“Really?”
“Well, only if you can be ready to leave in thirty minutes,” replied Sam.
“Love to, and where are we going?”
“Bhanchka and Ghan,” responded Sam.
“How did you remember?”
“How can you forget such memorable food, the ambience, and Nepalese cuisine in Nepal!”
Twenty-five minutes later Remi had changed into Akris slacks and a top, with a matching jacket thrown over her arm. And Sam, freshly shaved, wearing a blue Robert Graham shirt and dark gray slacks, ushered her out the door.
Remi was only marginally surprised to awaken at four a.m. to find her husband not in bed but rather in an armchair in the suite’s sitting area. When something was badgering Sam Fargo’s subconscious, he rarely could sleep. She found him under the soft glow of a lamp reading the dossier Zhilan had given them. Using her hip, Remi gently shoved aside the manila folder. Then she settled into his lap and wrapped her long La Perla silk robe tightly around her.
“I think I found the culprit,” he said.
“Show me.”
He flipped through a series of paper-clipped pages. “The daily e-mail reports that Frank was sending King. They start the day he arrived here and end the morning he disappeared. Do you notice anything different about the last three e-mails?”
Remi scanned them. “No.”
“He signed each one ‘Frank.’ Look at the ones prior.”
Remi did so. She pursed her lips. “Simply signed ‘FA.’”
“That’s how he signed e-mails to me too.”
“What’s it mean?”
“Just speculating. I’d say either Frank didn’t send the last three e-mails or he did and was trying to embed a distress signal.”
“I think that’s unlikely. Frank would have found a more clever code.”
“So that leaves us with the other option. He disappeared earlier than King believes.”
“And someone was posing as him,” Remi concluded.
In the predawn gloom, the Range Rover pulled off the main road. Its headlights swept over green terraced fields as it followed the winding road to the bottom of the valley, where it intersected another road, this one narrower and rutted with mud. The Rover bumped along the track for several hundred yards before crossing a bridge. Below, a river churned, its dark waters lapping at the bridge’s lowermost girders. On the opposite bank the Rover’s headlights briefly illuminated a sign. In Nepali, it read “Trisuli.” Another quarter mile brought the Rover to a squat gray-brick building with a patchwork tin roof. Beside a wooden front door, a square window glowed yellow. The Rover coasted to a stop before the building, and the engine shut off.
Russell and Marjorie King climbed out and headed for the door. A pair of shadowed figures emerged from behind each corner of the building and intercepted them. Each man carried an automatic weapon diagonally across his body. Flashlights clicked on, panned over the King children’s faces, then clicked off. With a jerk of the head, one of the guards gestured for the pair to enter.
Through the door, a single man was sitting at a wooden trestle table. Aside from this and a flickering kerosene lantern, the room was barren.
“Colonel Zhou,” Russell King grunted.
“Welcome, my nameless American friends. Please sit.”
They did so, taking the bench across from Zhou. Marjorie said, “You’re not in uniform. Please don’t tell us you’re afraid of Nepalese Army patrols.”
Zhou chuckled. “Hardly. While I’m sure my men would enjoy the target practice, I doubt my superiors would look kindly on my crossing the border without going through proper channels.”
“This is your meeting,” Russell said. “Why did you ask us here?”
“We need to discuss the permits you have requested.”
“The permits we’ve already paid for, you mean?” replied Marjorie.
“Semantics. The area you wish to enter is heavily patrolled-”
“All of China is heavily patrolled,” Russell observed.
“Only part of the area in which you wish to travel falls under my command.”
“This has never been a problem in the past.”
“Things change.”
“You’re squeezing us,” Marjorie said. Her face was expressionless, but her eyes were hard, mean.
“I don’t know that expression.”
“Bribery.”
Colonel Zhou frowned. “That’s harsh. The truth is, you are right: you have already paid me. Unfortunately, a restructuring in my district has left me with more mouths to feed, if you understand my meaning. If I do not feed those mouths, they will begin talking to the wrong people.”
“Perhaps we should be talking to them instead of you,” said Russell.
“Go ahead. But do you have the time? As I recall, it took you eight months to find me. Are you willing to start from the beginning again? You were lucky with me. Next time, you might find yourself imprisoned as spies. It could still happen, in fact.”
“You’re playing a dangerous game, Colonel,” Marjorie said.
“No more dangerous than illegally crossing into Chinese territory.”
“And, I suppose, no more dangerous than not having your men search us for weapons.”
Zhou’s eyes narrowed, darted toward the door, then back to the King twins. “You wouldn’t dare,” he said.
“She would,” Russell said. “And so would I. Bet on it. But not now. Not tonight. Colonel, if you knew who we were, you would think twice about extorting more money from us.”
“I may not know your names, but I know your kind, and I have a hunch about what you are after.”
Russell said, “How much to feed these extra mouths?”
“Twenty thousand-in euros, not dollars.”
Russell and Marjorie stood up. Russell said, “You’ll have the money in your account before day’s end. We’ll contact you when we’re ready to cross.”
He could tell from the chill in the night air, the utter lack of traffic sounds, and the nearby and frequent clanking of yak bells that he was fairly high in the foothills. Blindfolded as soon as he’d been shoved into the van, he had no way of knowing how far from Kathmandu they’d taken him. Ten miles or a hundred, it didn’t really matter. Once outside the valley in which the city rested, the terrain could swallow a person whole-and had done so, thousands of times. Ravines, caves, sinkholes, crevasses . . . a million places in which to hide or die.
The floor and walls were made of rough planking, as was the cot. His mattress was a straw-filled pad that smelled vaguely of manure. The stove was an old potbellied model, he guessed, from the sound of the kindling hatch banging shut whenever his captors entered to stoke the fire. Occasionally, over the tang of wood smoke, he caught the faint smell of stove fuel, the kind used by hikers and mountaineers.
He was being held in an abandoned trekkers’ hut, somewhere far enough off the regular trails that it received no visitors.
His captors had spoken fewer than twenty words to him since his abduction, all of them gruff commands given in broken English: sit, stand, eat, toilet . . . On the second day, however, he’d caught a snippet of conversation through the hut’s wall, and while his grasp of Nepali was virtually nonexistent, he knew enough to recognize it. He’d been taken by locals. Who, though? Terrorists or guerrillas? He knew of none operating within Nepal. Kidnappers? He doubted it. They hadn’t forced him to make any ransom recordings or letters. Nor had they mistreated him. He was fed regularly, given plenty to drink, and his sleeping bag was well suited for subzero temperatures. When they
