Rising Tiger: A Thriller (68)

Harvath appreciated that. “What happened?” he asked.

“He did just what you thought he did. He spun, I caught the glint of the razor—even in the storm—and he swung it at me. But I was expecting it.”

“Meaning he missed you.”

“Yes,” said the ex-cop, “but not by much. He sliced through my coat, just below my left armpit. Almost got me.”

“And you still didn’t shoot him.”

“No, I did not. But I did give him a little rooftop-to-rooftop counseling. I beat that piece of shit to within an inch of his life, tossed him to the next building, gave him a chance to catch his breath, and began the whole process all over again.”

“When did he learn he couldn’t fly?”

“On the last rooftop. I misjudged the distance. Didn’t throw him hard enough. My bad.”

Harvath chuckled. There really, and truly, was nothing like a smart-ass cop. “I’m guessing your partner wasn’t afraid to testify against him.”

“He was not. Aga Sayed countered by alleging police brutality and police misconduct. Unfortunately for him, there were no eyewitnesses to back up any of his claims, only the injuries he sustained while running from this detective.

“Sayed got lucky and pulled a judge who was soft on crime and hard on cops. His sentence was fifteen years. He served five.”

“What about your partner?”

“That was it for him. His wife wanted him out. His kids wanted him out. And on a certain level, he wanted out, too. So he retired.”

“What happened to you?”

Vijay smiled. “I got promoted.”

Harvath shook his head and smiled. “Of course you did. Any other ending just wouldn’t have suited that story.”

“Don’t the good guys always win?”

“Unfortunately,” Harvath replied, “the only place that the good guys always win is in the movies.”

“Well in this movie,” the ex-cop exclaimed, pointing at the two of them, “there’d better be a happy ending. Because if there’s one thing we demand in India, it’s happy endings.”

“And if there’s one thing we demand in America, it’s that justice be done before there can be any ending—happy or otherwise.”

“Here’s hoping both of our audiences get what they want,” said Vijay, sticking out his fist.

Harvath gave it a bump and watched as up ahead of them the majestic city of New Delhi came into view.





CHAPTER 42


New Delhi was everything Harvath had expected it to be—congested, loud, frenetic, dirty, colorful, vibrant, energetic, and alive, overflowing with humanity. There were trees everywhere.

Scooters fought with autorickshaws, which fought with taxis, which fought with buses, which fought with trucks. It was a symphony of chaos. Everyone was in a hurry, jockeying for position, at least until the next red light, when drivers would lean out their windows and laugh and chat with each other.

Some of the things Harvath saw were on a whole other level of beauty—the colors of women’s bright saris, the sidewalk carts exploding with fruits and vegetables, shrines and temples dripping with flowers.

Some of the things were heart-wrenching—the crushing poverty, the disease, the trash, and the filth.

Then there were the things he had never seen before—like traffic, on a major thoroughfare, patiently stopped, allowing a stray cow to cross unmolested. No one so much as honked. India was like no country he had ever visited.

Vijay explained that they were fortunate to have such a clean air day. When he had left New Delhi, he hadn’t been able to drop the Jaguar’s top until he was a half hour outside the city. The smog had been that bad. Harvath was receiving another grand introduction to one of India’s most incredible cities.

The ex-cop had made and received multiple phone calls during their drive—all in rapid-fire Hindi, peppered with words in English. He was working his contacts, trying to get a lead on the whereabouts of Aga Sayed. So far, all of it had been a bust.

This was the part of any assignment that Harvath hated the most—when it began to stall.

While conducting surveillance or passing hours—sometimes even days—in a hide site was often mind-numbingly boring, having all of your leads dry up could turn out to be a death knell for an operation.

“If you were going to force his hand and flush him out into the open, how would you do that?” Harvath asked.

Vijay thought for a moment and responded, “I would take something that belonged to him. Something very important.”

“Does he have a wife? Girlfriend? Kids?”

“These guys all have girlfriends. None of them rate very high on the importance scale. They’re toys. Objects of pleasure.”

“There’s got to be something he cares about enough to risk everything for,” said Harvath.

“I suppose if you interdicted a load of G-Company’s drugs or stole a whole bunch of valuable contraband, he might expose himself. But more likely than not, he’d just send an army of thugs after you.”

This was getting them nowhere. There had to be some way to get Aga Sayed to pop up. “If we can’t take something from him, what can we bait him with? What would be too good for him, personally, to pass up?”