Thirty thousand feet below Emirates Flight 502, the Arabian Sea glitters in the sunlight like burnished steel. Ripples form a complex pattern on its surface, interlocking ridges of water spread across a vast area. Much like what Keiran would see if he were to watch a small patch of ocean from a sailboat. A fractal pattern, repeated at every scale. Like a coastline, whose peninsulas and outcrops inevitably include perfect miniatures of themselves, the tiniest element governed by the same laws as whole continents and oceans. Keiran takes a moment to appreciate the elegance of the universe, then returns his attention to the chess game on the seat-back screen before him.

"Don't you get bored of winning every time?" Estelle asks from beside him.

Keiran looks over to her, and to Angus in the seat beyond. The colourful Scotsman and his pixieish American girlfriend with tattoos and purple-streaked hair stand out amid the airplane's mostly Indian and Arabic passengers like mustard splashes in a coal mine.

"No," Keiran says. "Their computer plays the Alekhine Defense every time. That's truly bizarre. I'd love to meet whoever programmed it."

"But you still beat it every time."

"Deep Blue it's not. But every game is different."

"Is it too much to ask for you to focus on what we're here for?" Angus asks. "You haven't taken that laptop out since we left London. I thought you had work to do."

Keiran pauses a moment to consider possible replies. Then he says, "I don't know about you, Angus, but I'm here because you fucked up colossally. Which puts you in a curious position vis-à-vis lecturing me on how exactly I spend my time."

"Christ. I don't know how many times I can say it. I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"As if sorrow and ignorance somehow make it better. I'd actually rather it was deliberate and you felt good about it."

"My information was that it would be perfectly safe," Angus says.

"Yes. Exactly the information I passed on to Danielle. Which very nearly got her raped and murdered. If I'm not very receptive to your complaints just now, it's because I try not to listen to idiots."

Estelle puts her hand on Angus's.

"Keiran, please," she says. "People make mistakes. Then other people accept it, and we all move on."

"I'll be happy to move on. Soon as I'm confident you won't make any more catastrophic errors."

"And how exactly are we meant to convince you of that?" Angus asks.

Keiran shrugs and returns to the Alekhine Defence.

** *

The town of Calangute comes as an unwelcome shock. The biggest tourist destination on the Goa coast, it is a technicolour vision of Tourist Hell, screeching with shouts and car horns and unmuffled motors, smelling of dust and exhaust fumes and too much humanity, full of cheap hotels slapped together out of uneven concrete. Its streets are clogged with fat blustering English tourists who resent the country they have travelled to for being insufficiently like Britain, Indian hustlers with angry eyes who physically pull tourists into their shops, taxi drivers who tell outrageous lies to get fares, and middle-aged Europeans who will not speak to anyone with dark skin except with peremptory orders. Even Calangute's long, glorious beach cannot redeem it.

"Don't worry," Estelle says in the taxi, noting Keiran's appalled expression. "You get used to it. And anyway we're staying near town, not in town."

"Thank Christ for that."

The crowds and buildings thin out as they drive north, until there is only a narrow strip of cafes, restaurants, and lodges to their left, between the road and the beach. The right side of the road borders waterlogged grassland patrolled by a few cows. They cross a tidal river via a concrete tunnel bridge, and enter an area of spacious estates hidden behind high walls. The driver follows Angus's directions to a pair of spiky iron gates, the only aperture in a stone wall topped with mortared broken glass. Angus exits the car to punch a five-digit code into a numbered panel next to the gate. He shields his hand, but Keiran instinctively watches the relative motions of his arm as it jabs back and forth, and guesses the code is either 13854 or 46087.

The house is blue, three-storied, with two satellite dishes visible on top. Keiran identifies the dishes as Sky India TV and a VSAT Internet connection. He is pleased to see the latter. The driveway winds through lush, well-maintained gardens, to mahogany doors adorned by a brass knocker shaped like the Sanskrit symbol for Om. The verandah runs right around the house.

"I see we'll be roughing it," Keiran says.

Angus smiles. "Builds character."

"You never did explain how exactly your crew of unemployed anarchists and social castaways came into all this money."

"No," Angus says, as he pays the taxi driver. "I didn't."

Keiran takes his laptop bag and small backpack, both of which he carried on his lap, and watches as Angus and Estelle unload their bewildering amount of luggage from the trunk and other half of the back seat. "Nor did you explain why you've got enough gear for an Antarctic voyage."

"That we can tell you," Estelle says. "We decided Goa might be a good secondary base of operations."

Keiran raises his eyebrows. "Setting up shop in the tiger's mouth, eh?"

"As long as we keep it quiet," Angus says, "the, shall we say, flexible regulatory environment might work to our advantage."

"Could you give us a hand with some of this?" Estelle asks, overloaded with bags nearly as big as she.

Keiran considers. "I could." He makes no move to help.

"Jesus. Are you always such a prick?"

Keiran looks at her. He doesn't know Estelle at all well. Until receiving Danielle's emailed report of danger and disaster, all his contact with their group had been via Angus himself. "No," he says after a moment, walks over, and picks up a heavy pack. He has every right to be angry with Angus, but none to take it out on Estelle as well. "Sorry."

She nods, partially mollified. Angus draws out a large, ornate, old-fashioned key from an inner pocket, and they follow him into the luxuriously appointed house.

"We should ring Danielle, let her know we're here," Angus says. Keiran says, "I believe her guru frowns on telephones. We'll have to go to the ashram ourselves."

** *

Keiran is drained by thirteen hours of airplanes and airports, his clothes are thick with sweat from India's alien heat and humidity, but he connects his laptop to the house's satellite uplink and checks email before he showers. This journey is the longest he has gone without Internet access for several years. He is relieved to be back online. He was beginning to feel exiled, stripped of one of his physical senses.

A sign in the washroom warns in bold type that toilet paper must be discarded in the small lidded wastebin, rather than the toilet, lest the finicky Indian sewer system choke on it. Another sign warns that the water is not drinkable. A few tiny gecko lizards dart about on the roof and walls, flicking their tongues. Keiran doesn't mind their presence. Even a luxury holiday home like this cannot be made both gecko-proof and livably cool. And he likes geckos. Their extraordinary climbing abilities are a miracle of science; gecko paws are covered by filaments so fine that they form a powerful quantum bond with any surface, allowing them to climb on anything like Spider-Man. Plus they eat mosquitoes. Indian tourist authorities claim that malaria has been eradicated in Goa, but the World Health Organization's web site treats that claim with considerable skepticism.

He dresses in gray slacks and gray T-shirt. Normally he wears all black, but that would be near-suicidal in the Indian heat. His day-pack is black canvas decorated with a Linux penguin. When he descends to the foyer, Angus and Estelle are waiting for him, clean and newly dressed, he in cargo pants and a red shirt, she in a green sarong and a sky-blue blouse filigreed with black. It's an eye-catching ensemble; with the purple streaks in her hair she looks like the top half of a rainbow. Keiran admits to himself that he resents Angus a little for having so pretty a girlfriend.

"Shall we?" Angus asks. "The taxi is waiting."

"Shouldn't we just hire a driver for the week?" Keiran asks.

Angus and Estelle exchange a look before she says, "We wouldn't be comfortable with that."

"Why on earth not?"

"When you hire a taxi, you're dealing with an independent local entrepeneur. That's fine. But hiring a driver for an extended period is like having a servant. It would be too close to exploitation."

Keiran stares at her. "It's exactly the same thing either way. You pay a man to drive you around."

Angus shakes his head. "There's a difference."

Keiran considers arguing, but just shakes his head at their Alice In Wonderland politics and follows them to the taxi.

** *

The Satori Ashram is essentially a disorganized summer camp for unhappy Western women. Its inhabitants sleep in individual A-frame huts but bathe, cook, eat, take ayurvedic lessons, and do yoga together, in big tents or out in the open. Keiran sees Tibetan monks in saffron robes, Indian men in designer clothes, and the occasional tanned Western man in locally purchased drawstring pants, but most of the population consists of white women, early twenties to late fifties, with stringy hair and grimly reverent expressions. A few of them wear saris, generally with Western clothes on beneath. Teams of women wash pots, prepare foods, chop herbs, clear weeds, and clean huts. There is no obvious nerve center; past the parking lot, in which a half-dozen cars and twenty motorcycles rest, several different paths lead into the ashram's large property, past haphazardly strewn buildings. Keiran, Angus, and Estelle wander for several minutes before the third woman they ask recognizes Danielle's name.

"Oh, she's not with us, she's doing the teacher training with Tara and Guru Virankasulam," she says, speaking the last name reverentially. "They'll be at the other end of the property."

It is a five-minute walk to a tentlike structure with open walls, a hardwood floor and pillars, and a canvas canopy rather than a roof, where nearly fifty people, almost all of them women, all of them extremely fit, are in the midst of a strenuous yoga class. A redheaded woman and a bald, elderly Indian man conduct the class. Both are clad in saffron robes. The guru calls out what Keiran supposes to be the Sanskrit name for a stance, and then, as the men and women attain and sustain the pose in question, the redheaded woman goes among them, adjusts their stances, sometimes forcefully, and scolds them for minute failures.

It is an impressive spectacle, this sea of athletic, sweat-glistening bodies moving in unison, their loud Darth Vader breaths in perfect sync, as they lift themselves off the ground, balance precariously on hands or heads or one foot, and twist and fold their bodies, human origami, into poses that must near the limit of human capability. It takes Keiran a little while to pick out Danielle. He hasn't seen her in more than a year, and she has cut her hair very short. He sighs with relief, to finally see her in the flesh and know she is all right, that his dreadful mistake that so endangered her can after all be repaired.

They retreat to a crude wooden bench beneath a copse of trees, within sight of the canopied wooden floor, to wait for the class to end.

"That's pretty intense," Estelle says. "I mean, I do ashtanga yoga too, I can go through the whole primary series, but nothing like that."

Keiran nods. He too is impressed. Danielle practised yoga when they dated, but never approaching this level.

A shirtless, heavily muscled man, almost hairless yet vaguely apelike, approaches them. His long arms are tattooed with vaguely military sigils, and he has bare feet and a black eye. He pauses, squints for a moment, and says, "Are you Keiran?"

Keiran looks at him. "Who wants to know?"

"You're here for Danielle?"

Already out-informed, Keiran doesn't want to let anything more slip, but Estelle says, "Yes."

"You must be Estelle. And Angus. I'm Laurent. Justice International."

Hands are shaken all around. Laurent all but crushes Keiran's hand.

"Thanks for coming," Laurent says.

"Thanks for helping her out," Keiran says stiffly, already deciding that Danielle is too good for this lout.

Angus says, "You knew Jayalitha."

"I did," Laurent agrees.

"Are you sure about what happened to her? Is there any chance..."

"I didn't myself see it, and they left no evidence," Laurent says, "but don't let that stir false hope. There is no doubt. I'm sorry."

Angus looks at Estelle, who takes his hand and clasps it between hers.

"Those bastards," Angus says. "They will pay. I promise you, I will see them pay for that. Jaya was, she was ... extraordinary."

Laurent nods.

"What happened to her?"

"They burned her in her own house. With her family and all the evidence she gathered. By the time I arrived there was nothing but ashes and bones."

Angus grimaces. Estelle closes her eyes for a moment. A silence follows.

"How did you know her?" Laurent asks.

"We met her when we came here a few years ago," Estelle says.

Angus picks up the story. "Jaya was working in a hostel in Cochin, saving up money to marry her husband. It was what they quaintly call a 'love match' around here. Meaning both families were appalled and there were death threats all around. Her husband was from Kishkinda, as you may know. I don't remember his name."

"Tamhankar," Laurent says.

Angus nods, satisfied. Keiran suspects he knew Jaya's husband's name perfectly well; that was a test. "Yes. He's Kannada, and Jaya is Tamil." He pauses and his face tightens again. "Was. Was Tamil. They will regret what they did to her. I know that sounds hollow, but it's truth."

"I heard it was a man called Vijay, from the Bombay office, who killed her," Laurent says. "It might have been him that captured me and interrogated Danielle. If so I think he has military training. He was new, I'd never seen him before."

"Vijay," Angus says, tasting the name. "From the Bombay office. Keiran. I want you to look into that. Vijay."

Keiran nods.

"When did it happen?" Angus asks.

"Two days before Danielle arrived."

"Just ten days ago," Estelle muses. "Jesus. What an evil thing to do."

Another silence.

Laurent says, "Danielle will be very happy to see you all."

"She won't be long now," Estelle says, "They're in shivasana."

Keiran glances at the yoga class, whose members are now lying back on their mats, arms and legs splayed out to the sides, eyes closed, silent. It reminds him of the famous picture of the Jonestown victims in the 1970s, hundreds lying dead in neat rows.

"I've been doing my due diligence," Angus says to Laurent. "Reading up on your group. You have an impressive track record. I think we could do good work together."

Laurent nods. "I was thinking that too. Common cause."

"You've got the organization there in the field. We've got money, and contacts, and certain other advantages. Like him," he says, indicating Keiran. "Your ground war, my air war, together we might beat these bastards."

The yoga class disperses, its members glowing with sweat and endorphin bliss. When Danielle sees Keiran, her face stretches into a wide grin and she pelts across the field like a delighted child. She rushes to him and he hugs her, tightly at first, until she grunts with pain and pulls away.

"Easy," she gasps, "I'm still a bit bruised."

"Shit. Sorry." He backs off. "Is that from..."

Danielle nods awkwardly as Laurent casually drapes his arm around her.

"Oh Jesus," Keiran says. "Those fuckers. Dani, I don't know what to say. I am so sorry."

"What did they do to you?" Estelle asks, her voice soft.

"They just hit me the one time. That's all. This little tinpot dictator with a lathi. But then Laurent showed up and saved the day."

"After she released my handcuffs," Laurent says. "It was a joint effort."

"It was entirely my fault," Angus says. "I sent the passport. I told Keiran it would be perfectly safe. You have every right to be absolutely livid at me. I had no right to ask you to go. I never imagined they might do that to you, but obviously I should have. I'm, fucking, I don't even know the right word, abashed and mortified and grovelling don't even come close to my level of guilt."

"Mine too," Keiran mutters. "For believing you weren't full of shit."

Angus gives him a weary look.

"Well," Danielle says. "Just don't let it happen again, okay? Once in a lifetime is more than enough. Trust me. But, you know, as long as you can get us out of the country, all's well that ends well." She smiles faintly. "There were even certain fringe advantages." She looks up at Laurent, who leans down and kisses her.

"Speaking of getting out of the country," Keiran says, trying to hide his annoyance at the way Laurent is pawing Danielle, making it clear she is his property. He digs in his penguin-pack and produces a digital camera. "I need pictures of the both of you. Laurent, over there, with the sky behind you, that will be easy to edit out."

"What's this for?" Danielle asks.

"Your new passports."

Laurent blinks as the camera flashes. "You can give us passports?"

"Fake ones. But good enough to fool Indian customs on the way out."

"What about when we land?" Danielle asks, taking Laurent's place.

Keiran snaps a picture of her. "You just can't imagine how it happened, but somehow you lost your passport in the airport in India. It's not hard to prove you're American. They might put you in a holding cell overnight, that's all, until they confirm your identity."

"And they might call the Indian embassy to see if we're wanted by the authorities here," Laurent says skeptically.

"Indeed they might. But the Indian embassy will say they never heard of you."

Laurent looks at him. "How can you be sure?"

"Trust me."

"Keiran, I don't mean any offense, but trusting you is how Danielle got into trouble in the first place."

Keiran looks at him expressionlessly.

"Don't worry," Danielle says. "If he says they won't know, they won't know."

Keiran explains, "It's what I do."

** *

Keiran, Angus and Estelle decide to visit Anjuna's beach before returning to the house. Anjuna's meandering main road, lined by restaurants, hostels, shops, Internet cafes, travel agencies and money changers, extends for two miles from the highway junction to the sea. At the waterfront, beachfront cafes overlook the surf, and a nightclub hidden behind tall fences stands on a high bluff. The town is far more easy-going than Calangute's seething chaos. White people are everywhere, most of them young and very fit, on foot, on motorcycles, eating in cafes, throwing Frisbees on the beach. As they descend the sandy path that leads to the beach, Angus is twice offered ganja and Ecstasy by local men ostensibly selling souvenirs and psychedelic paintings. Keiran supposes Angus's dreadlocks make him a magnet for drug dealers.

"So what do you think?" Estelle asks Keiran, as they walk over rocks and onto the long strip of soft, golden sand.

"Of what?" Keiran says.

Angus says, "Our new friend."