The Cloud Maker (2010)

by Patrick Woodhead

  Cathy took a deep breath. ‘Then why don’t you seem to notice when Ella and Hal are talking to you? Or me, for that matter.’ She hesitated, biting her lip, and continued, ‘I know it can be a bit of an anti-climax after these trips, but you’ve always seemed so pleased to see us before. This time . . . well, it’s like we’re barely here.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ protested Bill. ‘Of course I’m happy to be back with you and the kids.’

  There was a brief silence. The TV flickered mutely, announcing the beginning of the seven o’clock news. Bill reached for the volume on the remote, then gave a yelp as Cathy jumped up and snatched it from him. The picture shrank to a dot as she flicked the power switch.

  ‘Enough, Bill. Something happened up that mountain, and seeing as I’m the person you’ve chosen to spend your life with, I think I have a right to know about it.’

  Bill sighed and rubbed his eyes. He looked up, wincing to see her expression.

  ‘Look, I haven’t wanted to talk about this because I know what you think about Luca sometimes, and, well, he’s . . . my friend.’ Bill paused for a moment and slowly shook his head. ‘But since he hasn’t even called me or made any attempt to set things right . . .’

  ‘What did he do?’ Cathy interrupted, her voice steely.

  Bill sighed and looked down at his large hands for a moment before speaking. ‘You know when I got altitude sickness? I think Luca was planning on leaving me up there.’

  Cathy’s eyes widened. ‘What? He what?’

  Bill flapped his hands as if trying to put out a fire. ‘Look, it didn’t happen so don’t make a big thing out of it. But he said something about going for the summit and leaving me on the ledge. You know, it’s hard to be sure what the hell did happen up there. I wasn’t exactly thinking straight.’ Then he turned his head, looking back towards the blank television screen. ‘The strange thing is that part of me wishes he had gone for the summit. Then I wouldn’t have to feel so damn’ guilty, like the whole thing is unfinished business because I got ill.’

  ‘Jesus, I always knew he was selfish but I never thought he’d go that far. The man ought to be locked up!’

  ‘Come on, Cath, you know you can’t judge what happens up there from the safety of our living room. It was just the heat of the moment and funny things can happen to your brain at altitude. Besides, he didn’t actually do it. And he was the one who got me down.’

  ‘But this isn’t a one-off! Luca has a track record. Everybody knows he walked past those people dying on Everest.’

  Bill looked up accusingly. ‘That’s just what the bloody tabloids said, Cath, and you know it. Luca was trying to get the hell off the mountain. He didn’t even know those guys were up there.’

  ‘That’s what he told you.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what he told me, and I believe him. I know Luca’s always had a hard side to him, but he’d never go that far.’

  Cathy looked over at her husband. Bill looked pale and strained. He had dropped a few pounds, and there were shadows under his eyes from the restless nights he’d been having. Moving to sit down beside him, she leaned forward impulsively to give him a hug. As she rested her chin on his shoulder, her glance strayed to the framed photo of Luca and Bill standing at the summit of the Eiger. Their goggles were up around their foreheads and grins split their faces. It had been a speed ascent of the north face and the whole climb had gone without a hitch.

  ‘Well, at least you know you’ll never climb with him again.’

  Bill remained silent.

  Cathy pulled back and looked him in the eye. ‘Bill, please tell me you aren’t going to climb with him again? Look, we all know what Luca is like. The kids love him, and he’s sweet with me. Probably, underneath it all, his heart is in the right place. But in the end, Luca is out there for Luca. That’s not someone you can rely on.’

  A lock of hair had escaped her ponytail. She pushed it back impatiently.

  ‘Besides, we have a deal, right? Some good, uninterrupted family time.’ She reached for his hand, her voice growing more determined. ‘Right, my love?’

  The phone rang, making them both jump. Bill let go of her hand with a strained smile, crossing the room to pick up the receiver.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Yes . . . Oh, it’s you.’

  He turned so that his broad back was to his wife. Cathy felt her heart begin to thump.

  ‘Fine, and you?’

  There was a long silence before Bill spoke again.

  ‘Right. Well, that’s good of you, maybe some time later this week.’ He paused again and listened for a few minutes. ‘I see. OK, well, how about twenty minutes then? The Windsor Castle.’

  He put down the receiver and turned back to face Cathy. She felt her heart sink as she saw the new light that had appeared in his eyes.

  ‘Talk of the devil. Luca wants to speak to me, face to face. To apologise.’ Bill started walking towards the door, picking his jacket off the coat-hook as he passed. ‘I said I’d meet him for a quick pint.’

  Cathy looked down at her hands, realising they had started to tremble. ‘Don’t go,’ she said quietly.

  Bill was in the middle of sliding his arm into his jacket. He looked round at her in surprise.

  ‘Why on earth not? We need to sort this out.’

  ‘Because I don’t believe for a minute he’d be apologising unless he’s got something else up his sleeve. And I can’t bear the thought of him persuading you to go on another trip. I just can’t bear it.’

  ‘My love, I’m going for a pint with the man. That’s it.’ Walking over to the sofa, he kissed her briefly.

  ‘I’ll be back in an hour,’ he said. ‘In plenty of time to help put the kids to bed.’

  Three hours later, Cathy lay curled up in bed, pretending to sleep. As Bill crept into the bedroom she smelled the smoke from the pub on his clothes, heard the unevenness to his tread.

  ‘Cathy,’ he whispered as he sat down on the edge of the mattress, pulling off his boots. ‘Cathy love, are you awake?’

  Even before he reached out to switch on the bedside lamp, she heard it in his voice. He was going away again.

  Every instinct screamed inside of her. This time something bad would come of it.

  Chapter 15

  Two dust-streaked jeeps cut through the north-east outskirts of Lhasa, moving fast. After turning down a long, pitted cement drive, they halted in front of the complex’s iron gates and security passes were handed over. A moment later there was a clunking sound as old electric motors fired up and the massive gates slowly pulled back on their hinges.

  Past the long line of garrison buildings, the jeeps rounded a smaller, prefabricated block and came to a halt once more. As the engines died, Second Lieutenant Chen quickly stepped out, squinting against the streaming wind. He stood for a moment in silence, surveying the drab, military buildings and the desolate landscape. Then he jumped slightly as he noticed Captain Zhu had appeared by his shoulder.

  ‘Drapchi Prison, sir,’ Chen shouted above the noise of the wind.

  ‘What are these outer buildings?’ Zhu asked, seemingly indifferent to the dust blowing across his face.

  ‘The northern five are for ordinary criminals. The other two house the re-education centres.’

  Zhu nodded, then turned and started walking towards the door of the smaller building. Within a couple of strides Chen had caught up with him, but was careful not to get too close. He towered above the captain, taking one stride for each of his two, and was very aware of how his size could upset his superiors. It had happened before, when he had first graduated from the Academy. After everything he had heard about Zhu’s reputation, he wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice.

  As they crossed the few remaining yards, Chen averted his gaze from Drapchi’s windswept exterior. It had always been a hellish place, but he knew that the external appearance was nothing compared to what lay directly beneath. Mile upon mile of subterranean passages, built during the 1960s by t
he prisoners themselves, stretched out across the entire complex. There were hundreds of cells, each one an exact replica of the next and all kept in perpetual darkness. Electric lighting was only permitted in the interrogation rooms.

  But it wasn’t so much the dark that got to Chen, nor even the occasional sound of a prisoner’s screams. It was the smell. He had never experienced anything like it. It was as if the stench of panicked humans had been rubbed into every one of the bare concrete walls.

  Despite the heat Chen shivered slightly, thinking back to his dreadful mistake over the boy. When he’d first heard the news, he was terrified what they would do to him, but by some miracle he’d been allowed to stay on the mission. He didn’t doubt, however, that his life was hanging by a thread. Beijing wasn’t famous for second chances, let alone third.

  A guard with a pale, bloated face was there to meet them at the entrance. He carried a flashlight, and his blinking eyes seemed pained by the daylight. He gestured them inside and down a wide, circular staircase with an iron-bar security door at the bottom. After he’d signalled into a room beyond, the door was buzzed open and their slow progress began down the first of many corridors.

  Chen could feel that the temperature had already dropped. In only a few metres the heat and wind from outside had been replaced by a chill that seemed to seep through from the sheer weight of the concrete all around them. As the guard marched off down the corridor, his flashlight cut a narrow beam of light across the walls and floor. Every few steps they passed the silhouette of a cell door or an interlocking corridor, before it faded back again into the shadows.

  As the guard turned, shining his light round to check on them all, Chen suddenly caught sight of Zhu. His features were bleached white by the beam. He had a handkerchief pressed to his nose, but Chen could see the top half of it was wrinkled in disgust. Obviously the smell was getting to him too.

  They were approaching the yellow glow of a ceiling light and the corridor widened into a room. At first it was hard to see much, then various shapes began to take form. Towards the back of the room was a heavy wooden bench with thick strapping and several buckets of water lined up on top of it. Further to the left was a rickety metal chair with a figure slumped forward in it, his shaven head almost touching his knees and his face concealed from view.

  As the guard switched off his flashlight, a second figure stepped out from the shadows. He was small and gaunt looking, with wide eyes that stared vacantly ahead. He was wearing a cheap plastic cooking apron and long rubber gloves that stretched past his elbows like medieval gauntlets. Approaching the guard, he handed him a clipboard and, without even registering the others, walked past into the dark corridor and was gone.

  The guard swivelled the clipboard round and read the name of the prisoner aloud.

  ‘Jigme Sangpo. A monk from Tashilhunpo Monastery,’ he said, his voice as wavering as his eyes.

  The figure in the chair did not lift its head.

  Zhu stepped forward into the room, his left arm outstretched for the clipboard.

  ‘I know who he is, idiot.’

  Tilting the pages towards the light, he scanned the notes that had been kept during the prisoner’s interrogation. It had been going on for just over three days, with successively stronger tortures being introduced every few hours. They had got nothing from the early phases, but as Zhu had already guessed from seeing the water and the plastic gloves, the electro-shock treatment had brought better results.

  He moved closer to the figure on the chair. He crouched down and slowly tilted the man’s face up from his knees. There were jagged burn marks lacerating his cheeks, stretching right across his face from where the copper wire had been attached. As their eyes met, Zhu could see that the prisoner’s were dull and bloodshot from long hours of pain. He had both his arms folded into his lap, with his hands resting over his groin. That was where they would have done the most damage, Zhu thought, especially to a monk.

  After so many hours, all the monk had said was that ‘two climbers had been brought in from Nepal’ to move the Panchen Lama. That was it. Nothing more.

  Zhu looked into his eyes, searching for the slightest trace of emotion. That must be all he knew. No one could resist this kind of treatment, and he had already held out for an impressive length of time. But, once broken, it was rare for a prisoner to hold back. They usually said anything to get the electric shocks to stop.

  ‘You must not feel bad about what you have told us,’ he whispered, moving close but careful not to touch the monk. ‘You have done your duty and we are grateful for it.’

  The prisoner stared blankly at this new apparition before him, his mind clouded by the hours of pain and endless questions. In the half-light, the man’s black pupils seemed to expand, obscuring any trace of the true colour of his eyes. Those black circles were boring into him. He could smell the man’s aftershave and the subtle aroma of his freshly washed face.

  ‘You have done well,’ he said.

  Tears welled up in the corners of the monk’s eyes, streaking through the dirt on his cheeks. He had betrayed the boy, betrayed his entire religion. His single consolation was that he only knew a couple of the minor details of the escape, and so had had little to tell. But however little it was, the fact remained – he had told the Chinese.

  Captain Zhu stood up, his eyes moving from Chen to the guard.

  ‘Move him up to the day cells in the main complex.’

  ‘But, sir, political prisoners are . . .’

  The guard’s voice broke off as he saw the expression on the visitor’s face darken. For a moment Zhu remained quiet, allowing silence to fill the room. The guard straightened up, wishing he had kept his mouth shut and growing more and more uncomfortable as the moments passed.

  Eventually Zhu handed him back the clipboard.

  ‘This is no ordinary monk but one of the High Lamas of the Gelugpa sect,’ he said, in an icy voice. ‘You will treat him with the respect he deserves. Now, see to it that he is washed and has a good meal.’

  As the guard quickly pulled himself up into a salute and moved forward towards the prisoner, Zhu grabbed the flashlight from his hand.

  ‘And return his prayer wheel and beads,’ he added.

  Zhu signalled to Chen and they moved back down the dark corridor. As Chen fell into step behind him, his eyes following the beam of light passing over the floor ahead, he felt a strange sense of elation. Even after prisoners had given everything, named everyone involved in a suspected plot and many more besides, they were usually left to rot down here. There were no court proceedings, no appeals or transfers. The cell doors were simply slammed shut and the matter closed for all but the unfortunate soul within.

  But today was different. Zhu had given a simple order and now the monk was being transferred. Just like that.

  As they followed the line of the corridor, Chen’s expression softened. He had heard of the Captain’s reputation and, like everyone else, found his presence in the office unnerving. But when it came down to it, there was obviously more to this man than any of them had suspected.

  He cleared his throat, picking his words carefully.

  ‘Do you think the information will be helpful, sir?’

  Zhu continued walking, but after a moment replied over his shoulder.

  ‘It’s vague, but it might be useful when cross-checked with something else.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  They reached the iron security gate at the foot of the main stairwell. Zhu reached up and banged the end of the flashlight against the metal a couple of times, the noise quickly muffled by the concrete walls. From the annexe behind, another guard buzzed them through and they climbed up the wide circular staircase in silence, pausing only by the door to the outside. Chen turned towards Zhu, having mustered the courage to say something more.

  ‘I think you did the right thing, sir.’

  Zhu looked at him, his expression unreadable.

  ‘I mean, transferring the monk up to the surfa
ce,’ Chen continued, his voice beginning to falter. ‘He had told us everything he knew already. It was as good to let him go.’

  Zhu seemed to be nodding slowly as Chen spoke. Then he reached out with his left hand and slowly turned the handle on the door.

  ‘Every man’s last day should be a good one,’ he said as he stepped out into the light.

  Chapter 16

  Eight days after their meeting in the Windsor Castle, Bill and Luca arrived in Kathmandu airport with five large duffel bags of climbing equipment and dried food. Stepping out of the terminal, they stood blinking for a moment in the brilliant sunlight, taking in the sheer chaos that is Nepal’s greatest city.

  Billows of pungent smoke rose from the grills of food vendors, while beggar children darted through the heavy traffic, scanning the backs of taxis for the pallid faces of newly arrived tourists. Every so often there was a grinding of gears as a car swerved to avoid a cow, lying placidly in the middle of the road with the confidence of a lifetime of Hindu privilege. Amidst the incredible clamour, soldiers in pale blue uniform lined the streets, waving their truncheons and blowing their whistles at largely indifferent locals.

  Signalling to the nearest in a long line of decrepit taxis, Bill and Luca loaded their bags, using some spare rope to tie down the boot of the car. The car’s engine stuttered, and then they were heading for the narrow streets of the Thamel district.

  Luca leaned his head out of the open window, the hot air whipping across his face. The fumes, the noise, even the piles of rubbish rotting in the alleyways, somehow felt like a release from the stifling claustrophobia of the last few weeks.

  One thing he was sure of – there was no turning back now.

  Then he remembered his parents’ faces as he’d told them he was going back out to Tibet so soon after the last trip. Luca had steeled himself for anger rather than abject disappointment, and flinched at the memory.

  ‘You know you can’t come back and work here again,’ his father had said, grey-faced, and ignoring the warning hand his wife laid on his shoulder. ‘It makes a mockery of the other employees if you’re just hopping in and out whenever you feel like it.’