Blood Money (2 page)
Trilok nodded. ‘Absolutely, sahib. I only deal in live donors.’
Gopal lay back and stared at the ceiling, his small head and shoulders almost engulfed by the embroidered cushions. ‘I have rung for my man. He will see you out. Wait there until he comes. I don’t want you wandering about the house.’ He closed his eyes.
The only sound in the room was the gentle beat of the ceiling fan and the wet pulse of the machine as it sucked Gopal’s blood out of him and pumped it back in.
Trilok looked out of the window. Outside, the vast lawn was bathed in brilliant sunshine. Two sprinkler hoses snaked across the emerald grass, throwing long bright arcs of water from side to side like whips.
1
S
NAKE
NAKE
The snake slithered out of the upturned pot. Its head was a pale brown arrow covered in prehistoric scales. The coils of its body followed swiftly, slithering out like a falling rope. A cobra, released from captivity into a crowd of parents and children and teenaged aid volunteers enjoying a simple festival at the village shrine.
A cobra. The five volunteers froze in horror. Alex, Li, Paulo, Hex and Amber – Alpha Force – were highly trained in the arts of survival; they knew how deadly the cobra was. Would the noisy crowd scare the snake away? Or would it strike? There were bare legs just metres away from its questing tongue. Children squatted on the ground, drawing pictures in the earth with their fingers and laughing. They were easy targets. Who would the snake go for?
Normally Alpha Force would have taken charge: told everyone to keep absolutely still, or cleared the area. But the snake had been released deliberately. A man in straw-coloured shorts and a crumpled shirt had stepped forward with an earthenware water pot. The crowd had cleared around him and he’d lowered it gently to the ground, put it on its side and removed the plug so that the snake could slide out onto the sun-baked ground. And when the snake came out the spectators smiled and welcomed it.
Right now, all over India, Hindus were celebrating the cobra, symbol of fertility and manifestation of Lord Shiva. However hair-raising it might look, Alpha Force had to trust that they knew what they were doing.
Li was calmer than the others. Her parents were naturalists and had worked with a wide variety of dangerous animals. She guessed that a cobra confronted by a crowd would sidle off into the undergrowth. And then the festivities could continue safely.
But the snake made no attempt to escape. Its tongue flicked in and out, a slender black fork tasting the air; its flinty eyes took in the colourful skirts, the dusty feet, the jangling jewellery, the laughing faces. Then suddenly it reared up, spreading its hood wide like a fan.
Now this looked a lot more dangerous.
Li dug her slender fingers into Paulo’s arm. The snake’s head was raised a good forty centimetres in the air, its body curled in a wide muscular arc on the ground. The back of its hood was dark brown, with black and white markings like a set of ferocious eyes.
Beside Li, Paulo was just as tense. He knew exactly what she was thinking, because he was thinking the same. He’d grown up among animals too, on a ranch in Argentina. He knew that frightened animals had two ways of coping: run away or attack. That snake had no intention of moving away. So there was only one thing for it to do: lash out. Should he do something? Had the simple festival just gone badly wrong?
The children squatted on their haunches, looking at the snake, their big brown eyes full of wonder. Three women dropped to their knees in front of it. They brought their hands forward as though praying – just centimetres away from the rearing body. They didn’t even look at the deadly predator, but bowed their heads.
Their colourful shawls, one green, one blue, one pink, made easy targets. Paulo and Li instinctively drew closer together and held their breath. This was madness; it contradicted everything they knew about survival. Should they stop it now?
The women began to rock backwards and forwards, chanting. The crowd joined in and soon everyone was softly singing a rhythmic, gentle Hindu song.
The snake was poised above the women, only inches away from their heads. It swayed gently, its tongue flashing in and out. Its black eyes, like tiny points of obsidian, gazed inscrutably at them. The mirrors sewn into the women’s colourful robes threw flashes of light onto it as they moved and their silver bangles jingled. All of these things might provoke it to attack. But the snake did not strike.
Alex, next to Paulo and Li, was just as horrified. He knew that the striking range of the cobra was the raised part of its body. So anyone within forty centimetres could be dead. Survival lore had been as much a part of his upbringing as maths and football. His dad was in the SAS and from an early age Alex had been fascinated by the outdoors, camping out regularly in his native Northumbria. He always had a knife at his belt and a survival kit in his pocket. He could hear his father’s voice as though he were beside him right now:
If you disturb a snake, stay very still until it’s gone away.
If he was here he’d be having kittens. The praying women were at most thirty centimetres away from the cobra’s taut body. Their unprotected arms were almost touching it. Alex looked at all the bare feet, bare arms, bare legs. If he was going anywhere near hostile wildlife he wore long trousers and sturdy boots. His instincts were screaming,
No, no, no
.
If you disturb a snake, stay very still until it’s gone away.
If he was here he’d be having kittens. The praying women were at most thirty centimetres away from the cobra’s taut body. Their unprotected arms were almost touching it. Alex looked at all the bare feet, bare arms, bare legs. If he was going anywhere near hostile wildlife he wore long trousers and sturdy boots. His instincts were screaming,
No, no, no
.
Hex, next to Alex, was gripping Amber’s shoulder so hard he thought he must be bruising it badly. But he couldn’t help it. If he ever got that close to a cobra he would not be kneeling in front of it humming to himself.
None of the team dared move in case they broke the spell and it all went wrong. Now some of the children were tossing crimson flower petals at the snake, their mouths open in delight. The snake’s tongue continued to flick. Others threw uncooked rice. Amber flinched as the hard grains hit the snake’s taut body. Surely that would provoke it to strike?
A faint breeze wafted a stream of dust over the dry, sandy earth. It collected on Alex’s pale, sweat-soaked face like a velvety dusting. It frosted Amber’s ebony skin like talcum powder; settled like fine ash in Li’s inky-black plait of hair; formed a light covering on Paulo’s springy curls; made Hex squeeze his green eyes into a squint. The snake spread its hood even further, the markings opening out like widened eyes. Its body followed the movements of the chanting crowd.
Slowly, as the chanting and the worshipping went on, and the snake stood accepting it, Alpha Force began to realize that the snake presented no threat; they relaxed and started to enjoy the spectacle.
Paulo, used to handling big, unpredictable animals on his parents’ ranch, was the first to go with the flow. Animals could always surprise you. You always had to be on your guard, but there was something mesmeric about the tall, dignified snake, the markings moving like a slow, hypnotic dream. A grin spread across Paulo’s handsome features. This was awesome.
Li was more logical. This shouldn’t be happening. Perhaps the snake’s instincts to flee and to kill were cancelling each other out, so that it couldn’t move. Its stillness made her think of the state of calm she felt when doing martial arts. She could be calm, balanced and focused while delivering devastating kicks and turning like a whiplash. When she was doing gymnastics or climbing – her other great passions – she always remained cool, however demanding the move, however vast the drop beneath her. When Li concentrated like that, it was as if time stood still. To see it in the snake was wonderful. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t the freakiest thing ever.
Hex was just as impressed, but he definitely liked to keep dangerous creatures safely on the other side of a computer screen. Not that he spent much time playing games; particularly not since Alpha Force had brought him more real-life adventure than he ever thought he’d see. Hex’s real element was cyberspace, at the keyboard of his state-of-the-art palmtop. When Hex surfed, he had a magic touch. He could go wherever he wanted. There wasn’t a code he couldn’t break, a firewall he couldn’t breach, a file he couldn’t tease open.
Amber thought that if someone had described to her what she was seeing now, she simply wouldn’t have believed them. All the villagers were so calm, as though it never occurred to them that the snake could harm them. And the cobra was serenely accepting its due. Amber was an experienced horse rider, and understood how deeply the handler’s attitude affected the animal. Could it simply be this belief that was winning through? It was a humbling lesson.
Humbling; Amber smiled to herself as she thought it. Brought up by billionaire parents in the
USA
and used to the high life, she realized that humble wasn’t a word her friends would have thought was even in her vocabulary. But life had changed Amber over the past few years: her parents had died, and then she had discovered that they were working undercover to help disadvantaged people. She had been marooned on a desert island with the four friends who stood beside her now. What they went through there – their battle to survive – had forged a bond as unbreakable as Hex’s claw-like grip on her shoulder. Each of them, Amber, Li, Paulo, Hex and Alex, discovered they had remarkable potential. They came away fired with a desire to make a difference in the world, and to carry on the work started by Amber’s parents. Alpha Force would look for injustice and try to help people.
USA
and used to the high life, she realized that humble wasn’t a word her friends would have thought was even in her vocabulary. But life had changed Amber over the past few years: her parents had died, and then she had discovered that they were working undercover to help disadvantaged people. She had been marooned on a desert island with the four friends who stood beside her now. What they went through there – their battle to survive – had forged a bond as unbreakable as Hex’s claw-like grip on her shoulder. Each of them, Amber, Li, Paulo, Hex and Alex, discovered they had remarkable potential. They came away fired with a desire to make a difference in the world, and to carry on the work started by Amber’s parents. Alpha Force would look for injustice and try to help people.
They were in Nayla, in southern India, on an aid project, helping to build a school. It had all started when Alex, at home in Northumberland and grappling with maths homework, saw a TV programme about poverty in the tiny villages all over India. Aid projects had brought clean water, electricity and communal telephones; but the villagers couldn’t make further progress into the twenty-first century because they had no schools. A reporter had gone to a village and learned that if the children wanted to go to school they had to walk eight kilometres and miss a day’s work in the paddy fields – which the community couldn’t afford. Alex had scribbled down the web link to the aid organization and e-mailed the others:
You remember that money we raised last summer in the adventure race? How about if we helped to build a school in India?
You remember that money we raised last summer in the adventure race? How about if we helped to build a school in India?
After months of preparation, they were here in Nayla. The village was exactly as he had seen it on the TV: the clutch of houses made of earth and stone, with whitewashed walls and grey tiled roofs, surrounded by fertile rice fields; the standpipe providing the water supply; the sun that beat down despite the dramatic clouds; the shrine where they were now all gathered – a termite mound surrounded by a low wall of red-painted bricks and crowned with marigolds. Except the emerald paddy fields were now parched like straw, waiting for the rains.
And now a small building site stood a hundred metres from the shrine. Four pallets of plastic-wrapped breeze blocks surrounded a concrete slab they had laid that morning to become the foundations. A small wooden hut like a garden shed formed a tool store. Scaffolding poles lay ready to be assembled.
Alex felt pleased as he looked at it: their efforts in the adventure race had bought building materials and plans and paid for a foreman. Alpha Force would provide most of the labour and the villagers would join in when they could. Originally they’d had two other workers, including a builder, from an aid organization, but they had both come down with severe food poisoning a week ago and an ambulance had taken them back to Chennai. The project was now behind schedule. Fortunately the hard work of planning and laying the foundations was done. Now Alpha Force just had to get the walls up and the roof on before the rains hit.
Hex had said that the monsoon would start within days. He’d checked it on the government weather database. Not the ordinary website that everybody consulted – that one was a few days out of date. The site Hex had found was the secret one that used military satellites. The monsoon was visible as a vast black shadow advancing across the subcontinent. They didn’t have long. And that was if they survived the snake ceremony . . .
2
B
USINESS
A
S
U
SUAL
USINESS
A
S
U
SUAL
The ceremony was finishing. The man in straw-coloured shorts and tunic squatted on the ground, grasped the cobra by the tail and lifted it. The cobra writhed as it found itself in mid-air, its graceful head swaying as though held on a wire. In the blink of an eye the man lowered the snake inside the earthenware pot and put the lid on.
Li watched with alarm. ‘What will they do with that snake?’
A girl answered, ‘My father will set it free in the fields.’
Alex recognized the girl, and her father beside her. He had seen them on the documentary. Naresh, the father, had been pictured on a tractor, clearing irrigation ditches; Bina, twelve years old, was filmed in a turquoise sari stepping like an exotic bird through the deep green paddy fields, tending the plants. She talked about how she longed to learn to use computers. She was wearing that same turquoise sari today. It was strange to recognize them from a TV programme aired months ago and half a world away.
‘How do you avoid being bitten?’ said Li.
‘When the god is there we can worship without fear,’ said Bina. ‘That is the ceremony.’
‘But now,’ smiled Naresh, ‘we are very, very careful.’
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