Shantaram полностью

It would’ve been messy. I wasn’t a good fighter, but I knew the moves. I could hit hard. And if I got into real trouble in those years, I wasn’t afraid to put the wet end of a knife into another man’s body. Andrew was capable. With a gun in his hand, he was deadly. As Amir moved around to support him, directly behind his right shoulder, Abdullah took up a similar position beside me. A fight would become a brawl. We all knew it. But the young Goan didn’t raise his hands, and as one second became five, and ten, and fifteen, it seemed that he wasn’t as willing with his fists as he was with his mouth.

Nazeer broke the stand-off. Pushing between us, he seized Andrew by the wrist and a scruff of shirtsleeve. I knew that grip well. I knew that Andrew had to kill the burly Afghan if he wanted to break it. Nazeer paused only long enough to give me a bewilderingly cryptic look, part censure and part pride, part anger and part red-eyed affection, before he shoved the young Goan backwards through the circle of men. At the car, he pushed Andrew into the driver’s seat and then climbed into the back with Tariq. Andrew started the car and sped away spitting gravel and dust as he wheeled around and headed back toward Marine Drive. As the car swept past me I saw Tariq’s face at the window. It was pale, with only the eyes, like wild paw prints in snow, betraying any hint of the mind or the mood within.

‘Maijata hu,’ I repeated when the car had passed. I’m going. Everyone laughed. I wasn’t sure if it was at the vehemence of my tone or the blunt simplicity of the Hindi phrase.

‘I think we got that, Lin,’ Salman said. ‘I think that’s very clear, na? Okay, I’ll put you with Abdullah, out the back. There’s a lane behind Chuha’s house-Abdullah, you know it. It has two feeds from other lanes, one into the main street, and one around the corner to other houses in the block. At the back of Chuha’s house there’s a yard. I’ve seen it. There are two windows, both with heavy bars, and only one door to the house. It’s down two steps. You two hold that place. Nobody goes in when we start. If we do right, some of them will try to make a run for it out there. Don’t let them get past you. Stop them right there, in the yard. The rest of us will go in through the front. What about the guns, Faisal?’

‘Seven,’ he answered. ‘Two short shotgun, two automatic, three revolver.’

‘Give me one of the automatics,’ Salman ordered. Abdullah, you take the other one. You’ll have to share it, Lin. The shotguns are no good inside-it’s gonna get very close in there, and we want to be real sure what we’re shooting at. I want them on the street outside, for maximum coverage if we need it. Faisal, you take the shotguns, and give one to Hussein. When we’re finished, we’ll go out the back way, past Abdullah and Lin. We won’t go out the front, so put holes in anything that tries to go in or out once we’re in there. The three other guns are for Farid, Amir, and Mahmoud. Raj, you’ll have to share with us. Okay?’

The men nodded, and wagged their heads in agreement.

‘Listen, if we wait, we can get thirty more men and thirty guns to go in with us. You know that. But we might miss them. As it is, we’ve already talked for ten minutes too long. If we hit them now, quick and hard, before they know it, we can take them out, and none of them will get away. I want to finish them, and finish this business, right now, tonight. But I want to leave it up to you. I don’t want to make you go in if you don’t feel ready. Do you want to wait for more men, or go now?’

One by one the men spoke, quickly, most of them using the one word, Abi, meaning now. Salman nodded, then closed his eyes and muttered a prayer in Arabic. When he looked up again, he was committed, fully committed for the first time. His eyes were blazing with hatred and the fearsome killing rage he’d kept at bay.

‘Saatch… aur himmat,’ he said, looking each man in the eye. Truth… and courage.

‘Saatch aur himmat,’ they replied.

Without another word, the men claimed their guns, climbed into the two cars, and drove the few short minutes to Chuha’s home on fashionable Sardar Patel Road. Before I could order my thoughts and even consider, clearly, what I was doing, I found myself creeping along a narrow lane with Abdullah in a darkness deep enough for me to feel the widening of my straining eyes. Then we climbed over a sheer wooden fence and dropped down into the backyard of the enemy’s house.

We stood together in the dark for a few moments, checking the luminous dials on our watches, and listening hard as we let our eyes adjust. Abdullah whispered beside me, and I almost jumped at the sound.

‘Nothing,’ he breathed, his voice like the rustle of a woollen blanket. ‘There’s no-one here, no-one near.’