The PuppetMaster (42 page)

“You see, you are better at this than you thought. My guess is they are going to use it to cover what they bring out, like drugs in a load of pineapples. You don’t dig too far in the prickles before you get tired of being poked and quit.”

“You make a good detective yourself, Ms. Hadersen. That would lead me to think they’re getting ready to transport something soon.”

As we motored at a faster pace than I had anticipated on the secondary road, I was trying to solve a dilemma. The darkness and dust would conceal us until we were close to the fence and the frontage road. But we couldn’t just make a casual turn at the guardhouse and meander down to the cave. Security would be tight, especially if they were preparing to move goods. I had to avoid the gate and cut across open country on an angle to meet the road further down. The problem was two-fold. I had no idea at what point to turn, especially since I couldn’t see five feet in front of the Cherokee’s bumper. I also had no idea what the terrain would be like. Without lights we could easily crack into a boulder or a slide into a ravine, neither with pleasant consequences. I needed to be as close as possible to the fence without being visible to anyone inside.

I explained all this to Uli, and, as usual she a solution.

We decided that my two previous visits weren’t enough to gauge it from memory. Uli said, “If you drop back enough, maybe we can see the fence from the lights of the trucks.” I cleared the windshield and slowed, and sure enough, splintered light reflected off the spirals of razor wire. And we were closer than I had estimated, less than a third of a mile away. Gripping the wheel with both fists, I veered right, off the road and was immediately forced to creep along in the ink. We bounced over and around objects that I could barely see through the side window--small boulders, brush, stunted trees, and logs. Six times we stopped to get out and check for imagined obstructions that were always there. We zigzagged, crept like robbers, and an hour later completed the hypotenuse of our triangle. I hoped with all my might that no one had spotted us. Looking toward the gates, I saw only the guardhouse security lights illuminating the front compound. The trucks we had tailed were now backed against the opening of the shaft. I rolled across the grassy lot, up to our picnic spot, and shut down the engine. For a few moments we sat without moving. The rain and a rising wind tossed the leaves of the betel tree. Drops splattered rhythmically on the roof. I rolled down my window and listened. The moment had arrived when I knew we had to act, when I had to kick fear out the window. My legs, unfortunately, were mutinying. The rain came harder and I rolled the window shut.

“Listen, Sweet Premika of Mine, I know where a good sample is. Ralki picked it up when we were here, and I remember exactly where he dropped it. Take me less than a minute to find it.”

She grabbed my hand and whispered, “Remember our first date and the sketch of the lovers wrapped like forest vines? Inseparable? That’s us.”

Her grip told me it was moot to argue. “Okay, but . . .”

“You lead, Lover. I’ll follow stille som en mus”

“I hope that means quiet as a mouse.”

With a quick nod, she blew me a kiss, opened the door, and stepped into the downpour. I pulled the flashlight from my bag and kicked my reluctant legs out the door.

What path there was felt soggy but reasonably familiar. We stepped across to the foot of the spur, where I listened again for shouts or sirens or racing motors, but there was only the wind and rain and an incredibly raucous pounding in my chest. I switched on the flashlight and filtered the beam through my fingers. We were beyond the line of vision of the guardhouse, so I pulled them away and focused the beam in a tight circle on the ground.

“We’ll need to climb over,” I whispered. “The entrance is just on the other side, or used to be, anyway.” I reached to take her hand, but she had already started up, which was better because I needed to have at least one hand to climb. The rocks were cool and slippery with rain, and when we came to the top, I angled the beam downhill. Raindrops fell like tiny jewels through the light. To the right, the channel leading the cave had been cleared. Almost.

The slag had been back-dragged from the entrance, clearing the opening, but five boulders had been re-set to close off the crevice. Small tread marks scarred the dirt, dashing my original hopes of quickly grabbing Ralki’s providential rock and dashing back.

Uli crawled down into the ravine and I followed.

“They’ve cleared it. It looks like someone’s opened it up to get inside.” My distress was audible.

“That’s where the front was?” She pointed to the boulders.

“Yes, Master and I entered there, and Ralki and I stood here.” I spun the beam in a slow arc along the wall. And there, waiting patiently against a vertical slab, was the same innocuous chunk Ralki had selected. Perhaps it was irony or pure luck, but at the moment all I could think was, the damn thing just wanted to be found. I jumped across and scooped it up, seeing Ralki’s sneer dissolve into disbelief. I laughed aloud, and in the echo I was sure I heard four-thousand year-old voices laughing with me.

“A gift, My Love.” I turned and handed her the flashlight and the baseball-sized chunk. She immediately studied it in the beam. The rain was coming in sheets now, drenching us, and making vision difficult. I was quite prepared to pop our prize into my pocket and scramble back to the Cherokee.

“Color, size, shape, und texture.” She was talking to herself. “All match. Definitely uraninite, and by the look of it, high grade. A drop of nitric acid would help.”

With a sloppy grin I said, “I think I left mine at the villa. Can we go now?”

She was about to reply when we both heard a metallic hiss, muffled and distant, but clearly mechanical. A low rumble followed, as if a large machine was coughing to life. It was coming from beyond the crest of the hill directly in front of us, from somewhere between the cave and the guard gate.

“Uli, let’s go back,” I whispered, but she was already clambering up the slope. With a sigh I followed.

At the crest, the ridge ran in shallow cambers in the direction of the mine, the cave behind us at one end, and the gate a half a mile away on the other. And somewhere in the middle, machinery was hissing to life. Uli stopped to catch her breath and I grabbed her hand and tried to picture the ridgeline through the rain. Blackness.

“We don’t have to do this, Uli. We have what we came for.”

Her voice came in an urgent whisper. “We need to find out what they are doing. If they’re processing it, we need to know. It can’t be that far. Let’s find where the sound is und then leave. Please.”

Rain streamed into my eyes. I wanted desperately to be in the Cherokee motoring away, but I knew she was right. I hadn’t won one of these discussions yet anyway. I pulled the flashlight back out.

We scrambled, with more noise than I would have liked, up and over broken shard. The mechanical sound increased, and after a few hundred meters, and an achingly long time, I saw a faint glow low to the ground. We moved on all fours until we were near enough to see what it was--three vent caps protruded from the rock like toadstools. Light glowed in muted circles below them, and the sound of hissing liquid and pumps rippled towards us.

I took a step toward it, and was ready to drop to my knees and crawl, when Uli grabbed my wrist.

“Stop.”

What?” I whispered against the rain.

She pulled on my arm. “They’re leaching it.”

“What?” I asked again.

‘They’re leaching it into yellowcake right here.”

I wasn’t altogether sure what that meant and asked, “How do you know?”

She sniffed. “You can smell it?”

We were fifty feet away, downwind, and close enough for me to smell an acrid, alkaline odor on the wetness of the air.

“Ammonia. They’re processing it. Don’t go any closer.”

I not only didn’t want to go any closer, I wanted to high-tail it in the other direction as soon as I could turn my ugly tennies around. With a little tug, I convinced her of the same idea. We scrambled back along the ridgeline to the ravine, across the cave entrance, and back to the car.

She glanced back. “They must be crushing and leaching the ore below. That means technicians, machinery, und a lot of money. Very complicated, but the return, Gott, it could be huge.”

I didn’t want to think about any of it at the moment.

We were soaked and exhausted when we climbed into the car. I was just getting ready to turn the ignition key when I saw two lights moving along the road from the other direction. Uli saw it also, and we both froze. A small jeep was moving slowly south toward the gate, passing the grassy parking space at that moment. The bright beam of a spotlight bounced across the boulder field on the opposite side, exactly where we had driven thirty minutes earlier. Neither of us breathed.

Three fortuitous things saved us from being discovered that night. The increasing rain erased all signs of our trail, the spotlight shone away from where we sat, and C.G. had taken black as his color of choice. All of those, and the luck I was thinking just might be from Sahr’s constellations, kept us from being caught.

The outside air had cooled enough to open the windows slightly and turn the heat on low inside. I maneuvered the Cherokee around and for a moment pondered ripping straight down the access road with the high beams lit and all four tires spinning. The anger and frustration of the last nine days was spilling out like the fumes in those vents. For the first time since seeing my adversaries behind the concertina wire, I felt prepared. I knew what they were up to and why, and now, I was ready to send a blow to their solar plexus.

We made a long, slow arc back across the exposed field and an hour later were rolling down the Azamgarh Highway once more. Deep relief flooded me and then, remembering it, reached into the back and handed Uli the small bag Sahr had given me. She opened it onto her lap, and two pieces of nan, cucumber and yogurt dip, cheese, and a small bottle tumbled out. As we neared the outskirts of Varanasi, I pulled off the road, into a spot hidden from the highway. We dipped the bread, munched contentedly, and sipped on a surprise-- brandy. “I’ll be goddamned. I don’t think she’s ever put alcohol in a picnic before. Her birthmark scrunches if I have a second lager. Unless I’m dining with my premika.”

“Maybe she knew you needed to have a little something extra to calm you.”

I turned in my seat and fluttered my eyelashes. “And you don’t, Ms. Hadersen? Probably not. Nothing was going to stop you back there, was it?”

She leaned over and kissed my cheek. “No. This afternoon when you were inside me and I was crying, I knew I could do it. Your poem helped, too.” She bit my lobe. “Now let’s go kick them in their schlangers.”

I hoped our aim was good. The thought was delightful.

I started the engine. The rain had slackened now, replaced by a floating mist and a spray of stars in the east above the river. The blush of shop lights and thrumming of the city had receded. Varanasi was drifting to sleep, without riots, without drought, preparing once again for sunrise and burning corpses.

Sixty-Seven

Emotions in the villa the next morning were diverse and peculiar. I was moving about well before sunrise immersed in the sadness that I would be seeing Soma’s ashes mix into the wind. Then there was the tension we all felt of sending media and intelligence agents on the trail of people that could only be described as evil. There was the combined excitement and melancholy of a train ride to Delhi to say good-bye to Jitka. The worst, however, was Sahr’s agitation. It could be felt like a high-voltage wire popping throughout the villa.

She set a bowl of pakoras on the table with a force that almost cracked the ceramic. “Bhimaji, Durgubal came un-summoned last night. He has never done that before.”

I was trying to rush through a cup of coffee and make notes at the same time. I wasn’t quite ready for Sahr’s turbulence. “Right, well, I have quite enough to think about this morning. His advice will have to wait.”

“It cannot wait, Saab. There is danger in the hours ahead. Grave danger. He warned me.”

I popped a pakora into my mouth and mumbled, “Of course there is, and we’re two steps ahead of it.”

“It is even more serious than the last time he came. Look what happened then.” I felt the sting of that one.

I was preparing to argue that everything not only seemed more dangerous, but was, when the sisters entered. They wore traditional saris, light blue and green, and the transformation of Jitka was astounding; she looked more feminine than I’d ever seen her. Sahr immediately helped rearrange the pleats and the length of the shawl. I poured coffee and set dahi out for the pakoras. We barely had time to eat before rushing through the door and onto Shivanan Avenue.

And there, waiting like a patient doorman, was Vinduram Singh.

The turban bobbed. “At your service, Sahib and Memsahibs. The shiniest taxi in all of Varanasi awaits to carry you in total air-conditioned comfort to Manikarnika.” Doors flew open.

I looked at Sahr, whose look explained that she had arranged for Vin to pick us up the previous evening. “To Manikarnika,” I repeated.

As I helped the sisters into the back--Sahr was already in the front--I saw Lalji’s friends taking up posts inside my gate. “Where’s Lalji,” I asked suspiciously.