Games Traitors Play

58

Meena moved quickly back through the hall, following the foreigner at a safe distance. He looked Russian to her. Something about his manner, the tan socks on his shoeless feet. When he passed the Golden Lotus Pond, he broke into the open and pulled out a mobile phone. Meena dropped back and did the same, calling her CIA colleague who was still stationed outside the east gate.

‘We’re bringing her out in five,’ she said.

‘Your taxi’s waiting,’ he replied.

‘And we’ve got company,’ she added.

She hung up and rang her colleague at the Lakshmi idol. The signal was faint, but he heard enough to make his way quickly towards the Golden Lotus Pond, picking up another colleague, who was posing as a market-stall seller, along the way. They knew what to do. Delay the Russian for as long as possible, accuse him of taking photos without a camera ticket. Anything. Just play up the paperwork, Meena had told them.

‘How can I trust you?’ Shushma asked, glancing around her again, but Marchant sensed that she already believed he was who he said he was.

‘My father used to keep a Nataraja on his bedside table in Delhi,’ he said. She looked at the icon across the hall, and then back at Marchant. It was a gamble. He didn’t know where his father and Shushma had made love, where they had conceived Dhar, but there was a chance it had been in his parents’ bedroom in Delhi.

Shushma stared at him, this time tracing his features, recognising in them the man she had once loved.

‘I have been in danger most of my life.’

‘The Americans want to ask you some questions. We’d rather you talk to us, in London.’

‘I don’t know where my son is,’ she said. ‘If that’s what you want.’

‘I’m sure you have no idea. But the Americans won’t believe you. Trust me, I know. Please, we have to go. The east entrance.’

Shushma paused for a moment and then went over to talk to another female temple worker, who was lifting candles out of boxes in the shadows. After a brief exchange, the woman came up to the table and began to hand out candles to the devotees who had grown increasingly agitated in the queue. Shushma said something to her in Hindi, touched her forearm and then made her way out of the hall, followed a few yards behind by Marchant.