“The army…?”
“Previously neutral. The older generals were intelligent enough to realize that tearing India to pieces and killing or expelling a hundred and fifty million people would destroy us all. But now Prime Minister Ramanujan has stacked the high command with his own people. The army obeys the orders of the B.S.S.”
Lessing asked, “What will you… your people… do?”
“We have nowhere to go. Iran was Shi’i; now the western half is Israeli and the eastern half Russian… if the Russians are still alive to hold it. Afghanistan has been theirs for almost half a century, ever since the re-invasion. The Middle East? Israel would never let us in. Pakistan? A Sunni majority and a rabidly pro-Communist Mullah as leader! Sajid Ali Lahori would prefer us to starve in refugee camps in the deserts of Kutch and the eastern Panjab.”
“Like I said: what will you do?”
She shrugged gracefully, and his heart went out to her. “Do? We will live on here. If Ramanujan tries to expel us, we will fight. We will lose, of course, but we will fight. So will the Sikhs and some of the Christians. We will die as Muslims should.”
“Martyrs!” Borchardt’s characterization of Shi’i Islam arose to infuriate him. “What the hell good is that? God damn it, you are coming with me! Get your clothes! Get what you want to take!”
She melted against him, and he thought he had won. Then she pulled away. “You still don’t… never will… understand! I cannot! I must not!” She retreated toward the door. “I have my principles, Alan, just as you have yours. Your Party… your SS oaths “
“Wait a minute! I’m only a beegee… hired help! I’m not one of Mulder’s closet Nazis!” It was logical for her to think so; her father’s C.I.D. kikibirds had undoubtedly classified them all as Nazis, from Mulder on down to the kids who wiped the dishes.
“It doesn’t matter. That’s not the point, not now.” She pressed her fingers against her cheeks to hide tears, let her night-black tresses drift down to curtain her face, and backed into the hall. “Whatever you are, you are not mine… not for me… not a part of India!”
He followed her, reached for her. Then he saw that there was someone in the hall behind her: one of the faceless, rag-wrapped sweeper women who wielded short-handled straw brooms around Indoco’s buildings. He opened his mouth to tell the woman to go elsewhere, but Jameela spoke first:
“Sahib ko de do! Voh chiz jo turn ne pa’i thi, de do’.” She was ordering the crone to give him something, that much he understood.
The woman approached him shyly, crab-wise, head bowed, face hidden by her faded, green shawl. She extended both skeletal hands. Wondering, he cupped his own beneath hers.
Two objects dropped into his palms.
He knew at once what they were: one a smooth egg, the other a short, thick cylinder.
“My God!” He almost dropped them.
“My present,” Jameela said. “To you, Alan. In memory of… of us. They’re yours, aren’t they? Drugs? Weapons?… No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
He couldn’t speak. He was only glad that she seemed to have no idea what these containers held.
“Hameeda here saw you hide them. It’s impossible to remain unseen in India. We are so many: peasants, laborers, children, people with no jobs and little to do. Everybody watches. A rupee buys a day’s food. It’s cheap to hire watchers. Or anything else you want.”
“Thank her for me.” He stowed the Pacov containers into his shaving kit. “Why didn’t you tell your father? Subramaniam?”
“I would report on Mulder, on Wrench… certainly on Goddard… but never on you, Alan. As for Subramaniam, he hales you… all foreigners. But he hates us Muslims too… and the Christians, and the Sikhs, and everybody else who isn’t a caste Hindu. I told him only what I thought was my duty. As for Hameeda, she is a Christian, the lowest of the low, the outcasts who joined Christianity during British times to escape persecution. She would rather die than tell the mighty Inspector Sahib a single thing!”
He went to her, and this time she did not pull away. Hameeda watched impassively as they kissed.
“When this is over…,” Jameela murmured.
It would never be over. The world had turned; a new day had dawned, a Judgment Day of wrath and chaos and terror. It would never be over, but he smiled anyway and held her close, letting her warm, dry, spice-fragrant body nestle against his own. He rumpled her hair m his fist, strained against her, and let her feel his yearning. Soon,” he whispered. “I’ll be back for you.”
He hoped he wasn’t too bad a prophet.
For every complex question, there is a simple answer. And it’s wrong.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Thursday, December 11, 2042
Jennifer Caw tapped her sunglasses against the metal rim of the glass-topped beach table. “It was the Jews, I say. The Israelis, backed by their puppets in the United States.”
“Doubtful,” Hans Borchardt countered. “They’d kill their relatives who still live in Russia. Madness! Not even their most hawkish Jews would do that!”
“They might think a few hundred thousand lives were a fair exchange for knocking off their most dangerous enemy. Or they may have the antidote… vaccine, whatever… for Pacov. Smuggle that into Russia first, and the Jews there form a ready-made occupying force.”
“A handful, mostly untrained, women and kids, many old or infirm. Be serious, Jennifer!”
“Then, too, the Israelis may have had information we don’t. Maybe they saw a first strike as the only way out of a nasty situation. Remember the troop movements north of Iran a few months ago? There were Arabs or Pakistanis or Afghans caught inside Russian-controlled territory about the same time, weren’t there? Plenty of stateless assassins the Israelis could hire.”
“The big powers would never allow the balance to be upset! Neither an Israeli attack on Russia, nor a Russian thrust to halt the Israelis’ push through Iran… as long as they stopped at the Afghan border. The Americans and the Russians had this all worked out “
“Precisely why the Israelis might have used Pacov: a means to break the deadlock and get on with their expansion. A ‘surgical first strike.’ Tell nobody, and get the job done.”
“Too risky! They gain little…”
“Crap!” Jennifer popped her tongue against her teeth, one of her least ladylike habits. “Look at Eastern Europe now: empty, rich, and chock-full of loot all the way from the German border over to Siberia! Practically no defenses: Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland a jumble of desperate refugees and practically no local authorities left; Germany struggling to keep the refugees from crossing her own borders; Turkey, Greece, and the Balkans harmless; Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in turmoil; China already gobbling up Mongolia and the east! Are you telling me that Israel doesn’t gain by this? She can grab giant hunks of Russian and Ukrainian territory before anybody else gets to ‘em! Lebensraum, Hans, Eretz Israel! Kosher delicatessens in Kharkov and Donetsk!”
Borchardt fussed with his white Club Lingahnie tee-shirt. His first acquisition on Ponape had been a monumental tropical sunburn. He pursed his lips and said, “The Americans will not let Israel do that. Already they ‘re helping the survivors. Some of their teams have reached Moscow: decon squads, doctors, epidemiologists… not occupation troops.”
“They’ll find excuses to stay. So will the British in Leningrad, the Germans in Kiev, and the Chinese in Vladivostok. First they become permanent missions, then colonists. After a while they own the place, like the Israelis on the West Bank eighty years ago.” The sunglasses ticked out a distracting rhythm against the tabletop. Jennifer Caw played to win, even in a friendly debate. “No, the Israelis came, they saw, they conquered… and they stayed. Mulder picked up a radio newscast yesterday that said three Israeli armored columns are already moving north from Tabriz through Tbilisi. Are they going straight up to Moscow? Or sending a spearhead northwest to Kharkov and Kiev? Or just grabbing everything they can reach?”