The colonel stared at his whiskey. “Pity you didn’t think of that before,” he said, adding a withering look for emphasis.
Cunningham returned the gaze and said nothing.
“But I suppose the damage is done. I suppose we’ll be hearing soon enough what McColl has in mind. Either blackmail or the fool’s picked up a bleeding heart in Russia.”
“I’d guess the latter,” Cunningham said.
Fitzwilliam grunted his disbelief, though whether in McColl’s new organ or the concept itself, Cunningham couldn’t be sure. “What about the Good Indian team?” Cunningham asked.
“Yes, I was coming to them. Did the Russian see the camera?”
“He must have.”
Fitzwilliam gulped down the last of his whiskey. “Well, we weren’t planning on giving them knighthoods.” He thought for a minute, leaning against the sideboard, the cigarette curling blue smoke across the back of his hand. “In fact,” he said finally, “our options seem extremely limited.”
Cunningham nodded. “Brady won’t be any great loss to humanity.”
“An arrest that goes sadly awry,” Fitzwilliam murmured, half to himself. He looked at his watch. “It’ll be dark in three hours. You’d better take a platoon—we don’t want any more slipups. And you can bury them there.” He allowed himself a wintry smile. “If we ever need more on Sayid Hassan, we can dig them up again.” He stubbed out the cigarette and turned for the door. “If only Gandhi had a garden,” he said over his shoulder.
If only, Cunningham thought, as he picked up the club secretary’s telephone. After arranging the troops for that evening, he strolled back down to the IPI bungalow. He’d been there only a few minutes when Morley returned, looking hot, disheveled, and angry.
“What happened to you?” Cunningham asked.
“That bastard McColl,” Morley spluttered, wiping the back of his neck with a damp-looking handkerchief. He told the story between gulps of ice water.
“But who was the woman?” Cunningham wanted to know.
“Not a clue, old man. She didn’t deny knowing McColl, but she claimed he wasn’t staying there. Lying like a trooper, of course. She had a faint American accent, I think. A looker, all right. Chestnut hair, big green eyes.”
“Nice tits?” Cunningham asked sarcastically.
“Sorry, I didn’t have time to take measurements,” Morley retorted in the same tone.
Cunningham laughed. “Okay, okay. It doesn’t matter now.” He explained about the setup at the station and his conversation with the colonel.
Hearing someone else’s tale of woe raised Morley’s spirits. “So what now?” he asked with his customary air of boyish expectancy.
“We clear up their mess. What else?” Cunningham gazed out of the window, wondering why he felt vaguely envious of McColl.
When Piatakov got back to the house, he found Brady waiting in the chair beneath the banyan tree. When the American heard what had happened, he burst out laughing, loudly enough to bring Chatterji out of the house.
“What is happening?” the Indian asked with an uncertain smile.
As Brady repeated the story in English, Piatakov asked himself for the umpteenth time if she really was in Delhi, if she really had betrayed him.
“The police must have engineered it,” Chatterji said without stopping to think.
“No,” Brady decided. “Why would they? We’re not the sort of friends they’ll want to publicize.”
“Then who? Why would anyone do this?” the Indian asked nervously.
Brady raised a hand to quiet him, but said nothing for several moments. Then his face broke into a smile. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Look—”
“Who could have forced her to write a note like that?” Piatakov interjected in Russian. “I don’t understand it. If she’s a prisoner, then maybe. But whose? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Sergei, for Christ’s sake, get a grip,” Brady said coldly. “You left her and your precious party behind. What does it matter what intrigue she’s gotten herself mixed up in?”
It matters because I cared about her, Piatakov thought. And still do. You could leave a lover behind, but not the heart that loved her.
“You didn’t see her,” Brady continued remorselessly. “You don’t even know she’s here.”
“It was her handwriting!”
“Christ! Maybe someone had a copy from somewhere…”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care. She’s history! Forget her. Forget about whoever it was sent that note. You spend your life wondering why other people are doing what they’re doing. Who cares? Now listen. Whoever was behind that camera—they’ve actually done us a favor. Because now the English have lost any chance of pinning it all on the Bolsheviks—not when there’s a picture showing one of them hand in glove with…” His voice trailed off. “Fuck!” he exclaimed. “What’s the time?”
Chatterji told him.
“Pack up all our stuff,” Brady told them. “We’re moving out now, as soon as the sun goes in.”
“Why?” Piatakov asked.
“The English will know that we know. And there’s only one way that they can be sure of calling the whole thing off.”
The American was right, Piatakov realized.
“Durga,” Brady said, “why don’t you bring the servants together?”
Piatakov thought about protesting but decided against it. There was no time to find out whether one of the servants was genuine and, if so, which. The struggle was a lottery, claiming innocent and guilty alike. He remembered the woman in Samarkand, the shock on her face as she sank to her knees, blood coursing out through her fingers.
During the war Piatakov had heard several soldiers say that the more they saw of death the more careful they were with their lives. Not me, he thought. He was becoming more careless, with his own and everyone else’s.
Caitlin leaned against the balcony rail, watching the street life below. She preferred their old room at the caravansary to the one in Sinha’s house—it might be dirtier, smaller, devoid of extras, but it had this window on the world. She could still feel like part of the human race.
Jack had gone off to see about the photographs, his mood a lot lighter than it had been for days. She wanted to share his confidence, to believe they had found a solution that scuppered the plot without costing Sergei his life, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe it. Something kept nagging at the back of her mind, but she didn’t know what it was.
Maybe it was nothing. She watched two girls walk by in identical chrysanthemum-colored saris, their hair oiled, their eyes surrounded by pools of dark makeup. At what age, she wondered, was freedom curtailed and purdah imposed? Were there big differences between the religious groups? She would have liked to find people to ask, but even if she hadn’t been stuck there in her own peculiar purdah, her lack of the relevant linguistic skills would probably have proved a significant obstacle. She had no idea how many of the people walking by on the street below spoke English. Indeed, until the last couple of weeks, India itself had hardly featured in her consciousness.
She noticed Jack coming up the street, his turbaned head bobbing above the shorter locals. He was cradling a bag with one arm, and idly swinging a rolled-up newspaper with the other. Seeing her there on the balcony, he waved the paper and disappeared through the doorway below. A few moments later he was wrapping his arms around her waist and kissing the side of her neck.
“I bring food,” he said.
She followed him into the room, where uncorked pots of rice and sauce were gently steaming on the floor. They ate with their fingers, something both had grown increasingly proficient at in the last couple of months, while McColl told her all about Mirza’s friend with the darkroom and their picture taking form in his developing tray.