Invisible Armies

Part 2: Goa - Chapter 11

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.