“After World War I ended, he returned to his family home in Rajasthan, took off his Indian Army uniform, and told his village that his experiences on the Somme were nothing like hunting; he declared that any fool with a gun could have killed the poor souls who were sent over the top of the trenches into no-man’s-land.
“His wife, children, and the locals in his village were scared of Shikari because they thought they saw madness and vulnerability in his eyes. But they were also scared for another reason: a huge tiger had been spotted in the nearby outskirts of the jungle. Determined to allay their fears and to prove to them that he was the man they knew before the war, he put on some robust silks, fixed himself a flask of gin — for he was a prodigious drinker by then — paid a villager for her goat, and took the leashed animal to the jungle, where he tied the goat to a tree and clambered up its branches.
“He waited there for two days, his rifle in his hands, never moving from the branch. The tiger came on the third night, its nostrils flaring. Shikari had never seen one so big and knew it was powerful enough to leap up the tree and rip him apart. But it was fixated on the tethered goat, whose gullet had been slit so that the scent of blood would make the tiger insane with hunger.
“The tiger moved closer, ready to kill the goat.
“Shikari glanced at the stars, aimed his rifle, pulled back the trigger, and shot the beast in its paw.”
The child Sahir had interjected, “He missed?”
His father had shaken his head. “No. Just before the shot, Shikari had an epiphany that broke his heart. He realized the tiger was in no-man’s-land and that he was no better than one of the enemy German machine gunners at the Somme, waiting for him and his Indian and British comrades to draw closer so that they could be mowed down.
“After the tiger limped away and collapsed, Shikari returned to the village with tears in his eyes and alcohol coursing through his body.
“His family and the villagers kept their distance from him as he carried on drinking through the night. But his youngest son, your grandfather, was brave enough to knock on his door the next morning and tell him that a group of Quaker explorers were taking refreshments in the village and had heard he’d injured a tiger. They wanted to help the animal. The boy had expected Shikari to hurl drunken abuse at him, but instead he staggered to his feet and guided the Quakers to the spot where he’d last seen the injured animal. The tiger was still there, lying on its side, breathing fast. Using poles with nooses, they pinned the animal down, removed the bullet, cleaned the wound, and used needles to stitch it up.
“Keeping their guns trained on the tiger, they backed away and watched it limp into the jungle, never to be seen again. After the men returned to the village, the Quakers gave Shikari the leather pouch containing the needles they’d used to heal the tiger, and told him that they were to be his reminder that there was peace in the world.
“But Shikari knew he could never be at peace, because his life of hunting now seemed wholly wrong. So he gave the needles to his youngest son and went to bed, no longer a shikari, instead a confused and anguished shadow of his former self. That night, he died with the sound of German artillery fire raging in his ears.”
Sahir placed the photo back in his wallet and imagined the tethered goat. That’s what fascinated him the most about the story, because it seemed such an effective method to lure an alpha predator to its death.
And though Cochrane would want to rescue the tethered bait rather than kill it, the principle was the same. But he’d need something far better than a goat to distract Cochrane long enough to be able to creep up on him.
Chapter 8
Washington, D.C.’s illuminated night sky was sodden as I drove across a bridge that was taking me closer to the center of American politics and the city where Trapper believed I was hiding.
I was tired, and a large part of me felt that my trip to see Zakaria had been a wasted one because he couldn’t identify the man who wanted to kill me. But I was also puzzled by his last observation and kept trying to understand what it could mean. Zakaria never said anything for the sake of it; he’d seen something that I hadn’t, and that in equal measure annoyed and frustrated me as much as my car’s faulty seat-belt warning device, which had been pinging every second throughout my return journey.
I toyed with the idea of arriving unannounced at the safe house to tell Chrissie that my being away was fruitless and in any case I’d like to invite her out for a nightcap. But in doing that, I’d be telling her that I’d failed and had come back to her with my tail between my legs. I couldn’t bring myself to do that because I could imagine Chrissie smiling and saying something like, “So you’re like all the other Agency guys who talk a good game, trying to get me into bed, but can’t deliver the goods when it counts?”
Actually, I couldn’t imagine Chrissie saying anything like that, but I could imagine her thinking something similar, so I decided that tonight I wasn’t going to give her cause to believe I’m like some of the CIA guys she has to put up with. I wondered if Chrissie could be the one for me. She certainly made me feel good when I was in her presence. I momentarily fantasized about the two of us going on vacation together.
But I quickly put that fantasy and all other thoughts about Chrissie out of my head. Capturing or killing Trapper was all that mattered right now.
I drove through the city, windshield wipers on full, scrolling through radio stations until I settled on one playing modern jazz, but I quickly turned it off because the music sounded discordant and illogical alongside the infuriating and robotic ping ping of my seat-belt warning system. Plus, I had to stay focused on road signs, because I didn’t know my surroundings. Despite being a joint MI6-CIA officer for years, this U.S. trip was only the second time I’d been to D.C. Whenever I meet Patrick and his peers in Langley, they quickly put me on a plane to London because they think that if I stay in the States too long, I’ll cause them trouble. Given my current circumstances, it seems they are right.
I’d no particular destination in mind, though I had a loose idea to traverse the city until I found its northern outskirts and, hopefully, a motel where I could pay cash for a room, charge my cell phone, strip down and clean my handgun, and sleep. For now, I was an alien, drifting with buildings’ lights flickering over my face, free-falling with no idea where I’d land, a lonely predator searching for a secure place to rest. Solitary spies often feel this way. The more seasoned of us might have visited most of the world’s capital cities, but that doesn’t mean we are knowledgeable tourists; instead, more usually we are furtive travelers who migrate at night from one country’s Ritz Carlton to another’s Hilton and have no connection to our surroundings beyond the fact that they hold a man or woman with the potential to betray their country.
I felt that way in D.C.
It was just another dark city.
It was close to 11:00 p.m. when I found a motel with neon signs advertising its forty-dollar rooms and inability to accommodate teenagers or truckers. As I hauled my luggage out of the trunk, I thought that there must surely be less desirable people that the establishment would wish to deter. For example, fugitives, murderers, and me.
I looked around, rain dripping off my face, and wondered if this was the last place I would ever sleep.
Chapter 9
At noon the following day, Sahir slung a black canvas bag over his shoulder and stepped out of his apartment.
There were three other apartments that could only be accessed from the narrow corridor outside Sahir’s apartment. As well as getting to know his immediate neighbor Isabella, Sahir had made it his business to ascertain the identities of his other neighbors. One of them was a construction worker who pulled twelve-hour day shifts and only came home to eat and sleep; the other was a sightseeing guide who spent every daylight hour walking tourists around D.C.