THE DELHI GOLF Club dated back to the early 1930s and was home to the championship eighteen-hole Lodhi Course that was part of the Asian PGA Tour. Samir Patel played there twice a week. On Thursdays he would play with just one colleague while on Saturdays it was usually a four-ball.
He was dressed in his customary bush shirt. The only concessions he had made for the golf course were checkered pants, a sleeveless sweater, and a cap that covered the vermillion mark on his forehead. And today, as he returned to the clubhouse following his game, he was feeling very pleased with himself indeed. It was time to enjoy what he liked to call “a couple of swift libations.”
In the parking lot outside sat his chauffeur-driven Mercedes. The driver, a good man known to Patel as Babu, was well enough acquainted with his boss’s habits to know that there would be precisely three “swift libations” taking around an hour and a half, at which point his boss would stride slightly unsteadily from the clubhouse and onto the gravel of the parking lot, aglow with the morning’s golf and the afternoon’s alcohol, making more conversation than usual as he was transported back home to his luxurious, well-appointed home.
Not for the first time, Babu thought how sweet it must be to be one of the big bosses. What a life, he mused as he set his phone alarm for an hour’s time—an hour in which he planned to continue his nap.
But first, a piss.
And off he went to the course-side restrooms, unaware that he was being followed.
Indeed, he remained unaware, even as he stood at the urinal, barely hearing the restroom door open as a man in black slid in behind him. His first—and, as it turned out, his last—thought was, Why is someone standing behind me? But he never saw the man in black. He didn’t see the skewer the man held. His only sensation at the point of death was a sudden fierce pain in his left ear as the skewer was rammed hard and fast into his brain.
The man in black let the chauffeur’s body slump into his arms. He was already using a rag to staunch the flow of blood from Babu’s ear. Moments later he had maneuvered the corpse into a stall and was helping it out of its clothes.
An hour later, just as the recently deceased Babu had predicted, Samir Patel was exiting the clubhouse. An extremely happy Surgiquip chairman, he had won his game and been the recipient of exactly three celebratory drinks, and intended to spend the rest of the afternoon at home. His domestics had the afternoon off, and he planned to fill the remainder of his day slumped in a leather armchair, reading the papers, and catching up on an occasional e-mail, knowing he had complete privacy.
Or so he hoped.
Babu stood holding the door open for him. “Thank you, Babu,” he said, hearing a slight slur in his own voice as he settled into the lush leather interior. He really shouldn’t drink on an empty stomach. The door closed. Babu took his seat in front. The central locking clicked.
In the next instant Patel knew—even in his relaxed state—that something was amiss. Babu had been his driver a long time. He knew the man’s mannerisms. He knew how his presence felt.
And he knew this wasn’t Babu.
“Hey,” he managed, but then the man in the front was swiveling in his seat and God, no, it wasn’t Babu, of course it wasn’t Babu, because this man was holding a hypodermic syringe.
He recognized the man.
“No. You” was all he managed before the hypodermic needle was jabbed just under his jaw. It was too late to throw himself toward the door in order to escape, because the sedative had already started to work.
Chapter 49
WHEN PATEL SURFACED it was to the relief of knowing that the man with the hypodermic syringe had been an illusion of the mind, for he had awoken in his own bedroom, lying on his back in bed.
“Thank God,” he whispered to himself, feeling like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. “It was just a dream,” and he went to turn over in bed and find a more comfortable position—only to realize that he couldn’t. His outflung arms were held in place, tied with rope, and when he tried to turn his head the movement was prevented by a wide band of something around his forehead. His eyeballs skittered madly in their sockets as he tried to see his legs, knowing that they, too, were strapped to the bed.
Another thing: he was naked.
He became aware of someone else in the room, moving around.
“Are you awake?” said a voice. Bright light beams made his pupils contract.
“Please. Please. Please, don’t do this,” he said in a whine that was disgraceful to his own ears.
“Do what, Mr. Patel?” came the voice.
The familiar voice. Yes. That was right. He knew the man. He knew his attacker and if he knew his attacker then surely he could reason with—
“What are you doing?” he said, seeing something in his peripheral vision. The man was moving closer to the bed, a shadow that refused to fully form in his drug-fogged mind. All Patel knew was that once again a syringe was coming toward him.
“Just some pain relief, Mr. Patel. I want you to remain conscious, so you can see everything I am about to do to you. So you can appreciate its enormity.”
The needle sunk deep. The plunger depressed. Next it was as though a wave of bliss and well-being rolled through Patel, so that even though his eyes were wide and straining in their sockets, there was something almost comforting about the roll of surgical instruments that was unfurled on the bed beside him.
The figure retired and then moments later reappeared, only this time the man wore hospital scrubs and a mask. He had moved a mirror from the bathroom and angled it so that Patel could see his own abdomen.
“The doctor is in,” said the intruder.
He lifted a scalpel from the roll of instruments and held it up for Patel to see. Even with the etorphine working its magic Patel felt the first tremors of terror, knowing this was no dream; that there was no escape.
He was going to die.
“Anything,” he slurred, “I’ll do anything.”
“Anything? You have done nothing—nothing but take, take, take. And now it is your turn to give.”
He made his incision. Patel did not feel it, but he heard it, and he saw the blade pierce his flesh between the ribs, the scalpel held between index finger and thumb, angled and then drawn down, opening a red ribbon to just above his belly button. Patel saw his own flesh part, the glistening meat visible beneath, bits of himself he would have hoped never to see.
Damage! screamed his mind, like some kind of automated response. Damage, damage! But in the next second he was thinking, But if my attacker stopped there I might be all right. I might heal.
I could still live.