Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

‘If this goes south, so do you,’ he said, glancing at his watch again. ‘Head due south. This road goes to Trincomalee. Stay in the jungle, as much as you can. If you make it, report at the Castlereagh hotel. You’re booked in for two weeks. You’ll be contacted there.’

‘This is where you get off?’

‘Yeah. You won’t see me again.’

He began muttering indistinctly.

‘What?’

‘A diamond, for a pearl,’ he said.

I waited.

‘We shouldn’t be here, us Tamils. We left a diamond, Mother India, for a pearl. And no matter what we do, no matter how many of us die, it’ll never be worth it, because we gave up a diamond, for a pearl.’

‘Why do you still fight?’

‘You don’t know much about us Tamils, do you? Wait! Did you hear that?’

We listened for a while to the darkness. A small animal moved through the jungle nearby, swiftness hissing through the leaves. The jungle was silent again.

‘I’m fighting the army that trained me,’ he said softly, staring north along the road.

‘The Indian Army?’

At that time, the major military presence in Sri Lanka was the IPKF, the Indian Peace Keeping Force.

‘RAW,’ he replied. ‘They trained all of us. Bombs, weapons, tactical coordination, the whole lot.’

The Research and Analysis Wing was India’s counter-intelligence unit. It held a fearsome reputation throughout the region. RAW operatives were highly trained and motivated, and their By Any Means Necessary status gave them a licence that left a lot of questions where their commando boots landed, and not many answers.

Indian intelligence agents collected information from many sources, including the gangs. Every mafia Company in Bombay knew someone from RAW, openly or undercover, and every mafia Company knew better than to fight them.

‘And now they’re at war with us,’ my contact sighed, ruefully. ‘A diamond, crushing a pearl.’

We heard a noise, maybe the distant grating of gears, and hunkered down in the bushes, staring at the tunnel of the road. Then we heard the unmistakeable grunt and cough of a truck engine, labouring uphill.

The tall, tottering cargo truck rolled into view, and began coasting downhill toward us.

‘Is it ours?’

‘It’s ours,’ he grinned, pulling me up with him.

We walked to the edge of the road, where he waved a small blue-light torch. The truck squealed and creaked to a stop, the engine racing on idle.

As we approached, I noticed that a jeep had been driving behind the truck, lights out, and had stopped in its shadow.

My contact led me to the jeep. I glanced into the back of the truck and saw fifteen or more people sitting on bales of cotton.

‘You’re in the jeep,’ my contact said. ‘You’re a journalist, remember? Can’t have you travelling with the common folk.’

My cover name was James Davis, Canadian, a stringer for Reuters news agency. My passport and accreditation were impeccable: I’d made them myself.

We shook hands, knowing that we’d probably never see one another again, and that one or both of us would probably be dead within the year.

He leaned in close to me.

‘Remember, check in at the Castlereagh, keep a low profile, you’ll be contacted within forty-eight hours. Good luck. May Maa Durga be your guardian.’

‘And yours.’

He broke away to clamber up the tailgate of the truck and onto a cotton bale. He waved, and smiled at me.

For an instant, it looked exactly like the throne of sacks in the courtyard of the Cycle Killers, but with ghosts of war, instead of hired assassins.

I took the passenger seat of the jeep, shaking hands with the driver and the two young men sitting in the back.

The truck pulled away and the jeep followed. My contact’s face hovered in the swaying shadow, carrying him south. His eyes held mine.

People who abhor crime, as I do, often ask why men who commit crimes, as I did, do such things.

One of the big answers is that the low road is always easier, until it crumbles away beneath desire. One of the small answers is that when life and freedom are at stake, the men you meet are often exceptional. In other lives, they’d be captains of industry, or captains of armies.

In the jungle, on the run, they’re friends, because a friend is anyone prepared to die beside you. And men who’ll die beside you without even knowing you are hard to find, unless you know a lot of cops, soldiers or outlaws.

The truck turned onto a side road. Shadows closed over my contact’s face. I never saw him or heard about him again.

We rode on for twenty minutes, and then the driver stopped the jeep in a clearing, beside the road.

‘Get your passport and papers ready. We’re going through a few checkpoints. Sometimes they’re manned, sometimes, not. Things have been quiet here, for a while. Put this on.’

He handed me a dark blue flak vest with the word PRESS on the chest. The driver and the two men in the back donned flak vests, and the driver stuck a white square bearing the same word on the windshield.

We rode on past scattered cabins and shacks, and then the first large houses. What seemed to be the light of a forest fire on the horizon was the bright city, only ten kilometres away.

We passed through three unmanned checkpoints, slowing to a crawl each time, and then speeding up quickly. Skirting the city, we reached the coastal vantage point of Orr’s Hill, and the Castlereagh hotel, in just under an hour.

‘Damn lucky,’ the driver said, as he stopped the jeep in the driveway. ‘There’s a Bollywood actress doing a show tonight for the Indian troops. Guess they couldn’t tear themselves away.’

‘Thanks for your help.’

‘Don’t mention,’ he smiled. ‘May Jesus be with you, comrade.’

‘And with you.’

The jeep backed out of the driveway and sped away. The local contacts had been a Muslim, a Hindu, and a Christian, and they’d all used the word comrade . My contacts were always black market hustlers: men you knew how far to trust. The comrades were a new touch. I wondered what other surprises Sanjay had in store for me. I shouldered my backpack, and looked up at the gabled prow of the Castlereagh hotel.

It was in the white colonial style that colonial white men built for themselves, wherever they could steal gold. The gold in the vest, strapped to my chest, was coming back home to one of those colonies, and I couldn’t get rid of it fast enough.

I paused, and did a name check. A smuggler has to live in a new fake name and accent for a while, before using it. As a fugitive with a price on my head, I collected accents and practised them whenever I could.

I’m James Davis. James. My name is James Davis. Maybe not. I’m Jim Davis. Was I Jimmy, as a kid? Jim Davis, pleased to meet you. No, please, call me Jim.

When I found the fake name I could trust, I found my way into the new life I had to live for a while. The problem was simplified by war for my companion, my contact, who’d ridden away as a shadow in the back of a truck. When he wasn’t with those he loved or trusted, he had no name at all.

I climbed the granite and tile steps, crossed the wooden veranda and tapped on the filigreed glass of the main door. In a few moments, the night porter opened the door a crack.

‘Davis,’ I said, flipping easily into a Canadian accent. ‘Jim Davis. I have a reservation.’

He waved me inside, locking the door securely, and led me to the reservations desk, where he copied my passport details into a ledger that was half the size of a pool table. It took a while.

‘The kitchen is closed, sir,’ the attendant said at last, closing the book a page at a time as if he was making a bed. ‘There are very few guests at the moment. The season proper begins in three months. But there are cold snacks, and I can mix you a very nice drink, if you like. The house special.’