And, of course, I’d been fooled by Birgit, too. In the coffee shop of the Blue Diamond Hotel, she told me she’d been born in West Berlin to a German mother and an American father—an OSS officer—a year or so after the war ended. That she’d moved to Virginia at the age of seven when her mother was finally granted a visa, and she’d grown up on the outskirts of D.C., perfectly bilingual and determined to be a good American.

She was a DEA special agent, working mostly on drug cases involving Europe, for obvious reasons. Recruited straight out of Duke for her linguistic skills and superior test scores, Birgit was one of twenty-six female DEA agents. She went by Brigitte back in the States. Christ, did everyone have to have a different name? I was just Danny Jacobs.

Goddamn Willy, I thought as I lay on the bed. Couldn’t he have been a prick to me? Or vaguely indifferent? I might not have felt the conflict that troubled me now. And, most of all, couldn’t he have had a less attractive lover? One who didn’t light a fire in my heart?

I wanted to disappear. Leave them all behind and start anew back home. Be anonymous. Marry a girl who’d never thrown her lot in with a smuggler, a pimp, a drug dealer.

But then a thought occurred to me. For the first time since I’d realized my manservant was a well-trained cop—and the hayseed bigot I’d hated was, in fact, a disciplined, principled civil servant who’d been playing me for a fool—for the first time, yes, I realized that this was a chance. Here was a way to rid myself of the obstacle to my happiness. Willy. Was there a way to hand him over to the DEA, the CBI, or CID, and have Sushmita all to myself? It was the darkest impulse I’d ever experienced. Could I do it? Betray Willy and win the girl? The girl I couldn’t get out of my mind, even as I told myself she was a stranger to me.

TUESDAY, JULY 15, 1975, 8:02 P.M.

A light kiss on my forehead woke me.

“Mazha Danny. Wake up, my darling. It’s time for cocktails. I can’t bear it without you. Come.”

I stared up at her, wanting to tell her to go back to her man. But at the same time, wanting to … Never mind.

“What happened today, Danny?” she asked in a half whisper. “Something’s changed.”

At dinner, I told my hosts that I’d gone to the station that afternoon and bought my ticket back on the Bombay Express.

“You’re leaving us?” asked Sushmita. “When?”

“Tomorrow. I have to get back to work before I lose my job.”

“But what about the bomber?”

“I’ll ask Lokhande for help. I’m sure he can do something to protect me.”