Namaste (6 page)

She squeezed his hand, weakly. He looked at her face, her big, brown eyes. He read the squeeze, and her expression, knowing what she was saying:
I love you, too. And goodbye.
 

Amit gave a small, silent nod.
 

Then Nisha was gone.
 

He laid his head on her chest, feeling tears wanting to return as he fought them all back. Sadness was impotent. Helpless. Right now, he needed someone to blame. Something to do. He needed a way to give himself the catharsis he felt sure was moments from tearing him open.
 

The earlier sounds were back and sharper. With his head still on Nisha’s unmoving chest, her limp hand still clasped in his, Amit could make out the slow footsteps of five men, and five heartbeats.
 

A voice said, “Well, lookie what we got here.” And then, from the other four, a light chorus of laughter.
 

Amit closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
 

He had to be still. Calm. Focused.

It seemed he would be getting his catharsis after all.
 

Chapter 6

9:20
PM
ON
F
RIDAY

The Right Hand sat on the floor with his back against the bed, two of his fingers broken far enough that they looked like they didn’t belong, his wrist so shattered he had to hold it with his left hand to keep it from flopping over like a rag. Even if the Right Hand still had any fight left in him (which he did not), or if he’d posed a threat even fully functional (which he definitely did not), Amit wouldn’t have had to worry. All the man had right now to fight with was his legs. And if he was going to use them for anything, it’d be for running away.
 

“We are taught to be calm and pure of thought in my order,” said Amit, sitting on a seat at the bedroom’s bay window, looking out at the front lawn. He had one knee up and his hands knitted around it, reclining, looking casual and not at all monastic save his garb. “In a way, it was my fault. She came to us for protection. If I hadn’t broken from the discipline of my training and grown enamored, she might never have been in danger. We might have sheltered her as she wanted, hidden her as requested. She might not have ever felt compelled to leave the compound to escape the elders’ disapproving eyes to be with the monk she’d come to love. In a way, I and my imperfect hiding place led her straight from our protection into your hands. Do you agree?”
 

Amit turned to look at the Right Hand.
 

“I keep telling you, I don’t know anything about this woman … ”
 

“Nisha. Her name was Nisha.”
 

“I don’t know anything about … ” He looked at Amit, saw something in the monk’s eyes that bothered him, “ … about
Nisha
. An order was given to me. I passed it on. That’s all it was. Business. Nothing personal.”
 

Amit stood. He crossed to the Right Hand, then glanced back through the window. He could see a long line of lights in the distance, approaching on the main road. Reds and blues, the oranges of ambulances. Thanks to the second call he’d had the Right Hand make, white headlights were probably the news.

“I assure you, it was personal to her. And to me.”
 

The Right Hand flinched as if waiting to be struck, but during the past day, Amit had managed to regain the control he’d lost so early this morning. Ironically, he was more emotionally in control now than he had been in weeks, now that Nisha and her distracting, muddling love were out of the equation. He’d already gotten the information he needed from the Right Hand, and there was no real logical point in torturing him further. He deserved to die as had all of the others — the five men from the barn, the Right Hand’s guards — but his more important function was to convey a message, and an emotion. Uncertainty, and fear.
 

Amit returned to the window seat, but this time he didn’t sit. He watched and waited as the line of lights approached the closed main gate.
 

“If it makes you feel any better,” said the Right Hand, looking down at his destroyed paw, wincing in pain, “you couldn’t have protected her, even if she’d stayed at the monastery. Not from our people. Not from my bosses.”
 

Amit laughed — a good-natured laugh, because he was a kind-hearted man who still saw beauty in the world. “Oh, but then you don’t realize who it was she came to. The five men you sent to kill her this morning did not.”
 

Judging by the look on the Right Hand’s face, Amit realized that news must not have made it up the chain yet. He didn’t know the elite assassination squad, if that’s what the group was, had failed to return. Amit took a step closer, then flexed his bare foot with its blood-dyed skin for the man on the floor.
 

“We are taught, through each hour of every day, to control the muscles in our bodies and to squeeze every drop of force, speed, and potential from them. Our order’s purpose is to seek the limits of humanity — to find out just how much can be done with these mortal vessels we occupy in each of our lives. I can pick a lock with my toes. I can generate enough force fast enough, even from this distance, to knock a vertebrae out of your neck before you could raise a hand to stop me, like yanking a tablecloth from under a place setting without overturning the glasses. I can climb walls with only my fingertips. I can jump from a three-story building and absorb the shock so completely that not only will I not injure myself, I will land with no sound. I was able to take on five of your men at once because I could watch their eyes and their breathing to predict their movements. Once you see how a game will unfold, it is simple to avoid being trapped within it. And we are all that way. Every monk at the monastery. You could have sent in an army, and we would have killed them all with our bare hands.”
 

“But you’re monks. You’re not supposed to kill.”
 

“We may if it is required.”

“But you came after me in cold blood. Killed my guards. Killed my men.”
 

Amit turned slowly, hands again knitted behind his back. “It was required.”
 

“So, what?” said the Right Hand. “You’re going to kill my boss?”
 

“Is he the reason Nisha was killed?”
 

“I don’t know. But it probably goes further up. The order came down hard. Whatever she was to someone, she was a significant threat.”
 

“Then yes,” said Amit. “I will kill him. And I will kill those above him.”
 

“You’ll never get to the top man. Nobody even knows who pulls the strings.”
 

“Someone knows.”
 

“You’ll never find him. You’ll be stopped and killed.”
 

Amit chuckled as if hearing a clever limerick, his eyes squinting down in a genuine smile. “Oh, I do not think so.”
 

The Right Hand’s ears perked up. “Cops. I hear them coming.”
 

“Yes.”
 

“You should go.” His tone was dismissive, not at all concerned. Amit had already told the Right Hand that he would live, that it was his job to tell those above him that a man with a shaved head and bare feet would soon find and kill them. Uncertainty and fear were cancers, eating through strength and exposing weaknesses. The Right Hand’s message would unsettle the organization he still knew nothing about, allowing Amit to peer into its cracks as it trembled.
 

“We were going to be married,” said Amit, watching the police and ambulances arrive at the unmanned, locked front gate.
 

“Good for you.”
 

“She was going to tell me everything. I would have been able to protect her if I’d known what I was facing. But she never got a chance. This morning, it all ended, an hour too early. I would have renewed my proposal. I was going to leave the order. She would have told me all about you. There would have been no need for my quest. You would still have your hand, and I Nisha.”
 

“A shame.”

Amit turned, but this time the Right Hand didn’t flinch. He was getting comfortable, content that the monk wouldn’t hurt him.

“I should go.”

“I’ll miss you,” sneered the Right Hand.
 

“You will deliver my message to your boss, whom I will visit soon. And make suffer. Then I will kill him for what he did, for what he took from us.”
 

“And you won’t be back? You promised I could live if I delivered your message.”
 

“I promised. And a monk must keep his promises.”
 

The Right Hand nodded. Then Amit opened the window and dropped like a whisper to the grass.
 

Chapter 7

12:01
A
.
M
.
ON
S
UNDAY

The Right Hand, known to his friends by the rather non-underworld name of Telford Hayes, slipped into bed the night after his encounter with the killer monk, his new security men in place, all of the lawn lights on, fence guarded every 10 feet by a man in uniform. Security was costing a fortune, but he could afford it. No one would get through without him knowing. Even if an army of monks stormed his gates, Telford would see everything before it happened. He had a new bank of monitors in his bedroom, with several guards visible on every one.
 

As content as he could be with the giant cast on his arm (and holy shit had
that
fuckery hurt when they’d set it), Telford slipped under his sheets. With the lawn still blazing outside his window, he turned off the room lights and closed his eyes.
 

He was stirred when something sharp pressed against the underside of his chin.
 

“Greetings.”

Telford opened his eyes. It was the monk, still clad in his ridiculous garb. The man’s bald head caught the lawn lights and shone.
 

“How did you get in?” Telford asked. He couldn’t help asking. He’d put up an airtight perimeter, and looking at the computer monitors, he could see it was all still intact.

“I never left. I’ve been on the roof all night and day. I wanted to see the media circus. Sound carries well out there. You did admirably.”
 

Telford shifted, the knife’s sharp tip still pressing against his neck. “Thanks.”
 

“I saw your boss come today at your summons. I sneaked inside and heard what you said. You did well with him, too.”
 

“Again, thanks.”
 

The monk hadn’t moved, and was still smiling blandly down at Telford, his knife’s tip unwavering.

“So, I did what you said.”

“Yes.”
 

He rolled his eyes around the room:
Why-are-you-here?

“Well, did you forget something?”

“Yes,” said the monk. “I forgot to kill you.”
 

A cold sweat popped out on Telford’s forehead. “But you promised,” he stammered. “And a monk never breaks his promises!”
 

“This is true,” said the bald-headed man. “But I am no longer a monk.”
 

It was the last thing the Right Hand ever heard.
 

JOURNEY

Chapter 8

N
INETEEN
Y
EARS
A
GO

M
OST
S
RI
monks had shaved heads, but it was not a requirement. The order held many conventions, topmost among them in Woo’s mind was that there were no immutable truths or unbreakable maxims. True wisdom existed in knowing that he — and the others — knew nothing. Each rule or guiding principle could one day change, and no ritual was above that which the order was founded upon.
 

Most monks shaved. Woo did not, nor did he believe it was incumbent on a devoted follower to be uniform. While the others fashioned an unremarkable, undistinguishable exterior — to banish ego and give themselves more fully to the order — Woo felt that shaving was, in itself, an ego-centric behavior. Why would one without ego spend time on appearances at all? It was a contradiction to Woo. He wore his silver-white hair — not colored due to old age, but rather of his own peculiar genetics, as a shaggy, shoulder-length bob that he occasionally cut himself, without a mirror, with fevered motions of scissors or knife. The time he saved — time that the other monks spent with razors and mirrors — Woo spent in contemplation.
 

He was in this contemplation, eyes closed, when the racket arose.

His eyes opened slowly, as if the cacophony was expected. He rose from Lotus, without marring the grass with his hands, bowed to the garden for a long moment, quiet save for the tumult from somewhere behind him, then slowly turned with his hands clasped in front of his blue robe and its tied saffron sash and walked back toward the compound.