"Do you know them?" he asked, without turning around.

"Yes. They're the Blind Singers, I think."

"Indeed, they are," he said in the mix of Indian lilt and BBC newsreader's tone that I'd come to enjoy. "I love their music, Lin, more than anything I have ever heard, from any culture. But in the heart of my love for it, I have to say that I am afraid.

Every time I hear them-and I play them every day, when I am at home here-I have the feeling that I am hearing the sound of my own requiem."

He still hadn't turned to face me, and I remained standing near the centre of the long room.

"That... that must be unsettling."

"Unsettling..." he said softly. "Yes. Yes, it is unsettling.

Tell me, Lin, do you think that one great act of genius can allow us to forgive the hundred flaws and failures that bring it into being?"

"It's... hard to say. I'm not exactly sure what you mean, but I guess it depends on how many people benefit by it, and how many people get hurt."

He turned to face me, and I saw that he was crying. Tears rolled quickly, easily, and continuously from his large eyes, and spilled across the plump cheeks to the belly of his long silk shirt. His voice, however, was calm and composed.

"Did you know that our Madjid was killed last night?"

"No," I frowned, shocked by the news. "Killed?"

"Yes. Murdered. Slaughtered like some beast, in his own house.

His body was torn to pieces, and the pieces were found in many different rooms of the house. The name Sapna was daubed on the walls with his own blood. Police are blaming fanatics who follow this Sapna. I'm sorry, Lin. Forgive my tears, please. I'm afraid that this bad business has taken its toll on me." "No, not at all. I'll... I'll come back at another time."

"Of course not. You're here now, and Khader is anxious for you to begin. We'll drink tea, and I will pull myself together, and then we'll examine the passport business, you and I."

He walked to the hi-fi set, and extracted the cassette tape of the Blind Singers. Sliding it into a gold plastic case, he approached me and pressed it into my hand.

"I want you to have this, as a present from me," he said, his eyes and cheeks still wet with tears. "It's time I stopped listening to it, and I feel sure that you will enjoy it."

"Thank you," I muttered, almost as confused by the gift as I was by the news of Madjid's death.

"Not at all, Lin. Come, sit with me. You were in Goa, I believe?

Do you know our young fighter, Andrew Ferreira? Yes? Then you know he is from Goa. He goes there, often, with Salman and Sanjay, when I have work for them. You must all go there together, some time-they will show you the special sights, if you get my meaning. So tell me, how was your trip?"

I answered him, trying to give my whole attention to the conversation, but my mind was thick with thoughts of Madjid; dead Madjid. I couldn't say that I'd liked him, or even that I'd trusted him. Yet his death, his murder, shook me, and filled me with a strange, excited agitation. He'd been killed-slaughtered, Abdul had said-in the house at Juhu where we'd studied together, and he'd taught me about gold and golden crimes. I thought of the house. I remembered its view of the sea, its purple-tiled swimming pool, its bare, pale-green prayer room where Madjid had bent his ancient knees, five times every day, and touched his bushy grey eyebrows to the floor. I remembered sitting outside that room, near the pool, waiting for him as he took time out to pray. I remembered staring at the purple water as the murmured syllables of the prayers buzzed past me into the swaying fronds of palms leaning in around the pool.

And once again I had the sense of a trap, of a destiny not shaped by my own deeds and desires. It was as if the constellations themselves were just the outlines of an immense cage that revolved and realigned itself, inscrutably, until the single moment that fate had reserved for me. There was too much that I didn't understand. There was too much that I wouldn't allow myself to ask. And I was excited, in that web of connections and concealments. The scent of danger, the smell of fear, filled my senses. The heart-squeezing, enlivening exhilaration of it was so powerful that it wasn't until an hour later, when we entered Abdul Ghani's passport workshop, that I could give my full attention to the man and the moment that we shared.

"This is Krishna, and this is Villu," Ghani said, introducing me to two short, slender, dark-skinned men who resembled one another so closely that I thought they might be brothers. "There are many experts in this business, many men and women with a detective's eye for detail, and a surgeon's confident steadiness of hand. But my experience of ten years in the counterfeiting arts tells me that the Sri Lankans, such as our Krishna and Villu, are the best forgers in the world."

The men smiled widely, with perfect white teeth, in response to the compliment. They were handsome men, their faces formed from fine, almost delicate features, in a harmony of gentle contours and curves. They returned to their work as we strolled about the large room.

"This is the light-box," Abdul Ghani explained, waving his plump hand at a long table. It was topped with white opaque glass.

Strong lights shone from within its frame. "Krishna is our best light-box man. He examines the pages of genuine passports, looking for watermarks and concealed patterns. In this way, he can duplicate these effects where we need them."

I bent over Krishna's shoulder to watch him as he studied the information page of a British passport. A complex pattern of wavy lines descended from the top of the page, across a photograph, and on to the bottom of the page. On another passport beside it, Krishna was matching the pattern of wavy lines on the edge of a substituted photograph, creating the lines with a fine-tipped pen. Using the light-box, he placed one pattern over the other to check for irregularities.

"Villu is our best stamp man," Abdul Ghani said, guiding me to another long table. On a rack at the back of the table, there were rows of many more rubber stamps.

"Villu can make any stamp, no matter how intricate its design.

Visa stamps, exit and entry, special permission stamps-whatever we need. He has three new profile-cutting machines, for reproducing the stamps. The machines cost me dearly-I had to import them, all the way from Germany-and I spent almost as much again, in baksheesh, getting them through customs controls and into our workshop without any unpleasant questions. But our Villu is an artist, and he often prefers to ignore my beautiful machines, and cut the new stamps by hand."

I watched as Villu created a new stamp on a blank rubber template. He copied a photographic enlargement of the original-a departure stamp from Athens airport-and cut the new stamp with scalpels and jeweller's files. Inkpad tests of the new stamp revealed minor flaws. When those were finally eradicated, Villu used a scrap of wet-and-dry sandpaper to wear away one corner of the stamp. That deliberate imperfection gave the inked image a genuine, natural appearance on the page. The completed stamp joined scores of others in the rack of stamps waiting to be used on newly altered passports.

Abdul Ghani completed his tour of the factory, demonstrating the computers, photocopy equipment, printing presses, profile cutters, and reserves of special parchment papers and inks. When I'd seen all there was to see on a first visit, he offered me a lift back to Colaba. I declined, asking him if I might stay and spend some time with the Sri Lankan forgers. He seemed pleased with my enthusiasm, or perhaps simply amused. When he left me, I heard his heavy sigh as the sadness of bereavement claimed him once more.

Krishna, Villu, and I drank chai and talked for three hours without a pause. Although they weren't brothers, they were both Tamil Sri Lankans who came from the same village on the Jaffna peninsula. Conflict between the Tamil Tigers-the Liberation Tigers for Tamil Eelam-and the Sri Lankan army had obliterated their village. Almost all the members of both families were dead.