promise of huge returns, and the risk-free investment Max and his team had peddled to those suckers. This trap had finally closed on him, just like all the others, but the sound was sharper this time … and what about their union head who’d wanted to invest even more in it? Eight million, period. Max could just picture the meeting afterward, the anger of the police officers, drained by the naïveté of their broker. All our savings to Max O’Brien!?
“Don’t you wonder how I caught you?” inquired Roberge, taking another sip of mineral water.
“Béatrice and Patterson.”
“Juliette wasn’t so easy. Still, a charming kid, just the same. I bet she doesn’t know the part you played in Philippe’s death.”
“SHUT UP, ROBERGE!”
Passengers whipped around in surprise. Roberge was content just to smile. Max wished he hadn’t got carried away.
“Delhi was child’s play,” Roberge went on, “the night watchman at the Liverpool Guest House is a police informant.”
Of course he is.
Max stared out the window. At the edge of the runway there were more slums, people living just feet from the planes and breathing their fumes all day long, never able to talk above the constant roar of 747 engines. Max reclined his seat and closed his eyes so as not to have to listen to Roberge, then willed himself to sleep. Philippe in El Salvador; Philippe the martyr. He finally did sleep. He had no idea how long. Then a voice stirred him.
“Excuse me, sir.” The flight attendant, no longer smiling, held out her hand as he opened his eyes. “This way.”
Max turned to look at Roberge. He was fast asleep with his bottle of Bisleri spilled all over the tray. The plane was still on the runway, so Max had only dozed a few minutes. He followed the stewardess to the front of the plane. Passengers vaguely glanced at them before returning to their newspapers. The door was still open on the opposite side from the embarking platform. Airport employees were almost through loading food trays on carts with multiple shelves. One of the employees turned toward Max: it was Jayesh. He guided Max down the sloping platform to the catering truck parked next to the plane. The flight attendant followed them. Once inside the truck, Jayesh gave Max some coveralls and an ID badge. The flight attendant also changed clothes as the truck drove to the storage depot. The inside of the truck smelled of industrial chapati and stale fried food, but for Max it was the sweetest smell in the world.
“Thanks, Jayesh,” he said.
“Don’t mention it.”
When the door opened at the depot, Max saw the pilot finally get the plane moving at the far end of the runway. Ragged kids were hanging around the tarmac, but they weren’t at all interested in the 747. They were completely preoccupied with just surviving for one more day. That was real poverty; kids who didn’t enjoy watching a plane take off. Max imagined Roberge’s face when he awoke ten thousand metres in the air, alone with nothing but an orgy of peanuts to comfort him.
Jayesh put a hand on Max’s shoulder: “Have you heard the news? The Canadiens have re-signed José Théodore!”
27
Hari Singh was the last maharajah of Kashmir. A Hindu at the head of a mostly Muslim state, unable to choose between India and Pakistan, he had taken refuge in Jammu a few months after Partition.
“To make himself useful to the Indians?” asked Max.
“More like to wait and let events determine his political position,” explained Jayesh.
Hari Singh hadn’t left Srinagar of his own volition. In the fall of 1947, the mountain horsemen of Pakistan had set out for the Kashmiri capital, intent on laying waste to it, and then, while they were at it, annexing the entire region to Pakistan.
“So the dream of Kashmiri independence went up in smoke. An independence no one wanted them to have, for strategic reasons above all.”
It was stuck between Islamic Pakistan (a consolation prize from the “international community” after the foundation of the state of Israel that same year) and India, victimized by the caste system and prone to anti-Muslim pogroms, not to mention Tibet to the east, soon to be occupied by Maoist China. There were sentimental factors as well. Kashmir was the entry to Hinduism from the twelfth century B.C. It was also the homeland of Nehru, who, with Gandhi, fathered the modern Indian state.
The approach of the men from the mountains forced the maharajah to request support from New Delhi, which in exchange insisted on the annexation of Kashmir, an offer Hari Singh could not refuse. Indecision is always the worst policy of all. Still, the Indian Army did come to the rescue of Srinagar and succeeded in pushing the invaders back to a few kilometres from the capital. Then stagnation set in, as though the leaders on both sides had studied nothing but the First World War and the Battle of Verdun. This was often the problem with Third World armies, Jayesh said. They were economically too weak to support their military advances.
Then the newly created UN got involved and established a ceasefire line, which is pretty much unchanged to this day. To the southeast lay Jammu and Kashmir under Indian control, and to the northwest, Azad Kashmir, under the Pakistanis, perpetual losers in the wars with India. Now, for the first time, both powers held equal strength due to the nuclear evil that both could deploy.
Buses overflowing with refugees filed past the Maruti, one of many convoys the men had passed on their way out of the capital, tongas (horse-drawn carts), as well as other animals whipped on by kids. Such was the ignorance of the poor who thought they could escape nuclear hell by moving a few kilometres farther down the road. Specialists estimated the outcome at 20 million dead. Already, cameramen were in the capital to preserve the mushroom cloud for posterity, as well as the evening news, the first great nuclear boo-boo of the twenty-first century.
Jayesh managed to weave his way between two trucks and get back to the main highway, which was now clear. They spent the night in Chandigarh, then Jalandhar and the Punjab near the crossing into Kashmir at Pathankot, which was swarming with soldiers. Next, they reached Samba, crawling along in the middle of an interminable military convoy. In the opposite direction came Kashmiris headed south in cars smothered in cheap suitcases, and more buses bulging with refugees. This was still an exodus, though different from the better-policed and more “Western” one from Indira Gandhi Airport, despite the numbers. Here, it was a total free-for-all. Only a few kilometres west lay the border of the Pakistani sector where all hell was raging.
Jayesh’s car was practically the only civilian vehicle headed back north. Fascinated emigrants shook their heads when they saw Max, just another crazy foreigner with a death wish. Ever since he arrived in Asia, he had the feeling people had been trying to open his eyes and teach him a lesson, but perhaps it was really a distraction or a diversion.
“Why?” he wondered aloud. “What are they hiding?”
Jayesh shrugged. “That attack on David, pretty effective, eh?”
“An organization?”
“Killers are careful people, tenacious too. Nothing gets in their way.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Well, we’re a long way from our goal, so their attempt to get us off their trail is working pretty good.”
“So we’re not a threat anymore.”
