Caitlin just looked at him.
“We are going to assassinate him, but not only him. While Durga does the honors from the roof outside, Sergei and I will be half a mile away, executing the sainted Gandhi. An Indian killing an English prince, white men killing India’s favorite son. It’s called a double play in baseball, as I’m sure you know.” He grinned at her, relishing the moment. “And India truly will explode.”
“And Russia will no longer be alone,” Sergei pointed out. “A revolution here will keep ours alive. The party will no longer need to make compromises.”
She shook her head in disbelief. “What use would India be to us? It’s ten times more backward than we are!”
“All the more reason,” Brady drawled. “But I think we’ve talked for long enough. The only thing left to decide is what we do with you.”
McColl was a short step away from the barely open door, trying to pinpoint each man’s position from the sounds of their voices. He still had no idea where Chatterji was, but he might wait forever for the Indian to speak.
He pushed the door wide, took in the frozen tableau, and let the aim of his revolver come to rest on the Indian, whose hand was inches away from the gun on the table.
“Push it away from you,” McColl told him in English.
Chatterji did so.
“You,” McColl said to Piatakov in Russian, “back against the wall.”
“Jack McColl,” Brady said, a grin spreading across his face like a mask. “I should have guessed. Are you working for the Cheka, too, or has Caitlin here joined British intelligence?”
“Neither,” McColl told him, stepping into the room.
“We’re here together because we want the same thing,” Caitlin told the stunned Piatakov. “An end to this madness.”
Brady laughed at her. “When the Cheka starts working with the British Crown, there’s no revolution worth saving. But perhaps you’ve been too busy sleeping with the past to notice. Why not go home, as Sergei tells you? Back to your women’s business.”
“Nothing would make me happier. As long as he comes with me.”
“At the end of a gun?” Piatakov asked bitterly.
“If there was another way to save you from this idiocy, I would have used it.”
He shook his head sadly. “I can’t go back.”
“So that’s that,” Brady said. “I guess you’ll have to kill us all.”
She ignored him. “Sergei?”
“Remember Vedenskoye,” Brady said matter-of-factly.
“No!” Piatakov cried as Chatterji tipped himself backward.
Distracted by the Indian’s movement, McColl took his eye off Brady just long enough for the latter to raise his Colt revolver and would probably have paid the intended price if Piatakov, intent on shielding Caitlin, hadn’t thrown himself at the American.
McColl had braced himself for the bullet, but when the Colt boomed, it was the Russian who took it, staggering forward and then collapsing in front of his shocked-looking partner.
As Piatakov toppled, McColl fired over him, slamming Brady into the wall.
McColl fired again, blowing a hole through the side of Chatterji’s head as the Indian lunged for his gun.
Caitlin was on all fours, leaning over the now-prone Piatakov. “Oh, Sergei,” she whispered, but there was no answer, only a dark patch spreading on the white linen shirt.
Brady was slumped behind them, clutching his upper side, the fallen Colt beyond his reach.
McColl kept him covered, ears cocked for the sound of feet on the stairs. The other people in the house would have heard the shots, but would they do anything more than lock their doors and remind one another that white people’s business was better left to them?
So far, apparently not.
Chatterji and Caitlin’s husband were dead, so the obvious thing to do was finish Brady off and leave the building as fast as they could.
He looked at the wounded American and wished the man would give him the excuse he needed. It was doubtless to humanity’s credit that most people found it hard to kill in cold blood, but sometimes it was most inconvenient.
He didn’t think he could do it, not even when the man in question was Aidan Brady.
Caitlin stared at her fellow American. He had led her brother and Sergei to their deaths, and it made no difference to her that both had been willing disciples. He had murdered Yuri Komarov, whom she’d come to respect and almost cherish. Three times now, he had tried and narrowly failed to kill Jack.
What sort of monster was he? The five words that came to mind were hackneyed as hell but seemed bizarrely appropriate: an enemy of the revolution.
The gun that Chatterji had knocked off the table was lying a foot from her hand.
As she picked it up, Brady must have seen the look on her face. “No,” he said, trying to rise. There was more disbelief than fear in his voice, as if he couldn’t quite believe in a world without himself.
After only the briefest of hesitations, she aimed at that place where most men had hearts and firmly squeezed the trigger.
Brady’s head slumped to the floor, his mouth twisting into a final snarl.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs, then stopped. The shooting hadn’t gone unnoticed.
McColl tried to gently pull Caitlin away, but she shook him off. Back on her knees, she closed the dead Piatakov’s eyes and kissed him on the forehead.
McColl could hear voices below. Arguing, probably over what to do. “We have to go,” he told her. “He didn’t save you so you could end up in an Indian prison,” he added when she failed to respond. “He’d want you to go on with your work.”
She looked up, eyes full of tears. “I know.”
“Then come on. We’ll go out the way I came in.”
She got back to her feet, wiping the tears away on her sleeve.
He scanned the room for anything they might have left behind, then turned down the lamp. When he took a last look back from the door, the room seemed full of corpses, but for once in his violent life, he could see no cause for remorse. His only regret was that he hadn’t shot Brady himself because Caitlin seemed in a state of shock.
She let him lead her across a succession of adjoining roofs and down the rickety fire escape that a progressive landlord had provided for his tenants. As they reached the bottom, a rickshaw came out of the darkness and stopped right beside them, the boy driver beaming with pride. McColl helped her into the seat, thinking that Komarov’s ghost had to be working overtime.
McColl told the boy where to take them and asked for a back-street route. Soon they were speeding down narrow, dimly lit alleys where the rickshaw often scraped along one of the walls.
“You tried,” he told her, conscious of how empty the words sounded.
She just looked away.
He had never seen her like this before, but then as far as he knew, she’d never shot a man before. Nor seen a husband die.
The shock would wear off, but until it did he’d have to think for them both. Would Five and the IPI be after them? By rights they should be grateful—he and Caitlin had succeeded where Cunningham and his helpers had failed—but McColl wasn’t holding his breath. He and Caitlin knew too much.
They had to get out of Delhi, but where should they go? He knew Calcutta much better than Bombay… He suddenly thought of Darjeeling, largely empty of Brits at this time of year, and close enough to the Chinese border should they need a place to run to. One of those hotels high on the hill with their stunning views of the Himalayas. Next morning he could go to see Mirza, tell the detective the story as promised, and ask for the help of his old railway comrades in getting them out of the city.