There was no traffic at that hour in such a remote area, so when the headlights appeared behind me, I worried Chhotu and Bikas might have managed to improvise a solution for the missing gearshift. I picked up my pace, heading for a collection of huts ahead. If I could reach them in time, I might be able to escape. But the car was closing fast.

As it neared, the driver blew the horn, which sounded as if it had been installed backward and was blaring into the car instead of out. I’d heard Sushmita use the Mercedes’ horn on a few occasions. It trumpeted loud, muscular blasts, so I knew immediately it was not Chhotu and Bikas behind me. I waited for the car, a small green Fiat, to pass. It rolled to a stop instead.

“Get in, Dan,” came a voice from behind the headlights.

“Ranjit!”

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked, panting for breath.

He shifted into first, popped the clutch, and we were off. He told me he’d been following me, but got trapped behind the buffaloes.

“You were following me? How?”

“I’ve been watching the bungalow for weeks,” he said. “I was the fellow selling fruit on the footpath.”

“That was you? I must have passed you five or six times and never noticed.”

“Nobody pays attention to a fruitwallah sitting cross-legged on the pavement.”

“But how did you find me now?”

“I’ve been driving up and down the road, the lanes, looking for a white Mercedes. What happened to you? How did you get away?”

I gave him the story, from Willy’s discovery of my betrayal to Birgit’s unmasking to my escape, including my all-American tackle of Bikas. He said my wrist needed attention right away, and we sped off to Ruby Hall on the far side of Koregaon Park. I was X-rayed—multiple fractures—and wrapped in a heavy cast, what the doctor and nurses called a plaster. Ranjit told me the police had located the Mercedes and towed it away. Chhotu and Bikas were nowhere to be found.

An hour later, a squad of CID—the state criminal investigation police—supported by about thirty Poona cops, entered the bungalow in Koregaon Park, guns raised. They secured the place in a matter of minutes. It was empty anyhow. Abandoned. Just hours earlier, it had been filled with residents, servants, and me. Now? Nothing. Even Willy’s study had been cleared out. The ledgers were gone. And so was Sushmita.

With nowhere else to go, I checked into the Blue Diamond Hotel. Ranjit, working undercover, was staying there as well. He told me his boss had raised a stink about it. Said a CBI agent shouldn’t be relaxing in a luxury hotel, but he’d relented.