Harbart’s eyes snapped open.

And saw clotted-cream bush shirt leaning over his face.

“Sleeping, eh? Then how can I sweep your suspicions away?”

Harbart jolted up in bed.

“Didn’t I tell you, I’d come back when it’s time? Arise, awake, O Harbart the Great. For I am about to change your fate.”

The man opened his briefcase and took out a bottle of booze. Took out two fine glasses. A pack of Classic cigarettes. A lighter.

“Go, you witless wanker—go take a piss and then come back here and squat tight. Don’t stare at me like a disobedient donkey. Do as I say. And you’ll jack off the jackpot, and I’ll be Genghis Khan.”

Thumping-hearted Harbart scudded off to pee. By the time he got back, the man had poured two drinks. Each took a glass, lit a cigarette. “Not cheers,” the man said, “not skol. We’re Bengali, and everyone in Bengal now says: Joy!”

“Joy!” Harbart repeated.

The man’s name was Surapati Marik. Property, fish farms, coal mines, mopeds—a broker for a wide variety of goods and services, he’d amassed an immense expanse of experience. Those who’d started computerized horoscopes in India—Mr. Marik has been in on that too. Now, desperate to start big-league professional soccer in India. Russi Mody, Ratan Tata, Chhabria, Ambani—he’d spent the last three years talking soccer to them all. But now, right now, he had Harbart in his sights. Now, casting a loving look at Harbart, he said, “Look, my boy, I don’t believe a word of all that ghost stuff. Don’t believe you’re hugger-mugger with the lot of them. Don’t disbelieve either. I just know one thing—a tilapiya in a tank will never grow to full size.”

“Meaning, dear sir, that I’m a tank-trapped tilapiya?”

“Or what? Carp in a lake? Or whale in the ocean? I believe in calling a spade a spade.”

“Then why don’t you get to the point? Cough it up, whatever you’re on about. Or I’ll soon be too sloshed to care.”

Surapati Marik closes his eyes. “Good, good,” he says, “All that small talk I also do not like. The point is this—I am going take you to the top level. Take myself with you too. Or I wouldn’t have got you this whisky for free. Whatever else you think, don’t think me a fool. I’ve thrown heaps and handfuls of Harbarts into the water. Then reeled them in again.”

Surapati Marik opens his eyes. “A gleaming glass office,” he continues, “AC-cool and classy. Pictures on the walls. A girl at a computer. The shelves shining with rows of pricey books on the subject. Music playing, softly-softly. Dim lights. Carpets. Five hundred rupees a visit. Minimum. Much more for special cases. Then Bombay, then Delhi. What message a dead politician is sending—to whisper it just once into the ears of a live politician. And thus to capture a few king-pins and big-bulls. Alongside, detachment, indifference. Then Dubai. Bahrain. Dead sheikhs, live sheikhs. Air India. Tata Sierra. RSVP. RIP … Oh, I can’t go on. Hang on, let me pour another. This stuff’s smooth—no?”