My thoughts seesawed between Harlan’s proposition and Sushmita, a hundred miles or so away. She’d said she’d get word to me as soon as possible. I wondered how. I didn’t have a telephone, and a telegram seemed risky under the circumstances. I resigned myself to the probability that I’d hear from her only when she and Willy returned to Bombay. And who knew when that might be?

Harlan, on the other hand, had sat there and watched me walk out on him. He didn’t try to stop me, talk sense into me, or even say goodbye. That troubled me. It was as if he wasn’t concerned. As if he had another card to play. I hated not knowing his intentions. He was a seasoned agent, after all. I was sure he’d run into tougher nuts than me in his career. And I’d felt so cool striding out of the coffee shop, leaving him with my bill to pay.

But I considered myself an intelligent if foolish guy. If I thought about it seriously, I might be able to figure his next move. He’d come calling again at some point. Or he’d try to win back my good graces. Or Ranjit would. He was the lead agent on this, after all. But Harlan was the persuader.

MONDAY, JULY 21, 1975, 3:22 P.M.

I took a taxi to Lower Parel to an address I’d found two days before.

Mukesh Sharma’s mother answered the door of the small, dark flat. She was dressed in a white cotton sari. A widow—I knew from the color. Her gray hair was tied into a long braid at the back. She spoke some English, but not well enough to make up for my lack of Hindi or Marathi or Punjabi, whatever was her first language. But I managed to communicate that I wanted to talk to her about her son.

Somewhat warily, she let me in and offered to serve me chai. I smiled, and she seemed to like that. Before long, we were chummy. She produced an old tin whose original purpose was no longer decipherable because the paint and the words had been worn off over the years. Inside the box were biscuits to dip in the tea. I made sure to take only one. Clearly she didn’t have much, and I didn’t need to be taking advantage of her goodness.

“Your son,” I said, “Mukesh. The police have detained him?”

She understood son and Mukesh, but not detained. I tried arrested but no dice. Jail? I asked. That worked.

Her eyes expressed the love and worry of a mother who didn’t know where to turn to help her son. Obviously, she didn’t have the means to bribe him out of jail. Nor did she have, I was sure, the connections to secure him a good lawyer.