The Avatari (59 page)

‘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?’

Ashton looked down at the ground and made a rough sketch in the dirt with his shoe. ‘The sun always shines on one of it’s sides. It is triangular, I think,’ he said thoughtfully.

‘Trimukha! The three-sided peak – the seat of Shambhala!’ the monk exclaimed in excitement, prostrating himself before Ashton. ‘It is as the Zhang Zhung texts say!’

Stein stared at Ashton, then said pointedly to Claire, ‘What I don’t get is how you too seem to actually believe this guy! How can we be sure that he isn’t taking us on some wild goose chase just to buy time? Why don’t you let me work him over just to see if he’s telling the truth? Believe me, I won’t have a problem doing it.’

‘I never doubted that for a second, Mr Stein,’ Claire Donovant said, her face expressionless. ‘But perhaps we could first give the colonel the benefit of the doubt?’

‘It’s going to be a long trek if we’re planning to do it entirely on foot.’ Stein rubbed his face vigorously with his palms, trying to restore circulation. ‘God, we
need
those helicopters! Your transmitter should be picking up a signal, now that we’re on open ground, away from the screening of the mountains.’