Also by Stephen Alter:

NONFICTION

All the Way to Heaven: An American Boyhood in the Himalayas

Amritsar to Lahore: A Journey Across the India-Pakistan Border

Sacred Waters: A Pilgrimage Up the Ganges River to the Source of Hindu Culture

Elephas Maximus: A Portrait of the Indian Elephant Fantasies of a Bollywood Love Thief: Inside the World of Indian Moviemaking

Becoming a Mountain: Himalayan Journeys in Search of the Sacred and the Sublime

FICTION

Neglected Lives

Silk and Steel

The Godchild

Renuka

Aripan and Other Stories

Aranyani

The Phantom Isles

Ghost Letters

Copyright © 2013, 2016 by Stephen Alter

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

First North American Edition

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Visit the author’s site at www.stephenalter.net.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Alter, Stephen.

The rataban betrayal / Stephen Alter.—First North American edition.

pages; cm

ISBN 978-1-62872-575-9 (hardback)—ISBN 978-1-62872-623-7 (ebook)

I. Title.

PS3551.L77R38 2016

813’.54—dc23

2015028698

Cover design by Owen Corrigan
Cover photo: Shutterstock

Printed in the United States of America

The mind of another is a foreign land.

Himalayan proverb

Dedicated to
Friends and Neighbors in Mussoorie

Author’s Note

This novel is a work of fiction. All of the characters are entirely imaginary and bear no likeness to any person, living or dead. While many of the historical and cultural references are based on reality, the narrative is not intended to be a factual rendering of events, political circumstances, or contextual details. The hill station of Mussoorie and many of the locations described in this novel do exist, but poetic liberties have been taken with the geography; many of the places described can be found only within the confines of this story. RAW is an acronym for the Research and Analysis Wing, India’s foreign intelligence agency. The Intelligence Bureau, which is a separate agency, focuses primarily on domestic intelligence and security. Depiction of these agencies and their affiliates in this novel is entirely fictional. Finally, it must be emphasized that this book is written with the utmost admiration and respect for the Tibetan people, their cultural heritage, their religion, and their future.

One

1969. Tibet. Behind them stood the high Himalayas, impenetrable barriers of rock and snow, buttressed with ice falls and glaciers. An avalanche broke loose on one of the snow peaks above the pass, a rumbling white cloud that poured down the vertical face of the mountain. To the north, in front of them, spread the Tibetan Plateau—arid, undulating steppes as far as the eye could see. Once the floor of a primordial ocean, the plateau now lay 14,000 feet above sea level. The wind felt brittle and raw, as if scarce molecules of oxygen had crystallized in the air, invisible particles that cut your lips and tongue before dissolving painfully in your lungs.

Jigme watched the quarreling cluster of men, huddled on a flat rock at the far edge of the pass. His face was stern and unemotional, though his eyes betrayed the fear and remorse that lingered in his mind. Six yaks were tethered nearby, standing so close to each other they looked like a single, large animal—a shaggy black beast with a dozen horns and restless hooves. On a slope below were the horses, heads lowered, searching for grass in the frozen soil. They would find no forage, nothing to graze on, until they descended two thousand feet below the pass.

The men were arguing, and their voices rose in anger. One of them lifted his hand in a threatening gesture as he was shoved aside. Another got to his feet, holding up a pair of leather climbing boots by the laces. Dressed in sheepskin coats draped across one shoulder and heavy woolen robes of several layers, all of the men were nomadic hunters from Western Tibet. As the rest of the party stood up, Jigme could just make out a corpse lying on the boulder. Stripped naked, the dead man was as white as the patches of snow amid the rocks. Each of the hunters had claimed his loot—a pocket knife, a compass, a pair of trousers torn at the knee. One carried a nylon parka stained with blood. Another had removed a watch from the dead man’s wrist.

The pass was marked with several cairns of mani stones—inscriptions etched on granite, basalt, and schist. Om Mani Padme Hum . . . and other invocations honoring the divine elements and highland spirits who guarded this desolate region. Some of the stones were embedded with fossils, prehistoric mollusks and fish that once swam in the Tethys Sea, eons ago, before the Himalayas were formed. Piled on the cairns were bleached skulls of yak and bharal, wild sheep, as well as ibex. Tattered prayer flags trembled in the breeze, but most had been snapped by savage gales that blew across the pass. Strings of pennants lay on the ground, printed verses and images of wind horses and snow lions fading off the gauzy fabric.

Two of the hunters carried antique muskets with long barrels. The rest of the men were armed with modern weapons. Jigme was a Khampa, from Eastern Tibet. He stood apart from the group. These were not his people, and he barely understood their dialect. They had descended from warring clans of Shangshung, human predators as wild as their prey. For generations, their ancestors had been poachers and bandits, feared by travelers from Marco Polo to Sven Hedin. Even the Mongols had not subdued them, allowing these wandering brigands to pillage and plunder along the lower margins of the Silk Route. The hunters stuffed whatever clothes and other belongings they had stripped from the corpse into bundles loaded on their yaks.

The dead man was an American. He had fallen into a crevasse that morning while they were crossing a glacier. Jigme had been able to plunge his ice axe into the snow and anchor the rope, but when they’d pulled the American out of the crevasse, he knew the man would not survive. One leg was broken and there was a gash across his forehead where his skull had cracked. He was unconscious but breathing in shallow gasps. They had carried him this far, strapped to one of the yaks, knowing it was pointless. He had died an hour ago, as they were climbing up to the pass. Digging a grave in the frozen earth was impossible, and there was no fuel at this altitude, not even a juniper twig, with which to burn the body. Their only option was to consign the American’s corpse to a sky burial, according to the practical and spiritual traditions of Tibet.

Glancing behind him, Jigme could see the second American standing fifty yards away, a solitary figure with a rifle slung across his shoulder. Like Jigme, he was dressed in a thick down parka, its fur-lined hood pulled over his head. He was facing away from the pass, scanning the distant horizon through a pair of binoculars. The American seemed untroubled by the loss of his companion and the scavenging of the hunters, who had joined them yesterday, after they crossed over the main bulwark of the Himalayas, leaving India behind. Jigme watched the lone figure with distrust. They had spent the last two months together, but the American had remained a stranger, aloof and secretive as a ghost.

The nomads began to whistle through their teeth, calling the horses as they untied their yaks. Four hours of daylight still remained, and they were eager to get down off the pass. As the American turned to join the others, hoisting a rucksack onto his back, Jigme saw two circling shapes in the sky. A pair of Himalayan griffons passed overhead, spiraling down on outstretched wings. They seemed to come from nowhere, out of the void of heaven. As the vultures soared past Jigme, he could hear the murmur of their feathers. Within a minute the huge raptors had landed on the corpse. By this time, the hunters were already a hundred yards down the trail, still whistling at their animals. The American stopped and glanced back for a second, as the griffons began to feed. Jigme winced and mumbled a prayer for the dead, incoherent words catching in his throat and making him cough. The wind echoed his chanting with a solemn dirge, as it scoured the lifeless terrain.

Another vulture swooped in low and settled on a nearby cairn before opening its wings and strutting across to the pale figure on the granite slab. Soon, many more of these giant birds would join in the carrion feast. The grim ceremonies of nature commenced, and, before darkness fell, the sky burial had been consummated. As the sun disappeared behind the mountains and the wind grew still, the American’s bones were picked clean of flesh and scattered on the barren slopes below the pass. Then, like winged phantoms, the vultures returned to the sky, carrying with them the dead man’s spirit and dispersing it in the clouds.

Two

The closing verse of the final hymn, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” rose in a disparate chorus of voices scattered around the church. The pastor in his white cassock and scarlet stole led the singing with both arms raised, as the congregation joined together in the closing lines. The organist, an elderly woman in a green chiffon sari, pumped the treadles with both feet as her diligent fingers picked at the keys. Behind the altar was a triptych of stained glass windows depicting the Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension. Tall brass candelabra stood on either side, amber flames flickering in their grasp.

Dexter Fallows bowed his head as the pastor began the benediction. His folded hands fidgeted and his shoe tapped lightly on the marble floor. He was in his late sixties, a gaunt, agitated man with a youthful face, despite his age. He was clean shaven, though he had missed a patch of bristle under his chin this morning, as he’d hurried to get ready for church. His hair was white and thin, parted to the left. Fallows closed his eyes when the prayer began, but they blinked open almost immediately, a watery blue color that startled people when they met him first. He sat alone in one of the pews toward the back. Most of the congregation was Indian, members of the protestant community in Landour, though there were a number of foreigners in their midst.

Surreptitiously, Fallows rotated his wrist so that he could see the face of his watch protruding from beneath his sleeve. 11:38.

The service had dragged on for more than an hour. Distracted by his own convoluted thoughts and worries, Fallows had not been able to pay attention to the sermon, as the pastor admonished his parishioners about forgiving their enemies. Leaning forward, he hunched his shoulders under the gray gabardine fabric of his suit. His whole body seemed to twitch as the pastor brought the service to a close with words of blessing and deliverance.

An old cantonment church, St. Paul’s was consecrated in 1840, when Landour was first established as a convalescent retreat for colonial troops in North India. Landour was now part of the larger hill station of Mussoorie, though it remained a discreet area of the town, with scattered homes on a forested ridge, isolated from the main bazaar. Rows of notches were carved into the hard wooden pews at St. Paul’s so that British “Tommies” could rest their rifles during worship. After 1857, when many of the British were slaughtered by rebellious sepoys, European soldiers in India were ordered to bear arms in church rather than stacking their weapons outside. Today, no Enfield rifles rested against the pews. Fallows reached up nervously and flipped open the wooden latch that once held a loaded firearm in place.

For more than fifty years, he had attended this church. There were other places of worship in Mussoorie, but Fallows preferred St. Paul’s, which was walking distance from his house. He was at the end of his career as a missionary with the North India Bible Fellowship, administering several charities and Christian institutions funded by churches abroad, a paternalistic sinecure that gave him plenty of time for other pursuits. Fallows had grown up in Mussoorie, himself a child of missionaries. He had gone to school in Landour as a boy and returned here after college and seminary, to carry on his parents’ calling but also because it was his home.

In another six months, Fallows would retire and go back to America. Though anxious and ambivalent about the move, he had already signed a lease on an apartment in Arlington, Virginia. His wife had died a decade ago, and she was buried in the cemetery on the north side of Landour. They had no children, and his only living relative was a half-brother in Milwaukee, but the long cold winters of Wisconsin held little appeal for someone who had spent all of his life in India. For a while, Fallows had considered staying on in Mussoorie, but this year he had decided it was time to move back, before he got any older and his health declined. As a life-long expatriate, Fallows still pledged allegiance to America, though he had lived outside its borders for so many years he hardly knew the country. From time to time, he had returned to the United States on short furloughs, but he had never lived there for more than three months at a stretch. Going back, he felt uneasy about becoming an exile in his own homeland.

“Amen!”

Exhaling a grateful sigh, Fallows echoed the pastor’s exclamation and quickly rose to his feet. Fastening the uppermost button of his suit, he stepped into the aisle and rushed outside. Earlier that morning the sky had been overcast, but now the sun was breaking through the clouds. In the churchyard, a bed of scruffy dahlias were still blooming. The clear October air was scented with resin from the tall deodar trees that grew on either side of the church, their massive columns surrounding the red roof, yellow walls, and bell tower. Here in Landour, the architecture of nature overshadowed the sanctuaries of man.

Fallows hurried across the lawn, reaching for the inside pocket of his coat. Eagerly, his fingers closed around a packet of unfiltered Charminar and a box of matches. As soon as he was behind the largest deodar tree, he shook out a cigarette and tucked it between his lips. Furtively, he struck a match and cupped its flame in his palm, as he lit the roasted flakes of tobacco. A bittersweet fragrance soothed his restless nerves. As Fallows inhaled, his anxious thoughts seemed to ease. The tension between his shoulder blades was gently unknotted as the nicotine entered his lungs and dispersed through his veins.

Just then, a rifle shot rang out, but Fallows didn’t hear it. A single bullet punctured his skull, an inch behind his left ear, knocking him forward against the trunk of the tree. He was dead before his body slumped to the ground. The cigarette lay smoldering in the grass until it was extinguished by a spreading pool of blood.

Three

Breathing hard and pumping his arms in a steady rhythm, Colonel Imtiaz Afridi propelled himself forward, keeping his eyes fixed on the corners ahead. His wheelchair was a racing model, made by a company in Switzerland that specialized in high-performance equipment for disabled athletes. Afridi’s legs were folded under him in a mesh cradle, with a harness around his waist. The two rear wheels were positioned so that he got maximum thrust as he pushed himself forward with gloved hands. He looked like a swimmer doing the butterfly stroke, a repetitive crab-like motion. Never having been a man of caution, Afridi wore no helmet. As he came to a steep incline, his hands shifted to a steering mechanism connected to the single wheel in front. Leaning forward, he exhaled and let the wheelchair gather speed. The spokes whirred like propellers, and the breeze cooled the sweat on his face. At sixty-eight, Afridi was in better shape than most men half his age, though he’d lost the use of his legs in a mountaineering accident, nearly forty years ago.

The gradient lessened as Afridi took a sharp corner, almost colliding with a young couple holding hands. He had often thought of attaching a horn to his wheelchair so he could warn people of his silent approach. Hurtling down the road, his body was jarred by the rough surface, but he was used to physical punishment. The burning ache in his arms and shoulders made him feel he was fully alive. As he came around the next corner near St. Paul’s Church, Afridi touched the brake just enough to slow his progress.

A curious crowd had gathered near the churchyard fence, watching a television crew interviewing two policemen at the scene of the crime. The cameraman was focusing on the ridge above, as if trying to locate the shooter. A group of journalists from the local papers were loitering nearby, cameras in hand. One of the police inspectors noticed Afridi and stiffened, giving him a sharp salute. Afridi acknowledged the policeman with a curt nod of his head but did not stop, his hands resuming their work as he gathered momentum again and passed the small market of Char Dukan beyond the church. Another kilometer and he would be home. Lowering his head, Afridi pumped the wheels like a steam engine, with the graceful symmetry of human locomotion. Two minutes later, he crossed an invisible line that marked the end of his workout. Throwing himself back in his chair, Afridi pressed the button on his stopwatch.

33:14. Good enough, though not his fastest time for three circuits of the Chukkar. As the wheelchair coasted up a ramp to Ivanhoe, his cottage, Afridi glanced over his shoulder with a defiant look at the Himalayan summits arranged against the northern horizon.

An aging Bhotia mastiff got to his feet and wagged his tail with a hoarse bark of greeting. Afridi reached out as the wheelchair came to a stop. He took the dog’s head in his hands and stroked his ears affectionately.

“Arrey, mera Bhotu! Why are you barking?” The dog sniffed his hands and licked Afridi’s sweating face.

Turning the chair around with a quick pirouette, Afridi entered the house in reverse. The ramp was positioned so that he could go straight into his gym, which was attached to the cottage. As he wheeled himself past a weight machine, Afridi paused beneath the climbing wall. The roof of the gym had been raised to accommodate thirty vertical feet of artificial rock with handholds at different heights.

Unbuckling his harness and grabbing two parallel rods bracketed to the wall, Afridi hoisted himself into a second wheelchair. Taking a towel from a rack, he wiped his arms and face. From the gym, he passed through double doors that opened into the rest of the cottage. His bedroom lay to one side, and ahead of him was the drawing room, a compact but comfortable home designed expressly for his needs. Afridi had always been a bachelor and proudly protected his independence and self-sufficiency.

Wheeling himself to the bar in one corner of the living room, he opened a small refrigerator and took out a bottle of water. Raising it to his lips, he drank slowly but steadily. As he drained the bottle, he heard a voice behind him.

“Colonel sahib, what race are you training for?” The question was asked in Hindi, and Afridi immediately recognized who it was.

“These days I only race against myself,” he said, taking his time to turn around.

Seated in an overstuffed armchair on the opposite side of the room was a Tibetan man with weathered features. His long white hair was braided and coiled around his head. The clothes he wore were Western, a loose canvas jacket over a cotton shirt and trousers, neatly creased. His shoes were polished to a military shine. In one hand, he held a string of prayer beads that he fingered as he spoke.

“Did you hear?” Jigme asked. “There was a shooting behind the church.”

Afridi nodded. “I didn’t hear the gunshot, but news did reach me.”

“Things have changed, Afridi sahib. Before, this never happened in Mussoorie . . . a killing in cold blood.”

Afridi set the empty water bottle aside and wheeled himself toward Jigme.

“Still, it was a quick and painless death,” he said. “Fallows never knew what hit him. I can think of worse ways to leave this life.”

Jigme closed his eyes for a moment. “And enter the next,” he added.

“It makes you wonder. . . .” Afridi mused. “We all have premonitions of our own mortality. Do you think that Fallows knew he would be shot?”

“Kya patta? Who can say?” said Jigme. “But his fate was decided long ago.”

“Fate?” said Afridi. “Or is it the choices we make?”

“Colonel sahib, we can challenge our destiny,” Jigme muttered, “but nobody escapes what’s written.”

As he spoke, the old man’s eyes traveled over the walls, which were covered with framed photographs of mountaineering expeditions. His gaze was drawn to one picture—two men on a summit, holding the Indian flag. It was a photograph of Afridi and Jigme more than forty years ago on top of Trishul. Two ice axes were crossed above the fireplace. Between another set of pictures hung a pair of crampons attached to a carabiner. Next to this was a black-and-white photograph of a mountain at the head of a broad valley. In the white margin below the image he read the name:

RATABAN

6,166 MTS

“What can I offer you to drink, Jigme? Kya piyogey? ” Afridi asked, gesturing toward the bar. “Brandy? Scotch?”

“No, thank you. I’ve stopped drinking during the day,” came a gruff reply. “After sunset, I’ll have a glass or two, maybe a whole bottle.”

Jigme’s eyes crossed to the other side of the room, where hunting trophies were displayed on the wall, a bharal ram and an ibex with arched horns almost three feet long. The glass eyes on the trophies stared back at Jigme unblinking.

“What’s your theory?” Afridi asked. “Who shot him?”

“How should I know?” Jigme shrugged. “But amazing aim, from a range of more than three hundred meters! The American’s head popped open like a coconut. Thapaak! Clean bowled.”

Afridi studied him with cautious eyes, still wiping the sweat from his face. There was a time when Jigme could have out-climbed Afridi any day, but he had aged a lot in the past few years and his knees had stiffened with arthritis. As a young man, Jigme was tireless. Altitude never seemed to affect him. Now, he was often short of breath and spoke in choked bursts.

“Have you come here to give me cricket commentary or was there some other purpose?” Afridi asked, his voice impatient.

Jigme switched briefly to English. “Market report.”

Afridi reacted with interest.

“Three weeks ago. On the tenth of last month, a shipment of raw shahtoosh arrived from Tibet. Fifteen kilos. The price was ten lakhs.”

“Where was it sold?” Afridi asked.

“Pithoragarh,” said Jigme. “From there it went straight to Kashmir.”

Fifteen kilos . . . A million rupees. Afridi did the calculation in his head. “You’re sure it’s connected to the other shipments?”

“Definitely,” Jigme replied.

“But we don’t know, for sure, who smuggled it across the border . . . or how?”

“Not every pass in the Himalayas is guarded. This year there has been less snow,” Jigme said, “which means more routes are open. For someone who knows his way through the mountains, it isn’t difficult.”

“Ten lakhs isn’t a lot of money these days, considering the risks involved,” Afridi said. “There must be other motives.”

“Of course.” Jigme reached into the voluminous pocket of his coat and produced an antique prayer wheel. “This came with it as well.”

Afridi accepted the prayer wheel and spun it around with a thoughtful smile.

“Thank you, but I don’t need your prayers.”

“Open it, Afridi sahib. There’s a voice inside.”

Afridi kept spinning the wheel but raised his eyebrows.

“When did you start hearing voices?”

“Ever since people started invoking the name of Chairman Mao again,” said Jigme. “Look at what’s happening in Nepal, the Communists. Sir . . . I’m sure, one way or another, the Chinese had a hand in this shooting. Believe me,” Jigme spoke with indignation, leaning forward in his chair, “this is not the last bullet to be fired. The Maoists have chosen their targets. Others will die as well.”

“There are plenty of killers and plenty of victims,” said Afridi, “but China isn’t the only nation with blood on its hands.”

Jigme shook his head and rose stiffly to his feet.

“Be careful, Afridi sahib,” he said. “Both you and I know the American wasn’t killed by accident.”

“Why are you worried, Jigme? By now, most of our enemies are dead. We’ve outlived them all,” Afridi chided him.

“I’m not so sure of that,” Jigme replied.

“You’ve always been a pessimist.”

“All right,” Jigme said waving a hand in frustration. “If you’re not going to take my warning, I’ll be on my way. . . . Khuddah Hafez.”

Picking up his cane, he started to let himself out.

“Khuddah Hafez,” Afridi answered under his breath. “God go with you.” Then, as Jigme was about to leave, Afridi called out. “By the way, how is Renzin?”

The old man grunted. “Which father understands his son? I never know what he’s doing.”

With that, he let the door close behind him. As the prayer wheel stopped spinning, Afridi studied it for a moment, the metal drum embossed with sacred lettering and designs. Setting it aside, he removed the gloves from his hands. A holster with a pistol was buckled to the side of his wheelchair and he touched it briefly. Then, cupping his right hand over the cylinder of the prayer wheel, Afridi pried it open. When he shook it lightly, a small flash drive, shaped like a lozenge, fell into his open palm.

Four

Moving carefully and deliberately from right to left, Noya Feldman’s steady hand copied the verses with careful precision, graceful swirls and eddies of Urdu script flowing between the parallel lines of her notebook. As she finished writing the second stanza, Noya read the poet’s words aloud:

“Koi ummeed bar naheen aatee

Koi soorat nazar naheen aatee

“Maut ka ek din mu’ayyan hai

Neend kyun raat bhar naheen aatee”

Noya’s teacher, Salima, corrected her pronunciation in a quiet voice—“mu’ayyan,” an accent on the second syllable. Mirza Ghalib’s couplets seemed so simple but layered with deeper meanings that left Noya with a troubling sense of premonition.

“The one whom I await is not coming

No familiar face appears before my eyes

“When death will surely arrive one day

Why am I unable to sleep tonight?”

Teacher and student sat together on a stone bench inside the havaghar, a small roadside pavilion near the Landour Language School. When the weather was pleasant, tutorials were held outdoors. Most of the students were beginners, studying Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, and Nepali, but Noya had finished three years of Urdu already, completing a Masters degree in Oriental Languages at Tel Aviv University. Instead of focusing on grammar and vocabulary, as she would have done with her other students, who were beginners, Salima had chosen to study the poetry of Ghalib with Noya.

Wandering up the Chukkar Road to the crossing near the language school, Karan Chauhan could see clusters of teachers and pupils scattered in the sun and shade. It was a warm, autumn day, and he was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. An athletic man in his early thirties, Karan was clean shaven but with two days’ stubble and lightly gelled hair. Around his neck was a Nikon D3X, with a zoom lens. Every few steps, he paused to take a picture. The main town of Mussoorie was spread out on the ridge to the west of Landour, and beyond that, the Doon valley four thousand feet below. Karan had arrived the day before and was still trying to figure out where he was, puzzled and intrigued by a place that seemed a part of India but was also removed from the crowded chaos of the plains.

Earlier in the morning, Karan had gone for a run around the Chukkar, the road looping about the top of the hill and joining up with itself in a broad figure eight. Karan had run two circuits, only four miles, though he could feel the altitude straining his lungs. His hotel was a small guesthouse called Rokeby Manor, which lay five minutes’ walk from the language school, just above the Chukkar. In the other direction was the Char Dukan market and St. Paul’s Church, where the shooting took place.

Karan had read about it in the newspapers, which still carried short articles about the missionary’s death two days after he was shot. Nobody was certain why Dexter Fallows had been killed. The journalists quoted police sources, saying they were following several leads, including the possibility of a terrorist plot, though none of the usual suspects had claimed responsibility and Mussoorie seemed an unlikely place for a political assassination.

Karan had been surprised by the number of foreigners in Landour. Almost all of the language students were Europeans or Americans, as well as a few Koreans and Japanese, undergraduates on exchange programs, missionaries learning the language of prospective converts, foreign correspondents and scholars who wanted to understand the babel of voices around them. Karan had even considered enrolling in a tutorial, brushing up on his Hindi. Though he had learned the language as a child, from his parents, he had lived outside of India for most of his life.

In the twenty-four hours he’d been in Mussoorie, Karan had met several of the language students at the tea shops in Char Dukan, where they gathered for bun omelets, paranthas, and chai. The shooting didn’t seem to have alarmed them, though the students laughed nervously when he asked if they were worried. A couple of embassies, including the Americans, had issued travel advisories after the shooting, but only a few of the foreigners seemed to have left because they were afraid of a terrorist threat.

Given the circumstances, Mussoorie wasn’t exactly a destination he’d choose for a holiday, but Karan wasn’t a tourist by nature. After spending the last three years working sixty-hour weeks without a vacation, he was still adjusting to the idea of hanging out. He hadn’t wasted this much time doing nothing since he was in college. Enslaved by technology, Karan was so used to measuring each second in gigahertz and megabytes, it was difficult to accept the idle pleasures of a hill station, where everything moved at a slow, indifferent pace. When he normally traveled on work, it was always intense, requiring complete concentration and an awareness of every minute ticking away. Today, since breakfast, he hadn’t even looked at his watch.

Karan spotted the teacher and her student framed inside the havaghar, with its slate cladding. He raised his camera and focused on the two women, taking a couple of pictures before zooming in on the girl with ginger blonde hair. Twenty-five or twenty-six, he guessed. Her face was not just beautiful but unique. The line from her forehead to her nose formed a strong profile but with a softness that belied the fierce concentration in her eyes. He guessed she was a European, maybe German or Dutch, though there was a Mediterranean fullness to her mouth and her complexion was naturally tanned. Karan clicked a couple of close-ups and lowered the camera just as Salima glared at him.

Pointing an accusing finger, she called out in Hindi, “Arrey, Besharam! Why are you taking photos without asking?”

Noya looked up, startled. Karan shrugged with a guilty smile. “I’m sorry. Forgive me,” he answered in Hindi. “I wasn’t taking pictures of you. I was photographing the mountains.”

As if to prove his innocence, he lifted his camera once again and zoomed in on the white panorama of snow peaks visible through the branches of deodar trees that lay beyond the havaghar. The high Himalayas stood to the north of Landour like the battlements of a crystal fortress, a distant citadel of ice and rock. Their gleaming summits stood out against the clear October sky.

Five

The voice was low and indistinct, like someone mumbling into a keyhole. It was impossible to identify the accent, though the Urdu phrasing, with traces of Awadhi, suggested a Lucknow dialect. The speaker was certainly not Punjabi or Pathan, and probably not Kashmiri either. Most likely a Muhajir, a refugee who moved to Pakistan during Partition. The message contained an extended reference to paan leaves and betel nut—supari— as well as mention of chuna, or “lime.” These were code words for a contract killing, but the fluid slang of violence was always changing and it could just as easily suggest the delivery of explosives or an illicit payment. The man was speaking on a mobile phone connected to a landline in Mumbai. His conversation took less than two minutes. From the noises in the background, it was obvious that he was on a railway platform. A hawker was selling tea, “Chai chai! Chai chai!” and there was the whistle of a train pulling out of a station. All of these sounds had been captured and separated, leaving only the enigmatic, muffled voice.

Tapping a command on the keyboard, Anna adjusted her headphones and replayed the first ten seconds. A name was mentioned in the greeting, but it was incoherent. “Salaam aley kum . . . _____sahib, khairiyat?” Two garbled syllables. Mushtaq? Rafaat? Ulfat? It was impossible to know for sure. Slowing the speech down and playing each phrase at half its speed, Anna tried to pick consonants from the slurred greeting. Intelligence Bureau had traced the Mumbai number to a flat near Chor Bazaar belonging to a man named Raza Siddiqui, who had links to minor mafia figures, a courier who would communicate the message to others.

Anna rubbed her eyes with exhaustion. She had been staring at the screen for more than three hours without a break. The vacillating graph of voice imprints was like a mountain range that went on forever. Anna had established a possible match with a known terrorist and ISI operative, Rafiq Mohammed, better known as Karachi Bhai, but the quality of the recording was too poor for her to confirm it was him. The message itself, though, was worrying, with cryptic references to Banarasi patta and ilaichi—innocuous words for paan leaves and cardamom, but in the lexicon of terror they suggested an attack was being planned somewhere in Mumbai. Anna had noted down every word she recognized, like clues that refused to fit into the tidy boxes of a crossword puzzle.

Noticing the pulsing light on her mobile phone, Anna removed her headphones. The ringtone sounded shrill and insistent after the mumbled conversation. She didn’t recognize the caller’s number.

“Hello. Yes?”

“Annapurna Tagore?” A coarse, male voice on the phone.

“Yes, this is Anna.”

“What’ll you eat? Veg? Non-veg?”

“Who is this?” she asked, irritated, ready to hang up. “Kaun hai?”

“Arrey, batah dey, darling,” the man continued in crude Hindi. “Tell me. What do you want for lunch? Mughlai? Chinese? Udupi?”

She finally recognized who it was and smiled with annoyance.

“Chinese.”

“Chowmein Palace. One o’clock.”

Anna glanced at the time on her phone. It was just past noon. She put on her headphones and adjusted the cursor with her mouse, clicking the Play button once again. The unintelligible voice repeated itself. By now she had heard the message a hundred times, but only half the words made sense. It was like overhearing a conversation in a crowded market, fragments of speech that refused to fit together. In the end, no matter how clever or precise the technology, there was no way to decipher the ambiguities of a human tongue.

Being one of the great catastrophes of urban planning, Nehru Place towers above South Delhi like an elaborate set for a disaster film. It is the perfect target for a flaming asteroid from outer space or a tsunami of sand blowing in across the deserts of Rajasthan. An earthquake would topple the skyscrapers like dominoes of reinforced concrete. And if a giant ape were to climb the buildings they would crumble in his paws, scattering air-conditioners and satellite dishes on terrified victims fleeing below.

Anna dreaded the elevator to and from her office on the ninth floor. More than once she had taken the stairwell, but that was even worse, full of pigeon shit and paan stains, as well as fused bulbs on the landings and the bitter stench of bidi smoke. The elevator was always crowded. Inevitably, one of the men would sandwich himself against her hip with a faraway look in his eye. She used her elbows and knees to discourage them, putting on her most intimidating scowl, but there was no escaping the claustrophobic intimacy of the elevator as it descended to the ground floor.

Outside in the plaza was the usual bedlam of hawkers selling cheap clothes and factory seconds, T-shirts emblazoned with unknown brands, denim jeans in uneven sizes, and enormous brassieres like twin Taj Mahals of starched white lace. Slipping on her dark glasses as she stepped into the glare of sunlight, Anna brushed past a tout selling pirated CDs.

“Panch so key teen! Panch so key teen!” he croaked. “Five hundred for three!”

Sleek corporate signboards advertising Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, and Sony contrasted with the black-market chaos of the plaza. One man, squatting over a cardboard box on the pavement, was refilling printer cartridges with a syringe full of ink, while another was peddling mobile phone rechargers and cheap reprints of software manuals. Anna hated the grotesque functionality of the towers and the cluttered warrens of shops on their lower floors. She had been working here for sixteen months, at a company called Megadot, which provided a convenient cover for the Research and Analysis Wing’s audio surveillance project. At twenty-eight, Anna was a senior acoustical engineer, specializing in cyberlinguistics and speech analysis, all of which were fancy names for keeping an ear to the ground and listening in on dangerous voices.

Across the plaza, between two shops selling an identical range of computer accessories, Anna could see the sign for Chowmein Palace, one of many restaurants that fed the insatiable yet frugal appetites of salesmen, customers, and office workers in Nehru Place.

Pushing open the door, which had a brass handle shaped like a dragon having an epileptic seizure, Anna entered the restaurant. Even after she took off her glasses, the interior was dark. Stagnant air bore the stale smells of cabbage, vinegar, and garlic. Six booths were arranged along one wall with vases sprouting plastic chrysanthemums. The waiters were dressed in shabby uniforms, buttons missing. As her eyes adjusted to the shadows, Anna spotted Manav Shinde seated in one of the booths, near an aquarium.

Manav was dressed as always in a rumpled khadi kurta, looking like a CPI(M) party worker or a social activist for a rural NGO. He cultivated a simple, Gandhian style, even though he held the senior rank of joint secretary. A short man, in his indeterminate fifties, he wore old-fashioned spectacles that punctuated his ascetic demeanor. He was known as one of the shrewdest intelligence officers in RAW. Manav was especially adept at navigating the treacherous terrain of Indian intelligence agencies, each with its own competing agenda. RAW focused on foreign threats while the Intelligence Bureau directed its attention to domestic operations, but the two constantly overlapped and had to maneuver around Defence Intelligence, which had its own chain of command and operational protocols. When it came to keeping his eye on the target while juggling complex priorities and reaching contentious compromises, Manav Shinde was a master of the covert game. Folding his hands in greeting, he gestured for Anna to take a seat opposite him. A pot of jasmine tea was already on the table.

“What’ll you drink, madamji?” Manav asked, continuing in Hindi with the same exaggerated banter. “Nimboo pani? Soda? Sweet ya Salt?”

“Nothing, just tea, thank you,” said Anna, shaking her head.

The waiter slid a dog-eared menu in front of her. It looked as if someone had worried the corners in a fit of anxiety when faced with too many choices. The endless list of dishes included enigmatic variations such as “chilly chicken,” “chicken with chilly,” and “chillie chicken with/without cashews.”

“You insisted on Chinese,” Manav said, still teasing. “But I was in the mood for Mughlai, or maybe Continental.”

“Too late, you should have said something earlier,” Anna replied. Though Shinde was her superior, they had been friends for several years. He winked at her, then switched from Hindi to English, his accent flawlessly cosmopolitan.

“I would have thought you’d be more patriotic, choosing South Indian at the very least. This is enemy territory.” He pretended to be conspiratorial, glancing at the waiters hovering near the cashier’s counter.

“China isn’t our enemy anymore,” Anna said, scanning the menu. “They’re our competition. Besides, this place is owned by a Mallu and the waiters are all from Darjeeling.”

“Competition? Is that what it’s called these days?” Manav eyed her with amusement. “Whatever it is, the Chinese are winning.”

Anna snapped back at him in Hindi. “Now, who’s being unpatriotic? If you talk like that, I’ll have to report you.”

Manav laughed softly. “What are you going to do? Have my phone tapped?”

Ignoring him, Anna turned the page of the menu. “Burnt Garlic Prawns. Do you think they’re fresh?”

As she said this, two of the goldfish in the aquarium darted out of sight. Another tropical species, like a miniature shark, swam into view. Manav eyed it with a thoughtful expression. Anna could tell by the way he laced his fingers together that the pleasantries would soon be over. After the waiter took their order, Manav’s voice became businesslike and he spoke in a quiet, professional manner, explaining the reason for their meeting.

A week ago there had been an incident along the border in the mountains of Kumaon, near the Milam Glacier. Two jawans of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, who were manning an observation post at 5,000 meters above sea level, had been shot and killed. It wasn’t clear how many infiltrators there were or where they had gone. The only evidence IB had gathered was a discarded mountaineering jacket, which had been found by a goat herder on the bugiyal meadows above Munsiari. Manav showed Anna a photograph of the military arm patch on the jacket. Below a line of Chinese characters was a snarling visage of ferocity and cunning.

“Snow Leopard Unit. 12th Squadron,” Manav explained.

“Chinese special forces,” said Anna. “But aren’t they an antiterrorism unit?”

“It looks as if they’ve expanded their mandate.”

Half an hour later their plates were empty. Using his chopsticks, Manav plucked the last prawn from a nest of crispy noodles.

“So, my dear . . . you’re going on a holiday,” he said, glancing up with a wistful smile.

“Not possible,” said Anna. “I’m in the middle of this project. I can’t leave everything. We’ve got the voice signatures almost ready.”

“Then think of it as a honeymoon.”

“No way! We’re at a crucial point!” Anna shook her head defiantly, though she knew that Shinde wasn’t going to give her a choice.

“You haven’t even asked me where you’re going,” he said, twirling a toothpick between his fingers.

“I don’t care, Manav. It’s important we don’t lose momentum!”

“This is more important,” he said, then paused for several seconds. “Mussoorie.”

Anna made a face, not hiding her disappointment.

“Mussoorie?”

Six

“Situated at an invigorating 7,000 feet above sea level in the bucolic foothills of the Himalayas, Mussoorie is popularly known as ‘Queen of Hills,’ a title bestowed upon her modest yet seductive demeanor by generations of besotted admirers. With its salubrious climate and stupendous snow views, Mussoorie is a quaint and glorious haven for lovers of rustic, unspoiled nature. This pleasant, welcoming town is spread out along the crest of a meandering ridge, with comfortable hotels and charming cottages that offer incomparable delights for those who relish the quiet pleasures of a secluded alpine retreat—”

Karan had walked into the center of town to try and find a guidebook on Mussoorie. Browsing the shelves at the Cambridge Book Depot, this was the first he had opened, skimming the pages impatiently. Titled Majestic Mussoorie, it was written in an overblown style that seemed to use more adjectives than nouns and verbs combined. According to the blurb on the back, the author was Mr. Dharam Paul Khosla, a retired advertising executive and graduate of St. Stephen’s College and the prestigious Doon School, who made his home in Mussoorie. But beneath the florid style, the text was devoid of any useful information. Rather than provide helpful details and directions for a first-time visitor, Khosla seemed to want to do nothing more than “acquaint my dear readers with the poetic nuances of this hilly region.”

Setting this book aside, Karan picked another guide from the shelf—Mussoorie Then and Now. It looked more reliable, with the cover displaying an old photograph of the bandstand at Library Bazaar, with rickshaws and horses passing along the Mall Road. This book was written by an Englishman named Phythian Barnes, who lived in Dorset but visited India regularly. His only claim to authority was that his great grandfather had been a deputy commissioner in the 1920s. He seemed to have a collection of family photographs and letters written about Mussoorie, from which he quoted regularly and at length. Though the title of the book suggested some contemporary relevance, Barnes included very little about Mussoorie today, except for passing remarks about the town’s disfigurement and ruination, which he believed had followed Independence.

“It is safe, yet sad, to say,” he wrote in the introduction, “that Mussoorie’s best years are behind her. Where dandies, rickshaws, and coolies once trotted up the mossy paths, there is nothing but badly poured concrete. The Mall Road used to describe a gentle parabola around Gun Hill. Amorous couples could always find a moment of privacy in a shadowy corner of Camel’s Back Road, which is now overwhelmed by the worst kind of modern architecture, robbed of any aesthetic charms, an abysmal clutter of windows, balconies, fuse boxes and laundry lines. Even the quiet side streets of Mussoorie are overrun with boisterous, ill-mannered throngs of middle-class tourists. . . .”

Much of this book focused on colonial history. Phythian Barnes had obviously spent his time wandering through the graveyards of the hill station, where he had disinterred the stories of East India Company officers and social secretaries to the Maharajahs, a nostalgic ramble amid the moldering remains of the British Raj. Though a few of the pictures were interesting, including an old photograph from 1898 of Rokeby, the hotel where Karan was staying, he found himself irritated by the writer’s obsession with the past and his condescending prose.

“Mussoorie began as a humble potato patch, once farmed by Captain Young, a gallant Irish officer who survived the Ghurka wars and built the first shooting lodge in Landour, in 1826, at the top of what is now Mullingar Hill. It must have been a perfect spot to enjoy the brisk mountain air and set off on shikar in the surrounding hills, hunting panthers and mountain goats. Unfortunately, Captain Young’s estate is now a crumbling tenement slum, filled with Tibetan refugees and other castaways. . . .”

Karan stuffed the book back on the shelf, wondering why the British still felt any sense of entitlement in India.

Mussoorie and Landour