The Kashmir Trap (27 page)

“After David's death, Patterson's glory might slip through his fingers if he told us or the police.”

“Exactly.”

I've become just like him. I feel just what he felt.

Better yet, David wanted to leave all the credit to someone else.

 

 

F
loral
arrangements decorated the ballroom at the Sheraton Centre, marigolds in particular. The flags of India and Canada were crossed on the walls and behind the bar. There was the usual crowd of businesspeople, predictably drab save the turbans and saris that added the occasional splash of colour; the waiters weaving in and out with non-alcoholic drinks and vegetarian hors d'oeuvres; the familiar drone of trivial chit-chat; the murmur of banalities that run endlessly through such events. In a room several stories higher, Max was dialling his cellphone, letting it ring for a few seconds, worried about having to leave a message, but at last he got an answer: a weak, barely audible “Yes” drowned by the noise in the hall.

“Vandana, I need your help.”

He imagined her sidling away from the crowd, looking for a quieter spot. As the noise faded, he realized she was in the corridor.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“Right here in the hotel, I have to get out of the country, and you must help me.”

Silence from Vandana. Hesitation. The fish was circling the bait, ready to bite. Would she?

“One hour. Suite 2201.”

She was on the hook, and Max could practically hear her wriggling down there. Too late for Vandana now. All it took was a net and a sizzling pan.

Max ended the call and turned to the armchair Luc Roberge had comfortably sunk into, frowning nevertheless. He'd made a point of being out of the way while Max talked to Vandana. His older uniformed sidekick, Morel, cap in hand, was playing practically dead over by the window, like his boss. Bruno Mancini, the man in charge of the Patterson investigation, stood next to Max, who had called him a few hours earlier.

“I know who did Patterson,” he'd told him. “I'll help you arrest the killer, but you've got to let me run this thing.”

“And why would I do that?” asked Mancini with a slight Italian accent.

“Because you'll also get the killer of David O'Brien.”

Mancini was interested but cautious. “Trust a con artist? What do you take me for, O'Brien?”

“In exchange, I surrender to Roberge, so he can finally retire to Florida. That way you're rid of him, too. What's not to like?”

Mancini hesitated, but finally agreed, Roberge, too, and now they had him covered with machine guns for eyes. Roberge spoke first.

“Well, you got guts,” he said from the depths of the chair.

“Aw, it's nothing. Only doing my job.”

Moments before, Mancini had picked up Max and Indrani from the Loblaw's underground parking near the old Jean Talon train station, and she'd retold her story, convincingly. Indrani was to be put up in another hotel — well guarded — in case Bhargava's men tried anything. But soon the truth would be out and she wouldn't have to be afraid of her father anymore. In the police car, Indrani watched Max with admiration. He wasn't used to doing this as himself, instead of one of his asssumed identities. It felt funny, and he seemed to be the most important person she knew.

Indrani was to be put up in another one — well guarded — in case Bhargava's men tried anything. Soon she wouldn't have to be afraid of her father, and the truth would be out.

Mancini had the présence of mind to move Max through the shipping entrance. When the elevator doors opened on the fourth floor for an employee, Max caught a glimpse of High Commissioner Raymond Bernatchez summing up the commercial links between the two countries, and Max could imagine the enraptured attendees, slightly drunk of course, just drooling to sign a contract. Sooner rather than later, the scandal was going to hit them between the eyes, but for now they were still being jollied along.

Mancini had turned one of the suites into his operational headquarters. This was where Max phoned Vandana. Roberge, of course, wanted to arrest him then and there, while he finally had him, but he couldn't interfere with Mancini's plan to catch Patterson's killer. A simple courtesy under the circumstances. Roberge could hardly refuse him those extra moments of suspense. Still it rankled. This was Mancini's operation.

In turn, Max couldn't resist a smile at Roberge's resignation, like a child impatient to play with his Christmas toys.

“Now,” said Mancini, “to pluck the fruit.”

A young woman came in with a miniature recorder and mic in her hand. Max unbuttoned his shirt, helped her stick the mic to his chest, and slipped the recorder into his back pocket. Another frustrated smile from Roberge, who promptly turned his back as Mancini helped Max into his jacket. Max was eerily calm. He realized now why he'd felt uneasy in Philippe's office in San Salvador. He couldn't get over his own powerlessness to catch up with the killers and make them pay. This time, he was going to make it work, get David's murderer and in a way fulfill his promise to Philippe. He couldn't care less about prison at this point, and anyway, his sacrifice was a way to give meaning to David's and Philippe's sacrifices as well. Max was the final runner in this relay, and in finding Indrani he was picking up where David left off. David, who had done the same for Philippe. The three of them now reunited in Max's efforts and dedication.

Mancini looked at his watch. It was time to go. He took Max to the door, where Roberge's colleague grabbed his arm.

“I lost thirty-seven thousand dollars because of you,” Morel exclaimed. “I was supposed to retire two years ago, so if you're blowing smoke …”

As they got out of the elevator, Mancini looked all around, but there was no one. To the left, at one door, a meal tray with bread basket and empty coffee pot lying on its side. They turned right. Mancini had men on all four corners of the floor and the hotel's main exits. Suite 2201 was on the left. Max glanced at Mancini, who signalled him on before disappearing. Max knocked and Vandana opened the door. She was back to that wary look she had the first time they met at the High Commission.

She was very good at it. No wonder Max had been fooled.

“Let's get something straight right off, Vandana. You'r sister's told me everything.”

Her face fell. No more need to lie.

“Where is she?”

“Safe.”

“What do you want?”

“A deal. You give me the names of David's murderers, and I'll tell you where Indrani is. Your family history is none of my concern.”

She went over to the window, while Max stayed in position by the door, not venturing in. Then she turned to him.

“'You feel let down. I understand,” she said.

“Why'd you make it so easy for me?”

“What?”

“You were the one who told me David wasn't in Kathmandu, who told me all about the Durgas and Hindu extremism … and your father.”

She shrugged. “You'd've found out about Kathmandu eventually, and one phone call to the Canadian Co­­operation Office would've told you I was hiding something. Same thing for the Durgas. At least this way, I could avoid suspicion and influence your search.”

“Because of course you knew David had brought Indrani back from Srinagar, and when you realized that, and also about Patterson being his accomplice, same as Juliette and me …”

“All he had to do was mind his own business.”

“So you could carry on yours unhindered. You were the one who gave your father the idea of holding SCI to ransom.”

“One way to get financing, as good as any other.”

“Better than others, because you were already in place at the High Commission to shepherd the file through
oh-so
-discreetly.”

“Well, along with yours truly,” said William Sandmill.

Max felt the muzzle of a pistol against his neck. He turned slowly, fighting to keep his cool. A heavy guy with no light in his eyes accompanied the first secretary, who was standing slightly back. Then he stepped forward.

“Rodger may have laid it on a bit thick with Zaheer, I agree, but at least Patterson didn't require his attention.”

Morency smiled.

“Patterson unfortunately didn't have time to answer our questions, but today it's different.”

Sandmill and Vandana, partners in crime, with Sandmill discreetly investing his money in a Portuguese
quinta
, a vineyard he planned to retire to when his tour was over, smiling as he spelled it out. Vandana, of course, was doing it in the name of her father and extremism.

“Your perspicacity amazes me,” he went on. “Impressive, in fact. Vandana and I made the mistake of underestimating you at the outset. The first time in Delhi, I didn't think you'd go the distance by a long shot, but when you got away from that plane, well.”

“What do you do for an encore? Kill me outright just like that in a hotel full of conference-goers?” said Max.

Sandmill smiled. “Obviously, unless you tell us where Indrani is.”

“Self-defence,” added Vandana. “You broke into my room and begged me to help you get a fake passport.”

“Which she naturally refused to do,” said Sandmill, “so you took a shot at her. Hardly surprising on the part of a murderer.”

“It's my own fault, Sergeant. I'm just not used to hanging around criminals, you know.”

Another smile from Sandmill. “All in all, pretty close to the truth, really, isn't it?”

Max turned to him, playing for time. “The kidnapping, torture, and bomb in the Volvo were all you, of course.”

“Bhargava's men. All David had to do was tell us where to find Indrani, and all this could've been avoided.”

Utterly false, of course, since David would be an embarrassing witness and had to be eliminated at all cost. Sandmill couldn't possibly risk fouling the deal between Griffith and Bhargava. He had interceded with the businesswoman and convinced her to accept the Durga chief's proposal. In exchange, Bhargava had kicked in two million of the money he got from SCI.

“And where did it come from?”

“Money allocated for the relocalization of the valley residents displaced by the dam, so Griffith was playing a double game. She asked the board for twice what she promised the Indian government. The overpayment went to Bhargava, minus Sandmill's commission, of course. Then Vandana had the idea to blackmail Griffith a second time. Being the new CEO, she could manage that.”

“Zaheer would have sunk it all,” cut in Max, “so Griffith got rid of the journalist by sending her gorilla, Morency, after him.”

Yet another Sandmill smile.

“Ahmed Zaheer was not the guardian angel Indrani imagined,” he added. “On his way to Toronto, he figured that, if the CEO of SCI had enough money for Bhargava, she had enough for a journalist and inveterate gambler and playboy. He had expensive pastimes, and all he had to do was deal with Griffith, hence his phone call from the booth across from the motel, so it couldn't be traced. He lied to Indrani. That murder was a Griffith mistake. He could have been bought. David, though, was a crusader, so harder to neutralize.” Both, all three counting Bhargava, knew Indrani was behind this trip of his to Canada, and not being able get her whereabouts out of David, they couldn't lay their hands on Indrani.

“We must send her back to India!” screamed Vandana. “My father will get her to be reasonable.”

Kill her, more likely, and right here in Montreal.

“Indrani no longer exists officially anymore, does she?”

“Where is my sister?”

It all happened so fast. Max grabbed the lamp at his feet and tilted it at Morency, who lost his balance and took just a fraction of a second too long in reacting, when suddenly Sandmill fired his revolver just as the door opened. Once, twice, then he fell to the floor. Max caught a brief glimpse of Mancini and his men, wearing bulletproof vests. Max was on the ground holding his belly with both hands, surrounded by an immense pool of blood that kept growing. Someone yelled to call an ambulance, and then everything went dark — a black hole, an endless pit he knew he'd never come back from.
Oh well, that's that, I'm on my way to join Philippe and David
.

 

 

W
axed
floors, a corridor-length mirror, almost an ice rink with small, bent-over ladies sliding silently by in pale blue gowns. Their hesitant gait suggested prematurely aged, cloistered nuns. The tranquility didn't deter Juliette, though it did affect her somehow as she stormed out of the taxi, now becoming delicate herself. In this convent, slamming a door or raising one's voice was the worst thing imaginable. They'd asked her to stay in the waiting room, but she rushed down the corridor without a moment's hesitation, asking for directions as she went, and finally found herself in the chapel.

Two solid doors with a crucifix marked the entrance. She opened the right one, and received a whiff of incense full in the face. She noticed three elderly nuns seated randomly, none of them the person she was looking for. Maybe she should have cooled her heels in the waiting room after all.

“I was expecting you.”

She snapped around to see Deborah Cournoyer standing behind her, holding a rosary. She seemed so young surrounded by these elderly ladies. Juliette was about to explain her presence, but Cournoyer led her outside and into the corridor and mirrored tiles again. Words failed her.

“The rule of silence,” said Cournoyer. “Silence for the past and the present. We are all there. We all have our secrets.” She added, “I knew when Dennis died that sooner or later someone would come to question me, asking questions I never found answers to myself.”

Juliette had made the connection with the old passport photos in Patterson's apartment, photos of a younger Pascale, but still strikingly similar.

In an earlier life, Deborah Cournoyer had been Pascale.

In the phone book, Juliette had found the Montreal address of the order that Sister Irène in Varanasi belonged to after Max told her the story of the cremation. Now she was here simply to understand. What was Patterson's part in all this? Why not say anything to Max?

Her room was small but sunny. Pascale hadn't kept much from her time in India, and not necessarily the most exotic things, either. That comb on the wash basin, though, Juliette had seen many like it in the bazaars there, those plastic sandals under the bed — Indians all wore them. Pascale turned to Juliette.

“In a city where death is a flourishing industry, nothing could be easier than faking one's own. A few rupees for a blackened body unrecognizable to anyone. Throw it on the fire and scatter the ashes in the Ganges.”

“Why?”

“Because Max was close to finding me. He'd searched all through Europe, chased down every clue. I watched him from afar. Dennis let me know Max wasn't letting it go. Naively, I thought he'd soon give up, but no, never. Quite the opposite, he was consumed by my silence and his failure. Max wanted me home at any cost, no matter what I thought. Eventually I realized he'd never give up, not till the bitter end.”

There was no way out but this faked death with the help of Sister Irène, a lie, just another con like so many she'd staged in the past with Max and Antoine. But in Varanasi, it wasn't to fleece bankers and millionaires. It was to fool those close to her, her family and husband. Up on the ghats, she and Patterson hadn't missed a thing, and Antoine had almost spotted them when he glanced up in their direction.

“Being present at one's own funeral,” said Pascale, “was the most troubling experience I've ever had to face.”

“But why not simply tell Max? He revered his brother, yes, but he also loved you above all else. I'm sure he'd have pardoned your liaison with Philippe.”

Pascale, at a loss, raised her eyes to Juliette, gazing at her a long while.

“You don't understand, Juliette, not at all.”

Her affair with Philippe was just Patterson's ruse to stop Juliette from asking any more questions. The truth was something far more dramatic still, Pascale explained. Dennis, the diplomat, was about to quit Foreign Affairs to make his own way. Philippe often offered Pascale the comfort of his Chrysler on the road to the “zoo” in Northern Ontario. After three months in the bowels of the pen on the edge of the forest and among the deer, elk, and caribou, Max was far from the drama of everyday life. Blind to the plots going on outside the gates.

“I tried to confess it to him several times, but I never had the courage.”

“Confess what?”

Pascale paused.

At the time, Patterson was in the passport office, and Philippe and Béatrice sometimes invited him for a meal at their place. Pascale joined them once in a while. One night Patterson was telling Pascale about his work. Her questions became more and more pointed, with an insistence that took Philippe and Béatrice aback.Then, a few weeks later, Pascale told them she was pregnant.

Soon it would start to show. The child was Max's, but she didn't want to tell him. Why? Because she was tired of this life, of the lies, of the running. She no longer had the strength to keep looking over her shoulder, as Max was still doing, and there was no way she would impose this on their son. She wanted to save him that grief. She wanted a new life for him, something to be proud of. She decided to break with Max, her family, and the outlaw world.

Juliette could guess the rest, and she turned away, but Pascale had opened the floodgates, and there was no stopping her. This child was the solution. Philippe and Béatrice had been trying for years to conceive. They'd been to all the specialists and read all the journals on
in vitro
fertilization, when Pascale offered them a solution.
I'll give you this child to bring up and make into somebody.
At first, Béatrice and Philippe had been reticent, but she'd finally convinced them, and Max would be none the wiser. Pascale would disappear, go to India, and start a new life. She had neither the courage nor the strength to explain it to Max. All that remained of her was little David, who deserved better than a life on the run.

Pascale's revelation left Juliette stupefied: Pascale was not Philippe's mistress, but the first excuse Patterson dredged up; Pascale was the biological mother of a child, kept secret from the runaway father, who couldn't help influencing him nevertheless; Pascale's sudden disappearance, sneaking out on tiptoe. Now Juliette understood a little better Philippe's insistence that Max not pursue the search for Pascale. Philippe, who had kept it all secret, then asked Max to look out for David. Now she also understood Béatrice when, in Patterson's office, she'd said it “should not be brought out into the light of day.” Shaken by Philippe's death, Pascale had considered telling all, but Patterson had advised against it for David's sake. She had a choice to make: Max's happiness or David's … David, who venerated Philippe unreservedly. The revelation would be a bombshell, and destroying what remained of the family was out of the question, so the biological mother had opted for silence.

Pascale burst into tears, not bothering to turn away, as though glad to show her grief. After a while, Juliette took her face in her hands.

“You've got tell him now. You cannot hide it any longer.”