Rais was in high spirits when Golgoras finally landed in the old airport hangar. Even though they had found nothing, he was sure they were getting somewhere. There was a mystery afoot, some strange web that connected all of this together. They had the name of a missing text and a second banned one. Besides, he had possession of Risal’s entire collection, by dint of the laws of salvage, a truckload of books that would easily quintuple Juny’s existing collection on the occult. At the very least, his mother would be ecstatic.
“Come on, Barabas, we’re going to celebrate!” Rais said, grabbing the djinn around the shoulders.
“To your place!” Barabas said, cheering up. “Or do you want to hit the streets?”
“No, no, it’s Thursday night, and we’re going to my friend Moffat’s house. I’m going to show you how they party in Gulshan.”
“Rais, you choot!” It was midnight and their host Moffat was already drunk. This was no surprise really, for Moffat normally started in the evening or, on special party nights, directly after lunch. “And you’ve brought me a mullah. How charming. Can I keep him?”
“This is Barabas,” Rais said. “He’s a djinn. I’ve been meaning to get him some new clothes.”
Barabas glared at him. “Thanks for having us, Mr. Moffat,” he said in his most courtly voice.
“Any friend of Rais’s…” Moffat waved them in.
Mofazzal “Moffat” Tareque was the hideously rich son of a now legendary real estate tycoon and MP who had allegedly buried a body in each of his ninety-three buildings, either for good luck or through a surfeit of corpses. Moffat occupied a duplex penthouse in one of these buildings, with his own elevator, bodyguard, and live-in bootlegger. His living room and adjoining garden stretched across half the roof, walled off from the hoi polloi, complete with a wet bar and a wading pool, which was empty now, but would soon be filled with naughty women. There was a grand piano under the shade in the patio, which Moffat played occasionally, when the drink made him maudlin.
Rais had met Moffat in kindergarten, when Moffat’s father, rich but of awful birth, had shamelessly encouraged his son to befriend the scion of the Khan Rahmans. Moffat, a degenerate even at that age, hadn’t given two shits about his father and had gone out of his way to kick the crap out of Rais at every opportunity. Almost inevitably, they had become best friends.
Decades later, Moffat was an expert at carousing, living off the rent from his innumerable properties, a modern-day raja with a court full of drunken sycophants and midnight nymphs. He threw ridiculous parties, and everyone came.
“What the hell, you fucker,” Moffat said, leading them to the bar. “You never take my calls or what?”
“I’ve been up in the air a bit,” Rais said.
“What do you guys want? Whiskey for Rais, just like his daddy. They say Khan Rahman blood is fifty percent scotch, ain’t that right?” Moffat cackled. “What’s the other fifty percent, I always wondered… something Anglo from the Welsh footman who raped your great-great-grandmother…”
“Fuck off, you inbred village hick,” Rais said. “My great-grandmother used your people as footstools.”
“A drink for the mullah? I’ve got pills, hash, pot, roofies, Viagra, cough syrup, Cheerios, Cubans, aaand coke. No yaba, I’m afraid—I don’t allow that truck driver shit. One must have standards…”
“Hmm, Rais, this is much better than Kaiko’s parties,” Barabas said with a dreamy look in his eyes, as the bartender opened an old tea chest to reveal his cornucopia. “I’ll take one of each, of course.”
“Of course!” Moffat clapped him on the shoulder. “Good man! One of each for the djinn! Listen, dude, come with me for a second.”
“What?” Rais let his friend lead him to a quiet part of the roof, where the music was a background hum.
“The djinn’s a riot, man, I’m glad you brought him,” Moffat said. “One of each…”
“You wouldn’t believe some of the places he’s taken me,” Rais said. “Like slums inside slums. I wanted to show him a real party. Kick him out if he gets on your nerves, though.”
“Nah, man, I love it.” Moffat grabbed his arm. “Dude, I heard you’ve been cut off, kicked out, gone broke. You ever need some paper, I can cover you, you know that, right?”
Rais grimaced. “It’s not that bad. Let’s just say that my new line of work doesn’t reimburse me in a regular way.”
“I got some cash I owe you for that thing…”
“Forget it, dude, I’m okay for now.” Rais pulled out a packet. It was an archaic gear the size of his palm, a soft-toothed, twenty-one-karat gold disk, which he had looted from Risal’s home, where it had been connected to some plumbing device. Quite why such a mundane object was made of gold was a mystery, although Barabas had hazarded that djinn spells adhered best to the purer metals and the distortion field was best conducted through gold, which was the real reason alchemists so valued the metal. “Your dad still owns those jewelry stores in Chandni Chowk?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Can you hawk this for me?”
“Solid gold, man.” Moffat bit the gear in mock seriousness. “You into smuggling or what?”
“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”
“Try me, dude.”
“It’s supposed to be a secret.”
“Man, look at me…” Moffat spread his arms like Jesus. “Do you think anyone believes a word I say? I’m like the ultimate junkie. Plus I’m your oldest friend, man. It’s fuckin’ weird not knowing what you do. Import-export? Like fuck. You don’t know a sales invoice from your ass.”
“I’m an ambassador to the djinn,” Rais said. He pointed at Barabas, who was capering around under the happy confluence of hash and Pernod. “That dude—djinn. I just spent the last week or so on a djinn airship.”
“What, you already get high before coming?”
“Moffat.” Rais took his blue spectacles off and gently put them on his friend’s nose. “Look around.”
Moffat was already staring at Barabas, mouth open, smoke-slit eyes widening with excitement, so that for a moment he looked achingly like the boy he had been many years ago. His cigarette fell from nerveless fingers, and Rais put it out with a gentle tap of his heel.
“It’s real…”
“Sure.”
“Dude, I can see shit coming off of him… What is it, magnetic lines or something?”
“That’s the juice.”
“It’s all real then…”
“What?”
“Djinns, magic, heaven, hell, God…”
“Djinns are,” Rais said. He took the glasses back, put them on. “Not sure about the rest. By the way, your gardener is a djinn, I think.”
“Whoa, what?”
“He’s put little spells on each of the plants. To keep away pests, I imagine.”
“That’s awesome. I better give him a raise.” Moffat swigged his drink. “So this is your life now? Hobnobbing with djinns?”
“It’s not as exciting as it seems…”
“I’ll give you fifty lakhs for those glasses.” Moffat was abruptly serious.
“They are not for sale,” Rais said.
“Seventy lakhs. A crore. Say a number.”
Rais looked at him.
“There’s the old haughtiness,” Moffat said with a laugh. “Now I see the high-and-mighty six-year-old that I used to beat the snot out of. I missed that look. You’ve been so haggard lately.”
“Fuck off, you idiot.” Rais smiled. “Sell the gold for me, will you? I really am living on fumes.”
“I’ll send you the money tomorrow. If I remember.” Moffat winked. “Where you living these days? I heard some terrible rumors about a flat in Mirpur…”
“I’ve taken over my uncle’s place in Wari,” Rais said.
“Dude, Wari?! You can live here, for god’s sake. Hell, I’ll give you your own wing…”
“Nah,” Rais said. “But come by Wari sometime, if you’re interested in this kind of shit. My uncle has some unbelievable stuff.”
“Speaking of interested, some girls were looking for you.”
“Fuck off, Moffat,” Rais said.
“One of them was Maria,” Moffat said with a sly smile. “She came by last weekend. I had a nautical-themed party. She wore a life vest and a captain’s hat. That’s it. Unbelievably hot.”
“You’re bullshitting,” Rais said. “She’s marrying some engineer in Alabama.”
“Oho, so you do keep track.”
“Yeah, yeah, Moffy, I thought I was in love, she was the one, blah blah blah.”
“A common problem for you,” Moffat said, “this pathetic descent into love.”
“Well, you’re a degenerate bisexual swinger,” Rais said. “We can’t all be perfect.”
“Stick around, dear,” Moffat said, smirking. “She promised to drop in.”
Rais spent the next hour savoring Moffat’s gold label, which, he had to admit, he preferred to the single malts lined up like venerable, slightly pretentious soldiers. There was something to be said for the smoothness of aged, blended whiskey that was better than the distinctive, slightly wonky taste of the malted stuff.
“I mean people act like every single malt is superior to every blended whiskey, but that’s just ridiculous. Some of them taste like ass. And frankly, I don’t really want a bunch of weird flavors in my scotch. I want it to go down smooth and not give me a hangover the next day. I’d take a gold label over a random eighteen-year-old any day of the week…” He was further expounding on this topic to another friend when a cool hand slipped around his neck and some kind of expensive perfume wafted over him.
“Random eighteen-year-olds been bothering you lately?”
“You smell different,” Rais said, swallowing a mouthful. His friend smiled nervously at Maria and hurried off to spread the gossip that Rais and his old girlfriend were about to have it off.
“I tried to change a lot of things,” Maria said, half throttling him before deciding to let go. She had always been deceptively strong. “But that doesn’t always work out.”
“Moffat said you’ve been stalking me.”
“I need to talk.”
“How’s the engineer?”
“Gone back.”
“So what is it? Getting cold feet? One last hurrah for us?”
“Hardly.” Maria snorted in a most unladylike manner. In company she always affected a perfect textbook blend of well-bred demurity; with him she normally let loose her raucous, curse-filled, sarcastic harpy imitation. He had found it endearing before, had believed that he in fact was privileged to know her “real” nature, the lewd swearing an aphrodisiac. These tender thoughts had barely survived her unceremonious engagement to another man.
He waited for her to elaborate. She lit a cigarette, took a long drag, and blew smoke at him.
“I’ve left him.”
“Why?”
“Because of you, asshole.”
“Flattering as that may be…”
“Not for you, idiot, because of you.”
“Why? He couldn’t handle an ex-boyfriend?” Rais took a pull from the Never-Ending Pipe. He had played this same scenario numerous times in his head, had always come out of it vindicated and smug; now with Maria breathing fire in front of him, he just felt apprehensive and slightly wistful.
“Do you remember the pictures we took?”
“Yeah, that was your idea, if I recall.”
“Well, asshole, why the fuck didn’t you delete them when we broke up?”
“Er, I forgot?”
“Fuck you.”
“Okay, I kept them for jacking off…”
“Ew.”
“Joking. Really, I forgot.”
“Well, did you give them to anyone?”
“Of course not,” Rais said. “Look, I wouldn’t do that, no matter how we ended.”
“That’s what I thought,” Maria said. “Famous Khan Rahman honor. Well, some creep has them. Printed out in full HD color.”
“Really? How’d they turn out?”
“You think it’s a joke?” Maria spat out. “He came to my house, you fucker. He’s blackmailing me.”
“Why didn’t you just pay him off?!” Rais asked. “Or called someone to have him taken care of?”
“Rais, he wasn’t some street dude. He was scary,” Maria said. “He knew everything about me. He knew everything about you. He wants me to spy on you. I’m supposed to get back together with you and then report everything to him. What the fuck are you into, you bastard?”
“What?” Rais felt the rapid sobering effects induced by fear. “So this wasn’t some random sleaze? Describe this guy.”
“He’s old, like an uncle. He came in all suave and shit with an ivory cane and really expensive shoes. He said he was my dad’s friend.”
“What did he look like?”
“He had silvery-white hair, quite a lot of it, and looked very distinguished. He had an Oxford accent, like he’d actually been there and not just flown through Heathrow. He was tall, dressed really well, and was quite charming actually.”
“Well, he seems like a catch,” Rais said. “I’m surprised you didn’t end up sleeping with him.”
“Fuck off,” Maria said. “And for your information, I never slept with the engineer while we were together either.”
“How absolutely lucky for me. I can imagine his dismay.”
“Actually, I was going through a virginal phase with him.” She laughed. “You know, good girls wait for the wedding night and all that.”
“Poor engineer. Well, what did this guy say about me?”
“Nothing,” Maria said. “I told him you’re a weird loser, and he said that you had a few ‘large secrets.’ He had this theatrical way of talking. And that god-awful cane.”
“Wait, I have a feeling I know who this guy is,” Rais said, as the composite details clicked in his mind and took him years back to the living room in Wari. “He wasn’t Bengali, was he?”
“No, Kashmiri maybe? He didn’t say.”
“Afghani?”
“Maybe. You actually know him? Is this some sick revenge game?”
“No,” Rais said. “And I’m sorry, Maria. I shouldn’t have kept the pictures, although if this is the same man, he would have found some other way to get to you, I’m sure.”
“Well, he’s ruined my engagement,” Maria said, grinding out her cigarette with unnecessary roughness. “And if he starts spreading those pictures around, my dad will just die. He’s crazy too. He kept going on about genies.”
“Djinns,” Rais said. “He’s the missing emissary Siyer Dargoman. He’s a killer, never mind his accent, and he’ll do a lot more to you than just ruin your chances on the marriage market.”
“Ugh, you make it sound so vulgar,” Maria said. “Arranged marriages are in these days. What the hell does this guy want, anyway?”
“He probably wants to kill me,” Rais said.
“Good,” Maria said.
“Fine then.” Rais smiled. “I’m getting out of here. Thanks for the heads-up.”
“Wait!” Maria snapped. “What the hell am I going to do? I’m supposed to be following you around like a retard girlfriend.”
“I’d take the next flight to Chicago.”
“And have that perv post my pictures everywhere?” Maria asked. “I’d never be able to come back home again.”
“I’m kidding, you probably wouldn’t make it to the airport anyway,” Rais said. “I’m guessing he’s having you followed, and me as well. As I said, pictures are the least of our worries.”
“What the fuck is this all about? Are you like mixed up in some fundamentalist crap?”
“No, actually, I—we are mixed up with a bunch of djinns,” Rais said. “Look, come with me, I’ll explain everything and give you enough evidence to settle your doubts. We can figure out what to do afterward.”
“Go where? It’s the middle of the night,” Maria said.
“Oh, come on, your reputation is in tatters anyway,” Rais said. “And I’m hardly going to be forcing myself on you.”
“Good,” Maria said, flashing a butterfly knife from her purse, “because I’ve been wanting to stab someone, and it might as well be you.”
“Remind me to give you the Invisible Dagger of Five Strikes,” Rais said, laughing.
“And we better not be going to the dump in Mirpur,” Maria said. “That place depressed the shit out of me.”
“No, I’ve moved to my ancestral home in Wari.”
“Wari?! Wari? Do people actually still live there?”
“It’s a grand old house,” Rais said with a perfectly straight face. “It was featured in the newspaper in fact. Come on. I’ll drop you at home as soon as we’re done.”
They threaded their way across the now crowded terrace, avoiding invitations from various people, and had almost hit the door when Moffat came upon them with almost comical haste.
“Leaving?” he asked, slightly out of breath.
“Just giving her a lift home,” Rais said. “Thanks, I’ll call you tomorrow about the other thing.”
“Er, good luck, glad you’re on talking terms again.” Moffat patted Maria’s shoulder in an avuncular way. “Always rooting for you guys. You’re not leaving your djinn behind, are you?”
“Oh shit, I forgot about Barabas!”
“It’s just that he’s taken his shirt off and he’s lying on the piano and singing Beyoncé songs.”
“You can keep him for seventy lakhs.”