On the beach the two men jumped to their feet and pulled out an American football. Another shiver of contempt raced through him, as he watched them pitch the elongated ball back and forth. They called that a game, gridiron football. Absurd. Big men running into each other. Not like real football—what they called soccer. Or the most sublime game in the world: cricket.

He looked at his watch. Soon, he thought. Just one phone call away. He checked his Nokia to make sure it was working. It was. Balan was known as a fanatic about details.

He turned the binoculars on the families again. Since they were about to die, he couldn’t help wondering where they were on the ladder of spirituality. A Hindu, Balan had an appreciation of the concept of reincarnation—the concept of returning to earth after death in some form that echoes spiritual justice for your past life. His philosophy was a bit at odds with traditional Hindu views, though, since he believed that though he devoted his life to death and torture he was doing higher work here on earth. In an odd way, perhaps by hastening the families’ deaths—before they had a chance to lead even more impure lives—he might hasten their spiritual growth.

He didn’t need this idea to justify what was about to happen, of course. All that mattered was that his mentor, Devras Sikari, had singled him out to kidnap the husband—and kill anybody with him—then torture the man to find out what he’d learned on his recent trip to Paris.

There are more than 300,000 deities in the Hindu religion, but Sikari, though flesh and blood, was higher than them all, in Balan’s mind. In India, the social and economic caste system is impossibly complicated, with thousands of sects and subsects. But the religious text the Bhagavad-Gita defines only four castes: the highest are the Brahmin spiritual leaders, the lowest, the working-class Sudras.

Devras Sikari was in the Kshatriya caste, that of spiritual warriors and leaders. It was the second most spiritual class, below only the Brahmin. The Bhagavad-Gita says that those in the Kshatriya caste are “of heroic mind, inner fire, constancy, resourcefulness, courage in battle, generosity and noble leadership.” That described Sikari perfectly. His first name, Devras, meant servant of God. The surname meant “hunter.”

The man took the names when he was “twice born,” a phrase that has nothing to do with reincarnation, but refers to the coming-of-age ceremony for Hindu youths. Balan believed a name was important. His own first name, for instance, meant poet, and he did indeed have an appreciation for beauty and words. Mahatma Gandhi’s surname meant “greengrocer”—and was a perfect description of the mild-mannered commoner who changed the history of his country though peace and passive resistance.