Her Fugitive Heart Read online

  “You’ve just sussed it out, haven’t you?” Julia said.

  “He’s totally worked it out,” Ariel said. “He’s got that look on his face.”

  “I wish I didn’t,” I said. “Because it might mean we’re in deeper trouble than we imagined.”

  “How deep?” Ariel asked, that amused, knowing look on her face, like she was the American Punk Rock embodiment of Kali.

  “So who’s the client you’re taking us to anyway?” I asked.

  “Oh, you’ve met him,” Ariel said. “You could say you bonded last year when he nearly got us all killed.”

  FOUR

  “Ravi, Julia, it is so very good to see you again.”

  Hamid Mahfouz looked relaxed and totally in his element when he got into the limo. He had the look of a man relieved to no longer have to worry about people trying to kill him. That was how we’d first met him last year. We inadvertently became his babysitters as we ran around Los Angeles dodging assassins while the city was surrounded by brushfires in the hills.

  Interzone had had the contract for protecting him ever since.

  “The minute he heard you were available,” Ariel said, “he asked for the two of you.”

  “Mr. Mahfouz—”

  “Please, call me Hamid. We’re all friends here, after what you did to save my life in Los Angeles.”

  “I thought you might have ended up back in your country being forced to take over as the dictator,” I said.

  “That ship has gloriously sailed,” he said. “As I predicted, the factional infighting over there became so out of control it was obvious that nobody from my father’s family would be suitable to rule the place. The rebels that overthrew him have split into several factions and are at war with the other groups the CIA are backing. My presence there would not serve any purpose.”

  “So all you had to do was wait it out until they couldn’t use you anymore,” I said.

  “Good things come to those who wait,” Julia said.

  “They saw the light,” Hamid said. “So they’re not insisting I try to even form a government-in-exile. Whatever regime change they want to prop up, they have to do it without me. I’m free to continue my life as a decadent playboy layabout here.”

  “Congratulations,” Julia said.

  “Thank you, my dear. This leads me to why I’ve asked for your services.”

  “What do you need us for this time?” I asked.

  “It’s my sister Kareena.”

  “The one who led the rebels to overthrow your father?” Julia asked.

  “I only have one sister.”

  “Wasn’t she the one who sent those killers after you that chased us all over Los Angeles when it was on fire?” I asked.

  “The same. Well, her standing amongst the Maoist rebels has also taken a tumble, and they tried to have her killed as well.”

  “Talk about karma,” Ariel said, amused as ever. “Plan a revolution, overthrow the government, execute your dad, execute your nasty older brothers, try to have your last remaining brother killed, try to be the power behind your boyfriend in his bid to take over the government, and it all comes crashing down around your ears.”

  “Indeed,” Hamid said. “The CIA had a hand in her boyfriend getting killed. He was leading the rebels, though he was useless without Kareena calling the shots behind him. She tried to take over, but the rebels were too sexist to accept her as their true leader and tried to kill her in turn. They accused her of being a CIA asset as well, which prompted the need for her to leave the country.”

  “So where is she now?” Julia asked.

  “Here in America,” Hamid said. “I used my last favor with the CIA to have her flown over her and placed under my protection.”

  “But she tried to kill you last year,” I said. “Why would you take care of her now?”

  “She’s still my sister.” Hamid said. “We’ve always been close. I’m not going to abandon her now, especially if there are people who might want to kill her. Our mother has no interest, since she was never much of a mother to start with. She’s perfectly happy playing Jackie O with her new billionaire boyfriend, gallivanting around the South of France.”

  “What do you need us for?” Julia asked.

  “Kareena is at a very delicate stage in her life. She’s lost everything. I have to help her sort out what’s next. I need you to babysit her in the meantime.”

  “Um,” I said.

  “I may be a lazy playboy,” he said, “but I still have work to do. I’ve just finished talking to advertisers and sales representatives who want to buy the next season of Ultimate Times, my kids’ variety show. It’s the biggest kids’ variety show, that’s sold to over one hundred and twenty markets around the world and earns my production company and the KidTime network tens of millions of dollars in revenue. I have my hands full trying to find a new star to host the show since we lost the last two. The head of network is playing hardball with me about the next season of my show because we don’t have a new star. So I can’t look after my sister full-time while I deal with my day job.”

  “But why us?” I asked. “You have Interzone on retainer to be your bodyguards. You could just get them to babysit her.”

  “She hates private military contractors,” Hamid said. “And you have an ability to gain people’s trust, as if you were blessed by the gods. I’m hoping you might have the same calming effect on my sister.”

  “How do you know your sister won’t try to kill us all?” I asked. “She orchestrated those hit squads we had to run from last year. Now we’re going to be in the same room with her?”

  “She’s, well, not like you expect,” Hamid said. “She won’t kill us because we’re her benefactors now. It would just be rude. And my sister was raised to show good manners, just like me.”

  “If you say so,” Julia said, still a bit skeptical.

  Hamid seemed to enjoy the observable fact that Julia tolerated him rather than liked him.

  “When you meet her, you’ll understand.”

  “Where are we going?” Julia asked.

  “Why, to meet my sister for lunch, of course.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Louise wink. Kali and Shiva laughed their arses off. Bagalamukhi raised her glass in a toast. Ganesha took a picture of me with his phone to catch the look on my face.

  FIVE

  Hamid brought us to a five-star restaurant on Fifth Avenue where he had made reservations. Ariel accompanied us, her eyes alert as we walked past the diners to scan for threats. We were brought into a private dining room at the back where we could talk privately. Two Interzone men in suits sat with Hamid’s sister as she waited for us to arrive.

  “All done pressing the flesh of the bigwigs who run the TV industry, then?” she said, her accent revealing the British private schools she was sent to when she was younger.

  Kareena Mahfouz was not what I was expecting at all.

  To hear Hamid talk about her, and see the results of her actions, including the trouble she sent our way last year when we had to outrun scores of killers across Los Angeles, I was expecting a fiery, rage-filled militant. Instead, Julia and I were presented with a slim, athletic woman in her twenties, dressed in jeans and a blouse that made her look like a PhD student. The only thing that suggested otherwise was the intensity of her eyes, how they seemed to burn into you with their unwavering, unblinking gaze.

  She shook Julia’s and my hands with a firm but gentle grip.

  “Please accept my apology for nearly having you killed,” she said. “That was a different time. I was on a war footing.”

  “That’s one way of putting it,” I said.

  “You were on the opposing side, and I was intent on eliminating it.”

  “The ‘opposing side’ was your brother, and you sent killers after him,” I said.

  “Well, now I’m on the same side as him, and I have no army. That war is over for me,” she said.

  I never thought I would ever meet someon
e like Kareena Mahfouz. Hamid had told us she studied political theory and philosophy in college. She was particularly taken with the Suffragettes and Rosa Luxemburg, and wrote a paper on the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, and the Red Brigade of the 1970s and the Baader-Meinhof Gang. No one thought she was preparing herself for leading a revolt against her own father back home. She was a genuine revolutionary, driven by ideology and moral certainty, cool and ruthless in her moral calculations when it came to casualties and deaths. This made her uncompromising and dangerous. She was the most dangerous type of killer, one that commanded armies and sent people to their deaths without hesitation.

  “I’ve been reading up on my brother’s world,” Kareena said. “Hollywood is rather like Babylon, isn’t it? All that money and glamour and everyone fighting to get their share of it. And the abuse of power is astonishing. I’ve been following social media feeds, and it seems the film and television industry is full of sexual predators.”

  “Surely no different from any other industry,” Hamid said.

  “Show business more than most,” Kareena said. “All those men in positions of power preying on women who just want to have careers. This epidemic of sexual assault just won’t do.”

  “Baby sister,” Hamid said, “I can assure you I never harassed or assaulted any of the women I slept with. It was all consensual. And I compensated them well for the service.”

  “I know,” Kareena said. “It was never in your nature. It was in our older brothers’ nature, and I made sure they paid for that. If you were like them, I would have had you killed long ago.”

  The older brothers, Kabil and Mirza, had both been publicly and messily killed by the braying mobs when their father was overthrown. Hamid was actually relieved when his psychopathic brothers were dead. He mentioned that Kareena was more than relieved. She was downright delighted that she had engineered their deaths.

  “They were torturers and rapists and our father enabled them,” Kareena said. “You can’t have change in a society without justice being seen to be done. And a civil society needs to be founded on social justice.”

  “Yes, yes,” Hamid said. “We’ve had that discussion God knows how many times.”

  “If I was religious,” Kareena said, “I would like to think there was a special corner of hell reserved for rapists and abusers. But I’m an atheist, so I’ll settle for the glee of being the one who arranged for their horrible deaths.”

  “My little sister,” Hamid said with a combination of pride and horrified awe.

  “I was just reading about the head of the network that produces your little show,” Kareena said. “He’s been accused of abusing several of the actresses who were in their shows. And they were underage. They were practically children at the time. Monstrous.”

  “Yes,” Hamid sighed, “Herb always had a reputation for being a bit of a creeper for young girls. It’s only just coming out that he was much worse than the rumors suggested.”

  “Is he going to be arrested?” Kareena asked.

  “The police are investigating,” Hamid said. “But this is going to take time. And he’s hired an expensive lawyer to act as a firewall. Right now, he’s more preoccupied with keeping his job than fighting any criminal charges. Those haven’t been brought yet.”

  “I would hate to think he’s going to get away with it,” Kareena said. “Is there anyone in charge at your children’s TV studio who’s not a pedophile?”

  “Now, Kareena,” Hamid said. “You promised you wouldn’t get up to any mischief while you’re here. That’s the deal I struck with the CIA, remember? You’re going to keep a low profile and not do any of the things you got up to back home.”

  “Don’t worry, brother,” Kareena said. “I’ll watch my Ps and Qs. I won’t do anything to cause you any trouble.”

  Kareena possessed a kind of clinical calm as she talked about this. She had been dispassionately analyzing and absorbing information to acclimatize herself to the new world she had entered.

  Hamid turned to Julia and me.

  “Now, do you see why I need you to babysit her?” he asked. “I can’t keep her prisoner, but she needs a minder to get through the next few weeks.”

  Lunch was expensive steaks and roast lamb, salads and buttered vegetables. Ariel and her men ate beefsteak tartar, but they never let down their guard, always keeping an eye on the door and ready to draw their guns at the hint of any trouble. Julia and I had the salmon. Kareena had a chicken salad, the cheapest item on the menu. It wasn’t the calmest lunch I ever had.

  When Kareena got up to go to the loo, Ariel went with her.

  “What do you make of her?” Julia asked.

  “She’s rather mad,” I said. “But this might be what it felt like to meet Che Guevara.”

  “I like her,” Kali said.

  Of course, she would.

  “I see righteous wrath and vengeance in her,” Rudra said. “She is one of mine!”

  And he laughed a hearty bellow that only I could hear.

  “In case you were wondering,” Hamid said, “she didn’t become that way. She was always like that. Somehow, ever since childhood, she honed her anger at our dad and the world at large into a kind of focused, rational calm because she was always planning to bring it all crashing down.”

  “The problem with that is the world is likely to crash down on her as well,” I said.

  “It has,” Hamid said. “She’s actually rather subdued now that she’s lost everything. She’s at a loose end and doesn’t know what to do with herself. What she needs now is a second chapter.”

  “I think what she’s looking for is a purpose,” Julia said. “A mission in life.”

  “Another war to fight,” Julia said.

  “How long is this job supposed to be?” I asked Hamid.

  “Only until she gets a new face and a new identity,” Hamid said. “I know it’s a big job, but you’re in need of one, given your boss’s current problems in London, no?”

  SIX

  Hamid’s private jet headed for South Korea. Everything from here on in was clandestine. No one would think to follow Kareena to Seoul, and no one would be nosy enough to expect her to get her new face there. Ariel accompanied us; her seniority in Interzone meant she could pick and choose which jobs to look in on and whom to accompany.

  Kareena took advantage of the in-flight WiFi and quietly read websites on her laptop during the flight. Hamid was flying separately back to Los Angeles to get on with casting a new leading lady for his show. Julia and I were still in the dark about what was happening to everyone at Golden Sentinels in London.

  I had to check on my parents. It was morning in India. I put in a video call to Golden Sentinels’ Mumbai branch and talked to Sanjiv Mishra, one of the investigators there. Sanjiv was a bit of a Jack the Lad about Mumbai and always eager to try out new things as an investigator. He also liked to switch between English and Hindi when he spoke to me, always throwing in Mumbai slang in between as if he felt it was his job to keep me up to date on the patois over there.

  “Ravi! To what do I owe the pleasure of hearing from Golden Sentinels’ holy man!”

  Oh God. Roger must have mentioned me seeing the gods in the intercompany newsletter that Cheryl sent to all the Golden Sentinels branches across the world.

  “So you want us to follow your folks as they go around town, beedu?” he asked.

  That was like the equivalent of “dude” in English.

  “That and check up on the Dhewans they’re supposed to give gifts from Fortnum & Mason’s to,” I said.

  “Ah, the Dhewans. Big family.”

  “The way you say it, should I be concerned?” I asked. “Please tell me they’re not a major crime family.”

  “Well . . . let me ask around,” he said. “If it sets your mind at ease, shall we just say they’re a perfectly ‘respectable’ family here in Mumbai?”

  “I’m not sure, mate,” I said. “But you’d be doing me a big favor here.”
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  “Least I can do for a colleague,” Sanjiv said. “I could be serving the gods here, maybe get a blessing from Lord Shiva.”

  “Yeah, why not?” Shiva said, beside me all along. He gave me the thumbs-up.

  “The gods will be pleased,” I said, wincing.

  “First class!” Sanjiv said and rang off.

  Kareena was reading up on more reports naming executives, casting directors, studio bosses in Hollywood being accused of sexual harassment and assault. She seemed to be absorbing it all. Kali and Rudra were reading over her shoulder. The stewardess served her tea. She didn’t drink alcohol.

  “It’s not just actresses,” Kareena said. “It’s actors and young boys who are vulnerable as well. It’s remarkable that this went on for decades, but the victims are finally coming out in force to name their tormenters. This is an example of collective action, a popular uprising. It has the public’s support. Who’s going to speak against the victims of sexual assault? The ones who do just reveal their own callousness and monstrousness.”

  I found her dispassionate tone a bit chilling.

  “I’m amazed you can be so calm as you read all this,” I said.

  “I am calm because I’m absolutely furious,” Kareena said. “Inside, I’m screaming for blood. But all my life, whenever I get angry, I become very calm. The angrier I am, the calmer I become.”

  Her tone of voice was so cool it could freeze lava. I had no doubt in my mind she was capable of murdering hundreds of people if she believed it needed to be done for the greater good. And make no mistake, it would still be murder, no matter how justified she believed it to be. And the worst part was that she would feel perfectly justified when she got around to doing it.

  Julia and Ariel took her in their stride. They were both capable of a similar ruthlessness, so it wasn’t new or shocking to them. And here I was, witness to it all.