Suddenly throwing the steering wheel to the right, Dhaval recklessly turned into the oncoming traffic, forcing several vehicles to jam on their brakes. Gritting his teeth, Dhaval half expected to hear the crunch of a collision, but luckily it was only screeching tires, horns, and angry shouts. Whether the car ahead was the hotel’s or not, he’d decided to check the mosque. If Jennifer Hernandez wasn’t there, then he’d head back to the hotel.
Moving slowly in the stop-and-go side-street traffic, it took some time to get to the front of the mosque, where Dhaval turned left into a parking area. As soon as he did so he recognized the hotel car as it was being parked. Quickly glancing over his shoulder in the opposite direction, he was rewarded with catching sight of Jennifer on a cycle rickshaw just before she disappeared into one of the crowded galis.
Having been told the order in which Jennifer was planning on touring Old Delhi, Inspector Naresh Prasad merely assumed she’d changed her mind about the Red Fort and was moving on to the Jama Masjid. Although still hurrying to a degree, he felt there wasn’t the need to put himself in jeopardy. At the same time, he didn’t want to lose her, even though he was progressively questioning the need to follow her while she was acting like a tourist. He would have much preferred to see whom she’d had breakfast with that morning than follow her on a sightseeing junket.
As he pulled into the parking lot and parked, he noticed a man in black climbing from his Mercedes. He was the same man Naresh had seen only a few minutes earlier rushing for his car as Jennifer Hernandez was driving out from the Red Fort’s parking area. Curious, Naresh rapidly got out himself.
Neil had to Smile at himself as he ran along the face of the Jama Masjid mosque. He was certainly having a devil of a time surprising Jennifer, and wondered what had happened at the Red Fort. When he had visited India five months ago, the Red Fort had been one of his favorite tourist sites, but apparently Jennifer had felt otherwise.
A minute earlier, by sheer luck, Neil had just caught sight of Jennifer, poised on a cycle rickshaw and about to be swallowed up by the labyrinthine Delhi. Yelling to the driver to stop, Neil had tossed the fare into the taxi’s front seat, and had leaped from the vehicle, only to be bogged down by the milling crowds massed at the mosque’s entrance. When he’d finally broken free, Jennifer had disappeared.
When Neil entered the bazaar, he had to slow to a jog. At first he wasn’t sure which way she’d gone, but a minute or so of further jogging brought her back into sight. At that moment she was about fifty feet ahead of him.
Jennifer was not enjoying herself. The cycle rickshaw seat was hard and the alleyway bumpy. Several times she was concerned she might fall as the cycle’s tires fell into potholes. The alleyways, narrow lanes, and even narrower katras were horribly crowded, noisy, frenetic, vibrant, and chaotic all at the same time. Myriad electrical wires, like spider webs, hung above, as did water pipes. There was a symphony of smells both delightful and sickening, involving, among other things, spices and urine, animal feces and jasmine.
As she held on for dear life she thought she probably would have found the experience more engaging if it hadn’t been for her grandmother’s death, which she couldn’t quite displace from the forefront of her consciousness, despite the bombardment on her senses. Although she was dealing with the tragedy far better than she had imagined before arriving in India, it was still affecting her negatively on many levels. As such, it seemed to her that the part of the bazaar she was seeing was dirty — filled with too much trash and sewage, and teeming with far too many people. The shops themselves for the most part were mere holes in the walls, their junk tumbling out into the lane. Although she recognized she’d yet to see the section selling the gold and silver or the spice area, she’d had enough. She just wasn’t in the right mind-set.
Jennifer was about to try to tell the cyclist she wanted to go back — in fact, she’d leaned forward, holding on with her left hand and keeping her shoulder bag in her lap, to attempt to get the man’s attention — when she noticed a kind of commotion out of the corner of her eye. As she turned to her left and looked down, she found herself staring down the barrel of a gun. Over the top of the barrel was a man’s hard, thin, expressionless face.
The next thing everyone in the crowded galis heard was the startling noise of the gun being fired twice. Those close to the victim, who happened to be looking in his direction, also had to witness the awful destructive power at close range, of a nine-millimeter bullet traversing the skull and exiting the left side of the man’s face. In this incidence, most of the victim’s left cheek was blown away, laying bare the upper and lower dentition.
Chapter 26
October 18, 2007
Thursday, 10:52 a.m.
Delhi, India
For a moment, time stood still. All was silent. Everyone in the immediate area was dumbstruck for almost a full beat. With the gun going off in the narrow, close-quartered alleyway, their ears were ringing. The next instant it was like being next to a tornado, with everyone screaming and running headlong away in a complete panic.
The protein-starved cyclist ferrying Jennifer was one of the very first to flee, literally leaping from his tricycle and dashing off, heading down the galis, not even holding on to his dhoti. He might have appeared malnourished, but he had a strong sense of self-preservation.
The instant the driver left the cycle rickshaw and forcefully pushed off with his feet, the front wheel turned sharply and the tricycle’s momentum heaved it forward. As it crashed it hurled Jennifer straight ahead onto the filthy pavement. With her shoulder bag looped over her shoulder, it stayed with her as she sprawled spread-eagle on the ground, scraping the side of her nose and her right elbow in the process. At the time she didn’t care what she’d fallen into. Almost the second she’d touched down, she was up and running with everyone else.
Within seconds the bazaar became a building tide of people rushing forward like a wave, engulfing the shops, which acted like clams. As soon at the disturbance touched them, their doors instantly slammed shut from within; locks were secured, leaving merchandise to be stumbled over and trampled in the street.
Jennifer had no idea where she was going but was content to let her shocked feet take her anyplace quickly, as long as it was away from where the gun had gone off. All she could think about was the fleeting image of the man in black aiming a gun at her face. At the last nanosecond she saw the man’s left cheek literally disappear; one second it was there, the next it was gone. At that instant the man appeared to be the embodiment of the Grim Reaper.
Jennifer became aware of other people running, everybody in a slightly different direction, although most down the street and bearing to the right at the first corner. Rapidly tiring from running full-tilt, she noticed a number of people disappearing into the doorway of one of the larger shops beyond the corner. The owner was complaining and trying to get his door shut, but the half-dozen or so people were ignoring him. Jennifer pushed into the store behind the others, as ahead she saw two policemen, scruffily dressed in khaki, trying to stop the panic by beating people with their long bamboo staffs as they ran headlong into them.
As she dashed into the shop and stared around at the merchandise, she realized it was a butcher shop. Toward the front were stacks and stacks of tiny crates stuffed with live, cackling chickens and a couple of ducks. A little farther inside were some pigs and a lamb. The place stank and was horribly dirty. The floor was covered with dried crusted blood. Flies were all over everything. Jennifer found it hard to keep them out of her face.