The PuppetMaster (10 page)

Fifteen

Sutradharak never handled explosives, timers, or wires, or any other instruments of mass destruction for that matter. As his name suggested, he merely pulled the strings--and pushed the buttons--to bring about the death. The more, the better.

After his basic blueprint had arrived in the middle of the night he had stayed awake for two more hours planning. Then he had slept deeply and woken up invigorated. Immediately he drove to the loft in the center of the city and transmitted a text message that initiated an appointment with two men in a small vegetarian cafe in a decaying section of the city. At noon he arrived in his merchant disguise and entered the Peshawar Cafe. Even though the two men he was meeting were loyal lieutenants, they did not know his identity. They had never seen him in clothes other than those he was wearing. To them he was a purveyor of goat products--milk, hide, and cheese. He wore heavy, dark lenses and carried business cards with embossed lettering in the name of Akhmed Jamil. But the two also knew that he was also the same man that orchestrated bombings that terrified millions. Wisely, they didn’t ask questions.

Sutradharak, as usual, would not discuss details at their first meeting. He sipped tea and merely began pulling strings, spelling out a few of his needs--a team of four, the same that he had been on the bombing event of the train outside Agra a year earlier. He did not discuss dates or time, only some of the materials that would be necessary.

The first lieutenant assured him that sufficient quantities of the most critical element could be made available. “Yes Sir. HBX-3, more powerful than the C4 plastique. It is a mix of RDX, TNT, powdered aluminum, and D-2 wax, and can be easily shaped and to fit inside any ordinary container.”

Sutradharak halted the man with a wave of his fingers. “That is less important for this event. Tell me this? Can it be detonated underwater in the same way as the C-4? And with the cell phones?”

“Using the proper wiring and detonators, yes Sir, but obviously the receiving phones can not be submerged. They will need dry locations with wires leading down or up to the HBX.”

The goat merchant nodded. “That is adequate. Good. And all the items can be delivered by car to a location I will speak of later? No public transportation.”

“Yes, Sir. If you wish to tell me where and when . . .”

With another wave of the hand he silenced the man. “You will be contacted.”

The second man provided information about the two drivers needed to complete the team. Sutradharak wanted no names, only their curriculum vitae and assurance that they understood what would happened if they were apprehended. Or if didn’t follow his instructions in every way.

The subordinate squirmed. “Yes sir. They understand the consequences. There will be no problems.”

After a dessert of coconut flan and mint tea, Sutradharak pushed envelopes of washed rupees across the table and the three of them slipped quietly back into the slums.

A second meeting was convened two days later, this time in the loft, and this time Sutradharak presented his plan in full. Every detail was discussed. Maps, schedules, and structures were analyzed a dozen ways. Afterwards, as they had on previous occasions, the men lit a small fire in a brass bowl on the wooden table and incinerated all their notes into fine ash. With a few drops of water they blended it into a gray paste and smeared three horizontal stripes on the two men’s foreheads. As devotees of Shiva, they left the loft, and the Puppetmaster remained.

Sixteen

“Lalji! Laljiiiii!” I was leaning against the front of my gate rattling the chain and hinges in mounting frustration, screaming at the sleeping, obviously deaf, figure snoring in the rear. He had padlocked the chain through the bars as he was supposed to when I was safely inside. The problem was; I wasn’t safely inside. I was screaming like Fred Flintstone outside. Lights were popping on in the nearby villas. I stopped yelling.

In the back, under the mango, I heard his contented buzzing.

I looked for a pebble in the darkness and found something better, a hefty clod of dirt. My left-handed hook-shot, honed over the years as I had driven the lane against equal or taller opponents, arched over the fence in a perfect rainbow. It bounced with a thud off Lalji’s naked chest, resulting in a shriek and another light to come on somewhere up the street.

“Lalji, open the goddamned gate.”

“Saab?” The frightened, sleepy voice approached. “What are you doing out there?”

I took a breath and counted to four before pointing out that he had set the chain, settled into the hammock, and forgotten to check if I was actually inside before drifting off. He stared at me in confusion, and then offered the feeble excuse, “But Saab never goes out so late at night, even when he walks by the river, it is always early.”

“Yes, well not tonight.” He stared at me. With a sigh I asked, “Lalji?”

“Yes, Saab?”

“Do you have the key?”

As if finally awake and realizing that I was still on the opposite side, he proudly drew the key from around his waist and held it up for me to see. “Indeed, Saab. I have it with me all the time.”

“Then I suggest you put it in the lock and let me in.” He quickly—as rapidly as possible for him—opened the gate and issued me into the courtyard. “Thank you. Now you may lock it and go to your hammock, but do try to remember that you are a night watchman. Sleep with one eye open from now on.”

“Yes, Saab, I will do that, one ear open also.”

I sighed and as I made my way up the steps to the veranda, thought to ask, “Are there any messages?”

Lalji looked puzzled for a moment, digging through the memory of the last six hours. “Oh yes. Master Mejanand came to the gate this evening. I told him you were not in.”

I stared at Lalji with such ferocity that he slowly arrived at his own conclusion. I hadn't been inside when he'd delivered that message and hadn't been inside all evening.

“Did he say what he wanted?” Mej Whiton coming to my gate was not unusual. As far as I knew he didn’t even own a cell phone and his preferred method of conveying messages was to just drop by unannounced. I was certain of the reason for his visit anyway.

“He asked if Saab wishes to play with the flying platters tomorrow. Sunrise is best he said, because he is traveling to the capital by the morning train.”

I nodded, thinking out loud. “I suppose I could work on my notes before he arrives and play for an hour before going to Master’s. Did he say if he was coming here, or am I to meet him at the fields?”

Lalji patted off the remains of the dirt missile that powdered his chest. “He says that he will come here before sunrise with two new platters.”

I smiled, and with a final reminder to sharpen his duties as night watchman, plodded sleepily to my room.

Seventeen

Nearly every person in Varanasi created and offered opinions of the bombings. Two had been set in the heart of the city and four more along the rail line between us and New Delhi. Sixty-nine people had been murdered, including the most recent, near Lucknow, and during the previous fourteen months the attacks had been the topic over most cups of chai and evening meals. Most considered themselves informed enough to declare the guilty party as Taweel Churi, a terrorist group based out of Pakistan, but operating northern India. An interrogation of the only captured suspect provided intelligence agencies with a name, Sutradharak, The PuppetMaster. Nothing else came from that interrogation but the name and the mysterious death of the prisoner two days later. The media picked up on the title and used it persistently to drive up readership. But no more arrests came. No one knew for certain if Taweel Churi or Sutradharak truly existed, but logic dictated that whoever was responsible had a nasty agenda. Murdering innocent people in a temple was a profanity no one could imagine. Thirty-seven had died in the Sankat Mochan blast in March. Hindus were clamoring for retaliation, though against whom, they were not certain. Muslims walked about in larger groups. Hindus whispered that the mosque leader, Imam Nomani, or more likely the crazed Cabinet Minister Qereshy, were channeling funds to the terrorists. Now, both were under surveillance by the intelligence agencies. Conspiracy theorists whispered at tea stalls, and every cult in every religion in every neighborhood was nervous.

Blistering heat and a sky devoid of rain added to the tension.

The only person besides me that didn’t offer opinions was Mejanand Whiton. As far as I could determine Mej didn’t care about anybody but himself. If he did, it certainly wasn’t expressed or shown. I cared about all of the victims in my own quiet way, and certainly felt the agony the loved-ones left behind, but like the pyres at Manikarnika, I sidestepped any opinions.

Mej had no desire to chat about worldly events. He preferred to fire off truly offensive jokes in a raspy Cockney accent, while chortling non-stop at his own vulgarities. He usually had me smiling or chuckling within minutes. This was one of the reasons I rather enjoyed his company—albeit for very short periods of time--he never asked where I came from or why I lived alone. I reciprocated by not asking anything of him.

Our association was based on a single passion. Freestyle Frisbee. Mej, like me, even in my self-imposed monasticism, liked to stay in shape, a challenge in the crowded confines of Varanasi. Being creative, we'd discovered a unique way to burn off the calories of rice and butter-based dishes, and together we’d found the only place it could be done--the marigold and henna fields south of the city. Marigolds and carnations adorned every holy object, especially dead bodies and lingum and yoni alters. The henna was made into dye for hair and body art. Fortunately the fields were just a short walk from where I lived. They provided the raw materials for the ritual of Varanasi, and provided us a place to exercise.

The fields weren’t perfect, being rock-strewn and often covered with thatch, but as sections were rotated in and out, we discovered that we could romp across them for our fun and sweat.

Mej Whiton was English NRI--Non-Resident Indian-- and that was the extent of what I knew of him. He had a rough East End inflection and a coffee-complexioned features that, to put it nicely, were plain. His pajama pants and loose shirts were always clean, and he seemed to know the ways of Varanasi as well as I did. He spoke fluent Hindi, which I took to be an endowment of his English Indian parents.

We had met the previous year at a fruit stall in the central market in the Chowk district. I happened upon him one afternoon as he was juggling five sweet-limes, chatting to an expanding audience in his version of English that had no Hs. He hailed me with a friendly ‘ello, mate,’ and after his performance we struck up a conversation where he got me quickly smiling. According to extensive research—his own--it was a proven fact that long, firm bananas were the fruit of choice of local brides after only six months of marriage. He gave me a lurid description of their use and in short time we discovered that we shared a passion for Frisbee.

Mej stood on the far side of the gate grinning at me like a winning jockey. Two new discs, a blue one on his left index finger, and a green one on his right, spun in smooth silence. With a soft flick he sent them aloft where they crossed and resettled on opposite fingers. “Crickey, now that was foocking good one, eh Bheemster.”

I grinned. The trick was better than average. I pushed a mug of steaming coffee through the bars. “Yep, you’re the well oiled machine, Mej.”

I set my mug on the bricks and stepped to Lalji’s hammock—the snoring hadn’t changed since the previous the night. I tugged on the key and as I unfastened it from his waist, my vigilant watchman rolled over with a girlish giggle and resettled into the folds of his cocoon.

“’Appy you got me message. Been a shame to waste this part o’ the day.”

With mugs of coffee we strolled down Ramnagar Road towards the pontoon bridge that spanned the river. The water was wide and sluggish there as it exited the bosomy curve in the north. A kilometer away, on the opposite bank, the dilapidated fort of the Raja rose in the shimmering light of the new day.

Mej launched into his first joke. “So, Pope John Paul and ‘enry Kissinger walk into a barber shop.”

I groaned, “Jesus, Mej.”

“Nah, e’s in the next one. He didn’t want the ‘aircut.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “What do you do? Save these just for me?”

“Nah, store up ‘em up for the birdies. Good sense of ‘umor will snook ya more quim than your mug or talking up the size of your knob. I should know, mate. Me face doesn’t get me pussy, jokes do. So, whot do a tornado in Texas, a flood in Mississippi, and a divorce in Utah, ‘ave in common.”

Before I could even picture the first of these oddities, he laughed in a Cockney-Loosiana drawl, “Some poor arsehole’s gonna lose a double-wide.”

I groaned. “Gimmee a disc.” He spun it at eye level just within reach. I snatched it, and in a single motion spun like a ballerina and sent it rocketing ninety feet up where it leveled like a gyroscope, drifted languidly and then angled straight back down. He leapt, caught it behind his back, and flipped it into the breeze again before his feet touched the earth.

It had begun.

The art of the dance, that’s what we called it. Salsa, Rumba, and ballet with two vinyl discs, and once it started, we didn’t stop until an hour had passed. We jumped, caught, flipped, and launched ourselves like acrobats. There was a competitive element that seeped in naturally, a machismo desire to outdo each other. The discs flew. We dashed, leapt, and snatched them between our legs, heads, or backs. Mej perfected the toe- kick; I mastered the index flip. We knew every trick, every move, and by the end of sixty minutes we had pushed ourselves to a very sweaty fatigue.