Читать книгу Dirty Little Secret - Jon Stock - Страница 24

Lakshmi sat on the edge of the bed at the Fort, holding a sterilised syringe in one hand, her phone in the other. Marchant had only been gone ten minutes, but she couldn’t wait any longer. As requested, she had flirted with the guard in the gatehouse, distracting him without having to flash her breasts. By the time she had returned to the room, the guard at the bottom of the stairs had gone too, dragged into one of the empty rooms by Marchant. The alarm would be raised shortly, either when the guard regained consciousness or his absence was noticed, but by then she would be immune to the storm raging around her.

She looked at the needle’s point, turning it in the light of the bedside lamp. Her damaged left wrist was sore in its cast, the most painful it had been since she had left hospital. But it wasn’t hurting enough for what she was about to do.

Everything had been going so well before she was sent to Morocco to spy on Daniel Marchant. For two clean, healthy years she had worked for the Agency, signing up amid the optimism of a new presidency. Life as a field officer hadn’t always been what she had hoped. At times it had been hell. In her first year at Langley, Spiro had constantly reminded her that she was a woman in a man’s world. He had also tried to sleep with her, but she had dealt with that. The career change was working: her bad habits had been left behind at medical school.

Her father would have been happier if she had continued with her studies at Georgetown University, but he hadn’t known her secret – which was ironic, given that it was an act of rebellion against him. She would ring him now, explain the real reason why she had dropped out, prepare him for the shame it would bring on the family. He would be at home, checking emails at the kitchen table, worrying about the call from the IRS.

She brought his number up on the phone’s screen and looked at the image of him: never smiling, always formal, as if he was holding his breath. Then she held the phone to her ear, listening to the distant ring.

‘Dad? It’s me. I need to tell you something.’

‘Ennamma Kannu? I’m so glad you called.’ She could hear him place a muffled hand over the phone, letting her mother know it was their only daughter. ‘I’ve just had another call from the IRS. The whole thing was a hotchpotch, a terrible mix-up. They’re not investigating me any more.’

‘That’s good,’ Lakshmi said. Spiro must have moved quickly. ‘That’s so good.’

‘I’m just glad we didn’t waste time worrying unnecessarily. I always knew the charges were false.’

Lakshmi had to smile. Who was he kidding? He had nearly worried himself to death. Just as he had constantly worried about her over the years. And she had always done his bidding, forgoing alcohol, unsuitable men, meat, even caffeine. Her rebellion, when it finally came, had been extreme.

‘I wanted to say,’ she began, ‘that I know you were mad at me for dropping out of Georgetown –’

‘Baba, you know that’s not the case. And we’re so proud of you now, the important government work you’re doing.’

‘I know, but –’ she paused, holding the syringe. ‘It was a difficult time. I wasn’t well. I needed a change of direction.’

She thought back to the first and only meeting she had attended, when her habit was becoming hard to hide. Twenty strangers – hobos, storekeepers, journalists, a librarian – sat on plastic chairs in a circle, united by narcotics. Up until that anonymous gathering, her addiction had been private. Nobody knew about the stolen hospital supplies of diamorphine hydrochloride, better known as heroin. Shame had made her cunning, and she had concealed her secret life with the ingenuity of a spy. Certainly the vetters at Langley never found out when they later questioned her fellow students and tutors.

As she had sat there, listening to other people’s stories, the futility of her own rebellion had become all too apparent. No one she cared about had noticed anything. To her friends and family she was still the same clean-living, hard-working Indian girl from Reston, Virginia. Only a group of strangers knew that one of the brightest medics on campus was mainlining. For two weeks she sweated and vomited, vowing never to take drugs again.

‘You studied hard,’ her father said.

‘I’ve got to go,’ she replied, pursing her lips, fighting back the tears.

She had studied hard all her life, that was the problem. At her father’s behest she had spent every waking hour at her books, shunning nights out in Georgetown, politely declining dates, turning her back on life, all so she could study. It wasn’t his fault, she realised that now. Hard work was the curse of the immigrant, a response to the constant need to justify oneself. What was the point of telling him that she hadn’t always been studying in Georgetown? That she had nearly thrown her life away, the opportunities he had given her, and was in danger of doing so again?

‘I just wanted to check you were OK, about the IRS and everything,’ she said.

‘It’s all good. Everything’s fine.’

She said her goodbyes and put the phone down on the bed, looking again at the needle. The paramedic was to blame. After diagnosing that a single gunshot wound had shattered the lower radius and ulna of her left forearm, he had injected her with a 30mg ampoule of diamorphine hydrochloride. It had dulled the pain, like the good analgesic it was, but it had also mimicked the body’s endorphins, triggering a cascade of euphoria that had swept up her student past and laid it out in front of her in all its sparkling glory.

She sat back, trying to relax. Her dressing gown was drenched in sweat. Rolling up one sleeve, she tied a pair of knickers around her upper arm, tightened the elastic as hard as she could and flexed her hand again. Then she broke open two glass ampoules, one full of sterilised water, the other containing powdered diamorphine hydrochloride BP.

Although she knew the door was locked, she still looked up to check as she drew the sterilised water into the needle and squirted it into the powder. She shook the solution gently and then searched for the vein at the top of her forearm, sank back against a pillow and sobbed with joy.