Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

‘But this gun?’

‘This gun gives you a chance. The Indian Army has the island nailed down, but there’s so many freelancers everywhere now. Americans, Israelis, South Africans, and all of them are working with the Research and Analysis Wing. If the Indian Army catches you with this gun, you can try to pass yourself off as a RAW agent. It’s a long shot, but you wouldn’t be the first that got away with it. It’s the Wild East out there.’

‘So, I carry a big gun, and when they see it, because it’s so big, I talk them into believing I’m working for them, and then actually start working for them, if they let me live?’

‘It happens,’ he shrugged. ‘A lot, actually.’

‘Gimme a little gun, Mehmu. I don’t wanna kill wildebeest. I just wanna make enough noise to give me time to run away. If they catch me, I’ll ditch the gun and deny it. I’d rather do that than start working for them.’

‘But a little gun,’ he mused. ‘I always say, if you have to shoot someone in the eye to kill him, your gun’s too small.’

I looked at him for a while.

‘A small gun?’ He sniffed. ‘It’s right in the eye, man, or it’s like gravel rash, with a little gun.’

‘You don’t say.’

‘I do say. It happens. A lot, actually.’

‘You got a little gun, or not?’

‘I do,’ he mused. ‘If you’d be prepared to exchange?’

‘Show me.’

He took a small box of cartridges and a.22-calibre automatic from his jacket pockets. It was the kind of weapon designed to fit snugly next to lipstick, perfume and a credit card in a purse: a girl’s gun.

‘I’ll take it.’

We swapped guns. I checked the weapon and put it in my jacket pocket.

‘I’d wrap that lot in plastic,’ he said, tucking the Browning into his trousers again. ‘And lock it up with surgical tape.’

‘In case I end up in the water?’

‘It happens.’

‘Uh-huh?’

‘A lot, actually. What is this, your first smuggling run or what?’

I’d smuggled passports and gold to nine countries, but always by plane, and always on Czechoslovakian Airways. The communist airline was the only one in Bombay that accepted payment for tickets in rupees, and checked for weapons, but nothing else. Whatever else you had on you in transit flights, from gold bars to bundles of money, was your problem. And because nobody but Czechoslovakians actually went all the way to communist Czechoslovakia on Czechoslovakian Airways, it wasn’t their problem either.

‘I fly. Back and forth, in seventy-two hours. I don’t do ships.’

‘You don’t like ships?’

‘I don’t like power, on land or sea.’

‘Power?’

‘Power. Absolute power. The law of the sea.’

‘You mean the captain?’

‘Any captain. I think the Bounty was the last free ship.’

Voices whispered hoarsely near the piles of cargo secured to the deck. People began to stand. We saw figures moving back and forth between clusters of shadows.

‘What are they doing?’

‘They’re passing out cyanide capsules, to those who want them.’

‘People do that?’

‘A lot, actually.’

‘You know, Mehmu, the whole morale thing. You’re shit at it.’

‘You want a suicide capsule, while they’re still handing them out?’

‘See what I mean?’

‘You want one, or not?’

‘I’m more your kicking and screaming all the way type, but thanks all the same.’

The commotion on the deck increased. The ship’s first officer strode to the port side with several members of the Filipino crew. They uncovered bundles of rope-and-plank ladders, and began to roll them over the side.

‘Better get below, and get your stuff,’ Mehmu said. ‘I’ll wait for you at the ladders.’

I worked my way around the comparatively empty starboard side of the vessel to my crewman’s berth.

Wrapping the small automatic and the box of ammunition in plastic bags, I sealed them with tape and shoved them into my backpack. I pulled off my jacket and sweater, put on the heavy vest I’d hidden, and dressed again.

The vest contained twenty kilos of gold and twenty-eight blank passports. With an effort, I zipped up my jacket, and paced up and down in the cabin to adjust my step to the extra weight.

There was an open journal on the bed. I’d been trying to write a new short story. I was challenging myself with a difficult subject. It was about happy, loving people in a happy, loving place, doing happy, loving things. It wasn’t going well.

I scooped the journal, the pen and everything else on the bed into the backpack, and turned to leave. I reached out to turn off the light and caught sight of my face in a mirror, set into the door panel.

The reckless truth of travel into countries and cultures far from your own is that sometimes, you’re just rolling with the dice. Fate, the tour guide, can lead any traveller, at any moment of the journey, into a labyrinth of learning and love, or the long tunnel of a dangerous adventure. And every traveller knows those moments in the mirror: the last, long look at yourself before Okay, let’s do this.

I switched off the light, and made my way back on deck.

Lines of people were assembled at the ladders. The first officer gave the whispered command, and the smuggled people began to disembark.

I shuffled forward, last in line. A crewman was handing out life-preserver vests, and helping people to fit them.

Mehmu was standing beside him.

‘Take mine, as well,’ he said, when the crewman fitted me with a vest.

Our eyes met. He knew that if I ended up in the sea, one vest might not hold me afloat, with twenty kilos of gold on my body.

The crewman handed me a second vest, and then gave me a small metal object, and urged me forward.

‘What’s this?’ I asked, when Mehmu and I paused, away from the crowded rail.

‘It’s a clicker,’ he said.

It was a child’s toy, made from two pieces of tin that made a click-clack sound, when it was pressed. I pressed it.

Click-clack.

‘If you’re in the water,’ Mehmu said, ‘stay where you are. Keep together with the others in the water.’

‘The others ?’

‘A boat will come back to the ship,’ he continued, ‘and the ship will circle you from a klick or so away, until we get the all clear.’

‘A klick or so away?’

‘When you see or hear anything, use the clicker to let them know where you are. Most people keep it in their teeth, like this, so they don’t lose it.’

He reached out, took the clicker, and held the edge of it in his teeth. My clicker was shaped like a pink dragonfly. He was looking at me with a pink dragonfly in his mouth, and he was sending me into the sea.

‘It’s from a movie,’ he said, handing back the clicker. ‘ The Longest War , I think it’s called.’

‘ The Longest Day .’

‘Yeah, that’s the one. Have you seen it?’

‘Yeah. Have you?’

‘No. Why?’

‘I think you should take a peek. Thanks for everything, Mehmu. It was nice sailing with you, even if I don’t like sailing.’

‘Me, too. If you run into a chunky girl, thirty years old, about five-five high, wearing a sky-blue hijab, don’t show her the little gun.’

‘You stole it off a girl?’

‘Kind of.’

‘An enemy, or a friend?’

‘Does it make a difference?’

‘Hell, yeah.’

‘It was a bit of both. She’s my wife.’

‘Your wife?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And you love her?’

‘I’m mad about her.’

‘And… if I show her the gun… she might -’

‘Shoot you,’ he said. ‘It happens. A lot, actually. She shot me once. She’s a fighter, my wife.’