Jared's Ghost (2/3)
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Part 2
Jared’s plane lands at Colombo International Airport at a quarter past two on a humid Tuesday afternoon. From the sky, Sri Lanka doesn't appear to be a country at war: it looks like a tropical island out of a glossy travel brochure, surrounded by blue waters and glittering, yellow-white beaches that invite daydreaming and fantasies of romance. Tourism hadn’t exactly been a large-scale industry when Jared had lived in Colombo as a child, and he can’t stop his memories from superimposing themselves on what he sees now: ceiling fans slowly stirring the humid air in their two-bedroom home; paper boats set to sail in puddles of rain water with his friends from school; freshly-fried murukkus crunching in his mouth as he chattered with their cook in Sinhalese, the musical language spilling from his lips as easily as his mother tongue.
Throughout his sixteen-hour flight, Jared’s been looking at the extensive information that had been faxed to him at his office on the university campus. There are a few black-and-white photographs of murdered people assumed to be the victims of political violence, most of them anonymous and disinterred from unmarked graves. Most of the information is in the form of forensic reports that local doctors had been able to create before the bodies were confiscated as state’s evidence. As an outsider entering a volatile situation, he’s been asked to be discreet, to essentially go undercover. His official role will be that of a forensic pathologist assisting a team of archaeologists investigating a series of ruins just outside the capital city of Colombo.
As he emerges from Customs, he catches sight of a man in plain clothes-nondescript gray trousers and a checked, half-sleeved cotton shirt-holding up a card that says simply: Dr Jared P. The second thing he notices as he steps out of the air-conditioned terminal is the thick, heavy afternoon air, which instantly engulfs him.
He lifts a hand to draw the man’s attention, and helps him load his bags into the back. He doesn’t have much luggage, just his backpack and a duffel.
The car is blissfully cool, and Jared leans back against the soft seat and switches on his phone. There are no new messages. He opens a new text message and types.
Reached Colombo. Please call when you can.
He reads the seven words over and over, and then makes a change.
Reached Colombo. Please call if you can.
Making a frustrated sound, he slides his thumb to the Cancel button instead.
--
‘Rekha Sharma,’ the woman waiting for him in the hotel lobby says, standing up and holding out her hand. ‘I hope you had a good flight.’
‘It was pretty long, but yeah, I’m good.’
‘Great,’ she says with a warm smile. ‘I’m sure you’ll want to rest and catch up on your sleep. I just thought I’d say hello and drop this off.’ She hands him a folder. ‘Some new evidence.’
‘Actually, I’d rather stay up until tonight. I want to get my body clock adjusted ASAP, you know?’
‘Sure,’ she says. ‘You want to freshen up, and then pay a quick visit to the hospital?’
Jared nods. ‘I won’t be long.’
He dumps his bags in his room, takes a quick shower, and is back in the lobby in less than fifteen minutes.
‘I’m impressed,’ Rekha says with a laugh.
‘I’m not a girl,’ Jared grins, pushing a hand back through his hair. ‘Despite appearances.’
She grins back. They’re off to a good start, Jared thinks as they make their way to her car.
--
In the hospital morgue, Rekha locks the door behind them and pulls a plastic sheet off a long metal table, revealing four skeletons.
‘These just came in today,’ she says. ‘Retrieved from an old ruin just outside the city.’
Jared spends a few minutes examining the remains. ‘None of these is over five years old,’ he says finally, looking up.
‘Exactly. Far too recent to have been found so deep in the hills.’
Jared glances up at her. ‘You think they were put there by someone?’
Rekha nods. ‘The official report released to the press says that the bodies found in the ruins are at least fifty years old, victims of riots during the sixties.’
‘So these are murder victims?’ Jared turns one of the skulls gently, indicating an obvious head wound. ‘I’m pretty sure this is a gunshot wound.’
‘There’s more. The area that these were found in is a historical site, protected by government security.’
‘Are you saying-’
‘I’m saying these are political murders, Dr Padalecki.’
‘Jared.’
‘These bodies were put there by someone within the ruling government, Jared. Hidden there by someone who didn’t want them to be found.’
Jared meets her eyes. ‘Which also means there might be trace evidence.’
She nods. ‘Something that can lead us back to whoever did this.’ She glances at her watch. ‘It’s too late to do more today, but I had a friend collect some samples. She’ll give us a report first thing tomorrow.’
‘You’re sure she can be trusted?’
‘Normally I’d say yes, but this is turning out to be such a high-profile investigation that I’m just not sure whom to trust. I told her some remains had been found, but I didn’t tell her where.’
Jared nods, suddenly feeling out of his element. ‘We could be in real trouble if someone finds out what we’re doing, couldn’t we?’
‘Yes. Keep this to yourself, and don’t mention anything to anyone, not even over an email or phone call.’
--
They spend another hour examining the bodies. Jared finds several more injuries on each of the bodies, mainly broken bones. He’ll need to run more tests to be sure, but he’s almost certain some of the fractures were caused post mortem.
Rekha drops him off at the hotel, and they agree to meet back at the hospital the next morning to check on the test results, and to transfer the bodies to a safer location.
Jared’s bone-tired; in his time zone, he’d have been in bed nine hours ago. He strips and lies down, calling room service and ordering a sandwich. He forces himself to get up and pull on a robe while he waits for the food, getting a can of beer from the mini-fridge and putting on the TV to keep himself awake. It’s not even nine yet.
He falls asleep before it’s ten, managing only half a sandwich. When his alarm rings at six, he puts it off and goes back to sleep for an hour. He wakes up to no new messages on his phone.
Fuck, Jensen. He’d half-hoped Jensen would at least leave him a message before going to bed, but maybe he’s been busy. Maybe he’s sleeping at the hospital again. Jared hopes that isn’t the case, but he knows Jensen too well by now. He’ll work himself to death rather than give himself time to sit and think about the mess that he and Jared have let their relationship become.
Jared thinks back with a wince to the last conversation they’d had. Jensen had looked so angry, so hurt, so beautiful. He hadn’t raised his voice; he hardly ever did. He’d just sounded disappointed and betrayed that Jared didn’t want to stay and fix things.
‘I’m just going away for a while,’ Jared said. He’d already left the dogs at Gen and Danneel’s. Jensen hadn’t asked where they were, didn’t even seem to notice they were gone.
‘This is the worst time you could choose to go away,’ Jensen said.
‘I’m not choosing anything, Jensen. This is work. I told you a hundred times that I’m going to Sri Lanka.’
Jensen just nodded. ‘Yeah. You should go.’
‘I don’t leave for a couple of days. Maybe we could…’
‘Maybe we could what?’ Jensen asked quietly. ‘You didn’t even let me say goodbye to Harley and Sadie, Jared. Did you think I’d refuse to look after them while you were away?’
‘It’s not like that,’ Jared protested. ‘I know the hours you work. I couldn’t impose on-’
‘Save it, Jared. Just say that you aren’t sure you’re going to be coming back.’
‘Of course I’m coming-’
‘Here,’ Jensen finished. ‘You aren’t sure you’re going to be coming back to this house. Are you?’
Jared sat down on the couch, pushing his hands back through his hair. ‘I don’t know what to be sure of anymore.’
‘Yeah. Me either.’ Jensen looked so desolate that Jared wanted to burrow into his arms, tell him that everything was going to be fine.
He got up and put a hand on Jensen’s shoulder. ‘I’ll be back in a few weeks, okay? You take care of yourself.’
‘You too, Jared.’
When he took his bags out the door, neither of them remarked on the fact that he’d packed everything he owned.
--
Pushing aside that memory, Jared thinks back instead to the last time they’d been in bed together.
It had been over three weeks ago. Things were a little strained between them, but not so much that Jared didn’t want to touch Jensen, wrap himself around him when they slept. For once, he’d come home later than Jensen. Jensen had had a rare evening off work, and Jared had got home from the university to find that Jensen had cooked his favorite meal, pasta with mushrooms and white sauce. They’d foregone their usual preference for beer and opened a bottle of wine, watched Back to the Future and said all the dialogues out loud along with the actors, finishing the wine in record time.
Later, he’d gotten on all fours on the bed, and Jensen had spread his cheeks and licked him until Jared was reduced to writhing and begging to be allowed to come. They’d fallen asleep together in an exhausted mess.
The next morning, Jared confessed that he had signed the contract for the Human Rights Commission project, and Jensen had left for work without saying goodbye.
Jared finds an autoricksha-a small, three-wheeled cab open on both sides-to take him to the hospital, preferring to see the city that way rather than being shut up in an air-conditioned car. The cab careens its way through short cuts to avoid the morning traffic, zigzagging through narrow alleys and making Jared feel like he’s on a rollercoaster. It’s exhilarating.
He arrives at the hospital with his hair in a mess and his cheeks flushed, feeling more light-hearted than he has in a while. Rekha takes one look at him and lets out a laugh. ‘You look like you’re having a good morning,’ she observes.
‘The best,’ Jared agrees.
They spend some time with Rekha’s friend, Anjali Jay, who shows them the findings from the samples she’d gathered.
‘Definitely a military-issue gun,’ she says, pressing a fingertip against the forensics report on the bullet fragment she’d found embedded in the skull. She glances curiously between them. ‘Where did you get the skull? I’d love to examine the rest of the skeleton if possible.’
‘Only the head was found, I’m afraid,’ Rekha says, feigning regret. ‘I’ll keep you posted if there’s more news. Thanks a bunch, Anjali. I owe you one.’
‘Anytime,’ Anjali says brightly, but Jared can see she’s covering her disappointment.
‘Before you say anything, I had to,’ Rekha mutters when they’re alone in the morgue again.
‘I get it,’ Jared says quickly. He glances around at the skeletons. ‘So what shall we do with these guys?’
‘They need names. How about Tinker, Sailor, Soldier and Spy?’
Jared smiles. ‘Works for me.’
‘I’ll go get the paperwork to move them sorted, if you want to get started on them.’
‘Sounds good.’
Jared spends the rest of the morning examining the skeletons more closely. A quick test determines that Tinker and Soldier are at least five years old, while Spy is more recent, no more than two years old. As far as Jared can tell, Sailor is the most recently deceased: the skeleton is no more than six months old, and the victim was no more than twenty years old at the time of death.
‘This is strange,’ he tells Rekha when she gets back.
‘What?’
‘See these symmetrical markings at the joints of the arms? They show that Sailor’s arms got a lot of exercise. Probably something that needed her to raise her arms above shoulder level a lot.’
‘Why are the markings on her arms strange? Maybe she was… I don’t know, an artist or something?’
‘I’m not so sure, because both arms have the same wear and tear. And that’s not the strange part.’ He leads Rekha around to the opposite side of the table. ‘See the smoothness of her heels and the pads of her toes? I’d say her profession was largely sedentary.’
Rekha frowns. ‘So she worked with her arms a lot, but didn’t move her feet much? That doesn’t make sense.’ She looks up. ‘Could she have been in a wheelchair?’
‘That’s possible, but her hip bones don’t show the same lack of movement. Looks like she turned around a lot.’
‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ Rekha murmurs.
‘She’s definitely a forensic mystery waiting to be solved.’
‘Is there anything else you can tell?’
‘Yeah. She was burned, maybe post mortem, but there’s some evidence to show that she may have been alive at the time. I won’t know for sure until I’ve run more tests.’
‘Oh my fucking god.’ Rekha clamps a hand over her mouth.
‘I know.’ Jared winces. ‘They probably thought she was already dead, if that’s any consolation.’
‘And they burned her to destroy her identity, I suppose.’
‘That would be my guess, yeah.’ Jared gestures to one of Sailor’s arms. ‘She has a fractured humerus, which definitely happened after she was dead for at least a month.’
‘She was transferred?’
Jared nods. ‘I ran some tests on a bone fragment I took from Sailor’s ankle. When a body is buried in soil, the bones absorb the chemicals from the surrounding earth. There’s evidence that she was buried in alluvial soil first, and later moved to the ruins.’
‘Alluvial-isn’t that soil that’s found near the surface of the ground?’
‘Yes. Probably a shallow grave, hastily made to conceal the victim temporarily before a more secure hiding place could be found.’
‘And in a fertile region,’ Rekha muses. ‘Maybe a field of some sort?’
‘Most probably. Definitely somewhere outside city limits. There are barely any traces of pollutant.’ He smiles, remembering a line he’d heard in a lecture. It hadn’t been remarkable in itself, but he hasn’t forgotten it because he’d spoken to Jensen for the first time that day.
‘Something funny?’
‘No, I was just thinking of something. I went to a course at a teaching hospital about a year ago. The lecturer said something about how you need ‘a high index of suspicion’ to categorize certain injuries. With victims this old, we can only make educated guesses.’
Rekha pats him on the arm. ‘You’ve done a great job so far, Jared. Now, would you like to hear the good news first, or the bad?’
‘There’s bad news?’
‘’Fraid so. They won’t let us ship the bodies out to the labs at the research institute. The hospital director says he has orders to wrap the bodies to go. Someone from the government general hospital will be here this afternoon to pick them up.’
‘They can’t do that!’
‘They can, and they will. The good news is, they’re probably going to send some lackey who isn’t going to care much about a few skeletons. I suggest we remove one of the heads-possibly Sailor’s, since she’s the most recent and we have the best chance of identifying her-and pack the rest. Enough people are beheaded that it won’t seem strange that one of the bodies is missing a head.’
Jared stares at her, appalled. ‘Rekha, this is a person we’re talking about. We can’t just remove her head and-’
‘I know,’ Rekha says firmly. ‘I know, okay? If we don’t do this, she may never have a chance to be put to rest. At least this way we’ll have something to work with.’
--
They pack each of the bodies in plastic wrap, labeling them with serial numbers and leaving them on the morgue table. Rekha slips out and comes back with a large handbag, big enough for Sailor’s skull.
‘I can’t believe we’re doing this,’ Jared mutters. He takes the scarf that Rekha is holding out and wraps it carefully around Sailor’s detached, cellophane-covered head.
‘We don’t have a choice,’ Rekha reminds him. She glances around the room one last time, and checks in the drawers to make sure none of their X-rays and test reports have been left behind. ‘I left Anjali’s reports with her,’ she says. ‘Just so it doesn’t seem we cleaned the place out. She only saw a few photographs and X-rays, so there’s nothing left to show that Sailor had her head on when she was brought here.’
To Jared’s amazement, they leave the hospital without incident. There’s no security at the exit, only the entrance, and no one even checks their bags or IDs as they leave.
‘Piece of cake,’ Rekha says when they’re in her car, the thin sheen of sweat along her hairline belying her nervousness. ‘What now?’
‘Can we take Sailor to your institute? We’ll need a lab to run more tests.’
‘I’ll find out. Why don’t I drop you back at your hotel, and you can work there for a while? I’ll check if the institute is safe.’
--
‘You won’t believe what I’m looking at right now,’ Jared says into the phone. ‘I can’t say what it is, but my god, Gen, this is so much bigger than I thought.’
‘Why can’t you say what it is? Jared, are you in some sort of danger?’
Jared smiles, warming a little at the concern in his friend’s voice. ‘I don’t think so. Not if we’re careful.’
‘Well, then, be careful. This is why Jensen was so against you going there, isn’t it?’ Genevieve says, blunt as ever.
‘I don’t want to talk about him, Gen.’
She sighs. ‘I know. He looks like death warmed up, by the way.’
Jared winces. ‘Be nice to him, okay?’
‘Has he called or messaged you at all?’
‘No.’
‘Didn’t think so. Remind me again why I’m supposed to be nice to him?’
Jared sighs. ‘I haven’t contacted him either, Gen. And I’m the one who left.’
--
Rekha arrives several hours later, looking annoyed.
‘What happened?’ Jared asks as he lets her in.
‘Well, it turns out that not only can we not take Sailor to the Institute of Advanced Scientific Research, but that we’ve officially been asked to step back from this investigation and focus on our original task, which is to analyze the fifty-year-old bodies that were found at the scene.’
‘Can they do that?’
‘They can, and they did.’
‘What if I call my embassy? See if I can pull some strings?’
Rekha shrugs, sinking into a chair. ‘You can try, but I’ll bet your embassy would rather send you home than get involved in a political incident.’
‘Fuck this. I’m not giving up, Rekha.’
‘Good, because neither am I.’
--
They share the bed that night, simply because it’s too late for Rekha to drive back home alone, and Jared’s concerned about letting her spend the night on her own. From the news reports he’s been reading, too many people who’ve been in the wrong place at the wrong time have disappeared.
Neither of them feels like going out in public for dinner, so they cover Sailor up and order room service. The boy who brings up the food-Aravinda, Jared remembers-gives him a cheeky smile when he sees Rekha, misreading the situation. Jared gives him an extra-large tip.
‘So,’ Rekha says during dinner, lifting a fork of noodles to her mouth. ‘You got someone at home? A wife? Girlfriend?’
‘I bat for the other side,’ Jared says with a smile.
‘Boyfriend, then?’ Rekha asks with a grin, taking a sip of wine.
‘I… yeah. I guess.’
‘You guess?’ Rekha shakes her head. ‘I’m sorry, it’s none of my business.’
‘It’s okay. It’s just… we didn’t part on very good terms.’
‘I know the feeling,’ she says, shooting him a sympathetic look. ‘You got a picture of him?’
‘Yeah.’ Jared pulls out his phone, flipping to his photos and sliding his finger across the screen until he finds one. He slides the phone across the table.
‘Wow, he’s bloody gorgeous.’
Jared looks down at the screen. Jensen’s smiling up at him. He’d been relaxed that afternoon. It was a Sunday and they’d both been home, messing around with the dogs and generally hanging out doing nothing. He’s wearing his favorite gray t-shirt, and a jolt of nostalgia hits Jared as he recalls the way the soft worn cloth feels against his cheek. ‘Yeah. Yeah, he is.’
Rekha hands his phone back. ‘He’s also very lucky. He’d better be waiting for you, if he knows what’s good for him.’
Jared laughs. ‘You sound like my friend Genevieve.’
‘Genevieve is a wise woman,’ Rekha says, lifting her glass. ‘To absent friends.’
‘To absent friends,’ Jared agrees, clinking his glass against hers.
--
The next morning, they drive out of the city in a car provided for them by the embassy. Rekha knows an expert who might be able to help, she says. Their official story is that they’re visiting the ruins to get started on their research.
‘When he drops us off at Pollunaruwa, we’ll do some perfunctory work and then take the bus to Kandy,’ she murmurs, too softly for the driver to hear them. ‘The expert I mentioned is a bit of a hermit. He lives just outside Kandy.’
‘Wow,’ Jared whispers when the car stops in front of the heritage site. Facing them is a massive reclining statue of the Buddha, and behind the statue are tall rocks with inscriptions and intricate carvings, spread out wide over the landscape.
‘How big is this place?’ Jared asks as they hitch their bags over their shoulders, and proceed on foot.
‘Several hundred acres, I should think.’ Rekha points to a group of statues a few hundred meters away from them. ‘A Duran Duran video was shot there,’ she says with a wry smile. ‘That’s probably what this place is most famous for, at least outside Sri Lanka.’
They walk for around ten minutes, passing several more sculptures and a couple of temples, before they reach an area cordoned off with yellow tape.
‘This is where the bodies were found by a team of archeologists a couple of weeks ago,’ Rekha says. ‘It’s closed off to the public at the moment.’ She grins. ‘If not for a couple of team members tweeting their findings immediately, the government might have gotten away with never letting the discovery be known.’
Once inside the caves, they take some samples of soil from the ground. There are a few more half-uncovered skeletons, clearly decades old, and they take some bone samples as well, in case anyone checks to see if they’re working on their actual project.
When they get back to the entrance, they’re surprised to find the car still waiting for them.
‘I thought I told you to leave,’ Rekha says, frowning.
‘I’m sorry, madam. I thought you wanted to travel to Kandy,’ the driver says smoothly.
Rekha and Jared exchange a look. ‘Who told you that?’ she asks.
The driver looks around, and then lowers his voice. ‘I heard you earlier, madam. My name is Faran Tahir. My father and brother were killed in the Colombo riots last year. If I can bring their killers to justice, there is nothing I would like more than to help you.’
Rekha looks at Jared, who shrugs. The man seems sincere enough, and it’s not like visiting an old scientist is a crime; they can just as easily claim, if asked, that they were taking the Pollunaruwa samples to be analyzed.
‘We’re not investigating anything of the sort,’ Rekha says firmly, turning back to Tahir. ‘We are simply taking some bones samples to Kandy for analysis by a professional.’
‘Of course, madam.’
Jared’s skin prickles a little at the man’s tone, and he can tell that Rekha is uneasy as well, but they say nothing else as they get into the car.
--
At Kandy, they get dropped off at a restaurant for a late lunch, picking a table in a far corner, away from most of the others.
‘What do you think?’ Jared asks once they’ve ordered prawn curry and steamed rice. ‘Can he be trusted?’
‘I don’t think so, but he doesn’t know where we’re really headed, does he? I’ll get rid of him, and we’ll get a rental car or a cab.’
They subside into silence as they eat, famished after the long journey. The curry is flavored with coconut, and absolutely delicious.
‘This tastes just like the curry our cook used to make when I was a kid,’ Jared says, surprised.
Rekha shrugs. ‘Traditional recipes don’t tend to change much.’
Jared takes another bite, savoring the flavors of coriander and turmeric. ‘I’m more surprised that I remember the taste so well, actually. Some sort of sense memory, I guess.’
‘Redolence, huh?’ Rekha says with a smile.
‘Exactly. I can almost smell the wooden floorboards of the house we lived in.’
Rekha orders an Indian sweet for dessert, carrot halwa, ‘just to mix things up’.
‘You’re Indian, aren’t you?’ Jared asks as they dig into the sweet.
‘Officially, I’m a Sri Lankan national now, but yes, I have an Indian passport too. My parents decided to move here when I was little.’
‘And do you have a significant other? If I may ask.’
She waves a dismissive hand, but she’s smiling. ‘Not anymore. No regrets, though.’ She glances up at him. ‘You missing your guy?’
‘Like crazy,’ Jared confesses.
‘You should call him, you know.’
‘Maybe I will,’ Jared says with a smile.
Rekha shrugs. ‘Just my two cents. Or two paisa, if you prefer. Life’s too short for regrets.’
The Grove of Ascetics is easily one of the most beautiful places Jared has ever been in. They get a rental car and drive out of the city after lunch, following the same highway they’d taken from Colombo. The forest is around thirty minutes away. Everything, as Rekha puts it, is within screaming distance in Sri Lanka.
The forest is another heritage zone, and they park the car at the entrance and proceed on foot. There’s a hush over the area, a thick canopy of branches over their heads, so dense in some places that the sky isn’t even visible.
‘There are stories about this place,’ Rekha whispers. ‘That in some areas, deep in the forest, the canopy is meters thick, and that there are creatures who dwell up there, treating the bed of branches as the ground, as unaware of the world below as the world is of them.’
Jared stares at her. ‘Are you making this up?’
Rekha grins widely. ‘You’ll never know, will you?’
There are a few ancient statues along the worn, winding path. Occasionally, Rekha points to one of them and tells Jared a fantastic story associated with it. The glint of mischief in her eyes makes him believe that she’s pulling his leg half the time, but the stories are entertaining nonetheless, and he’s enjoying her company.
They reach a massive old oak tree with a wooden platform on it, clearly a makeshift treehouse, and Jared is suddenly reminded of Lothlorien from The Lord of the Rings. He says as much, and Rekha gives him a broad smile. ‘Exactly what I thought when I first came here. I expected to hear Elven song at any moment,’ she says, and then gives him a sudden hug. ‘I’m glad you’re here, Jared.’
‘Me too,’ he says, returning the hug.
They pull apart as they hear a rustle behind them, and Jared turns to see a girl of around fifteen or sixteen. She’s wearing a mismatched outfit, a shirt of dull green and a gaily patterned blue and orange skirt.
‘Lakma,’ Rekha says, smiling warmly at the girl. They exchange a few words in Sinhalese, too rapidly for Jared to follow what they’re saying.
Rekha turns to Jared. ‘He’s expecting us,’ she says.
--
The girl leads them off the dirt path, down a winding stone staircase to a large pond with glittering green water and a multitude of lilies. Beyond the pond is an astonishingly large house.
‘I thought you said he was an ascetic,’ Jared mutters, and Rekha elbows him.
‘Ssh! He’ll hear you.’
A tall, elderly man appears on the porch, his snow-white hair down to his shoulders and a wooden staff in his hand.
‘Elrond,’ Jared says immediately, and Rekha stifles a giggle.
‘Lothlorien,’ she whispers. ‘Not Rivendell.’ Jared stares after her, impressed, as she leaves his side and goes to greet the man.
‘Palipana,’ she says, and bends down to touch the man’s feet. Jared does the same, recognizing it as a show of respect, and feels the ascetic’s cool, dry hand touch the crown of his head in what is presumably a blessing.
‘You’ve come far,’ Palipana observes. It’s only when he feels around for his chair that Jared realizes he’s blind. He looks inquiringly at Rekha.
‘Patience,’ she mouths.
‘You should rest,’ Palipana says, settling in his chair. ‘There will be time for talk later. Lakma will show you to the guest rooms.’
--
‘This place is incredible,’ Jared says as Lakma leads them down a cool stone corridor to the interior of the house.
‘I think it used to be a palace, or at least a summer house,’ Rekha says. ‘Palipana has opened it out to guests, but he’s very selective about whom he invites here.’
‘I guess we’re lucky, then.’
‘Very. You’ll see later, when we talk to him, just how brilliant he is. He used to be the head of the archaeology department at Colombo University. They say he’s still better than any archaeologist alive, even without his sight.’
--
Just before sunset, Lakma arrives to escort them back to the veranda. Palipana is sitting there, and Jared can’t tell if he’s been there all along, or if he’d gone in and just come back out.
He isn’t alone. ‘This is Assaf,’ he says, gesturing toward the man sitting by his side. Assaf gives them a nod, and quickly excuses himself and disappears into the house.
‘Assaf is an artist,’ Palipana says, sounding a little amused. ‘He is unused to the company of strangers, and prefers his own. But I suspect he will be of some use to you.’
‘How?’ Rekha asks.
‘Impatient as ever, child,’ Palipana says with a laugh. ‘First tell me why you both are here, and then I shall tell you Assaf’s story, with his permission.’
‘We need your help.’ Rekha gestures to Jared, and he places Sailor’s unwrapped skull carefully in the old man’s lap.
‘Tell me what you know.’ Palipana places his hands on top of the skull, holding it with reverence, and Jared relaxes a little. He quickly summarizes what he’s found out so far, and Palipana nods as he talks, not interrupting, listening with his head tilted toward Jared.
‘Good,’ he says approvingly. ‘Very good. This young woman, from what you recount, was very clearly a miner.’
‘Of course!’ Rekha smacks her forehead. ‘That explains why she used her arms so much, but not her feet!’ She turns to Jared. ‘Mines over here-especially the coal mines-have very low tunnels,’ she explains. ‘Most of the miners work squatting.’
Palipana nods. ‘I think you’ll find coal residue in her bones if you run some basic tests. My laboratory is a little rudimentary, but you’ll find the necessary tools.’
‘We can’t thank you enough,’ Jared says. ‘This is such a tremendous help.’ He glances at Rekha. ‘There can’t be many twenty-year-old miners who went missing six months ago. Rekha, we may actually get to find out who Sailor really was.’
--
The ‘rudimentary’ laboratory turns out to have state-of-the-art equipment. Looking around, Jared lets out a low whistle. ‘Who is this guy, really?’
Rekha chuckles. ‘One of the most brilliant minds of our time. Don’t tell him I told you, but his career ended after a plagiarism accusation. No one knows for sure if he was really guilty or if someone successfully sabotaged his career, but soon after the case, he retreated to the woods.’
Jared’s phone beeps, startling him. ‘Satellite phone signals,’ Rekha says with a wink. ‘Some ascetic, huh?’
Jared grins, glancing at his phone. It’s a message from Genevieve. You still alive out there?
I’m fine, he types back quickly. Don’t worry.
Good, comes the reply a few seconds later. Your kids miss you.
Give them a hug from me.
I will. Oh, and before you ask, I haven’t seen J. :-P
Jared slides the phone back into his pocket.
‘Bad news?’ Rekha asks, noticing the expression on his face.
‘Not really.’
‘More like no news, huh?’
‘Something like that, yeah.’
‘Let’s distract you with work, okay?’
They scrape a few more fragments from Sailor’s skull, and get to work.
--
Early the next morning, Jared takes a chance and calls Jensen’s phone. He knows it’s not like Jensen to miss work, and if he’d been at the hospital, Gen would have seen him; she’s in the same internship program that Jared had briefly joined when he had audited the chiropractic seminars.
Jensen’s phone goes straight to voicemail, and Jared hangs up in frustration. It’s good, though, however briefly, to hear Jensen’s voice say, Hi, you know what to do. It must be around nine p.m. where Jensen is. Maybe he’s on his way home from work, Jared reasons, and then remembers that Jensen probably isn’t going home at all.
He opens a new message to find that the draft he’d typed after landing in Colombo is still in his unsent messages. Sick at heart, he puts his phone away and goes to check on Sailor.
Given the way his life has changed over the last few weeks, Sailor is, in some ways, the only constant he has. He’s taken to wishing her good night, and greeting her in the morning when he wakes up. In a way, he’s selfishly dissociated her from whatever she’d been during her life, completely disregarded her identity, her memories, given her a frivolous name and separated her head from her body with utter disrespect for who she’d been. In another way, she’s the most important part of his life right now, a ghost that he’s slowly piecing together in the most important task of his life so far, trying to discover her identity so that he can find her killers and put her, at long last, to rest.
--
‘Copper,’ Jared says. ‘She worked in a copper mine, not a coal mine.’
‘Are you sure?’ Rekha asks.
‘Yeah.’ He points to the cross-section of the bone that he’s been running tests on. ‘Look at this,’ he says, taking her by the elbow and steering her toward a microscope.
Rekha peers in, and then looks up. ‘That’s odd,’ she says. ‘There’s far too little decomposition for someone who died over six months ago.’
‘I think it’s because she was killed and buried in the mines where she worked. There’s a famous story in a textbook about a body known only as Copper Man. Copper Man was a miner, killed when a section of the tunnel he was working in collapsed on him. He was found long after he died, but his skin and bones were almost perfectly preserved by the coating of copper on him. Copper is anti-bacterial and anti-fungal.’
‘So Sailor’s bones are well-preserved, but her skin didn’t stand a chance because she was burned.’
Jared nods. ‘I think there might have been some traces of skin on her left leg, but we’ll need to run more tests for that, if we ever get access to the bodies again. But my best guess is that her bone tissue survived because of the copper in the mines where she was first buried.’
‘A copper mine in an area with alluvial soil.’ Rekha smiles up at him. ‘I think we’re close to bringing Sailor home.’
--
‘There are abandoned copper mines not very far from Kandy,’ Assaf tells them at dinner. ‘And if I recall correctly, they they've been barely functional for months.’ It's the most Jared has heard him speak so far. Palipana is absent, since he usually retires early in the evening.
‘I think this is it,’ Rekha says, her eyes shining. ‘The miners must've been killed there, and their bodies burned and buried in shallow temporary graves.’
‘And sometime during the last six months, Sailor was transported to Pollunaruwa, and buried there,’ Jared finishes.
‘Why relocate only Sailor, though?’ Rekha muses. ‘Unless she was the only victim. Or someone was looking for her.’
‘Think we can ask the local police if there was a missing person’s report filed for someone of Sailor’s age and profession?’
‘I don’t know how helpful they’ll be, but we can try.’
‘You must ask the people, not the authorities,’ Assaf, who has been listening quietly, advises them. ‘Talk to the waiters at hotels, the flower sellers on the roadside, the autoricksha drivers. And here is where I must show you how Palipana thinks I can help you.’
--
‘Can this really be done?’ Jared murmurs, low enough so only Rekha can hear him.
She shrugs. ‘It’s possible, I guess. If Assaf’s really one of the artists from a Buddha temple, as Palipana says, he must be immensely talented. Did you know they paint the eyes on a Buddha statue by looking at it in a mirror and painting over their shoulder? Because of the belief that no one should look the Buddha directly in the eyes.’
Assaf seems extremely sure of himself, but Jared feels a pang as the artist rolls a bit of green plasticine between his palms and presses it to Sailor’s face, beginning the act of reconstructing her features.
‘Let’s leave him to it,’ Rekha whispers, squeezing Jared’s arm.
--
A week later, Assaf is still at work. Jared still has bone fragments to work with, but there isn’t much left to find that forensic science can help him with. He and Rekha spend most of their time talking to Palipana-who is brilliant, plagiarist or not-and taking walks through the forest, sometimes together and sometimes by themselves.
For Jared, the nights are easily the worst periods of the time he spends at the Grove of Ascetics. Maybe it’s mostly because he knows that Jensen’s awake at the time, probably at work, maybe just a phone call away. One night, when he’s just gotten undressed for bed, he picks up his phone on an impulse and calls Jensen.
There’s no response. Jared turns off his phone and just barely resists the urge to throw it against the wall.
The next morning, when the grove is attacked, Jared realizes that the harmony of the forest had lulled him into a kind of spell, made him forget, impossibly, that there was a war on.
The attack is swift and silent. He wakes with a blow to his head, feeling sharp pain and opening his eyes to find a gun in his face, and Faran Tahir’s face behind the weapon.
‘Stand up,’ Tahir orders. ‘Hands behind your back.’
Jared stumbles to his feet, still half-asleep. His arms are wrenched behind his back and bound with coarse rope. He’s dragged out into the veranda, still in his sweat pants and t-shirt, and finds Rekha already there, similarly bound.
‘Get their belongings,’ Tahir snaps to a couple of his men. ‘Make sure nothing’s left behind.’
Two more men emerge from the house, dragging Assaf along. One of them is carrying Sailor’s head.
‘What is this,’ Tahir snarls, his face close to Assaf’s. Assaf gives him his patented blank stare, and Tahir hits him across the face.
‘Don’t!’ Rekha cries. ‘Please, don’t hurt him. It’s just a project we were working on.’
‘Speak again and I’ll blow your head off,’ Tahir says calmly. He looks at the man carrying the skull. ‘Put it in the truck. We’ll figure it out later.’ He looks between Jared and Rekha. ‘You covered your tracks well, but no one can hide in Sri Lanka for too long, doctors. Now, you go where you’re needed. Where your worthless lives can be of some value.’
‘People know where we are,’ Jared says. ‘You can’t hold us.’
Tahir hits him with the muzzle of his gun, a glancing blow across his temple that sends Jared to his knees, blinking blood from his eyes. ‘Speak again and I’ll shatter both your kneecaps,’ he says.
A black cloth bag is yanked over Jared’s head and bound securely. He’s dragged to his feet and pushed into the back of the militants’ truck, his head spinning. He’s only half-conscious during the journey, but it seems to take hours.
--
He wakes in a dimly-lit room. He’s lying on the floor, his hands still bound behind his back, his ankles tied together.
‘Thank goodness you’re awake,’ Rekha whispers from beside him. ‘I was so scared they’d hurt you badly.’
‘I’m okay. I think.’ Jared struggles into a sitting position. ‘Have they hurt you?’
Rekha shakes her head.
‘Assaf?’
‘I don’t know where he is.’
‘Where are we? The mines?’
‘I think so.’ The place smells strongly of copper, and is clearly subterranean.
‘There are caves full of wounded people,’ Rekha whispers. ‘Militants, I think. They must’ve brought us here to tend to them.’
‘Why us? We aren’t doctors.’
‘You heard Tahir earlier. He must think we’re medical doctors. Don’t tell him the truth. I’m guessing it’s the only thing keeping us alive.’
‘They’re bound to find out sooner or later,’ Jared whispers back. He’s fighting back nausea from the pain in his head. He closes his eyes for a moment.
‘You need stitches,’ Rekha says, sounding distressed. ‘I hope you haven’t lost too much blood.’
‘I think I’ll be okay. It doesn’t seem too deep.’
‘Awake, doctors?’ Tahir’s voice booms through the claustrophobically small space.
Jared shifts closer to Rekha. ‘What do you want with us?’
‘I think you already know. There are freedom fighters here who need medical care.’
‘I’ll do it,’ Jared says quickly. ‘Let Dr Sharma go.’
Tahir laughs. ‘I don’t think so. I can shoot her through the head, but that would be a waste of a professional.’
‘You’re going to kill us anyway,’ Rekha says.
‘Yes, but not today.’ Tahir smiles. ‘Now, are you ready to get to work?’
--
They let Rekha stitch up the wound on Jared’s head when she insists that he needs care before he can help others. Afterward, they’re both led out into the main tunnel of the mines, which is much larger than the tiny space in which they’d been imprisoned. Row after row of stretchers is laid out across the floor, filled with wounded men and women, some moaning with pain, some unconscious.
Jared spends the next six hours making lists of medicines to be brought, and using whatever he can find at hand to create makeshift bandages. When they bring him full cartons of the supplies he’s asked for, he doesn’t question where they found it, just uses the bandages and painkillers as best he can. When he begins to reach the end of his reserves of strength, he imagines what Jensen must have gone through during his days as an army surgeon. He pretends he’s in a war zone with Jensen working beside him, taking strength from the invisible presence at his side. If Jensen could do it, so can he.
A week passes in a blur. They’re allowed to sleep at midnight and are woken at six, and work throughout the day. More and more wounded come in, injured by military weapons in the course of their attacks. Jared has no sympathy either for his patients or their enemy. He works methodically, patching up wounds as best he can, even performing an improvised surgery or two every day to get out shrapnel from wounds, but never when the wounds are too deep. He tells Tahir, honestly enough, that he isn’t a surgeon.
They don’t see Assaf at all. Sailor’s head lies in a corner of their cell, her face half-finished, still almost unrecognizable. Just as it had been a constant in Jared’s life, it now becomes a source of despair. Just days ago, all he’d wanted was to help her, find who she was, tell her family that she’d been found, that she could be put to rest. But now, the frantic desire to get away is always uppermost on his mind. There’s no real chance of escape, because the way out of the mines is closely guarded at all times. Rekha is also a source of worry: she’s been running a fever for a couple of days, and the antibiotics they’ve asked for don’t seem to be helping.
On the eighth day, when Jared has almost become used to his everyday routine, he’s bound again and dragged into the elevator that leads out of the mine, and shoved into the truck.
He doesn’t see Rekha again, and his desperate questions about her remain unanswered.
--
The new camp is in a field, canvas tents set up in a row. Jared is the only ‘doctor’ now, and he’s reduced to four hours of sleep every night. For the first few days he all but begs to be told about Rekha’s fate, but is met with blank stares from his captors. Tahir is the leader of the group, the only one who appears to know English, or perhaps he’s warned the others about talking to Jared.
‘Is this fucking Mercurochrome necessary?’ he says on the second day, flinging Jared’s list of drugs at his chest. ‘Do you know how fucking difficult it is to find?’
Jared shrugs. ‘Suit yourself. If you don’t get it, your people’s injuries are likely to turn septic.’
Tahir snatches up the piece of paper and stalks out of the tent, grumbling.
Some nights, lying awake before he waits for sleep to claim him, Jared wonders if Jensen even knows that he’s missing. If he’d even care if he did.
Three weeks later, Jared’s learned a lot more about the civil war in the country than he’d known earlier. The militants belong to an insurgent group known as the LTTE, a name he’s familiar with from his childhood: since the early 1980s, they’ve been fighting the government for a separate country of their own. Many members of the group are very young. All of them refer to themselves as freedom fighters rather than militants.
He speaks to a few of the men in broken Sinhalese, developing a strange sort of camaraderie with his captors and becoming a reluctant participant in the camp and its activities. He eats with them, borrows their cut-throat style razors to shave every other day. Tahir becomes a little more civil after he sees Jared getting along with the rest, even apologizing gruffly for having injured Jared. Some of the men come back from battle in bags, and their bodies are quickly burned on a communal pyre that’s been built for the purpose some distance away from the camp. Some of them come back still alive, and he can barely recognize them under the blood and the torn flesh.
Four weeks after they had fled the camp in the mines, the commandos invade. They gun down the militants with lethal precision. Jared stays in his tent, waiting to be found. There’s no excitement in him; even the adrenaline in his system seems to be defunct now. There’s just more of the deadly calm, filling him with inaction.
A few minutes after the gunfire dies down, he hears a familiar, impossible voice calling his name.
‘Jared! Jared!’
He stumbles to his feet and out of the tent.
‘Jared,’ Jensen says, his voice a half-sob, hoarse from screaming Jared’s name. ‘Jared, Jared, thank god.’
And then Jensen’s arms are around him, tight, squeezing like a vise, and Jared stumbles and falls, sending them both to the ground. ‘You can’t be here,’ Jared says, numb, beyond feeling. ‘You aren’t here.’
‘I’m here, Jay. I’m here.’
Masterpost | Part 3
Part 2
Jared’s plane lands at Colombo International Airport at a quarter past two on a humid Tuesday afternoon. From the sky, Sri Lanka doesn't appear to be a country at war: it looks like a tropical island out of a glossy travel brochure, surrounded by blue waters and glittering, yellow-white beaches that invite daydreaming and fantasies of romance. Tourism hadn’t exactly been a large-scale industry when Jared had lived in Colombo as a child, and he can’t stop his memories from superimposing themselves on what he sees now: ceiling fans slowly stirring the humid air in their two-bedroom home; paper boats set to sail in puddles of rain water with his friends from school; freshly-fried murukkus crunching in his mouth as he chattered with their cook in Sinhalese, the musical language spilling from his lips as easily as his mother tongue.
Throughout his sixteen-hour flight, Jared’s been looking at the extensive information that had been faxed to him at his office on the university campus. There are a few black-and-white photographs of murdered people assumed to be the victims of political violence, most of them anonymous and disinterred from unmarked graves. Most of the information is in the form of forensic reports that local doctors had been able to create before the bodies were confiscated as state’s evidence. As an outsider entering a volatile situation, he’s been asked to be discreet, to essentially go undercover. His official role will be that of a forensic pathologist assisting a team of archaeologists investigating a series of ruins just outside the capital city of Colombo.
As he emerges from Customs, he catches sight of a man in plain clothes-nondescript gray trousers and a checked, half-sleeved cotton shirt-holding up a card that says simply: Dr Jared P. The second thing he notices as he steps out of the air-conditioned terminal is the thick, heavy afternoon air, which instantly engulfs him.
He lifts a hand to draw the man’s attention, and helps him load his bags into the back. He doesn’t have much luggage, just his backpack and a duffel.
The car is blissfully cool, and Jared leans back against the soft seat and switches on his phone. There are no new messages. He opens a new text message and types.
Reached Colombo. Please call when you can.
He reads the seven words over and over, and then makes a change.
Reached Colombo. Please call if you can.
Making a frustrated sound, he slides his thumb to the Cancel button instead.
--
‘Rekha Sharma,’ the woman waiting for him in the hotel lobby says, standing up and holding out her hand. ‘I hope you had a good flight.’
‘It was pretty long, but yeah, I’m good.’
‘Great,’ she says with a warm smile. ‘I’m sure you’ll want to rest and catch up on your sleep. I just thought I’d say hello and drop this off.’ She hands him a folder. ‘Some new evidence.’
‘Actually, I’d rather stay up until tonight. I want to get my body clock adjusted ASAP, you know?’
‘Sure,’ she says. ‘You want to freshen up, and then pay a quick visit to the hospital?’
Jared nods. ‘I won’t be long.’
He dumps his bags in his room, takes a quick shower, and is back in the lobby in less than fifteen minutes.
‘I’m impressed,’ Rekha says with a laugh.
‘I’m not a girl,’ Jared grins, pushing a hand back through his hair. ‘Despite appearances.’
She grins back. They’re off to a good start, Jared thinks as they make their way to her car.
--
In the hospital morgue, Rekha locks the door behind them and pulls a plastic sheet off a long metal table, revealing four skeletons.
‘These just came in today,’ she says. ‘Retrieved from an old ruin just outside the city.’
Jared spends a few minutes examining the remains. ‘None of these is over five years old,’ he says finally, looking up.
‘Exactly. Far too recent to have been found so deep in the hills.’
Jared glances up at her. ‘You think they were put there by someone?’
Rekha nods. ‘The official report released to the press says that the bodies found in the ruins are at least fifty years old, victims of riots during the sixties.’
‘So these are murder victims?’ Jared turns one of the skulls gently, indicating an obvious head wound. ‘I’m pretty sure this is a gunshot wound.’
‘There’s more. The area that these were found in is a historical site, protected by government security.’
‘Are you saying-’
‘I’m saying these are political murders, Dr Padalecki.’
‘Jared.’
‘These bodies were put there by someone within the ruling government, Jared. Hidden there by someone who didn’t want them to be found.’
Jared meets her eyes. ‘Which also means there might be trace evidence.’
She nods. ‘Something that can lead us back to whoever did this.’ She glances at her watch. ‘It’s too late to do more today, but I had a friend collect some samples. She’ll give us a report first thing tomorrow.’
‘You’re sure she can be trusted?’
‘Normally I’d say yes, but this is turning out to be such a high-profile investigation that I’m just not sure whom to trust. I told her some remains had been found, but I didn’t tell her where.’
Jared nods, suddenly feeling out of his element. ‘We could be in real trouble if someone finds out what we’re doing, couldn’t we?’
‘Yes. Keep this to yourself, and don’t mention anything to anyone, not even over an email or phone call.’
--
They spend another hour examining the bodies. Jared finds several more injuries on each of the bodies, mainly broken bones. He’ll need to run more tests to be sure, but he’s almost certain some of the fractures were caused post mortem.
Rekha drops him off at the hotel, and they agree to meet back at the hospital the next morning to check on the test results, and to transfer the bodies to a safer location.
Jared’s bone-tired; in his time zone, he’d have been in bed nine hours ago. He strips and lies down, calling room service and ordering a sandwich. He forces himself to get up and pull on a robe while he waits for the food, getting a can of beer from the mini-fridge and putting on the TV to keep himself awake. It’s not even nine yet.
He falls asleep before it’s ten, managing only half a sandwich. When his alarm rings at six, he puts it off and goes back to sleep for an hour. He wakes up to no new messages on his phone.
Fuck, Jensen. He’d half-hoped Jensen would at least leave him a message before going to bed, but maybe he’s been busy. Maybe he’s sleeping at the hospital again. Jared hopes that isn’t the case, but he knows Jensen too well by now. He’ll work himself to death rather than give himself time to sit and think about the mess that he and Jared have let their relationship become.
Jared thinks back with a wince to the last conversation they’d had. Jensen had looked so angry, so hurt, so beautiful. He hadn’t raised his voice; he hardly ever did. He’d just sounded disappointed and betrayed that Jared didn’t want to stay and fix things.
‘I’m just going away for a while,’ Jared said. He’d already left the dogs at Gen and Danneel’s. Jensen hadn’t asked where they were, didn’t even seem to notice they were gone.
‘This is the worst time you could choose to go away,’ Jensen said.
‘I’m not choosing anything, Jensen. This is work. I told you a hundred times that I’m going to Sri Lanka.’
Jensen just nodded. ‘Yeah. You should go.’
‘I don’t leave for a couple of days. Maybe we could…’
‘Maybe we could what?’ Jensen asked quietly. ‘You didn’t even let me say goodbye to Harley and Sadie, Jared. Did you think I’d refuse to look after them while you were away?’
‘It’s not like that,’ Jared protested. ‘I know the hours you work. I couldn’t impose on-’
‘Save it, Jared. Just say that you aren’t sure you’re going to be coming back.’
‘Of course I’m coming-’
‘Here,’ Jensen finished. ‘You aren’t sure you’re going to be coming back to this house. Are you?’
Jared sat down on the couch, pushing his hands back through his hair. ‘I don’t know what to be sure of anymore.’
‘Yeah. Me either.’ Jensen looked so desolate that Jared wanted to burrow into his arms, tell him that everything was going to be fine.
He got up and put a hand on Jensen’s shoulder. ‘I’ll be back in a few weeks, okay? You take care of yourself.’
‘You too, Jared.’
When he took his bags out the door, neither of them remarked on the fact that he’d packed everything he owned.
--
Pushing aside that memory, Jared thinks back instead to the last time they’d been in bed together.
It had been over three weeks ago. Things were a little strained between them, but not so much that Jared didn’t want to touch Jensen, wrap himself around him when they slept. For once, he’d come home later than Jensen. Jensen had had a rare evening off work, and Jared had got home from the university to find that Jensen had cooked his favorite meal, pasta with mushrooms and white sauce. They’d foregone their usual preference for beer and opened a bottle of wine, watched Back to the Future and said all the dialogues out loud along with the actors, finishing the wine in record time.
Later, he’d gotten on all fours on the bed, and Jensen had spread his cheeks and licked him until Jared was reduced to writhing and begging to be allowed to come. They’d fallen asleep together in an exhausted mess.
The next morning, Jared confessed that he had signed the contract for the Human Rights Commission project, and Jensen had left for work without saying goodbye.
Jared finds an autoricksha-a small, three-wheeled cab open on both sides-to take him to the hospital, preferring to see the city that way rather than being shut up in an air-conditioned car. The cab careens its way through short cuts to avoid the morning traffic, zigzagging through narrow alleys and making Jared feel like he’s on a rollercoaster. It’s exhilarating.
He arrives at the hospital with his hair in a mess and his cheeks flushed, feeling more light-hearted than he has in a while. Rekha takes one look at him and lets out a laugh. ‘You look like you’re having a good morning,’ she observes.
‘The best,’ Jared agrees.
They spend some time with Rekha’s friend, Anjali Jay, who shows them the findings from the samples she’d gathered.
‘Definitely a military-issue gun,’ she says, pressing a fingertip against the forensics report on the bullet fragment she’d found embedded in the skull. She glances curiously between them. ‘Where did you get the skull? I’d love to examine the rest of the skeleton if possible.’
‘Only the head was found, I’m afraid,’ Rekha says, feigning regret. ‘I’ll keep you posted if there’s more news. Thanks a bunch, Anjali. I owe you one.’
‘Anytime,’ Anjali says brightly, but Jared can see she’s covering her disappointment.
‘Before you say anything, I had to,’ Rekha mutters when they’re alone in the morgue again.
‘I get it,’ Jared says quickly. He glances around at the skeletons. ‘So what shall we do with these guys?’
‘They need names. How about Tinker, Sailor, Soldier and Spy?’
Jared smiles. ‘Works for me.’
‘I’ll go get the paperwork to move them sorted, if you want to get started on them.’
‘Sounds good.’
Jared spends the rest of the morning examining the skeletons more closely. A quick test determines that Tinker and Soldier are at least five years old, while Spy is more recent, no more than two years old. As far as Jared can tell, Sailor is the most recently deceased: the skeleton is no more than six months old, and the victim was no more than twenty years old at the time of death.
‘This is strange,’ he tells Rekha when she gets back.
‘What?’
‘See these symmetrical markings at the joints of the arms? They show that Sailor’s arms got a lot of exercise. Probably something that needed her to raise her arms above shoulder level a lot.’
‘Why are the markings on her arms strange? Maybe she was… I don’t know, an artist or something?’
‘I’m not so sure, because both arms have the same wear and tear. And that’s not the strange part.’ He leads Rekha around to the opposite side of the table. ‘See the smoothness of her heels and the pads of her toes? I’d say her profession was largely sedentary.’
Rekha frowns. ‘So she worked with her arms a lot, but didn’t move her feet much? That doesn’t make sense.’ She looks up. ‘Could she have been in a wheelchair?’
‘That’s possible, but her hip bones don’t show the same lack of movement. Looks like she turned around a lot.’
‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ Rekha murmurs.
‘She’s definitely a forensic mystery waiting to be solved.’
‘Is there anything else you can tell?’
‘Yeah. She was burned, maybe post mortem, but there’s some evidence to show that she may have been alive at the time. I won’t know for sure until I’ve run more tests.’
‘Oh my fucking god.’ Rekha clamps a hand over her mouth.
‘I know.’ Jared winces. ‘They probably thought she was already dead, if that’s any consolation.’
‘And they burned her to destroy her identity, I suppose.’
‘That would be my guess, yeah.’ Jared gestures to one of Sailor’s arms. ‘She has a fractured humerus, which definitely happened after she was dead for at least a month.’
‘She was transferred?’
Jared nods. ‘I ran some tests on a bone fragment I took from Sailor’s ankle. When a body is buried in soil, the bones absorb the chemicals from the surrounding earth. There’s evidence that she was buried in alluvial soil first, and later moved to the ruins.’
‘Alluvial-isn’t that soil that’s found near the surface of the ground?’
‘Yes. Probably a shallow grave, hastily made to conceal the victim temporarily before a more secure hiding place could be found.’
‘And in a fertile region,’ Rekha muses. ‘Maybe a field of some sort?’
‘Most probably. Definitely somewhere outside city limits. There are barely any traces of pollutant.’ He smiles, remembering a line he’d heard in a lecture. It hadn’t been remarkable in itself, but he hasn’t forgotten it because he’d spoken to Jensen for the first time that day.
‘Something funny?’
‘No, I was just thinking of something. I went to a course at a teaching hospital about a year ago. The lecturer said something about how you need ‘a high index of suspicion’ to categorize certain injuries. With victims this old, we can only make educated guesses.’
Rekha pats him on the arm. ‘You’ve done a great job so far, Jared. Now, would you like to hear the good news first, or the bad?’
‘There’s bad news?’
‘’Fraid so. They won’t let us ship the bodies out to the labs at the research institute. The hospital director says he has orders to wrap the bodies to go. Someone from the government general hospital will be here this afternoon to pick them up.’
‘They can’t do that!’
‘They can, and they will. The good news is, they’re probably going to send some lackey who isn’t going to care much about a few skeletons. I suggest we remove one of the heads-possibly Sailor’s, since she’s the most recent and we have the best chance of identifying her-and pack the rest. Enough people are beheaded that it won’t seem strange that one of the bodies is missing a head.’
Jared stares at her, appalled. ‘Rekha, this is a person we’re talking about. We can’t just remove her head and-’
‘I know,’ Rekha says firmly. ‘I know, okay? If we don’t do this, she may never have a chance to be put to rest. At least this way we’ll have something to work with.’
--
They pack each of the bodies in plastic wrap, labeling them with serial numbers and leaving them on the morgue table. Rekha slips out and comes back with a large handbag, big enough for Sailor’s skull.
‘I can’t believe we’re doing this,’ Jared mutters. He takes the scarf that Rekha is holding out and wraps it carefully around Sailor’s detached, cellophane-covered head.
‘We don’t have a choice,’ Rekha reminds him. She glances around the room one last time, and checks in the drawers to make sure none of their X-rays and test reports have been left behind. ‘I left Anjali’s reports with her,’ she says. ‘Just so it doesn’t seem we cleaned the place out. She only saw a few photographs and X-rays, so there’s nothing left to show that Sailor had her head on when she was brought here.’
To Jared’s amazement, they leave the hospital without incident. There’s no security at the exit, only the entrance, and no one even checks their bags or IDs as they leave.
‘Piece of cake,’ Rekha says when they’re in her car, the thin sheen of sweat along her hairline belying her nervousness. ‘What now?’
‘Can we take Sailor to your institute? We’ll need a lab to run more tests.’
‘I’ll find out. Why don’t I drop you back at your hotel, and you can work there for a while? I’ll check if the institute is safe.’
--
‘You won’t believe what I’m looking at right now,’ Jared says into the phone. ‘I can’t say what it is, but my god, Gen, this is so much bigger than I thought.’
‘Why can’t you say what it is? Jared, are you in some sort of danger?’
Jared smiles, warming a little at the concern in his friend’s voice. ‘I don’t think so. Not if we’re careful.’
‘Well, then, be careful. This is why Jensen was so against you going there, isn’t it?’ Genevieve says, blunt as ever.
‘I don’t want to talk about him, Gen.’
She sighs. ‘I know. He looks like death warmed up, by the way.’
Jared winces. ‘Be nice to him, okay?’
‘Has he called or messaged you at all?’
‘No.’
‘Didn’t think so. Remind me again why I’m supposed to be nice to him?’
Jared sighs. ‘I haven’t contacted him either, Gen. And I’m the one who left.’
--
Rekha arrives several hours later, looking annoyed.
‘What happened?’ Jared asks as he lets her in.
‘Well, it turns out that not only can we not take Sailor to the Institute of Advanced Scientific Research, but that we’ve officially been asked to step back from this investigation and focus on our original task, which is to analyze the fifty-year-old bodies that were found at the scene.’
‘Can they do that?’
‘They can, and they did.’
‘What if I call my embassy? See if I can pull some strings?’
Rekha shrugs, sinking into a chair. ‘You can try, but I’ll bet your embassy would rather send you home than get involved in a political incident.’
‘Fuck this. I’m not giving up, Rekha.’
‘Good, because neither am I.’
--
They share the bed that night, simply because it’s too late for Rekha to drive back home alone, and Jared’s concerned about letting her spend the night on her own. From the news reports he’s been reading, too many people who’ve been in the wrong place at the wrong time have disappeared.
Neither of them feels like going out in public for dinner, so they cover Sailor up and order room service. The boy who brings up the food-Aravinda, Jared remembers-gives him a cheeky smile when he sees Rekha, misreading the situation. Jared gives him an extra-large tip.
‘So,’ Rekha says during dinner, lifting a fork of noodles to her mouth. ‘You got someone at home? A wife? Girlfriend?’
‘I bat for the other side,’ Jared says with a smile.
‘Boyfriend, then?’ Rekha asks with a grin, taking a sip of wine.
‘I… yeah. I guess.’
‘You guess?’ Rekha shakes her head. ‘I’m sorry, it’s none of my business.’
‘It’s okay. It’s just… we didn’t part on very good terms.’
‘I know the feeling,’ she says, shooting him a sympathetic look. ‘You got a picture of him?’
‘Yeah.’ Jared pulls out his phone, flipping to his photos and sliding his finger across the screen until he finds one. He slides the phone across the table.
‘Wow, he’s bloody gorgeous.’
Jared looks down at the screen. Jensen’s smiling up at him. He’d been relaxed that afternoon. It was a Sunday and they’d both been home, messing around with the dogs and generally hanging out doing nothing. He’s wearing his favorite gray t-shirt, and a jolt of nostalgia hits Jared as he recalls the way the soft worn cloth feels against his cheek. ‘Yeah. Yeah, he is.’
Rekha hands his phone back. ‘He’s also very lucky. He’d better be waiting for you, if he knows what’s good for him.’
Jared laughs. ‘You sound like my friend Genevieve.’
‘Genevieve is a wise woman,’ Rekha says, lifting her glass. ‘To absent friends.’
‘To absent friends,’ Jared agrees, clinking his glass against hers.
--
The next morning, they drive out of the city in a car provided for them by the embassy. Rekha knows an expert who might be able to help, she says. Their official story is that they’re visiting the ruins to get started on their research.
‘When he drops us off at Pollunaruwa, we’ll do some perfunctory work and then take the bus to Kandy,’ she murmurs, too softly for the driver to hear them. ‘The expert I mentioned is a bit of a hermit. He lives just outside Kandy.’
‘Wow,’ Jared whispers when the car stops in front of the heritage site. Facing them is a massive reclining statue of the Buddha, and behind the statue are tall rocks with inscriptions and intricate carvings, spread out wide over the landscape.
‘How big is this place?’ Jared asks as they hitch their bags over their shoulders, and proceed on foot.
‘Several hundred acres, I should think.’ Rekha points to a group of statues a few hundred meters away from them. ‘A Duran Duran video was shot there,’ she says with a wry smile. ‘That’s probably what this place is most famous for, at least outside Sri Lanka.’
They walk for around ten minutes, passing several more sculptures and a couple of temples, before they reach an area cordoned off with yellow tape.
‘This is where the bodies were found by a team of archeologists a couple of weeks ago,’ Rekha says. ‘It’s closed off to the public at the moment.’ She grins. ‘If not for a couple of team members tweeting their findings immediately, the government might have gotten away with never letting the discovery be known.’
Once inside the caves, they take some samples of soil from the ground. There are a few more half-uncovered skeletons, clearly decades old, and they take some bone samples as well, in case anyone checks to see if they’re working on their actual project.
When they get back to the entrance, they’re surprised to find the car still waiting for them.
‘I thought I told you to leave,’ Rekha says, frowning.
‘I’m sorry, madam. I thought you wanted to travel to Kandy,’ the driver says smoothly.
Rekha and Jared exchange a look. ‘Who told you that?’ she asks.
The driver looks around, and then lowers his voice. ‘I heard you earlier, madam. My name is Faran Tahir. My father and brother were killed in the Colombo riots last year. If I can bring their killers to justice, there is nothing I would like more than to help you.’
Rekha looks at Jared, who shrugs. The man seems sincere enough, and it’s not like visiting an old scientist is a crime; they can just as easily claim, if asked, that they were taking the Pollunaruwa samples to be analyzed.
‘We’re not investigating anything of the sort,’ Rekha says firmly, turning back to Tahir. ‘We are simply taking some bones samples to Kandy for analysis by a professional.’
‘Of course, madam.’
Jared’s skin prickles a little at the man’s tone, and he can tell that Rekha is uneasy as well, but they say nothing else as they get into the car.
--
At Kandy, they get dropped off at a restaurant for a late lunch, picking a table in a far corner, away from most of the others.
‘What do you think?’ Jared asks once they’ve ordered prawn curry and steamed rice. ‘Can he be trusted?’
‘I don’t think so, but he doesn’t know where we’re really headed, does he? I’ll get rid of him, and we’ll get a rental car or a cab.’
They subside into silence as they eat, famished after the long journey. The curry is flavored with coconut, and absolutely delicious.
‘This tastes just like the curry our cook used to make when I was a kid,’ Jared says, surprised.
Rekha shrugs. ‘Traditional recipes don’t tend to change much.’
Jared takes another bite, savoring the flavors of coriander and turmeric. ‘I’m more surprised that I remember the taste so well, actually. Some sort of sense memory, I guess.’
‘Redolence, huh?’ Rekha says with a smile.
‘Exactly. I can almost smell the wooden floorboards of the house we lived in.’
Rekha orders an Indian sweet for dessert, carrot halwa, ‘just to mix things up’.
‘You’re Indian, aren’t you?’ Jared asks as they dig into the sweet.
‘Officially, I’m a Sri Lankan national now, but yes, I have an Indian passport too. My parents decided to move here when I was little.’
‘And do you have a significant other? If I may ask.’
She waves a dismissive hand, but she’s smiling. ‘Not anymore. No regrets, though.’ She glances up at him. ‘You missing your guy?’
‘Like crazy,’ Jared confesses.
‘You should call him, you know.’
‘Maybe I will,’ Jared says with a smile.
Rekha shrugs. ‘Just my two cents. Or two paisa, if you prefer. Life’s too short for regrets.’
The Grove of Ascetics is easily one of the most beautiful places Jared has ever been in. They get a rental car and drive out of the city after lunch, following the same highway they’d taken from Colombo. The forest is around thirty minutes away. Everything, as Rekha puts it, is within screaming distance in Sri Lanka.
The forest is another heritage zone, and they park the car at the entrance and proceed on foot. There’s a hush over the area, a thick canopy of branches over their heads, so dense in some places that the sky isn’t even visible.
‘There are stories about this place,’ Rekha whispers. ‘That in some areas, deep in the forest, the canopy is meters thick, and that there are creatures who dwell up there, treating the bed of branches as the ground, as unaware of the world below as the world is of them.’
Jared stares at her. ‘Are you making this up?’
Rekha grins widely. ‘You’ll never know, will you?’
There are a few ancient statues along the worn, winding path. Occasionally, Rekha points to one of them and tells Jared a fantastic story associated with it. The glint of mischief in her eyes makes him believe that she’s pulling his leg half the time, but the stories are entertaining nonetheless, and he’s enjoying her company.
They reach a massive old oak tree with a wooden platform on it, clearly a makeshift treehouse, and Jared is suddenly reminded of Lothlorien from The Lord of the Rings. He says as much, and Rekha gives him a broad smile. ‘Exactly what I thought when I first came here. I expected to hear Elven song at any moment,’ she says, and then gives him a sudden hug. ‘I’m glad you’re here, Jared.’
‘Me too,’ he says, returning the hug.
They pull apart as they hear a rustle behind them, and Jared turns to see a girl of around fifteen or sixteen. She’s wearing a mismatched outfit, a shirt of dull green and a gaily patterned blue and orange skirt.
‘Lakma,’ Rekha says, smiling warmly at the girl. They exchange a few words in Sinhalese, too rapidly for Jared to follow what they’re saying.
Rekha turns to Jared. ‘He’s expecting us,’ she says.
--
The girl leads them off the dirt path, down a winding stone staircase to a large pond with glittering green water and a multitude of lilies. Beyond the pond is an astonishingly large house.
‘I thought you said he was an ascetic,’ Jared mutters, and Rekha elbows him.
‘Ssh! He’ll hear you.’
A tall, elderly man appears on the porch, his snow-white hair down to his shoulders and a wooden staff in his hand.
‘Elrond,’ Jared says immediately, and Rekha stifles a giggle.
‘Lothlorien,’ she whispers. ‘Not Rivendell.’ Jared stares after her, impressed, as she leaves his side and goes to greet the man.
‘Palipana,’ she says, and bends down to touch the man’s feet. Jared does the same, recognizing it as a show of respect, and feels the ascetic’s cool, dry hand touch the crown of his head in what is presumably a blessing.
‘You’ve come far,’ Palipana observes. It’s only when he feels around for his chair that Jared realizes he’s blind. He looks inquiringly at Rekha.
‘Patience,’ she mouths.
‘You should rest,’ Palipana says, settling in his chair. ‘There will be time for talk later. Lakma will show you to the guest rooms.’
--
‘This place is incredible,’ Jared says as Lakma leads them down a cool stone corridor to the interior of the house.
‘I think it used to be a palace, or at least a summer house,’ Rekha says. ‘Palipana has opened it out to guests, but he’s very selective about whom he invites here.’
‘I guess we’re lucky, then.’
‘Very. You’ll see later, when we talk to him, just how brilliant he is. He used to be the head of the archaeology department at Colombo University. They say he’s still better than any archaeologist alive, even without his sight.’
--
Just before sunset, Lakma arrives to escort them back to the veranda. Palipana is sitting there, and Jared can’t tell if he’s been there all along, or if he’d gone in and just come back out.
He isn’t alone. ‘This is Assaf,’ he says, gesturing toward the man sitting by his side. Assaf gives them a nod, and quickly excuses himself and disappears into the house.
‘Assaf is an artist,’ Palipana says, sounding a little amused. ‘He is unused to the company of strangers, and prefers his own. But I suspect he will be of some use to you.’
‘How?’ Rekha asks.
‘Impatient as ever, child,’ Palipana says with a laugh. ‘First tell me why you both are here, and then I shall tell you Assaf’s story, with his permission.’
‘We need your help.’ Rekha gestures to Jared, and he places Sailor’s unwrapped skull carefully in the old man’s lap.
‘Tell me what you know.’ Palipana places his hands on top of the skull, holding it with reverence, and Jared relaxes a little. He quickly summarizes what he’s found out so far, and Palipana nods as he talks, not interrupting, listening with his head tilted toward Jared.
‘Good,’ he says approvingly. ‘Very good. This young woman, from what you recount, was very clearly a miner.’
‘Of course!’ Rekha smacks her forehead. ‘That explains why she used her arms so much, but not her feet!’ She turns to Jared. ‘Mines over here-especially the coal mines-have very low tunnels,’ she explains. ‘Most of the miners work squatting.’
Palipana nods. ‘I think you’ll find coal residue in her bones if you run some basic tests. My laboratory is a little rudimentary, but you’ll find the necessary tools.’
‘We can’t thank you enough,’ Jared says. ‘This is such a tremendous help.’ He glances at Rekha. ‘There can’t be many twenty-year-old miners who went missing six months ago. Rekha, we may actually get to find out who Sailor really was.’
--
The ‘rudimentary’ laboratory turns out to have state-of-the-art equipment. Looking around, Jared lets out a low whistle. ‘Who is this guy, really?’
Rekha chuckles. ‘One of the most brilliant minds of our time. Don’t tell him I told you, but his career ended after a plagiarism accusation. No one knows for sure if he was really guilty or if someone successfully sabotaged his career, but soon after the case, he retreated to the woods.’
Jared’s phone beeps, startling him. ‘Satellite phone signals,’ Rekha says with a wink. ‘Some ascetic, huh?’
Jared grins, glancing at his phone. It’s a message from Genevieve. You still alive out there?
I’m fine, he types back quickly. Don’t worry.
Good, comes the reply a few seconds later. Your kids miss you.
Give them a hug from me.
I will. Oh, and before you ask, I haven’t seen J. :-P
Jared slides the phone back into his pocket.
‘Bad news?’ Rekha asks, noticing the expression on his face.
‘Not really.’
‘More like no news, huh?’
‘Something like that, yeah.’
‘Let’s distract you with work, okay?’
They scrape a few more fragments from Sailor’s skull, and get to work.
--
Early the next morning, Jared takes a chance and calls Jensen’s phone. He knows it’s not like Jensen to miss work, and if he’d been at the hospital, Gen would have seen him; she’s in the same internship program that Jared had briefly joined when he had audited the chiropractic seminars.
Jensen’s phone goes straight to voicemail, and Jared hangs up in frustration. It’s good, though, however briefly, to hear Jensen’s voice say, Hi, you know what to do. It must be around nine p.m. where Jensen is. Maybe he’s on his way home from work, Jared reasons, and then remembers that Jensen probably isn’t going home at all.
He opens a new message to find that the draft he’d typed after landing in Colombo is still in his unsent messages. Sick at heart, he puts his phone away and goes to check on Sailor.
Given the way his life has changed over the last few weeks, Sailor is, in some ways, the only constant he has. He’s taken to wishing her good night, and greeting her in the morning when he wakes up. In a way, he’s selfishly dissociated her from whatever she’d been during her life, completely disregarded her identity, her memories, given her a frivolous name and separated her head from her body with utter disrespect for who she’d been. In another way, she’s the most important part of his life right now, a ghost that he’s slowly piecing together in the most important task of his life so far, trying to discover her identity so that he can find her killers and put her, at long last, to rest.
--
‘Copper,’ Jared says. ‘She worked in a copper mine, not a coal mine.’
‘Are you sure?’ Rekha asks.
‘Yeah.’ He points to the cross-section of the bone that he’s been running tests on. ‘Look at this,’ he says, taking her by the elbow and steering her toward a microscope.
Rekha peers in, and then looks up. ‘That’s odd,’ she says. ‘There’s far too little decomposition for someone who died over six months ago.’
‘I think it’s because she was killed and buried in the mines where she worked. There’s a famous story in a textbook about a body known only as Copper Man. Copper Man was a miner, killed when a section of the tunnel he was working in collapsed on him. He was found long after he died, but his skin and bones were almost perfectly preserved by the coating of copper on him. Copper is anti-bacterial and anti-fungal.’
‘So Sailor’s bones are well-preserved, but her skin didn’t stand a chance because she was burned.’
Jared nods. ‘I think there might have been some traces of skin on her left leg, but we’ll need to run more tests for that, if we ever get access to the bodies again. But my best guess is that her bone tissue survived because of the copper in the mines where she was first buried.’
‘A copper mine in an area with alluvial soil.’ Rekha smiles up at him. ‘I think we’re close to bringing Sailor home.’
--
‘There are abandoned copper mines not very far from Kandy,’ Assaf tells them at dinner. ‘And if I recall correctly, they they've been barely functional for months.’ It's the most Jared has heard him speak so far. Palipana is absent, since he usually retires early in the evening.
‘I think this is it,’ Rekha says, her eyes shining. ‘The miners must've been killed there, and their bodies burned and buried in shallow temporary graves.’
‘And sometime during the last six months, Sailor was transported to Pollunaruwa, and buried there,’ Jared finishes.
‘Why relocate only Sailor, though?’ Rekha muses. ‘Unless she was the only victim. Or someone was looking for her.’
‘Think we can ask the local police if there was a missing person’s report filed for someone of Sailor’s age and profession?’
‘I don’t know how helpful they’ll be, but we can try.’
‘You must ask the people, not the authorities,’ Assaf, who has been listening quietly, advises them. ‘Talk to the waiters at hotels, the flower sellers on the roadside, the autoricksha drivers. And here is where I must show you how Palipana thinks I can help you.’
--
‘Can this really be done?’ Jared murmurs, low enough so only Rekha can hear him.
She shrugs. ‘It’s possible, I guess. If Assaf’s really one of the artists from a Buddha temple, as Palipana says, he must be immensely talented. Did you know they paint the eyes on a Buddha statue by looking at it in a mirror and painting over their shoulder? Because of the belief that no one should look the Buddha directly in the eyes.’
Assaf seems extremely sure of himself, but Jared feels a pang as the artist rolls a bit of green plasticine between his palms and presses it to Sailor’s face, beginning the act of reconstructing her features.
‘Let’s leave him to it,’ Rekha whispers, squeezing Jared’s arm.
--
A week later, Assaf is still at work. Jared still has bone fragments to work with, but there isn’t much left to find that forensic science can help him with. He and Rekha spend most of their time talking to Palipana-who is brilliant, plagiarist or not-and taking walks through the forest, sometimes together and sometimes by themselves.
For Jared, the nights are easily the worst periods of the time he spends at the Grove of Ascetics. Maybe it’s mostly because he knows that Jensen’s awake at the time, probably at work, maybe just a phone call away. One night, when he’s just gotten undressed for bed, he picks up his phone on an impulse and calls Jensen.
There’s no response. Jared turns off his phone and just barely resists the urge to throw it against the wall.
The next morning, when the grove is attacked, Jared realizes that the harmony of the forest had lulled him into a kind of spell, made him forget, impossibly, that there was a war on.
The attack is swift and silent. He wakes with a blow to his head, feeling sharp pain and opening his eyes to find a gun in his face, and Faran Tahir’s face behind the weapon.
‘Stand up,’ Tahir orders. ‘Hands behind your back.’
Jared stumbles to his feet, still half-asleep. His arms are wrenched behind his back and bound with coarse rope. He’s dragged out into the veranda, still in his sweat pants and t-shirt, and finds Rekha already there, similarly bound.
‘Get their belongings,’ Tahir snaps to a couple of his men. ‘Make sure nothing’s left behind.’
Two more men emerge from the house, dragging Assaf along. One of them is carrying Sailor’s head.
‘What is this,’ Tahir snarls, his face close to Assaf’s. Assaf gives him his patented blank stare, and Tahir hits him across the face.
‘Don’t!’ Rekha cries. ‘Please, don’t hurt him. It’s just a project we were working on.’
‘Speak again and I’ll blow your head off,’ Tahir says calmly. He looks at the man carrying the skull. ‘Put it in the truck. We’ll figure it out later.’ He looks between Jared and Rekha. ‘You covered your tracks well, but no one can hide in Sri Lanka for too long, doctors. Now, you go where you’re needed. Where your worthless lives can be of some value.’
‘People know where we are,’ Jared says. ‘You can’t hold us.’
Tahir hits him with the muzzle of his gun, a glancing blow across his temple that sends Jared to his knees, blinking blood from his eyes. ‘Speak again and I’ll shatter both your kneecaps,’ he says.
A black cloth bag is yanked over Jared’s head and bound securely. He’s dragged to his feet and pushed into the back of the militants’ truck, his head spinning. He’s only half-conscious during the journey, but it seems to take hours.
--
He wakes in a dimly-lit room. He’s lying on the floor, his hands still bound behind his back, his ankles tied together.
‘Thank goodness you’re awake,’ Rekha whispers from beside him. ‘I was so scared they’d hurt you badly.’
‘I’m okay. I think.’ Jared struggles into a sitting position. ‘Have they hurt you?’
Rekha shakes her head.
‘Assaf?’
‘I don’t know where he is.’
‘Where are we? The mines?’
‘I think so.’ The place smells strongly of copper, and is clearly subterranean.
‘There are caves full of wounded people,’ Rekha whispers. ‘Militants, I think. They must’ve brought us here to tend to them.’
‘Why us? We aren’t doctors.’
‘You heard Tahir earlier. He must think we’re medical doctors. Don’t tell him the truth. I’m guessing it’s the only thing keeping us alive.’
‘They’re bound to find out sooner or later,’ Jared whispers back. He’s fighting back nausea from the pain in his head. He closes his eyes for a moment.
‘You need stitches,’ Rekha says, sounding distressed. ‘I hope you haven’t lost too much blood.’
‘I think I’ll be okay. It doesn’t seem too deep.’
‘Awake, doctors?’ Tahir’s voice booms through the claustrophobically small space.
Jared shifts closer to Rekha. ‘What do you want with us?’
‘I think you already know. There are freedom fighters here who need medical care.’
‘I’ll do it,’ Jared says quickly. ‘Let Dr Sharma go.’
Tahir laughs. ‘I don’t think so. I can shoot her through the head, but that would be a waste of a professional.’
‘You’re going to kill us anyway,’ Rekha says.
‘Yes, but not today.’ Tahir smiles. ‘Now, are you ready to get to work?’
--
They let Rekha stitch up the wound on Jared’s head when she insists that he needs care before he can help others. Afterward, they’re both led out into the main tunnel of the mines, which is much larger than the tiny space in which they’d been imprisoned. Row after row of stretchers is laid out across the floor, filled with wounded men and women, some moaning with pain, some unconscious.
Jared spends the next six hours making lists of medicines to be brought, and using whatever he can find at hand to create makeshift bandages. When they bring him full cartons of the supplies he’s asked for, he doesn’t question where they found it, just uses the bandages and painkillers as best he can. When he begins to reach the end of his reserves of strength, he imagines what Jensen must have gone through during his days as an army surgeon. He pretends he’s in a war zone with Jensen working beside him, taking strength from the invisible presence at his side. If Jensen could do it, so can he.
A week passes in a blur. They’re allowed to sleep at midnight and are woken at six, and work throughout the day. More and more wounded come in, injured by military weapons in the course of their attacks. Jared has no sympathy either for his patients or their enemy. He works methodically, patching up wounds as best he can, even performing an improvised surgery or two every day to get out shrapnel from wounds, but never when the wounds are too deep. He tells Tahir, honestly enough, that he isn’t a surgeon.
They don’t see Assaf at all. Sailor’s head lies in a corner of their cell, her face half-finished, still almost unrecognizable. Just as it had been a constant in Jared’s life, it now becomes a source of despair. Just days ago, all he’d wanted was to help her, find who she was, tell her family that she’d been found, that she could be put to rest. But now, the frantic desire to get away is always uppermost on his mind. There’s no real chance of escape, because the way out of the mines is closely guarded at all times. Rekha is also a source of worry: she’s been running a fever for a couple of days, and the antibiotics they’ve asked for don’t seem to be helping.
On the eighth day, when Jared has almost become used to his everyday routine, he’s bound again and dragged into the elevator that leads out of the mine, and shoved into the truck.
He doesn’t see Rekha again, and his desperate questions about her remain unanswered.
--
The new camp is in a field, canvas tents set up in a row. Jared is the only ‘doctor’ now, and he’s reduced to four hours of sleep every night. For the first few days he all but begs to be told about Rekha’s fate, but is met with blank stares from his captors. Tahir is the leader of the group, the only one who appears to know English, or perhaps he’s warned the others about talking to Jared.
‘Is this fucking Mercurochrome necessary?’ he says on the second day, flinging Jared’s list of drugs at his chest. ‘Do you know how fucking difficult it is to find?’
Jared shrugs. ‘Suit yourself. If you don’t get it, your people’s injuries are likely to turn septic.’
Tahir snatches up the piece of paper and stalks out of the tent, grumbling.
Some nights, lying awake before he waits for sleep to claim him, Jared wonders if Jensen even knows that he’s missing. If he’d even care if he did.
Three weeks later, Jared’s learned a lot more about the civil war in the country than he’d known earlier. The militants belong to an insurgent group known as the LTTE, a name he’s familiar with from his childhood: since the early 1980s, they’ve been fighting the government for a separate country of their own. Many members of the group are very young. All of them refer to themselves as freedom fighters rather than militants.
He speaks to a few of the men in broken Sinhalese, developing a strange sort of camaraderie with his captors and becoming a reluctant participant in the camp and its activities. He eats with them, borrows their cut-throat style razors to shave every other day. Tahir becomes a little more civil after he sees Jared getting along with the rest, even apologizing gruffly for having injured Jared. Some of the men come back from battle in bags, and their bodies are quickly burned on a communal pyre that’s been built for the purpose some distance away from the camp. Some of them come back still alive, and he can barely recognize them under the blood and the torn flesh.
Four weeks after they had fled the camp in the mines, the commandos invade. They gun down the militants with lethal precision. Jared stays in his tent, waiting to be found. There’s no excitement in him; even the adrenaline in his system seems to be defunct now. There’s just more of the deadly calm, filling him with inaction.
A few minutes after the gunfire dies down, he hears a familiar, impossible voice calling his name.
‘Jared! Jared!’
He stumbles to his feet and out of the tent.
‘Jared,’ Jensen says, his voice a half-sob, hoarse from screaming Jared’s name. ‘Jared, Jared, thank god.’
And then Jensen’s arms are around him, tight, squeezing like a vise, and Jared stumbles and falls, sending them both to the ground. ‘You can’t be here,’ Jared says, numb, beyond feeling. ‘You aren’t here.’
‘I’m here, Jay. I’m here.’
Masterpost | Part 3