We stumbled back along the causeway, just as the first police vans and ambulances arrived on the scene. Constables and stretcher-bearers ran past as Sam and I blended into the crowd.
The car was waiting, the engine running. Miss Colah’s driver, alerted by the explosion and the ongoing exodus across the causeway, had sensed the need for a quick getaway.
We drove south in silence, back towards the heart of the city, detouring via the Taj Hotel in the desperate hope that Irani might have returned there. It was futile of course, but the English have a phrase about a drowning man clutching at straws. We were informed that Irani had checked out the previous night, and I doubted the man would even exist by sundown. Atchabahian would simply discard the persona and disappear.
Back on Malabar Hill, Miss Colah’s maid tended to my wounds while Sam attempted to contact Dawson. I tried to focus on the positive. We had saved Gulmohamed’s life and hopefully averted the sort of bloodbath which had engulfed Calcutta after Mukherjee’s murder. That was surely worth celebrating, whatever lay in store personally.
Ooravis Colah attempted to lighten the mood in the way only a woman of wealth and leisure can, but even her levity failed to rouse me from black despondency.
How had things come to this? Even now, with the facts becoming clear, I still struggled to comprehend. A plot by Section H to funnel money to extremists – both Hindu and Muslim – in an attempt to destabilise the consensus which Gandhi had built, in order to sway the elections. It had, if you believed Dawson, led to MacRae, a rogue agent setting in train a series of assassination plots to set Hindus and Muslims at each other’s throats. And yet it was I who was the fugitive, I who would be put on trial for Mukherjee’s murder. It would not be a fair trial of course. There was no such thing as a trial by jury, not for Indians, not under British law. I would be tried in camera, by a panel of British judges. None of the facts of Section H’s involvement could be corroborated by hard evidence, and even if it could, I doubted it would be deemed admissible. The military would see to that; invoke articles of imperial security and that would be the end of it. Even if I somehow avoided the gallows, my life as it had been, and the promise it held for the future, was finished. There would be no family, no career, no honour. The more I considered it, the more I came to the conclusion that I had no choice.
The last week had felt as though the mountains of the Himalaya had rained down upon me, and now, with the avalanche finally having passed, I was emerging, bruised and bitter.
Yet these few days, I realised, were merely the end of a road I had been on for several years. No, not the end, but another junction. A definite decision to be taken between what was left and what was right. I felt a molten anger at the hypocrisy. The authorities I worked for and had served selflessly for more than five years were the same authorities who would now put me on trial for crimes which their own agents had committed.
Sam returned, grim-faced.
‘They’re putting out an alert for Atchabahian: all ports, all stations. There’s a chance they’ll catch him. In the meantime, Dawson says they’re leaning on Gulmohamed to make a statement to his people calling for calm. It should be fairly straightforward. If he doesn’t, the press might get to know where his funds have come from.’
He paused, waiting for me to speak, but I had nothing to say. The silence sat awkwardly between us.
‘He’s confident he can get the charges against you dropped. He says it might take a while, but once we’re back in Calcutta and you turn yourself in, he can put in a quiet word to the right people, and if they catch Atchabahian in the meantime, well —’
‘I’m not going back to Calcutta,’ I said. ‘I can’t take that chance.’
Sam stared at me. ‘You can’t just stay in Bombay. They’ll find you and arrest you. It’s better we go home and you surrender voluntarily.’
‘I’m not going to stay here and I’ve no intention of surrendering to anyone.’
I explained my plans to him.
‘Well,’ he said finally, ‘maybe Surrender-not wasn’t such a bad name after all.’