very clearly, when they asked me, that I wanted half and half. Chicken and pineapple on one side for the carbs, and olives and sundried tomatoes on the other. No peppers, because they mess up my sleep. I stated it, Hank. So clearly.”

“I … I’m sorry for delivering the wrong pizza. I really am. I really am.” Hank started sobbing louder now, his wails echoing off the white walls of the sunny bedroom with the white bed.

“Please don’t kill me. Please don’t.”

The Woodpecker smiled and leaned forward on the table. The blade of the cigar trimmer flashed unholy silver as the terrorist clipped off the butt and it fell down on the carpeted floor in a rush of leaf and tobacco. The acrid scent of nicotine permeated the air around them.

Hank’s already fearful, hysterical, ruined face took on epic proportions of roundness as he heard the methodic way with which The Woodpecker handled the knife.

“Why would I kill you, Hank?” Wood smiled. “I am not an unreasonable person. I just want a little respect. People should respect each other, don’t you think?”

Hank nodded, desperately, like a bobblehead. “Yes, yes. Yes!”

“Good. So you agree that we should be respectful towards one another.”

“Yes. Hell, yes!”

“Then why did you not show me any respect, Hank?” Wood asked, sorrowfully. “Why did you call me all those awful, awful names and said that I could take the pizza if I wanted or I could just eat dirt and die.”

Hank’s eyes, never clear, started streaming again.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! I won’t ever do it again. I won’t say anything to anyone. Just let me go. Please, let me go. PLEASE!” He screamed in the end.

The Woodpecker frowned. “Don’t shout; it’s not polite. I can’t let you—”

The door to the massive bedroom opened and a tall man with piercing silver eyes and graying hair strode in. He was dressed in a conservative three-piece suit and he had a classically handsome face. A face that people would remember if only because of those remote eyes.

The man was Tom Jones. The Woodpecker’s father, for all intents and purposes. He looked with mild distaste at Hank’s wasted form and then with censure at The Woodpecker who was chewing on the butt of the cigar instead of lighting it. Something like defiance gleamed in those cold, dead eyes.

“You’ve made a mess over dinner,” he observed mildly.

“He brought me the wrong pizza,” Wood said indignantly. “He gave my order to somebody else.”

Tom untied Hank’s legs, wrinkling his nose at the distinct smell of urine emanating from the boy’s pants. They all wet themselves in Wood’s presence. After he was done, he straightened and looked coldly at his kid.

“This is a seven star hotel. You cannot stuff a body down the trash chute here.”

The Woodpecker smiled sweetly. “I was going to burn him and then flush his remains down the toilet.”

Hank screamed again, terrified beyond anything. An inhuman sound. Tom Jones reached behind and clipped him once on the jaw. A hard punch. Hank’s head lolled onto his shoulder, his lower lip bleeding slightly, as he finally, mercifully fainted.

“Send the boy back, Woodie. Please.”

The terrorist nodded and came to stand next to Tom. Tom put a comforting arm around Wood’s shoulder; who leaned into the embrace with an ease that was natural. Tom Jones was the only person in the whole world The Woodpecker trusted. Tom squeezed Wood’s shoulder. A fatherly gesture.

Wood sighed. An incongruous sound, given the bloodied boy tied at their feet.

“I want pizza, Dad,” the terrorist said, sounding so alarmingly like a teenager. Another incongruity.

“Let Hank go. I’ll get you your favorite,” Tom promised.

Wood smiled and nodded.

“OK, Dad. If you say so.”

And with that, Wood went to dispose of his handiwork in a more conventional fashion.

“And then, Krivi just picked Zee up and put her back down about two feet away without breaking a sweat, Da,” Noor narrated. “Ziya was spitting mad, I could practically see the steam coming out of her ears, but you know how she is?”

Noor paused, only to shove a bite of crisp naan , wheat bread that went well with most Indian curries before picking up her story again.

“All ice-queen and icy eyes. So, she pulled that routine with K here.” She grinned at the silent, hulking man who was calmly eating the food on the table as if not just forty-eight hours ago he hadn’t defused a dangerous piece of explosive.

They had all, Sam included, decided to brave the night and come back home to Goonj rather than hang around Pehelgam and wait for morning light. So, Noor had slept on Sam’s shoulder in the back while Ziya had scrunched herself against the passenger window and Krivi had driven them back. Not even fazed by the prospect of a hard ride after the day he’d had.

Ziya had concluded then and there that the man was not just superhuman, which he undoubtedly was, but that there wasvery little human in him. Rest, food, sleep, these things didn’t matter to him at all. He wasn’t even any different these two days than he’d been for the last six months. He looked the same, remote and with a hard face that could break granite. He dressed the same, jeans and sweaters to ward off the mild chill that signified the end of spring.

Yet, for the life of her, Ziya couldn’t understand why she suddenly found everything about him distractingly appealing. Even his usual morose taciturn behavior couldn’t make her stop watching him covertly, through the corner of her eye. At the way those long, tanned fingers used the fork to shred some chicken before chewing it slowly. Those same hands had touched an unexploded ordnance and come off the victor.

Those same hands had touched her too. With such unbelievable strength she still had finger marks on her arm that she’d covered with a long-sleeved shirt. But it wasn’t the pain she remembered or even her own justifiable anger at his high-handedness in ordering her about. It was just the sensation of his fingers touching her flesh. Hot, searing on impact. As if there was a current running between them that had shorted a few circuits in her brain.

Made her aware of a very unpleasant fact about Krivi Iyer. Namely, that she was aware of Krivi Iyer. More than she’d wanted, more than she thought possible and now, more than was comfortable for her. Because he was still the same, silent assistant manager who refused to look her in the eye for the eight hours that they shared office space.

Ziya turned back to her own food, determined to not join in Noor’s delighted ribbing of her. Determined to not let anything get to her. Most of all, the way Krivi was plowing through his food, as if he couldn’t eat and get away from the dinner table fast enough. Such an unsociable animal he was. And yet, he’d smiled at her with something close to sexiness. And promised her he wouldn’t blow them all to kingdom come. Heroes, Ziya decided, were a strange breed. And she wanted nothing to do with them. She ate some of the field greens on her plate and looked up to see Sam grinning wryly at her.