The Tomb

CHAPTER EIGHT

Manhattan

Monday, August 6

1

Gia watched Jack and Vicky playing with their breakfasts. Vicky had been up at dawn and delighted to find Jack asleep in the library. Before long she had her mother up and making breakfast for them.

As soon as they were all seated Vicky had begun a chant: "We want Moony! We want Moony!" So Jack had dutifully borrowed Gia's lipstick and a felt-tipped pen and drawn a face Senor Wences-style on his left hand. The hand then became a very rude, boisterous entity known as Moony. Jack was presently screeching in a falsetto voice as Vicky stuffed Cheerios into Moony's mouth. She was laughing so hard she could barely breathe. Vicky had such a good laugh, an unselfconscious belly-laugh from the very heart of her being. Gia loved to hear it and was in turn laughing at Vicky.

When was the last time she and Vicky had laughed at breakfast?

"Okay. That's enough for now," Jack said at last. "Moony's got to rest and I've got to eat." He went to the sink to wash Moony away.

"Isn't Jack funny, Mom?" Vicky said, her eyes bright. "Isn't he the funniest?"

As Gia replied, Jack turned around at the sink and mouthed her words in perfect synchronization: "He's a riot, Vicky." Gia threw her napkin at him. "Sit down and eat."

Gia watched Jack finish off the eggs she had fried for him. There was happiness at this table, even after Vicky's nightmare and Nellie's disappearance—Vicky hadn't been told yet. She had a warm, contented feeling inside. Last night had been so good. She didn't understand what had come over her, but was glad she had given in to it. She didn't know what it meant… maybe a new beginning… maybe nothing. If only she could go on feeling this way. If only…

"Jack," she said slowly, not knowing how she was going to phrase this, "have you ever thought of switching jobs?"

"All the time. And I will—or at least get out of this one."

A small spark of hope ignited in her. "When?"

"Don't know," he said with a shrug. "I know I can't do it forever, but… " He shrugged again, obviously uncomfortable with the subject.

"But what?"

"It's what I do. I don't know how to say it any better than that. It's what I do and I do it well. So I want to keep on doing it."

"You like it."

"Yeah," he said, concentrating on the last of his eggs. "I like it."

The growing spark winked out as the old resentment returned with an icy blast. For want of something to do with her hands, Gia got up and began clearing the table. Why bother? she thought. The man's a hopeless case.

And so, breakfast ended on a tense note.

Afterwards, Jack caught her alone in the hallway.

"I think you ought to get out of here and back to your own place."

Gia would have liked nothing better. "I can't. What about Nellie? I don't want her to come back to an empty house."

"Eunice will be here."

"I don't know that and neither do you. With Nellie and Grace gone, she's officially unemployed. She may not want to stay here alone, and I can't say I'd blame her."

Jack scratched his head. "I guess you're right. But I don't like the idea of you and Vicks here alone, either."

"We can take care of ourselves," she said, refusing to acknowledge his concern. "You do your part and we'll do ours."

Jack's mouth tightened. "Fine. Just fine. What was last night, then? Just a roll in the hay?"

"Maybe. It could have meant something, but I guess nothing's changed, not you, not me. You're the same Jack I left, and I still can't accept what you do. And you are what you do."

He walked out, and she found herself alone. The house suddenly seemed enormous and ominous. She hoped Eunice would show up soon.

2

A day in the life of Kusum Bahkti…

Jack had buried the hurt of his most recent parting with Gia and attacked the task of learning all he could about how Kusum spent his days. It had come down to a choice between trailing Kusum or Kolabati, but Kolabati was just a visitor from Washington, so Kusum won.

His first stop after leaving Sutton Square had been his apartment, where Jack had called Kusum's number. Kolabati had answered and they'd had a brief conversation during which he learned that Kusum could probably be found either at the consulate or the U.N. Jack had also managed to wrangle the apartment address out of her. He might need that later. He called the Indian Consulate and learned that Mr. Bahkti was expected to be at the U.N. all day.

So now he stood in line in the General Assembly building of the United Nations and waited for the tour to start. The morning sun stung the sunburned nose and forearms he had acquired yesterday on the tennis courts in Jersey. He knew nothing about the U.N. Most people he knew in Manhattan had never been here unless it was to show a visiting friend or relative.

He was wearing dark glasses, a dark blue banlon buttoned up to the neck, an "I Love NY" button pinned to his breast pocket, light blue bermudas, knee-high black socks, and sandals. A Kodak disk camera and a pair of binoculars were slung around his neck. He had decided his best bet was to look like a tourist. He blended perfectly.

The tombstone-like Secretariat building was off-limits to the public. An iron fence surrounded it and guards checked IDs at all the gates. In the General Assembly building there were airport-style metal detectors. Jack had reluctantly resigned himself to being an unarmed tourist for the day.

The tour began. As they moved through the halls, the guide gave them a brief history and a glowing description of the accomplishments and the future goals of the United Nations. Jack only half listened. He kept remembering a remark he had once heard that if all the diplomats were kicked out, the U.N. could be turned into the finest bordello in the world and do just as much, if not more, for international harmony.

The tour served to give him an idea of how the building was laid out. There were public areas and restricted areas. Jack decided his best bet was to sit in the public gallery of the General Assembly, which was in session all day due to some new international crisis somewhere. Soon after seating himself, Jack learned that the Indians were directly involved in the matter under discussion: escalating hostile incidents along the Sino-Indian border. India was charging Red China with aggression.

He suffered through endless discussion that he was sure he had heard a thousand times. Every dinky little country, most unknown to him, had to have its say and usually it said the same thing as the dinky little country before it. Jack finally turned his headphones off. But he kept his binoculars trained on the area around the Indian delegation's table. So far he had seen no sign of Kusum. He found a public phone and called the Indian Consulate again: No, Mr. Bahkti was with the delegation at the U.N. and was not expected back for hours.

He was just about to nod off when Kusum finally appeared. He walked in with a dignified, businesslike stride and handed a sheaf of papers to the chief delegate, then seated himself in one of the chairs to the rear.

Jack was immediately alert, watching him closely through the glasses. Kusum was easy to keep track of: He was the only member of the delegation wearing a turban. He exchanged a few words with the other diplomats seated near him, but for the most part kept to himself. He seemed aloof, preoccupied, almost as if he were under some sort of strain, fidgeting in his seat, crossing and uncrossing his legs, tapping his toes, glancing repeatedly at the clock, twisting a ring on his finger: the picture of a man with something on his mind, a man who wanted to be somewhere else.

Jack wanted to know where that somewhere else was.

He left Kusum sitting in the General Assembly and went out to the U.N. Plaza. A brief reconnaissance revealed the location of the diplomats' private parking lot in front of the Secretariat. Jack fixed the image of the Indian flag in his mind, then found a shady spot across the street that afforded a clear view of the exit ramp.

3

It took most of the afternoon. Jack's eyes burned after hours of being trained on the exit ramp from the diplomats' parking lot. If he hadn't happened to glance across the Plaza toward the General Assembly building at a quarter to four, he might have spent half the night waiting for Kusum. For there he was, looking like a mirage as he walked through the shimmering heat rising from the sun-baked concrete. For some reason, perhaps because he was leaving before the session was through, Kusum had bypassed an official car and was walking to the curb. He hailed a cab and got in.

Fearful he might lose him, Jack ran to the street and flagged down a cab of his own.

"I hate to say this," he said to the driver as he jumped into the rear seat, "but follow that cab."

The driver didn't even look back. "Which one?"

"It's just pulling away over there—the one with the Times ad on the back."

"Got it."

As they moved into the uptown flow of traffic on First Avenue, Jack leaned back and studied the driver's ID photo taped to the other side of the plastic partition that separated him from the passenger area. It showed a beefy black face sitting on a bull neck. Arnold Green was the name under it. A hand-lettered sign saying "The Green Machine" was taped to the dashboard. The Green Machine was one of the extra-roomy Checker Cabs. A vanishing breed. They weren't making them any more. Compact cabs were taking over. Jack would be sad to see the big ones go.

"You get many 'Follow that cab' fares?" Jack asked.

"Almost never."

"You didn't act surprised."

"As long as you're paying, I'll follow. Drive you around and around the block till the gas runs out if you want. As long as the meter's running."

Kusum's cab turned west on Sixty-sixth, one of the few streets that broke the "evens-run-east" rule of Manhattan, and Green's Machine followed. Together they crawled west to Fifth Avenue. Kusum's apartment was in the upper Sixties on Fifth. He was going home. But the cab ahead turned downtown on Fifth. Kusum emerged at the corner of Sixty-fourth and began to walk east. Jack followed in his cab. He saw Kusum enter a doorway next to a brass plaque that read:

NEW

INDIA HOUSE

He checked the address of the Indian Consulate he had jotted down that morning. It matched. He had expected something looking like a Hindu temple. Instead, this was an ordinary building of white stone and iron-barred windows with a large Indian flag—orange, white, and green stripes with a wheel-like mandala in the center—hanging over double oak doors.

"Pull over," he told the cabbie. "We're going to wait a while."

The Green Machine pulled into a loading zone across the street from the building. "How long?"

"As long as it takes."

"That could run into money."

"That's okay. I'll pay you every fifteen minutes so the meter doesn't get too far ahead. How's that sound?"

He stuck a huge brown hand through the slot in the plastic partition. "How about the first installment?"

Jack gave him a five dollar bill. Arnold turned off the engine and slouched down in the seat.

"You from around here?" he asked without turning around.

"Sort of."

"You look like you're from Cleveland."

"I'm in disguise."

"You a detective?"

That seemed like a reasonable explanation for following cabs around Manhattan, so Jack said, "Sort of."

"You on an expense account?"

"Sort of." Not true: He was on his own time and using his own money, but it sounded better to agree.

"Well, sort of let me know when you sort of want to get moving again."

Jack laughed and got himself comfortable. His only worry was that there might be a back way out of the building.

People began drifting out of the building at 5:00. Kusum wasn't among them. Jack waited another hour and still no sign of Kusum. By 6:30 Arnold was sound asleep in the front seat and Jack feared that Kusum had somehow slipped out of the building unseen. He decided to give it another half hour. If Kusum didn't show by then, Jack would either go inside or find a phone and call the Consulate.

It was nearly seven o'clock when two Indians in business suits stepped through the door and onto the sidewalk. Jack nudged Arnold.

"Start your engine. We may be rolling soon."

Arnold grunted and reached for the ignition. The Green Machine grumbled to life.

Another pair of Indians came out. Neither was Kusum. Jack was edgy. There was still plenty of light, no chance for Kusum to slip past him, yet he had a feeling that Kusum could be a pretty slippery character if he wanted to be.

Come out, come out, wherever you are.

He watched the two Indians walk up toward Fifth Avenue. They were walking west! With a flash of dismay, Jack realized that he was parked on a one-way street going east. If Kusum followed the same path as these last two, Jack would have to leave this cab and find another on Fifth Avenue. And the next cabbie might not be so easy-going as Arnold.

"We've got to get onto Fifth!" he told Arnold.

"Okay."

Arnold put his cab in forward and started to pull out into the crosstown traffic.

"No, wait! It'll take too long to go around the block. I'll miss him."

Arnold gave him a baleful stare through the partition. "You're not telling me to go the wrong way on a one-way street, are you?"

"Of course not," Jack said. Something in the cabbie's voice told him to play along. "That would be against the law."

Arnold smiled. "Just wanted to make sure you wasn't telling."

Without warning he threw the Green Machine into reverse and floored it. The tires screeched, terrified pedestrians leaped for the curb, cars coming out of the Central Park traverse swerved and honked angrily while Jack hung on to the passenger straps as the car lunged the hundred feet or so back to the corner, skewed to a halt across the mouth of the street, then nosed along the curb on Fifth Avenue.

"This okay?" Arnold said.

Jack peered through the rear window. He had a clear view of the doorway in question.

"It'll do. Thanks."

"Welcome."

And suddenly Kusum was there, pushing through the door and walking up toward Fifth Avenue. He crossed Sixty-fourth and walked Jack's way. Jack pressed himself into a corner of the seat so he could see without being seen. Kusum came closer. With a start Jack realized that Kusum was angling across the sidewalk directly toward the Green Machine.

Jack slapped his hand against the partition. "Take off! He thinks you're looking for a fare!"

The Green Machine slipped away from the curb just as Kusum was reaching for the door handle. Jack peeked through the rear window. Kusum didn't seem the least bit disturbed. He merely held his hand up for another cab. He seemed far more intent on getting where he was going than on what was going on around him.

Without being told to, Arnold slowed to a halt half a block down and waited until Kusum got in his cab. When the cab went by, he pulled into traffic behind it.

"On the road again, Momma," he said to no one in particular.

Jack leaned forward intently and fixed his eyes on Kusum's cab. He was almost afraid to blink for fear of losing sight of it. Kusum's apartment was only a few blocks uptown from the Indian Consulate—walking distance. But he was taking a cab downtown. This could be what Jack had been waiting for. They chased it down to Fifty-seventh, where it turned right and headed west along what used to be known as Art Gallery Row.

They followed Kusum farther and farther west. They were nearing the Hudson River docks. With a start, Jack realized that this was the area where Kusum's grandmother had been mugged. The cab went as far west as it could and stopped at Twelfth Avenue and Fifty-seventh. Kusum got out and began to walk.

Jack had Arnold pull into the curb. He stuck his head out the window and squinted against the glare of the sinking sun as Kusum crossed Twelfth Avenue and disappeared into the shadows under the partially repaired West Side Highway.

"Be back in a second," he told Arnold.

He walked to the corner and saw Kusum hurry along the crumbling waterside pavement to a rotting pier where a rust-bucket freighter was moored. As Jack watched, a gangplank lowered itself as if by magic. Kusum climbed aboard and disappeared from view. The gangplank hoisted itself back to the raised position after he was gone.

A ship. What the hell could Kusum be doing on a floating heap like that? It had been a long, boring day, but now things were getting interesting.

Jack went back to the Green Machine.

"Looks like this is it," he said to Arnold. He glanced at the meter, calculated what he still owed of the total, added twenty dollars for good will, and handed it to Arnold. "Thanks. You've been a big help. "

"This ain't such a good neighborhood during the day," Arnold said, glancing around. "And after dark it really gets rough, especially for someone dressed like you."

"I'll be okay," he said, grateful for the concern of a man he had known for only a few hours. He slapped the roof of the car. "Thanks again."

Jack watched the Green Machine until it disappeared into the traffic, then he studied his surroundings. There was a vacant lot on the corner across the street, and an old, boarded-up brick warehouse next to him.

He felt exposed standing there in an outfit that shouted "Mug me" to anyone so inclined. And since he hadn't dared to bring a weapon to the U.N., he was unarmed. Officially, unarmed. He could permanently disable a man with a ballpoint pen and knew half a dozen ways to kill with a key ring, but didn't like to work that close unless he had to. He would have been much more comfortable knowing the Semmerling was strapped against his leg.

He had to hide. He decided his best bet would be under the West Side Highway. He jogged over and perched himself high up in the notch of one of the supports. It offered a clear view of the pier and the ship. Best of all, it would keep him out of sight of any troublemakers.

Dusk came and went. The streetlights came on as night slipped over the city. He was away from the streets, but he saw the traffic to the west and south of him thin out to a rare car cruising by. There was still plenty of rumbling on the West Side Highway overhead, however, as the cars slowed for the ramp down to street level just two blocks from where he crouched. The ship remained silent. Nothing moved on its decks, no lights showed from the superstructure. It had all the appearances of a deserted wreck. What was Kusum doing in there?

Finally, when full darkness settled in at nine o'clock, Jack could wait no longer. In the dark he was pretty sure he could reach the deck and do some hunting around without being seen.

He jumped down from his perch and crossed over to the shadows by the pier. The moon was rising in the east. It was big and low now, slightly rounder than last night, glowing ruddily. He wanted to get aboard and off again before it reached full brightness and started lighting up the waterfront.

At the water's edge, Jack crouched against a huge piling under the looming shadow of the freighter and listened. All was quiet but for the lapping of the water under the pier. A sour smell—a mixture of sea salt, mildew, rotting wood, creosote, and garbage—permeated the air. Movement to the left caught his eye: a lone wharf rat scurried along the bulkhead in search of dinner. Nothing else moved.

He jumped as something splashed near the hull. An automatic bilge pump was spewing a stream of water out a small port near the waterline of the hull.

He was edgy and couldn't say why. He had done clandestine searches under more precarious conditions than these. And with less apprehension. Yet the nearer he got to the boat, the less he felt like boarding her. Something within him was warning him away. Through the years he had come to recognize a certain instinct for danger; listening to it had kept him alive in a dangerous profession. That instinct was ringing frantically with alarm right now.

Jack shrugged off the feeling of impending disaster as he took the binoculars and camera from around his neck and laid them at the base of the piling. The rope that ran from the piling up to the bow of the ship was a good two inches thick. It would be rough on his hands but easy to climb.

He leaned forward, got a firm two-handed grip on the rope, then swung out over the water. As he hung from the rope, he raised his legs until his ankles locked around it. Now began the climb: Hanging like an orangutan from a branch with his face to the sky and his back to the water below, he pulled himself up hand-over-hand while his heels caught the finger-thick strands of the rope and pushed from behind.

The angle of ascent steepened and the climb got progressively tougher as he neared the gunwale of the ship. The tiny fibers of the rope were coarse and stiff. His palms were burning; each handful of rope felt like a handful of thistles, especially painful where he had started a few blisters playing tennis yesterday. It was a pleasure to grab the smooth, cool steel of the gunwale and pull himself up to eye-level with its upper edge. He hung there and scanned the deck. Still no sign of life.

He pulled himself over the gunwale and onto the deck, then ran in a crouch to the anchor windlass.

His skin prickled in warning—danger here. But where? He peered over the windlass. There was no sign that he had been seen, no sign that there was anyone else aboard. Still the feeling persisted, a nagging sensation, almost as if he were being watched.

Again, he shrugged it off and set his mind to the problem of reaching the deckhouse. Well over a hundred feet of open deck lay between him and the aft superstructure. And aft was where he wanted to go. He couldn't imagine much going on in the cargo holds.

Jack set himself, then sprinted around the forward cargo hatch to the kingpost and crane assembly that stood between the two holds. He waited. Still no sign that he had been seen… or that there was anyone here to see him. Another sprint took him to the forward wall of the deckhouse.

He slid along the wall to the port side where he found some steps and took these up to the bridge. The wheelhouse was locked, but through the side window he could see a wide array of sophisticated controls.

Maybe this tub was more seaworthy than it looked.

He crossed in front of the bridge and began checking all the doors. On the second deck on the starboard side he found one open. The hallway within was dark but for a single, dim emergency bulb glowing at the far end. One by one he checked the three cabins on this deck. They looked fairly comfortable— probably for the ship's officers. Only one looked like it had been recently occupied. The bed was rumpled and a book written in an exotic-looking language lay open on a table. That at least confirmed Kusum's recent presence.

Next he checked the crew's quarters below. They were deserted. The galley showed no signs of recent use.

What next? The emptiness, the silence, the stale, musty air were getting on Jack's nerves. He wanted to get back to dry land and fresh air. But Kusum was aboard and Jack wasn't leaving until he found him.

He descended to the deck below and found a door marked ENGINE ROOM. He was reaching for the handle when he heard it.

A sound… barely audible… like a baritone chorus chanting in a distant valley. And it came not from the engine room but from somewhere behind him.

Jack turned and moved silently to the outer end of the short corridor. There was a watertight hatch there. A central wheel retracted the lugs at its edges. Hoping it still had some oil in its works, Jack grasped the wheel and turned it counterclockwise, half-expecting a loud screech to echo throughout the ship and give him away. But there came only a soft scrape and a faint squeak. When the wheel had turned as far as it would go, he gently swung the door open.

The odor struck him an almost physical blow, rocking him back on his heels. It was the same stink of putrescence that had invaded his apartment two nights in a row, only now a hundred, a thousand times stronger, gripping him, jamming itself against his face like a graverobber's glove.

Jack gagged and fought the urge to turn and run. This was it! This was the source, the very heart of the stench. It was here he would learn whether the eyes he had seen outside his window Saturday night were real or imagined. He couldn't let an odor, no matter how nauseating, turn him back now.

He forced himself to step through the hatch and into a dark, narrow corridor. The dank air clung to him. The corridor walls stretched into the blackness above him. And with each step the odor grew stronger. He could taste it in the air, almost touch it. Faint, flickering light was visible maybe twenty feet ahead. Jack fought his way toward it, passing small, room-sized storage areas on either side. They seemed empty—he hoped they were.

The chant he had dimly heard before had ceased, but there were rustling noises ahead, and as he neared the light, the sound of a voice speaking in a foreign language.

Indian, I'll bet.

He slowed his advance as he neared the end of the corridor. The light was brighter in a larger, open area ahead. He had been traveling forward from the stern. By rough calculation he figured he should be almost to the main cargo hold.

The corridor opened along the port wall of the hold; across the floor in the forward wall was another opening, no doubt a similar passage leading to the forward hold. Jack reached the end and cautiously peeked around the corner. What he saw stopped his breath. Shock swept through him front to back, like a storm front.

The high, black iron walls of the hold rose and disappeared into the darkness above. Wild shadows cavorted on them. Glistening beads of moisture clung to their oily surfaces, catching and holding the light from the two roaring gas torches set upon an elevated platform at the other end of the hold. The wall over there was a different color, a bloody red, with the huge form of a many-armed goddess painted in black upon it. And between the two torches stood Kusum, naked but for some sort of long cloth twisted and wrapped around his torso. Even his necklace was off. His left shoulder was horribly scarred where he had lost his arm, his right arm was raised, as he shouted in his native tongue to the crowd assembled before him.

But it wasn't Kusum who seized and held Jack's attention in a stranglehold, who made the muscles of his jaw bunch with the effort to hold back a cry of horror, who made his hands grip the slimy walls so fiercely.

It was the audience. There were four or five dozen of them, cobalt-skinned, six or seven feet tall, all huddled in a semicircular crowd before Kusum. Each had a head, a body, two arms and two legs—but they weren't human. They weren't even close to human. Their proportions, the way they moved, everything about them was all wrong. There was a bestial savagery about them combined with a reptilian sort of grace. They were reptiles but something more, humanoid but something less… an unholy mongrelization of the two with a third strain that could not, even in the wildest nightmare delirium, be associated with anything of this earth. Jack caught flashes of fangs in the wide, lipless mouths beneath their blunt, sharklike snouts, the glint of talons at the end of their three-digit hands, and the yellow glow of their eyes as they stared at Kusum's ranting, gesticulating figure.

Beneath the shock and revulsion that numbed his mind and froze his body, Jack felt a fierce, instinctive hatred of these things. It was a sub-rational reaction, like the loathing a mongoose must feel toward a snake. Instantaneous enmity. Something in the most remote and primitive corner of his humanity recognized these creatures and knew there could be no truce, no co-existence with them.

Yet this inexplicable reaction was overwhelmed by the horrid fascination of what he saw. And then Kusum raised his arms and shouted something. Perhaps it was the light, but he looked older to Jack. The creatures responded by starting the same chant he had faintly heard moments ago. Only now he could make out the sounds. Gruff, grumbling voices, chaotic at first, then with growing unity, began repeating the same word over and over:

"Kaka-jiiiiii! Kaka-jiiiiii! Kaka-jiiiiii! Kaka-jiiiiii!"

Then they were raising their taloned hands in the air, and clutched in each was a bloody piece of flesh that glistened redly in the wavering light.

Jack didn't know how he knew, but he was certain he was looking at all that remained of Nellie Paton.

It was all he could take. His mind refused to accept any more. Terror was a foreign sensation to Jack, unfamiliar, almost unrecognizable. All he knew was that he had to get away before his sanity completely deserted him. He turned and ran back down the corridor, careless of the noise he made; not that much could be heard over the din in the hold. He closed the hatch behind him, spun the wheel to lock it, then ran up the steps to the deck, dashed along its moonlit length to the prow, where he straddled the gunwale, grabbed the mooring rope, and slid down to the dock, burning the skin from his palms.

He grabbed his binoculars and camera and fled toward the street. He knew where he was going: To the only other person besides Kusum who could explain what he had just seen.

4

Kolabati reached the intercom on the second buzz. Her first thought was that it might be Kusum; then she realized he would have no need of the intercom, which operated only from the lobby. She had neither seen nor heard from her brother since losing him in Rockefeller Plaza yesterday, and had not moved from the apartment all day in the hope of catching him as he stopped by to change his clothes. But he had never appeared. "Mrs. Bahkti?" It was the doorman's voice. "Yes?" She didn't bother to correct him about the "Mrs."

"Sorry to bother you, but there's a guy down here says he has to see you." His voice sank to a confidential tone. "He doesn't look right, but he's really been bugging me."

"What's his name?"

"Jack. That's all he'll tell me."

A rush of warmth spread over her skin at the mention of his name. But would it be wise to allow him to come up? If Kusum returned and found the two of them together in his apartment…

Yet she sensed that Jack would not show up without calling first unless it was something important.

"Send him up."

She waited impatiently until she heard the elevator open, then she went to the door. When she saw Jack's black knee socks, sandals, and shorts, she broke into a laugh. No wonder the doorman wouldn't let him up!

Then she saw his face.

"Jack! What's wrong?"

He stepped through the door and closed it behind him. His face was pale beneath a red patina of sunburn, his lips drawn into a tight line, his eyes wild.

"I followed Kusum today…"

He paused, as if waiting for her to react. She knew from his expression that he must have found what she had suspected all along, but she had to hear it from his lips. Hiding the dread of what she knew Jack would say, she set her face into an impassive mask and held it that way.

"And?"

"You really don't know, do you?"

"Know what, Jack?" She watched him run a hand through his hair and noticed that his palms were dirty and bloody. "What happened to your hands?"

He didn't answer. Instead he walked past her and stepped down into the living room. He sat on the couch. Without looking at her, he began to speak in a dull monotone.

"I followed Kusum from the U.N. to this boat on the West Side—a big boat, a freighter. I saw him in one of the cargo holds leading some sort of ceremony with these"—his face twisted with the memory—"these things. They were holding up pieces of raw flesh. I think it was human flesh. And I think I know whose."

Strength flowed out of Kolabati like water down a drain. She leaned against the foyer wall to steady herself. It was true! Rakoshi in America! And Kusum behind them—resurrecting the old dead rites that should have been left dead. But how? The egg was in the other room!

"I thought you might know something about it," Jack was saying. "After all, Kusum is your brother and I figured—"

She barely heard him.

The egg…

She pushed herself away from the wall and started toward Kusum's bedroom.

"What's the matter?" Jack said, finally looking up at her. "Where are you going?"

Kolabati didn't answer him. She had to see the egg again. How could there be rakoshi without using the egg? It was the last surviving egg. And that alone was not enough to produce a nest—a male rakosh was needed.

It simply couldn't be!

She opened the closet in Kusum's room and pulled the square crate out into the room. It was so light. Was the egg gone? She pulled the top up. No… the egg was still there, still intact. But the box had been so light. She remembered that egg weighing at least ten pounds…

She reached into the box, placed a hand on each side of the egg, and lifted it. It almost leaped into the air. It weighed next to nothing! And on its underside her fingers felt a jagged edge.

Kolabati turned the egg over. A ragged opening gaped at her. Bright smears showed where cracks on the underside had been repaired with glue.

The room reeled and spun about her.

The rakosh egg was empty! It had hatched long ago!

5

Jack heard Kolabati cry out in the other room. Not a cry of fear or pain—more like a wail of despair. He found her kneeling on the floor of the bedroom, rocking back and forth, cradling a mottled, football-sized object in her arms. Tears were streaming down her face.

"What happened?"

"It's empty!" she said through a sob.

"What was in it?" Jack had seen an ostrich egg once. That had been white; this was about the same size but its shell was swirled with gray.

"A female rakosh."

Rakosh. This was the second time Jack had heard her say that word. The first had been Friday night when the rotten odor had seeped into his apartment. He didn't need any further explanation to know what had hatched from that egg: It had dark skin, a lean body with long arms and legs, a fanged mouth, taloned hands, and bright yellow eyes.

Moved by her anguish, he knelt opposite Kolabati. Gently he pulled the empty egg from her grasp and he took her two hands in his.

"Tell me about it."

"I can't."

"You must."

"You wouldn't believe…"

"I've already seen them. I believe. Now I've got to understand. What are they?"

"They are rakoshi."

"I gathered that. But the name means nothing."

"They are demons. They people the folk tales of Bengal. They're used to spice up stories told at night to frighten children or to make them behave—'The rakoshi will get you!' Only a select few through the ages have known that they are more than mere superstition."

"And you and Kusum are two of those select few, I take it."

"We are the only ones left. We come from a long line of high priests and priestesses. We are the last of the Keepers of the Rakoshi. Through the ages the members of our family have been charged with the care of the rakoshi—to breed them, control them, and use them according to the laws set down in the old days. And until the middle of the last century we discharged that duty faithfully."

She paused, seemingly lost in thought. Jack impatiently urged her on.

"What happened then?"

"British soldiers sacked the temple of Kali where our ancestors worshipped. They killed everyone they could find, looted what they could, poured burning oil into the rakoshi cave, and set the temple afire. Only one child of the priest and priestess survived." She glanced at the empty shell. "And only one intact rakosh egg was found in the fire-blasted caves. A female egg. Without a male egg, it meant the end of the rakoshi. They were instinct."

Jack touched the shell gingerly. So this was where those horrors came from. Hard to believe. He lifted the shell and held it so the light from the lamp shown through the hole into the interior. Whatever had been in here was long gone.

"I can tell you for sure, Kolabati: They aren't extinct. There were a good fifty of them in that ship tonight." Fifty of them… he tried to blank out the memory. Poor Nellie!

"Kusum must have found a male egg. He hatched them both and started a nest."

Kolabati baffled him. Could it be true that she hadn't known until now? He hoped so. He hated to think she could fool him so completely.

"That's all well and fine, but I still don't know what they are. What do they do?"

"They're demons—"

"Demons, shmemons! Demons are supernatural! There was nothing supernatural about those things. They were flesh and blood!"

"No flesh like you have ever seen before, Jack. And their blood is almost black."

"Black, red—blood is blood."

"No, Jack!" She rose up on her knees and gripped his shoulders with painful intensity. "You must never underestimate them! Never! They appear slow-witted but they are cunning. And they are almost impossible to kill."

"The British did a good job, it seems."

Her face twisted. "Only by sheer luck! They chanced upon the only thing that will kill rakoshi—fire! Iron weakens them, fire destroys them."

"Fire and iron…" Jack suddenly understood the two jets of flame Kusum had stood between, and the reason for housing the monsters in a steel-hulled ship. Fire and iron: the two age-old protections against night and the dangers it held. "But where did they come from?"

"They have always been."

Jack stood up and pulled her to her feet. Gently. She seemed so fragile right now.

"I can't believe that. They're built like humans but I can't see that we ever had a common ancestor. They're too—" He remembered the instinctive animosity that had surged to life within him as he had watched them "… different."

"Tradition has it that before the Vedic gods, and even before the pre-Vedic gods, there were other gods, the Old Ones, who hated mankind and wanted to usurp our place on earth. To do this they created blasphemous parodies of humans embodying the opposite of everything good in humans, and called them rakoshi. They are us, stripped of love and decency and everything good we are capable of. They are hate, lust, greed, and violence incarnate. The Old Ones made them far stronger than humans, and planted in them an insatiable hunger for human flesh. The plan was to have rakoshi take humankind's place on earth."

"Do you believe that?" It amazed him to hear Kolabati talking like a child who believed in fairy tales.

She shrugged. "I think so. At least it will do for me until a better explanation comes along. But as the story goes, it turned out that humans were smarter than the rakoshi and learned how to control them. Eventually, all rakoshi were banished to the Realm of Death."

"Not all."

"No, not all. My ancestors penned the last nest in a series of caves in northern Bengal and built their temple above. They learned ways to bend the rakoshi to their will and they passed those ways on, generation after generation. When our parents died, our grandmother passed the egg and the necklaces on to Kusum and me."

"I knew the necklaces came in somewhere."

Kolabati's voice was sharp as her hand flew to her throat. "What do you know of the necklace?"

"I know those two stones up front there look an awful lot like rakoshi eyes. I figured it was some sort of membership badge."

"It's more than that," she said in a calmer voice. "For want of a better term, I'll say it's magic."

As Jack walked back to the living room, he laughed softly.

"You find this amusing?" Kolabati said from behind him.

"No." He dropped into a chair and laughed again, briefly. The laughter disturbed him—he seemed to have no control over it. "It's just that I've been listening to what you've been telling me and accepting every word without question. That's what's funny—I believe you! It's the most ridiculous, fantastic, far-fetched, implausible, impossible story I've ever heard, and I believe every word of it!"

"You should. It's true."

"Even the part about the magic necklace?" Jack held up his hand as she opened her mouth to elaborate. "Never mind. I've swallowed too much already. I might choke on a magic necklace."

"It's true!"

"I'm far more interested in your part in all this. Certainly you must have known."

She sat down opposite him. "Friday night in your room I knew there was a rakosh outside the window. Saturday night, too."

Jack had figured that out by now. But he had other questions: "Why me?"

"It came to your apartment because you tasted the durba grass elixir that draws a hunting rakosh to a particular victim."

Grace's so-called laxative! A rakosh must have carried her off between Monday night and Tuesday morning. And Nellie last night. But Nellie—those pieces of flesh held on high in the flickering light… he swallowed the bile that surged into his throat—Nellie was dead. Jack was alive.

"Then how come I'm still around?"

"My necklace protected you."

"Back to that again? All right—tell me."

She lifted the front of the necklace as she spoke, holding it on either side of the pair of eye-like gems. "This has been handed down through my family for ages. The secret of making it is long gone. It has… powers. It is made of iron, which traditionally has power over rakoshi, and renders its wearer invisible to a rakosh."

"Come on, Kolabati—" This was too much to believe.

"It's true! The only reason you are able to sit here and doubt is because I covered you with my body on both occasions when the rakosh came in to find you! I made you disappear! As far as a rakosh was concerned, your apartment was empty. If I hadn't, you would be dead like the others!"

The others… Grace and Nellie. Two harmless old ladies.

"But why the others? Why—?"

"To feed the nest! Rakoshi must have human flesh on a regular basis. In a city like this it must have been easy to feed a nest of fifty. You have your own caste of untouchables here— winos, derelicts, runaways, people no one would miss or bother to look for even if their absence was noticed."

That explained all those missing winos the newspapers had been blabbering about. Jack jumped to his feet. "I'm not talking about them! I'm talking about two well-to-do old ladies who have been made victims of these things!"

"You must be mistaken."

"I'm not."

"Then it must have been an accident. A missing-persons search is the last thing Kusum would want. He would pick faceless people. Perhaps those women came into possession of some of the elixir by mistake."

"Possible." Jack was far from satisfied, but it was possible. He wandered around the room.

"Who were they?"

"Two sisters: Nellie Paton last night and Grace Westphalen last week."

Jack thought he heard a sharp intake of breath, but when he turned to Kolabati her face was composed. "I see," was all she said.

"He's got to be stopped."

"I know," Kolabati said, clasping her hands in front of her. "But you can't call the police."

The thought hadn't entered Jack's mind. Police weren't on his list of possible solutions for anything. But he didn't tell Kolabati that. He wanted to know her reasons for avoiding them. Was she protecting her brother?

"Why not? Why not get the cops and the harbor patrol and have them raid that freighter, arrest Kusum, and wipe out the rakoshi?"

"Because that won't accomplish a thing! They can't arrest Kusum because of diplomatic immunity. And they'll go in after the rakoshi not knowing what they're up against. The result will be a lot of dead men; instead of being killed, the rakoshi will be scattered around the city to prey on whomever they can find, and Kusum will go free."

She was right. She had obviously given the matter a lot of thought. Perhaps she had even considered blowing the whistle on Kusum herself. Poor girl. It was a hideous burden of responsibility to carry alone. Maybe he could lighten the load.

"Leave him to me."

Kolabati rose from her chair and came to stand before Jack. She put her arms around his waist and laid the side of her head against his shoulder.

"No. Let me speak to him. He'll listen to me. I can stop him."

I doubt that very much, Jack thought. He's crazy, and nothing short of killing's going to stop him.

But he said: "You think so?"

"We understand each other. We've been through so much together. Now that I know for sure he has a nest of rakoshi, he'll have to listen to me. He'll have to destroy them."

"I'll wait with you."

She jerked back and stared at him, terror in her eyes. "No! He mustn't find you here! He'll be so angry he'll never listen to me!"

"I don't—"

"I'm serious, Jack! I don't know what he might do if he found you here with me and knew you had seen the rakoshi. He must never know that. Please. Leave now and let me face him alone."

Jack didn't like it. His instincts were against it. Yet the more he thought about it, the more reasonable it sounded. If Kolabati could convince her brother to eradicate his nest of rakoshi, the touchiest part of the problem would be solved. If she couldn't—and he doubted very much that she could—at least she might be able to keep Kusum off balance long enough for Jack to find an opening and make his move. Nellie Paton had been a spirited little lady. The man who killed her was not going to walk away.

"All right," he said. "But you be careful. You never know —he might turn on you."

She smiled and touched his face. "You're worried about me. I need to know that. But don't worry. Kusum won't turn on me. We're too close."

As he left the apartment, Jack wondered if was doing the right thing. Could Kolabati handle her brother? Could anyone? He took the elevator down to the lobby and walked out to the street.

The park stood dark and silent across Fifth Avenue. Jack knew that after tonight he would never feel the same about the dark again. Yet horse-drawn hansom cabs still carried lovers through the trees; taxis, cars, and trucks still rushed past on the street; late workers, party-goers, prowling singles walked by, all unaware that a group of monsters was devouring human flesh in a ship tied to a West Side dock.

Already the horrors he had witnessed tonight were taking on an air of unreality. Was what he had seen real?

Of course it was. It just didn't seem so standing here amid the staid normalcy of Fifth Avenue in the upper Sixties. Maybe that was good. Maybe that seeming unreality would let him sleep at night until he took care of Kusum and his monsters.

He caught a cab and told the driver to go around the Park instead of through it.

6

Kolabati watched through the peephole until Jack stepped into the elevator and the doors closed behind him. Then she slumped against the door.

Had she told him too much? What had she said? She couldn't remember what she might have blurted out in the aftermath of the shock of finding that hole in the rakosh egg. Probably nothing too damaging—she'd had such long experience at keeping secrets from people that it was now an integral part of her nature. Still, she wished she could be sure.

Kolabati straightened up and pushed those concerns aside. What was done was done. Kusum would be coming back tonight. After what Jack had told her, she was sure of that.

It was all so clear now. That name: Westphalen. It explained everything. Everything except where Kusum had found the male egg. And what he intended to do next.

Westphalen… she thought Kusum would have forgotten that name by now. But then, why should she have thought that? Kusum forgot nothing, not a favor, certainly not a slight. He would never forget the name Westphalen. Nor the time-worn vow attached to it.

Kolabati ran her hands up and down her arms. Captain Sir Albert Westphalen had committed a hideous crime and deserved an equally hideous death. But not his descendants. Innocent people should not be given into the hands of the rakoshi for a crime committed before they were born.

But she could not worry about them now. She had to decide how to handle Kusum. To protect Jack she would have to pretend to know more than she did. She tried to remember the name of the woman Jack said had disappeared last night… Paton, wasn't it? Nellie Paton. And she needed a way to put Kusum on the defensive.

She went into the bedroom and brought the empty egg back to the tiny foyer. There she dropped the shell just inside the door. It shattered into a thousand pieces.

Tense and anxious, she found herself a chair and tried to get comfortable.

7

Kusum stood outside his apartment door a moment to compose himself. Kolabati was certainly waiting within with questions as to his whereabouts last night. He had his answers ready. What he had to do now was mask the elation that must be beaming from his face. He had disposed of the next to the last Westphalen—one more and he would be released from the vow. Tomorrow he would set the wheels in motion to secure the last of Albert Westphalen's line. Then he would set sail for India.

He keyed the lock and opened the door. Kolabati sat facing him from a living room chair, her arms and legs crossed, her face impassive. As he smiled and stepped forward, something crunched under his foot. He looked down and saw the shattered rakoshi egg. A thousand thoughts hurtled through his shocked mind, but the one that leaped to the forefront was: How much does she know?

"So," he said as he closed the door behind him. "You know."

"Yes, brother. I know."

"How—?"

"That's what I want to know!" she said sharply.

She was being so oblique! She knew the egg had hatched. What else did she know? He didn't want to give anything away. He decided to proceed on the assumption that she knew only of the empty egg and nothing more.

"I didn't want to tell you about the egg," he said finally. "I was too ashamed. After all, it was in my care when it broke, and—"

"Kusum!" Kolabati leaped to her feet, her face livid. "Don't lie to me! I know about the ship and I know about the Westphalen women!"

Kusum felt as if he had been struck by lightning. She knew everything!

"How… ?" was all he could manage to say.

"I followed you yesterday."

"You followed me?" He was sure he had eluded her. She had to be bluffing. "Didn't you learn your lesson last time?"

"Forget the last time. I followed you to your ship last night."

"Impossible!"

"So you thought. But I watched and waited all last night. I saw the rakoshi leave. I saw them return with their captive. And I learned from Jack today that Nellie Paton, a Westphalen, disappeared last night. That was all I needed to know." She glared at him. "No more lies, Kusum. It's my turn to ask, 'how?' "

Stunned, Kusum stepped down into the living room and sank into a chair. He would have to bring her into it now… tell her everything. Almost everything. There was one part he could never tell her—he could barely think about that himself. But he could tell her the rest. Maybe she could see his side.

He began his tale.

8

Kolabati scrutinized her brother closely as he spoke, watching for lies. His voice was clear and cool, his expression calm with just a hint of guilt, like a husband confessing a minor dalliance with another woman.

"I felt lost after you left India. It was as if I had lost my other arm. Despite all my followers clustered around me, I spent much time alone—too much time, you might say. I began to review my life and all I had done and not done with it. Despite my growing influence, I felt unworthy of the trust so many were placing in me. What had I truly accomplished except to filthy my karma to the level of the lowest caste? I confess that for a time I wallowed in self-pity. Finally I decided to journey back to Bharangpur, to the hills there. To the Temple ruins that was now the tomb of our parents and our heritage."

He paused and looked directly at her. "The foundation is still there, you know. The ashes of the rest are gone, washed into the sand or blown away, but the stone foundation remains, and the rakoshi caves beneath are intact. The hills are still uninhabited. Despite all the crowding at home, people still avoid those hills. I stayed there for days in an effort to renew myself. I prayed, I fasted, I wandered the caves… yet nothing happened. I felt as empty and as worthless as before.

"And then I found it!"

Kolabati saw a light begin to glow in her brother's eyes, growing steadily, as if someone were stoking a fire within his brain.

"A male egg, intact, just beneath the surface of the sand in a tiny alcove in the caves! At first I did not know what to make of it, or what to do with it. Then it struck me: I was being given a second chance. There before me lay the means to accomplish all that I should have with my life, the means to cleanse my karma and make it worthy of one of my caste. I saw it then as my destiny. I was to start a nest of rakoshi and use them to fulfill the vow."

A male egg. Kusum continued to talk about how he manipulated the foreign service and managed to have himself assigned to the London embassy. Kolabati barely heard him. A male egg… she remembered hunting through the ruins of the Temple and the caves beneath as a child, searching everywhere for a male egg. In their youth they both had felt it their duty to start a new nest and they had desperately wanted a male egg.

"After I established myself at the embassy," Kusum was saying, "I searched for Captain Westphalen's descendants. I learned that there were only four of his bloodline left. They were not a prolific family and a number of them were killed off in the World Wars. To my dismay, I learned that only one, Richard Westphalen, was still in Britain. The other three were in America. But that did not deter me. I hatched the eggs, mated them, and started the nest. I have since disposed of three of the four Westphalens. There is only one left."

Kolabati was relieved to hear that only one remained— perhaps she could prevail upon Kusum to give it up.

"Aren't three lives enough? Innocent lives, Kusum?"

"The vow, Bati," he said as if intoning the name of a deity. "The vrata. They carry the blood of that murderer, defiler, and thief in their veins. And that blood must be wiped from the face of the earth."

"I can't let you, Kusum. It's wrong!"

"It's right!" He leapt to his feet. "There's never been anything so right!"

"No!"

"Yes!" He came toward her, his eyes bright. "You should see them, Bati! So beautiful! So willing! Please come with me and look at them! You'll know then that it was the will of Kali!"

A refusal rose immediately to Kolabati's lips, yet did not pass them. The thought of seeing a nest of rakoshi here in America repulsed and fascinated her at the same time. Kusum must have sensed her uncertainty, for he pressed on:

"They are our birthright! Our heritage! You can't turn your back on them—or on your past!"

Kolabati wavered. After all, she did wear the necklace. And she was one of the last two remaining Keepers. In a way she owed it to herself and her family to at least go and see them.

"All right," she said slowly. "I'll come see them with you. But only once."

"Wonderful!" Kusum seemed elated. "It will be like going back in time. You'll see!"

"But that won't change my mind about killing innocent people. You must promise me that will stop."

"We'll discuss it," Kusum said, leading her toward the door. "And I want to tell you about my other plans for the rakoshi—plans that do not involve what you call 'innocent' lives."

"What?" She didn't like the sound of that.

"I'll tell you after you've seen them."

Kusum was silent during the cab ride to the docks while Kolabati tried her best to appear as if she knew exactly where they were going. After the cab dropped them off, they walked through the dark until they were standing before a small freighter. Kusum led her around to the starboard side.

"If it were daylight you could see the name across the stern: Ajit-Rupobati— in Vedic!"

She heard a click from where his hand rested in his jacket pocket. With a whir and a hum, the gangplank began to lower toward them. Dread and anticipation grew as she climbed to the deck. The moon was high and bright, illuminating the surface of the deck with a pale light made all the more stark by the depths of the shadows it cast.

He stopped at the aft end of the second hatch and knelt by a belowdecks entry port.

"They're in the hold below," he said as he pulled up the hatch.

Rakoshi-stench poured out of the opening. Kolabati turned her head away. How could Kusum stand it? He didn't even seem to notice the odor as he slid his feet into the port.

"Come," he said.

She followed. There was a short ladder down to a square platform nestled into a corner high over the empty hold. Kusum hit a switch and the platform began to descend with a jerk. Startled, Kolabati grabbed Kusum's arm.

"Where are we going?"

"Down just a little way." He pointed below with his bearded chin. "Look."

Kolabati squinted into the shadows, futilely at first. Then she saw their eyes. A garbled murmur arose from below. Kolabati realized that until this instant, despite all the evidence, all that Jack had told her, she had not truly believed there could be rakoshi in New York. Yet here they were.

She shouldn't have been afraid—she was a Keeper—yet she was terrified. The closer the platform sank to the floor of the hold, the greater her fear. Her mouth grew dry as her heart pounded against the wall of her chest.

"Stop it, Kusum!"

"Don't worry. They can't see us."

Kolabati knew that, but it gave her no comfort.

"Stop it now! Take me back up!"

Kusum hit another button. The descent stopped. He looked at her strangely, then started the platform back up. Kolabati sagged against him, relieved to be moving away from the rakoshi but knowing she had deeply disappointed her brother.

It couldn't be helped. She had changed. She was no longer the recently orphaned little girl who had looked up to her older brother as the nearest thing to a god on earth, who had planned with him to find a way to bring the rakoshi back, and through them restore the ruined temple to its former glory. That little girl was gone forever. She had ventured into the world and found that life could be good outside India. She wanted to stay there.

Not so Kusum. His heart and his mind had never left those blackened ruins in the hills outside Bharangpur. There was no life for him outside India. And even in his homeland, his rigid Hindu fundamentalism made him something of a stranger. He worshipped India's past. That was the India in which he wished to live, not the land India was striving to become.

With the belowdecks port shut and sealed behind them, Kolabati relaxed, reveling in the outside air. Whoever would have thought muggy New York City air could smell so sweet? Kusum led her to a steel door in the forward wall of the superstructure. He opened the padlock that secured it. Inside was a short hallway and a single furnished cabin.

Kolabati sat on the cot while Kusum stood and looked at her. She kept her head down, unable to meet his eyes. Neither had said a word since leaving the hold. Kusum's air of disapproval rankled her, made her feel like an errant child, yet she could not fight it. He had a right to feel the way he did.

"I brought you here hoping to share the rest of my plans with you," he said at last. "I see now that was a mistake. You have lost all touch with your heritage. You would become like the millions of soulless others in this place."

"Tell me your plans, Kusum," she said, feeling his hurt. "I want to hear them."

"You'll hear. But will you listen?" He answered his own question without waiting for her. "I don't think so. I was going to tell you how the rakoshi could be used to aid me back home. They could help eliminate those who are determined to change India into something she was never intended to be, who are bent on leading our people away from the true concerns of life in a mad drive to make India another America."

"Your political ambitions."

"Not ambitions! A mission!"

Kolabati had seen that feverish light shining in her brother's eyes before. It frightened her almost as much as the rakoshi. But she kept her voice calm.

"You want to use the rakoshi for political ends."

"I do not I But the only way to bring India back onto the True Path is through political power. It came to me that I have not been allowed to start this nest of rakoshi for the mere purpose of fulfilling a vow. There is a grander scheme here, and I am part of it."

With a sinking feeling, Kolabati realized where all this was leading. A single word said it all:

"Hindutvu."

"Yes—Hindutvu! A reunified India under Hindu rule. We will undo what the British did in 1947 when they made the Punjab into Pakistan and vivisected Bengal. If only I had had the rakoshi then—Lord Mountbatten would never have left India alive! But he was out of my reach, so I had to settle for the life of his collaborator, the revered Hindu traitor who legitimized the partition of our India by persuading the people to accept it without violence."

Kolabati was aghast. "Gandhi? It couldn't have been you!"

"Poor Bati." He smiled maliciously at the shock that must have shown on her face. "I'm truly disappointed that you never guessed. Did you actually think I would sit idly by after the part he played in the partition?"

"But Savarkar was behind—!"

"Yes. Savarkar was behind Godse and Apte, the actual assassins. He was tried and executed for his part. But who do you think was behind Savarkar?"

No! It couldn't be true! Not her brother—the man behind what some called "the Crime of the Century"!

But he was still talking. She forced herself to listen:

"… the return of East Bengal—it belongs with West Bengal. Bengal shall be whole again!"

"But East Bengal is Bangladesh now. You can't possibly think—"

"I'll find a way. I have the time. I have the rakoshi. I'll find away, believe me."

The room spun about Kolabati. Kusum, her brother, her surrogate parent for all these years, the steady, rational cornerstone of her life, was slipping further and further from the real world, indulging himself in the revenge and power fantasies of a maladjusted adolescent.

Kusum was mad. The realization sickened her. Kolabati had fought against the admission all night but the truth could no longer be denied. She had to get away from him.

"If anyone can find a way, I'm sure you will," she told him, rising and turning towards the door. "And I'll be glad to help in any way I can. But I'm tired now and I'd like to go back to the—"

Kusum stepped in front of the door, blocking her way.

"No, my sister. You will stay here until we sail away together."

"Sail?" Panic clutched at her throat. She had to get off this ship! "I don't want to sail anywhere!"

"I realize that. And that's why I had this room, the pilot's cabin, sealed off." There was no malice in his voice or his expression. He was more like an understanding parent talking to a child. "I'm bringing you back to India with me."

"No!"

"It's for your own good. During the voyage back home, I'm sure you'll see the error of the life you've chosen to lead. We have a chance to do something for India, an unprecedented chance to cleanse our karmas. I do this for you as much as for myself." He looked at her knowingly. "For your karma is as polluted as mine."

"You have no right!"

"I've more than a right. I've a duty."

He darted out of the room and shut the door behind him. Kolabati lunged forward but heard the lock click before she reached the handle. She pounded on its sturdy oak panels.

"Kusum, let me out! Please let me out!"

"When we're at sea," he said from the far side of the door.

She heard him walk down the hall to the steel hatch that led to the deck and felt a sense of doom settle over her. Her life was no longer her own. Trapped on this ship… weeks at sea with a madman, even if it was her brother. She had to get out of here! She became desperate.

"Jack will be looking for me!" she said on impulse, regretting it immediately. She hadn't wanted to involve Jack in this.

"Why would he be looking for you?" Kusum said slowly, his voice faint.

"Because…" She couldn't let him know that Jack had found the ship and knew about the rakoshi. "Because we've been together every day. Tomorrow he'll want to know where lam."

"I see." There was a lengthy pause. "I believe I will have to talk to Jack."

"Don't you harm him, Kusum!" The thought of Jack falling victim to Kusum's wrath was more than she could bear. Jack was certainly capable of taking care of himself, but she was sure he had never run up against someone like Kusum… or a rakosh.

She heard the steel door clang shut.

"Kusum?"

There was no reply. Kusum had left her alone on the ship.

No… not alone.

There were rakoshi below.

9

"SAHNKchewedday! SAHNKchewedday!"

Jack had run out of James Whale films—he had been searching unsuccessfully for a tape of Whale's The Old Dark House for years—so he had put on the 1939 version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Charles Laughton, playing the part of the ignorant, deformed Parisian, had just saved Maureen O'Hara and was shouting in an upper class British accent from the walls of the church. Ridiculous. But Jack loved the film and had watched it nearly a hundred times. It was like an old friend, and he needed an old friend here with him now. The apartment seemed especially empty tonight.

So with the six-foot projection tv providing a sort of visual musak, he sat and pondered his next move. Gia and Vicky were all right for the time being, so he didn't have to worry about them. He had called the Sutton Square house as soon as he had arrived home. It had been late and Gia had obviously been awakened by the phone. She had grouchily told him that no word had been received from either Grace or Nellie and assured him that everyone was fine and had been sleeping peacefully until his call.

On that note, he had let her go back to sleep. He wished he could do the same. But tired as he was, sleep was impossible. Those things! He could not drive the images out of his mind! Nor the possibility that if Kusum learned that he had been on the ship and had seen what it held, he might send them after him.

With that thought, he got up and went to the old oak secretary. From behind the false panel in its lower section he removed a Ruger Security Six .357 magnum revolver with a four-inch barrel. He loaded it with jacketed 110-grain hollow points, bullets that would shatter upon entry, causing incredible internal devastation: little hole going in, huge hole coming out. Kolabati had said the rakoshi were unstoppable except for fire. He'd like to see anything stand up to a couple of these in the chest. But the features that made them so lethal on impact with a body made them relatively safe to use indoors—a miss lost all its killing power once it hit a wall or even a window. He loaded five chambers and left the hammer down on the empty sixth.

As an extra precaution, Jack added a silencer—Kusum and the rakoshi were his problem. He didn't want to draw any of his neighbors into it if he could avoid it. Some of them would surely be hurt or killed.

He was just settling down in front of the tv again when there was a knock on the door. Startled and puzzled, Jack flipped the Betamax off and padded to the door, gun in hand. There was another knock as he reached it. He could not imagine a rakoshi knocking, but he was very uneasy about this night caller.

"Who is it?"

"Kusum Bahkti," said a voice on the other side.

Kusum! Muscles tightened across Jack's chest. Nellie's killer had come calling. Holding himself in check, he cocked the Ruger and unlocked the door. Kusum stood there alone. He appeared perfectly relaxed and unapologetic despite the fact that dawn was only a few hours away. Jack felt his finger tighten on the trigger of the pistol he held behind his right leg. A bullet in Kusum's brain right now would solve a number of problems, but might be difficult to explain. Jack kept his pistol hidden. Be civil!

"What can I do for you?"

"I wish to discuss the matter of my sister with you."

10

Kusum watched Jack's face. His eyes had widened slightly at the mention of "my sister." Yes, there was something between these two. The thought filled Kusum with pain. Kolabati was not for Jack, or any casteless westerner. She deserved a prince.

Jack stepped back and let the door swing open wider, keeping his right shoulder pressed against the edge of the door. Kusum wondered if he was hiding a weapon.

As he stepped into the room he was struck by the incredible clutter. Clashing colors, clashing styles, bric-a-brac and memorabilia filled every wall and niche and corner. He found it at once offensive and entertaining. He felt that if he could sift through everything in this room he might come to know the man who lived here.

"Have a seat."

Kusum hadn't seen Jack move, yet now the door was closed and Jack was sitting in an overstuffed armchair, his hands clasped behind his head. He could kick him in the throat now and end it all. One kick and Kolabati would no longer be tempted. Quick, easier than using a rakosh. But Jack appeared to be on guard, ready to move. Kusum warned himself that he should not underestimate this man. He sat down on a short sofa across from him.

"You live frugally," he said, continuing to inspect the room around him. "With the level of income I assume you to have, I would have thought your quarters would be more richly appointed."

"I'm content the way I live," Jack said. "Besides, conspicuous consumption is contrary to my best interests."

"Perhaps. Perhaps not. But at least you have resisted the temptation to join the big car, yacht, and country club set. A lifestyle too many of your fellow countrymen would find irresistible." He sighed. "A lifestyle too many of my own countrymen find irresistible as well, much to India's detriment."

Jack shrugged. "What's this got to do with Kolabati?"

"Nothing, Jack," Kusum said. He studied the American: a self-contained man; a rarity in this land. He does not need the adulation of his fellows to give him self-worth. He finds it within. I admire that. Kusum realized he was giving himself reasons why he should not make Jack a meal for the rakoshi.

"How'd you get my address?"

"Kolabati gave it to me." In a sense this was true. He had found Jack's address on a slip of paper on her bureau the other day.

"Then let's get to the subject of Kolabati, shall we?"

There was an undercurrent of hostility running through Jack. Perhaps he resented being disturbed at this hour. No… Kusum sensed it was more than that. Had Kolabati told him something she shouldn't have? That idea disturbed him. He would have to be wary of what he said.

"Certainly. I had a long talk with my sister tonight and have convinced her that you are not right for her."

"Interesting," Jack said. A little smile played about his lips. What did he know? "What arguments did you use?"

"Traditional ones. As you may or may not know, Kolabati and I are of the Brahmin caste. Do you know what that means?"

"No."

"It is the highest caste. It is not fitting for her to consort with someone of a lower caste. "

"That's a little old fashioned, isn't it?"

"Nothing that is of such vital concern to one's karma can be considered 'old fashioned.' "

"I don't worry about karma," Jack said. "I don't believe in it."

Kusum allowed himself to smile. What ignorant children these Americans were.

"Your believing or not believing in karma has no effect on its existence, nor on its consequences to you. Just as a refusal to believe in the ocean would not prevent you from drowning."

"And you say that because of your arguments about caste and karma, Kolabati was convinced that I am not good enough for her?"

"I did not wish to state it so bluntly. May I just say that I prevailed upon her not to see or even speak to you ever again." He felt a warm glow begin within him. "She belongs to India. India belongs to her. She is eternal, like India. In many ways, she is India."

"Yeah," Jack said as he reached out with his left hand and placed the phone in his lap. "She's a good kid." Cradling the receiver between his jaw and his left shoulder, he dialed with his left hand. His right hand rested quietly on his thigh. Why wasn't he using it?

"Let's call her and see what she says."

"Oh, she's not there," Kusum said quickly. "She has packed her things and started back to Washington."

Jack held the phone against his ear for a long time. Long enough for at least twenty rings. Finally, he replaced the receiver in its cradle with his left hand—

—and suddenly there was a pistol in his right hand, the large bore of its barrel pointing directly between Kusum's eyes.

"Where is she?" Jack's voice was a whisper. And in the eyes sighting down the barrel of that pistol Kusum saw his own death—the man holding the gun was quite willing and even anxious to pull the trigger.

Kusum's heart hammered in his throat. Not now! I can't die now! I've too much still to do!

11

Jack saw the fear spring onto Kusum's face. Good! Let the bastard squirm. Give him a tiny taste of what Grace and Nellie must have felt before they died.

It was all Jack could do to keep from pulling the trigger. Practical considerations held him back. Not that anyone would hear the silenced shot; and the possibility that anyone knew Kusum had come here was remote. But disposing of the body would be a problem.

And there was still Kolabati to worry about. What had happened to her? Kusum seemed to care too much for his sister to harm her, but any man who could lead a ceremony like the one Jack had seen on that hellship was capable of anything.

"Where is she?" he repeated.

"Out of harm's way, I assure you," Kusum said in measured tones. "And out of yours." A muscle throbbed in his cheek, as if someone were tapping insistently against the inside of his face.

"Where?"

"Safe… as long as I am well and able to return to her."

Jack didn't know how much of that to believe, and yet he dared not take it too lightly.

Kusum stood up.

Jack kept the pistol trained on his face. "Stay where you are!"

"I have to go now."

Kusum turned his back and walked to the door. Jack had to admit the bastard had nerve. He paused there and faced Jack. "But I want to tell you one more thing: I spared your life tonight."

Incredulous, Jack rose to his feet. "What?" He was tempted to mention the rakoshi but remembered Kolabati's plea to say nothing of them. Apparently she hadn't told Kusum that Jack had been on the boat tonight.

"I believe I spoke clearly. You are alive now only because of the service you performed for my family. I now consider that debt paid."

"There was no debt. It was fee-for-service. You paid the price, I rendered the service. We've always been even."

"That is not the way I choose to see it. However, I am informing you now that all debts are cancelled. And do not follow me. Someone might suffer for that."

"Where is she?" Jack said, leveling the pistol. "If you don't tell me, I'm going to shoot you in the right knee. If you still won't talk, I'll shoot you in the left knee."

Jack was quite ready to do what he said, but Kusum made no move to escape. He continued facing him calmly.

"You may begin," he told Jack. "I have suffered pain before."

Jack glanced at Kusum's empty left sleeve, then looked into his eyes and saw the unbreakable will of a fanatic. Kusum would die before uttering a word.

After an interminable silence, Kusum smiled thinly, stepped into the hall, and closed the door behind him. Containing the urge to hurl the .357 against the door, Jack lined up the empty chamber and gently let the hammer down on it. Then he went over and locked the door—but not before giving it a good kick.

Was Kolabati really in some kind of danger, or had Kusum been bluffing? He had a feeling he had been outplayed, but still did not feel he could have risked calling the bluff.

The question was: Where was Kolabati? He would try to trace her tomorrow. Maybe she really was on her way back to Washington. He wished he could be sure.

Jack kicked the door again. Harder.