Escape from Kathmandu efk-1 Read online

  The nights on this hike back have been so long that I finally decided to write this, to occupy my mind. I hoped writing it all down would help, too; but the truth is, I’ve never felt lonelier. It’s been a comfort to imagine you going nuts over my story—I can just see you jumping around the room and shouting “YOU’RE KIDDING!” at the top of your lungs, like you used to. I hope to fill you in on any missing details when I see you in person this fall in Kathmandu. Till then—

  your friend, Nathan.

  III

  Well, blow my mind. When I finished reading that letter all I could say was “Wow.” I went back to the beginning and started to reread the whole thing, but quickly skipped ahead to the good parts. A meeting with the famed Abominable Snowman! What an event! Of course all this Nathan guy had managed to get out was “Huhn.” But the circumstances were unusual, and I suppose he did his best.

  I’ve always wanted to meet a yeti myself. Countless mornings in the Himal I’ve gotten up in the light before dawn and wandered out to take a leak and see what the day was going to be like, and almost every time, especially in the high forests, I’ve looked around and wondered if that twitch at the corner of my sleep-crusted eye wasn’t something abominable, moving.

  It never had been, so far as I know. And I found myself a bit envious of this Nathan and his tremendous luck. Why had this yeti, member of the shyest race in Central Asia, been so relaxed with him? It was a mystery to consider as I went about in the next few days, doing my business. And I wished I could do more than that, somehow. I checked the Star’s register to look for both Nathan and George Fredericks, and found Nathan’s perfect little signature back in mid-June, but no sign of George, or Freds, as Nathan called him. The letter implied they would both be around this fall, but where?

  Then I had to ship some Tibetan carpets to the States, and my company wanted me to clear three “videotreks” with the Ministry of Tourism, at the same time that Central Immigration decided I had been in the country long enough; and dealing with these matters, in the city where mailing a letter can take you all day, made me busy indeed. I almost forgot about it.

  But when I came into the Star late one sunny blue afternoon and saw that some guy had gone berserk at the mail rack, had taken it down and scattered the poor paper corpses all over the first flight of stairs, I had a feeling I might know what the problem was. I was startled, maybe even a little guilty-feeling, but not at all displeased. I squashed the little pang of guilt and stepped past the two clerks, who were protesting in rapid Nepali. “Can I help you find something?” I said to the distraught person who had wreaked the havoc.

  He straightened up and looked me straight in the eye. Straight-shooter, all the way. “I’m looking for a friend of mine who usually stays here.” He wasn’t panicked yet, but he was close. “The clerks say he hasn’t been here in a year, but I sent him a letter this summer, and it’s gone.”

  Contact! Without batting an eye I said, “Maybe he dropped by and picked it up without checking in.”

  He winced like I’d stuck a knife in him. He looked about like what I had expected from his epic: tall, upright, dark-haired. He had a beard as thick and fine as fur, neatly trimmed away from the neck and below the eyes—just about a perfect beard, in fact. That beard and a jacket with leather elbows would have got him tenure at any university in America.

  But now he was seriously distraught, though he was trying not to show it. “I don’t know how I’m going to find him, then…”

  “Are you sure he’s in Kathmandu?”

  “He’s supposed to be. He’s joining a big climb in two weeks. But he always stays here!”

  “Sometimes it’s full. Maybe he had to go somewhere else.”

  “Yeah, that’s true.” Suddenly he came out of his distraction enough to notice he was talking to me, and his clear, gray-green eyes narrowed as he examined me.

  “George Fergusson,” I said, and stuck out my hand. He tried to crush it, but I resisted just in time.

  “My name’s Nathan Howe. Funny about yours,” he said without a smile. “I’m looking for a George Fredericks.”

  “Is that right! What a coincidence.” I started picking up all the Star’s bent mail. “Well, maybe I can help you. I’ve had to find friends in Kathmandu before—it’s not easy, but it can be done.”

  “Yeah?” It was like I’d thrown him a lifebuoy; what was his problem?

  “Sure. If he’s going on a climb he’s had to go to Central Immigration to buy the permits for it. And on the permits you have to write down your local address. I’ve spent too many hours at C.I., and have some friends there. If we slip them a couple hundred rupees baksheesh they’ll look it up for us.”

  “Fantastic!” Now he was Hope Personified, actually quivering with it. “Can we go now?” I saw that his heartthrob, the girlfriend of The Unscrupulous One, had had him pegged; he was an idealist, and his ideas shined through him like the mantle of a Coleman lantern gleaming through the glass. Only a blind woman wouldn’t have been able to tell how he felt about her; I wondered how this Sarah had felt about him.

  I shook my head. “It’s past two—closed for the day.” We got the rack back on the wall, and the clerks returned to the front desk. “But there’s a couple other things we can try, if you want.” Nathan nodded, stuffing mail as he watched me. “Whenever I try to check in here and it’s full, I just go next door. We could look there.”

  “Okay,” said Nathan, completely fired up. “Let’s go.”

  So we walked out of the Star and turned right to investigate at the Lodge Pheasant—or Lodge Pleasant—the sign is ambiguous on that point.

  Sure enough, George Fredericks had been staying there. Checked out that very morning, in fact. “Oh my God no,” Nathan cried, as if the guy had just died. Panic time was really getting close.

  “Yes,” the clerk said brightly, pleased to have found the name in his thick book. “He is go on trek.”

  “But he’s not due to leave here for two weeks!” Nathan protested.

  “He’s probably off on his own first,” I said. “Or with friends.”

  That was it for Nathan. Panic, despair; he had to go sit down. I thought about it. “If he was flying out, I heard all of RNAC’s flights to the mountains were canceled today. So maybe he came back in and went to dinner. Does he know Kathmandu well?”

  Nathan nodded glumly. “As well as anybody.”

  “Let’s try the Old Vienna Inn, then.”

  IV

  In the blue of early evening Thamel was jumping as usual. Lights snapped on in the storefronts that opened on the street, and people were milling about. Big Land Rovers and little Toyota taxis forged through the crowd abusing their horns; cows in the street chewed their cud and stared at it all with expressions of faint surprise, as if they’d been magically zipped out of a pasture just seconds before.

  Nathan and I walked single file against the storefronts, dodging bikes and jumping over the frequent puddles. We passed carpet shops, climbing outfitters, restaurants, used bookstores, trekking agents, hotels, and souvenir stands, and as we made our way we turned down a hundred offers from the young men of the street: “Change money?” “No.” “Smoke dope?” “No.” “Buy a nice carpet?” “No.” “Good hash!” “No.” “Change money?” “No.” Long ago I had simplified walking in the neighborhood, and just said “No” to everyone I passed. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no.” Nathan had a different method that seemed to work just as well or better, because the hustlers didn’t think I was negative enough; he would nod politely with that straight-shooter look, and say “No, thank you,” and leave them open-mouthed in the street.

  We passed K.C.’s, threaded our way through “Times Square,” a crooked intersection with a perpetual traffic jam, and started down the street that led out of Thamel into the rest of Kathmandu. Two merchants stood in the doorway of their shop, singing along with a cassette of Pink Floyd’s The Wall. “We don’t need no education, we don’t need no thought control.” I almost g
ot run over by a bike. Where the street widened and the paving began, I pushed a black goat to one side, and we leaped over a giant puddle into a tunnellike hall that penetrated one of the ramshackle street-side buildings. In the hall, turn left up scuzzy concrete stairs. “Have you been here before?” I asked Nathan.

  “No, I always go to K.C.’s or Red Square.” He looked as though he wasn’t sorry, either.

  At the top of the stairs we opened the door, and stepped into the Austro-Hungarian Empire. White tablecloths, paneled partitions between deep booths, red wallpaper in a fleur-de-lis pattern, plush upholstery, tasteful kitschy lamps over every table; and, suffusing the air, the steamy pungent smell of sauerkraut and goulash. Strauss waltzes on the box. Except for the faint honking from the street below, it was absolutely the real item.

  “My Lord,” Nathan said, “how did they get this here?”

  “It’s mostly her doing.” The owner and resident culinary genius, a big plump friendly woman, came over and greeted me in stiff Germanic English.

  “Hello, Eva. We’re looking for a friend—” But then Nathan was already past us, and rushing down toward a small booth at the back.

  “I think he finds him,” Eva said with a smile.

  By the time I got to the table Nathan was pumping the arm of a short, long-haired blond guy in his late thirties, slapping his back, babbling with relief—overwhelmed with relief, by the look of it. “Freds, thank God I found you!”

  “Good to see you too, bud! Pretty lucky, actually—I was gonna split with some Brits for the hills this morning, but old Reliability Negative Airline bombed out again.” Freds had a faint southern or country accent, and talked as fast as anyone I’d ever heard, sometimes faster.

  “I know,” Nathan said. He looked up and saw me. “Actually, my new friend here figured it out. George Fergusson, this is George Fredericks.”

  We shook hands. “Nice name!” George said. “Call me Freds, everyone does.” We slid in around his table while Freds explained that the friends he was going to go climbing with were finding them rooms. “So what are you up to, Nathan? I didn’t even know you were in Nepal. I thought you were back in the States working, saving wildlife refuges or something.”

  “I was,” Nathan said, and his grim do-or-die expression returned. “But I had to come back. Listen—you didn’t get my letter?”

  “No, did you write me?” said Freds.

  Nathan stared right at me, and I looked as innocent as I could. “I’m going to have to take you into my confidence,” he said to me. “I don’t know you very well, but you’ve been a big help today, and the way things are I can’t really be…”

  “Fastidious?”

  “No no no—I can’t be over-cautious, you see. I tend to be over-cautious, as Freds will tell you. But I need help, now.” And he was dead serious.

  “Just giving you a hard time,” I reassured him, trying to look trustworthy, loyal, and all that; difficult, given the big grin on Freds’s face.

  “Well, here goes,” Nathan said, speaking to both of us. “I’ve got to tell you what happened to me on the expedition I helped in the spring. It still isn’t easy to talk about, but…”

  And ducking his head, leaning forward, lowering his voice, he told us the tale I had read about in his lost letter. Freds and I leaned forward as well, so that our heads practically knocked over the table. I did all I could to indicate my shocked surprise at the high points of the story, but I didn’t have to worry about that too much, because Freds supplied all the amazement necessary. “You’re kidding,” he’d say. “No. Incredible. I can’t believe it. Yetis are usually so skittish! And this one just stood there? You’re kidding! In-fucking-credible, man! I can’t believe it! How great! What?—oh, no! You didn’t!” And when Nathan told about the yeti giving him the necklace, sure enough, just as Nathan had predicted, Freds jumped up out of the booth and leaned back in and shouted, “YOU’RE KIDDING!!”

  “Shh!” Nathan hissed, putting his face down on the tablecloth. “No! Get back down here, Freds! Please!”

  So he sat down and Nathan went on, to the same sort of response (“You tore the fucking BRIDGE DOWN!?!” “Shhhh!!”); and when he was done we all leaned back in the booth, exhausted. Slowly the other customers stopped staring at us. I cleared my throat: “But then today, you um, you indicated that there was still a problem, or some new problem… ?”

  Nathan nodded, lips pursed. “Adrakian went back and got money from a rich old guy in the States whose hobby used to be big game hunting . J. Reeves Fitzgerald. Now he keeps a kind of a photo zoo on a big estate. He came over here with Adrakian, and Valerie, and Sarah too even, and they went right back up to the camp we had in the spring. I found out about it from Armaat and came here quick as I could. Right after I arrived, they checked into a suite at the Sheraton. A bellboy told me they came in a Land Rover with its windows draped, and he saw someone funny hustled upstairs, and now they’re locked into that suite like it’s a fort. And I’m afraid—I think—I think they’ve got one up there.”

  Freds and I looked at each other. “How long ago was this?” I asked.

  “Just two days ago! I’ve been hunting for Freds ever since, I didn’t know what else to do!”

  Freds said, “What about that Sarah? Is she still with them?”

  “Yes,” Nathan said, looking at the table. “I can’t believe it, but she is.” He shook his head. “If they’re hiding a yeti up there—if they’ve got one—then, well, it’s all over for the yetis. It’ll just be a disaster for them.”

  I supposed that was true enough. Freds was nodding automatically, agreeing just because Nathan had said it. “It would be a zoo up there, ha ha.”

  “So you’ll help?” Nathan asked.

  “Of course, man! Naturally!” Freds looked surprised Nathan would even ask.

  “I’d like to,” I said. And that was the truth, too. The guy brought it out in you, somehow.

  “Thanks,” said Nathan. He looked very relieved. “But what about this climb you were going on, Freds?”

  “No prob. I was a late add-on anyway, just for fun. They’ll be fine. I was beginning to wonder about going with them this time anyway. They got themselves a Trivial Pursuit game for this climb, to keep them from going bonkers in their tents. We tried it out yesterday and you know I’m real good at Trivial Pursuit, except for the history, literature and entertainment categories, but this here game was the British version. So we get a buzz on and start to playing and suddenly I’m part of a Monty Python routine, I mean they just don’t play it the same! You know how when we play it and you don’t know the answer everyone says ‘Ha, too bad’—but here I take my turn and go for sports and leisure which is my natural forte, and they pull the card and ask me, ‘Who was it bowled three hundred and sixty-five consecutive sticky wickets at the West Indian cricket match of 1956,’ or whatever, and they like to died they were laughing so hard. They jumped up and danced around me and howled. ‘Yew don’t know, dew yew! Yew don’t have the slightest fookin’ idear who bowled those sticky wickets, dew yew!’ It was really hard to concentrate on my answer. So. Going with them this time might have been a mistake anyway. Better to stay here and help you.”

  Nathan and I could only agree.

  Then Eva came by with our food, which we had ordered after Nathan’s epic. The amazing thing about the Old Vienna Inn is that the food is even better than the decor. It would be good anywhere, and in Kathmandu, where almost everything tastes a little like cardboard, it’s simply unbelievable. “Look at this steak!” Freds said. “Where the hell do they get the meat?”

  “Didn’t you ever wonder how they keep the street cow population under control?” I asked.

  Freds liked that. “I can just imagine them sneaking one of them big honkers into the back here. Wham!”

  Nathan began to prod dubiously at his schnitzel. And then, over a perfect meal, we discussed the problem facing us. As usual in situations like this, I had a plan.

  V

&
nbsp; I have never known baksheesh to fail in Kathmandu, but that week at the Everest Sheraton International the employees were bottled up tight. They didn’t even want to hear about anything out of the ordinary, much less be part of it, no matter the gain. Something was up, and I began to suspect that J. Reeves Fitzgerald had a very big bankroll indeed. So Plan A for getting into Adrakian’s room was foiled, and I retired to the hotel bar, where Nathan was hidden in a corner booth, suitably disguised in sunglasses and an Australian outback hat. He didn’t like my news.

  The Everest Sheraton International is not exactly like Sheratons elsewhere, but it is about the quality of your average Holiday Inn, which makes it five-star in Kathmandu, and just about as incongruous as the Old Vienna. The bar looked like an airport bar, and there was a casino in the room next to us, which clearly, to judge by the gales of laughter coming from it, no one could take seriously. Nathan and I sat and nursed our drinks and waited for Freds, who was casing the outside of the hotel.

  Suddenly Nathan clutched my forearm. “Don’t look!”

  “Okay.”

  “Oh my God, they must have hired a whole bunch of private security cops. Jeez, look at those guys. No, don’t look!”