The Caretaker Page 27

  The Senator takes a deep breath. “All right. Loosen the ropes, I can’t feel my hands.”

  Ranjit puts an arm around the man’s shoulders and heaves him upright, reaching behind him to create some slack in the rope. The Senator scuttles to the edge of the seat, but pitches forward as he tries to get out of the car. Ranjit grabs him under his armpits, feeling a jolt of pain. He guides the Senator up the icy stairs, his free hand holding the shotgun.

  The front door is open. Good thinking, Anna. Ranjit pushes the Senator down the long, dark hallway toward the kitchen.

  “Anna,” he calls out. “I’m bringing the Senator with me. Where are you?”

  “I’m here.”

  There is a flicker of motion at the end of the corridor. Anna is standing behind the long plank table, her hands resting on its top, her dark eyes fixed on the Senator’s advancing figure. Behind her the alarm cupboard is open, the screen showing the Mercedes parked outside.

  The Senator stops his steady shuffle. He turns abruptly to Ranjit.

  “She’s with you? I knew it. Bitch. Fucking bitch.”

  “Just keep walking, Senator.” Ranjit pushes the barrels of the shotgun into the Senator’s back.

  As they pass the dark entrance to the living room there is a soft footfall behind Ranjit. Something hard and metallic is thrust into the back of his neck.

  Everything freezes.

  The Senator is in mid-stride, the shotgun jammed into his back. Ranjit is behind him, the unmistakable, icy barrel of a handgun pushing into the skin of his neck.

  “Drop the shotgun. Do it.” A careful, slurred voice.

  The shotgun falls from Ranjit’s hand and clatters onto the floor.

  The Senator turns, and relief floods through his dark face. “Kohonen. Thank God.”

  Kohonen articulates each word. “Keep walking, Mr. Singh. Into the kitchen. Slowly.”

  The Senator is the first into the kitchen, and walks over to the wall with the copper pots, while Kohonen pushes Ranjit into the middle of the kitchen. Anna is still standing, hugging herself tightly as she stares at a piece of paper lying on the table. She glances from it to the Senator, her eyes red and angry.

  The Senator’s voice is a rasp. “Matti. Thank God. Untie me. This bastard tried to kill me at the house. I got away on the boat—”

  “Senator, that’s not true, I—”

  “Shut up! And Anna’s with him. She’s working with him.”

  “I know. I know.” Kohonen steps through the doorway. He’s smiling, his teeth white and perfect. He’s dressed for a weekend at an English country house, in gray tweed trousers and a quilted green Barbour jacket. The only discordant note is the sling that starts at his shoulder and wraps around his right hand: an army-issue Colt .45 automatic pokes out of the sling, and Ranjit’s shotgun is in his left hand.

  He walks over and puts the shotgun down on the table, right in front of Anna.

  “No!” the Senator shouts. “Anna’s with him! She told him about Korea, he knows—”

  “Clayton.” Anna’s voice is soft and quivering. “Why did you lie to me?” She points at the piece of paper on the table. “It says six inches of water.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” The Senator’s face takes on a hunted look. “Kohonen, untie me. Anna, you’re crazy. I don’t know—”

  “I’m the crazy one? I’m crazy?” Her hands are a blur as she swings the shotgun to her shoulder.

  A blue muzzle flash. A deafening roar fills Ranjit’s ears.

  The Senator rises onto his toes, picked up by an invisible hand. He slams backward, clanging against the copper pots, then slides to the floor, polished copper cascading around him. Like a magic trick, blood wells from his chest, oozes from a dozen puckered wounds on his face.

  Anna lowers the shotgun. Kohonen walks up to her and in one quick motion she hands the shotgun to him, then falls back into a kitchen chair.

  What?

  Kohonen tucks the Colt into his waistband and puts an arm around Anna’s shoulder, the shotgun aimed at Ranjit’s head.

  No, this cannot be happening. Not Anna. No.

  The Senator lies slumped on the floor. His hands are still roped together behind his back and dark blood puddles around him, filling the white joints of the stone floor.

  Ranjit waits, motionless, for the end.

  * * *

  Time stands still, as it used to in combat. Seconds like hours. But all the frantic calculations he does only come back to one thing: Anna. In the Guru’s name, why?

  The woman he had made love to sits behind the table, her eyes extinguished. She has gone, has retreated into her dark hiding place.

  Ranjit keeps his voice steady. “Anna. Listen to me. Clayton is bleeding to death. We need to get him to a hospital.”

  She does not reply. The shotgun in Kohonen’s hand remains pointed at Ranjit.

  “Anna, listen to me. He’s losing a lot of blood. You were angry, you made a mistake, but you can save him—”

  “Let him die. The bastard.” She spits out the words. “He killed her.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Her voice is hollow, about to crack. “Josephine. She drowned. In six inches of water.”

  “Anna, it was an accident. It said so in the papers.”

  “He told me it was an accident. He told me that the pool was full. But it was almost empty. Look at the coroner’s report. It said she drowned in six inches of water.” She wipes a trembling hand over her face, as though trying to brush away a cobweb.

  He can see the anger still burning in her; if she could, she would pick up the shotgun and shoot him again.

  Ranjit takes a step forward. “Kohonen, you showed her that? You’re sick, you’re manipulating her.”

  Anna’s face crumples. “He burnt all Jojo’s photographs. One day I came home, and they were gone. He even took her picture out of my pocketbook. He said I was stuck in the past, he said I needed to move on. Now I can’t remember her face anymore. I can’t remember my baby…”

  Kohonen frowns. “No closer, Mr. Singh. That is enough, Anna.” He squeezes her shoulder. “You didn’t have to shoot him. That was stupid. But don’t worry, I’ll take care of it. Let’s talk in the living room.” He motions Ranjit toward the corridor. “And unlike those two fools, I won’t miss at this range.”

  Ranjit can tell from the Senator’s shallow, gasping breathing that he has fifteen, perhaps twenty minutes left. And it was he who led the Senator to his death.

  * * *

  The living room is dark, except for the fading light from the French doors. Ranjit sits in an armchair covered with a white dust cover, his hands resting in plain sight on its wide arms. Anna sits across from him, and Kohonen stands in front of the French doors, rocking back and forth on his heels, his injured hand caressing the silver engraving of the shotgun.

  The two of them have been working together all this time. That day at Filene’s Basement they were probably discussing how to lure him in. Then, at Harvard, Kohonen must have alerted her that he was in the audience. He remembers that Anna had looked at her phone constantly; she had even left the lecture so he could approach her. How could he have been so blind?

  He looks at Anna, sitting curled into the armchair, her dark hair tousled, her eyes blank, staring out of the French doors. He feels again her lips on his, her taut body against his, her words in the darkness mingling with his. It is as though he has been expelled from a warm, safe place.

  “Anna, why are you doing this? Please?”

  She turns her head away, and his disbelief gives way to a white flash of anger. “Damn it, Anna, all these days … you…”

  Her voice is barely audible. “I asked you to go away with me. We could have left while there was time. You were the one who wanted to see it through…” She stares down at the floor and her voice trails off.

  With a shock, he realizes that if he had agreed, she would really have gone with him to Brazil. He hears the wind outside, and
has a mental flash of the empty rocking chairs on the porch, moving slowly back and forth.

  He turns to Kohonen. “You’re responsible for this, you can’t just kill a United States Senator and get away with it.”

  Kohonen shrugs and smooths back a strand of long blond hair. “The Senator isn’t really the issue. I talked to Anna”—Kohonen smiles at her—“before you got here, and we have a proposition for you. A business proposition.”

  Ranjit leans forward, his face red with anger. “You sent those two men to kill me. And the Senator.”

  Kohonen raises one hand, palm out, the gesture of a man trying to be reasonable.

  “Yes, you’re right. I hired the Nash brothers.” He shrugs and smiles apologetically. “You did a good job of vanishing in Boston, Mr. Singh. I thought you might be back on the island, and I talked to a cop in West Tisbury. Nice guy, an Officer Gardner. He told me an interesting story about how you’d stumbled into some sort of robbery, identified two local hoodlums. He said they’d be arrested any day now.

  “It was serendipitous, really. I found the Nash brothers, half starved out in Chappaquiddick, told them that I’d get them off the island if they did a job for me. They were glad to help me out. For some reason, they didn’t like you very much, Mr. Singh. The Senator was extra.” He shrugs again. “It would have looked like another botched robbery. If it’s any consolation to you, I was going to let those two take the fall for it. They were going to spend the rest of their lives in jail anyway.”

  Anna’s anguished voice comes from behind Ranjit. “I didn’t know he was going to do that. He said that once you handed the microfilm over, he would let you go—”

  A look of irritation passes over Kohonen’s pale face. “Anna, pull yourself together. What’s done is done. Mr. Singh, you’re a military man, I’m sure you understand my logic. You were no good to me once you gave the microfilm back. The Senator—well, the Koreans want him dead. He really pissed them off.” His voice is still reasonable. “My point is, Mr. Singh, you have the microfilm, and I need it. I’ll pay you for it. How does ten million sound?”

  “That one frame of microfilm is worth ten million dollars to you?”

  Kohonen glances at Anna. “She didn’t tell you the full story, did she?”

  “No. She didn’t.” Come closer, Kohonen, come closer, keep talking. Ranjit’s shoulders tense. He can dive from here, tackle him …

  But Kohonen backs up, his fingers caressing the silver engraving on the shotgun.

  “Back in India, I was the one who did all the hard work, I used all my connections to get the microfilms for the Agni missile. Of course, the Senator was the hero, he got all the glory.”

  Kohonen gestures at the next room. “That’s the problem with Clayton Neals. He thinks that if he says something enough times, it’s true. You heard all those stories about growing up poor in Roxbury, how his father was an undertaker? That’s bullshit, his father owned a string of funeral parlors.” His face is flushed now.

  “Now me, I did grow up poor. You know how I lost my hearing? Measles. Where I grew up, they didn’t inoculate the kids. And you know how far a deaf man can go in the CIA? Once I washed out of there, what was I supposed to do? Security details for rock stars? I don’t think so … but I’m digressing.”

  He smiles, showing his perfect white teeth. “Once we were done with the negotiations, we were supposed to destroy the microfilms, but the Senator kept the whole set, in case we had to deal with the Indians again. And that started me thinking. We had the microfilms, nobody knew about it, and the damn things were worth a lot of money. You know how much the Iraqis would have paid for them? Or the Libyans? But the Senator, he would never do something like that. The son of a bitch wouldn’t even tell me where he hid them. He’s an honorable guy, right?

  “Then the North Korean hostage situation showed up, and it was perfect. I talked to them, and negotiated a pretty good deal: they would return the hostage—and give me a nice finder’s fee—if I gave them the Agni microfilms. Sure, they were almost ten years old, but, hey, the missile worked, it did the job.

  “Of course I didn’t tell the Senator that. I told him that they would trade the hostage for medicine and machine parts, and he jumped at the deal. And once we were there, I said that the Koreans had reneged, that they wanted military information, something big. So now the Senator was really in a bind. Either he came up with the microfilms, or he returned with a dead hostage. Once his ass was on the line, it wasn’t a hard decision.”

  He chuckles. “I gave the North Koreans the whole set of microfilm, they gave us the hostage, it was a done deal. I got paid, Neals was supposed to go home and get reelected. Everybody was supposed to be happy. But the Senator”— he gestures at the next room—“he went and fucked it all up.

  “On the plane ride back he told me what he’d done. Matti, he said, I couldn’t go through with it. What happens if those bastards actually build that missile, point it at South Korea? We’ll be sucked into a nuclear war. He’d kept the microfilm for the wiring of the guidance system. Without it, the missile is useless, it won’t track. Can you imagine pulling a stupid stunt like that?

  “I mean, even with the microfilm, the North Koreans can’t build the damn missile. Half of them are eating bugs, they have no food, no medicine. How in God’s name are they going to precision-engineer a missile?

  “But even they finally figured out that one frame was missing. They asked nicely for it, but Neals wouldn’t budge. He said he’d burnt the microfilm, but I knew he was lying. He always likes to have an ace hidden up his sleeve.” Kohonen sighs, and waves his free hand. “The rest is mundane. The Koreans were after my ass, so I searched the house in the Vineyard, top to bottom, couldn’t find a damn thing. Then Anna remembered the doll, but when we went back for it, there you were, Mr. Singh. You and your pesky little daughter.”

  Anna is sitting motionless behind them, her head held in her hands. As Kohonen talks, he draws nearer to Ranjit.

  “What do you say, Mr. Singh? Ten million? I’m being generous here. That is the same amount Anna is getting.”

  Ranjit thinks of Neals dying in the next room and is suddenly exhausted at the stupidity of it all; ten million will barely buy a water view on the Vineyard. In any case, as soon as Kohonen has the microfilm, he will kill Anna too, and take all the money.

  “All right,” Ranjit says. “All right. You let my family go, and I’ll give you the microfilm.”

  Kohonen shrugs, a small, elegant gesture. “Too late for your family, I’m afraid. The deportation procedures are under way. It was easy enough to tip off Homeland Security, but getting them to stop … well, if the Senator called, that would be another matter. But he’s not really in great shape, is he?”

  Blood floods into Ranjit’s face. He thinks of Preetam and Shanti being escorted onto a plane, the General waiting at the other end.

  “There’s no need to worry. Ten million should be able to buy you plenty of protection in India. Now, where did you hide it?”

  Ranjit fights down his anger. Take the enemy onto your terrain, where you have the advantage. He remembers Anna telling him about a hidden slush fund, and the Senator at the house saying, Give it to me and I’ll pay you for it. I have money inside … And then he knows what he has to do.

  “It’s at the Senator’s house,” he says. “I hid it there.”

  “That’s more like it.” Kohonen gestures Ranjit to get up. “Anna, pull yourself together, you’re driving. Let’s go. And remember, we are all partners now.”

  They walk outside and Anna slides into the driver’s seat of the Mercedes, with Ranjit next to her. Kohonen sits in the back with one ankle crossed over his knee, the shotgun pointed at the base of Ranjit’s neck.

  “Step on it, we don’t have much time left.”

  She turns the ignition and the Mercedes jerks forward, gravel spraying.

  As they go through the gate, Ranjit knows that neither of them has noticed. While leaving the house, Kohone
n was focused on getting out quickly, and Anna walked as though in a trance. Ranjit had looked down the long hallway, one quick glance, but he was sure of what he’d seen.

  Incredibly, the Senator was no longer slumped against the kitchen wall. Across the floor was smeared a trail of blood that led out of sight.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  There are no other cars on the road. Anna drives blindly, taking the turns very wide, the intricate steering mechanism of the Mercedes instantly correcting. For long stretches of time she drives down the middle of the road.

  Her foot presses down on the accelerator. Seventy. Seventy-five. The car surges effortlessly through the narrow stretch separating the waters of Menemsha and Squibnocket ponds. Eighty, eighty-five. Dusk is falling over the island, and if another car were to come toward them …

  “Anna, please slow down. Please.” Ranjit speaks softly.

  “He’s right.” Kohonen’s voice comes from the back. “Not so fast.”

  With a start, Anna eases off the accelerator and the car instantly slows. The details of her daughter’s death seem to have taken her into so much pain that even pulling the trigger hasn’t released her anger. Ranjit has to somehow bring her back to reality, otherwise both of them will soon be dead.

  “Anna, I’m sorry about what happened to Josephine. Truly sorry.”

  She does not even look at him. “That’s what they all say. Why are you sorry? You didn’t know her.”

  “Mr. Singh, I didn’t realize you liked to talk so much.” Kohonen’s voice comes from the backseat.

  Ranjit ignores him and keeps talking, his voice soft and comforting. “Don’t forget that I have a daughter. What was Josephine like?”

  Anna glances at him from the corner of her eyes. Does she recognize him now?

  There is a long silence. Houses blur by, their windows darkened. No lights shine across the road, no dogs bark. The very land, shadowy and uninhabited, is conspiring against him, just when he needs to fill her mind with thoughts of life.