The History Thief: Ten Days Lost (The Sterling Novels) (30 page)

The mango-lassi was also bottomless.

Afterward and when he was sure that his stomach could hold no more, York was shown to the bathroom where a shower stall awaited. Next to the shower, on a small hand carved, wooden table, was a white cotton kurta and some undergarments. The old woman picked it up and gestured with it toward York.

As York took the kurta, she pointed to his dirty clothes, and, in a voice that revealed her age, said, “I wash. Leave at door.” She turned and left.

York disrobed, put his dirty clothes outside by the door, and then eagerly entered the shower. The hot water splashed against his face and down his body. Days of caked dirt muddied the water as it circled the drain. He turned the faucet handle a bit more; the water became hotter. A pleasant shiver ran the course of his skin. York let the heat soothe his aching muscles. His mind drifted momentarily from the present situation as he imagined that he was elsewhere.

He imagined his Elizabeth there with him; the cascading water was her fingers, and the enveloping heat, her body.

The fantasy lasted a long time, longer than York had realized.

A knock at the door interrupted his mind-play, and York snapped back to attention, calling, “One moment, I am almost finished.” He was almost ashamed.

The old woman had returned. York quickly dressed and saw that she had waited for him in the hallway. She moved her stooped frame closer to York and then motioned for him to come.

York obliged.

He followed her as she walked down the marble hallway; they stopped in front of the infirmary.

Doctor Hora was there, tending to CPT Scott.

“Ah, come in. Come in. I have been finished for some time. He rests well,” explained Doctor Hora.

Finished? Already? I must have been in the shower longer than I thought.

“Will he be okay?” asked York.

“He has lost a lot of blood, but I think he will survive. His recovery will take some time—I had to remove one of his kidneys.”

Dr. Hora’s eyes spoke of the truth; York saw the man’s compassion in them.

York put a hand on Scott’s arm. He was thankful that his commander and friend would live.

Outside, on Juhu beach and near the gate to the Theological Society, the small, skinny assistant squatted under a palm tree. He had his disfigured face buried deep into a mango. Intent on finishing his meal, he waited to make his call until done.

An emaciated mutt, blackened by the color of its fur and the filth of its elements, cowered close to the man.

With only the rind of his mango left, he tossed it into the grass and wiped the small remnants of fleshy mango bits from his cheeks and onto his dirty khaki pants.

The black dog limped nervously and erratically but quickly to the rind. It snatched the discarded bit of fruit and scampered pathetically away.

The Indian man reached into his pocket; he pulled out a cell phone and pressed a series of numbers into its keypad.

He waited for the man to answer. When the man finally did, the Indian flatly stated in Gujarati, “They are here. They are in the doctor’s house.”

That was all that he said. He listened to what the man on the other end commanded.

His instructions were short and said only once. The call was over; he snapped shut the cell phone, stood, and walked down to the kulfi stand. It had just opened. He thought to himself that two scoops of pistachio-topped, coconut kulfi instead of his normal one scoop would be the perfect reward for a job well done. The line was already fifteen rick drivers deep. He pushed himself gruffly through the throngs of drivers who parted immediately when they saw him; he pointed at the vendor with the blackened fingernail of his index finger. He shouted out his order.

With both scoops of the kulfi already in his mouth and nearly devoured, he smiled as the creamy cold treat drizzled down his cheek. It had been the easiest five hundred rupees he had ever made.

Tonight he would earn five thousand.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

A RUSE IS A RUSE
THE UNITED STATES
GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

L
ou slowly inhaled on the cigarette, the lit end crackled loudly in the quiet room as it neared the filter; he could smell the tobacco distinctly. His inhale was long; he wanted to savor every drag—right down to the last one.

He could hear them in the hallway. He knew it would be only a matter of moments. The helicopter hovered close overhead; he was sure that he heard two of them.

Lowering his head to his chin, he flicked away the butt. The cigarette was finished. He thought that he might be, too.

He exhaled his final, long plume of smoke and watched as it curled slowly into fat, twisting clouds.

He adjusted himself in his chair, but the moment that he moved, a sharp pain ran through his shattered arm. Lou winced and waited for the wave of pain to pass.

They were getting closer; he thought he heard his second in command.

It was time.

Lou slid carefully to the floor, favoring his broken arm, and lay on his side.

The very moment that he did, his men burst into the office.

“In here!” shouted the Special Activities Division officer. Lou’s officer.

Instantly the room was full of his men; the barrels of their laser-mounted weapons were all pointed at him.

Uneasily they approached, unsure of what had occurred.

Lou groaned.

“He’s alive!” shouted his second in command.

Slowly the man rolled Lou over. Lou’s swollen eye remained firmly shut while the other fluttered.

The officer saw Lou’s badly broken arm and the injuries to his face and asked, “Sir, what happened?”

Lou’s answer was pithy, and he coughed out, “I don’t know, Ben.”

“Shit, sir,” said the officer quietly so the others couldn’t hear, “you gotta give me something. Langley wants your ass.”

Lou repeated, “Ben, look at me, I don’t know what the fuck just happened. One minute I’m tracking the Doc and the next, you are standing over me. Goddamn, my arm hurts!”

Lou tried to sit up but screamed out in pain and fell roughly back to the floor.

“Don’t try to move, Lou. You’re busted up pretty bad.” Ben turned to another officer and barked out, “Get an ambulance here and a paramedic! Do it now!”

Another officer asked, “Where should we take him?”

“Back to Langley,” responded the officer as he looked back at Lou. “Those are our orders.”

So much for playing stupid
, thought Lou.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

A TIME TO RUN
MUMBAI, INDIA

S
taring over the empty, black waters of the Indian Ocean reminded him that he was alone in this world. It mattered not that the streets of Mumbai—the only placed he had lived—were choked with the bodies of every caste: from the Dalits to the Brahmins, and every caste in between; there were bodies everywhere.

From the dark-skinned rick drivers to the fair-skinned well-to-dos: every square meter of street and sidewalk was filled.

Every day he moved through the same streets, running errands, doing someone else’s bidding. There was always a body to step over, a hawking child to push aside, an upper-caste man to bow to, or some filthy dog to kick. He was never alone, not allowed to work for himself, not allowed to think for himself.

His head was filled with rage.

He always tasted anger on his tongue.

Everything in his life belonged to someone else. Even who he was—what he was—could be claimed by another man: three men to be precise.

He looked around the beach. He wanted a moment to be alone, but even now the movements of humanity surrounded him. To his right, down the beach, fisherman squatted around pockets of fire, smoking their cloves. Some were spitting globs of red saliva through paan-stained teeth; most were half-intoxicated from the shared bottle of Scotch being passed around. They cackled on about the day’s catch or some other matter that had no importance.

To his left, old women nearing death ventured to the water’s edge to offer themselves to whatever god they had seen fit to praise this evening.

Little homeless boys and girls ran half-naked through the sands, their bodies marked with the pocks of infection.

He hated this world; he loathed his part in it.

The cigarette in his hand burned close to his finger, the heat sizzled against the top layer of his skin, but he couldn’t feel it. He raised his arm to bring the cigarette closer to his lips; only then did he see that it was burning him. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t feel a thing.

Taking a drag, he laughed bitterly at the irony: the lumpy scar tissue on his fingers formed by the horrid acid burns prevented the burning from the cigarette to be felt.

His laugh abated quickly. He wasn’t even sure why it had struck him as funny. Anger filled his eyes, and his lips turned to a scowl. He flicked the remains of the cigarette at the dog nearest to him, hitting it along the shallowness of its empty stomach. The dog howled slightly and ran away.

His phone rang. The caller was on time, just as he said that he would be.

“Hello,” answered the Indian.

“Do it now; is there a problem with that?” asked the caller.

“No, boss, no problem: both of them?”

“No. Kill the hurt one. Leave the other alive. Do you understand?”

“Yes, boss. I understand. Same price, okay?”

“Don’t worry about the money. Kill the hurt one, and you will be paid what we agreed.”

The call ended. He looked up toward the gate into the Theological Society; the guard was asleep as usual. He checked his watch and waited.

Barely fifteen minutes had passed when Dr. Hora walked out of his home. It was his ritual; this much the Indian man knew. Dr. Hora always took a slow stroll around the tree-lined roads of the upper-class, walled society as the day ended. He waited until the doctor was out of sight and then made his way to his home. Soon he was inside.

He was a lithe man: small and light and not more than one hundred and fifteen pounds. His footsteps across the marble made no sound.

Quietly he passed the mat where York lay. He stood over the young Green Beret, making sure that he was asleep.

When convinced that the American was not awake, he turned and walked quietly into the infirmary. As he neared the entryway to where CPT Scott recovered, he passed a large, oval mirror that hung along the corridor wall. He caught a glimpse of his face and stopped.

The burns on his face were gnarled and bulbous. The thick scars disgusted him and filled him with hate; it had taken years before he could dare look at himself. Gingerly, he fingered the smooth, undulate scar tissue. He thought of that day when three boys from an upper caste had thrown him to the ground and beaten him. But that hadn’t been enough for them.

No.

They needed to hurt him more.

They marked him with acid; on that day he had felt a pain never before imagined. The innocent boy that he had been died on that day: in his place, he was reborn and filled with an anger that could be satisfied in only one way.

The American wouldn’t be his first kill.

He would only be one at the end of a long line of many.

His first kill had been one of the three upper-caste boys: their leader. It had taken a number of years to find him, but when he did, he had made him pay. It was his sloppiest kill; the boy didn’t die easily. Before his death, he had carved the boy’s face beyond recognition. He had held up a mirror, making him stare upon it just as he was forced to stare upon his own disfiguration.

The boy’s death had been haphazard and uncoordinated, but it had been his most satisfying.

The tone from the soldier’s heart monitor brought his attention back to his mission. His eyes retreated from the mirror and refocused on the doorway ahead. He entered the infirmary.

The injured soldier would not wake. The drugs flowing into his veins through the intravenous solution made sure of that. The Indian walked to the monitor that emitted a low tone that chimed in conjunction with CPT Scott’s heart rate.

He turned it off.

Then he walked to a drawer and slowly opened it, careful not to make any sound; from inside the drawer, he pulled out a syringe. Next, he went to the infirmary’s small refrigerator and quietly pried its door ajar. Lit up by the small interior light, numerous glass vials of different drugs lined the shelves. He knew precisely, however, where on the shelf the drug he needed would be.

Grabbing a vial, he held it up and inserted the needle through its lid. Drawing more than he needed, he set the remaining pentobarbital on the counter.

As he stood next to the hurt soldier, he watched as the man’s large chest rose and fell in shallow breaths. He smiled at the soon-to-be incongruous use of the drug: he had first used the pentobarbital as a preoperative sedative when he had assisted the doctor earlier. Now, he would use it to kill the man.