The avatari, p.46
The Avatari, page 46
Claire Donovant gave an awkward cough. ‘I’d hate to have it come to that, Colonel Ashton, but Peter here will corroborate my statement that Mr Kurt Stein, who is with us, has a reputation for being – how shall I put it – extremely disagreeable when he wants someone to do something and faces resistance.’
‘You would torture me?’ Ashton asked mildly.
‘Only in the end, Colonel – after we have finished with Dr Hamilton and Peter. Believe me, neither of us wants it to come to that, but…’ She let the sentence trail off into a meaningful silence.
Trapped, the three of them exchanged glances. Susan and Ashton looked at Peter who nodded, his face expressionless. Peter did not tell them that while he had met many wantonly cruel men in his profession, Kurt Stein had a reputation for the kind of ingenious, morbidly perverse brutality few people were capable of.
‘But you will if you have to,’ Ashton said finally, completing Claire’s sentence for her, his voice sounding tired, defeated. He turned to Ru San Ko now and leaning forward, looked intently at his face, before asking, ‘You must have murdered the Teacher – a man who treated you like a son. Why? For what?’
Ru San Ko looked back at him without remorse and said blandly, ‘The prize was too great, Henry.’
‘In the end, it is only thirty pieces of silver,’ Ashton spat back, not bothering to hide the contempt he felt for the man.
‘Shall we get on with it, Colonel?’ Claire Donovant asked, an edge to her voice.
‘There is no map in my head,’ Ashton responded tiredly, ‘just random flashes of images I think I have seen. If you want to follow them, you’re welcome. You’ll have to give me time, though.’
After a while, he called Dr Donovant to one side. During their conversation, he pointed out directions to her from the landmarks that were visible. After lunch, they set course due south in the direction of the river. Peter noticed that very few orders were issued and, in minimum time, they were on the move, progressing in an almost military manner. All the men were mounted. They themselves were an animal short, having lost two mules while getting through the Gate. Peter opted to walk alongside Susan. He tried speaking to her, but she sat very straight on her mule, ignoring him.
‘Looking for a ride, Herr Peter?’
It was Kurt Stein who had come up, revving on a Honda quad bike, his grin revealing shiny white teeth.
‘Looks like the fraulein does not like your attentions.’
‘I’d rather walk,’ Peter said curtly.
‘Suit yourself,’ the man responded, accelerating and going ahead to give some orders.
Kurt Stein had sent scouts about a mile ahead on both flanks and Peter could see they were in no hurry, their main body moving tactically, once the scouts had signalled to them to move ahead.
Soon, Peter found the woman who called herself Claire Donovant riding on a pony by his side. He looked up and saw her smile at him.
‘So what is the cover story?’ he asked casually.
‘Why? You don’t believe me when I say I am an academic in Eastern History at Princeton?’
‘No. There is too much farm on you,’ Peter retorted, using the common slang for the CIA training facility in Virginia.
‘The smell is that bad, eh?’ she asked, her voice quite casual. ‘And how did they get you on this?’ she asked him.
‘Oh, they shopped around and I liked the money.’
‘Well, they certainly got the best. The best-looking, anyway,’ she said with a hint of coquetry.
Despite himself, Peter felt an attraction for the woman. They were on opposite sides, but it was always good to meet your own kind.
‘Are you still with the CIA?’ he asked her.
‘Yes and no,’ she replied, before ending their conversation by moving ahead.
* * *
Earlier, at the Pashtun location in the Tora Bora mountains where they had landed, Claire Donovant could not have anticipated that things would work out so perfectly to their satisfaction. To begin with, Josh Wando and Dr Hal Stevens had come down with altitude sickness. They were both laid out in sleeping bags on the floor of the small cave which served as their shelter. It was a relief that Ru San Ko had held out much better.
‘We’ve lost them,’ Claire had come up and announced.
‘What do you mean “lost them”?’ Stevens had asked quietly.
‘The transmitter isn’t sending any signals. It’s either malfunctioning or they have caught on and destroyed it.’
‘What was their last position?’
‘What Falcon radioed was right here,’ she had said, her finger tracing a location in the Karakoram mountains featured on the map she carried. ‘But that was twelve hours ago.’
‘Is it where we want to go?’
‘I can’t say. Ru San Ko here doesn’t think so.’
‘And why is that?’
‘The Zhang Zhung texts say that Shambhala is guarded by two rings of mountains – an outer ring and an inner one. My guess is they may have got through the outer ring.’
‘And how far is it from this inner ring?’
Josh, who had been listening quietly, had added, ‘If we go by the texts, we should be looking for a triangular peak, the Trimukha.’ He had turned to Ru San Ko. ‘Can you make out any such peak on the map?’
‘I cannot say,’ the man had told him. ‘The maps are not accurate and there are mountains on every side.’
‘What do you suggest we do?’ Dr Stevens had asked Claire. He knew she was the leader of this team.
‘Well, we have to get to them as soon as we can. Otherwise, we’re likely to lose them.’
For a moment, she was lost in thought. Then she had said with steely resolve, ‘We’ll go after them, find them and send the birds back. We’ll get them to guide us. When we’re close, we’ll transmit to you and you can fly in.’ She had paused, before adding, ‘It will save you the hike and, hopefully, you’ll be feeling better by then.’
* * *
Claire Donovant’s plans had gone off without a hitch and here she was now, on her way to fulfilling her mission, having taken Henry Ashton and his group hostage. Soon they were at the river, a raging torrent which flowed about 300 yards below in a rocky gorge. From where they stood looking down, they could see a narrow stony ledge about 200 yards below, which ran parallel to the river for as far ahead as they could see. Claire consulted Ashton once more, then turned to brief Stein who ordered his scouts to find a way for them to climb down to the ledge. The scouts took about half an hour to do so and soon they were going ahead to find a point on the escarpment where the slope was gradual enough for them to descend.
Once they were on the ledge, the frothing, murky blue waters now barely fifty yards below them, the roar of the river became deafening. The watercourse appeared approximately a hundred yards across and the ledge itself was roughly ten feet wide, except at places where it narrowed to scarcely six feet so that the all-terrain quad bikes were just about able to squeeze across. Susan looked up at the sheer rock face and shivered, remembering the last portion of the Gate they had crossed.
Peter saw a flash of light again and turned quickly to catch its source, but it was gone. The far bank of the river, which was the far side of the gorge, looked equally forbidding. He walked alongside Susan and waited for the path to narrow down. Then taking her by surprise, he held the reins and murmured without looking up at her, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘How could you, Peter? How could you ever doubt me?’
Her voice was bitter. But at least she was talking.
‘It was a joke!’ he protested.
‘No, it was not!’ she said fiercely, now turning to look down at him. ‘For an instant, you actually believed it. That’s what hurts.’
‘I’ll make it up to you, sweetheart – for the rest of my life,’ Peter said.
Then taking care to ensure that Susan wouldn’t notice, he surreptitiously jabbed the cigarette he was holding between his fingers into her mount’s eyes. The mule reared up, braying and snorting in pain, almost unseating Susan. The others looked on, shocked, as the startled animal staggered against Peter, causing him to lose his footing. Too late, the men shouted a warning as he stumbled off the ledge and plunged headlong into the river, hands flailing in vain for a hold.
Susan stared in horror as Peter disappeared into the swirling water. Stein, who had dismounted from his bike and was walking ahead of them, quickly slung off the rifle from his shoulder, aimed at the spot where Peter had hit the water and fired off a magazine.
Susan, who was still off-balance, screamed, ‘What do you think you’re doing? He’s fallen in the water, for god’s sake! You’ve got to save him!’
Stein kept looking at the spot where Peter’s body had entered the water. When he was sure couldn’t see anything, he turned to Susan.
‘I just want to ensure that your boyfriend is dead, fraulein,’ he said amiably.
CHAPTER 33
24 September 1986
Behruz Amin
Major Behruz Amin was praying hard now. They had had an unbelievable run of luck from the moment they lifted off from their base that morning. The weather had been fine and the maps reasonably true, allowing an accurate visual identification of most of the landmarks. He had made it clear to the woman, that morning, that if they couldn’t find what they were searching for they would head back in ten minutes. They didn’t have fuel to linger beyond that time frame.
Much to his surprise, they had detected the group the woman was searching for, but then, it had been so easy; they had stood out quite conspicuously against the washed-out white desolation of the plain that had emerged as soon as they had crossed the ranges of the Karakorams.
On their return journey, they had just flown over the ridgeline when Behruz noticed that the weather was taking a swift turn for the worse; the barometer needle dipped erratically and curly white clouds began looming ahead to obscure his vision. There was a steady crosswind buffeting their helicopters now, making them drift off course, and Behruz knew that given such conditions, they could now rely on the instrument controls only up to a point and would need to keep righting themselves by using their judgement and depending on a visual identification of landmarks. The clouds were massing rapidly now and they tried entering them to see if they could come out to the top. But they realized soon enough that this option was no longer available to them; the sky had clouded up way above their height ceiling. Behruz felt the sweat beading his brow and snapped irrationally at his co-pilot to swallow his gum, which the boy did immediately with a startled look on his face.
They were flying in a single line, the pilots of the four helicopters keeping each other in sight; his was the third. They had already missed a set of landmarks they should have sighted five minutes ago if they went by their flight speed and course. Now they were approaching another ridgeline, the crest of which was barely visible in the drifting clouds. The sweat was now pouring down Behruz’s face, stinging his eyes. They had not flown over this ridgeline on the way out. Allah, be merciful! Flying as they were at 100 knots, they were 25 minutes from the last known position on the course. They could now be off by anything over 50 kilometres in these desolate mountains!
His eyes were on the helicopter in front; it kept disappearing into the clouds as it rapidly approached the mountain range. He looked at the wind-speed indicator; they had a strong tail wind which was increasing their approach speed to the crest line. He worried about the altitude; they needed to keep the crest in clear sight, but this was getting increasingly difficult. Already, their rate of ascent had decreased to less than half of normal; they were dangerously close to their ceiling. Allah, be merciful! Let us clear this crest, he prayed. Then suddenly, the clouds lifted and he could see the helicopter clear the crest, but only just. Behruz found himself panting and then screaming on the radio, ‘Baalaa! Baalaa!’ – Dari for ‘Up! Up!’ So concerned was he about the helicopter clearing the crest line that he had overlooked the peril posed by the tail wind. Till now.
It was something they taught you in eighth grade, which the science teacher called Bernoulli’s Principle. The wind rushing over the crest would create a vacuum on the far side, sucking the helicopter down as soon as it had crossed the crest. The closer they were to the crest, the stronger would be the downward drag. Behruz knew with a kind of morbid intuition that the pilot in the first helicopter would not have made an allowance for that.
There was no time for him to think further as he approached the crest himself. He pulled on the cyclic and collective levers, feeling for the suction as he crossed and pulling the nose of the helicopter up as he thrust forward. The wind struck the helicopter with tremendous force as Behruz crossed the crest line, but he was able to right himself. The cloudbank had opened up and they had clear visibility. His co-pilot pointed to the crashed helicopters down below, with the debris strewn for miles over the snowy slopes. Behruz surmised that the first helicopter was probably trying to pull up when it had hit the second one which was being sucked down as it crossed the crest line. He did not bother to circle back in to check for survivors. He remembered that he had just attended the wedding of one of the pilots of the ill-fated helicopters. They were now down to two birds.
Peter
As Peter hurtled towards the river below, he fought his natural instincts and waited until the very last moment to right his body before it hit the turbulent water. Aware of the men watching him fall to his apparent death from the ledge above, he knew it was vital to convince them that he hadn’t taken a deliberate dive to escape, but had lost his footing and tumbled off when Susan’s mule bucked. His arms and legs pawed the air as he fell and he heard the sporadic bursts of fire from the rifle above, but they sounded very far away. As he continued to fall, the rocky outlines of the gorge flashed past in a blur and he felt the air grow colder as his body gained momentum. Counting slowly up to three, he jackknifed into an upright position moments before he struck the water, but not before he felt a sharp sting on his left foot.
Shit, he thought, I’ve taken a hit!
He entered the water, now hearing a sharp, crackling sound as his body smashed through the thin crust of ice just beginning to form on the surface. Then he was under, submerged in the inky blackness so punishingly icy that it seemed to scrape his skin raw and leave it smarting. He knew he was sinking too fast and stretched his arms out in an attempt to slacken the speed of his descent so that he could rise again to the top without going all the way down. But he had to will himself to slow down his movements as far as possible, for given the speed at which he was plunging, the upthrust of the water could well be powerful enough to wrench his arms off. He felt the hard contours of the boulder in the water seconds before his head struck it. After that, he felt nothing.
Susan
It took a while for the shock to wear off. Then the tears came. Every now and then, Susan’s body would go into a paroxysm of uncontrollable shivering. Ashton had come up and placed a blanket around her shoulders. He now rode alongside, her hand clasped in his own. They did not exchange a word, though both had seen Peter go under and had strained to see if his body would surface anywhere near the spot where it had entered the water. They kept moving along the ledge as it ran parallel to the river. At one place, they came down to the stone-littered riverbank where they stopped to water the animals. Susan could not tear her eyes away from the river, her gaze transfixed in morbid fascination on a bend where some driftwood and the bleached bones of animals had washed up, as though she were half-expecting to see Peter’s body surface.
They continued on their way and it was late afternoon when the ledge began climbing up again to the top of the gorge, until they were back on the tabletop. The path they had taken along the river skirted the sharply rising row of hills. It was still broken country, though, a rugged, sandy wasteland of rolling troughs and crests, furrowed with gullies and littered with boulders so large they obscured the view. There was not a blade of grass in sight. The going was slow and the animals floundered, finding it difficult to retain their footing in the rough terrain. Soon, they had no alternative but to dismount and lead them along. The sun began dipping behind a low line of clouds in the west. A breeze picked up, flinging grit and dirt into their faces, lacerating the skin. They would have to set up camp soon. Claire, who had been leading, stopped at the top of one of the higher crests and waited for Ashton to whom she had beckoned with a wave. Kurt Stein and Ru San Ko joined them too. As Ashton paused to catch his breath, he observed that the ground before them fell away gently; they could see far into the distance.
‘How much farther, Colonel?’ Claire Donovant asked.
Ashton reached into his rucksack, now loaded on the pack animal’s back, and pulled out his binoculars. Then he scanned the ground that lay before them.
‘Well?’ she asked, somewhat impatiently, after a short interval.
‘Can’t say,’ Ashton said tiredly. ‘We have to ride across these plains till we reach the low hills up ahead. From there, we should be descending into a dry lakebed. After crossing the lakebed, we are supposed to see a high peak on a mountain range which we have to skirt at the base. The same route will lead us to the monastery.’
Stein, who was rolling a cigarette, spat on the ground in disgust.
‘How on earth do you come up with all this nonsense?’ he asked. ‘We are both soldiers, Colonel. So you can stop giving me that bullshit about some “dream” you supposedly had. Is there a map you have that we don’t? If so, why not just hand it over and save us the trouble of this point-to-point march?’
Ashton chose not to reply. Ru San Ko, who had discarded his combat fatigues and was now dressed in the red robes of his order, came up to the Englishman, clasped his hands together and bowed.
Glancing over his shoulder at Stein, he whispered, ‘Do not pay attention to that man. He is of inferior intellect.’ Then raising his voice so that his words would be audible to the others, he asked, ‘What is the shape of this peak we are supposed to see – if I may be so audacious as to ask, Henry?’
