Borrowed Time Read online

  ‘Enough to make great trouble, when they choose.’

  ‘That’s fascinating. Absolutely fascinating.’ Sabrina hoped she looked like the intrigued tourist she was trying to be. ‘Do tell me more.’

  14

  ‘If you don’t mind, Mr Graham, I’d like to get on with it,’ Amrit Datta said. ‘More rehearsal won’t do anything but make me less believable.’

  ‘It’s your call,’ Mike said. ‘But remember, you’ll be on your own. You’ll have to be good, there’s nobody to save you if you’re not.’

  They were in the Drugwatch International office at Srinagar, a couple of shabby rooms fronting as a motorcycle courier agency; when prospective customers called, which they rarely did, there were never any couriers available. Mike stood by the window, looking out at the smoky traffic churning dust into the air. Amrit Datta sat on the edge of the plywood desk with his arms folded.

  ‘I know you’re concerned I’m rushing things,’ he said, ‘but I don’t think I am. In all the time I’ve been with this outfit, I’ve never once behaved like myself on the street. It’s always an act, I’m permanently behind a fake identity and a counter-feit personality. This is nothing new.’

  ‘The penalties in the mule racket are higher, that’s the difference,’ Mike said. ‘And there are precious few escape routes if things go wrong.’

  ‘I won’t forget that.’

  Mike opened the package he had brought. ‘You’re on secondment to UNACO, so you get UNACO issue.’ He took a gun from the big brown envelope and handed it to Amrit, together with a box of ammunition. ‘SIG Sauer P230, your dearest pal if you get into a corner. Trust it more than the silly little Stenda you carry around.’

  He pulled a greasy, worn brown leather wallet from the envelope and opened it flat on the table.

  ‘This is your history. They will look at it, whether you know it or not. And if your act’s a good one, this will corroborate it. The whole thing was put together by people who specialize in manufacturing identities.’

  Inside the wallet was a picture of Amrit taken two days ago. Now it looked as if it had been behind the glassine window for a year at least. He was shown as part of a smiling group — a wife and three children, none of whom he had ever met. In a pocket of the wallet was a crumpled birth certificate identifying the owner as Opu Hikmet. Other documents — letters, a folded picture postcard, more snapshots — bulged the sides of the wallet, which had been sprayed with the authentic odour of artisan sweat.

  ‘Now this,’ Mike said, taking a chunky amulet from the bag, ‘is a very important piece of gear.’ He handed it to Amrit. ‘What do you make of it?’

  Amrit hefted it, turned it over in his hands, shook it and finally took it to the window to examine it in full light.

  ‘It’s an oval disc, wooden, about four centimetres by two-point-five centimetres at its widest point, and maybe fifteen millimetres thick. It has a metal loop at one end with a thin leather cord through it, which I suppose is for hanging the disc around the neck. The disc is smooth on one face, on the other it is carved with a representation of the face of Narsingh, the man-lion incarnation of Vishnu.’ Amrit looked at Mike. ‘Did I miss anything?’

  ‘I’m pleased to say you did.’

  Mike took the amulet and pressed down hard on the metal loop at the top. The centre of the front panel dropped inwards and glided aside. In the gap a small lens could be seen gleaming.

  ‘Oh, boy’ Amrit said, shaking his head. ‘It’s a camera.’

  Mike pressed a high spot on the grooved edge of the disc and the back panel opened. It had a spring-loaded carrier for a flat circular film cartridge.

  ‘It’s sixteen mil,’ Mike said, ‘it takes twenty shots per cartridge, and it works in low light. It’s auto-focus, so all you have to worry about is getting it pointed the right way so it catches what you happen to be looking at.’

  ‘How does it fire?’

  ‘Press on the point of Narsingh’s chin. Like this.’

  Amrit watched. ‘I didn’t hear anything.’

  ‘Right. It’s good, isn’t it?’

  The final item out of the bag was a slim gold finger ring with a single cheap-looking stone set into it.

  ‘It should fit the little finger,’ Mike said.

  Amrit tried it on. It fitted perfectly. ‘Not the kind of thing I would have chosen,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, it’s pretty tacky. But it’ll find you if we ever lose visual contact.’

  ‘A tracer?’

  ‘The stone is the beacon,’ Mike said. ‘Wear it in health.’

  Mike crumpled the empty bag and put it in the trash basket. ‘So tell me,’ he said, ‘what makes you so anxious to get under way?’

  ‘They’re recruiting again,’ Amrit said. ‘It happens in waves. Moving around the city every day, you’re aware of a pattern of faces, people you barely look at but you know they’re there, working in the markets or running errands or just hanging around street corners. Then all of a sudden two or three of them are gone, and you know they’ve been pulled into the mule game.’

  ‘So you want to get on to the streets while there’s a chance of being spotted.’

  ‘That’s it, Mr Graham.’

  ‘Call me Mike. Listen, I’ll tell Lenny Trent what you just told me, and we’ll line up one last rehearsal session for later today.’

  ‘If you think it’s necessary.’

  ‘I know you’re impatient, but please give the rehearsal all you’ve got.’

  ‘Of course I will.’ Amrit paused. ‘Mike.’

  Old Aziz had given Sabrina tea in gratitude for the lift home, and as they sat on his ramshackle veranda and talked, he had turned out to be a gold mine. After several minutes of polite inconsequential chat, he stood up and pointed to all the places on the lower slopes of the mountains where he regularly saw bandit convoys.

  ‘Who knows what they carry,’ he said. ‘I know it is not always contraband. Often they are moving their dwellings, their entire communities, every stick, from one place to another. That way they avoid conflict with the authorities, and with each other. Much of the time, though, they carry illegal merchandise.’

  Then Aziz had fetched an ancient pair of British Army binoculars, which had been given to him by a soldier in 1944. He handed them to Sabrina and showed her how to point them, until she saw an area of mountainside Aziz called the bronze pass.

  ‘A fanciful title,’ he said, ‘but you will see, in the late sunlight, how the path glows a rich bronze. It is a combination of colours in the rock stratum and the sandy earth at that level.’

  Sabrina saw it, like a long, undulating red-brown strand along the side of the mountain.

  ‘That is where the truly bad men travel,’ Aziz said. ‘Once every week, at dusk, they pass within the reach of my binoculars. They carry heavy loads, and they eliminate whatever is in their path. Twice they have killed men whose curiosity has taken them up there to take a closer look. Twice, also, they have come down to this village and demanded water for their horses and food for themselves. They did not treat people cruelly, as some might, but they were strangers to sympathy and compassion, nevertheless.’

  ‘How often do they appear?’ Sabrina said.

  ‘Twice a week. They will pass that way tonight.’

  Sabrina tried to blank any sign of excitement. She swallowed what was left in her cup, then got up to go. She thanked Aziz for the tea and for the information. He shook her hand as she left and wished her well on her journey through Kashmir.

  Twenty minutes later she was parked in a shadowed cleft in the foothills, elbows braced on the bonnet of the car as she pointed the EVC12A up at the mountainside. Dead in the centre of the viewfinder she had a convoy of twelve heavily-laden horses, moving obliquely towards her, the faces of the riders visible in the late golden sunlight.

  She took twelve pictures before the convoy moved along out of sight. Then she got back in the car, pulled up the rubber mat at the driver’s side and snapped open a m
etal flap in the floor. She took out a modified cellular phone, set to call one number only. She went outside again, the phone in one hand, the camera in the other. She pulled up the phone’s antenna with her teeth, thumbed the green button and put the phone to her ear.

  ‘Secure Communications,’ a woman’s voice said.

  ‘I have a P-I-G transmission,’ Sabrina said. The initials stood for Peripheral Information Gathering.

  ‘What hardware are you using?’

  ‘The EVC12A. I have twelve shots total.’

  ‘Raise the antenna on the camera and set it to send.’

  Sabrina put the camera on the car bonnet, pulled up the titanium antenna, and pushed the SEND button.

  ‘We are homing on the equipment,’ the woman said. ‘Please confirm when the contact signal shows.’

  Sabrina watched the camera, holding her breath. A tiny green lamp winked.

  ‘Contact,’ she said.

  There was a long pause, then the woman said, ‘Twelve pictures received. Closing communication.’

  The phone went dead. Sabrina dropped it in her pocket. She pushed down the camera’s antenna and put the whole unit into her shoulder bag. As she got back in the car the telephone in her pocket rang.

  She shut the door, fished out the phone. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Sabrina!’ Philpott said. ‘What a good girl you are! I was in Secure Comms when your pictures came through. Magnificent quality, my dear. Who are those people, exactly?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir, beyond the fact they’re bandits with a pretty bad reputation among people who live near the foothills.’

  ‘Can you get the location co-ordinates, at all?’

  ‘Well I’m still there. Will I use the phone?’

  ‘By all means.’

  Sabrina wound down the window, held the phone out through the gap and pressed her thumb firmly on a blue button on the side. Ten seconds later the phone beeped and she pulled it in again.

  ‘Got it,’ Philpott said. ‘I gather from this that you’re quite close to Srinagar.’

  ‘I’ll be there tomorrow, with luck.’

  ‘And I’m sure that Mike and the others will be glad to see you. In the meantime I’ll send them printouts of the pictures, along with the co-ordinates. Good work, Sabrina.’

  ‘Thank you sir.’

  ‘Keep in touch.’

  As Philpott came out of the Secure Communications Suite he saw Whitlock, who immediately waved a folder at him.

  ‘And what would that be?’

  ‘My notes on the life and later career of Arno Skuttnik. I just picked up another snippet.’

  They went into Philpott’s office. Whitlock pointed at the coffee machine. ‘May I?’

  ‘Pour me one, too.’

  Philpott sat down to wait. Whitlock poured two black coffees and brought them to the desk.

  ‘This whole thing,’ he said, opening the folder, ‘makes me wonder how much buried history gets overlooked in any investigation.’

  ‘It depends who’s digging,’ Philpott said.

  ‘And how desperate they are to find something, anything. We set out with zilch on Skuttnik. He was a nobody immigrant with a history hardly worth the name. Now his story’s fattening into the material of a pretty good mini series.’

  ‘What’s the latest?’

  ‘He was married.’

  ‘After he came to the United States?’

  ‘Six years after.’

  ‘How did you pick that up?’

  ‘When I fed his social security number through Public Records it came up blank. No marriage, no criminal record, no unpaid taxes. So then I fed his immigration number through the same channels. Still no criminal record, no civil mis-demeanours. But the marriage showed up. It turns out the people who registered the wedding were so keen to get Skuttnik’s immigration status right, they completely forgot the social security notation.’

  ‘So now you’re following up on the marriage?’

  ‘I’ve got tracers going right now.’

  ‘I don’t want this turning into a saga, C.W. Especially if it isn’t going to produce anything we can use as a defence.’

  ‘Or as a counter-attack,’ Whitlock said.

  Philpott looked at him. ‘Do you know something you’re not telling?’

  ‘When I know everything, I’ll give it to you whole, sir.’

  ‘So you still feel this is worth pursuing?’

  ‘More so than ever.’

  Philpott tasted his coffee. He pointed to a typewritten document on the desk in front of him. ‘While you’re here, I’d like your opinion on something. This is a summary of investigations into the widespread theft of charity aid around the world. It was supplied by my old friend Harry Lewis at the World Health Organization.’

  Philpott opened the document to the third page. He held it up for Whitlock to see. A short paragraph had been circled in red and alongside was written, ‘What a coincidence.’

  ‘The paragraph covers a piece of intelligence supplied over a year ago, but so far uncorroborated,’ Philpott said. ‘It’s about an alleged black market operation centred on a farm eighty kilometres east of Srinagar.’

  ‘Maybe a coincidence, but it’s hardly a surprise. The hill bandits have transportation and supply sewn up. Farms make perfect way-stations.’

  ‘I was thinking of looking into this one myself.’

  Whitlock saw that Philpott was waiting for his reaction. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because some all-round balance-correction in that area of the world wouldn’t go amiss, and this particular piece of suspected villainy suits my sneaky style.’

  ‘Softly, softly.’

  ‘If you want to call it that. Anything I might do would be an adjunct to the work the others are engaged upon, I suppose. But the overall effect would be a comprehensive defusing of villainy in the region, wouldn’t you say?’

  Whitlock smiled. ‘Do you want me to say I think it’s a good idea for you to go to Kashmir?’

  ‘Only if you mean it.’

  ‘Well…’ Whitlock scratched the tip of his nose. ‘While you’re not here, the people at Policy Control can’t pull any fast ones, like getting a review date called before I’ve built a case.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘Are you kidding me, sir?’

  ‘Well…’ Philpott shrugged. ‘It crossed my mind.’

  ‘All things considered,’ Whitlock said, ‘I guess it’d be a really good thing if you high-tailed it to Kashmir, fast as you can.’

  ‘Thanks, C.W.’ Philpott smiled. ‘I always value your judgement in these matters.’

  15

  ‘I have not seen you here before,’ the fat man said. He peered at Amrit Datta’s face as he spoke, ready to catch a lie before it could take off. ‘You are not from this area, are you?’

  ‘For two years I have worked in there.’ Amrit pointed to a warehouse behind the market where he was sweeping up. ‘Two years of moving sacks and boxes, emptying drums, filling bottles. For two years I didn’t see daylight except in the morning when I came to work.’

  ‘And why did you leave the warehouse?’

  ‘Why are you asking me these things?’

  The man frowned. ‘Don’t you want to do yourself some good?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then answer me, and something good may come of it.’

  Amrit wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. It was hot and he was sweating freely. He wore a drab grey T-shirt and cheap baggy cotton trousers. His feet were bare and he had dark lines of carefully-applied dirt under his fingernails.

  ‘I kept asking the foreman to let me work in the open, or at least do work that brought me outside for a little time each day. Eventually he paid attention to what I asked. He told me that if I wanted to spend my days out in the open air, I was now free to do that.’

  ‘He sacked you?’

  ‘Yes, he did. And when I begged him to let me have my job back, he told me I should have conside
red just how valuable the job was before I threw it away so carelessly.’

  ‘So now you sweep up in the market.’

  ‘It is hard work and it pays less than one-third of the wage I made in the warehouse.’

  The fat man patted his belly thoughtfully. ‘I like to help people like yourself whenever I can,’ he said.

  ‘I would be grateful for any work,’ Amrit said. ‘Real work,’ he added, ‘not anything like this.’

  ‘What family do you have?’

  ‘A wife and three children. The children are still small.’

  ‘So you must provide for them, too.’ The fat man sighed, as if he was full of sympathy. ‘What would you say to a little job, nothing too difficult, which would earn you enough money to take it easy for a while, or to travel south where the work is more plentiful and the wages are higher?’

  Amrit looked suspicious. ‘What kind of work would that be?’

  ‘Courier work. Delivery work. You would deliver one consignment of merchandise, and for that one delivery you would be paid in advance —’

  ‘In advance?’ Amrit looked astonished. ‘You are saying you would give me my wages before I even did the job?’

  ‘That is correct.’

  Amrit scowled suddenly. ‘It is a joke, isn’t it? You are having fun with me.’

  ‘It is no joke, uh, what is your name?’

  ‘I am called Opu Hikmet.’

  ‘Well, it’s the truth I tell you, Opu. I offer you the work because you look like a strong and decent young man who deserves a helping hand at this stage in his life.’

  ‘What do I have to do?’

  ‘Simply tell me you accept my offer.’

  ‘Oh I do, I do.’

  ‘Then I will come and see you in a few days’ time.’

  ‘I will be here, sir.’

  The fat man walked away and was soon lost in the crowd. Amrit patted the amulet hanging on his chest. He had taken three shots. He hoped at least one of them would come out.

  Ram Jarwal was alone in the cabin. Mike Graham and Lenny Trent were at police HQ in Srinagar, going through mug shots to try to identify the dead bandit from the drug convoy.