And for three weeks, after that night, I tried to lose the loneliness that their three happy marriages had pulled from my heart by taking every job I was offered, and cutting every deal I could devise. I flew one passport run to Kinshasa staying, as instructed, at the Lapierre Hotel. It was a nearly squalid three storey building in a laneway parallel to Kinshasa's long main street. The mattress was clean, but the floor and the walls seemed to be made from recycled coffin-wood. The grave-like smell was overpowering, and a sweating damp filled my mouth with gloomy, unidentifiable tastes. I chain-smoked Gitanes and gargled Belgian whisky to kill them. Rat-catchers patrolled the corridors, dragging conspicuous hessian sacks that bulged with writhing, fat animals. Cockroach colonies had claimed the drawers of the dresser, so I hung my clothing and toiletries and other personal items from hooks and thick, crooked nails conveniently hammered into every surface that would endure them.
On my first night I was ripped from a light sleep by gunshots in the corridor beyond my door. I heard a crumpling thump, as of a body falling, and then shuffling footsteps pulling something heavy, backwards, along the bare wooden floor of the hallway. I clamped a fist around my knife and opened the door. Men were standing at three other doors in the corridor, drawn as I was by the sounds. They were all Europeans. Two of them held pistols in their hands, and one held a knife similar to my own. We all looked at one another, and then at the trail of blood that smeared its way down the corridor out of sight. As if in response to a secret signal, we all closed our doors again without a word.
When I followed the Kinshasa run with a mission to Mauritius, my hotel on the island-nation provided a welcome and agreeable contrast. It was called the Mandarin, and it was in Curepipe. The original structure was built as a small-scale reproduction of a Scottish castle. The turreted resemblance was clear enough, on the winding approach through a neat English garden. Inside the building, however, the guest entered a kingdom of Chinese baroque designed by the Chinese family who were the new owners of the hotel. I sat beneath huge, fire-breathing dragons and ate Chinese broccoli with snow peas, garlic spinach, fried bean curd, and mushrooms in black bean sauce by the light of paper lanterns, while the windows gave a view of castellated battlements, gothic arches, and rose-studded topiary.
My contacts, two Indians from Bombay who lived in Mauritius, arrived in a yellow BMW as had been arranged. I got into the back of the car and had barely spoken a greeting when they took off at such tyre-torching speed that I was hurled backwards into a corner of the seat. We screamed along back roads at four times the speed limit for fifteen knuckle-whitening minutes and then they pulled into a silent, deserted grove. The overheated car cooled down with little clinks and clunks of sound. There was a strong smell of rum on both men.
"Okay, let's have the books," one of the two contacts said, leaning around from the driver's seat.
"I haven't got them," I snarled at him through clenched teeth.
The contacts looked at one another and then back at me. The driver raised his mercury-lens glasses, revealing eyes that looked as though he kept them in a glass of brown vinegar beside his bed at night.
"You don't got the books?"
"No. I was trying to tell you that on the way here-wherever the fuck we are-but you kept saying, Keep cool! Keep cool! And not listening to me. Well, are we cool enough now? Huh?"
"I'm not cool, man," the passenger said. I saw myself in the lenses of his glasses. I didn't look happy.
"You idiots!" I growled, switching to Hindi. "You nearly killed us all for nothing! Driving like a speed-freak-arsehole-Bombay taxi-driver with the cops up his arse! The passports are back at the sister-fucking hotel. I stashed them because I wanted to be sure of you two motherfuckers first. Now the only thing I'm sure of is that you guys haven't got the brains of two fleas on a pariah dog's balls."
The passenger lifted his glasses, and they both smiled as widely as their hangovers would allow.
"Where the fuck did you learn to speak Hindi like that?" the driver asked. "It's fuckin' great, yaar. You're speaking like a regular Bombay sister-fucker. It's fantastic, yaar!"
"Damn impressive, man!" his friend added, wagging his head admiringly.
"Let me see the money," I snapped.
They laughed.
"The money," I insisted. "Let me see it."
The passenger lifted a bag from between his feet and opened it to reveal many bundles of cash.
"What's that shit?"
"It's the money, brother," the driver replied.
"That's not money," I said. "Money is green. Money says, In God We Trust. Money has the picture of a dead American on it because money comes from America. That's not money."
"It's Mauritian rupees, brother," the passenger sniffed, wounded by the insult to his currency.
"You can't spend that shit anywhere but in Mauritius," I scoffed, recalling what I'd learned about restricted and open currencies while working with Khaled Ansari. "It's a restricted currency."
"I know, of course, baba," the driver smiled. "We arranged it with Abdul. We don't have the dollars just now, man. All fuckin' tied up in other deals. So we're paying in Mauritian rupees. You can change them back to dollars on your way home, yaar."
I sighed, breathing slowly and forcing calm into the little whirlwind that my mood was making out of my mind. I looked out the window. We were parked in what seemed to be a green forest fire. Tall plants as green as Karla's eyes whirled and shuddered in the wind all around us. There was no-one and nothing else in sight. "Let's just see what we got here. Ten passports at seven thousand bucks apiece. That's seventy thousand bucks. At the exchange rate of, say, thirty Mauritian roops to the dollar, that gives me no less than two million, one hundred thousand rupees. That's why you got such a big bag. Now, forgive me for seeming obtuse, gentlemen, but just where the fuck am I going to change two million rupees into dollars without a fuckin' currency certificate?"
"No problem," the driver responded quickly. "We've got a moneychanger, yaar. A first-class guy. He'll do the deal for you.
It's all set up."
"Okay," I smiled. "Let's go and see him."
"You'll have to go there alone, man," the passenger said, laughing happily. "He's in Singapore."
"Singa-fkckin'-pore!" I shouted, as that little whirlwind flared in my mind.
"Don't be all upset, yaar," the driver replied gently. "It's all arranged. Abdul Ghani is cool about it. He'll call you at the hotel today. Here, take this card. You go to Singapore, on your way home-okay, okay, Singapore is not exactly on the way home to Bombay, but if you fly there first, then it will be on the way, isn't it? So when you get down in Singapore, you go and see this guy on the card. He's a licensed moneychanger. He's Khader's man.
He'll change all the roops into dollars, and you'll be cool. No problem. There's even a bonus in it for you. You'll see."
"Okay," I sighed. "Let's go back to the hotel. If this checks out with Abdul, we'll do the deal."
"The hotel," the driver said, sliding his glasses down over the dartboards of his eyes.
"The hotel!" the passenger repeated, and the yellow Exocet hurtled back along the winding roads once more.
The trip through Singapore passed off without a hitch, and the Mauritian currency fiasco provided a few unexpected benefits. I made a valuable, new contact in the Singapore moneychanger-an Indian from Madras named Shekky Ratnam-and I took my first look at the profitable smuggling run of duty free cameras and electrical goods from Singapore to Bombay.
When I rode out to the Oberoi Hotel to meet Lisa Carter, after handing the dollars to Abdul Ghani and collecting my fee, I felt positive and hopeful for the first time in far too long. I began to think that I might've thrown off the dark moods that had settled on me after Prabaker's wedding night. I'd travelled to Zaire, Mauritius, and Singapore on forged passports without raising the vaguest suspicion. In the slum, I'd survived from day to day on the small commissions I made from tourists, and I had only my compromised New Zealand passport. Just a year later I lived in a modern apartment, my pockets were bulging with freshly ill-gotten gains, and I had five passports in five different names and nationalities, with my photograph on every one of them. The world of possibility was opening up for me.