The Mountain Shadow

‘Wait a minute, I slept through all that?’

‘Sure, soldier,’ she purred. ‘Diva said you looked cute.’

‘Diva said what?’

‘She wanted to talk to me, while Charu and Pari were getting ready to leave. It takes those girls a time to do anything. Diva came in here, and we sat on the bed.’

‘While I was asleep?’

‘Yeah. She was right, you’re cuter asleep than awake. It’s lucky I’ve got a weakness for awake.’

‘How long was Diva here?’

‘We smoked a joint,’ Karla said.

‘That long?’

‘And drank a glass of wine.’

‘While I was sleeping?’

‘Yeah, she came in to tell me that Kavita had a new secret admirer, and she’d been acting a bit nuts.’

‘Kavita is a bit nuts,’ I said. ‘She had a thing with Lisa, and it won’t let her go. She’s clever and capable, but she’s been acting nuts with me, too. I think that’s why Madame Zhou likes her – they’re as crazy as each other.’

‘Kavita did this whole thing with us, Lin,’ Karla said. ‘She was with us every step of the way.’

‘And you put her next in line to run a major daily newspaper.’

‘I won’t let you talk her down,’ she said. ‘I won’t let anyone talk her or any of my friends down. Just like I wouldn’t let anyone talk you down.’

‘Okay. Fair call. But it’s my job to tell you when I sense a threat.’

‘Your job?’ She laughed.

‘Yeah, and it’s your job to warn me,’ I smiled. ‘So, Diva left with the girls?’

‘The bodyguards escorted them away. They had some explaining to do, about staying out all night.’

‘And I slept through all of this?’

‘Sure did. We helped Jaswant put the barricade back, I showered, got back into bed, and you got very glad to see me. The girls said goodbye, by the way.’

I was feeling strange. I was always the first up, no matter how tired I was, and if someone in a room next door dropped a pen on the floor, I started awake from deep sleep. But somehow, I’d slept through a conversation on my own bed.

It was an unusual feeling, disorienting, all slow pulse rates and blurred edges, and negotiating it was like walking along the deck of a rolling ship. It took me a while to realise what it was: I was feeling peaceful.

Peace, Idriss once said, is perfect forgiveness, and is the opposite of fear.

‘Are you with me, Shantaram?’ Karla smiled, shaking me by the chin.

‘I’m so with you, Karla.’

‘Okay,’ she laughed. ‘Where were we?’

‘You were telling me how you and Kavita put this together,’ I said, holding her close.

‘Kavita, Diva and me. Diva’s the richest girl in Bombay right now, and when she threw a fetish party, the rich rowed up in limousines.’

‘But Diva wasn’t even there.’

‘We set it up for her to be turned away at a roadblock, and pushed back into the city, with plausible deniability about anything that happened at the party.’

‘To cover her assets.’

‘To cover her assets,’ Karla said, tapping me on the chest in agreement.

It was the first time she ever did it: the first time that little gesture born in who she was, when she was completely relaxed in love, made its way to my skin.

‘So, you set up fetish games, and cameras?’

‘We had seven targets, counting the editor, but only five of them turned up.’

‘Targets?’

‘Impediments to progress, that we wanted to make vessels of change.’

‘And now the five are –’

‘Vessels of change, and we’ll get slum resettlement, and more attention to women’s issues. Win–win, women style.’

I sat up on the bed. She offered me a towel, scented with ginger, and we wiped our faces and hands.

‘If these guys are big shots, Karla, they’re dangerous, by definition. That film’s a bomb, and it’ll keep ticking as long as it exists.’

‘We’ve got intermediaries,’ she said, leaning into my arm again.

‘They’ll need to be bulletproof.’

‘They are,’ she said. ‘We’ve contracted the Cycle Killers to talk for us.’

‘Now, that makes things much saner. The Cycle Killers?’

‘I don’t do anything face to face with anyone but them. They do all the negotiating with the other side.’

‘How did that happen?’

‘You really wanna know?’

‘Of course I wanna know.’

‘Well,’ she said, sitting up and facing me, her legs lotus. ‘Randall and I noticed the Cycle Killers following you, twice, and I sent Randall to find out what they wanted.’

‘He fronted the Cycle Killers alone?’

‘No doubt.’

‘He’s a keeper,’ I smiled. ‘I’m glad he’s on board with you.’

‘With us,’ she corrected.

‘What do you make of it, Randall and Diva? I know Naveen is crazy about her, and I thought she liked him.’

‘It’s a lockdown, Shantaram. What happens in a lockdown, stays in a lockdown. Best we keep out of it.’

‘You’re right, I guess. Go back to the Cycle Killers.’

‘So, Randall found out that Abdullah had hired them to watch over you for a while, and he made a couple of friends.’

‘And when you found out they were for hire, you hired them.’

‘I did, and they were happy to do it.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Yeah, they’re working on their image. They’d like to move into more public-minded areas than killing people for money.’

‘Like threatening people for money.’