Chapter 29 - Tailed Across The Channel

Of Publishers and Parisian Detours

Hey folks,

I hope you’re enjoying reading this section as much as I am - these chapters are all full of cloak-and-dagger spies and informers and hoodwinking and being five steps ahead.

We’re now introduced to a new character - John Parker of Scotland Yard, who tails our characters across countries, to see if they are going to be sneakily publishing the forbidden history of the 1857 rebellion.

This whole saga was the main thing that drew me to this plot. I wanted to write about cat-and-mouse games in foreign locales involving Indians. Abbas-Mastan tried that in Race and Race 2. There are far fewer fast red cars in my version, but this stuff is at least 75% fact.

A few interesting facts come together in this chapter:

• The British authorities got to everyone and prevented them from publishing Savarkar’s book.

• Savarkar found a completely ingenious way to publish his book far from the eyes of the authorities, which will be revealed in the following chapters.

• The Indian revolutionaries were tailed constantly by plainclothesmen from Scotland Yard. They enjoyed frustrating them. There will be more of that happening here.

I also couldn’t help throwing references to a well-known Indian publisher who tries to get politicians and other eminent, even if not well-known, personalities to spill their guts in books that she goes on to make into bestsellers. Ten points if you spot it!

Tailed Across The Channel

The clink of crystal and the low murmur of conversation filled the opulent lounge of the Savoy Hotel. Beneath glittering chandeliers, gentlemen in tailored suits lounged in leather armchairs while waiters in crisp white jackets moved deftly through the room. At a corner table, half-hidden behind a fern, Sir Curzon-Wyllie swirled the amber liquid in his glass and regarded his companion with a mixture of amusement and irritation.

“You seem to have aged a lot since we last met, old boy,” Rupert Rex said in his clipped accent.

“India tends to do that to one, Cheeky,” Sir Curzon-Wyllie said. Eton nicknames never died, “It makes a man older, but none the wiser”.