Kingdom Come

Ziya smiled, non-committal and distant. “I’m afraid Mr. Iyer doesn’t make the decisions around here, Bashir miyan. I do. I have the degree in business management.” Her smile turned a little nasty. “He doesn’t.”

Bashir grinned and bowed before her. “As madam says.”

Ziya offered her elbow to the man and he took it gallantly, leaving Krivi behind to follow if he chose to.

“Tell me about your rainfall scarcity backup plan,” she invited. “And I am very interested in finding out if organic pesticide is as effective on the southern part of the property as it is here.”

She might have been distracted by a hot ex-war vet who seemed to put her down every chance he got, but she still knew her work better than anyone else. And she was damned if some man was going to take her work away from her.

As Bashir talked her through his operation, elaborating on the points that she particularly wanted clarified, she resisted the urge to look back and check the thundercloud expression on the man following them. She would have been surprised to find that he wasn’t angry at her high-handedness at all.

In fact, if Ziya had looked back at all, all she would have seen in his midnight eyes were covert speculation and outright admiration.

“Where have you guys been?” Noor demanded a couple of hours later as she got in the car.

She was dressed in butter-soft jeans and knee-high boots with three-inch heels. Her coat was a leather floor-duster that swept in her wake like a regal cape. In fact, with her flowing hair and the Jackie O glasses she wore on her thin nose, she very definitely resembled a princess from some visiting principality.

She plonked on the passenger seat before Ziya could open the door for her.

“Can I get off first?”

Noor wriggled her butt and edged to the side so Ziya could get out and into the back.

Noor punched Krivi in the arm in a sisterly gesture. “You are late, mister,” she announced. “I had to have room service and you know I hate that.”

Ziya rolled her eyes as she settled herself in the back, after shrugging off the jacket and carefully folding it before placing it in the seat next to her. Next to her laptop briefcase. Because their meeting had run over, ending with a very successful kahwah tea meeting, she didn’t have time to change and get into more comfortable clothes.

“At least you got to have lunch, sweetie. We only had kahwah chai and you know how much I hate it,” Ziya retorted.

Krivi shot her a look on the rearview mirror as he gunned the engine and they took off in a blur of gravel. Her stomach dipped again at the unreadable emotion in his eyes and the easy, almost animal confidence with which he handled the Rover as he drove. His long, dark fingers caressing the wheel in a gesture she couldn’t help but notice. Dammit, but she didn’t want to notice anything about him.

“I didn’t know you hated kahwah,” he said, as he took the exit out of the city, flashing the Military Vehicle pass again at the checkpoint. “We wouldn’t have drunk it you’d said something.”

She shrugged, and felt her shirt blow out against her. “It wasn’t important. Bashir miyan was more inclined to negotiate in my favor if I drank the tea. And I knew that.”

“Smart strategy.”

She pressed her lips because she didn’t think he meant it as a compliment.

Noor on the other hand burst out with an amused chuckle and said, “You have no idea how strategic my Zee is, K. She scalped the sorority chicks in Trinity one semester because one of them had dared her to wear a bikini in December for Pledge Week.”

Ziya thunked the back of Noor’s beret-clad head. “Stop talking. Now.” She threatened.

“You want to know what she did?”

Krivi didn’t answer, so Noor continued anyway. “She posted a notice on the college website and charged a pound for all the frat house boys to see her parade in a Victoria’s Secret ensemble outside their frat houses. At two a.m.”

Krivi’s lips twitched but he kept his straight face on. “The sorority girl’s boyfriend was one of the idiots who paid up, I assume.”

“Yep,” she confirmed with an urchin’s grin. “He was. And all of his friends too, who were, of course, her girlfriends’ guys. Needless to say, there were a lot of breakups that week. And my Zee got a lot of desperate offers for dates.”

“Of course.”

“Noor?” Ziya said conversationally.

“Yeah, Zee.” Noor fiddled with the radio controls right as her cell phone started ringing. And the display picture was Sam. She turned the volume on high to drown out the sound of the ringing.

“If you don’t keep your trap shut I will rip my earmuffs off your pretty ears. Along with your ears.”

Noor held her hands up in a gesture of surrender and tossed her phone to the backseat, and Ziya sighed. The rest of the ride was accomplished to the sound of raucous music and the intermittent ringing of a cell phone.

The first thing Krivi noticed when they got to the Gulmarg Tourist Office parking lot was that the immediate area was almost empty of parked cars. The horse handlers were also leading their horses away from the sloping parkland. The tourist mania that was May in Gulmarg was also conspicuously absent.

Then his twenty-twenty vision spotted something near the cable car station. The station was about a kilometer into the parkland and was swarming with people. At first glance, they looked like normal civilians, tourists. But his veteran eyes could make out the outlines of firepower hanging from the sides of the perimeter guys. Which begged the immediate question, why the hell was a perimeter being formed at the cable car station at all?

Krivi recalled similar situations from news reports and snippets of news broadcasts he’d read and seen over the years. Unidentified vehicle in Srinagar contains IED. Ten dead, forty-four injured. A car bomb in July of 2011 resulting in the death of twenty-two people and several more injured. Some maimed for life. And that deadly suicide bombing of the Raghunath Temple, where terrorists affiliated to one of the jihad groups entered the temple twice, and killed closed to sixty people, injuring almost a hundred of them, all of them unarmed. All of them innocent.

Security was not just an issue in Kashmir, it was a foreboding presence. And seeing military personnel at the cable car park could be a regular exercise. But something in his gut, his spidey sense, told him that wasn’t the case.

He was out the door before he could stop himself.

“Krivi?” Ziya called out, in an uncertain voice.

He looked back at the two women still sitting inside the car.

“Stay inside. Don’t move,” he ordered.

He was sprinting towards the cable car station and covering it at a rapid clip before Ziya could process his action. Then she turned the door handle and leaped out of the Rover. Noor followed her, jumping out and keeping pace with her stride effortlessly. By now, Krivi was a distant blur as he’d already reached the perimeter.

“You know, he’s going to be very mad because we didn’t listen to him,” Noor said, as she tried to keep her breathing even in the freezing temperature.

Sunset was about forty minutes away and the air was turning colder by the second.

“He’s not my boss. I am his employer,” Ziya corrected Noor as she walked rapidly to the crowd that was formed around the cable car station. “He has no right to order me around.” She wasn’t sure but she thought they were all military personnel, which was very odd and a whole lot frightening. There were only a couple of reasons why the Army would make an appearance at a hopping tourist spot. Noor gasped next to her and caught her arm, pointing at the crowd.

“Sam’s Jeep. I see his Jeep, Zee.” Noor sprinted past Ziya, all her fear and love focused on the jeep and the man inside it.

Ziya ran faster and passed her and was almost at the crowd when she was lifted off the ground and thrust back with an almost violent force.

“What the fuck do you think you are doing?” Krivi asked her tonelessly, his black eyes pitch dark.

She stumbled away from him and Noor crashed into her and he steadied them both. His fingers biting into her skin.

“I asked you two to stay in the goddamn car.”

“She said … you’re not … her boss. Sam’s Jeep.” Noor bent over, trying to catch her breath.

Ziya simply glared at him and tried to stalk past him. He hauled her back again with insulting ease and this time her fist plowed into his stomach. It didn’t even faze him as he stared at her with infuriating calm.