Borrowed Time Read online

  ‘In other circumstances I would have done an exchange of clothes with you,’ Amrit said, getting on the bike and positioning the Ray-Bans on the bridge of his nose. ‘But I’ll need my shabby wardrobe later. Besides …’ He stared at the officer in his striped jockey shorts. ‘You could use a lesson in humility.’

  Amrit kick-started the machine and drove away.

  ‘I suppose you could say the Security Council is redoubling its efforts,’ Philpott told Dr Arberry. ‘We never do anything precipitate. Flying off the handle can be spectacular, but it’s seldom ever right. So forgive us if we appear to move slowly, but we like to have all the facts marshalled and verified before we embark on serious action.’

  They were in the drawing room at Arberry’s mansion with glasses of sherry in their hands, gazing out at the sunset across the gardens. Philpott had arrived unannounced and introduced himself as yet another Security Council fact-finder. A senior one. He was in the region, he said, to evaluate the findings of Mr Graham and Mr Trent, and thought he would call on the doctor, having heard so much about him.

  ‘I stand here many an evening,’ Arberry said, ‘and I look out over a scene that doesn’t, I’m sure, fall very short of perfection. And along with the joy that is generated by such beauty, I get the deepest pain.’ He looked at Philpott. ‘All this is being eroded and pulled apart by nothing more than people’s envy.’

  ‘Envy?’

  ‘Envy and the need that some of them feel to dominate their environment.’

  ‘Envy of what, though?’

  ‘Of me. I’m convinced that’s the root of most of the trouble in this area. Or most of the trouble that’s been visited on me and those who work for me. There are people who envy and lust after what I possess. Their perspective doesn’t let them see that I’m driven by my enthusiasms, they don’t see that what I have, I have made. I didn’t walk in here and take anything for nothing. I built it all. For everything this divine place gives me, I strive to give back ten times, twenty times.’

  ‘Yet people see you as a menace — would you say that’s accurate? You are perceived as a threat to something?’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ Arberry said. ‘I’m an undesirable, because what I do, what I achieve, stands in the way of some people’s ambitions.’

  ‘You mean you’re the equivalent of civilization, yes? And what they need, the others, is the opposite, they need chaos in order to control events and to thrive.’

  ‘That is exactly right, Mr Philpott.’

  Philpott had compared notes with Mike and had simply handed Arberry back his own point of view, dressed as a fact-finder’s assessment.

  ‘So I take your point about envy,’ Philpott said. ‘But it’s incurable, wouldn’t you say? Envy is ingrained in humanity. There’s a French proverb that says, “People only throw stones at the tree loaded with fruit.”’

  Philpott glanced at the clock and decided he should move the talk in the planned direction. He was there on a genuine fact-finding mission: he believed Dr Arberry had probably received personal threats. Two of his people had been killed in an effort to discourage him, so it wasn’t hard to imagine that the man himself had been the focus of some aggression. Philpott believed that careful questioning could turn up a useful line of enquiry.

  ‘Can I ask you, Doctor, if you’ve been attacked yourself, or have been threatened with violence?’

  Arberry frowned. Philpott waited. After a few seconds it seemed the doctor wasn’t planning to say anything.

  ‘Did I speak out of turn?’ Philpott said.

  ‘No.’ Arberry hesitated. ‘I don’t like having to be secretive, but I was warned that if I said anything to anyone …’

  ‘Surely they can’t know what you say in the privacy of your home?’

  ‘They have breached these secure grounds, Mr Philpott. In spite of elaborate security they have been able to walk in and kill my people. Who knows what they are capable of doing or finding out?’ Arberry shrugged. ‘I’m probably infected with a touch of the superstition of the region. Or I’m just too conscious that people’s lives can hang on what I do or don’t do.’

  ‘So you have been attacked?’

  ‘I have been threatened.’ Arberry emptied his glass and looked at Philpott’s. ‘Another?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Then forgive me if I have one.’

  Arberry filled his glass at the drinks cabinet and came back to stand by the window. It was almost completely dark now, with only a dim trace of light along the horizon.

  ‘I was told that if I extend my territorial rapacity — those were the words used on the telephone, territorial rapacity — I would lose the eyes with which I take such pleasure in my works. If I remained after that, I would lose, in addition, the legs with which I walk upon my stolen territory.’

  ‘And have you any idea at all who made these threats?’

  ‘A hill bandit,’ Arberry said. ‘Which one I’ve no idea, but they’re the only ones who oppose what I do here. It doesn’t really matter which one made the calls, anyway. They have an alliance. Whatever one of them does, they all do. What one hates, they all hate.’

  ‘Do you feel different for having told me this?’

  ‘I’m not sure. It’s always good to unburden oneself, but I can’t say I’m any less anxious than before.’

  Philpott was studying the array of recording and communications equipment along one side of the room. ‘I suppose you record all your telephone calls?’ he said.

  ‘Ordinarily I do. But on both occasions I received telephone threats, the wavelength used to transmit the calls was obscured by noise. When I played back the recordings I got only static.’

  ‘Perhaps there’s something there, though,’ Philpott said. ‘We have resources nowadays that can pick out slender threads of voice signal from whole skeins of noise.’

  ‘Oh, I destroyed the tapes in frustration.’ Arberry looked at Philpott rather sheepishly. ‘Which I suppose I shouldn’t have done.’

  ‘Well …’ Philpott shrugged. ‘No use wasting energy on regrets.’

  ‘So what is the position now, Mr Philpott? Does the UN hope to mount an offensive against the crime wave in our valley? I had the impression from Mr Graham and Mr Trent that a fightback of serious proportions was being planned.’

  ‘That is still the intention.’

  ‘Good. The sooner the better.’ Arberry made a wan smile. ‘Apart from any other consideration, I want to go on enjoying the sight of the sunset, and being able to walk in my gardens when I feel like it.’

  Mike and Sabrina returned to the cabin an hour after Philpott had gone to see Arberry. Ram greeted them like long-lost family. He told them to sit down and do nothing. Drinks first, he insisted, then he would prepare them a meal.

  ‘It was bad, what happened to Lenny,’ Ram said as he dropped the lemon into Sabrina’s gin and tonic. He brought the glasses to the couch where they were flopped out side by side. ‘Dare I ask if you got the ones who did it? When we spoke on the phone, the details were rather sketchy.’

  Sabrina looked at Mike. ‘I think you understand what happened better than I do.’

  ‘It was one of Seaton’s men that shot Lenny,’ Mike said. ‘But no, we didn’t retaliate. And for a while it looked like we would never be in a position to do that.’

  Mike recounted his meeting with Seaton, and the turnaround in events when Mike accused him of being involved in the new trade.

  ‘He let us go,’ Mike said, ‘because he had to underline that he’s not like the new people. Not anywhere near as savage or murderous as they are. He overstated the difference, of course. He’s just another kind of savage, the traditional kind. But he didn’t want me or Sabrina thinking of him in the same terms as the new guys.’

  ‘And that was all?’ Ram said. ‘He let you go because he didn’t want you to think too badly of him?’

  ‘There was something else,’ Mike said. ‘Or I should say, I sensed something else. But I don’t know what
it was.’

  ‘That whole episode was doomed,’ Sabrina told Ram. ‘Apart from Lenny’s death, I mean. The ambush flopped, I got septicaemia and even had hallucinations, and after one bad deal and another we came out with what we stood up in. I even managed to lose a police Range-Rover.’

  ‘I know about that.’ Ram did an eye-roll. ‘Mr Philpott will have something to say, I believe. On top of the cost of the ambush operation, he’s had to sanction a payment for replacement of the vehicle.’

  ‘We have to put it all behind us,’ Mike said. ‘The answer or answers to our problems are here, right here in the Vale of Kashmir. We have to knuckle down, decipher the answers and take appropriate action.’

  ‘You make it sound like a straight matter of spit and elbow grease,’ Sabrina said. ‘We don’t even know where to start.’

  ‘We will, don’t worry.’ Mike tasted his Jim Beam and smacked his lips. ‘Ram, tell us, what’s the boss doing here?’

  ‘I think he made an error of judgement, too. But he’s working hard to make up for it.’

  ‘Has there been word from Amrit?’

  ‘Nothing. But you wouldn’t expect anything, would you? He must be due at the Chinese border any time now.’

  ‘If he’s made it.’

  The fax machine in the corner rang twice, then began to gurgle. A second later the red URGENT light came on and paper rolled from the front of the machine.

  Mike got up and looked at the cover sheet. He read it aloud as it fed out on to the tray.

  ‘“Urgent facsimile message from H. Lewis, World Health Organization, for the attention of M. Philpott.”’

  ‘What’s it say?’ Sabrina said.

  ‘You want me to read the boss’s confidential fax?’

  Sabrina tilted her head. ‘Is there any way I could stop you?’

  Mike was already reading, his eye racing across the type as fast as it came out of the machine. ‘Oh, my,’ he said, and looked up at Sabrina and Ram.

  ‘What?’ Sabrina demanded. ‘What does it say?’

  Mike stared at the fax again. ‘My,’ he said. ‘My oh my …’

  26

  Amrit Datta stood by a cracked stucco pillar behind a grain store that occupied half the length of the street. It was a pillar marked with a dab of brown paint near its foot. This was where he had been told to stand. Or he believed it was. The store was in the dirtiest part of the border town of Boyding. It was an area where only beggars, burned-out opium zombies and superannuated street prostitutes gathered at this hour of night.

  Amrit had taken a while to convince himself this was the spot. The daub of paint was so casual, so accidental-looking, and it was faded, too; it was difficult to believe anyone would designate a mark like that as an identifying characteristic.

  But there were other markers, also part of the specified rendezvous point. Opposite the rear of the grain store was a coal brazier that the derelicts gathered round to warm their hands; it was exactly where he had been told it would be. And there was the boarded-up coffee stall, the Chinese laundry — also boarded up — the halfhearted painting of Siva on a wall by a little candle shop. This was the place, all right. Amrit just couldn’t believe he was expected to transfer ownership of 200,000 dollars’-worth of highly refined drugs in such a dump.

  After a time he was aware a man was watching him. He was dressed as shabbily as Amrit, which meant nothing, since Amrit was certainly not what he appeared to be. He waited, and after a few minutes the man came across.

  ‘You want to buy kif?’ he whispered.

  Amrit stared at him. That was not the magic phrase. He thought he should give the man another chance; maybe he was nervous, or just forgetful.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Kif,’ the man said, producing a waxy brown wad. ‘Very cheap, very best stuff. All the way from Egypt.’

  ‘Go away,’ Amrit said.

  The man looked offended. ‘You can’t afford it, right?’

  ‘I said go away. Do it now. Go.’

  The man waggled his head. ‘Go away. Do it now,’ he mimicked. ‘What are you, beggar boy, some kind of big-shot in disguise?’

  Amrit saw that this could get awkward. It could even ruin the set-up. He looked around. No one was paying any attention to them. It had started to rain and people were huddling in doorways and bunching around the coal brazier.

  ‘Listen …’ Amrit drew his gun from the folds of his shirt. ‘I’m not a big-shot in disguise. I’m a man who’s come out to kill someone, I don’t care who. Do you want to be the one? I don’t mind, I promise.’

  He cocked the gun. The man stared at it, his mouth working soundlessly.

  ‘Disappear, or stay here and check out the afterlife.’

  The man turned and ran.

  Amrit used his foot to edge his sack into the cover of the overhang and stepped back a pace to keep the worst of the rain off himself. He looked at the Pepsi-Cola clock on the side of the old coffee stall. It was still working, he could see the sweep hand moving. It said ten to midnight. He was supposed to wait between 11:30 and midnight. What happened if nobody showed? What did he do then?

  ‘Wares from the vale of beauty?’ a sing-song voice said.

  Amrit spun, saw nobody for a moment, then realized the man was on the other side of the pillar. He was Chinese in appearance, half turned away from Amrit. He looked, in fact, as if he didn’t even know Amrit was there. But he had used the right phrase.

  ‘Precisely the wares you desire,’ Amrit said, supplying the other half of the transaction code.

  The man turned, came round the pillar and held out an open linen bag. Amrit pulled the first consignment from his sack and dropped it in the bag.

  Nothing is happening, he thought, glancing quickly around. There was nothing. Nobody. Another second and this man would be gone. So would the batch of drugs.

  The man tucked the bag under his flowing coat and moved away. Amrit felt his heart sink. He watched the man reach the end of the street and turn the corner. He was gone. Amrit stared at the empty street, shiny with rain.

  Things had gone badly wrong. He realized that in this situation, he had no idea what he should do. It wasn’t his show, after all. He was the bait, not the angler …

  His heart thumped as a police officer appeared at the corner for one fleeting moment, holding up his thumb. He winked at Amrit and vanished again. Amrit swallowed back a grin.

  It’s working! God, it’s working!

  He realized that in his anxiety and distraction he had wandered out into the full downpour, and now he was soaked. He didn’t care. His heart thrummed in him now. It was working! He was a crucial part of a big-time operation and it was ticking over like clockwork.

  Suddenly, in that instant, standing there with rain pouring down over him, he knew that he never wanted to do any other job. The work had its rotten times, its rotten hours and days, but when the brilliant, winning moments came, they wiped the slate clean and he knew there was nothing else in the world he would ever want to do.

  ‘Wares from the vale of beauty?’ a voice said from the other side of the pillar.

  Amrit turned, getting his sack ready. ‘Precisely the wares you desire,’ he replied, and allowed himself one swift, secret, gleeful grin.

  When Philpott returned to his car, which was parked a few metres outside the gates of Arberry’s mansion, he found a reception party waiting. Mike and Ram were in the back; Sabrina was in the front passenger seat.

  ‘Well, well…’ Philpott nodded to them each in turn as he climbed in. He was pliant on sherry and a couple of stiff brandies. He smiled with less restraint than usual. ‘What were you trying to do? Frighten me to death, perhaps? Where’s your transport?’

  Sabrina pointed to the jeep on the other side of the avenue.

  ‘Oh.’ Philpott shut the door. ‘I thought you might have come by Range-Rover.’

  ‘We came because your buddy Harry Lewis sent you a fax,’ Mike said. ‘We couldn’t be sure where you’d
go after seeing Dr Arberry, and since you’re not carrying a mobile…’

  ‘Sorry,’ Philpott mumbled. ‘A change of climate and scene and my memory deserts me.’

  ‘Well, since the message was something you should know about straight away, we decided to come and wait for you.’

  ‘And what is the message?’

  ‘Harry Lewis carried out a curiosity check on who’s been funding the Arberry Foundation,’ Mike said. ‘And guess what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nobody has.’

  Philpott took a deep careful breath. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘No corporation anywhere in the civilized world has donated money to Dr Arberry, or claimed relief on donations to any such foundation.’

  ‘But surely —’

  ‘Lewis has been thorough,’ Mike said. ‘He’s checked with international banks, charitable trusts, finance foundations and the IRS.’

  ‘The bottom line is this,’ Sabrina said. ‘Dr Arberry runs an ambitious, expensive, multi-faceted medical foundation, but nobody finances it.’

  ‘One other thing,’ Mike said. ‘The for-your-eyes-only message from Mr Lewis, which we naturally took the liberty of reading in full, points out that Simon Arberry is a doctor all right, but he’s a doctor of pharmacology. He’s a drug designer.’

  Philpott peered at Mike in the gloom. ‘What turn are your thoughts taking?’

  ‘I’ve had time to reflect, sitting here waiting for you,’ Mike said. ‘Now I’m thinking Arberry could be the source and substance of the whole refined drug trade.’

  Philpott groaned softly.

  ‘I’m thinking,’ Mike continued, ‘that he could easily fund his conspicuous good works out of the small change from a trade in top-line drugs. It would be a brilliant cover and terrific PR rolled into one.’

  ‘His only worry,’ Philpott said, caught up in the unfurling logic, ‘is that other villains, the traditional traffickers of the territory, are getting close to uncovering his game. So he handles that by bumping off an employee or two and appealing — or getting a friend to do the appealing — to the UN to fight off those terrible bandits.’