The Last Theorem

16 HOMEGOING

Gamini refused to listen to any talk of American breakfasts but simply signaled to the flight attendants. Who produced a fine Sri Lankan meal—string hoppers of woven rice, a rich curry of meat and potatoes, and a plate of poppadoms—causing Ranjit’s eyes to bulge in wonder. “Tell me, Gamini,” he ordered, already chewing, “when did you get to be God? Isn’t this an American plane?”

Gamini, sipping a cup of tea that had come from the fields around Kandy, shook his head. “It’s a United Nations plane,” he said, “which happens to have an American crew, only it’s not on either UN or U.S. business right now. We just borrowed it to go after you.”

“And ‘we’ is—?”

Gamini shook his head again, grinning. “Can’t tell you, or anyway not right now. Pity. I knew you’d be interested, and as a matter of fact, I was considering asking you if you wanted to join us, when you went off on your little cruise.”

Ranjit didn’t put his spoon down, but he held it motionless while he gave his friend a long and not entirely friendly look. “You’re telling me that you’re such an important person that you can just borrow a plane like this to run your errands for you?”

This time Gamini laughed out loud. “Me? No. They didn’t do it for me. They did it because my dad requested it. He’s got this high-up UN job, you see.”

“And what job is that?”

“Can’t tell you that, either, so don’t ask. And don’t ask what country you’ve just got out of, either. Finding where you were wasn’t hard, after we got hold of Tiffany Kanakaratnam—Oh,” he said, taking note of Ranjit’s response to the child’s name, “that’s something I can tell you about, anyway, at least up to a point. I, uh, used my father’s position to run my own computer search for you. Sort of the way you got your math teacher’s password; I fed in every name I could think of that might possibly know anything about where you were—Myra de Soyza, and Maggie and Pru, and all your teachers, and all the monks that worked for your father, and the Kanakaratnams. No,” he said, again answering the look that had appeared on Ranjit’s face, “there wasn’t anything to embarrass you. We were just looking for meetings or conversations you’d had, after the day you disappeared. We got nothing. Didn’t get any data on the adult Kanakaratnams at all, which I think means they were shot out of hand along with the rest of the pirates by the first court that tried them. But I kept adding names as I thought of them, and when I put the names of the four children in, we found them. They’d been arrested, of course, but they were too young to be tried even on a piracy charge, so they were taken to some relatives near Killinochchi, and Tiffany gave us a description of the people who took you away. She described the helicopters and where you washed ashore; it took a lot of searching after that, to be sure, but at last I located you. You might have sat there for years more.”

“And the people who took me were?”

“Oh, Ranj,” Gamini said, “there you go again. I can’t exactly tell you that, except, I guess, in sort of general terms, without mentioning any specifics. Have you ever heard of extraordinary rendition? Or the Law Lords’ findings on torture?”

Ranjit hadn’t, but Gamini filled him in after his friend had woken from a deep sleep that had lasted hours. Back in the bad old days some great powers, such as the United States, were on record as opposed to using torture to extract information. However, they kept finding themselves in possession of some captives who surely knew things that were important but that they would never voluntarily say. Torture was an unreliable way of making people give truthful answers—at a certain stage almost anyone would say whatever their interrogators wanted to hear, true or not, just to make it stop—but these great powers had no better way available. So they worked out a little plan. Captives of that sort were handed over to the intelligence services of some other country, one that had never promised to abjure the infliction of pain as a technique in questioning, and then the information would be passed back to the United States or whatever other great power had requested it. “And that,” Gamini finished, “was extraordinary rendition. ‘Extraordinary’ because that’s what it was. ‘Rendition’ in the sense of rendering—meaning, ‘turning over’—like rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, as the Christians say.”

“Huh,” Ranjit said thoughtfully. “And that’s still going on?”

“Well, sort of. The superpowers don’t commission it anymore. There’s been too much publicity. Anyway, they don’t have to because there are plenty of uncommitted countries that automatically pick up and question people with inexplicable criminal records. Like pirates, who are beyond the pale for them anyway, and especially like pirates who seem to be hiding their identities. Like you, they thought, because of the name business. And then they trade off information to the sanctimonious countries, because that’s where the Law Lords’ decision comes in. The Lords did a commission on information derived from torture way back when, and concluded that, for moral reasons, such information could never be used in any legal proceedings. On the other hand, it would be perfectly proper, they said, to turn it over to, say, the police.” He looked up as the two women were advancing on them. “And now we have to buckle up because I guess we’re coming in to Bandaranaike. Only, listen. You wouldn’t believe what deals we had to make and what promises we had to give to spring you loose from where you were. So help me keep those promises. No matter what, you don’t ever tell anybody anything that can identify any of the people who held you. Or I’ll be in deep trouble, and so will my dad.”

“I promise,” Ranjit said, meaning it. And then he added mischievously, “You said you checked on the girls. How’s good old Maggie doing?”

Gamini gave him a pained look. “Oh, good old Maggie’s fine,” he said. “She married a U.S. senator a couple of months ago. Sent me an invitation to the reception, as a matter of fact. So I went to Harrods and picked out a nice fish slice to send her, but I didn’t go myself.”