Max O'Brien Mysteries 3-Book Bundle. Mario Bolduc
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closely by bhikharis, a whole family of them in rags with hands outstretched. When the two men reached the limits of their territory, they turned back. They emerged at Connaught Place, and more beggars followed in their wake. Jayesh ignored them, the same as the others.
The two men stopped under the arcade of the Regal Cinema. Nearby, next to a column, a shoeshine boy called out for customers in a tired voice. Most people paid no attention to him, but one man stopped, rolled up his pant leg, and put his foot on the small wooden box. The shine began without a word. When it was done, the customer tossed some coins on the ground, but the shoeshine boy didn’t seem at all insulted. He fell upon the coins scattered on the pavement amongst the passersby, before returning to his spot by the column.
“Dalit,” murmured Jayesh, “untouchable.”
Max turned to him and Jayesh explained: “If the shoeshine boys touch the leather shoes, which are made from cowhide, they’re impure. That’s why that guy threw down the money instead of putting it into his hand.”
Jayesh was a Vaishya — merchant class, third rung on the Hindu social ladder — and this explained his father’s occupation. Even in America, Siddhartha Srinivasan respected, in his own way, his place within the caste system.
While Max was speaking to Juliette on the phone the day before, Jayesh was at the Kasgari Mosque impersonating a CBI investigator: “Just a few more questions about some things we need to clear up.” He’d met the “second-in-command” of the imam Khankashi. He was told the imam had kept in touch with David because both of them were on the same wavelength, especially about Kashmir. The imam would never openly acknowledge such a thing. Genghis Khan had supported the separatist movement from the beginning, while still keeping his distance from Pakistan. It wasn’t easy. The brutality of the Indian forces, especially in Srinagar, played right into the hands of Pakistan. Pervez Musharraf’s government would have welcomed this son of Islam safely home from Hindu territory with open arms. Khankashi was an idealist, though. He professed to believe in a multi-ethnic India, as Gandhi and Nehru had imagined it. An India where Hindus, Parsis, Christians, and Muslims could live in harmony with respect for one another.
“So, you’re thinking bluff?”
“Of course. The usual sitar song to put people to sleep while the Islamist killers of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen build up their arsenal, courtesy of the Pakistani secret service.”
“Sufis and jihadists fighting side by side … pretty weird, no?”
“I’m telling you, showbiz. Whatever. The imam shouting from the rooftops that Muslims are second-class citizens, worse than untouchables. From time to time, some Dalits get roughed up, but Muslims get exterminated … with the government’s blessing. No problem with putting Hindus first in everything in this country: schoolbooks get ‘revised’ to showcase Brahmin heritage.
“In a situation like this,” Jayesh went on, “Genghis Khan has no choice but to walk the straight and narrow, and for years the Vajpayee government has been longing for him to step out of line so they can put him away. So what does our holy man do? He cites proverbs from the Mahatma and yet he still rips into the BJP and the Islamists every chance he gets — James Bond included. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if one day we found Khankashi stuck away in the country eating bread and water while he weaves the cotton threads of his charkha, like Mahatma. It would be just like that asshole to slide back into the old passive resistance number!
“David’s association with the holy man had tongues wagging among Bhargava Hindus, without a doubt; not that he made a point of publicizing it, but it was no secret either. I mean, tea out in public in Old Delhi. He had to be doing favours for the imam on the q.t., in the guise of diplomacy.”
Max came back to Vandana’s theory that James Bond had probably used David as an example to other diplomats that they had better play in their own sandbox. “Maybe, but if so, why didn’t they claim the attack? Terrorism has a marketing scheme all its own, but it’s been a whole week and nothing. Old news. There’s been Afghanistan, then Kashmir and the worsening situation between India and Pakistan took centre stage and stepped back into the general melee.”
“But getting back to Genghis Khan,” said Jayesh. “Whatever his Islamist reputation, especially among the papers loyal to the BJP, he denounced the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks of September 11 — against the spirit of the Qur’an, he said.”
“I bet that put a chill on his Islamist buddies in Pakistan,” guessed Max.
“Precisely.”
“Yet the Indian cops are sure he’s hiding out in Karachi.”
“They have no idea where he is, so they dream up any old thing, as usual. I think he’s still in Delhi and laughing his ass off.”
“So, a fake ‘moderate,’ is that it?”
“That’s what the Durgas are saying. They’d do anything to get their hands on him. Bhargava would love to finish him off personally.”
“And where exactly is he? How do we get in touch, talk to him?”
“No one knows but his closest cronies.”
This was just getting better and better with both suspects disappearing into thin air: Genghis Khan to his lair and James Bond into clandestine retirement. One thing was certain, though. Dhaliwal and his team were going to have to treat this one with kid gloves. If they did tie the attack on David to his contacts with Khankashi, it would make waves that might drown them all, even Bernatchez and the High Commission. For instance, if Dhaliwal could prove that David had “privileged” connections with Muslim officials — already suspected of financing or protecting Kashmiri terrorists — Canada would be in hot water, just when its businessmen were about to break into this new market and important contracts were to be signed at the Montreal conference.
Was Bhargava the culprit? It was a sexy hypothesis, but it couldn’t withstand serious scrutiny. Hindu extremists didn’t give a damn about world opinion. Their country’s “Hinduization,” as they put it, was domestic business, a religio-nationalist delirium that knew no diplomatic scruples. What was it Vandana said? As recently as March, Prime Minister Vajpayee had crossed his arms while fascist groups in Gujarat staged pogroms against Muslims for two months without denouncing or forbidding them or even sending in the police. A government like that was not going to bother about a diplomat — Third Secretary to boot — being friends with the imam of a mosque.
Nope. The answer had to be somewhere else.
Summer 1984. Max was living in the U.S. under three different names and passports, still a Canadian citizen according to two other passports he hardly used anymore. Now he was in Hy’s Steak House in Toronto, specializing in T-bone, filet mignon, and surf ’n’ turf, sitting on a leather seat worn in by an army of clients every day at noon in the thrall of red meat. Philippe sat facing him; he was soon leaving for Bangkok with his small family. David was six and mischievous-looking in the photo his father had thumbed a million times. Philippe looked up with that winning smile he often showed. Max smiled back, but for different reasons.
“I found Stéphane Kavanagh,” Max said. This was the man who’d ruined their father. Philippe’s smile vanished, which surprised Max, who had also never heard his brother raise his voice. He was normally so calm and collected.
“Stay away from that guy!”
“He put us out on the street.”
“Ancient history, all of it. Forget it!”
“Forget it? He’s living a totally normal life as though nothing happened.”
“DON’T YOU LAY A FINGER ON HIM!”
Max didn’t get it. Since finding the piece of garbage, he was determined to clean his clock, and his own brother, who’d suffered as much as all of them, was telling him to sit on his hands. Max’s thirst for revenge had grown over the years and kept him awake at night, even in his cell, and now Philippe was telling him to forget it. He didn’t realize that vengeance was Max’s food and his fuel.