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Aik roze apni rooh se poochha, ke Dilli kiya hai?
To yun jawab main kahaa geya, yeh dunya man-o-jism he aur Dilli iski jaan
One day I asked my soul, what is Delhi?
And so in answer was said, the world is the body and Delhi is its life.
— Ghalib
New Delhi — temporary offices of RAW, undisclosed location
Alex is awoken by a soft thud, of a heavy newspaper thrown onto the table in front of him. He’s been waiting for ages for someone to come in, but after the last agent stormed out, they’d left him locked up in the room all alone. He’s been spending the time counting tiles but that’s boring enough for him to fall asleep, apparently.
The front page of the newspaper declares in blocky letters, “Double Dhamaka (Blast) at Red Fort — a strategic attack or just a prank gone too far?”. Accompanied underneath is a vivid photograph of the explosion. The Times of India certainly doesn’t mince words.
A large finger jabs at the colourful photo, and Alex looks up at the man who’s walked in. He’s of a middling height, with dark hair sweeping across his forehead and a thick, neatly trimmed moustache.
“You’re lucky the media hasn’t found out yet that a British kid was behind this.”
The agent waits a beat but Alex pretends to be reading the article while he considers the man across from him. Another government official in a long line of them that had come in and left, papers and forms crumpled up in their shaking hands.
He remembers this agent, though, has seen him before, leaning on the tall arches of the entrance hall or briskly walking through the busy workstations.
He remembers the other officers saluting to him as he walked past.
The man unbuttons his plain, dark linen suit and takes a seat. The office is surprisingly cosy for an intelligence agency — darkly painted walls stand behind a large rosewood desk and bookcases. The chairs are simple yet sturdy, with a seat of woven rattan, and they’re surprisingly comfortable — he should know, because he’s had the immense pleasure of sitting in one for the majority of the past week.
A light breeze flutters through the linen draping the open windows. The sun hasn’t risen to its zenith yet, and the gust of air is still pleasantly cool. An ornately patterned rug cushions his feet as he toes the floor in anticipation.
The last few people who’d come to take down his statement hadn’t been too keen on having to question an English kid, and there’d been a lot in his answers that was lost in translation.
The last agent and officer had both left muttering under their breath, calling his story “outlandish” and “completely unrealistic”.
Maybe he just needs to get on their good side, first. Cool air hits the back of his neck as a fan lazily spins to his direction with a gentle hum.
“Okay, Alex, if that’s how you’re going to be…” The man sighs. Elegant cufflinks sparkle as they catch the light. “I’m Agent Sahil. Let’s go over your statement again.”
“Hi,” Alex replies politely, a pleasant smile on his face as he decides on a compliment for the higher ranking agent. “You look much nicer than those other officers, they didn’t have an ounce of fashion sense. That outfit is very dashing.”
The man gives him an unimpressed look, flipping open the file on the table with a scowl.
Alex points to the cuff links. “I love those, they’re very —”
''While such attempts at flattery would usually get you far, I'm still waiting for you to tell me why you found it necessary to blow up a World Heritage site.”
“I’ve already told you,” Alex groans, “I didn’t mean to blow it up! I was on my way out of the whole place, honestly!”
“The footage clearly shows you sprinting towards the building.”
“Yeah, because I was going to try to stop the explosion!”
The man tries to suppress a groan from escaping. “Listen, we cannot release you to your country’s embassy until you tell us exactly what happened. Do you understand? I know you’re too young to be mixed up in this but anyone else who was there has disappeared or has been paid off — lives are at stake here, even yours, but we cannot protect you until we know what’s really going on. Until you tell us the truth, your British friends can negotiate all they want, but we will have to hold you here. You might be stuck in New Delhi for months until the investigation is completed.”
“I haven’t lied to any of you,” Alex grumbles, crossing his arms. The agent raises a single eyebrow, crossing his arms too.
“When I say ‘the truth’ I mean the whole truth. The last few agents have reported you’re only spinning tales worthy of a Bollywood film.” The man flipped through a few of the papers, landing on the other agents’ reports. “Let me see...here it is: ‘Alex claims a monkey was responsible for the explosion. His increasingly ridiculous explanations include flying like a crow, driving a rickshaw through the desert, and a band of costumed children with magic carpets.’”
“That’s all completely true, your agents just didn’t bother to let me explain!”
“So explain, then. You’ll find I’m not as easy to spin in circles as my subordinates.”
“ Fine ,” he sighs, uncrossing his arms and settling back against the soft chair. “Where do you want me to start?”
The agent smiles, pulling a slim tablet towards him, fingers hovering over the keyboard. “Thank you, beta (son, child) . Let’s start with the Red Fort’s tower exploding.”
Alex finds himself relaxing, thankful that the agent has finally started to listen, and screws up his eyes, trying to find a good place to begin.
“Okay, so first of all, I didn’t know we’d end up at the Red Fort...”
Old Delhi — Chandni Chowk, Old Dariya Ganj, Farid Bookstore rooftop
It was dusk, and the sky was as dark as ink. The wind whistled through his hair, and the air was cold on the roof he’d climbed onto, following Merab, the boy who’d grown up running through Old Delhi’s streets and rooftops. Merab and George leaned over his phone too, as they checked the tracker’s location.
The orange dot blinked slowly as the trucks entered a swathe of greenery, rolling to a stop. Maybe they had a hidden store or helipad there, in the middle of the jungle.
“They stopped, that’s Restricted Forest,” Merab said quietly into the air. “You need special permission for there.”
Alex paused, knowing he didn’t have much time to think. George excitedly eyed his watch (and the button to activate the bombs).
“There won’t be anybody else there then, if it’s restricted.”
“Yes, no people. Except them and maybe some unlucky ones.” Merab looked up and Alex knew he was right — there wouldn’t be a better chance to destroy the cargo in those trucks.
Wincing at the trees he was killing, Alex pressed the button, activating the little devices that the three of them had planted earlier in the trucks. Smithers had warned him that there was a short delay while they came online, and then he could detonate the bombs with another twist of the watch. Merab slouched down, swinging his feet off the roof. Alex and George followed, waiting for the watch face to turn green.
A moment, and then his phone lit up again. The orange dot moved, slowly at first, and then picking up speed. Three pairs of eyes watched, alarmed, as the tracker flew through the forest. The trucks were heavy enough to make their own path through the bushes and trees, crunching them in their wake.
Alex cursed the delay on the bombs. If he could have activated them immediately, there wouldn’t be any trucks left to plow through the nature reserve. Then he realised where the trucks were heading, and was suddenly grateful for it, because the tracker’s little dot was careening out of the forest, towards the city. He looked up to see Merab with a look of absolute horror on his face as he came to the same realisation.
The trucks, and the cargo, were heading to Lal Qila , the Red Fort — the symbol of India’s nation, where the Prime Minister made a speech every year to commemorate independence from the British.
“No, not Lal Qila !” Merab scrambled to his feet and George followed, looking over the shops and houses as if he could see the trucks from where they stood.
Alex went for the watch — there must be an option to deactivate the bombs before they’ve been detonated, and he’d had it right in his hand while they waited. Maybe he’d slipped it into a pocket when they were watching the tracker —
George had it. She cradled the shiny metal gadget in her hands.
“George, I’m going to need that back, hand it over!” She shook her small head, and tightened her fingers around it, clenching her hand into a fist. Alex tried prying it out of her hands, but it was no use — she scampered away and if he wasn’t careful, she’d run away completely.
Merab was still looking into the dusky sky, looking like he was one step away from wailing. “Don’t bother yourself Alex. It’s too late now.”
“Wait, wait,” Agent Sahil holds up a hand, frowning.
“What? I’m getting to the explosion, don’t worry,” Alex huffs.
The older man shakes his head. “I’m confused. George is...a woman? A girl?”
Alex cackles. “No, of course not! George is a monkey.”
“A...monkey. You did this with a monkey’s help?” The poor agent looks like he doesn’t know whether to laugh or frown. His face attempts both simultaneously.
“Yeah, you guys really have a monkey problem in this city. Is it the same in Mumbai, or is this just a Delhi thing? Luckily Merab’s trained George pretty well and —”
“Ok, no, sorry we’re not going to discuss city wildlife. Please, go on, and just get to how the bombs went off.”
“Alright, alright! So anyway, George thought we didn’t need the watch anymore, and decided it was hers now. I had to think of a way to defuse those bombs, and fast.”
Old Delhi — Chandni Chowk, Old Dariya Ganj, Farid Bookstore rooftop
“Merab, tell her to let go, if she hits the wrong button they’ll go off!”
The slender boy finally turned around, his eyes sharpening as he watched the monkey’s tail swinging happily.
“George, give it, let me see.” He held out a hand to her, but she ignored him, too. “Chalo, dikhao mujhe!” (Come on, show me!)
Alex could see that it was a losing battle. “Ok, never mind the watch. We’ve got to get to where those trucks are — if we can’t stop it from exploding, we’ll have to figure out a way to put them out before they cause too much damage.”
He leapt down the concrete stairs, taking them two and three at a time, and the heavy thud-thud-thud that followed reassured him that Merab and George were closeby. So far, Merab’s shortcuts through the back alleys and little shops had let them follow the trucks from a distance, as the crow flies, but they needed to get to the Red Fort fast, and they’d need a set of wheels for that. Alex eyed the bicycles leaning against the bricks.
“Auto! Rickshaw, come, come!” Merab was one step ahead, jumping and waving wildly at an oncoming rickshaw, pulling Alex along with his arm. One rickshaw passed, and then another, before a driver finally stopped. The man eyed Alex’s fair skin and hair. “Apna gora dost bhi jaaega tumhare saat? (Our foreign friend is also coming with you?) ”
“Haan, aur jaldi karo bhai sahib, bohot jaldi mein hein hum! (Yes, and hurry up sir, we’re in a real hurry!)” Merab turned to his British friend, dragging him into the rickshaw before the driver changed his mind. “Come, come, I told we’re in a hurry.”
“Where to, boys?” The driver grunted, still staring at them, clearly in no rush to move along.
“Lal Qila,” Alex said, digging in his pockets, and found a wad of cash that Mr. Rathore had given him to spend. “And we’ll make it worth your while, if you get us there as quick as you can. It’s an emergency!”
The notes of rupees finally kickstarted the driver into action, and he swiftly swiped them out of Alex’s fingers and dropped the whole bundle into his kurta shirt’s pocket. He grinned at them in the mirror, revving the engine and smoothly sliding into traffic. “Now, chota sahib (little sir), see how fast I take you!”
There’s a soft knock at the wooden door, and Agent Sahil beckons the visitor to come in. It’s the chaiwala (tea boy), a young man who brings tea for all the agents and officers throughout the day.
By now, the relative coolness of the morning has all but disappeared. Even with multiple fans running, the room is unbearably hot. He’s used to air conditioned buildings, but the men and women busily walking through the premises are clearly fine without. His pale, English skin begs for a cooler sky, and he vows to never complain about the rain again.
Agent Sahil takes a glass of the steaming hot tea, and then reaches for another one for Alex. He can’t imagine why anyone would have such a hot drink in the blistering heat.
“Oh! Um, no, no thank you. I’m fine without.”
“Are you sure? I thought the British loved tea.” The agent’s eyes run over Alex’s face, lingering on his probably very red and sweaty cheeks. “Leave the tray here,” he tells the chaiwala , “and bring a cold drink for our guest.”
A moment, and the young man scampers back inside with an icy bottle of Fanta. Alex would have preferred Coke, but he’ll take what he can get.
The mango flavour is sweet on his tongue, and he sips the cool juice gratefully.
Agent Sahil isn’t so bad, he reflects, as long as the man gets what he wants. He’s clearly more clever than the other officers and agents he’s met with in the past few days, and more agreeable to speak with too. He wonders if there’s a way to keep him around for longer, until MI6 finally send someone to collect him.
“So you get to Lal Qila, then what?”
“Well, first, I had to survive that crazy man’s driving, with a monkey squeezed between the two of us. Who still had my watch in a death grip. And also Merab had slipped into existential dread, so he was no use.”
Old Delhi — towards Shahi Burj via Lahori Gate, Lal Qila
The rickshaw swerved through larger cars and skidded past motorcycles on the packed roads. Alex had learned, on his first day in Delhi, that traffic in India had no rules, no lanes. As long as you could fit on the road and avoid hitting the cars around you, it was fair game. The engine sputtered loudly and the smell of diesel overwhelmed him.
Merab stared listlessly outside. He turned to check the phone, which showed that the trucks were still at the Shahi Burj tower of the Red Fort.
“This tower, it’s closed for many years. There are always builders, doing construction,” he said, suddenly alert again.
“Good thinking!” Alex pulled himself back inside the covered seat, battling with the little monkey for room. “They’ve probably disguised themselves as builders, while they prepare the cargo.”
Merab shook his head, glancing at the rickshaw-wala before speaking quietly. “No, I mean, if we can’t...fix it...maybe it’s ok.”
Now it was Alex’s turn to stare at him wide-eyed. “ What? How exactly would that be ok?!”
Merab shrugged. “Accidents happen. Not our fault.”
“Right. Until they figure out it was me. A white British kid, who destroyed India’s symbol of independence from the British ?”
“Oh,” Merab sighed with a sheepish laugh. “That does sound bad.”
The orange light stayed on, lighting the dark backseat of the rickshaw with an ominous glow. They stared at it in silence until the short ride ended with the tires screeching to a stop, next to the Lahore Gate.
The driver turned to Merab, shaking his head as he looked into the traffic behind them. “Isse qareeb nahi ho sakta (I can’t go any closer). I can’t drive any closer.”
The trucks must have used a hidden entry point, but there was no time to waste. Alex jumped off and leaped into a sprint, running past the towering gate that guarded the fort. Inside, there were palaces and mosques, gardens and halls — everything a Mughal royal would have ever needed. Alex would have liked to stop and admire the intricate carvings, the inlaid jewels and tiles, the heavenly arches, but as usual, he was running out of time.
“Quite literally running ,” he huffed as his feet pounded towards the northwest corner of the complex.
Above him, George swung through the tall trees, squealing in delight.
A white pavilion stood at the northeast corner, the moonlit marble glowing against the backdrop of red sandstone. Scalloped arches rose above a small stream of water, and he could see the empty ridges where inlaid jewels once rested. The dome of the tower was missing, and tarps were pulled across its structure. Old caution tape blew in the wind. He paused for a moment, imagining what it would have looked like before its precious stones and carved tiles had been stolen away, to be gifted to the Queen.
Three garishly bright trucks idled behind the Shahi Burj pavilion, almost out of sight, their reddish headlights throwing shadows in the grass. He crept forward, turning the corner. They were still loaded, and a handful of men loitered there, lighting up for a smoke or scrolling on their phones.
The lit cigarettes were awfully close to the alcohol doused cargo inside.
He tried to think of a way to redirect the water in the stream onto the trucks, and realised with a start that he’d been standing here, all alone, for quite awhile. Craning his neck, he could just make out the silhouette of Merab against a lamplight, speaking wildly to a night guard.
Just then, a shadow moved across the glow of the humming truck lights. A shadow with a long, curled tail.
“George!” Alex hissed, vowing to never keep a wild animal as a pet. “Come back here!”
George turned to him, big round eyes looking into his, and cautiously walked closer, away from the trucks.
“Yes, good girl, come here,” he whispered, crouching down and holding out his arms. Maybe he’d finally gotten through to her tiny furry brain.
The monkey walked closer and closer, and then — she darted right past him, scampering up a tree. Alex’s watch dangled from the pocket in her little jacket, bouncing with her every frantic leap.
Great, the last thing he needed was for that bloody watch to confirm the detonation on those explosives. Couldn’t Merab have chosen a cute little dog to do tricks in his show? Dogs, unlike monkeys, understood the meaning of “obey”.
Muttering under his breath, he crept as quickly as he dared, following the cheeky monkey from below the winding branches of the leafy neem trees. She came to a stop just in front of the clearing where the trucks hid behind the Shahi Burj , settling onto a nice, thick branch and comfortably curling her tail behind her. Maybe she just wanted to keep a lookout and make sure her human friends were safe, Alex thought.
George pulled out the watch, and let out a soft trill, spinning it around in her hands. Her pudgy little fingers caressed the edges of the dials and buttons around the round watchface.
Oh no. The monkey looked too excited to not be thinking of the absolute worst idea.
“Don’t you dare press that button!” Alex whisper-shouted at the furry beast. She startled for a moment, looking this way and that, before glancing below her. If she wasn’t about to press that button , he might have thought she looked comical, cute even, peering down at him through the leaves past her chubby little belly.
She cocked her head questioningly at him before deciding he wasn’t a worthy threat, and pressed gently at the glass of the watch face again, and even from so far below, he could see it light up with a greenish glow, and couldn’t hold back a yelp of alarm.
“NO! Don’t press it, George!”
His shout reached the men clustered around the construction site, who looked wildly from him, to the red truck’s roof where he had been tied up in the afternoon. The larger of the men stamped out his cigarette, the smoke wafting up into the moonlight, and sent a younger man clambering up the ladder to check the roof.
“The boy’s gone!”
They erupted into a cacophony of yells, and Alex knew the signs of a chase when he saw them. So did George — she darted into the trees with an awkward gait, still cradling the watch. Alex bolted after her, and the men gave chase, yelling at him to stop.
He stumbled his way through the overgrown brush around the border of the fort, grabbing a particularly thick branch and pulling himself up an ancient tree. He had to get George to stop before her spindly fingers confirmed the detonation, accidentally or not.
He paused to catch a breath, and from his perch, he could see Merab speaking into the guard’s radio. Help would, hopefully, be here soon.
“Come on,” he muttered, watching the guards clustered beneath as he dug around in his pocket. No wonder George was so full of herself, humans really did look ridiculous from up here. Currently, she was several branches above him and looked a little stuck. The spoiled monkey was used to being toted around on shoulders and in bags, today’s climbing had probably been a week’s worth of exercise.
What she needed was a bit of incentive to come back down. Alex pulled out a shiny taffy, dangling it towards her. “George, look at what I’ve got!”
George turned, eyes latching onto the packet sparkling in the dark, and slowly crept towards him. She looked a bit frightened of the men who were still shouting at Alex from below the tree.
“Come on, it’s ok. I’ll help you,” Alex cooed at her, balancing out an arm as she came closer. “Try and jump here, we can climb back down together.”
It was dark in the foliage of the trees’ canopy, with the leaves glowing ominously in the red lights of the trucks, and it was getting harder to stay balanced on the creaky old branches.
George finally made her way to the branch nearest to him and carefully calculated the distance between them. The watch was still gripped tightly in her left hand. She could make it, surely.
But then — Alex saw something on the branch, even in the dark. Something shadowy and hairy and creepy crawly.
A spider, calmly making its way to wherever spiders go in the middle of the night. Time slowed as he watched its path, and its hairy legs touched George’s foot.
George yelped and flailed her arms, finally making the jump, and landed in his arms. In her fright, her little monkey hands waved about, and she shivered as she quickly scampered up to his shoulder.
The watch fell through the darkness, swallowed by the leaves.
One of the men poked at the branches with his rifle, starting to climb up as Alex slid down the viney branches and dropped to the grass below, hands up in the air.
A glint in the darkness, and Alex could almost see the watch hanging, suspended by its band, on a twig just above reach. It sagged, heavy with the weight of metal and whatever else Smithers had stuffed inside.
The twig snapped, and the watch sailed through the air, bouncing on the grass and clattering onto the marble pathway, the button pressing harshly against the tiles. Alex winced, and for a moment, everyone just stared at each other.
Then the tiny explosives detonated with a few small bursts, and in the distance, the trucks caught fire. The men erupted into shrieks and wails, rushing to cover the burning trucks with water, rugs, anything to save their precious cargo, but the fire only spread further and further. Bits of metal burst out of the trucks and pierced the tarps on the Shahi Burj , and flames licked against the red sandstone of the fort’s walls behind the pavilion.
Alex stretches his arms, leaning back in his chair, yawning. He’s peppered the story with loose ends and hints, bits of information that the agents could latch onto. Hopefully Agent Sahil will want to keep questioning him, and Alex could buy enough time for MI6 to send an agent here, or at the very least keep hidden from the henchmen whose cargo he destroyed.
“...and you know the rest — you lot finally showed up, the thugs disappeared, George scampered off to hide, and I was left standing there alone, holding the stupid watch with the fire raging behind me and broken car parts flying everywhere.”
Agent Sahil has a long-suffering look on his face. “The guard should have notified us immediately, but he must have been paid a heavy bribe to look the other way. You’re lucky your friend stole his radio and called in the local police.”
“Yeah, well you didn’t listen to him when he told you those men were at fault...Anyway, that’s the story of how I didn’t blow up a UNESCO World Heritage site.”
The man huffs at him, shaking his head. “Your story brings up more questions than answers. Maybe you’re right, it’s the monkey’s fault that the Shahi Burj exploded. But then, where did you get a watch that detonates explosives? Why was your phone tracking those trucks? And, you were the one who initially activated the bombs, which you somehow knew about —”
Alex cuts off the agent’s rousing speech with an exaggeratedly loud yawn. It’s nearing dinner time, the sun nearing the end of its daily journey to the horizon. Sometime between the rickshaw’s drive and George’s climbing, the agent had disappeared for lunch, and he’d been given rice and curry to eat alone in the cozy room (as far as interrogation cells went, anyway). They gave him a book of English crosswords to while away the time, but the clues are full of sayings and idioms that probably make more sense if you know Hindi.
Agent Sahil is less than impressed by his fake yawning, but somewhere mixed in with the exasperation is a look of fondness that threatens to warm some part of Alex that he always buries deep when he’s not in Chelsea. There’s no reason to look deeper into it, the agent probably just has kids his age.
“It’s been a long day, beta (son, child). Thank you for explaining what happened at the Red Fort — I’ll leave you for now, but I hope you’ll help us find a way to get you home.”
Alex looks down, acting sheepish. He can’t believe the agent has fallen so easily to his plan to stretch out his stay here. “If I can get home, I’ll tell you everything else you want to know. But not the other agents, they weren’t nearly as good at listening as you are.”
“The other agents...they’re used to interrogating criminals and terrorists, they don’t get that you’re just a kid that’s mixed up in this.” Agent Sahil gave him a gentle pat on the head. “Don’t worry, I’ll be the only one to speak with you. And I’ll get them to send you some English food as well, or is curry alright with you?”
“Thanks, Agent Sahil. A burger would be great, with some Coke please.”
***
Agent Sahil closes the door tightly as he leaves, silently slotting the lock into place, and any sign of friendliness dissolves from his face like steam billowing away from a cup of chai (tea). The boy is certainly telling tales, but not the kind his agents had complained about — it would take a sharp mind to pull the threads of truth from the winding account Alex had woven together.
The boy looks like a boy, and acts like a boy, he thinks, but there’s something...off about him. His eyes are too knowing, his posture too sure, to be just what he seems like.
He strides into the main area of the old haveli (manor house) they’ve taken over for the mission, repurposing the grand rooms into a shared headquarters with the Crime Branch Unit. There’s a lot of work to be done, to find out the hows and whys, and most importantly, who was behind the attack.
Alex is one of the key pieces to the puzzle, and he hopes he can squeeze enough out of him to tie together some of the many loose threads that have wound up on his desk. Unwanted threads that have caused him not only a fair amount of headaches, but are also preventing him from joining his family in their annual holiday to the tropics of Goa.
There is no door to his office here, only an old, worn archway that once used to have woven curtains pinned to it. Now, there is nothing blocking him from the rest of the officers and agents toiling away on tables and chairs they’ve dragged into the large hall opposite the room he’s in, busy typing and pinning and mapping clues together.
Officer Rao knocks sharply on the floral tile edging the arch, holding a stack of papers with a tablet balanced on top.
“What do you have for me, Rao?”
“Sir,” the younger man slides his load onto the desk. “Interesting new lead on the case. The boy who we have here, Alex, does not exist.”
Sahil eyebrows raise involuntarily. It’s common enough in India, for children to slip through registration forms and never show up in government records, but he’s always thought foreigners had much stricter regulation.
“Sikander (Sikander is the Indian variant of the name “Alexander”) ‘Alex’ Rathore does not exist, you mean?”
“Yes, exactly. He’s a British national, but he’s no NRI, doesn’t have an ounce of Indian heritage, so there’s no way Mr. Rathore is his long lost father as the pair of them claim. He is named Alexander — we’ve indexed his prints and his true name is Alex Rider.” Rao fans out the papers, showing school records and addresses and family members. But there’s one in particular which catches his eye — for a fourteen year old, the boy is very well travelled. He gazes at the travel itineraries, and notes that more than half of his trips have been in the last year alone.
“Alex Rider has quite the case of wanderlust, it would seem.”
“Only in the last year, though. He seemed quite content in London until the death of his uncle,” Rao says, and pulls up a screen on his tablet. “Kiran mapped out his locations, but we can’t seem to find any trends — some of these are tourist locations, but they don’t strike me as very interesting for a teenager. Not to mention, why would he go alone and how can he afford to take these holidays? My little brother’s his age, and he’d much rather visit Los Angeles or Tokyo.”
Sahil swipes through the map, coming up with more questions than answers. This boy is like a ball of knotted up strings, like headphones tangled up in the bottom of a bag. With every pull, something loosens, but it turns out to be another knot to open.
He can feel a headache forming at his temples.
“Good work, and keep digging — I want to know who Alex Rider is, who he’s working for, and why he’s in Delhi. There’s something more to this whole thing than just a terrorist attack and an unfortunate bystander.”
“Of course, sir.” Rao turns to leave, then glances back at him. “How was the interrogation with the boy? More successful than our attempts?”
Sahil nods, already reading the files in front of him. There’s a niggling sense that what he’s looking for is right in front of him. “I treated him like a boy and played the part of a pita-ji (father (-ji is an honorific)). Got him speaking, but he’s holding something back. He’s requested that from now on, I do the questioning — you two are responsible for combing through the recording and seeing if he gives us anything useful in between his long winded storytelling.”
“Right, sir.”
“Oh, and Rao? Our esteemed guest has requested a burger and a Coke. Try and treat him like a boy and not an enemy operative when you send him his dinner, will you?”
New Delhi — courtyard in the temporary offices of RAW, undisclosed location
When Special Agent Jayesh Sahil makes his way down the winding stairs of the haveli the next morning, he sees the boy engaging in a round of early morning chess with Agent Rao, a plate of eggs balanced in his lap. Two cups of steaming hot chai rest on the side of the little table.
Rao munches on toast as he moves a knight across the board.
Personally, Sahil thinks it’s too early for chess, but perhaps the boy will tire himself out, and that will be a good thing for his questioning. Although he is concerned that Alex has seemingly charmed his way out of the little bedroom he’d locked the boy into last night.
It looks like the boy wants to stay here, in the fortified manor, surrounded by police. He doesn’t seem to feel frightened or out of place at all, in a house full of special agents. He almost seems to fit in, bantering with Rao and swapping jokes with Agent Kiran Lal.
It’s another thread to weave into the mystery of Alex Rider and the Red Fort Blast.
The boy suddenly looks up, straight at him standing at the foot of the staircase. He has the same uncanny sense for being watched that Sahil has, the same sense every agent has to have in the field.
“Morning, Agent Sahil!” Alex chirps with a friendly wave.
“Good morning everyone,” Sahil nods, and Rao snaps up to his feet with a loose salute.
“Er, sir, I was just watching our guest,” he says sheepishly, before changing the subject. “I brought everyone fresh breakfast from the shops, there’s a warm paratha waiting for you!”
Sahil waves him off, taking Rao’s place on the cushion across from Alex, and sits cross-legged in front of the chessboard. The rest of the agents and officers scamper off, back to their desks to start the day’s work.
Alex looks wary at this turn of events, and they play the next few moves quietly, the sliding marble click-clacking on the smooth board. The ornate pieces are heavy, carved into little turbaned soldiers and jewelled elephants. He takes Alex’s knight and flips it over to see a round stamp, the text “East India Company” inked into the circle. Someone had probably dragged the ancient relic out of the shuttered study of the old haveli .
“Where did you learn to play so well, Alex?” He asks quietly, smiling, exuding the warm, friendly vibe that had worked so well yesterday.
As expected, Alex loosened, taking a sip of the hot tea. “My uncle taught me. He always said it would help keep my mind sharp. For, um, Maths and stuff.”
Sahil cracks a grin. “I tell my son the same thing. Shatranj , we call it here.”
The cautiousness in the boy’s posture fades away, to be replaced with the cockiness he’s used to seeing in teenaged boys. Alex slides forward his elephant-bishop and rams it into one of Sahil’s pawns, knocking it off the board. “Oops, looks like your soldier there got stampeded by my elephant.”
Sahil hums, retrieving the piece that had clattered onto the dusty floor, and sets in Alex’s pile of taken pieces. The inlaid emerald glints in the morning sun.
“Probably, playing shatranj with an old man like me, in the middle of an abandoned manor, wasn’t on your list of things to do this spring.”
“Probably. But it’s not like I ever get what I want out of my holidays, anyway,” Alex says with a shrug.
“Your dad made you come and see the sights?”
The boy takes another sip of tea, stealing a glance from beneath the cup’s rim.
“Yeah,” says Alex carefully. “My, er, dad thought I should come here. I told him I didn’t want to, especially since I’d never even met him before, but — what I want never matters. I was meant to be competing with my school’s football team this season, you know?”
So he was sticking with the cover story, but like yesterday, there were threads of truth woven into his words.
“Your school in Chelsea, you mean? Not the one Mr. Rathore enrolled you in here?”
“Yeah, I was set to be my team’s captain before my uncle went and died.”
Sahil gazes at the boy. Such a normal thing for a teenager to fret about, but it doesn’t match at all with the boy he caught amongst the smouldering north wall of Lal Qila four days ago. Then he catches it —
“Your uncle? Wasn’t it your mother who passed away?”
Alex smirks, bouncing his little white soldier across the board and takes Sahil’s elephant. “Well, you already knew I’m from Chelsea, so there’s no point in hiding it now.”
Ah, yes. Alex Rathore had been from an entirely different part of South England.
Sahil holds his black marble soldier in the palm of his hand, its coolness seeping through to his skin.
“So will you tell me, then, how you ended up here, in Mr. Rathore’s care?”
Alex turns away, looking up into the blue sky above the courtyard, as he munches on his last piece of toast. “I didn’t like Mr. Rathore very much. I was randomly selected to go on a foreign exchange trip, and then he showed up. I told them I wasn’t interested, to pick someone else instead, but nooo, it had to be me. Mr. Rathore told me that I’d get to enjoy all the culture and food and see the sights, and he’d pay for everything — which was already shady, but I didn’t have a choice…”
New Delhi — Indira Gandhi International Airport
Alex stepped off the flight and straight into a Mercedes waiting for him, chilled by an AC on full blast.
The dark tinted windows obscured the people and cars they passed, and the driver wasn’t very talkative.
“So we’re going to New Delhi, right?”
“Yes, chote sahib (young sir).”
“Am I going to meet Mr. Rathore there?”
“Yes, chote sahib .”
“What’s your name, by the way? What’s Delhi like? I’ve done some research and Old Delhi has a lot of interesting things to explore.”
“ Chote sahib, I am paid to drive, not to talk.”
For the rest of the long drive, Alex slumped in the back of the seat, determined to make the most of this trip. He fiddled with the watch his friend Smithers had made for him, and hugged his backpack closer to his chest. He hoped he wouldn’t need to use any of the safety features in his watch.
The car rumbled past the city, through South Delhi and into New Delhi, where the buildings were new and glassy. There was none of the India that he’d seen in adverts or films, and the modern complexes looked like just another part of London. A hotter, sunnier part of London.
The car wound its way up a long, private driveway, and a guard let the driver through the massive iron gates. Through the dark glass of the windows, he saw a stately garden, and a large fountain with a bubbling stream of water. The enormous mansion was styled in the Western way, with Roman columns and white brick. It looked like any other rich person’s estate, like those of Sir David Friend or General Sarov.
Mr. Rathore was waiting for him at the front doors, arms wide open, as the driver opened the car door for him and took his luggage.
“Ah, my son, you have arrived!”
“Um. Hi,” Alex said, silently battling to keep his backpack away from the porters who had rushed to the car.
“Oh, you must be tired, jet lagged from flying halfway round the world to come home,” Mr. Rathore wailed, pulling Alex into a hug, furiously waving away the porters. “Come, I have arranged everything for you.”
***
In the days that followed, Alex learned that Mr. Rathore was like most men who were rich: he thought he knew how to run the world, despite not having a clue how the world functioned outside his gated mansion or his tinted cars. Everyone who worked for him was a yes man, for fear of displeasing him.
But Mr. Rathore wasn’t just a rich man — he was a politician too, a minister in parliament. And he knew how to make politicians rich, too. He had many, many schemes, which he walked through in great detail with his colleagues and other men who came to visit.
When those men came, Alex would be called down to the drawing room, and Mr. Rathore would present him with a flourish.
“Friends, this is my son, Sikander Rathore. I went to such great lengths to rescue him from his videshi (foreign) mother, but he is here, home to papa, at last!”
“Hello,” Alex would say with clasped hands, “Namaste. Pleased to meet you.”
It was what he’d agreed to, to play the part of a dutiful son, returned to accept the heritage of his Indian half.
“He goes by Alex,” Mr. Rathore would say, fluffing his blond hair that had darkened in the sun. And then, he would be dismissed, to tend to his studies.
It was a curious puzzle, and he pondered over it often in the huge, luxurious set of rooms he was given as the young master’s suite.
On weekdays, he went to a posh, English medium school full of posh, rich children of elite families. They stumbled over themselves to make fun of him in one moment, and became awestruck by his British accent in the next.
Mr. Rathore, and the other people who’d sent him here, told him to make friends with those children, and Alex started to glimpse the shadows of a larger plan.
Election season would be upon them soon, and what else would make Mr. Rathore, an old bachelor who never married, seem lovable than finding an adorable long-lost son, and a half European one at that?
“Other people? I thought it was Mr. Rathore behind the raffle for an exchange trip?” Agent Sahil has long since abandoned the chess game, fully enraptured in the tale Alex twists together.
There’s no way he can tell the man about MI6. After centuries of colonial rule, he’s not sure how well the Indian secret service will take the news of a British spy.
And so Smithers becomes a friend of his who loves to tinker, making gadgets to help protect yourself, and MI6 become “other people”.
“I mean, other people like my friend Tom, or my housekeeper Jack. They kept telling me I should try and make friends, and maybe figure out what Mr. Rathore wanted from me so badly that he wouldn’t run the selection again.”
“Right. Jack is your ayah ? Why did she make you come here?” The agent looks sceptical, but Alex doesn’t really have a better explanation.
“Jack, she’s…well, my teachers convinced her that it would be a great thing for me to put on my CV someday. And it would give me personal growth and all that.”
Alex decides to change the subject before Agent Sahil decides to dig in his heels about who sent him here. He can hardly tell him that MI6 sent him here to spy on their sometimes-ally, Mr. Rathore, can he?
“So are we gonna spend the rest of the day here in the aangan (verandah, courtyard) or should we head inside, to the shade?”
“The aangan ? So you’ve picked up some Hindi, eh?” The taller man stands up fluidly from the ground, stacking the breakfast plates to the side and picking up his cap, which he tucks into his arm. “Come, let’s go inside. I’m eager to hear the rest of your wild tale.”
Alex pulls a face. If only the man knew what his other trips were like — he’d take a stubborn monkey over a deadly jellyfish or a shark or a crazy doctor any day. At least his trick seems to be working, and the agent is too tangled up in the, admittedly bizarre, account of his latest mission-holiday.
He’s trotted back to the little room he was in before, and left to wait, locked up with the newspaper and crosswords. He flops onto the narrow settee, staring up at the hollow patterns carved into the wooden shutters lining the windows above. Dappled light streams onto the ceiling. A pigeon coos at him, and he wonders how long Mrs. Jones will take to send someone to pick him up.
Later, once Sahil has shuffled through the files and forms, and attended more than his fair share of phone calls demanding to have a terrorist in handcuffs, he slinks out of the grand arches lining the gates, into the street. New Delhi is not anywhere near as bustling as Old Delhi, but its clean modern skyscrapers bely the busy life of its residents. No amount of glass and clean pavement can deter a good tehla-wala (street food vendor), and in his years of shuttling back and forth from the RAW headquarters in the new city, he knows the perfect one for this time of day.
Alex Rider is an English boy with English tastes, and he’s probably eaten too much rice and roti and curry in the past week. And Sahil is not above a simple bribe — a full stomach and a grateful heart will open many a secret.
“Sahil-ji!” The tehle-wala remembers him. “Kiya lenge aap, samosa, tikka roll, sandwich, sab he aaj! (What will you have, samosa (fried potato pastry), tikka roll (spicy chicken wrap), sandwich, everything’s on the menu today!) ”
“Ah, tere to sab khane achhe lagtein hein! (Ah, I love all of your food!)”
He orders a chicken sandwich for Alex, and gets a spicy roll and samosas for himself. If his wife were here, she would scold him for eating the greasy street food, but he won’t let that stop him from enjoying the tasty lunch.
He has the vendor fold the food into separate packages, and carefully balances them as he walks.
Back inside the haveli , he grabs a couple plates and makes his way to Alex’s room.
He doesn’t unwrap the packages. For some reason, he’s begun treating the boy like a fellow agent, and he would never trust an opened plate of food from anyone outside his team.
He unlocks the door to see Alex has stacked a chair onto an old crate below the window, standing on the wobbling tower to scratch the green parrot that sits on the windowsill outside.
“Oh! Mr. Sahil, hi!” Alex leans an elbow precariously on the window sill, acting casual.
“Hello,” Sahil says, and he finds himself genuinely amused. He lifts up the paper bags. “I’ve brought lunch.”
As they eat, Sahil asks Alex the questions that have been burning in his mind all morning.
“So how did you go from taking classes at a posh secondary school, to getting mixed up in thugs?”
“Well, it’s simple really. I snuck out of class. But I should probably tell you why I did that first.”
New Delhi — Vasant Valley School
The days passed by at school, which was like any other school he’d had the fortune of attending, on a trip or otherwise. It was better than Point Blanc, but full of the same type of students — children of the elite, who were sheltered from the real world around them. They lived in luxury, and had never known true pain or struggle like Alex had. For these boys and girls, a late delivery from the tailor or a wrong ingredient in their food was their struggle.
That’s not to say that they didn’t have any problems — they just had different ones than Alex was used to. He kept to himself mostly, socializing with the other children as little as he could get away with.
There was another boy in his class that did the same, and as the weeks went by, he found himself drawn to the quiet boy.
Ratan Nayak always had his nose in a book, furiously scribbling notes and was always early to class. The others made fun of him, but he wasn’t here to make friends. His father wasn’t rich like theirs were, and he’d worked hard to earn a scholarship to the prestigious school. Even still, it was always a struggle to put together the fees for the expensive uniforms and to pay the taxi fare everyday, all the way from Old Delhi.
The first time they spoke to each other was when no one picked either of them to pair up with in a chemistry lab. They caught on like a house on fire, and quickly became friends. At lunch, they no longer lingered alone at the edges of the canteen and the courtyard. Ratan quizzed Alex on his Hindi, and Alex taught Ratan how to pick locks and scale the heavy metal gates without triggering an alarm.
Alex soon became a regular topic of conversation at Ratan’s home, and his family clamored to meet this foreign friend of his. And so one sunny afternoon as Ratan dialed for a taxi, he was surprised to see his father waiting there already, leaning against one of the black and yellow cabs.
“Ratan beta !” Mr. Nayak waved from his spot near the gates.
“Babu-ji (dad)? What are you doing here?” Ratan jogged towards him, and Alex followed, in no hurry to go back to Mr. Rathore’s strange idea of a father figure.
“Ah, can’t a father come to escort his intelligent son home?”
“ Babu-ji! Don’t start that here!” Ratan hissed, a faint embarrassed blush on his cheeks. “Um, Alex, this is my dad. Babu-ji, this is my friend Alex.”
“Hi, Mr. Nayak!” Alex said cheerfully, putting his palms together and inclining his head, greeting him like a local would.
“Oh no, no mister-shister for me, beta . Just call me Nayak uncle.”
Alex laughed sheepishly. “Sorry, Nayak uncle.”
Nayak uncle smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s better. Now, Ratan’s told me all about how you’ve been cooped up in some mansion these past two weeks, and there’s no question about it. You are coming home with us tonight, how can you be here and not see Old Delhi?”
“Um. I’m not sure if Mr. Ra — I mean, my father, would like that very much,” Alex said, but it was a weak protest as he climbed into the taxi with Ratan and his dad.
“You have a phone, yes? Then message him that you’ve made a friend, it’s what boys your age do.” Nayak uncle turned to the driver then, and quickly rattled off an address before turning to face the back seat where he and Ratan sat, pointing at him. “You, beta , are going to have a proper Indian dinner with us tonight!”
***
Ratan’s home in Old Delhi was nothing like a mansion, but it was spacious enough, and reminded Alex of his similarly cosy rowhouse in Chelsea. There was faded blue paint on the old façade and metal grates curled into floral designs guarded the windows and doors. Brightly patterned curtains unfurled from the upper floors, and on the arches of the balcony that jutted out, there were long wooden trays full of birdseed. A dozen green, ring-necked parrots feasted upon their dinner. On the flat rooftop above, Ratan’s sister swayed as she pulled on a kite sailing in the wind amongst those of the other neighbourhood childrens’.
Inside, past the small open verandah, the walls were covered in mismatched paintings and memorabilia. Family photographs hung above cricket bats, and block-printed fabric in vibrant patterns covered tables and shelves that were lined with all the paraphernalia of a large family.
Alex carefully lined up his shoes near the door and slipped on the light rubber sandals he was offered. Soft music filtered in from somewhere deeper inside, and delicious smells drifted from the kitchen where Ratan’s mum and aunt were busy adding in the final touches to the food.
There was a pleasant chatter amongst Ratan’s siblings and their cousins who lived with them, and Alex happily joined in, as eager to practice what little he’d learned of Hindi as the other children were to practice English with a real English person.
It reminded him of when he and Tom and Ian and Jack would have dinners together, full of jokes and laughter. But this dinner was more than even that — there were so many people, all gathered around the table; so many conversations overlapped each other that he couldn’t tell where one began and where the other ended, and underneath it all there was the soft music playing from the radio in the bright kitchen behind them.
It was warm, and happy, and he felt more like a family member that had come home from a long trip than a guest. They asked him about his schoolwork, and he told them about his football team, and Ratan’s older brother talked about the new cricket team he was starting in the neighbourhood. One of the younger cousins wanted to know if Alex had ever met David Beckham, and as he munched on the deliciously spicy curries, he tried his best to follow everyone’s stories.
Eventually, the conversation drifted to Nayak uncle, who asked Alex what he knew about carpet weaving.
This was followed by a short burst of groans around the table. Clearly, it was a recurring topic.
“Bhai-jaan (brother dear), why will you bore our guest with your work?” Ratan’s aunt, Jyoti, asked indignantly. “Alex beta , you don’t want to know about rugs, do you?”
“Er,” said Alex. “I mean, I don’t really know anything about it.”
Nayak uncle’s eyes gleamed. “Perfect! Carpets, beta , real Indian made rugs, are a work of art!”
Ratan’s dad was the head manager at a carpet factory in Chandni Chowk, Alex learned. “It is the best in all of India! The number one, hand-knotted and custom-crafted, the most unique carpets you’ll ever find, made of wool and silk with beautiful dyes.”
As their dinner plates emptied, they moved from the table onto the chairs and sofas in the living room. Despite everyone's protests, they all quieted down, with Ratan and his mum passing around desserts and tea.
The sky darkened, and Kishore Kumar’s melancholy voice crooned from the radio as Nayak uncle pulled on the lamp string, brightening the room, and leaned forward.
“Recently, there’s been a rumour circling around the factory — of strange carpets, magical ones with charmed knots and patterns. Some of my workers even think the designs are cursed, and today — today I went down to the stockrooms to see for myself.
And there they were — hiding amongst all the normal boxes, there were bundles of oddly coloured threads, with not an address in sight, just strange instructions on rolled up papers. And they were shipped to the factory in the dead of night, when no one saw the courier coming or going.
The papers, they were a talim — do you know what a talim is, Alex?
It’s a special code, you see, that carpet weavers use, so they can knot the threads line by line, to create the pattern. It’s like the pixels on your phone, and slowly, slowly, after months of work, the lines stack up to become the flowery designs you see on the carpets.
Now, most designs come from my bosses, they have whole studios and special surface designers who create the patterns, usually on computers nowadays.
Sometimes we have clients who come in with images of what they want. But there is always a talim guru who has to take the visual designs and patterns and translate them into the talim code.
But these ones, these talims come ready-made, without any picture or drawing at all. Just the symbols of the code, and they are delivered so mysteriously — by pigeon . Narrow strips of cotton paper rolled up at their scaly little ankles. Such an old fashioned delivery, no?
My weavers, they can’t imagine what is going on. They tell me, it must be some secret new design, by a celebrity who doesn’t want it leaked before they’re ready...or, my favourite idea, it is some eccentric, old money amir-zadah who doesn’t want to walk into our common, dirty Old Delhi, but knows we are the best carpet makers in the country, so he’s come up with the strangest way for us to make these for him.
And the pigeons. These pigeons, they disappear in the same strange way that they flap into our factory, and in their place we find our payments as bundles of cash.
By now, the carpets are half woven, and the designs make no sense at all...so, what do you think? Is it a curse that we’ve been told to weave? Do the abstract colours and shapes mean something, are they a strange omen? Or maybe, this is what foreigners want to see in their living rooms?”
A loud ping interrupts Alex’s story, and a bright notification slides across Agent Sahil’s phone. Before the nosy boy could peek at it, Sahil tilts it away and scans the message from Agent Rao.
We managed to recover these from the trucks at Lal Qila. Rest are still being processed.
There are a batch of photographs, and he sees they are all rugs, in various states of damage. Some are fairly intact, covered in smoke, but in good shape. Others have burnt fibers, the face of the carpets destroyed, and a fair amount of them are completely burnt through, and what remains are lumps of deformed threads barely clinging together.
Another ping, this time from Agent Lal.
Sir, there’s only rugs. SO MANY rugs.
He opens the images and slides the tablet forward to Alex.
“We’ve recovered some of the truck’s cargo — were these the mysterious rugs your Mr. Nayak was describing?”
The boy looks uneasy as he stares at the photos. “Yeah. But I’d be careful with those if I were you. They’re not just rugs.”
Ah , thinks Sahil, now comes the magic carpet Rao and Lal had complained about in their reports.
“Not just rugs? Do you believe they’re cursed, like your friend’s father said?”
“No,” Alex scowls. “I don’t believe in fairytales and magic . The first time I saw one of those rugs was at some party Mr. Rathore had dragged me to, to show off what a great dad he was.”
New Delhi — Manor home in Jor Bagh, local MP’s birthday party
This party was dull. Mr. Rathore had told him he wasn’t allowed to speak to any of the adults. He was only to sit there, smile, and look cute, and show off what a family man Mr. Rathore was. It had been hours, and none of the other children in the party looked remotely interesting, and now he was bored . Surely no one would notice if he slipped away.
The mansion had surprisingly twisting hallways, and on his quest to find a quiet balcony, he ended up a bit lost. Even walking around being lost was a better alternative than going back into the main hall and sitting pretty until Mr. Rathore decided to let him go home.
He found himself in an area that was near the servant’s stairs, and he was just about to ask for directions when he noticed a door opening in the hallway up ahead.
A pair of men exited, and he hid behind a service cart as they passed by him. What were they doing here, all alone, when everyone else was singing and dancing downstairs?
It was the most excitement he’d had in weeks, and he couldn’t help himself. He snuck into the little room to find it was a tiny study, with a narrow desk holding an iMac, and a small bookshelf on the other wall. In the empty floor space between the two, there were several carpets, layered atop each other.
His mind buzzed with the intriguing story Ratan’s dad had shared yesterday, and as he looked closer, he could see that the pattern on this carpet looked strange, too. The colours and lines didn’t quite match up, and it reminded him of a glitchy image file. The pattern was nothing like what he’s seen on countless Persian and Indian carpets, both here and back home in England.
He crouched, running his hand through the soft fibers, before flipping a corner of the rug to reveal the same colourful knots, but neater and easier to see, on the back.
The weird pattern wasn’t as random as it had looked at first glance, and the longer he studied it, the more it looked like a puzzle — like a cypher.
He craned his neck, glancing out of the door to see the hallway was still empty. Quickly flipping over the small rug, he snapped a few photos. If it was a code for something, he could work on cracking it later, when he wasn’t in danger of being caught.
He knew what rich and powerful men were capable of, and he wasn’t about to try his luck with Mr. Rathore’s friend.
Creeping back out of the room, he waited until he saw a servant passing by, with a tray of champagne glasses.
“Excuse me, I’m a little lost,” Alex said with his most childlike voice.
“Oh, you shouldn’t be here,” the woman said, concerned. “Let me help you back to the party.”
“Thanks so much. If you don’t mind, I think my dad would really love a carpet like that one — do you know where it’s from?”
The woman smiled. “Are you planning on a gift for your father? I’m sure he’d love a beautiful carpet, almost all of the ones here are from the same place.”
As they walked back to the main hall, she prattled on. “Amar Carpets, that’s the name. They have a beautiful legacy of the craft, some say they even made carpets for Shah Jahan.”
Amar Carpets. The same place that Nayak uncle managed.
A plan began to form in Alex’s mind. A plan that would mean sneaking off at lunchtime, and grabbing a ride into the heart of Old Delhi.
***
Inside Amar Carpets, there were looms upon looms, with weavers busy at work. Their arms blurred as they pulled threads up and down, through the white strings of the warp. With nimble fingers, they twisted sharply, knotting the threads and cutting them with small blades all in one quick motion. And then on to the next colour, the next knot.
It was fascinating to watch.
There were two or three weavers to each loom, old men and middle aged women, teenage girls and young boys, all of them completely focused on their work. Tucked into the warp threads above the knotted lines in progress were narrow sheets of thin paper — the talim .
He moved quietly through the room, ducking behind unused looms and hanging carpets. Most of the rugs he saw were normal, with the floral mandalas and intricate designs typical of any Indian carpet.
Dotted between them, there were a few pairs of weavers working on the “cursed” carpets, and he saw what Ratan’s dad had meant.
Clearly, at some point, the design had been a simple one, with the basic borders and flourishes. But like a corrupted file, that design was overlaid with swathes of random colours, with no rhyme or reason to their lengths or shapes. The men knotting their way through the confusing pattern had furrowed brows and paused often to check the talim , muttering the sequence to themselves as they swapped colours and threads.
Alex crept towards them, and snapped a few careful photos using the zoom lens on his Smithers-enhanced phone, capturing the scribbled symbols on the talims and the rugs in progress below.
Alex pauses for a sip of water, the heat getting to him now that the sun had floated higher into the sky. The fans ruffling his fringe help, but they’re not enough to keep the mugginess at bay.
He looks across the table, where the agent digs through files on his tablet.
“So that’s what those images were in your phone,” he mutters. “Did you tell anyone what you found out?”
“Well, yeah, I sent them to my friend Smithers — he’s a tech whiz, like I told you,” Alex says, inwardly smirking. It’s not like he can tell Agent Sahil that Smithers is a tech whiz at MI6, and the gadget man is certainly more of a friend than anyone else at the bank. “He said it’s some kind of binary code, but he was still working on cracking it and I haven’t heard from him since.”
The agent shakes his head in disbelief and types furiously into his phone, shooting off messages frantically. Probably telling his team to get cracking on those carpets. “I can’t believe this — these criminals know we’re monitoring everything digital, so they’re wasting months of work to send each other messages through carpets ?”
“Well,” Alex drawls. “Maybe they have a crime etsy, where they’re selling state secrets...via avante garde carpet art.”
The older man tries, and fails, to hold back a snort of laughter, before he composes himself. “And then? Did Nayak know where these talim instructions were coming from?”
“Nope, and I wasn’t about to let him know I snuck past his guards into the factory. But I found the pigeons in the back room.”
“A real Dr. Doolittle, you are. First a monkey, then pigeons. Don’t tell me you’re a snake charmer, too.”
“Oh no, I met the pigeons first. I tried putting a tracker on one, to see where they ended up when they were collected, but…I may have gotten caught by the guy who snuck in to take them back to his crime boss.”
Agent Sahil perks up at that. “Did you get a good look at the man?”
“Yeah, kind of hard to miss a bloke’s face when he’s trying to beat you up for trying to take away his pigeons.” Alex rubs his arms, remembering the frantic chase through the old city that had followed. He’d vaguely recognized the man, but it had taken him all day to figure out where he’d seen him before, and by then he was too busy cajoling a certain monkey to give back his gadget watch. He’s been thinking on it for the past few days, and he’s sure now. He can’t tell the agent about Mr. Rathore’s involvement with MI6, but this is something he can share.
“I’m certain he’s one of Mr. Rathore’s men. I’ve seen him leaving through the back of the mansion a few times.”
Alex is expecting some surprise, but the agent’s face shows none, just a weary, worn look of defeat. He supposes the agency must be keeping tabs on him.
“Of course it’s Rathore. I’ll need you to describe him to the police artist, we need all the evidence we can get. It’s not an easy fight against these types of people.”
Agent Sahil puts away his phone, and crosses his arms. “So, the man caught you?”
“Well, I did manage to lose him at first. And then my phone got stolen, by a monkey —”
“Ah, there’s the monkey!”
“ — and that’s how I met Merab and George. They’re street performers, you see, and they let me hide out with the rest of the crew. But it was getting late, and if I stayed out too long, I’d miss the driver coming to pick me up from school. Just my luck that as I was calling for a taxi, that man happened to drive past. Next thing I knew, I was waking up on the roof of one of those trucks, tied up next to a bunch of carpets.”
Somewhere on the Indian National Highway
When Alex woke up, it was with a giant sneeze. He was tied up, laying on the low roof of a bright red truck, amongst rolled up carpets. He rolled over, and saw the early evening sky stare back at him.
“I never want to see another carpet again,” he groaned into the rushing wind of the road. He pulled himself up to his knees, peeking over the scalloped edges of the roof.
They were on a motorway, with plenty of other trucks and cars wheezing along the packed lanes. Office hours had ended, and the rush hour traffic spilled through the various exits up ahead.
The wind whipped his hair and whistled in his ears. Looking behind, he spotted a rickety old motorcycle sidling up to the truck he was in.
As an exit approached, the lorry tipped to the side, changing direction and squeezing into the narrow road that branched off. The motorcyclist followed, and when the truck slowed to a stop, he leapt onto the brightly coloured ladder that clung to the side.
A curly haired head popped up from below.
“ Merab ? What are you doing here?”
“Me? Why are you here, Alex?!”
Alex huffed, and tried to cross his arms, before he remembered they were still tied up in ropes. “That man caught me again. I woke up here all tied up. I don’t even know where we’re going.”
“Alex, I told you, you should join circus with me. You’re already doing the tricks.” The older boy pulls out a pocket knife and cuts away at the thick ropes. “George — she is terrible thief, and stole your watch. I don’t know what button she pressed but it showed you are in trouble. So we came.”
Ah, thought Alex. That would be the emergency beacon, the one MI6 probably ignored.
“Merab — thank you. Why did you — I mean, I’m just a random kid, you didn’t have to —”
Merab put a hand on his shoulder. “When I said you are my dost , my friend, I mean it. You are in trouble, so I help.”
He finished cutting through the ropes and pulled Alex into a one-armed hug. “Now, you follow me down the ladder. We wait for truck to stop.”
“Wait. We can’t leave all this here.”
“What? These carpets? This is just normal shipping truck, they are probably making deliveries.”
“No, they’re not just carpets, these people are smuggling stuff with them. Remember how I told you about the coded carpets? They could have anything stored in them, nuclear codes or passwords, we’ve got to stop them before they’re sent out.”
Merab skittered off of the large folded carpet he’d been sitting on, eyeing it warily. “You mean, these could be bombs?”
Alex’s eyes sparkled, and snapped his fingers. “Merab, you’re a genius!”
“Er. Thank you?”
“Carpets! They’re flammable .”
“...Ok?” Merab looked very concerned for Alex’s health.
“We can stop them, alright. We can just destroy them!”
“Not right now. We get off, first.”
Alex scowled, looking around. “Ok, yeah, we probably should.”
Merab patted his pockets, and brought out a packet of matches. “Then, you throw this on truck, and we run very fast.”
“Merab,” Alex said, patting the older boy’s knee. “Merab, I don’t need the matches. I need my watch.”
After they wrestled the watch away from George, Alex opened up the watch band and carefully removed a few of the duller looking silver links. He held up one of the little explosives, thanking Smithers yet again.
“This, my friend, is much better than a match.”
Merab shook his head fondly. “Alex, I tell you, join my troupe! You have so many tricks!”
Just then, they heard the rumbling of more cars on the road. Behind them, there were two more brightly painted cargo trucks, and peeking over the edge, Alex saw they also carried heavy rolls of carpets and rugs.
He exchanged a glance with the teenager beside him, who gave him a lopsided grin. “Alex, do you have more of those?”
“...and then we stuck a tracker on the truck, put a couple of the watch links in there, and George finally came in handy. Turns out she’s pretty obedient when it comes to creating chaos, she leapt into the other trucks and dropped a few in there too.
Then Merab herded us off the lorry before we got into the city proper, where the driver would be able to hear us leaving. And he’s amazing at navigating through the city — we ran through back alleys of the market, leapt off of roofs full of drying peppers in Khari Baoli, and held our shoes in our hands as we snuck through mandirs (Hindu temple) and masjids (mosque). He knows all the shortcuts, and that’s how we ended up on the bookstore’s roof. And you know the rest. That monkey really loved my watch, I hope Merab buys her one, she’d look really cute wearing a tiny one on her wrist.”
Sahil takes a long breath. The boy is finally done leading him around with more twists than a Bollywood film.
“You do believe me, don’t you?” Alex’s voice sounds tiny and quiet. Somewhere along the way, the fatherly persona that Sahil had put on had become more than just an act. He wonders how the boy ended up here, all alone in a foreign country, with no one to ask after him. No parents have called, no relatives, not even his caretaker.
“Yes, I believe you, beta. You’ve helped us quite a lot — I’m having Agents Rao and Lal run those talims and carpets through a decoding system right now, and we’ll know what was in them soon. We’ve been after Rathore for quite some time, this will definitely help us prove he doesn’t have the country’s best interests at heart.”
“Yeah, he doesn’t have any country’s best interests at heart.”
Sahil furrows his brow. What a curious thing to say, Rathore had never lived abroad.
He files that thought away for later, and guides Alex to the police artist that’s been brought in. He leaves Agent Rao in charge of the boy — there’s a lot of work to be done, and God knows he’ll be the one responsible if his team makes another mistake, like they did in dismissing Alex as a clueless witness.
***
Later, when the sky’s bright blue washes away in tints of mauve, there’s a commotion at the gate and a woman emerges into the haveli . Her curly dark hair is groomed into a neat bun, and she wears a sharp navy suit. Her ears and wrists glisten with gold, and she has on large, round sunglasses that obscure her face.
Her name is Mishal D’Souza, and she introduces herself as the British embassy’s liaison, here to take Mr. Rider home to London.
“Mr. Sahil, the terms are simple,” Ms. D’Souza says in a crisp London accent. “Either you hand him over to us, and we tell the media that his release has been negotiated. Or, you can try and keep him, but we’ll say you’ve imprisoned a minor, and take him anyway. I’d say it’s an easy choice.”
Sahil agrees, it is an easy choice, especially since Alex has already given them valuable intel.
He collects Alex, and goes over the release details, and watches from the gate as the woman escorts him to a dark car waiting outside. Its windows are dark, and he hopes the boy will be alright.
Just before his blond head disappears into the car, Sahil calls out.
“Alex! If you ever find yourself back in India, you’re welcome to give me a call.”
Alex nods and waves cheerily at him, and some of the wound up tension loosens. Maybe the boy will be alright after all.
The car disappears into the distance, and Sahil is already dreaming of the beach in Goa. The laughter of his children playing in the waves, the delicious street food, taking his wife out to dinner…
Of course, that’s the moment Rao bursts through the doors, his face already looking like he has bad news.
“Bad news, sir,” he pants, as if he’s run a marathon. “There’s a woman who’s on her way here —”
“Short, sharply dressed, curly hair and glasses big enough to hide her face?”
“— yes…has she already taken Alex?”
“We signed a release after some negotiation, yes.”
Rao groans, running his hand over his face. “She wasn’t from the embassy. She’s an MI6 agent.”
“What? What does MI6 want from a teenager?” Sahil turns sharply, barking orders, and trying desperately to push down the anxiety — the guilt — that’s blossomed in his chest. He was worried the woman would take Alex to Rathore, but this — this is worse, because now the boy might not be safe in his own country.
“Well, that’s the…other bad news, sir. I’ve just confirmed with our sources — Alex Rider is an MI6 agent.”
“ What? ” Sahil runs through the past few days again. No wonder he’d started treating Alex like an agent — he was one. “Since when do the high and mighty British recruit actual children?”
Rao’s panicked eyes roam around the room, no doubt wondering how much of this would make it back into the ears of the MI6 head, Alan Blunt. “He’s been working as a spy for MI6 this whole past year. Since his uncle — Agent Ian Rider — died.”
Sahil feels a headache coming on, and his dreams of the beach start to dissolve. Again. He sees his future laid out in front of him — forms, and paperwork, and meetings, and calls…and the four walls of his office back at HQ.
At this rate, he’ll be lucky if he ever sees the beach again.