Escape from Kathmandu efk-1 Read online

  “The truth is I dragged him away before he could,” said Sarah.

  Nathan got us back to the problem at hand. “We’ve still got to get the yeti out of Kathmandu, and Adrakian knows we’ve got him—he’ll be searching for us. How are we going to do it?”

  “I’ve got a plan,” I said. Because after my meal with Buddha I had been thinking. “Now where is Buddha’s home? I need to know.”

  Nathan told me.

  I consulted my maps. Buddha’s valley was pretty near the little airstrip at J—. I nodded. “Okay, here’s how we’ll do it…”

  XII

  I spent most of the next day through the looking glass, inside the big headquarters of the Royal Nepal Airline Corporation, getting four tickets for the following day’s flight to J—. Tough work, even though as far as I could tell the plane wasn’t even close to sold out. J—wasn’t near any trekking routes, and it wasn’t a popular destination. But that doesn’t mean anything at RNAC. Their purpose as a company, as far as I can tell, is not so much to fly people places as it is to make lists. Waiting lists. I would call it their secret agenda, only it’s no secret.

  Patience, a very low-keyed pigheadedness, and lots of baksheesh are the keys to getting from the lists to the status of ticket-holder; I managed it, and in one day too. So I was pleased, but I called my friend Bill, who works in one of the city’s travel agencies, to establish a little backup plan. He’s good at those, having a lot of experience with RNAC. Then I completed the rest of my purchases, at my favorite climbing outfitters in Thamel. The owner, a Tibetan woman, put down her copy of The Far Pavilions and stopped doing her arm aerobics, and got me all the clothes I asked for, in all the right colors. The only thing she couldn’t find me was another Dodgers cap, but I got a dark blue “ATOM” baseball cap instead.

  I pointed at it. “What is this ‘ATOM,’ anyway?” Because there were caps and jackets all over Nepal with that one word on them. Was it a company, and if so, what kind?

  She shrugged. “Nobody knows.”

  Extensive advertising for an unknown product: yet another Great Mystery of Nepal. I stuffed my new belongings into my backpack and left. I was on my way home when I noticed someone dodging around in the crowd behind me. Just a glance and I spotted him, nipping into a newsstand: Phil Adrakian.

  Now I couldn’t go home, not straight home. So I went to the Kathmandu Guest House, next door, and told one of the snooty clerks there that Jimmy Carter would be visiting in ten minutes and his secretary would be arriving very shortly. I walked through into the pretty garden that gives the Guest House so many of its pretensions, and hopped over a low spot in the back wall. Down an empty garbage alley, around the corner, over another wall, and past the Lodge Pleasant or Pheasant into the Star’s courtyard. I was feeling pretty covert and all when I saw one of the Carters’ Secret Service men, standing in front of the Tantric Used Book Store. Since I was already in the courtyard, I went ahead and hurried on up to my room.

  XIII

  “I think they must have followed you here,” I told our little group. “I suppose they might think we really were trying a kidnapping yesterday.”

  Nathan groaned. “Adrakian probably convinced them we’re part of that group that bombed the Hotel Annapurna this summer.”

  “That should reassure them,” I said. “When that happened the opposition group immediately wrote to the King and told him they were suspending all operations against the government until the criminal element among them was captured by the authorities.”

  “Hindu guerrillas are heavy, aren’t they?” said Freds.

  “Anyway,” I concluded, “all this means is that we have a damn good reason to put our plan into effect. Freds, are you sure you’re up for it?”

  “Sure I’m sure! It sounds like fun.”

  “All right. We’d better all stay here tonight, just in case. I’ll cook up some chicken soup.”

  So we had a spartan meal of curried chicken soup, Nebico wafers, Toblerone white chocolate, jelly beans, and iodinated Tang. When Nathan saw the way Buddha went for the jelly beans, he shook his head. “We’ve got to get him out of here fast.”

  When we settled down, Sarah took the bed, and Buddha immediately joined her, with a completely innocent look in his eye, as if to say: Who, me? This is just where I sleep, right? I could see Nathan was a bit suspicious of this, worried about the old Fay Wray complex maybe, and in fact he curled up on the foot of the bed. I assume there weren’t any problems. Freds and I threw down the mildewed foam pads I owned and lay down on the floor.

  “Don’t you think Buddha is sure to get freaked by the flight tomorrow?” Sarah asked when the lights were off.

  “Nothing’s seemed to bother him much so far,” I said. But I wondered; I don’t like flying myself.

  “Yeah, but this isn’t remotely like anything he’s ever done before.”

  “Standing on a high ridge is kind of like flying. Compared to our bike ride it should be easy.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Nathan said, worried again. “Sarah may be right—flying can be upsetting even for people who know what it is.”

  “That’s usually the heart of the problem,” I said, with feeling.

  Freds cut through the debate: “I say we should get him stoned before the flight. Get a hash pipe going good and just get him wasted.”

  “You’re crazy!” Nathan said. “That’d just freak him out more!”

  “Nah.”

  “He wouldn’t know what to make of it,” Sarah said.

  “Oh yeah?” Freds propped himself up on one arm. “You really think those yetis have lived all this time up there among all those pot plants, and haven’t figured them out? No way! In fact that’s probably why no one ever sees them! Man, the pot plants up there are as big as pine trees. They probably use the buds for food.”

  Nathan and Sarah doubted that, and they further doubted that we should do any experimenting about it at such a crucial time.

  “You got any hash?” I asked Freds with interest.

  “Nope. Before this Ama Dablam climb came through I was going to fly to Malaysia to join a jungle mountain expedition that Doug Scott put together, you know? So I got rid of it all. I mean, do you fly drugs into Malaysia is not one of the harder questions on the IQ test, you know? In fact I had too much to smoke in the time I had left, and when I was hiking down from Namche to Lukla I was loading my pipe and dropped this chunk on the ground, a really monster chunk, about ten grams. And I just left it there! Just left it lying on the ground! I’ve always wanted to do that.

  “Anyway, I’m out. I could fix that in about fifteen minutes down on the street if you want me to, though—”

  “No, no. That’s okay.” I could already hear the steady breathing of Buddha, fast asleep above me. “He’ll be more relaxed than any of us tomorrow.” And that was true.

  XIV

  We got up before dawn, and Freds dressed in the clothes that Buddha had worn the day before. We pasted some swatches of Buddha’s back fur onto Freds’s face to serve as a beard. We even had some of the russet fur taped to the inside of the Dodgers cap, so it hung down behind. With mittens on, and a big pair of snow boots, he was covered; slip the shades onto his nose and he looked at least as weird as Buddha had in the Sheraton. Freds walked around the room a bit, trying it out. Buddha watched him with that surprised look, and it cracked Freds up. “I look like your long-lost brother, hey Buddha?”

  Nathan collapsed on the bed despondently. “This just isn’t going to work.”

  “That’s what you said last time,” I objected.

  “Exactly! And look what happened! You call that working? Are you telling me that things worked yesterday?”

  “Well, it depends on what you mean when you say worked. I mean here we are, right?” I began packing my gear. “Relax, Nathan.” I put a hand on his shoulder, and Sarah put both her hands on his other shoulder. He bucked up a bit, and I smiled at Sarah. That woman was tough; she had saved our ass at the Sheraton, an
d she kept her nerve well during the waiting, too. I wouldn’t have minded asking her on a long trek into the Himal myself, really, and she saw that and gave me a brief smile of appreciation that also said, no chance. Besides, double-crossing old Nathan would have been like the Dodgers giving away Steve Garvey. People like that you can’t double-cross, not if you want to look yourself in the mirror.

  Freds finished getting pointers in carriage from Buddha, and he and I walked out of the room. Freds stopped and looked back inside mournfully, and I tugged him along, irritated at the Method acting; we wouldn’t be visible to anyone outside the Star until we got downstairs.

  But I must say that overall Freds did an amazing job. He hadn’t seen all that much of Buddha, and yet when he walked across that courtyard and into the street, he caught the yeti’s gait exactly: a bit stiff-hipped and bowlegged, a rolling sailor’s walk from which he could drop to all fours instantly, or so it seemed. I could hardly believe it.

  The streets were nearly empty: a bread truck, scavenging dogs (they passed Freds without even a glance—would that give us away?), the old beggar and his young daughter, a few coffee freaks outside the German Pumpernickel Bakery, shopkeepers opening up… Near the Star we passed a parked taxi with three men in it, carefully looking the other way. Westerners. I hurried on. “Contact,” I muttered to Freds. He just whistled a little.

  There was one taxi in Times Square, the driver asleep. We hopped in and woke him, and asked him to take us to the Central Bus Stop. The taxi we had passed followed us. “Hooked,” I said to Freds, who was sniffing the ashtrays, tasting the upholstery, leaning out the window to eat the wind like a dog. “Try not to overdo it,” I said, worried about my Dodgers cap with all that hair taped in it flying away.

  We passed the big clock tower and stopped, got out and paid the cabbie. Our tail stopped farther up the block, I was pleased to see. Freds and I walked down the broad, mashed-mud driveway into the Central Bus Stop.

  The bus stop was a big yard of mud, about five or eight feet lower than the level of the street. Scores of buses were parked at all angles in the yard, and their tires had torn the mud up until the yard looked like a vehicular Verdun. All of the buses were owned by private companies—one bus per company, usually, with a single route to run—and all of their agents at the wood-and-cloth booths at the entrance clamored for our attention, as if we might have come in without a particular destination in mind, and would pick the agent that made the loudest offer.

  Actually, this time it was almost true. But I spotted the agent for the Jiri bus, which is where I had thought to send Freds, and I bought two tickets, in a crowd of all the other agents, who criticized my choice. Freds hunkered down a little, looking suitably distressed. A big hubbub arose; one of the companies had established its right to leave the yard next, and now its bus was trying to make it up the driveway, which was the one and only exit from the yard.

  Each departure was a complete test of the driver, the bus’s clutch and tires, and the advisory abilities of the agents standing around. After a lot of clutching and coaching this brightly painted bus squirted up the incline, and the scheduling debate began anew. Only three buses had unblocked access to the driveway, and the argument among their agents was fierce.

  I took Freds in hand and we wandered around the track-torn mud, looking for the Jiri bus. Eventually we found it: gaily painted in yellow, blue, green and red, like all the rest, ours also had about forty decals of Ganesh stuck all over the windshield, to help the driver see. As usual, the company’s “other bus” was absent, and this one was double-booked. We shoved our way on board and through the tightly packed crowd in the aisle, then found empty seats at the back. The Nepalis like to ride near the front. After more boardings, the crowd engulfed us even in the back. But we had Freds at a window, which is what I wanted.

  Through the mud-flecked glass I could just see our tail: Phil Adrakian, and two men who might have been Secret Service agents, though I wasn’t sure about that. They were fending off the bus agents and trying to get into the yard at the same time, a tough combination. As they sidestepped the bus agents they got in the driveway and almost got run over by the bus currently sliding up and down the slope; one slipped in the mud scrambling away, and fell on his ass. The bus agents thought this was great. Adrakian and the other two hurried off, and squished from bus to bus trying to look like they weren’t looking for anything. They were pursued by the most persistent agents, and got mired in the mud from time to time, and I worried after a while that they wouldn’t be able to find us. In fact it took them about twenty minutes. But then one saw Freds at the window, and they ducked behind a bus hulk that had sunk axle-deep, waving off the agents in desperate sign language. “Hooked for good,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Freds replied without moving his lips.

  The bus was now completely packed; an old woman had even been insinuated between Freds and me, which suited me fine. But it was going to be another miserable trip. “You’re really doing your part for the cause,” I said to Freds as I prepared to depart, thinking of the cramped day ahead of him.

  “No hroblem!” he said liplessly. “I like these ’us trits!”

  Somehow I believed him. I weaseled my way upright in the aisle and said good-bye. Our tails were watching the bus’s only door, but that wasn’t really much of a problem. I just squirmed between the Nepalis, whose concept of personal “body space” is pretty much exactly confined to the space their bodies are actually occupying—none of this eighteen-inch bullshit for them—and got to a window on the other side of the bus. There was no way our watchers could have seen across the interior of that bus, so I was free to act. I apologized to the Sherpa I was sitting on, worked the window open, and started to climb out. The Sherpa very politely helped me, without the slightest suggestion I was going anything out of the ordinary, and I jumped down into the mud. Hardly anyone on the bus even noticed my departure. I snuck through the no-man’s-land of the back buses. Quickly enough I was back on Durbar Marg and in a cab on my way to the Star.

  XV

  I got the cabbie to park almost inside the Star’s lobby, and Buddha barreled into the backseat like a fullback hitting the line. While we drove he kept his head down, just in case, and the taxi took us out to the airport.

  Things were proceeding exactly according to my plan, and you might imagine I was feeling pretty pleased, but the truth is that I was more nervous than I’d been all morning. Because we were walking up to the RNAC desk, you see…

  When I got there and inquired, the clerk told us our flight had been canceled for the day.

  “What?” I cried. “Canceled! What for?”

  Now, our counter agent was the most beautiful woman in the world. This happens all the time in Nepal—in the country you pass a peasant bent over pulling up rice, and she looks up and it’s a face from the cover of Cosmopolitan, only twice as pretty and without the vampire makeup. This ticket clerk could have made a million modeling in New York, but she didn’t speak much English, and when I asked her “What for?” she said, “It’s raining,” and looked past me for another customer.

  I took a deep breath. Remember, I thought: RNAC. What would the Red Queen say? I pointed out the window. “It’s not raining. Take a look.”

  Too much for her. “It’s raining,” she repeated. She looked around for her supervisor, and he came on over; a thin Hindu man with a red dot on his forehead. He nodded curtly. “It’s raining up at J—.”

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I got a report on the shortwave from J—, and besides you can look north and see for yourself. It’s not raining.”

  “The airstrip at J— is too wet to land on,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “but you landed there twice yesterday, and it hasn’t rained since.”

  “We’re having mechanical trouble with the plane.”

  “I’m sorry, but you’ve got a whole fleet of small planes out there, and when one has a problem you just substitute for it. I know, I swit
ched planes three times here once.” Nathan and Sarah didn’t look too happy to hear that one.

  The supervisor’s supervisor was drawn by the conversation: another serious, slender Hindu. “The flight is canceled,” he said. “It’s political.”

  I shook my head. “RNAC pilots only strike the flights to Lukla and Pokhara—they’re the only ones that have enough passengers for the strike to matter.” My fears concerning the real reason for the cancellation were being slowly confirmed. “How many passengers on this flight?”

  All three of them shrugged. “The flight is canceled,” the first supervisor said. “Try tomorrow.”

  And I knew I was right. They had less than half capacity, and were waiting until tomorrow so the flight would be full. (Maybe more than full, but did they care?) I explained the situation to Nathan and Sarah and Buddha, and Nathan stormed up to the desk demanding that the flight fly as scheduled, and the supervisors had their eyebrows raised like they might actually get some fun out of this after all, but I hauled him away. While I was dialing my friend in the travel agency, I explained to him how maddening irate customers had been made into a sport (or maybe an art form) by Asian bureaucrats. After three tries I got my friend’s office. The receptionist answered and said, “Yeti Travels?” which gave me a start; I’d forgotten the company’s name. Then Bill got on and I outlined the situation. “Filling planes again, are they?” He laughed. “I’ll call in that group of six we ‘sold’ yesterday, and you should be off.”