The Caretaker Read online

  “That … that was not necessary. I was going to give you the doll—”

  “You should have taken my last call, Mr. Singh. We’re not fooling around here. If you hand it over, we can have the charges dropped against your family. They’ll be released right away. You won’t get an apology, of course. Those people never apologize.”

  Who in the Guru’s name are these men? Stall them.

  “I … I don’t have it with me. I can give it to you tomorrow morning.”

  There is a silence, then a deep sigh. “We’re not fools, Mr. Singh. I hope this isn’t some bullshit delaying tactic.”

  “No, no. I’ll give it to you. I don’t want my family deported—”

  “We know that you’re in Boston. We’ll call you at nine A.M. and tell you where to meet us. Or else your family goes back to India. And from what we’ve learned, you don’t want that, right?”

  “What do you mean?”

  There is a faint chuckle. “We did some research, Mr. Singh. We know all about your illustrious military career in India. You certainly don’t want your family to go back there, do you?”

  Ranjit’s head spins. How the hell had they found out about him?

  “Oh, and one more thing. Don’t try to contact the Senator. He’s a busy man. We don’t need to fill his ears with fairy stories, do we?”

  There is a dry chuckle and the phone goes dead.

  Breathing hard, Ranjit walks slowly down the dark alley, thinking about what will happen to his family if they are sent back to India. “Sergeant,” he whispers, “help me. What do I do now?”

  A faint breeze blows down the alley, rustling stray newspapers and stirring up the smell of old urine.

  “Is this my answer, Sergeant? Have you left me alone in this battle?”

  The breeze blows stronger, and Ranjit lifts his head and sniffs the air; mixed in with all the other smells is something hard and clean, like the steel blade of a knife. It is going to snow soon, not just a snowstorm, but a blizzard.

  As he emerges from the alley, still sniffing the air, he almost runs into a group of teenagers in dark hooded sweatshirts and combat boots. A tall boy with tattooed arms mimics Ranjit, raising his nose to the air.

  “Hey, bro,” the boy says, “you gotta stop sniffing glue. It’ll rot your brain. Get some Colt 45 like the other bums.”

  The kids crowd around Ranjit, stamping their feet and slapping each other on the back. They have seen his grease-stained jacket and dirty baseball cap and assumed that he is one of the winos who hang around the 7-Eleven.

  “Get the hell out of my way.” Ranjit’s voice is harsh, his hands balled into fists.

  “Yo, we were just kidding. Relax, man…”

  The kids step aside, and he walks away quickly, his face burning with anger. He walks fast all the way down Massachusetts Avenue, and by the time he reaches the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he is freezing, the scar on his thumb beginning to throb. He needs to stop, to figure out what he’s going to do next. After walking up the stairs of MIT’s white neoclassical building, he enters its vast marble lobby. Slumping down on a bench, he tries to think through his next move, but all he can remember is coming here with Shanti.

  She’d stood with him in this lobby, staring at the fluted columns soaring four floors to the curved dome above. They had walked through the long corridors, and he had pointed out the brightly lit computer labs crowded with Chinese and Indian kids. “When you grow up,” he’d told her, “you can study here, become an engineer or a doctor. You don’t have to work in a store like me.”

  Now she is gone, snatched away, and all he could do was watch. What is he going to do now?

  One thing is clear: if those men have the power to deport his family, they can easily have him deported, too. As soon as he hands over the doll, he is finished.

  He needs to get off the streets, to disappear. Thrusting his hands deep into his coat pockets, he heads back out into the cold. He crosses the Massachusetts Avenue bridge across the dark Charles River and heads toward Chinatown.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The overheated fifth-floor room at the Garibaldi Hotel costs thirty bucks a night. It barely has room for a metal-framed bed and a scarred wooden dresser, but at least it has a window with a view of Chinatown’s rooftops. When Ranjit tries to heave it open, he discovers that many coats of white paint have jammed it permanently shut.

  Giving up, he looks outside: as he predicted, it has started snowing. A thick layer already coats the rooftops, and the tall brick chimneys look like sentries, each wearing a white helmet of snow. Down below he sees a sliver of sidewalk, bright with reflected neon, where a group of elderly Chinese men wait for the evening bus to the Foxwoods Casino. They stamp their feet to keep warm, and their harsh, excited voices drift up to him.

  He prays that there is a window wherever they have taken Preetam and Shanti. He has heard stories about the deportation centers, mainly old prisons, where two or three families are crowded into a single cell. There is only one break a day to go outside and see the sun, and as deportation looms, suicides are common.

  Anxiety begins to bubble up, but he pushes it aside. He has to stay calm and think this through. After all, he has the doll, and the men desperately want it.

  It sits on top of the dresser under a bare bulb, casting its looming shadow on the wall. He picks it up and examines its staring painted eyes, flat nose made of two whorls of porcelain, and cheeks puffed out like pillows. It is made to be a caricature but still manages to have the shrewd expression of a survivor.

  When he pulls off its clothes, the brittle lace skirts leave faint crumbles on his fingertips. Its arms and face are painted dark brown, but the body underneath is shining white porcelain. Could this ugly thing be valuable? Unlike the dolls that Anna had shown Shanti, this one has no maker’s mark, or any other clue to its origin.

  He remembers the piece of paper clutched in Ricky’s hand and decides to call him. He needs all the information he can get before he formulates a plan.

  He’s about to dial when he suddenly hears a cough, so loud that it seems to be coming from his own room. Mystified, he looks around: the room is tiny but high-ceilinged, and the scalloped plaster molding at the tops of the walls ends abruptly at the back wall. He realizes that this was once a much larger room, now subdivided, and that the wall by his bed is just a thin Sheetrock partition. Anything he says will be clearly audible next door.

  Taking out his cell phone, he walks to the window and dials.

  Ricky’s querulous voice answers after eight rings. “Ranjit Mausa? Ohmigod. You don’t know what happened after you left. They…”

  “I saw it all.” Ranjit keeps his voice flat. “Now listen. The men from Homeland Security. Did they leave a deportation notice?”

  “A what?”

  “I saw a piece of paper in your hand. What did it say?”

  “Ohmigod, what are we going to do? Why is this happening?” The boy’s voice quivers.

  “Ricky. Get a grip. Find that piece of paper and tell me what it said.”

  “Okay, okay, it’s here…” There is a shuffling noise. “It says, ‘You are deportable under section 237 (a) 2(A)(iii)—”

  “Skip that part.”

  “Okay, okay. ‘… you have been charged with illegally overstaying a tourist visa. The Department is serving you with this Final Administrative Removal Order without a hearing before an Immigration judge. You will be remanded to the Norfolk County Correctional Center and may be represented—at no expense to the United States Government—by counsel, authorized to practice in this proceeding. If you wish legal advice and cannot afford it…’”

  “Does it say how soon they’ll be deported?”

  “Let me see … let me see … Oh yeah, here, ‘You have the right to remain in the United States for fourteen calendar days so that you may file a petition for review of this order to the appropriate U.S. Circuit Court … If you fear torture in any specific country or countries…’”r />
  “Enough.” The man on the phone had lied to him when he said ten days. Not that another four days are going to make a difference.

  In the background, Ranjit can hear Lallu talking on another line, using his outraged, bullying tone.

  “Your father is back? What is he doing?”

  “He is talking to his lawyer. You know, that guy, Mike Donohue, downtown.”

  Ranjit closes his eyes. Donohue is a small-time immigration lawyer who obtains specialty visas for cooks in Indian restaurants. He won’t be able to do a damn thing.

  “Mausa? Mausa, are you there? What are we going to do?”

  “I need to think this through. Don’t tell your father about this conversation. I’ll call you as soon as I figure something out.”

  Ranjit hangs up and stares out of the window. The snow is falling faster now, erasing the sky, and powerful gusts rattle the windowpane.

  He’s safe here for tonight, but tomorrow the man with the strangely garbled voice is expecting him to hand over the doll. Then what? A bullet in his head, or a call that has him bundled into one of those white SUVs.

  The only path of action left is to involve Senator Neals. If the Senator isn’t aware of the value of this doll, he’ll be glad to discover it now. He should call the Senator, explain the situation, and ask for help. But it will mean telling the Senator about living in his house, and that part isn’t going to go over well.

  No choice. He hunts through his wallet and finds the Senator’s crisp business card. He calls the number on it and a woman’s voice answers instantly.

  “Senator Neals’s answering service.”

  “This is Ranjit Singh, the Senator’s caretaker from Martha’s Vineyard. I need to talk to him. Urgently.”

  “This is his answering service. Do you want to leave a message?”

  “Please, I need to talk to the Senator. There is a huge problem with his house.”

  “What is the problem you are referring to?”

  “I have to see the Senator personally. Tell him it involves his valuable doll collection.”

  The woman says, “Please hold.”

  He listens to the buzzing silence. When the woman comes back onto the line her voice is sharper. “Where are you now?”

  “I’m in Boston.”

  “Wait.” Silence again. Outside, snow is piling up on the windowsill, and Ranjit has the urge to force the window open and sweep it away with his hand.

  The woman’s voice clicks back in. “The Senator has a few minutes tomorrow before his official schedule begins. Seven-thirty A.M. Come to the JFK Federal Building on Cambridge Street. Check in at the lobby. I’ll put you on the list.”

  “Yes, thank you, I appreciate—” The phone goes dead.

  He sits down on the creaking bed. Somewhere on the other side of the wall the coughing starts again, interspersed with gasping breaths.

  He will just hand over the doll, tell Senator Neals the truth, and ask for help; surely a U.S. Senator has some influence with the immigration authorities? But will Neals believe his story, or think that he is crazy, and have him arrested for trespassing?

  There is no choice now. Best to get some sleep and be ready for tomorrow.

  He puts the knife on the floor beneath the bed, noticing that its rope handle has darkened with the dead dog’s blood. Taking off his cracked boots, he strips to his undershirt and slides under the threadbare blue blanket. His long hair, unwashed now for three days, is beginning to smell musty.

  He tosses and turns, listening to the person coughing next door. From other rooms down the hall he can hear the faint wail of music and the murmur of a television talk show. It occurs to him that once again he is alone, and in the company of men. When he checked in, he’d seen some men sitting in the lobby, playing cards by the light of the flickering Christmas tree, and they had looked up, their faces pale and listless. He’s talked to such men in Central Square, and their stories all followed the same arc: drugs, jail, or divorce estranged them from their families and left them alone on the streets. It frightens him how easily families fragment in America, leaving the survivors isolated.

  He lies on the hard bed, replaying the same scene over and over: the SUVs screeching up, the anguished look on Preetam’s face, the terrified way that Shanti hung her head. I will find a way to free them, he tells himself, and we will be together once more.

  The coughing in the next room continues. Past midnight he just can’t take it anymore and bangs on the wall. The coughing stops briefly, and during the few moments of silence he slips into a deep, troubled sleep.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The sun is rising over the Siachen Glacier when the Captain and his men reach a sheer ice face. The Captain climbs alone, and his men wait for him to reach the top and lower a rope down.

  No one else has ever climbed this route, but he doesn’t let that thought cloud his mind. He focuses on the enemy target, which is very close now, somewhere up there.

  It is so cold that his beard freezes from the moisture of his breathing. He wills himself to become an automaton, an extension of his two ice axes and the toothed crampons on his feet. He lifts one foot, drives the crampon deep into the ice, swings an ice ax, and anchors it above him. Pulling himself up, he finds another foothold, then swings the second ice ax and repeats the motion.

  The carabiners in his belt tinkle with each move. Every hundred feet or so he stops and checks the ice, and if it is firm, he chips a hole and twists in a long ice screw. Clipping a carabiner to the screw, he slips his climbing rope through it, and establishes one more point of connection to the mountain. If he falls from this height, the last belay point will catch him and leave him dangling in the air. In theory, he will be saved, but he knows he is too tired and frozen to scrabble back to the cliff face.

  His mind grows mercifully blank. There are no thoughts of Private Dewan or of the mission, nothing except him and the mountain. He climbs to the howling of the wind and the chip chip chip of his ice axes.

  It takes him over three hours to reach the top.

  He is the first man to climb this route, but there are no flags to plant, no pictures to be taken. Hauling himself over the edge, he lies on his back, and the sun shines into his face and blinds him. His awareness of the mission returns, and he wishes that he could leave this mess behind and just keep on climbing upward, climb right into the thin blue sky …

  Twisting his body, he looks down the other side of the mountain. On a ridge directly below is the enemy post, very close to the coordinates given to him at the briefing.

  After all this secrecy, he has expected the enemy outpost to be something elaborate, but it is simply a long slit trench covered in gauzy white camouflage netting. At one end, sandbags surround a long-barreled artillery piece, and at the other end are three fiberglass igloos and a lavatory tent. From up here he can see men scuttling around the gun, and then it recoils. It takes a second before he hears the boom and sees the shell arcing out into the air.

  So this is what the fuss was all about: a hidden artillery position.

  The Captain sits up and hammers both axes deep into the ice. He hauls up a thick rope and knots it firmly over the ax heads, tugging to make sure that the anchor point will hold. Using this guiding rope, the men climb up slowly, arriving one by one. Two hours later, the last man is Sergeant Khandelkar, blue-faced and wheezing.

  The Sergeant squints through his binoculars and then lowers them disgustedly. “Too far away, sir. Can’t really see those bastards. Should I radio in for confirmation?”

  The Captain knows that all their radio frequencies are monitored by the Pakis. Within minutes of breaching radio silence, the post below will be alerted. And if they manage to swivel that gun around before the jets arrive …

  “That post is the only damn thing in the sector they gave us. Call in the air strike.”

  Khandelkar pauses. “Sir, permission to take the radio and climb down two hundred meters before calling it in. If they pinpoint the transmi
ssion, at least they’ll be firing too low.”

  “Sergeant, I can’t allow that, it’s too dangerous.”

  “Sir, we cannot risk losing you. You are the only one who can get the men back down. Me, I’m expendable.”

  The Sergeant is right, as always. “All right, but don’t get too close. The planes will bomb the whole ridge.”

  The Sergeant climbs down slowly, the radio strapped to his back, and soon his snowsuit merges with the white of the mountain.

  On the post below, the enemy soldiers are oblivious. One of them heads to the latrine tent, and the Captain’s men chuckle when they see this.

  “Poor bastard,” a soldier says, “one moment he’s taking a shit, the next moment, he’s dead. Hope he’s done by then. I’d hate to die in the middle.”

  “They killed Dewan, they deserve it,” another says quietly.

  They wait, heads down, watching the post through binoculars.

  Above them snow blows off the ragged peaks of the Sia Kangri and clouds flit through the sky, casting patches of shadow that alternate with sparkling sunshine. Existence up here is reduced to light and dark, to something elemental; no wonder the Hindus believe that these mountains are the abode of the gods.

  Their reverie is broken by the hum of engines. Two planes fly in from the east, silver specks high in the blue sky.

  The men grow tense. Knowing Sergeant Khandelkar, he will have crept as close as possible to the enemy position, and the Captain prays that he will be spared by the falling bombs.

  The Jaguar jets are now clearly visible, long-nosed missiles slung under their stubby wings.

  The enemy base below seems unconcerned. Their encampment merges easily with the rock and snow, hiding them from high-flying planes; jets from both sides probably fly over them regularly, unaware of their existence.

  Without warning, the Jaguars launch their missiles. The men at the post stop and stare upward. A man runs out of a tent and waves his arms above his head, signaling, Air attack, air attack.