"I want to know why you never told me about Khaderbhai."

"Do you want it straight?"

"Of course I do."

"I couldn't trust you," she declared, looking away again. "That's not exactly right-I mean, I didn't know if I could trust you. I think... now-I know-I could've trusted you all along."

"Okay." My teeth were touching, and my lips didn't move.

"I tried to tell you. I tried to get you to stay with me in Goa.

You know that."

"It would've made a difference," I snapped, but then sighed just as she had, and relaxed my tone. "It might've made a difference if you'd told me that you worked for him-that you recruited me for him."

"When I ran away... when I went to Goa, I was in a bad way. The Sapna thing-that was my idea. Did you know that?"

"No. Jesus, Karla."

Her eyes narrowed as she read the angry disappointment in my face.

"Not the killing part," she explained, and her expression was shocked, I think, to realise that I'd misunderstood what she'd said, and that I believed her capable of devising the Sapna killings. "That was all Ghani's idea-his spin on it. They needed to get stuff in and out, through Bombay, and they needed help from people who didn't want to give it. My idea was to create a common enemy-Sapna-and to get everybody working with us to defeat him. It was supposed to be done with posters, and graffiti, and some harmless bomb hoaxes-to make it seem like there was a dangerous, charismatic leader out there. But Ghani didn't think it was scary enough. That's why he started the killings..."

"And you left... for Goa."

"Yeah. You know the very first place I heard about the killings- what Ghani was doing with my idea? It was at that Village in the Sky... that lunch you took me to. Your friends were talking about it. And it really shook me up that day. I stuck it out for a while, trying to stop it, somehow. But it was hopeless. And then Khader told me you were in jail-but you had to stay there until Madame Zhou did what he wanted her to do. And then he... he got me to work on the Pakistani, the young general. He was a contact of mine, and he liked me. So I... I did it. I worked him, while you were in there, until Khader got what he wanted.

And then I just... quit. I'd had enough."

"But you went back to him."

"I tried to get you to stay with me."

"Why?"

"What do you mean?"

She was frowning, and seemed irritated by the question.

"Why did you want me to stay with you?"

"Isn't that obvious?"

"No. I'm sorry. It's not. Did you love me, Karla? I'm not asking if you loved me like I loved you. I mean... did you love me at all? Did you love me at all, Karla?" "I liked you..."

"Yeah..."

"No, it's true. I liked you, more than anyone else I knew. That's a lot for me, Lin."

My jaw was locked tight, and I turned my head away from her. She waited for a few moments and then spoke again.

"I couldn't tell you about Khader. I couldn't. It would've felt like I was betraying him."

"Betraying me was different, I guess."

"Fuck, Lin, it wasn't like that. If you'd stayed with me, we both would've been out of that world, but even then I couldn't have told you. Anyway, it doesn't matter. You wouldn't stay with me, so I never thought I'd see you again. Then I got a message from Khader saying you were in Gupta's place, killing yourself with smack, and he needed me to help him get you out of there. That's how I got back into it. That's how I went back to him."

"I just don't get it, Karla."

"What don't you get?"

"You worked for him, and Ghani, for how long-before the Sapna thing?"

"About four years."

"So, you must've seen a lot of other stuff go down-you must've heard about it, at the very least. You're working for the Bombay mafia, for fuck's sake, or a goddamn branch of it. You're working for one of Bombay's biggest gangsters, like I was. You knew they killed people, before Ghani went psycho with his Sapna gang. Why ... after all that, did you suddenly get freaked out with the Sapna thing? I don't get it."

She'd been watching me closely. I knew she was clever enough to see that I was striking back at her with the questions, but her eyes told me that she saw more than that. Although I'd tried to hide it, I knew she'd picked up the scepticism barbed with righteous censure in my tone. When I finished she took a breath, and seemed about to speak, but then she paused as if reconsidering her reply.

"You think I left them," she began at last, with a little frown of surprise, "and went to Goa because I wanted to be... what... forgiven, for what I'd done? Or for what I'd been part of? Is that it?"

"Did you?" "No. I wanted to be forgiven, and I still do, but not for that. I left them because I didn't feel anything at all about the Sapna killings. I was stunned... and... sort of, freaked out, at first, that Ghani had turned the idea around so much. And I didn't like it. I thought it was stupid. I thought it was unnecessary and it would get us all into trouble we didn't need.

And I tried to talk Khaderbhai out of it. I tried to get them to stop. But I didn't feel anything about it, even when they killed Madjid. And I... I used to like him, you know? I liked old Madjid. He was the best of them, in a way. But I didn't feel anything when he died. And I didn't feel it, not even a bit, when Khader told me he had to leave you in jail and let you get beaten up. I liked you-more than I liked anyone else-but I didn't feel bad or sorry. I kind of understood it-that it had to happen, and it was just bad luck that it was happening to _you. I felt nothing. And that's when it hit me-that's when I knew I had to get away."

"What about Goa? You can't tell me that was nothing."

"No. When you came to Goa and you found me, like I knew you would, it was... pretty good. I started to think, this is what it's like... this is what they're talking _about... But then you wouldn't stay. You had to go back-back to _him-and I knew he wanted you, maybe even needed you. And I couldn't tell you what I knew about him, because I owed him, and I didn't know if I could trust you. So I let you go. And when you left, I didn't feel anything at all. Not a thing. I didn't want to be forgiven because of what I did. I wanted to be forgiven-and I still want it, and that's why I'm going to Khaled and Idriss-because I don't feel sorry for any of it, and I don't regret a thing. I'm cold inside, Lin. I like people, and I like things, but I don't love any of them-not even myself-and I don't really care about them. And, you know, the strange thing is, I don't really wish that I did care."

And there it was. I had it all-all the truth and detail that I'd needed to know since that day on the mountain, in the withering snow, when Khader had told me about her. I think I'd expected to feel... nourished, perhaps, and vindicated, by forcing her to tell me what she'd done and why she'd done it. I think I'd hoped to be released by it, and solaced, just by hearing her tell me.

But it wasn't like that. I felt empty: the kind of emptiness that's sad but not distressed, pitying but not broken-hearted, and damaged, somehow, but clearer and cleaner for it. And then I knew what it was, that emptiness: there's a name for it, a word we use often, without realising the universe of peace that's enfolded in it.

The word is free.

"For what it's worth," I said, reaching out to put my hand against her cheek, "I forgive you, Karla. I forgive you, and I love you, and I always will."

Our lips met like waves that crest and merge the whirl of storming seas. I felt that I was falling: free and falling at last from the love that had opened, lotus-layered, within me. And together we did fall the length of her black hair to the still warm sand in the hollow of the sunken boat.

When our lips parted, stars rushed through that kiss into her sea-green eyes. An age of longing passed from those eyes into mine. An age of passion passed from my grey eyes into hers. All the hunger, all the fleshed and hope-starved craving, streamed from eye to eye: the moment we met; the laughing wit of Leopold's; the Standing Babas; the Village in the Sky; the cholera; the swarm of rats; the secrets that she'd whispered near exhausted sleep; the singing boat on the flood beneath the Gateway; the storm when we made love the first time; the joy and loneliness in Goa; and our love reflecting shadows into glass, on the last night before the war.