The Mountain Shadow полностью

‘Good,’ he said, puffing the hookah alight once more. ‘The Irishman. You want him, and I know where he is.’

Concannon. For a second, the irony of finding my personal torturer through a professional torturer was too much. I was pretty high, and I laughed.

‘I’m sorry, Tuareg,’ I said, regaining control. ‘I’m glad to hear that you know where he is, and I’d also like to know. I’m not laughing at anything you said. It’s just that this Irishman has a way of making you laugh, no matter how much you want to hurt him.’

‘Like my cousin, Gulab,’ the Tuareg said. ‘It was not until three of us in the family wounded him that he mended his ways.’

‘How’s he mending now?’

‘Very well. He’s a living saint now.’

‘A saint, huh?’

‘Indeed. It was a miracle that he survived my shooting alone, let alone the other corrections. People believe he’s blessed. And he certainly is blessed with a new career, dispensing blessings, in fact, near a mosque in Dadar. My advice to you regarding the Irishman is to kill him, before you can’t.’

‘Look, Tuareg, I –’

‘Seriously,’ he said, leaning toward me seriously. ‘You have no idea about this man, do you?’

‘I’m always happy to learn more,’ I said, trying as hard to get straight as I’ve ever tried to get high.

‘He’s the truth.’

‘I’m not following you.’

‘He’s a truth-finder, like me.’

‘You mean he makes people tell him things, like you did.’

‘It’s not the truth that’s dangerous,’ he said, ‘it’s someone who always knows how to find it. This Irishman is such a man. I’ve seen files on him. He was very good at what he did. He’s a younger version of me, perhaps.’

He laughed again, and puffed on his hookah pipe.

‘You have no idea how much fear you can find inside yourself,’ he said after a while, ‘until someone helps you find it.’

It was a game, a psychological game, and I don’t play games. I didn’t answer. He’d called me to his house, and sooner or later I knew he’d get to the point. He gestured with his hookah pipe, urging me to smoke. I smoked.

‘In my time with Khaderbhai,’ he continued, ‘there was no-one more powerful in the Company than I was, although I never appeared at meetings. Khaderbhai knew that I could make the truth spring from any desert, like sacred waters, even from his own lips. When he knew how good I was at my job, he had only two choices – to kill me, or to use me. There is a lesson for you in that.’

He looked at me intently for a moment.

‘No advice about killing, please,’ I said quickly.

He laughed again, and gestured with the hose of the hookah.

‘Smoke!’ he commanded.

I puffed until the coals in the lotus bowl glowed like a tiny sun, drew in a deep breath, closed off the pipe again, and blew out a stream of smoke that settled in curling waves on the wall of the arched room.

‘Excellent!’ he said. ‘Never trust a man who can’t hold his hashish.’

‘Too sane?’ I offered.

‘Because hashish talks,’ he laughed. ‘So let us continue talking.’

‘Okay. Go ahead.’

‘This Irishman, his hatred is not for you. It never was. His hatred is for Abdullah. He attacks you, because he knows how much it hurts Abdullah.’

‘What do you know about it?’

‘I know that is why the Irishman went to see your girlfriend, on the night that she died.’

I couldn’t hide the shock.

‘Yes, I know about the last night of your girlfriend’s life.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘Smoke again first,’ he said, gesturing at the bowl of the hookah pipe. ‘You do understand that some revelations require a trance state, to fully comprehend their import?’

Okay, I thought. Now I get it.

‘I understand, Tuareg, that you’re performing psychological experiments on me. I wish you’d include me, so we can get it over with.’

He liked to laugh, the psychoanalytic punitory, and he had a peculiar laugh, high and jagged, but it never varied in pitch or tone. No one thing was ever funnier than another, and the laugh never swelled or chuckled or changed.

The laugh, and the walk, tell you everything, Didier once said to me.

‘I do so wish that we could have at least one more interview,’ the Tuareg said. ‘You’re quite right. It was another little experiment. Forgive me.’

‘Stop with the tests, Tuareg.’

‘I will, I will,’ he laughed. ‘I have few visitors, you see, and I never leave this home, nowadays. I miss . . . the field experiments. Shall I continue, about the Irishman?’

‘Please do.’

‘He murdered a man, with Abdullah.’

‘He . . . what?’

‘More than one life was lost, in fact,’ the Tuareg said.

It couldn’t be. I didn’t want to believe it.

‘How do you know this, Tuareg?’

He frowned, hesitating on the shore of puzzlement, ready to laugh again.

‘People tell me things,’ he said.

‘Okay, you know what, Tuareg, don’t tell me any more. Abdullah will tell me the rest.’

‘Wait! Don’t be so impatient. This information was told to me, not elicited, and you need to know this about Abdullah.’

‘I won’t talk about Abdullah, if he’s not in the room. Sorry.’