He pulled himself up onto the deck and turned to help her out. But she was still standing on the elevator platform.
"Kolabati!" He yelled her name and she jumped, looked at him, and started up the ladder.
When they were both on deck he led her by the hand to the gangway.
"Kusum operates it electronically," she told him.
He searched the top of the gangway with his hands until he found the motor, then followed the wires back to a small control box. On the undersurface of that he found a button.
"This should do it."
He pressed: A click, a hum, and the gangway began its slow descent. Too slow. An overwhelming sense of urgency possessed him. He had to be off this ship!
He didn't wait for the gangway to reach the dock. As soon as it passed the three-quarter mark in its descent he was on the treads, heading down, pulling Kolabati behind him. They jumped the last three feet and began to run. Some of his urgency must have transferred to her—she was running right beside him.
They stayed away from Fifty-seventh Street on the chance that they might run into Kusum coming back to the docks. Instead they ran up Fifty-eighth. Three taxis passed them by despite Jack's shouts. Perhaps the cabbies didn't want to get involved with two haggard-looking people—a shirtless man with a bloody right hand and a woman in a rumpled sari—looking as if they were running for their lives. Jack couldn't say he blamed them. But he wanted to get off the street. He felt vulnerable out here.
A fourth taxi stopped and Jack leaped in, dragging Kolabati after him. He gave the address of his apartment. The driver wrinkled his nose at the stench that clung to them and floored his gas peddle. He seemed to want to be rid of this fare as soon as possible.
During the ride Kolabati sat in a corner of the back seat and stared out the window. Jack had a thousand questions he wanted to ask her but restrained himself. She wouldn't answer him in the presence of the cab driver and he wasn't sure he wanted her to. But as soon as they were in the apartment…
14
The gangway was down.
Kusum froze on the dock when he saw it. It was no illusion. Moonlight glinted icy blue from its aluminum steps and railings.
How? He could not imagine—
He broke into a run, taking the steps two at a time and sprinting across the deck to the door to the pilot's quarters. The lock was still in place. He pulled on it—still intact and locked.
He leaned against the door and waited for his pounding heart to slow. For a moment he had thought someone had come aboard and released Jack and Kolabati.
He tapped on the steel door with the key to the lock.
"Bati? Come to the door. I wish to speak to you."
Silence.
"Bati?"
Kusum pressed an ear to the door. He sensed more than silence on the other side. There was an indefinable feeling of emptiness there. Alarmed, he jammed the key into the padlock—
—and hesitated.
He was dealing with Repairman Jack here and was wary of underestimating him. Jack was probably armed and unquestionably dangerous. He might well be waiting in there with a drawn pistol ready to blast a hole in whoever opened the door.
But it felt empty. Kusum decided to trust his senses. He twisted the key, removed the padlock, and pulled the door open.
The hallway was empty. He glanced into the pilot's cabin-empty! But how—?
And then he saw the hole in the floor. For an instant he thought a rakosh had broken through into the compartment; then he saw part of the iron bed frame on the floor and understood.
The audacity of that man! He had escaped into the heart of the rakoshi quarters—and had taken Kolabati with him! He smiled to himself. They were probably still down there somewhere, cowering on a catwalk. Bati's necklace would protect her. But Jack might well have fallen victim to a rakosh by now.
Then he remembered the lowered gangplank. Cursing in his native tongue, he hurried from the pilot's quarters to the hatch over the main hold. He lifted the entry port and peered below.
The rakoshi were agitated. Through the murky light he could see their dark forms mixing and moving about chaotically on the floor of the hold. Half a dozen feet below him was the elevator platform. Immediately he noticed the torch on its side, the scorched wood. He leaped through the trapdoor to the elevator and started it down.
Something lay on the floor of the hold. When he had descended halfway to the floor, he saw that it was a dead rakosh. Rage suffused Kusum. Dead! Its head—what was left of it—was a mass of charred flesh!
With a trembling hand, Kusum reversed the elevator.
That man! That thrice-cursed American! How had he done it? If only the rakoshi could speak! Not only had Jack escaped with Kolabati, he had killed a rakosh in the process! Kusum felt as if he had lost a part of himself.
As soon as the elevator reached the top, Kusum scrambled onto the deck and rushed back to the pilot's quarters. Something he had seen on the floor there…
Yes! Here it was, near the hole in the floor, a shirt—the shirt Jack had been wearing when Kusum had last seen him. Kusum picked it up. It was still damp with sweat.
He had planned to let Jack live, but all that was changed now. Kusum had known Jack was resourceful, but had never dreamed him capable of escaping through the midst of a nest of rakoshi. The man had gone too far tonight. And he was too dangerous to be allowed to roam free with what he now knew.
Jack would have to die.
He could not deny a trace of regret in the decision, yet Kusum was sure Jack had good karma and would shortly be reincarnated into a life of quality.
A slow smile stretched Kusum's thin lips as he hefted the sweaty shirt in his hand. The Mother rakosh would do it, and Kusum already had a plan for her. The irony of it was delicious.
15
"I have to wash up," Jack said, indicating his injured hand as they entered his apartment. "Come into the bathroom with me."
Kolabati looked at him blankly. "What?"
"Follow me." Wordlessly, she complied.
As he began to wash the dirt and clotted blood from the gash, he watched her in the mirror over the sink. Her face was pale and haggard in the merciless light of the bathroom. His own looked ghoulish.
"Why would Kusum want to send his rakoshi after a little girl?"
She seemed to come out of her fugue. Her eyes cleared. "A little girl?"
"Seven years old."
Her hand covered her mouth. "Is she a Westphalen?" she said between her fingers.
Jack stood numb and cold in the epiphany that burst upon him.
That's it! My God, that's the link! Nellie, Grace, and Vicky—all Westphalens!
"Yes." He turned to face her. "The last Westphalen in America, I believe. But why the Westphalens?"
Kolabati leaned against the wall beside the sink and spoke to the opposite wall. She spoke slowly, carefully, as if measuring every word.
"About a century and a quarter ago, Captain Sir Albert Westphalen pillaged a temple in the hills of northern Bengal —the temple I told you about last night. He murdered the high priest and priestess along with all their acolytes, and burned the temple to the ground. The jewels he stole became the basis of the Westphalen fortune.
"Before she died the priestess laid a curse upon Captain Westphalen, saying that his line would end in blood and pain at the hands of the rakoshi. The Captain thought he had killed everyone in the temple but he was wrong. A child escaped the fire. The eldest son was mortally wounded, but before he died he made his younger brother vow to see that their mother's curse was carried out. A single female rakosh egg—you saw the shell in Kusum's apartment—was found in the caves beneath the ruins of temple. That egg and the vow of vengeance have been handed down from generation to generation. It became a family ceremony. No one took it seriously—until Kusum."
Jack stared at Kolabati in disbelief. She was telling him that Grace and Nellie's deaths and Vicky's danger were all the result of a family curse begun in India over a century ago. She was not looking at him. Was she telling the truth? Why not? It was far less fantastic than much of what had happened to him today.