“We know how to use weapons,” Borchardt stated grimly. “We have similar problems in South Africa.”
Lessing heard the snick of the weapons compartment opening. He thought: God, don’t let Borchardt be a trigger-happy hothead!
He should have worried more about Jennifer Caw.
“Keep the guns out of sight!” he commanded. “What we don’t want is a bloodbath! If we hurt somebody, either these people will massacre us or we’ll face charges in an Indian court! Either way we lose!”
Distorted faces pressed against the windows. A club smashed at the windshield; they saw the wielder’s surprise as his weapon bounced harmlessly away. Fists pounded on the roof, paving stones battered the glass, and lathis jabbed at the headlights, the hood, and the door panels. Wrench got the vehicle in gear and began to creep forward. The front bumper pushed into yielding, writhing human flesh. One man started to slip down under the wheels. He disappeared. All Wrench could do was brake helplessly. Another marcher saved himself by clambering up onto the hood.
The car lurched violently. Lessing called, “Liese, hold on to Mrs. Delacroix! They’re trying to tip us over!”
The tide of saffron robes against the windows turned the interior into a gloomy, airless oven. The vehicle tilted in the opposite direction, then bumped down again. As soon as their assailants got coordinated, they would go over.
“Pardes’C. Pardesti” the mob chanted: “Foreigner! Foreigner!”
The chorus swelled to a deep-throated roar and became a rhythmic, bestial grunting. There were hundreds of people outside. One face squeezed against the glass nearest Lessing was bleeding from the nose, the eyes open but rolled up so that only the whites showed. The man was probably dead or dying, suffocated in the crush. Somebody passed the youth on the hood a mattock, and he swung this against the front windshield. Even bulletproof glass would eventually give way. The din was unbearable, the yelling and pounding and banging a single, sustained, howling clamor. The car stank of dust, sweat, blood, and perfumed hair-oil.
“We’re dead in here! ” Jennifer Caw shrieked. Lessing yelled and ducked as she poked the muzzle of the Riga-71 past his ear. The limousine was rocking violently now; in seconds it would go over. He couldn’t catch all she said: “One burst… open window… scare them off….” He did understand her last word clearly: “Gasoline!”
She was right. A sea of waving hands arose to pass five gallon tins of gasoline over the crowd to those closest to the car. Fire was a good way to deal with a bulletproof vehicle. Puncture the fuel tank or bring up your own inflammables; wait for the flaming, screaming occupants to crawl out; then massacre them at your leisure. Lessing had a sudden vision of Syria again: dry, yellow grass, a litter of dust-grimed barrels and ammunition boxes, concrete blocks, rocky soil, all blossoming yellow and orange and black as the Israelis used a flamethrower to pour death into an Arab house. The fate of those inside did not bear remembering.
Jennifer Caw had the rear window down an inch or two. Liese screamed a last protest. Then the chatter of the automatic rifle drowned out all else. The universe became chaos and the reek of gunpowder. Spent shell casings rattled against the roof above Lessing ‘s head, and he threw up his arms to protect himself.
The car jounced down again onto all four wheels. The chanting mingled with screams, then faltered to a stop. Some of the attackers hurled themselves away in terror, a jumble of brown, sweat-shining limbs and faces, clawed fingers, staring eyes, open mouths, and orange-and-yellow garments. Some went down, others clutched and scrambled to stay on top of them. The man on the hood threw away his mattock and leaped off onto the backs of those below. He hopped, fell, got up, balanced like an acrobat, and staggered until he, too, slipped down and vanished under the millipede feet of the mob.
“You hit anybody?” Wrench called out.
“I don’t see how,” Jennifer Caw yelled back. “Some bastard got hold of the barrel and pushed it straight up in the air!” Lessing had a glimpse of her in the rear-view mirror. She was a valkyrie: wild, reddish hair, high spots of color in her cheeks, eyes glittering with battle-lust. Combat did that to some people, both men and women. He recalled many who had died of it.
“Now, God damn it!” he snarled at Wrench. The little man did not need urging; he already had the big Tora Ultra moving. The press and the dust kept them from seeing much, and the car bumped horribly over unseen objects in the street. The relentless hammering of stones and lathis on the roof kept pace with them as they inched toward the end of the square. The broad avenue there led to Hazrat Ganj and the comparative safety of the upper-class districts.
Borchardt shook Lessing ‘s shoulder and shouted in his ear. “They’re thinning out… giving up… going.” He repeated himself in Afrikaans — it might have been German — for Mrs. Delacroix’s benefit The old lady had survived intact, disheveled but calm, a .38-caliber pistol on her lap. Not exactly Whistler’s mother, but then Lessing had come to expect no less from Emma Delacroix.
Borchardt spoke the truth. Their attackers were dropping back. Many seemed to be heading for the open-fronted shops that lined the square. Only a few good Samaritans knelt by the half dozen bodies sprawled where their vehicle had been attacked. Lessing looked over the heads of the mob, thinking to see an advancing wall of Indian policemen, or perhaps a phalanx of the B.S.S.’s paramilitary troops, wearing saffron armbands and cast-off army uniforms. He saw neither.
“What the hell?” Wrench put Lessing’s puzzlement into words. “Just a few loose cops over there by the speakers’ stand. And they re headed out, too. All going away… or into the goddamned shops.”
“Or standing around in little groups…,” Liese added from the
The rally had indeed broken up, apparently for reasons other than the near-mayhem that had just occurred. The loudspeakers still blared, and Lessing could see men standing and gesticulating on the podium, but nobody was paying attention. The crowd was dispers—
Lessing took a chance and rolled the window down. “Hey!” he called to an older man, one who looked more prosperous than the rest. “Janab-i-ali! Kyahai? Kyaho rahahap.”
The man turned, pointed, and shouted indistinct words back.
“Something about a radio,” Lessing told theothers. “Stop the car. There, in front of that electrical goods store.”
“You’re crazy! They’ll kill us!” cried Jennifer Caw, and Borchardt echoed her.
Lessing put a hand on the wheel. “Not likely, now that the fun’s over.”
“Please, Alan…!” That was Liese.
He had the door open. “Just a moment. Most of the people in this shop are Muslims. I can tell by their clothes and other things. The B.S.S. has no more use for them than it does for us!
The shop sold electric heaters, refrigerators, stoves, and small appliances. Perhaps fifty people, young and old, from various faiths and classes, clustered about a pyramidal display of glittering transistor radios. Most of these were turned on, tuned to the same station, the Urdu Broadcast Service of the government of India.
Lessing knew the shopkeeper slightly. He and Jameela had bought a toaster here three weeks ago. He struggled with his Urdu, gave up, and asked in English, “What’s happening? What’s on the radio?”
The merchant gazed at him from huge, gentle, slightly crossed eyes and shifted his cud of betel nut from one side of his jaw to the other. He made no reply but jerked his head toward the radios. The crowd watched.