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   Derek Jarvis woke up, his head pounding, in a mountain cabin he had never seen before, and then he found the note about the bomb.
   The cabin is booby-trapped. If you try to leave without following instructions, you’ll be blown to pieces. Use the phone for help. It’s your only chance to survive. You get only one call, and that call is preset on speed dial #1. If you’re feeling stupid, go ahead and disregard these instructions. We have  champagne on ice to toast the detonation.
   Jarvis was a businessman with a reputation for making enemies— and laughing at them—but he’d never thought things would come to this.
   He turned the note over to see if there was any sign of who had written it.
   All he found was a postscript.
   One more thing. The bomb is on a timer. No telling when it might go off. Adds to the suspense, don’t you think?
   Jesus.
   Jarvis wondered if the sonofabitch who put him in the cabin had at least left him some aspirin for his headache. Wait a minute. He looked back at the front side of the note. It wasn’t some lone maniac who had done this to him. The note said we have champagne on ice.
   Two or more SOBs had put him in this fix.
   Hell, it might have been enough people to fill a football stadium. Jarvis was a guy who bought companies, stripped them drown to their core assets, threw thousands of people out of work, and hired hundreds back at one-third the wages and no benefits. The stockholders in DeJa, Inc. made out like bandits and Jarvis lived like the bandit king.
   Not that he promoted himself in those terms.
   He styled himself as the Charles Darwin of capitalism. Making American business survival fit to withstand the onslaught of international competition. This public persona conveniently overlooked the fact he outsourced every job he could.
   Jarvis studied the phone that stood in a charger cradle on the table where he’d found the note. It was an Iridium 9550A, the same model he owned. It might be his phone. With text messaging and a distress signal key. Had those bastards had thought of—
   Yeah, of course they had. They were hoping he’d get tricky and blow himself up. Laugh themselves silly while they slurped their champagne. The best joke would be if he went boom while he was talking on his own phone.
   But the fact that he was familiar with the Iridium told him a few things. The phone’s battery would last thirty hours on standby; the charger wasn’t plugged in. Glancing around, he didn’t see an electrical outlet in the cabin. If he played along, and pressed #1, and got somebody on the phone, he’d have three hours of talking time. Assuming the battery started at a full charge.
   So, the way the game was probably set up, he’d have thirty hours at the outside before the phone became inoperative and the timer on the bomb went off. No, wait a minute. He didn’t know how long the phone had been sitting there before he woke up. Safer to think he had maybe twenty-four hours at the most. Yeah, a day, that would be more like it.
   Or the bastards might have figured he’d hit #1 right away. Set the bomb to blow with that in mind: the three-hour talking limit for the phone. He might have already wasted ten minutes of the last three hours of his life. Those fuckers.
   God, his head hurt. He had to get something to ease the pain or he didn’t stand a chance. First, though, he had to focus. He studied his surroundings.
   The place was a shithole. It got blown up, the property loss wouldn’t come to a thousand dollars. The cabin was square, fifteen feet each way. The rafters, walls, and floorboards were all made of the same rough pine. There was one door and one window. The window was set in the wall to the left of the door and had no curtains. Bright sunlight reflecting off virgin snow streamed through the dirty pane of glass and revealed every slipshod detail of the place’s construction.
   Including the fact that the door had no lock. Just a latch.
   Jarvis walked over and studied the latch. It was a lift-and-pull setup, as primitive as you could get. Iron Age technology. No security at all. He looked over his shoulder. No need for a lock on this place. The only furnishings were a bare, pee-stained mattress on a rusty iron frame and a scarred oak table with no chairs.
   And a small Styrofoam cooler in the far corner.
   Jarvis looked back at the door. Lifting the latch and walking out looked like the easiest thing in world. This whole damn situation, even if he had no idea how he’d wound up in the middle of it, could all be a big joke. Or the bomb could be rigged to the other side of the door where he couldn’t see it.
   He went to the window to see what was out there.
   A lot of damn big mountains was what. Heavy with snow and thick with evergreens. The mountains were far too tall to be in the Eastern U.S. Somewhere west then: the Rockies, the Cascades, the Sierra Nevada. That meant someone had gone to a lot of trouble to haul him all the way across the country—if he was still in the States—because the last place he remembered being was Boston.
   Home.
   The thought he might never see his beautiful Beacon Hill townhouse again hit him like a steel-toed boot to the gut. Beacon Hill itself had been all but leveled long ago, but the Olympian perspective of the neighborhood’s residents was eternal: They looked down on the rest of the world as a matter of course.
   Now, here he was trapped in an oversized outhouse.
   There was no way he could allow it to be the place where he met his end.
   He stepped over to the cooler and reached for it, but stopped short.
   What if the bomb was in there? Lift the lid and goodbye Mr. Jarvis.
   Sonofabitch. He couldn’t live in fear of making the smallest move, even if he was down to his last few hours. For all he knew—assuming there was a damn bomb—a sneeze might set it off. He lifted the lid and saw three objects inside, none appearing to be explosive.
   There was a full liter bottle of spring water, the cap seal intact. An empty liter bottle of the same brand of water, not capped at all. That was his toilet, he assumed. And, thank God, a tin of twelve Bayer aspirin tablets.
   He took the bottle of water and the aspirin tin to the soiled bed, taking care to sit between the pee stains. That was when he noticed what he was wearing: a red plaid wool shirt, worn blue jeans, and down at the heel work boots. Someone had thought to humiliate him in every regard. He opened the tin and sniffed the tablets. Aspirin. He popped two into his mouth and washed them down with the water, after sniffing that, too.
   From where he sat, he looked directly at the phone.
   And the note, the edges of which now curled up.
   He looked back at the window. Maybe that was the way out. He could see no wiring on it. No sort of sensor or alarm. But then this was a wireless world. You could pick up your Iridium 9550A and call anywhere in the world.
   He tried to think of where pressing #1 would get him.
   Maybe a direct line to his kidnappers who would laugh and tell him to kiss his ass goodbye while they detonated their bomb.
    If that was their plan, so be it.
   He’d get in a last, “Fuck you,” before they could kill him.
   Derek Jarvis bounced to his feet, grabbed the phone, and pressed #1.
   And he heard the bomb go off.


   He heard the bomb go off?
   Come on. Nobody heard the blast that killed them.
   Then Jarvis heard the first ring of the phone call. So he still had to be alive.
   A voice said in accented English, “Superintendent Aasim Vaze.”
   Jarvis recognized the accent and asked, “Have I called India?”
   The voice repeated, “This is Superintendent Aasim Vaze.” And then elaborated, “Head of the Lucknow Police Department.” And then very clearly stated, “Uttar Pradesh, India.”
   Jarvis heard a rumbling outside and asked, “Could you please hold for just a second?”
   Without waiting for the Indian’s assent, he hurried to the window. He saw, in the distance, an avalanche scour the side of a peak. Then came the bang of a second explosion on another far off mountain, followed by another avalanche. Jarvis realized what he was seeing: the work of a ski patrol eliminating hazardous conditions.
   “Hello,” came the voice from the phone. “Are you still there?”
    Jarvis raised the Iridium to speak, he noticed what looked like a manila envelope stuck to a tree not far from the cabin. Turning away from the window, he said, “Yes, I’m here. My name is Derek Jarvis. And you said your name is Aasim Vaze, and you’re the superintendent of police in Lucknow, India.”
   A man who never forgot or forgave a grudge, Jarvis had a faultless memory.
   “That is correct,” Vaze replied.
   Jarvis said, “I’m calling, sir, in the hope you can save my life. Do you know anything about bombs?”
   When Vaze spoke there was a note of interest in his voice.
   “What kind of bomb?”
   “Let me start at the beginning,” Jarvis told him.


   The problem with that was Jarvis wasn’t sure where to begin. The last clear memory he had before waking up in the cabin was being at his cigar club: The Smoke-Filled Room. He started from there and told Superintendent Vaze the rest.
   “Do you smoke alone?” the superintendent asked.
   “At times. I also smoke with friends.”
   “And casual acquaintances?”
   The question made Jarvis frown.
   “Yes, now that you mention it. Sometimes a new member of the club will stop by my table and introduce himself.”
   “When was the last time that happened?”
   Jarvis’s frown deepened. “The last time was—Damnit, did someone spike my cigar?”
   “Perhaps he offered you one of his.”
   That was it. Exactly what happened. Only he couldn’t recall the bastard’s name or face.
   With his memory, that meant the cigar must have been drugged.
   Vaze said, “Your CIA tried to kill Fidel Castro using exploding cigars. It’s not surprising someone has revisited the idea with a new twist.”
   Jarvis heard the Indian cop chuckle and he didn’t like it.
   “You think this is funny, the situation I’m in?” Jarvis asked.
   “I think it is ironic. You see, I am presently barricaded in my office, trying to keep a number of my enemies out. I told them I have a bomb.”
   “Good God,” Jarvis said. “Do you?”
   “I’ll keep that to myself. But I was expecting a call from an English journalist so I could make my predicament an international cause célèbre. But then you rang my office instead.”


  “I really can’t tie up this line long,” Superintendent Vaze said.
   “Didn’t you hear me say my life is at stake?” Jarvis asked.
   “I did, and I told you mine is also in peril,” Vaze responded. “Publicizing my situation might be the only thing that will save me.”
   “You’re going to rely  on the media to save you?” Jarvis couldn’t believe this guy.
   “The BBC.” The Indian’s English took on a British gloss.
   Jarvis couldn’t help himself, he laughed.
   “Best of luck to you, Mr. Jarvis,” Vaze told him.
   “No, wait! I didn’t tell you the most important thing about me. I’m wealthy.”
   Just as when he’d mentioned the bomb, Jarvis heard the interest in Vaze’s voice.
   “Millions or billions?” the cop asked.
   “Billions,” Jarvis replied. “Many of them.”


    Jarvis went back to the window. Yeah, that was a manila envelope stuck to the base of a fir tree out there. He wondered if the bomb was in there. It would have to be pretty small to fit inside the envelope. And at that distance, could a small bomb do him any harm?
   “Mr. Jarvis,” Vaze said with irritation, “I asked if you know of our caste system.”
   Jarvis regained focus. He usually didn’t let his mind wander.
   “Yes, I have a cursory knowledge. I do business in your country.”
   Hearing his own words, started Jarvis off down another divergent path. Something he’d just said was important. But he didn’t want to lose the thread of the conversation again. He brought his attention back to the superintendent.
   “I am a member of the Kshatriya caste,” Vaze said. “The warrior caste.”
    Jarvis said, “I thought all that was outlawed by your constitution.”
   “Yes, of course, it is. And all Americans are created equal.”
   This time both men laughed.
   “My point is,” Vaze continued, “despite your money, I think you are a Vaishya, a merchant.” Jarvis had no trouble reading between the lines: The damn Indian considered him an inferior.
   “On your side of the world, perhaps,” he said. “Over here, I’m what is known as a Boston Brahman.”
   Putting the uppity cop right back in his place.
   Which, oddly enough, he seemed to appreciate.
   “That is a very good thing to know. Perhaps we can help each other.”
   That was when it hit Jarvis, the idea that had teased him earlier.
   Vaze was his tech support line.


   “You see,” Superintendent Vaze said, “I earned my current position by both merit and bribery.”
   Jarvis was surprised by Vaze’s candor, but then he might be blown to pieces soon, too.
   “Tell me about the merit,” Jarvis said.
   “Before becoming superintendent, I was the inspector in charge of our encounter squad.”
   “Encounter squad?”
   “You Americans might call it a shootout squad.”
   “Is that what you do?” Jarvis asked. “Shoot people?”
   “Criminals, yes.”
   “Then that’s what we’d call it. Why don’t you just make arrests?”
   “Our courts are corrupt and overburdened with cases.”
   “Your courts are corrupt, and you got your job through bribery?”
   Some country, Jarvis thought. But who cared as long as the labor was cheap?
   “I understand the same flaws afflict the United States, Mr. Jarvis.”
   “Yes, they do. But so far we manage without encounter squads.”
   And American labor was getting cheaper all the time, too.
   “Yes, so far. Would you like me to continue?” Vaze asked.
   Jarvis didn’t want to alienate the man, not before he got free.
   “Please do.”
   “As head of the encounter squad, I killed eighty-six members of criminal syndicates. What you Americans would call mafias.”
   The guy didn’t sound like he was bragging, Jarvis thought. He came across like a ballplayer saying, yeah, he hit .340 for the season, but he figured he could get near .400 next year.
   “Very impressive, superintendent. So why did you have to pay your bribe?”
   “Because that is our tradition. New recruits to the police pay 150,000 to 300,000 rupees for  their jobs; I paid two million rupees for mine.”
   Jarvis did the math. The superintendent had paid a little better than 51K for his job. From what any good American businessman knew of Indian pay scales, he could conclude…
   “That’s a bit more than your annual salary, isn’t it?”
   “My government salary.”
   “Of course. Through your own thrift and ingenuity, you’ve prospered.”
   “I would never admit this to anyone else,” Vaze said, “but there may be a Vaishya somewhere in my lineage.”
   Jarvis said, “Meaning you’ve done so well someone else has come along and offered your sponsor a bigger bribe to take your place. And dispose of you in the bargain.”
   “A precise reading, I’m afraid. All that’s keeping this evil plan from succeeding is my enemies are unable, at the moment, to find underlings willing to sacrifice their own lives.”
   “But you and I know they will,” Jarvis said. “There are always hotshots who thinks they can beat the odds.”
   “Another unfortunate truth. So you see, I really must ring off. Plead my case to the world that in India even our system of corruption is being corrupted. The government won’t like that; it could be bad for business.”
   Jarvis could, indeed, see that.
   But he suggested an alternative to Vaze. “How about you offer your boss a mega-bribe to stay on the job? You think thirty-nine million rupees would do it?”
   A million bucks.
   Jarvis had tipped a yacht broker that much for finding him the right boat.
   “You are a Brahman indeed, Mr. Jarvis. Yes, I think that would do the trick.”
   “But first we get me out of my box,” Jarvis said.


   The superintendent had a good memory, too. He recalled what Jarvis had told him the size of the cabin was: 15X15.
   “A space as small as that will not require a very big explosion to both kill you and destroy the structure.” The Indian cop also recalled hearing the place was shoddily built.
   “How big?” Jarvis asked.
   “With a military-grade plastic explosive, a lump not much bigger than your fist. Assuming you have a normal hand, but—”
   “But what?”
   Vaze continued, “As its name implies, this explosive has great plasticity. A fairly small quantity might be stretched without breaking around the interior perimeter of your cabin.”
   “If it’s spread out like that, would it still kill me?” Jarvis asked.
   “Quite nicely. Imagine being at the center of a square with four shock waves rushing toward you at more than 8,000 meters per second.”
   Unfortunately for Jarvis, he did just that, and almost dropped the phone.
   But then Vaze told him, “Plastic explosives require a detonator.”
   “What’s that?”
   “One of two things: a smaller explosion, such as a detonator cord or a blasting cap,to set off the larger explosion, or a spark.”
   “What kind of a spark?”
   “Electrical.”
   “But this dump doesn’t have any electricity.”
   Vaze didn’t respond immediately, and Jarvis heard a horrendous racket emanating from India. Sounded like gunfire. Christ Almighty, had someone just killed his tech support guy? It would be bad enough if he had to call back and start over, but if he didn’t even have that opt—
   “Mr. Jarvis?” Vaze was back, breathing a little hard.
   “Yes, I’m here. Are you all right?”
   “Just a bit of a probe from the opposition. I had to send a few brash fellows on to their next lives. Got a bit nicked myself. I’m afraid I’ll have to double the fee I require.”
   Bastard, Jarvis thought. At the same time, though, he admired Vaze’s shrewdness.
   Fucker had more than one Vaishya in his family tree.
   “Done. Now what about the detonator?”
   “Oh, yes. In fact, there is an electrical device in your cabin. You are holding it in your hand.”
   Horrified, Jarvis held the Iridium at arm’s length and gaped at it.
   He was still able to hear Vaze tell him. “Whatever you do, don’t disconnect. I’m afraid I’m going to be busy again for the next few minutes.”


   In a natural progression for a man in his position, Jarvis thought of all the things that might go wrong. Vaze might get killed. The battery in the phone might die and set off the bomb. The phone might be the bomb and blow his head off. He put it down  in a corner of the cabin, grabbed the stinking mattress off the bed frame and covered himself with it in the far corner. Probably a futile gesture, but you did what you could. He thought of something else he could do. He tipped the oaken table on its side and put it in front of the phone. Another barrier. The he went back to crouching behind the mattress.
   None of which was going to him any good if he had a heart attack before the bomb went off. Which he just about did when he heard a loud BOOM. He prayed it hadn’t come from the phone, that it was just the ski patrol coming closer, clearing a nearby slope of unstable snow. But he had to know for sure what happened.
   He emerged from behind the mattress and went to the window. He didn’t see any signs of a new planned avalanche. He did see the manila envelope again. That damn thing was really beginning to annoy him. But he didn’t have time for it now. Overcoming enormous apprehension, he crossed to the phone and picked it up.
   “Superintendent Vaze,” he asked in soft voice, “are you there?”
   There was no answer.
    Jarvis could almost smell smoke and charred flesh.
   But if he wasn’t supposed to break the connection, wouldn’t breaking it from Vaze’s end also be fatal for him?
   The superintendent came back on the phone.
   “Mr. Jarvis,” he said, “things are getting a bit sticky here. It looks as though there’ll be no escape for me now.”
   “You set off your bomb?”
   “One of them. Took out enough of the blighters to buy myself a respite of an hour or two. But I’ve killed too many of them now for bribery to remain a viable notion. I’m afraid I’ve also cast myself in too unfavorable a light to get any international media sympathy.”
   Jarvis thought fast. “Is there anyone you might like me to send your seventy-eight million rupees to?”
   Vaze chuckled.
   “You do not believe you will be reincarnated, Mr. Jarvis?”
   “If there’s an afterlife, superintendent, I’m afraid mine will be in a broiler.”
   The Indian must have liked the image. He laughed again.
   “I do have a favorite mistress,” he said. “She could use the money.”
   Vaze provided a name and address. Jarvis committed them to memory and promised to provide the funds—if Vaze got him safely out of the cabin.
   The superintendent told Jarvis his theory. Once Jarvis had opened the phone connection between them, they had to keep it open to prevent the bomb in the cabin from going off. More than likely, they also had to keep their dialogue going to prevent the detonation.
   Jarvis said, “You mean if you’d been away from the phone a little longer…”
   “I really was killing them as fast as I could, Mr. Jarvis, I assure you.”
   “Yes, of course. This is all just starting to wear on my nerves. But if we have to keep talking, how do I get away?”
   “I have an idea,” Vaze said. “I will patch a third party into our call. A male with an American accent.”
   “How are you going to do that?”
   “As you suggested, Mr. Jarvis, I have invested my money wisely. One of my holdings is a call-answering enterprise named Friendly Tech. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.”
   “Are you kidding?” Jarvis asked. “I use Friendly Tech for all my outsourced tech calls.”
   And in that instant both men knew what had brought them together.


   “It’s a conspiracy,” Jarvis said. “Everybody who’s ever gotten pissed off talking to Friendly Tech, they’re taking it out on both of us.”
   Vaze said, “They are the ones who bribed the chief minister to dispose of me.”
   “And they wanted me to be on the phone with you when you died,” Jarvis said. “So I’d hear my tech support call get cut off and know I was cooked, too.”
   “May all these swine be reborn as Dalits with leprosy,” Vaze snarled.
   “Damn right. But if you help me get out of here, I’ll make it my life’s work to hunt down every last one of them, and I have the means to do it.”
   “An encounter squad to destroy these criminals? Yes, that is perfect.”
   Vaze worked his end of the telecom system to bring what sounded to Jarvis like a California surfer dude into the conversation.
   “I’m sorry, man…I mean, Mr. Vaze, what do you want me to say?”
   “It does not matter, Rajiv,” the superintendent told. “Just wait until I tell you, then read your script.”
   “Right, man.”
   “Mr. Jarvis,” Vaze said, “may Shiva the destroyer guide your efforts.”
   Jarvis liked that. Thought if he got out alive he might have alter his world view.
   “Thanks. First thing, though, I send the money to your mistress. How much time do you think I have once I put the phone down?”
   “The bastards might be using voice recognition software,” Vaze said. “Rajiv might not fool it for long. Figure no more than thirty seconds.”
   “Right,” Jarvis said. “I’ll get even for us.”
   Superintendent Aasim Vaze replied, “Vengeance. Now go. Rajiv, read your script.”
   Derek Jarvis dropped the phone, yanked the door open, and ran from the cabin.
   The last thing he heard from India was an American sounding voice saying, “Hi, this is Kyle, may I have your name please? Mary? How can I help you, Mary?”


   The snow was thigh-deep on Jarvis and he didn’t quite get all the way behind the big fir tree in time. So he got to see what happened. Four bombs went off: bang, bang, bang, bang. The phone must have been the detonator and the plastic explosives had to be stretched around the outside of the cabin.  Jarvis thought the choreography of the controlled demolition was a thing of beauty. Each wall fell inward: one, two, three, four. And the roof dropped neatly atop the pile.
   Apparently, the cabin had been built with more care than he’d appreciated.
   Had he been inside, he’d have been smashed flat.
   Maybe he’d have somehow survived the initial structural collapse.
   But he wouldn’t have lived for long, and his last minutes would have been agony.
   As it was, it looked like he was going to have a hell of a time getting off the mountain on foot. He might wind up dying anyway. Without redeeming his promises to Inspector Vaze.
   He braced an arm against the fir tree and lay his head against it as a wave of self-pity washed over him. Then something more tangible struck him; something pointed poked his forehead. He looked up and saw the corner of the manila envelope he’d seen from the cabin.
   He grabbed it, pulled it off the tree, and tore it open. Inside he found another Iridium 9550A and another note. The note told him to use the phone to get help to determine which paths down the mountain the ski patrol had set with explosives, which paths his lunatic captors had mined, and the single path the was his only hope for survival.
   That was when Derek Jarvis knew. He would never have his revenge. And whatever time he had left to live would be spent making tech support calls.

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