Authors: Charles Benoit
Out of Order (16 page)
In a single, perfected move, Mukund Chaudhary checked his mirrors, downshifted to second gear, singled his intention, and swung the fifty-passenger bus around the slow-moving flatbed that was itself overtaking an even slower tractor-trailer on the two-lane road that wound uphill into a blind curve. It was almost noon and he was ten minutes behind schedule, not that anyone at Mangalore Transport would care. He could pull his bus in four hours late and no one would say a word, but after five years driving the same route, hitting the target landmarks on time was a personal, if not professional, goal.
The engine revved hard and he felt the tires on his side of the bus slip off the paved highway and onto the hard-packed shoulder, a tactile signal that he was an inch or two from sliding along the metal guardrail. Fortunately, the guardrail on this section of the highway had been taken out a year ago by a doomed lorry driver from Madras as his flaming truck tumbled down the mountain side, so Mukund didn’t have to worry about scratching the paint on the company-owned bus.
For a moment, the three vehicles ran abreast, spanning the entire width of National Highway Forty-Eight. Foot to the floor, the bus moved ahead of the flatbed that was struggling to pass the creeping tractor-trailer. After flicking on his directional, he cut in front of both vehicles, just in time to give the horn a friendly toot, waving hello to a rival bus company driver who came full-speed around the bend. Behind him, Mukund heard the two tourists suck in their breath and he could picture them, eyes-wide, gripping onto the arm rests or onto each other, certain they were about to die. Mukund made a mental note to cut it a little closer next time.
There wasn’t a ten-meter stretch of the route that Mukund didn’t know as well as he knew his own home. The crumbling pavement outside of Bantval, the traffic-choked area around Sakaleshpur with its busloads of pious Jain pilgrims, the constant road work between Hassan and Channarayaptna, the thousands of bends and twists of the blacktop as it snaked through the mountain passes—he could close his eyes and see all of it. The six-hour morning run to Bangalore he could do in his sleep. The run back to Mangalore—the last two dead-tired hours coming in the dark jungle foothills—well, that was different. He didn’t just drive his bus, an air-conditioned Tata that wasn’t even three years old yet, he controlled it, dominated it, like an expert rider controlling a fiery thoroughbred. And yet they gasped as if he didn’t see the bus coming headlong at them. Damn tourists.
He kept his foot on the gas pedal, slowing down just as he came up to the back end of a truck hauling burlap bags of rice, the words
Horn Please
ornately painted on the tailgate. Mukund hit the horn twice as he shot by, staying in the wrong lane even after he was well past the truck. He glanced in his rearview mirror to make sure the tourist couple was watching.
The first thing he had noticed about the man when he climbed aboard the bus was the long gauze bandage on his left arm. He had been watching as the man had replaced an older, dirty bandage with a smaller one, doing the whole thing one-handed, easy, biting the white medical tape from the roll with his teeth like he’d been wearing the thing his whole life. From where he had been sitting, Mukund didn’t think it was much of a cut, but he knew that it was the small cuts that were most trouble. The man needed a shave and his clothes looked like he’d slept in them, but overall he didn’t look like the typical scruffy western tourists that took the bus, anyone with money hiring a car, cutting an hour at least from the trip.
Mukund tried not to stare too much at the woman. Her hair was dark but when the light caught it right it seemed red—not a henna-based red, something richer, more natural—but for some reason she bunched it all up under a grimy, long-billed cap. She smiled at him when she had climbed aboard the bus, asking if the bus had a restroom, him pretending he didn’t understand just to draw out the conversation, captivated by her bright eyes and beautiful smile, that lean, hard build. She had to be the one from the note.
In the mirror, Mukund watched as the man closed his eyes and looked away from the front window. It was that kind of disrespect, that open lack of confidence in his driving ability, that questioning of his skills, that Mukund hated most. He yanked the bus back in his lane, waving to the cement truck driver who didn’t wave back, too busy screaming as he stood on his brakes, long, smoking black lines appearing under his locked-up rear tires.
The other passengers rode in proper silence, eyes glued to the TV monitors, Shah Rukh Khan lip-synching the title track to a tear-jerker film. Two movies, a clean toilet on board, reclining seats and a fifteen-minute rest stop at the halfway point—what more could you ask for?
But Mukund knew what they were asking for. A rail line. For decades there had been talk about connecting the two cities, politicians proclaiming that, if elected, they would drive the final stake themselves, one more promise forgotten the day after the voting, the geography blamed for the delay. It was all hills and sharp bends and swamps. Maybe—someday—a narrow gauge line like the one they had up in Simla, a toy train that would take three times as long as the bus. But a proper rail line? Not possible.
Then the computer boom. Bangalore—sleepy little garden-city Bangalore—suddenly the Silicon Valley of the East, whatever the hell that meant, everybody moving there, all those high-tech companies starting up, failing, starting up again, money everywhere, pensioners forced out of their hometown by the high rents, those young guppies or puppies, whatever you call them, driving brand-new cars, not content with Ambassadors, no, demanding Toyotas and Hondas and Mercedes. Demanding a rail line, a real one, getting it from a New Delhi government cowed by their success. The line would be complete in a year, maybe two. The smaller bus companies were selling out already, the bigger ones scaling back. He had four years at most before he would be out of a job, already thinking about the money he’d be missing. A thousand rupees to see that the backpack stays on the bus? Easy money.
Ahead, an overturned truck, its lights still on, its wheels still spinning, had dumped a load of stone in the street. He downshifted and stopped, waiting for his turn to move around the wreck, the dazed truck driver clearing a path with a broken-handled shovel. Mukund looked back into his mirror, wondering what the hell they were doing now, the cute girl holding up part of a ratty old sari, sticking her fingers through little round holes, holding the fabric up to her nose and laughing, punching the man in his shoulder, the man rubbing the spot like it actually hurt, the girl leaning over, kissing him on the cheek, then the mouth, again, right in public, the guy making a veil out of the fabric, covering their faces, probably kissing under the red sari.
Mukund looked back at the road and waited for an opening in the traffic. He didn’t care what they did. Just as long as that backpack stayed on the bus until Bangalore.
The Mangalore Transport Company’s morning bus pulled into its assigned parking space at four-forty in the afternoon, ten minutes ahead of schedule. The driver wore a toothy grin as he eased the blunt nose of the bus under the corrugated tin awning, the air brakes hissing as the bus came to a stop. Unlike the airlines that kept their passengers in their seats until the captain gave the two-bell signal, the aisle of the bus had been packed for the last five miles, the travelers eager to abandon the air-conditioned comfort for the sweltering humidity of their hometown. Jason and Rachel were the last two off, the driver, happy, saying something that sounded like thank you as they passed.
There was more hustle to the crowd at the bus terminal, a greater sense of urgency brought on by the unpredictable schedules of the privately owned transports. Unlike the train stations, with their chai vendors and porters, their distinctive architecture and their panoramic rail-side views, the bus terminal was a stripped-down transportation hub, all revving engines and blue clouds of diesel exhaust, no one waiting, everyone rushing, dodging the buses that didn’t even pretend to slow down. They were making their way out the front gates to the pack of auto-rickshaw drivers and cabbies when the man approached.
“My name is Sarosh Mehta,” the man said. “May I offer you a ride to the lovely gardens at Lal Bagh?”
He was just taller than Rachel, heavy but not yet fat, pushing fifty, with a high forehead, wispy black hair covering a growing bald spot. He had a thick salt-and-pepper mustache, wide, round glasses, and a kind, cherubic face, the corners of his eyes wrinkling as he smiled.
“You are the couple looking for the ride to Lal Bagh, yes?” Sarosh Mehta said, and when they nodded the man nodded too, waving to a tall, beefy, dark-eyed man who pushed his way towards them. “Please. This way,” he said, and stepped aside to let Jason and Rachel pass, the three of them falling in behind the big man as he forged a way out.
They cut across the small parking lot where a white Ambassador waited with the doors open, the driver smoking a scrawny homemade cigarette as he leaned against the hood. “Please,” the man said, guiding them into the back seat of the car, the big man climbing in to sit between them. As the driver pulled the car out into traffic, the round-faced man turned in the passenger seat to face them. “How do you like your trip so far?” he asked.
Rachel gave a slight shrug. “It’s been okay,” she said, a nervous crack in her voice.
“You will enjoy the gardens at Lal Bagh. They are quite beautiful this time of the year.” Sarosh’s smile widened as he spoke. “Did you begin your vacation in Goa?”
“No,” she said. “Up in Delhi.”
“Then you must have gone to Agra. What did you make of the Taj Mahal? Isn’t it magnificent?”
When Rachel didn’t answer, Jason leaned around the big man to look at her, busy untying and retying a pull cord on her pack, ignoring the man’s questions.
“We didn’t get there,” Jason said, sitting back. “Maybe next trip.”
Sarosh straightened and his smile dropped. “Oh, but you must not leave India without seeing the Taj. It’s bad luck.”
“Thanks, but I think we’ve had our fill of bad luck,” Jason said. In the front seat, the driver gave the wheel a violent yank, swerving around a swarm of auto-rickshaws, cutting down a side street lined with thick-trunked trees.
Sarosh said something short and fast in Hindi to the driver, repeating it for the big man, who stretched his arms up and around the shoulders of his fellow back seat passengers, his flowery deodorant as overpowering as his cologne. Sarosh pushed his round-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose with a pudgy finger. “Now my friends, I believe you have something for me.”
Jason heard Rachel swallow hard and saw her hand shaking as she tugged open the zipper on her backpack, her hand slipping off the short metal tab. “Here,” she said, thrusting the bag at Jason. “I can’t do it.”
Jason reached out and took the bag by the straps, his hands caressing hers as she slowly let go, her lips moving, the words inaudible above the engine’s whine.
“Is there a problem?” the man said, his eyebrows arching.
“No problem,” Jason said, unzipping the bag and lifting out one of the bundles from the pack, the tan wrapping paper crinkling under his light grip. “We’re not very good at this drug-running thing.”
The round-man’s mouth snapped shut, his smile replaced by a tight-lipped scowl, the veins on his neck rising as he drew in a sharp breath through his nose. “Who told you it was drugs?” Sarosh said through clenched teeth. Jason stared into the man’s hooded eyes but said nothing. “I asked you a question,” the man said, almost shouting, his teeth still held tight. “Who said it was drugs?”
Jason felt the big man’s forearm flinch and out of the corner of his eye saw the man’s long fingers curl into a fist. “No one told us,” Jason said, the words bunching up. “I just figured….”
“That I am a drug dealer? Is this what you are saying?” His face was flushed, his nostrils flared, a double-edged knife appearing now between the front seats, slashing out at Jason, catching the bundle near the top, cutting through the tan paper and shipping tape. Rachel gasped as Jason pushed back against the seat, trapped, waiting for the knife to slash again.
The round-faced man pointed the knife at the bundle, holding it steady until he was sure they were listening. “Open it,” he said, his voice calm, almost soft.
It was several moments before Jason moved. He balanced the bundle on Rachel’s open backpack, his sweaty hands leaving dark prints on the thin paper. He started where the knife had made its cut, pulling the paper down the side, tugging loose the shipping tape. Freed from the wrapping, layers of cotton batting puffed up, the bundle seeming to grow as he unraveled it. He pulled the fabric away to reveal a block of machined parts bound in a layer of bubble wrap and rubber bands, not much bigger than a forty-ounce can of Odenbach beer. He held it out in front of the big man so Rachel could see.
“It’s part of a multi-directional joint for a robotic arm,” Sarosh said, tossing the knife back in the glove box. “A prototype. The other bundle contains the rest.”
“A
machine part
?” Rachel said, her voice rising as she spoke. “I did all of that for a stupid
machine
part
?”
“I wanted you to know that I am not a drug dealer,” Sarosh said, his cheerful voice and smile returning. “Drugs are a terrible thing.”
“I’ll tell you what’s terrible,” Rachel said, slapping the big guy’s chest for emphasis. “What’s terrible is everything I went through—
we
went through—to deliver a stupid damn part.” She leaned over and waited for Jason’s support.
“I’m glad it’s not drugs, Sarosh, but come on. A machine part? What’s going on?”
“As I said, it’s a prototype of a very expensive piece of equipment. Potentially it could be worth billions of rupees. Things have changed in India. The computer industry is on the rise. So is industrial crime. These parts came from a plant in Germany and tomorrow they’ll be delivered to an Indian robotics research firm here in Bangalore. Six weeks from now they’ll introduce an Indian version—smarter, better, cheaper than the original.”
Jason looked down at the two bundles, a fortune on his lap. “It’s still against the law.”
“Of course,” Sarosh said, laughing. “That is why you were paid to carry it.”
“But if we were caught?”
“You are tourists. The police seldom bother tourists. If you are stopped, all they look for is drugs. And if they did arrest you, what would you know? You couldn’t tell a Tamil from a Rajasthani, let alone pick out the subtle differences in accent. Industrial secrets? What do they care? No, tourists make the perfect people to carry these type of goods.”
“So we just helped ruin some German company?” Jason said.
“You are helping to complete the circle. For two hundred years the West robbed everything from India—our resources, our wealth—and they still rob us today. Tell me, how many doctors and engineers and computer programmers in your country come from India?”
“That doesn’t make it right,” Jason said, seeing Sriram, Vidya, and Ravi as he spoke.
“No,” Sarosh conceded. “But it does make it quite profitable.”
“Well, we’re outta here,” Jason said, dropping the plastic-wrapped parts, the padding, and the second bundle in the big man’s lap. “You can drop us off right here.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Sarosh said, his smile bending as he spoke to the driver, the car picking up speed.
“But we delivered the packages,” Jason said. “We kept our side of the deal.”
“I swear we won’t say anything,” Rachel said, adding her attempt at an earnest
ahcha
head sway.
“I know this, but I can not let you out. You see,” Sarosh said, pointing at a series of road signs, “this is a no-stopping zone. We must circle around this block. That is the rule.”
