Kingdom (11 page)

Nancy had never imagined that a place like this could exist. She was marvelling at the colour and density around her, while Krishna tugged her sleeve and dragged her past a gang of bickering Tajik truck-drivers who were arguing with their Hindu overlord about how much money they were owed for their most recent journey.

Smiling at it all, she leaned forward and shouted towards Krishna, ‘What on earth is an American doing in a place like this?’

He yelled back at her, still with his eyes on the melee around them, ‘It’s a good place for the illegal antiques trade. Lots of stuff still comes down from Afghanistan over the Khyber Pass and the Karakoram highway from China. The old merchants can get anything through . . . If you try to fly it out and get caught, you can spend a very long time in jail . . .’

She shook her head, not bothering to respond above the din. What am I doing? she thought suddenly. A wave of tiredness washed over her and her confidence suddenly began to ebb away again. Surely I should just go home and get some sleep? Dan Fischer’s advice was perfectly sensible and she was supposed to be a journalist, not a private detective. Her mood swings were becoming disorienting; for a second she had the distinct feeling that she was walking out over an abyss and beneath her there was nothing but a cold dark chasm, stretching infinitely away. But she tried to shrug off the thought. It was too late now. Krishna was climbing up a flight of stairs, and she watched him moving through a wooden doorway and into one of the mysterious cloisters. She followed behind him, and at the top of the steps she paused and glanced down briefly at the frenetic business of the market.

You could spend months here, she thought, just exploring this place, let alone the rest of Delhi. It was exactly what she’d hoped for when she had decided to pack her bags and leave her old life behind with its over-familiar routines, those rituals that had grown dull and eventually sapped her energy: buying a cup of coffee from the store on the corner on the way to work, the bland expanse of the newsroom with its trading floor-like rows of desks, lunch in the canteen or on the lawn when it was sunny. Now she was here and a huge continent lay waiting to be explored, another world, full of novelty and fascination. If only things hadn’t started like this, she thought wistfully, if only Herzog would just walk back in off the dusty streets, it could all be so much fun. But that was never going to happen, Herzog was gone, and she had a horrible feeling he might never be coming back.

Inside, the cloister looked like a cross between a Turkish seraglio and a natural history museum. Two large fabulous lamps hung from a vaulted ceiling that arched over a space about twenty-five yards square. They illuminated a vast collection of antiques and ancient fossils and bones of all shapes and sizes and descriptions. Beautiful multicoloured Persian rugs hung from the walls and covered the floors; antique tables and cabinets from China and Japan were scattered everywhere, and on every surface imaginable lay the thousands of items that made up what Nancy assumed was Jack Adams’s Tibetan collection.

The sight was breathtaking. In the middle of the room, in the only clear space available, Krishna was sitting on a pile of cushions, talking to a small Indian boy who appeared to be about twelve years old. The boy was dressed in shalwar kameez, the long baggy trousers of the Pashtuns, a pair of worn leather slippers and a grubby white skullcap. His expression was alert and as soon as Nancy entered the den he stood and made a small bow.

‘Come over,’ said Krishna to Nancy. ‘This is Kim, Jack’s assistant. Kim, this is Nancy Kelly of the
Herald Tribune
newspaper.’

Krishna turned back to the boy and continued to speak to him in Hindi. Nancy picked her way through the chaos and stepped on to the rug.

‘Kim will get Mr Adams,’ said Krishna to her as she approached.

The boy bowed again to both of them and then wriggled his way to the back of the room and disappeared through a doorway that Nancy hadn’t noticed before, into the back of the cloister.

Krishna nodded at her. He looked a little nervous. ‘Adams is here – which is lucky. I suddenly thought he might be away on one of his trips. Ask him about going to Pemako and then, once you’ve got him interested, ask him about Anton . . . I’m sure you know what to do, with your journalistic credentials . . .’

There was a noise from the darkness beyond and out stepped a tall, deeply bronzed white man. He had short-cropped blond hair and sky-blue eyes. He moved with a nonchalant swagger and with a compressed energy, the line of his muscles visible through his thin shirt. Nancy saw at once what Krishna had meant about his macho arrogance, though all he was doing was wiping his hands on a rag that he tossed to the floor as he came forward. Arrogant and requiring careful handling, she thought, with her journalist’s instinct for a tricky customer. Charming if it pleased him, but given to treachery, or outbursts – certainly he looked like a man who played his own game and no one else’s.

‘So you want to go to Tibet?’ he said, coming towards her with his hand extended.

As she shook the proffered hand, Nancy wondered about the best way to proceed. He was shrewd; she suspected he would see through her soon enough. Was it better to be honest with him from the start? As Krishna added his own wary greeting, Nancy thought that this image of the rugged explorer looked carefully calculated. Adams had fitted himself up with a wonderfully scenic office location, a great collection of antiques, and then he had his own physical appearance to draw on: the tough mountaineer-cum-adventurer. It was all a crucial part of his sales pitch no doubt, but she wasn’t interested in that. He was handsome though, she conceded, and he must be used to women falling at his feet, mistaking what was probably quite a hard, ambivalent way of life for glamour and adventure.

She stopped herself: people can always sense what you think of them on some level, she thought. Particularly when they’ve fixed you with glittering eyes, as if they’re speculating about your motives even as you try to analyse theirs. She should be more circumspect; he might after all know something about the bone trumpet. She had brought it with her, slung over her shoulder. As Adams released her hand, Nancy tried to get into her part, and said, in a breezy, interested way, ‘Yes. That’s right – I need to get into Pemako. As soon as possible.’

‘I see,’ he said, rubbing a hand over his chin.

Even his speech was slightly theatrical – probably born of dealing with tourists straight off the plane from the States. Naturally she was also straight off the plane, but she had travelled widely in her career and hoped she had learned a little about the many ways travellers could be exploited. Charismatic, certainly, she was thinking, but overdone, this posturing as an explorer.

As they all sat together on the cushions, Kim bringing in some cups of tea, Adams was saying, ‘I was in Pemako only last summer, I went in over the Su La pass. It’s a treacherous place – there are no accurate maps, none of the bridges are standing any more, and these days there are hundreds of Chinese soldiers, all trying to extract money from you. And then there are the witches . . .’

Krishna, fidgeting impatiently by her side, interrupted:

‘What witches?’

‘The poison witches. Pemako is famous for them. They are the old ladies who live in the villages. They poison strangers in order to take their “chi”, their vital power.’

Nancy raised an eyebrow. ‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘how much will it cost?’

‘So, I see, we have an intrepid explorer in our midst?’ Adams seemed to be sneering at her, and Nancy bridled, though she tried to tell herself this was all part of the pitch; nothing to really concern herself with.

‘Not really,’ she said briskly. ‘Pemako is hardly the jungles of Borneo, is it?’

A shadow passed across Adams’s face. He turned his head and spotting a large bone lying on the table top next to them, he picked it up. When he spoke, his demeanour had changed; he was no longer smiling.

‘You see this? This is the thigh bone of a yak.’ He slapped it into the palm of his left hand. ‘The yak is a relative of the camel but it is skinny, lazy and even more bad-tempered. The Tibetans rely on the yak just as the Bedouin do on the camel. They get their milk from it, they eat its meat, they eat its eyeballs, they eat its testicles and they even light their lamps using its butter.’

He weighed the bone in his hand as if it were a club. Then, still unsmiling, he fixed her with a stony look. ‘Perhaps, Miss Kelly, you believe all the propaganda about old Tibet? That it was a peaceful, happy place, where the Dalai Lamas presided over a contented population until the wicked Chinese arrived?’

He handed her the bone. She took it, unwillingly, transfixed by his mood change. This guy is getting curiouser by the minute, she thought. Adams was speaking again.

‘That bone that you are holding was used as a tool. If a peasant committed a crime, even something as trivial as stealing a small amount of gruel to feed his starving family, he would be held down whilst the round ends of two such thigh bones were pressed into his temples. When enough pressure was applied, the peasant’s eyes would pop out. And justice would be done in the feudal kingdom of the great lamas.’

Nancy dropped the bone onto the rug in disgust. He picked it up and replaced it carefully on the table and flicked his head up to fix her with a condescending stare.

‘The bromides that are passed around at American dinner parties about the magical, spiritual East are a long way from the truth. Tibet has always been a violent and dangerous place for those who don’t understand it. And I would go so far as to say it is scarcely even Buddhist, it is an occult kingdom where black magic has always reigned supreme. It is not and never was a Buddhist land of peace . . .’

Krishna could contain himself no longer.

‘OK, Adams, enough of your opinions. Do you want the job or not? We didn’t come here for a lecture and I very seldom attend any American dinner parties.’

Adams turned to look at him and in a businesslike tone replied, ‘It will cost you.’

‘How much?’

‘When do you want to go, how many people and what is the purpose of the trip?’

Krishna glanced at Nancy.

‘Just me,’ she said quickly. ‘And I want to go without alerting the Chinese or Indian authorities. The exact purpose will be revealed when we get to Pemako.’

Adams smiled, as if none of this was surprising to him.

‘I see. Well, then, let’s say fifty thousand dollars for a ten-day trip, all sherpas and equipment included. And I need all the money up front.’

Nancy gasped:

‘What? I don’t know much about travelling in Tibet, but that really sounds totally outrageous. Surely we could hire an army of sherpas for that price?’

‘You could, and you could even bribe the Chinese immigration officials – but if you went into Pemako without me, no one would ever see you again . . .’

Krishna interjected, ‘I simply don’t see how you run any sort of business with those prices. You and I know they’re ridiculous . . .’

‘Sure, if you think that, then good luck finding someone else to take you,’ Adams replied, in a dry, nonchalant voice. He drank down his tea and looked as if he was about to conclude the meeting. Indeed Krishna was beginning to rise, when Nancy said, ‘Listen Mr Adams, maybe we can do a deal. I don’t have that kind of money. I’m a journalist, not a millionaire.’

Adams looked hard at her and then after a long pause said, ‘I’ll think about it. When do you want to go?’

Krishna was looking at Nancy in complete confusion. She realized he had suggested the enquiry as a ruse, to draw Adams out. She had thought of it differently – or had she? She wasn’t sure whether she had intended to go from the start. Her motives were becoming cloudy to her; she felt driven by a deep prevailing purpose, but she couldn’t disentangle the elements. If he can take me, why not go? she was thinking. But she couldn’t afford his fee, that was for sure. She would have to find a way of haggling him down – quite how she didn’t know.

‘As soon as possible. I’m in something of a hurry.’

For a moment no one said anything. Krishna was looking incredulous and appalled, and Nancy and Adams were staring at each other. Nancy acknowledged once more that the man was irritatingly handsome, though his were unsubtle, over-brawny good looks that didn’t much appeal to her. Now Adams was saying, ‘Well, then you have a choice. An associate of mine is flying up tonight – it might just be possible to get on his flight. If not, then you’ll have to wait at least another fortnight. Commercials are out – if you want to go in under the radar then you have to arrive by private aircraft.’

‘What time tonight?’

‘Midnight. From Indira Gandhi airport light aircraft terminal.’

She was flushed with adrenalin, and for the first time since the interrogation she felt she was taking control again of her own destiny. This was what she had wanted: adventure and a chance to make her name. Perhaps she could actually find Herzog. If only she had more money. All she had was five thousand dollars’ worth of travellers’ cheques which she had brought with her to India and then her savings – but she would have to wire those from the States and that might take days or even weeks and even then they only amounted to about fifteen thousand dollars. She could sense Krishna’s mounting panic, but now she didn’t care at all.

‘What’s your best price?’

‘I’ll think about it,’ said Adams. And he fixed her again with his condescending eyes. What am I doing? Nancy wondered with excitement and mounting trepidation. It was certain that she was getting carried away. And to what end? He would never lower his price enough to make the trip affordable, and more importantly, none of this was exactly necessary. She had been harassed by the Indian police, that was a fact, but why was she now running off on a wild goose chase with a man who seemed part macho cliché and part something she couldn’t quite understand? She sensed once more Krishna’s discomfort, and knew he wanted to tell her to forget the business. A formal complaint, strong words from the editor, that was more in his line; he was firmly in the Dan Fischer camp. Absconding with this eminently untrustworthy man, he couldn’t possibly approve. But then she didn’t want to stay in Delhi, creeping around, waiting to be rearrested, or ordered back to New York – an unattractive prospect for different reasons. And she was quite certain that there would be no Indian police going into Tibet to look for Anton Herzog, nor any Americans either.