‘Were you at Waterlily House?’ asked the boy.
‘How did you know?’
‘I was there with you,’ the boy said, grinning. ‘You don’t remember me, no?’
Vikram shook his head. But he was interested in spite of himself.
‘Somebody from your village brought you there after the army killed your family.’
‘I don’t remember,’ Vikram said slowly. ‘I’ve been living in the south.’
The boy nodded. ‘My name is Siva Thruban,’ he said. ‘But everyone calls me Gopal.’
Gopal told Vikram he had been in the camp a long time, perhaps four years.
‘After you left, I got moved from Waterlily House. We were on our way by truck to another orphanage when we were ambushed by the Tigers and I was taken to a camp. I was trained there for four months. We did many things,’ he added proudly. ‘We blew up army jeeps, we carried messages for the Chief, we stole motorcycles and we threw hand grenades.’
He told Vikram the worst fighting was in the north but he had only been on one trip up there.
‘What happened to your family?’ asked Vikram.
Gopal had no idea. ‘The Tigers came in the night to my village,’ he said. ‘They asked my father where my older brother was. My family had sent my brother away because they knew
the Tigers were coming. But the man told my father if they couldn’t have my brother then I would have to go with them. I was asleep. They woke me up. My mother was crying, my father was crying too.’
They had taken him away, he said. He had never seen his parents again. He did not know where his brother had gone either. At some point he had been told his family did not want him back. To start with this had angered him.
‘It wasn’t like your family.
Your family
died. Mine didn’t want me.’
But now he no longer cared. Vikram made no comment. He took a can of Coca-Cola from his rucksack and drank it.
‘It’s not so bad here,’ Gopal said after a while. ‘It isn’t as bad as people think. This is my home now. I wouldn’t want to go back to my village. We were forced to pour petrol on the cattle there, and set fire to them. So after that I could never return.’
‘You went back to your village?’ asked Vikram.
‘Oh yes. I had to. It was important that it was my own village. It was my initiation ceremony. Otherwise they told me I would not be able to join the Leopard Brigade. You have to show you don’t care about anything! Your family, your village, anything from the past. So, you see, men, I survived all the campaigns,’ he said grinning, ticking an imaginary list on his fingers. ‘I have been a spy, a courier, a front-line fighter. I have survived all of it.’
They had put him in this special unit because of this ability to court good luck, he said.
‘This time we’re getting very different kind of training, you know. You’ve been brought here specially. They told me you are a very good shot, is it true? We’re going to be working together on this new campaign.’
Vikram nodded.
‘I’ve been using Type 52 and 58 up to now. But this ambush is different. We’ll be told about it tomorrow.’
Gopal took Vikram to his sleeping quarters. They would each have a hammock in a tent on the far side of the camp.
‘Have you had suicide training?’ he asked Vikram later, when they were alone. ‘When I first joined the Tigers I was given a suicide bodysuit with explosives. I wore it when we carried out the attack on Elephant Pass.’
Gopal grinned. He looked for a moment like a small boy. He had been frightened at first, he said, even though he knew they were doing it for the glory of the oppressed. At one point, two of his team stepped on a landmine and were blown up.
‘I was very upset at the time,’ he continued chattily. ‘But, you know, now I’ve almost forgotten what they looked like. It’s the way things are in this business.’
He paused, then made up his mind.
‘Look, let me show you something.’
Pulling out a box he showed Vikram his treasures. He had collected razor wire and explosives, wire-cutting tools and a small radio. Then he showed Vikram a pair of designer trainers. They were hardly worn. He had stolen them, he said.
‘If my luck runs out,’ he said. ‘Take them!’
Mrs Mendis was admitted into hospital. Her condition had worsened. All night long Nulani watched as her mother shuddered with the ice-cold chill that shook the bed and sent her body into desperate spasms in its attempt to generate heat. Then, after the terrible cold, came the raging fever. Slowly it became clear that Mrs Mendis was becoming weaker by the hour. Sugi came. He brought food, but Mrs Mendis was beyond eating. So he fetched the doctor instead. The doctor saw the hopelessness of the situation. Where were Mrs Mendis’s
relatives, her brother? Surely the girl could not make decisions alone? The doctor was not an unsympathetic man but the girl did not seem to understand, the hospital was not necessarily the answer. The wards were overcrowded and understaffed; there was hardly any medicine. Still, something of the girl’s distress penetrated some part of the doctor’s numbed mind. He found a bed and sent Mrs Mendis there. He could see that Nulani Mendis was at the point of collapse. This was a family well known to him. He had watched as it slowly shrank and disintegrated. Now, as far as he could see, the daughter had no one left except her thuggish uncle. The doctor had been fond of Mr Mendis; he had seen the children change after his death. The girl had become withdrawn. She has grown very beautiful, he thought, looking at her tiredly. But what use were her looks without her family to protect her? So he admitted Mrs Mendis to hospital in the hope that she would recover. And Nulani, travelling in the ambulance, glad that her mother would get well quickly, thought, in less than a week Theo will be back from the UK.
They were biding their time. In between the training sessions at dawn the Leopards spent endless hours of intolerable boredom. Waiting. Waiting for what? No one would say. They knew the next mission would be dangerous, but that was hardly surprising. Nearly everything they did in this unit was lethal. Only twelve of the original thirty recruits from Waterlily House had survived. The rest were all new and therefore younger.
‘Would you swallow the cyanide?’ asked Gopal as they began to pack. Finally the orders had come that the operation was to begin. ‘If you get caught, I mean.’
‘No.’
‘What, not even if they tortured you?’
Vikram shook his head. He frowned and continued to reload his gun. This new model was smaller and deadlier. It was lightweight even with the silencer fitted. But he preferred his old one.
‘I would,’ said Gopal cheerfully. ‘What’s the point of suffering?’
They had finished their preparation. In a few hours they would move from the camp and head through the jungle for Katunayake Airport. Vikram and Gopal had worked closely together during the past few weeks. As the oldest in the group, they were the leaders. The youngest were only ten. They were the runners and would carry the explosives.
‘Your father took cyanide, didn’t he? That’s what they said at Waterlily House.’
‘Yes,’ said Vikram shortly.
He clicked the safety catch on. Then he wiped the back of his hand across his face. The humidity had risen to unbearable levels since the morning. The swampy ground was a hotbed of mosquitoes and other insects. Gerard had told him he could go back to the south once this job was done. He glanced at his watch. They were due at the airport by four. It was now midday. Gopal was still talking. He didn’t seem to be in any rush.
‘Did you have brothers?’ he asked.
The appalling heat did not seem to bother Gopal.
‘No,’ said Vikram. ‘Gopal, aren’t you ready?’
‘Almost,’ said Gopal. ‘I thought you said you had a brother.’
‘I only had a sister.’
Had she lived she would have been twenty-eight now. The thought came to Vikram quite calmly, without effort, as though it was an everyday occurrence for him to think of his sister. There had been a man who visited them, he remembered suddenly. Somehow, even though he had been small, he had known the man only visited because of his sister. He remembered nothing
else of the man, except that he was always at their house and his sister was always happy when he was there. She used to smile in a secret, inexplicable way at these times. She laughed when she played with Vikram and she was happy when she helped their mother. But with the man, she had been different. Vikram had not understood the difference, only that it was not how she looked at any of them. He frowned, thinking all this suddenly. Seeing the vivid green of the plantain trees near their house, the walk to the well and the schoolteacher who had taught him his alphabet. H for hollyhocks, the schoolteacher had written on his slate.
‘I think I saw my brother when we were at Elephant Pass,’ Gopal was saying. ‘Just before we blew up the bridge. If it was him he didn’t see me, or didn’t want to.’
Vikram blinked. For a moment he had forgotten where he was. He looked pointedly at his watch and Gopal laughed good-naturedly.
‘OK, OK, men. Have you become our new Chief or something?’ He began to collect together the last of his things. He was in charge of the two boys who would carry the explosives. He would see to it they planted them in the correct spot. Unusually, everything had been organised with precision. Vikram would detonate the bombs. For once headquarters wanted to reduce the number of casualties among the Tigers. Gopal opened his box and took out the pair of Adidas trainers. He wiped them with his shirt. Then he put them back in the box. Their belongings were to be loaded into a different truck. The camp was being dismantled for security reasons and would regroup elsewhere. Their possessions would be moved on while they were at the airport.
‘What d’you think of Meera?’ Gopal asked suddenly, jerking his head in the direction of the girls’ camp.
Vikram finished loading his gun and began clearing out his pockets.
‘D’you think she’s pretty?’
‘She’s all right,’ said Vikram. ‘She’s a good shot,’ he added. ‘For a girl.’
Gopal laughed, a high-pitched excited laugh. Vikram looked sharply at him.
‘D’you like any of them here, Vikram?’
‘No,’ said Vikram. ‘Not here.’
‘Where then?’
‘Somewhere else,’ Vikram said shortly.
‘Really?’ Gopal was interested. ‘Have you got a photo, men?’
His sharp eyes darted feverishly about and he moved his head from side to side, grinning. He reminded Vikram of a stray mongrel he had once seen. He thought of the temple on the hill, near Sumaner House. The breeze had been clean and fresh, not at all like the heavy, rancid air they breathed in the camp. Through the trees he had glimpsed small cameos of the sea. And the girl’s dress had been piercingly white in the sunlight, absorbing the heat, changing it into something sweet and very calm. He heard her voice, over and over in his head. He had seen her twice more before he left. On one occasion, she had been standing in the queue at the dispensary in the lime-green skirt he had often seen her wear. She had not seen him. She stood quietly staring at the ground, patiently waiting her turn in the queue. And her face in profile had such a look of acceptance that it had hit him like a spasm of pain. He had moved away, not wanting her to see him, not understanding why he felt this way. And then there had been the last time on the way to the station when he was leaving. It had been early in the morning and he had been in a hurry. On an impulse he had decided to walk along the sea road and over the hill, as Gerard
had advised and in order to avoid being seen. And then he had come across her standing motionless staring at the railway line. She had turned and he saw she was deep in thought and did not recognise him. But then she had come towards him and touched his arm asking him where he was going.
‘I like to watch the train from Colombo,’ she had volunteered. ‘When I can’t sleep it’s what I like to do. My mother is in the hospital at the moment, and I like to wake early so I can visit her.’
Vikram told her he was going to Colombo. ‘To meet a relative,’ he lied, and at that she had said she was glad he had someone left from his family. Even in his confusion he had felt the sincerity of her words.
‘Hurry or you’ll miss the train,’ she had said. ‘I’ll wave to you when it goes.’
She had smiled at him and then, just as he had turned to go, she had reached up and kissed him on the cheek. Gopal was staring at him.
‘No,’ said Vikram. ‘No, I’ve no photo. And we’d better go.’
They crouched, watching as it came into view. It appeared as a small speck in the sky, glinting in the sun, descending fast, heading for the runway, graceful as a gull. The sun was on its wings and it had travelled seven thousand miles. In spite of the tension Vikram was mesmerised by the sight of the aeroplane. He lay flat on the ground clutching his radio, holding it to his mouth. From where he was he could just make out the outline of the others as they waited for the plane to land. The two boys were already close to the runway, under some airport trucks. Gopal, the most experienced of them all, was not far behind with the silencer fitted on his revolver. He would have to shoot the driver of the fuel tanker and possibly some of the ground
staff. The stationary fleet of empty aircraft were dotted around in bays and the two boys placed a small black box close to the base of each fuel tank. So far everything had been straightforward. Someone had provided them with access to the enclosed grounds, and now, Vikram knew, the runners were waiting tensely for the oncoming plane to land. Once the passengers had disembarked the runners would plant the final cache of explosives under it before taking cover. Vikram had had his own private briefing. The Chief had shaken Vikram’s hand and told him he had great plans for him. If at the given moment there were still people on the tarmac, he had said, it did not matter. If they did not move quickly enough, Vikram was to trigger the bombs regardless. It was his priority, the Chief had emphasised, somehow making it sound as though he was giving Vikram a warning. Did Vikram understand, the Chief asked? This was a war, not a game of cricket.
‘Your responsibilities are to the Tamil people, not to individuals,’ he had said.