"How was your work with Khaled?" Khader asked me when we walked back through the dock.

"Very good. I like him. I liked working with him. I'd still be with him if you hadn't put me to work with Madjid."

"And how is that? How is it, with our Madjid?"

I hesitated. Karla once said that men reveal what they think when they look away, and what they feel when they hesitate. With women, she said, it's the other way around.

"I'm learning what I need to know. He's a good teacher."

"But... you made a more personal connection with Khaled Ansari, isn't it so?"

It was true. Khaled was angry, and there was a part of his heart that was always hate-filled, but I liked him. Madjid was kind and patient and generous with me, yet I had no feeling for him at all beyond a vague, premonitory unease. After four months in the black-market currency business, Khaderbhai had decided that I should learn the gold-smuggling trade, and he'd sent me to Madjid Rhustem. In his house overlooking the sea, among the affluent elite at Juhu, I'd discovered the many ways in which gold was smuggled into India. Khaled's formula of greed and control applied to the trade in gold. Strictly enforced government controls on the import of gold crashed head-on with India's insatiable demand for the yellow metal.

Grey-haired Madjid controlled Khader's substantial gold imports, and had been running the business for almost ten years. With inexhaustible forbearance, he'd taught me everything that he thought I needed to know about gold and the smuggler's arts. His dark eyes had stared at me from beneath his bushy grey brows, hour after hour in the lessons. Although he commanded a large number of strong men, and could be ruthless with them when it was required, his rheumy eyes only ever showed me kindness. Still, I felt nothing for him but that bodeful uneasiness. When I left his house, after any lesson, a sense of relief flooded into me: a relief that washed the sound of his voice and the sight of his face from my mind, just as water might wash a stain from my hands.

"No. There's no connection. But he's a good teacher, as I say."

"Linbaba," Khader replied, his deep voice rumbling over the name that the slum-dwellers used, "I like you."

My face flushed with emotion. It was as if my own father had said the last three words to me. And my own father never did. The power that those simple words had-the power that Khader had over me-made me realise how neatly and completely he'd come to fill the father's role in my life. In my innermost, secret heart, a small boy that I used to be was wishing that Khader was my father-my real father.

"How's Tariq?" I asked him.

"Tariq is very well, nushkur Allah." Thanks be to God.

"I miss him. He's a great kid," I said. Missing him, I missed my own daughter. I missed my family. I missed my friends.

"He misses you, too," Khader said slowly, and with what seemed to be regret. "Tell me, Lin, what do you want? Why are you here?

What do you really want here, in Bombay?"

We were approaching his parked car. Nazeer ran ahead on his short, thick legs to open the doors and start the engine. Khader and I stood close together, holding a stare.

"I want to be free," I said.

"But you are free," he replied.

"Not really."

"Are you talking about Australia?"

"Yes. Not only that. But mostly that."

"Don't worry," he said. "Nothing will ever harm you in Bombay. I give you my word. No harm will come to you, now, while you wear my name on the medal around your neck and while you work for me.

You are safe here, Inshallah."

He held both my hands in his and murmured a blessing, just as he'd done with the owner of the Saurabh. I walked him to his car, watching as he stooped to sit. Someone had daubed the name Sapna on a grubby wall nearby. The paint was reasonably fresh, no more than a week old. If Khader had noticed, he gave no indication of it. Nazeer slammed the door, and ran around to the other side of the car.

"Next week, I want you to start with my friend Ghani on passports," Khader said. Nazeer revved the engine, awaiting the instruction to leave. "I think you will find the passport business interesting."

He was smiling at me as Nazeer drove away, but it was Nazeer's scowl, behind him, that lingered longest in my mind. The man hated me, it seemed, and sooner or later I would have to settle the matter with him. It was a measure of just how lost and lonely I was, in my exile, that I looked forward to fighting him. He was shorter than I was, but every bit as strong, and perhaps a little heavier. I knew it would be a good fight.

I filed that future violence away under pending and impending, hailed a cab, and made my way to the Fort area. The commercial district of printers, stationers, warehouses, and light manufacturers, known simply as the Fort, served the office districts that surrounded it. The buildings and narrow streets of the Fort were some of the oldest in the city. The atmosphere of another age, an age of starched and formal courtesies, remained in those law firms, publishing houses, and other cerebral enterprises that had been fortunate enough to boast a Fort address for several decades.

One of the newer businesses in the Fort was the travel agency owned through proxies by Khaderbhai and managed by Madjid Rhustem. The agency handled the travel arrangements for thousands of men and women who worked on contracts in the Gulf States. On the legitimate side, the agency organised plane tickets, visas, work permits, and hostel accommodation in the Gulf. On the black market side, Madjid's agents arranged for most of the returning workers to wear from one to three hundred grams of our gold, per person, in chains, bracelets, rings, and brooches. The gold arrived in the Gulf ports from many sources. Some of it was obtained in legal bulk purchases. Much of it was stolen. Junkies and pickpockets and housebreakers from all over Europe and Africa stole gold jewellery and then sold it to their drug dealers and fences. A percentage of that gold, stolen in Frankfurt or Johannesburg or London, found its way through black marketeers to the Gulf ports. Khader's men in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, and every other Gulf capital melted the gold into thick bracelets and chains and brooches. For a small fee, the contract workers wore the gold jewellery on their return to India, and our men collected it from them at the international airport in Bombay.

Each year, the travel agency in the Fort area handled travel arrangements for at least five thousand contract workers. The gold they carried in was re-worked, when necessaiy, at a small workshop near the agency and then sold throughout the Zhaveri bazaar, or jewellery market. The profit from that one part of the gold operation was greater than four million American dollars a year, tax free, and Khader's senior managers were all wealthy, well-respected men.

I checked in with the staff at the Transact Travel Agency. Madjid was out, but the three managers were busy. When I'd learned how the gold-smuggling operation worked, I suggested that Khader's agency should computerise its files, and maintain a database on the contract workers who'd successfully completed one mission for us. Khader had approved the suggestion, and the men were busy transferring hard copy paper files onto the computers. I looked over their work, and was satisfied with their progress. We talked for a while, and when Madjid didn't return I went to look for him at the small gold workshop nearby.

Madjid looked up with a smile when I entered the factory, and then concentrated on the scales once more. Gold chains and bracelets, sorted into various grades, were weighed as individual pieces and weighed again in lots. The amounts were entered into a ledger and crossed-checked against a separate ledger kept for sales in the Zhaveri bazaar.