Kingdom Come

Krivi felt cold, colder than he’d felt in four years. His vision sharpened, his breath slowed, his heart slowed. He gripped the phone so tight, his knuckles showed veins.

“What are you saying, Harold?”

“You know what I am saying, Krivi. Come back, and you can find the son of a bitch who took out Joe and Gemma.”

“No.”

The word was short and cold.

“Come back, Krivi. The Woodpecker is a dangerous entity. No fear, no consequences. But no one can catch him because there are rumors about identity, no one can confirm. Gun for hire type and with no moral compass to guide him, from the looks of things. People are getting hurt, Krivi. You can help stop that.”

His other hand clenched in a fist. His short nails dug into the skin of his palms.

“No, Harold. Goodbye.”

“Krivi, there’s a face and features match, eyes, skin color, mom’s date of death and DOB with a civilian. Ninety percent chance of siblings. That’s a huge chance for someone we haven’t ever seen. We need confirmation and you can get it for us. The female is in India, in Kashmir. Transport wouldn’t be a problem for you. You can nail The Woodpecker.”

“It’s a fucking awful codename for a terrorist.”

Harold chuckled weakly. The sound seemed wrong in the conversation they were having.

Krivi loosened his grip on the phone. Looked at the blinking red light that indicated call active on the satellite phone. He thought about the last four years and the six months before that. He thought about all those days and nights when he had sat and thought about nothing else but finding the person responsible for killing his soul.

“I pull the trigger,” he said.

“Now, Krivi—”

“I come back, I do your ID, I catch the bastard and I pull the trigger and watch the life bleed out of him. Do we have a deal?”

“Krivi, I don’t think—”

“Goodbye, Harold.” He made to press the end call button.

“Goddammit. Wait.”

Krivi waited.

“Fine. You come back, run the op and we will see where we end up. Deal?”

“I come back, run the op, ID the female, find out her connection to him and when we get the bastard; I put a bullet between his eyes. Deal.”

Harold Wozniacki was a smart man. He knew when to weigh his options and he knew when to hedge his bets. He also knew that Krivi Iyer was the best man for the job because there was no one else with his unique skill set. And that skill set included, cold, purposeful, lethal vengeance.

Harold sighed.

“You always were a stubborn bull, my boy. Fine. Come back and we have a deal.”

Krivi smiled. And it was a terrible thing to see. “Good. Send me the details at the—”

“Holiday Inn, Ladakh. Yeah, I know.”

Krivi shook his head, the call ended. And every muscle in his body loosened just as his brain sharpened.

The Woodpecker. It was an awful name for a cold-blooded murderer. But there was no name suitable enough for a monster like that. And he was going to kill this monster and pay his blood debt once and for all. Maybe, he could even die in the process. Maybe, God would be that kind.

If ever there was a God.

Krivi took out his cellphone, the one provided by his employers and punched in speed dial two.

When his boss picked up he said, very briefly, very clearly, “Jim. Krivi Iyer. Yeah, everything went down OK. The girl’s OK. I am calling to let you know I am done. I quit.”

Jim asked something and Krivi answered, “Why? Just something I have to take care of. No, not a woman. I quit, Jim. You can wire the rest of my funds to Ladakh. Thanks.”

two (#ulink_92bc8bad-d43a-5eab-9999-83d21fd6c1fc)

Srinagar

India

May 2012

Ziya Maarten had never looked forward to early mornings, till she came to Srinagar, the heartland of some of the most beautiful country she had ever seen. She’d done the Euro backpacking trip, fresh out of school, saving up for her grand adventure when other girls her age had been trying out graduation day dresses and making out with their boyfriends in shady corners.

Ziya had worked two jobs, as a library helper and a waitress at a trendy Soho café, in order to see the Eiffel Tower, Pisa, the Coliseum and the sandy beaches of Corfu. Kids who bounced from foster home to foster home, learnt the value of being grounded to places rather than people early on in life. Places that you had been to, places that you dreamed about, were something else altogether. They were permanent. They were forever.

People, on the other hand were so much more inconvenient to love. People came and went. More often than not, they left you. And she’d experienced more loss in her twenty-nine years than she’d wanted. Ergo, she’d traveled extensively and wide, as a troubleshooter for an organic chemical fertilizer company that operated out of England and had ties in China.

Ziya had worked hard after high school too, getting into Trinity, which was no mean feat and then getting her business admin degree from the London School of Economics. All on scholarship. Because foster kids were really on their own after age eighteen. And, it had been a stroke of luck that she had become roommates with the most interesting creature in Trinity, who was waiting for the love of her life to finish his Army training.

Noor Saiyed, a Kashmiri princess who had only spent the summers in India till her twenty-seventh birthday which fell this year, had simply refused to let Ziya be alone. She had cajoled and laughed and giggled and drunk her way into Ziya’s life, until they really were Best Friends Forever. Last year she’d given those goofy, tacky, matching BFF bracelets to Ziya as a gag gift. And this, from a woman with an IQ in the triple digits, and who had made the Dean’s List all four years of her undergrad as a literature major at Trinity. Ziya couldn’t hold out against someone with so much love and sunniness and eternal optimism, even though Noor was as impulsive as Ziya was methodical and pragmatic.

And, when Noor, had told Ziya that one of her distant relatives had an interesting job opening back in Kashmir, managing a fairly large estate and the various business concerns that made up Goonj Enterprises, one of which was manufacturing cricket bats, the most popular sport in the sub-continent, Ziya had been hard-pressed to not at least give the interview a fair shot. And she had flown into Srinagar Airport, after a connecting journey filled with innumerable delays.

Ziya had been fully prepared to turn down the job, because she didn’t think she was suited to just settle down in one place, no matter how interesting and challenging the running of it was.

She had not counted on Kashmir. Her first view of the mountains that ringed the hilly terrain of Srinagar had made her catch her breath. Her second view of the Dal Lake, totally frozen in winter, with the houseboats moored in for the duration like soldiers hunkering down for the long haul, had clutched at her heart. And she’d wanted this job, the managing of an estate she knew almost nothing about, with a desperation that still worried her.

Kashmir was a place, you could love a place.

But, she loved Goonj too. The house of wood and stone, set high up in the hills, overlooking the lake, which flickered like a bright jewel on a clear spring night that she could see down her bedroom window. The challenging job of overseeing the different business interests of the Akhtar family, all of whom were settled in other parts of the world and wanted nothing to do with the house and the business.

And Dada Akhtar.

Grandpa.

Ziya sighed as she looked out her bedroom window and saw Dada Akhtar puttering around with his beloved rose bushes, his tiny gardening scissors going snip-snip on the bad leaves. His beady eyes large behind the gigantic glasses he wore with obvious pride. He was nearing eighty, a retired military man, who was now content with looking after his roses and holding court over his family when they deigned to visit him.

He was the grandfather she’d never had.