The Mountain Shadow

‘They don’t trust you,’ he said, lighting two cigarettes, and passing me one. ‘It’s nothing personal. They don’t know who you are, or why you’re in the group. When you’re in a situation that only ever gets worse, like theirs, everyone’s a threat, even a friend.’

‘You stay on this ship for every tour?’

‘I do. We unload the legit cargo, and I go back with the ship to Madras.’

‘I wouldn’t want to do this every month. Those patrol boats we saw weren’t far away, and they’ve got big guns.’

He laughed quietly.

‘You know anything about the Tamil Muslims in Sri Lanka?’

‘Not much.’

‘Pogroms,’ he said. ‘Look it up.’

He laughed, but it was just sadness, finding a different way to his face. He straightened up.

‘The gold and passports you’re bringing will help,’ he said. ‘We have to buy people out of prison, and then we have to get them out of Sri Lanka to tell the world about our situation. For the others, it’s a new civil war. For us, this is a war we never start, but always have to fight. For us, this isn’t a matter of nationality, it’s a matter of faith.’

Faith, again. There wasn’t any pure or noble cause in what I was doing. There was no cause but my own. I was ashamed to think it, standing next to a man who risked his life for what he believed.

The hundred-gram gold ingots I was smuggling had been melted down from jewellery that the Sanjay Company had stolen or extorted. There was blood on it already, and I was carrying it: nothing noble, and nothing pure.

But there was still a stained-glass shard of faith somewhere inside. Mehmu’s sacred mission was a job, for me, it was true, but the same dark vessel carried both of us to the same dark war. And it was a war of one, for me: one man’s freedom from a gang that was once a band of brothers.

Faith is belief without fear, and freedom is one of faith’s perfections. Standing there on that smothered deck, listening to prayers in Arabic, Hindi, English, Sinhalese and Tamil, the stars so bright those tiny suns burned my eyes, I put my faith in freedom, and asked Mehmu for my gun.

He lifted his sweater to show me the handgun, stuffed into the belt of his trousers. It was a Browning HP, standard issue to Indian Army officers. The penalties for trading in them were severe, which was why the officers who sold them to us charged a premium.

I liked Mehmu, and wished that he could come with me to Sri Lanka. He was a fit, knowledgeable thirty-year-old, fluent in six languages, and had a confident eye. I didn’t like Mehmu’s gun.

‘What’s with the cannon?’

‘It’s a bit . . . conspicuous, I’ll give you that,’ he replied, looking around as he handed me the weapon and a magazine.

‘Conspicuous? This thing is a zebra in a line-up.’

I checked the gun, and flipped the safety on.

‘If you’re gonna get caught with a gun in this war,’ he said, ‘it’s gotta be this one. Any other gun, they’ll go to work on you for a long time, before they drop you from a helicopter into the sea, right about here, actually.’

‘But this gun?’

‘This gun gives you a chance. The Indian Army has the island nailed down, but there’s so many freelancers everywhere now. Americans, Israelis, South Africans, and all of them are working with the Research and Analysis Wing. If the Indian Army catches you with this gun, you can try to pass yourself off as a RAW agent. It’s a long shot, but you wouldn’t be the first that got away with it. It’s the Wild East out there.’

‘So, I carry a big gun, and when they see it, because it’s so big, I talk them into believing I’m working for them, and then actually start working for them, if they let me live?’

‘It happens,’ he shrugged. ‘A lot, actually.’

‘Gimme a little gun, Mehmu. I don’t wanna kill wildebeest. I just wanna make enough noise to give me time to run away. If they catch me, I’ll ditch the gun and deny it. I’d rather do that than start working for them.’

‘But a little gun,’ he mused. ‘I always say, if you have to shoot someone in the eye to kill him, your gun’s too small.’

I looked at him for a while.

‘A small gun?’ He sniffed. ‘It’s right in the eye, man, or it’s like gravel rash, with a little gun.’

‘You don’t say.’

‘I do say. It happens. A lot, actually.’

‘You got a little gun, or not?’

‘I do,’ he mused. ‘If you’d be prepared to exchange?’

‘Show me.’

He took a small box of cartridges and a .22-calibre automatic from his jacket pockets. It was the kind of weapon designed to fit snugly next to lipstick, perfume and a credit card in a purse: a girl’s gun.

‘I’ll take it.’

We swapped guns. I checked the weapon and put it in my jacket pocket.

‘I’d wrap that lot in plastic,’ he said, tucking the Browning into his trousers again. ‘And lock it up with surgical tape.’

‘In case I end up in the water?’

‘It happens.’

‘Uh-huh?’

‘A lot, actually. What is this, your first smuggling run or what?’