Her Nightly Embrace Read online

  Though it all, I felt a bit wistful. Here was my sister, my confidante and partner in crime in our childhoods and teenage years, a unit we formed to protect us from the high-strung craziness of our parents, now going off to form her own unit with Vivek. We would still have that bond of secrets and language, but she would be separate from me now, with her own husband and, eventually, children to get busy with. I was forming my own unit with Julia, with its own set of secrets and bonds. I glanced at my parents, and my father’s eyes met mine, and I knew he was feeling the same mix of melancholy and happiness.

  As the bride’s brother, and the one who pretty much paid for the whole shindig, I was responsible for doing the rounds to make sure everything went smoothly while my parents got to be the doting in-laws giving away their daughter and holding court. My teenage cousins Francis and his sisters Priya and Anya were in charge of the guest list, the visitors’ book, and greeting the guests.

  The main rituals were over, and we settled down to eat at last. I went to join Julia and the smattering of Sanjita and Vivek’s non-Indian friends.

  “I’m so turned on by your outfit,” Julia whispered to me.

  My phone buzzed. Who the hell would be calling me? They knew I wasn’t available.

  I looked at the text message, and the blood drained from my head. Julia saw the text and asked if I was all right. I had to excuse myself to walk out to the waiting limousine at the front of the hotel.

  Of course it had to be a Lincoln Continental, one of the few American limos in the UK. Even had tinted windows. I noticed the bulge under the jacket of the big, burly Rakashaka in the chauffeur’s uniform to know he wasn’t just a driver but an armed bodyguard. He opened the door for me as I stepped in.

  “Forgive me for the intrusion, Ravi,” Laird Collins said. “We’ve never formally met, and I thought I’d correct that. I’m on my way to the airport, and this was the only time I could squeeze in a meeting.”

  “You shouldn’t have gone to the trouble. What’s this about?”

  “I have a proposition for you. An offer, if you will.”

  “What kind of offer?”

  “Well, I’d like you to come work for me.”

  “Me?! What brought this on?”

  “Don’t be so surprised. We’ve been looking at you, and everyone at Golden Sentinels, but you were their newest addition. I read Ariel’s After Action Report on the Holloway-Browner job. She was especially impressed with how you handled it. You could have cracked under pressure, completely caved in to Jarrod when he came after you.”

  “That wasn’t just me. That was a team effort.”

  “Not according to Ariel. You were on your own when you seized the situation and negotiated terms with her just minutes after my people snatched Ms. Rodriguez. You changed the game from that moment on, all the way to turning the tide and having my people take out Stuart Powys, and tied it all up in a neat little bow. You saved our company’s mutual boss a lot of trouble. That showed some serious strategic and lateral thinking.”

  “I wasn’t thinking in terms of strategy. I was trying to keep my client and myself alive. Then I was thinking in terms of getting the bastard who set the whole mess in motion. Don’t forget I still blame your men for being the weapons Powys used to murder two men. They still have to pay the piper.”

  “And they will. Eventually. Everyone has to account to God at the end.”

  “I prefer them to do it in this lifetime.”

  “Moral conviction. That’s the other rare thing. Simply put, I like the cut of your jib.”

  “I really don’t see what I could bring to your company, Mr. Collins. I’m strictly small-time. Street level. I’m not a trained soldier and certainly not a trained killer who can switch it on and off at will.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short. You want to do good. I can see it in you. Ariel saw it in you, and she’s very hard to impress.”

  “And what would I be working towards if I was with you? Perpetuating the global state of war? All to bring things to a head so we can bring about the Rapture?”

  “The Kingdom of Heaven is a good thing, Ravi. It’s the pinnacle of everything we as men can strive for. Once we succeed, there would be no more suffering, no more war. It’ll be paradise, and no one will ever kill or hurt or die ever again.”

  “But what about the moral cost?” I asked. “All the people who die, all the suffering you’re going to cause along the way?”

  “They’ll all be accounted for when they reach heaven.”

  “But you don’t believe everyone will get to heaven. Only the born again will. As a Hindu, I don’t get to go your heaven. So what’s in it for me to work for you? I would be bringing about an apocalypse where I’ll be screwed at the end if you succeed.”

  “I think you know the answer to that, Ravi.”

  “What, convert?”

  He smiled. Paternally.

  “Is that a prerequisite for joining your little shop?”

  “It’s not necessary, but it hurts less morally and psychologically if you believe. If not, just enjoy the money you make, and what it can buy.”

  “I see.”

  “Now, I know Roger brings in decent money with his diversified portfolio and services to his clients, but we’re in a completely different league. Our contracts are worth tens of millions at a pop. We have a wider global reach with higher payoffs. You come work for us, you’ll make your first million in a year. You’ll be worth ten million dollars in just five years.”

  I looked at Collins, so sure in his fanaticism. His belief was so absolute that he was almost Zen about it. I’d thought I was a dead man when I came in here. Now I was feeling something completely different.

  “So how about it?” Collins said. “You can bring Julia along if you want. I’m sure she’ll stick with you. We’ll offer her opportunities as well.”

  “You’ve read my medical records, so you do know I’m mentally unstable, don’t you?”

  “You’re selling yourself short again, Ravi. From everything we’ve seen, you’re perfectly functional. You’re not schizophrenic. You don’t act schizophrenic. If anything, I suspect your visions are what gives you an edge.”

  I could see it now. Laird Collins was a collector. He amassed resources, tools, and weapons, and he had no qualms about where they came from or if they went against his personal beliefs. He was practical in that respect.

  “Mr. Collins, I’m Hindu. We believe in lots of gods. But even our gods are accountable to the cosmos. I’ve read the Bible. Your God declared, ‘Thou shalt worship no other gods but me.’ That implies that even the biblical god is aware there are other gods other than Him.”

  “Well, that’s an interesting way of looking at it.”

  “So forgive me if I’m don’t really think of the Supreme God as a white guy in the sky with a beard. The one in the Old Testament always struck me as a narcissist and a psychopath. If He was the same one in the New Testament, then it feels like He went into rehab and has learned to temper his nastiness with talk of love, but he was still the same abusive arsehole. Now, I’m not saying this to get into a pissing contest and how my gods can beat up your god. Why would they even want to? I think they have better things to do with their time, like watching us mere mortals make complete idiots of ourselves. My gods seem to enjoy watching me in particular act like a prat as I try to get through life in one piece. Praise the Lord and Hallelujah!”

  “Are you mocking me?” Collins raised an eyebrow.

  “I’m British. Our default mode is ‘snark.’ ”

  I watched his face for any anger or contempt, maybe even hatred, but aside from a momentary twitch of irritation in his eyebrow, he stayed unflappable. It was that air of absolute moral certainty that makes him the most dangerous man I’ve ever met. At least I knew where I stood with Roger: he was shifty and egotistical, but he wasn’t rigid and he wasn’t batshit-crazy.

  “Mr. Collins, I’m going to let you in on a little secret,” I said. “I’m an
atheist.”

  For the first time, I saw his eyes widen in surprise.

  “Yes, I was raised Hindu and I was a religious scholar, but at the end of the day, I don’t believe there’s a god who’s a guy in the sky with a beard who’s going to bring down divine retribution. Heaven or hell isn’t in the afterlife, it’s here, depending on which we decide to make. That’s right. I don’t believe in God. And at the same time, I think the gods are real.”

  “How can you think that?”

  “They’re in our heads. That’s where they really live. Not out there waiting for us to end the world. We created them. They talk to me just like yours talks to you. We make them up as we go, and I don’t like yours very much.”

  He looked at me and blinked a few times. He was trying to decide if I was taking the piss or if I was genuinely mad. For the first time, I saw uncertainty in his eyes, maybe even a little fear. Not fear of me. That would be ridiculous. He could kill me with his bare hands, and very quickly, if he wanted to, but fear of the unknown, of the utter chaos of the contradictory notions I carried, where the binary collapsed and everything was both true and false, and gods of everything snuck in and out of the nothingness.

  “Mr. Collins, are you familiar with the expression ‘Try anything once except incest and Morris dancing’? If you ever saw actual Morris dancing, you would understand why. I’m going to add ‘working for a private military contractor’ to that list. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a wedding to finish overseeing, and you have a flight to catch.”

  I got out of the limo and walked back to the hotel. Back straight, look ahead, don’t show how much you’re shitting yourself. I tried not to imagine a red laser dot on my back and a shot ringing out or poison in my food. Ridiculous paranoia. Hold it together.

  Julia was waiting at the hotel entrance and sighed in relief when I got out of the limo and reached her. She’d watched the area surrounding the limo and said there wasn’t anyone milling around who could be Collins’s backup or muscle. She put her arms around me and hugged me tight. I nearly sagged into her arms. She had been as terrified as I was when I went into the limo.

  We made it back to the banquet and sat down. I checked my phone and saw the recording of my conversation with Collins was intact. On Monday, I would be playing it to Roger and Cheryl at the office. Ken and Clive would grunt. Mark and Benjamin would applaud. Marcie would shake her head in amusement. David would be stoical. Roger would laugh heartily and go on a rant about Collins trying to poach his “best people,” the greed of the man, and he would praise me for my loyalty. He would ask if my sister received his wedding gift, the £1,000 check he sent to the wedding. Yes, she did. She and Vivek were gobsmacked as Roger expected they would be. My mother was suitably impressed and my father harrumphed, but they were basking in the glow of their daughter’s wedding to kick up too much of a fuss.

  Even in the crowded hall, the gods found a way to sit behind me and join in the celebrations, even if I was the only one who saw them. I looked at them now, and they at me. They seemed pleased and raised their glasses to me.

  “Over the last year since I started this job, I’d destroyed a politician’s career, destroyed an author’s career, caused a man’s abduction by the CIA, been directly or indirectly party to at least one murder. I’m now on the radar of a private military contractor. I’m being groomed as an asset by a CIA officer. Once you’re in this, they don’t let you leave. This becomes your life. You don’t get to just quit. And all my own choices.”

  “You also helped a bunch of people.”

  “It’s going to take me a long time to suss how much that balances things out,” I said.

  “We could try to leg it,” Julia said. “We know how to get new papers. Just disappear, go somewhere, and start over.”

  “No. We both have family we care about. We have people who depend on us. It wouldn’t do to just drop out of their lives suddenly. The grief and uncertainty isn’t worth it. I’m owning this.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m going to see this to the end, and try to balance my karma.”

  “Whatever you decide, I’m with you,” she said. “You and I are better together, since it won’t make me any safer if we’re apart.”

  She took my hand.

  “So yeah,” I said. “I’m all in.”

  And the gods applauded my decision.

  Julia and I went into work together on Monday, the gods following eagerly behind.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Much of Ravi’s story was informed by the conversations I’ve had with various people over the last few years. It’s a work of fiction trying to keep up with the craziness of the world without becoming a complete fantasy. Real life is already weirder, crazier, and more unpredictable than we realize.

  Michael Wilson and Minh-Hang Nguyen’s insights on politics, finance, power, recent history, and espionage were the biggest influence on my thoughts about genre storytelling and Ravi’s story. They often told me about the real story behind the ones we hear about and reminded me to be suspicious of every official account.

  Thanks to Alan Moore for the conversations about gods and our relationships with them, which came to inform Ravi’s beliefs, and for reassuring me that I did not inadvertently rip him off. It was Alan who also understood instinctively the inherent, unspoken theme of Britishness in the figure of Ravi from the moment he heard this story, that it was about how many Indian-British people can be more British than the British in their embrace of the culture without losing their own.

  Thanks to Roz Kaveney for playing sounding board and listening to my flights of fancy as I planned out the books, and to Richard Markstein for the perspective and reminders of the structures and workings of London that still course through the city’s veins, that Ravi exists as part of the legacy left behind by his father George Markstein, who created The Prisoner TV series that has warped our perception of reality ever since.

  Thanks to Leopoldo Gout for working tirelessly to get Ravi published, and for pushing for the magical realist layer that resulted in Ravi seeing the gods as part of his journey.

  Thanks to James Handel for volunteering his time to help address some narrative issues and grounding some of the story where needed.

  ADI TANTIMEDH has a BA in English literature from Bennington College and an MFA in film and television production from New York University. He is of Chinese-Thai descent and came of age in Singapore and London. He has written radio plays and television scripts for the BBC and screenplays for various Hollywood companies, as well as graphic novels for DC Comics and Big Head Press, and a weekly column about pop culture for BleedingCool.com. He wrote Zinky Boys Go Underground, the first post–Cold War Russian gangster thriller, which won the BAFTA for Best Short Film in 1995.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by Adi Tantimedh

  Interior illustrations © 2016 by Amber Ma

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  Interior design by Amy Trombat

  Jacket design by Gregg Kulick

  Jacket Photographs © Chad Griffith (Ravi); © Doug Armand/Getty Images (Skyline); © Ray Wise/Getty Images (Skyline Sunset)

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Tantimedh, Adi, author.

  Title: Her nightly embrace / Adi Tantimedh.

  Description: First Leopoldo & Co/Atria Books hardcover edition. | New York : Atria Books, 2016. | Series: Ravi, P.I. ; book 1

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016019628| ISBN 9781501130571 (hardback) | ISBN 9781501130588 (paperback) | ISBN 9781501130595 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Private investigators--Fiction. | London (England)--Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / General. | FICTION / Media Tie-In. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3620.A6955 H47 2016 | DDC 813/.6--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016019628