to face the heat and humidity once again.
Bronson paid the driver, retrieved their bags from the boot and together they walked into the terminal building in front of them.
The flight to Delhi left on time, which slightly surprised them both, and they then had a two-hour wait in the domestic terminal in the capital before their onward flight to Leh.
When their flight was finally called, they picked up their bags again and walked towards the departure gate, and the last leg of their journey.
As they stood up, two middle-aged men of European appearance who’d been sitting about twenty feet away stood up as well. One of them looked down again at the picture displayed on the screen of his mobile phone, comparing that tiny image – showing a man lying apparently unconscious on the flag-stoned floor of a room – with the face of the man in front of him. Then he nodded to his companion. The identification was certain.
As Bronson and Angela walked away, the two men followed about fifty feet behind them, joining the back of the queue for the flight out to Leh, a flight for which they’d already bought tickets. As they waited to pass through the departure gate, the man holding the Nokia flipped it open and then made a twenty-second call to a US mobile number.
46
Nick Masters, his eyes red with exhaustion after a series of long-haul flights, took another sip of thick black coffee and stared across the table at the tall, slim man wearing an immaculate light grey suit. Despite his Western-style dress, his companion’s brown skin, black hair and dark eyes marked him as a local. In fact, Rodini was a lieutenant-colonel in the Pakistani military.
They were meeting in a small cafe close to the centre of Islamabad. Masters had explained what assistance he needed, though not why he needed it. And Rodini knew better than to ask for specifics.
‘Tell me exactly which part of Kashmir you need to get to,’ Rodini asked, sliding cutlery and plates to one side and opening a military map on the table.
‘Northern Ladakh,’ Masters said, pointing at the area near Panamik.
Rodini nodded. ‘That helps,’ he said. ‘We still control Baltistan and the Northern Areas, so getting you and your men as far as Skardu or Hushe – they’re just here, in central Baltistan – wouldn’t be a problem. Crossing the border into the area controlled by India will be more difficult, of course, because there’s a very large military presence along the border – on both sides of it, in fact. We’ll have to work out the best method of achieving that, but it will have to be a covert insertion, because all the roads between the Nubra Valley and Baltistan have been closed since nineteen forty-seven.’
Rodini tapped the map with his forefinger for emphasis. ‘Insertion is one thing, but extraction could be quite another. Depending on what you’re planning on doing in Indian territory, your best route out might be to simply drive down to Leh and buy an airline ticket to Delhi or Mumbai. Otherwise we could try to arrange for a chopper to pick you up, but we’d have to select the location very carefully. How many men in your team?’
‘Eight in all,’ Masters replied. ‘That’s seven plus me, but two of them are in Leh already, or at least on their way there, so I guess they can leave the same way they came in. That means the infiltration team will be six men.’
In fact, he had only recruited a six-man team, but Donovan would be flying into Islamabad that morning, and was intending to cross the border into India with them. Masters had also sent two men to Delhi. They had spotted Bronson and Angela at the airport, and had managed to get on the same flight.
‘We’ll need some ordnance as well,’ Masters continued, ‘but nothing too heavy. A few nine-millimetre pistols, some Kalashnikovs and if possible a sniper rifle with a suppressor, plus ammunition. Will that be a problem? Can we still just go out and buy them here in Islamabad?’
Rodini made a note on a piece of paper and shook his head. ‘The sniper rifle might prove difficult to source because it’s somewhat specialized, and if you find one it’ll be expensive, but otherwise there’s no problem, especially for the Kalashnikovs. You can buy them in one of the markets. I can suggest traders who supply good quality ordnance and are honest – or at least as honest as anyone else involved in that business. Anything else?’
Masters paused for a few seconds, wondering how best to phrase his final request.
‘Yes,’ he said, and leaned forward. ‘We intend to recover an object from that area, and we will need transport to assist us in the retrieval.’
‘What kind of an object?’
‘That I can’t tell you, but I can assure you that it has no military significance or intrinsic value. It’s simply a relic that my principal has located, and wishes to take possession of. He collects such things.’
‘Does he always need a team of crack mercenaries armed to the teeth to recover objects that he covets?’ Rodini asked, a slight smile on his face.
‘Not always, no.’
Rodini grunted his disbelief. ‘And may I ask whether it belongs to the Indian government?’
Masters shook his head. ‘No. It belongs to nobody. It’s been lost for millennia.’
‘Very well. How big is it, and how heavy?’
‘I don’t know for certain at the moment, but I estimate a weight of no more than four hundred pounds, and a box that would fit in the back of a jeep or small truck.’
Rodini still looked unconvinced, but Masters decided this was just too bad. The last thing he was going to do was tell him exactly what he was trying to recover – all his credibility would vanish the moment he did so. Even the men he’d recruited had no idea of their actual objective, only that it was a relic that had been lost for a couple of thousand years.
Rodini looked down again at his few notes. ‘OK,’ he said at last. ‘The only major problem is getting you across the border. Give me a call when all your men have arrived.’
47
After the noise and dirt of Mumbai, the relative peace and tranquillity of Leh provided a stark but welcome contrast to Bronson and Angela. The airport was crowded, groups of white-clad Indians bustling around or standing in groups, and there were several clusters of Westerners, mostly wearing utility clothing, heavy walking boots and carrying backpacks. A babel of voices speaking a wide variety of languages and accents greeted them, but it sounded as if English was one of the dominant tongues.
It hadn’t the same sense of frantic urgency as Mumbai either, and outside the terminal building the sense of tranquillity deepened. The scenery was spectacular, mountains, hills and valleys extending in all directions. There was what looked like a monastery on the side of one hill that Bronson had actually seen before – it had flashed past the wing of the aircraft, alarmingly close, as the plane had come in to land.
But there was no sign of the town of Leh itself.
‘Is this the right place?’ Bronson asked, a little breathlessly.
