The Avatari (49 page)

‘Don’t you want any sleep?’ she asked, sitting up abruptly.

‘It’s my watch,’ he replied.

‘I didn’t know we were keeping watch,’ she mumbled. ‘I thought you said the Mongol was supposed to be doing that?’

‘I’m sure he is, but we need to watch him too. Taidjut is a Hazara; his tribe owes its lineage to Genghis Khan. They have a custom of murdering honoured guests, so their spirits will remain in the house and bring them good luck.’

‘You’re kidding!’ she said with some irritation.

‘Don’t believe me if you don’t want to,’ Peter said nonchalantly and turned back to the window.

She turned to go back to sleep and found she couldn’t. After a moment, she got out of bed and came to where he was standing. He did not turn to face her. She put her arms around him and he felt her soft breasts press against him.

‘Come to bed, Peter,’ she whispered, her lips nibbling his ear.

He smelt the soap in her hair.

He turned and they were suddenly kissing, struggling with each other’s clothes. They were frantic and yet tender and gentle. When they had finished, she lay across him, one leg thrown over him, her head nuzzling his shoulder. He tried reaching for his trousers to get his cigarettes, but she muttered at him angrily, forbidding him to move. He kissed the top of her head.

‘What was all this about?’ he asked softly.

La tierra se movio.
For him, the earth had moved.

‘I wanted to, before you left,’ she said matter-of-factly.

‘Sweet Jesus!’

‘What? Don’t tell me you minded?’ she asked him.

‘No, not at all. But I thought... ’ Peter began lamely.

‘You forget that I was an undergrad in the 70s, Peter. We were a whole lot less complicated then.’

He cursed softly and she began to giggle and he found himself laughing with her. She reached down and felt him, then climbed on top of him. He grunted under her weight.

‘I’ve decided to stay,’ he said, squirming as she began to bite his neck. When she didn’t respond, he held her still and asked, ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’

She looked at him, her expression forthright, and said with a half-smile, ‘I didn’t really expect you to leave after
that
, you know.’ Kissing Peter’s now open mouth, she muttered, ‘Now just stop talking, will you?’

Peter complied.

In the room below, Ashton and Duggy were awake, talking in a low monotone. Ashton was in a foul mood.

‘So from here, our destination shouldn’t be too far away; that is,
if
Susan is reading the map correctly.’

‘She’s doing a great job,’ Duggy said reassuringly. ‘I’m sure we’re on the right track.’

‘Glad to know you’re so optimistic,’ Ashton muttered pensively. ‘We’re just getting out of the war zone and into one of the most desolate regions in the world. And so far, we haven’t found any signs of this monastery or, for that matter, of anyone else trying to get there.’

‘I’m sure we will, Colonel. It’s just a matter of time. Don’t worry, we’ve got this far already; we’ll make the rest of the journey too.’

‘You sound a lot like my aunt, Duggy,’ Ashton observed moodily. ‘For all you know, even if we do get there, chances are that it’s just an abandoned ruin, with nothing but dilapidated buildings and dust – like all other myths. We may have come all this way for nothing; we could just as well have let those buggers find that out for themselves.’

Duggy nearly began retorting that he didn’t quite agree, but decided against it. The ‘aunt’ quip rankled.

CHAPTER 28

Into the Big Pamir and Beyond

S
EPTEMBER 1986

‘Why do we need another guide?’ Ashton asked the man from Zhawar. ‘Can you not guide us, old man?’

‘No, I cannot,’ the man replied. ‘I was very young at the time. I had accompanied my father on that trip and ultimately, we never even reached the place.’

‘Why did you want to go there?’ Ashton asked curiously.

‘My father used to trade in animal skins in Feyzabad – snow leopard, wolf, ibex. He was also a great hunter who could shoot the
baaz
, the eagle, out of the sky with his .303.’

The old man mimicked the stance of an imaginary person holding a rifle and squinting against the glare of the sun as he aimed at a target.

‘One day,’ he went on, ‘a man comes to see him and describes this fantastic valley, untouched by humans, where these animals are supposedly found in large numbers and roam without fear, for no one ever hunts them. Intrigued, my father agreed to accompany the man to this place. They set off one day, taking me along. Just like you and members of your group, they were going to a village in the Little Pamir to pick up the guide, when my father died of the
tutek
– altitude sickness.’

He stopped and spat on the ground, his eyes fixed on the contours of the stark brown mountains ahead.

‘No, we will definitely need guides to get you to your final destination,’ he concluded.

And so the old man and his son went off, leaving them waiting patiently at the caravanserai until they returned. The duo had apparently gone to look for some shepherd who might have come to Ishkashim to sell his livestock and would be making his trip back up the Wakhan Corridor. There were rumours of a large number of spies in the area, which might well have been true. The corridor had been out of the war so far, but that was a situation the Soviets would very much have wanted to maintain. Travelling with a shepherd would enable Ashton’s group to travel cross-country without arousing much suspicion.

Two days passed. They utilized the period of waiting by preparing for their onward journey. They had packed their rucksacks under Peter’s supervision and Susan, who had done some trekking before, learnt how vitally important it was to pack a rucksack correctly for a high-altitude expedition.

‘Put anything you don’t need right at the bottom,’ Peter instructed them all.

‘I guess this goes to the bottom, then,’ Ashton decided with some regret, looking at his slouch hat which he held for a moment before shoving it deep into one of the rucksacks.

Ever since they had entered Afghanistan, the men had been wearing loosely tied turbans.

Duggy looked at Ashton and acknowledged his sentiments with a sympathetic shrug. He knew how fond Ashton was of that hat, which he had worn since his days in Malaya.

They had started packing in the morning and it was mid-afternoon by the time most of it was finally done.

‘I didn’t think it was going to take this long,’ Susan said, stretching her back.

‘Well, it’s a good thing we have the time to spare,’ Peter mumbled, his words coming indistinctly past the pencil held between his teeth as he made a note of every item that had gone into the rucksacks in a small diary. ‘Here, check those torches and see if they’re working before you put them in, will you?’ he added.

He made Susan memorize each item, the order in which it had been stored in the rucksack and the particular section in which she had placed it. Not content with that, he made her memorize the contents of all the other rucksacks. Then they worked out what to carry and what to discard in case the nature of the terrain compelled them to let their mules go and carry the loads themselves, and if, due to injury to one of their party, they needed to drop one of the climber’s loads.

‘Where on earth did you learn about all this?’ she asked.

‘Oh, here and there,’ he answered airily, picking up one of the packed rucksacks and swinging it easily over his shoulders to check it for weight and bulk.

‘What’s this, another guy thing about never kissing and telling?’

‘Really, if you want to know about the women, it’s never going to be a problem,’ he said with a grin.

‘Don’t bother, we get the drift,’ Ashton cut in with a wry smile.

They were all rather relieved that Peter had decided to accompany them all the way.

Having satisfied himself with the packing, Peter prepared a deep brown mixture of henna in an aluminium bowl and they all sat down to apply the paste to their hair. After leaving it on for two hours, they rinsed it off, laughing at the results which ranged from Duggy’s deep auburn to Susan’s bright copper. They had already changed into the clothes the Afghans had given them and all of them had acquired a deep tan from the harsh sun of the mountains. Unless someone looked at them closely, Ashton thought, they might very well pass off as locals.

On the second day following the guide’s departure, there was nothing much to do. They sat and played poker, with Duggy winning every game. Susan said she didn’t play and her group saw no reason to doubt her word.

‘It’s your inscrutable face, Sergeant,’ Peter said to Duggy, before getting up in disgust.

He had lost a big pot and not for the first time.

‘You would win, if you waited for a hand, Captain,’ Duggy countered, happily scooping up the money from the table, while puffing at a noxious Russian cigarette which Vilayat Hussain had sent them by the carton.

Even in this remote area, the Russian presence was palpable. The radio blared out Russian techno-pop or Soviet patriotic songs most of the time.

‘Damn, can’t make it catch any other station!’ Peter complained.

They all felt the tension in his voice.

‘Have you given a thought to who we’re up against?’ Susan now asked, voicing a question that was uppermost in their minds.

The men turned and looked at her.

‘Well, if they’re going to be operating here, they have to be well connected and it’s not going to be just about money,’ Ashton said after a moment, when he realized no one was volunteering an answer. ‘There’s a war going on here. So they have to have some government contacts too. And, of course, they will need firepower, in case they have to use it.’

‘What government contacts?’ Duggy enquired.

This time, Peter replied. ‘Could be Pakistani; they have a lot of control here. Might even be the Russians. But on second thoughts, how would these guys get to the Russians? It would have to be with Afghan help,’ he reasoned, expanding on Ashton’s argument, ‘and that wouldn’t be too difficult, provided the price was negotiated.’

‘If they are already here, it means they have deciphered the
paiza
and roughly followed the route we have just taken,’ Ashton added.

‘Could be,’ Susan mused. ‘If I’ve got it right, these people with their resources would have hired professionals to do the job for them. Or they might have some additional clues which we don’t.’

‘And do you think they know we’re also on this trail?’ Duggy asked quietly.

They all knew the answer to that one.

‘That’s a definite yes, I’m afraid,’ Ashton said ruefully. ‘If they had followed the messenger Ru San Ko sent me, they would certainly have a tail on us – unless they have lost it.’

He tried to sound cheerful, but could see that the others looked unconvinced.

‘Henry, I’ve wanted to ask you this: why did the Teacher specifically ask for
your
help?’ Susan enquired frankly, looking straight at him.

Intrigued by the note of urgency in her voice, the others looked at her curiously.

‘Why do you ask?’ Ashton asked, obviously taken aback by the question.

‘I don’t know. You tell me. Is there something, some conversation you remember having about this place?’ She paused before continuing in a calmer voice, ‘I know it was a very long time ago, but anything you remember could be important.’

‘No, I don’t think so’, Ashton said, after giving it a thought. ‘Anyway, even the letter says that Jason Wando delivered the
paiza
to the monastery after I had left.’

He had already shared his experiences at the monastery with his team in Leh.

‘So you think the Teacher appealed to you because he knew no one else who could help,’ Peter said quietly. ‘Fits in, in a way, I would imagine. How many people with the colonel’s skills would a monk in a Laotian monastery know?’

Duggy and Ashton exchanged a quick glance before looking away.

‘One last question,’ Susan cut in with an uncertain smile. ‘I haven’t told you yet, but it’s quite possible that we don’t meet any of the Jhagun. They may well have died off or never been there in the first place. In that case, have you considered how we should tackle the bad guys with their “firepower” if and when we meet them?’

There was no answer from the assembled men. After a while, Peter got up, announcing to the others that he was going for a wash.

It was midnight when they heard the pack animals returning to camp. They had all been lying awake in anticipation and promptly came out into the courtyard to meet their guide from Zhawar and his son. Peter quickly sought feedback from the old man.

The others gathered around him the moment his conversation with their guide was over.

‘It’s okay,’ he reassured them. ‘I think we’ve got it right so far. We need to move right away so that we can reach the outskirts of Ishkashim, about fifteen miles east, before daylight. From there, we hitch up with a Wakhi
padaban
or herdsman who is moving towards the Big Pamir.’

‘Is this herdsman going to the Blood Mountain?’ Duggy asked.

Peter quickly spoke to the old man again and translated his reply for the benefit of his team.

‘He says the herdsman will go no further than the Kyrgyz village of Kotal in the Big Pamir. The place we need to head for is further east, in the Little Pamir. We’ll need a new guide to take us beyond Kotal and will, hopefully, get one at the village for our journey to the Blood Mountain.’

Although the others had half-anticipated such an eventuality, they exchanged apprehensive glances before quickly loading the pack animals and setting off.

The night temperature had dropped considerably and it was numbingly cold. They skirted the town of Ishkashim, enveloped in darkness but for a few twinkling lights, and travelled through the night. Well before dawn, they reached an open pasture nestled on a rocky hillside where the
padaban
had pitched a few colourful tents, locally known as yurts. As they approached the camp, a pack of huge, mastiff-like dogs which had lain sleeping among the herdsman’s yaks and sheep sat up and growled menacingly, their coats glistening in the starlight. The old man let out a low whistle which was instantly answered by what appeared to be a lookout, who called in the dogs before riding up to the group on a pony. After greeting the old man, he directed them with a wave of his hand to follow him. They were ushered into a vacant yurt which had obviously been pitched for them. They quickly pegged their animals and lay down in their sleeping bags, trying to snatch a few hours of sleep before sunrise.