Finally, she came out on to the top of the cliff and staggered like a drunk over to where Luca stood, pulling the rope through a belay.
‘That was incredible,’ she said, flopping down on the flat rock.
Luca’s eyes switched from staring at the far mountains and he smiled down at her.
‘That was one hell of a first climb. You should be proud of yourself.’
Shara gave a tired but happy smile. Beyond where Luca stood, she could see the high summits of the mountains encircling them like an immense amphitheatre, their peaks stretching up thousands of metres into the sky. Glaciers streamed down from their summits, converging on the lower slopes. Not far from where they were, she could see the snub nose of the nearest one, rising up like a pitted barricade.
Moments later, Bill appeared above the cliff edge. He walked straight past where Shara was sitting and up to Luca.
‘Great climb, huh?’ Luca said, smiling.
Bill seemed not to have heard him. ‘We need to get moving to the shelter higher up,’ he said. ‘The wind’s picking up fast, like you said.’
Shara got to her feet and walked up to where they were standing. She had been so absorbed in the climb she hadn’t even noticed the changing weather. The ghostly clouds they had seen that morning now streamed across the sky, muting the afternoon light. They had obviously been climbing in the lee of the wind for all this time, but now they were exposed to its full force and she could feel it rip through her heavy jumper. Reaching into her pack, she put on the sheepskin jacket, using her leather belt to pull it tight around her body and buttoning it high up under her chin. The jacket also had a hood lined with soft wool and fringed with long, black fur that she pulled up to protect her face.
‘Let’s get moving,’ Luca said, coiling the slack rope across his shoulder in equal lengths. ‘We’ve got to get to the far side to be out of the wind. You OK with that, Shara?’
She looked pale and tired, but without another word swung her pack on to her shoulders, ready to leave. Luca smiled again, amazed by how different she seemed from the angry and aloof girl they had first met in the village. Bill had been completely wrong about her, he was sure of it.
‘I’m ready.’
Within seconds she was roped up between the two of them and together they trudged off towards the start of the snowline like convicts in a chain gang.
With each minute that passed, the wind grew steadily in strength. Funnelled by the adjacent peaks, it rampaged down the mountainside, picking up loose snow from the glacier floor and hurtling past them. Squinting against the swirling air, Luca leaned into it, concentrating on the route ahead. They had to reach the shelter of the higher ground.
As he marched forward, tugging at the rope, Shara struggled to keep pace. She panted in the thin air as huge, swirling belts of cloud rolled across the sky, blurring out the horizon. The ground had become a great flowing blanket of driven snow, with the wind streaming across the hardened ice, until all they could do was bend lower still against the maelstrom.
Luca trudged forward without checking his stride. All around them, the noise of the wind grew and grew, until it became a shrieking sound that made the sides of their Gore-Tex hoods clatter at deafening volume.
Hours passed and the strength of the wind only increased. It was relentless, the streaming snow eddying round their faces and condensing on their raw cheeks. Snow forced its way past their hats and neck gaiters, trickling down their bodies like sand and making them shiver from cold.
They had been going for three hours when suddenly the rope at Luca’s waist snapped tight. He waited for a moment, bracing himself against the wind, then stepped forward once again. It remained fixed. Behind him, he could see the blurry outline of Shara. She was bent forward, her hands on her knees.
As he trudged back along the rope towards her, Bill appeared out of the gloom. For a moment they stood in silence as the snow quickly covered the coils of rope at their feet. Shara was still bent double, struggling to breathe in the rushing air. Frost layered her face and her heavy jacket hood was caked in snow. She was shaking violently from the cold, her arms hugging her body to stay warm.
Luca pulled her upright, staring into her eyes. They were glassy, her eyelashes frosted at the end.
‘Hold on,’ he shouted to her. ‘We’re stopping here.’
Bill swung off his rucksack, pulling out the tent and poles. With heads bent low, they knelt on the hard snow, staking down the main body of the tent while the fabric flapped and twisted in the wind. Bill had his right glove off, the end clamped between his teeth, as he used his bare fingers to work the poles through the fabric sleeves.
‘OK,’ he shouted, holding one of the ends tight. As Luca put tension on the pole, the end slipped past the attachment at the corner of the tent, digging down into the snow beneath. With the snow half-blinding him, Bill hadn’t seen what had happened and Luca pushed harder, digging the pole down deeper into the snow.
Suddenly it flexed then gave a brittle snap.
Luca looked up to see the main support for the tent buckling to one side.
‘Shit!’ he shouted, banging his fist against the snow.
He flung his end to one side and crawled across the billowing fabric to where Bill crouched on the opposite side. For a moment they knelt in silence, heads only inches apart, as they tried to work out what to do.
‘Back to the rock-face?’ Bill shouted.
‘Too dangerous.’
Luca then squinted across to where Shara stood.
‘We don’t have much time. You stay with her. I saw some overhangs in the rock west of here. Before the weather closed in.’
‘OK,’ Bill shouted back. Balling up the tent fabric with both hands, he trudged round to Shara who was still standing, arms clamped around her body. Wrapping the fabric around her to shield her from the worst of the wind, he pushed her down on his rucksack. Then he put one arm around her shoulders and with his spare hand tried to brush some of the caked snow away from her face.
Reaching into his jacket pocket, Luca pulled out his GPS and waited for the satellites to triangulate. Finally he got a clean signal and took a waypoint of their position. With a final glance at Shara, he shouldered his pack and marched off.
Seconds later he was lost to the blizzard.
Chapter 27
THE STRIP LIGHT flickered, its pallid glow picking up the curls of smoke from Captain Zhu’s dying cigarette.
The green walls were pockmarked with patches of raw cement and there were no windows, only a decrepit metal fan bolted to the far corner of the room, one of its three blades missing. A plastic table, which had evidently been left out in the rain for many years, stood unsteadily in the centre, exuding a dank smell of mould.
Of the two chairs that stood to either side of it, one supported the considerable bulk of René Falkus. Squeezed in between the plastic armrests, his body filled every part of the chair, forcing him to sit unnaturally upright, thick thighs locked together as if the need for modesty far outweighed that of comfort.
Across the table, Zhu had one leg folded over the other as he delicately stubbed out what remained of a cigarette. They had been locked in the same position for almost an hour, Zhu asking questions while René tried to answer with as little detail as possible, the pounding in his temples only exacerbated by the remnants of his hangover.
Leaning back in his chair, Zhu allowed his eyes to settle on one of the stains on René’s shirt.
‘I understand that you feel some loyalty to your friends, but is it worth risking everything you own to protect them from something that is simply inevitable? You must know by now that we will find them.’
‘I’ve already told you,’ René said tiredly. ‘They’re just on the standard route.’
‘Tell me where they are.’
René shrugged and looked down at the table.
‘I don’t know where they are.’
‘You will lose everything you have worked for,’ Zhu continued,
his voice suddenly softening, as if he personally would regret such an outcome. ‘Your restaurant, your bar, everything. All we need to know is where they went.’
‘One phone call to the Foreign Office and we’ll soon see what you can do to my restaurant,’ René countered. ‘I have rights and you know it.’
Zhu’s expression looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘Of course, your rights . . . The problem is, I don’t think there are too many lawyers inside Drapchi Prison.’
A muscle flickered in René’s cheek. He had heard the stories. The miles of underground cells. The darkness.
There was a pause as he steeled himself, choosing his next words very carefully. He had been in Lhasa for a long time, and had learned how to deal with the Chinese. But somehow this newcomer was different. There was something about him that turned the stomach. Something that made René think that the worst thing he could do was to show any fear. Clenching his jaw, he looked straight into the captain’s eyes.
‘Either charge me with something or get me the hell out of here. Enough of this bullshit.’
Zhu didn’t respond. Instead he leaned forward, picking up the silver lighter lying on the table. Using his thumb, he sparked it then snapped the lid shut again. He did this several times before leaning back in his chair again, leaving the flame burning.
‘You still have no idea what I could do to you, do you?’ he said. ‘I can take your livelihood, just like that.’
As he said the word, he snapped the lighter shut. René dragged up a smile, the effort clearly costing him.
‘Yeah? Then what else have I got to lose?’ he said, squaring his shoulders across the table.
For the first time that afternoon a smile of genuine pleasure crossed Zhu’s face. He uncoiled himself from the chair and stepped over to the bolted metal door. He knocked twice and it swung back on its hinges.
‘Everyone has something more to lose, Mr Falkus,’ he said, and walked out into the corridor beyond.
René sat waiting in the dank cell, unable to make out the curt orders Zhu was giving outside. Sweat gathered on his upper lip and with a sweep of his tongue he licked it off. As Zhu’s footsteps softly receded down the hallway, a new silence fell. Despite the fact that he was craving a cigarette, something prevented René from leaning forward and taking one from the open packet that had been left on the table. Instead, he just sat there, listening to the hum of the fluorescent lighting.
A moment later the door burst open and three burly soldiers dressed in military fatigues rushed in. They shunted the table to one side, grabbing hold of René by his shirt collar and lifting him bodily from the chair. It happened so fast that he barely had time to shout out before one of the soldiers had kicked the chair from under him, sending it spinning to the far corner of the room.
They half-carried, half-dragged him down the corridor, his feet skidding along the smooth concrete floor.
‘Get your hands off me, you bastards . . .’ he started when one of the soldiers elbowed him right across his jaw. René howled in pain. The soldier raised his arm to strike again.
They pulled and shoved him down another corridor, and then another. Finally, with a fierce yank on his hair, they pulled him to an abrupt halt. One of the soldiers pointed to some wire mesh set at waist-height in the wall in front of him.
The mesh area was about the same size as a brick and René had to stoop to peer in. Through the cross-hatching of wire he could see a cell identical to the one he had just been in. A table stood in the centre and, to the left, two figures in profile.
René could feel his breath quicken and his heart start to beat faster.
Please God, no. Anything but that.
One of the figures was hunched over the table, her dark hair obscuring most of her face. Her gangly legs were clamped together at the knees and her upper half had been stripped bare. With only her crossed arms, she tried to cover her small, adolescent breasts. Even through the wire mesh, René could see that Anu’s hands were shaking.
The man next to her was a soldier. René didn’t recognise him, but he was wearing the same fatigues as the three who had just dragged him from the cell. He had a broad back which stretched the fabric of his military-issue shirt, and his hair had been shaved almost to the skin of his squat head.
As René stared in disbelief, one of the man’s coarse hands reached down to unbuckle his belt, while the other moved across and grabbed Anu’s slender leg. She flinched violently, her large brown eyes fixed on some unseen part of the floor.
‘Oh, God,’ repeated René in a whisper, feeling his stomach contract and the bile rise in his throat. ‘Please. No.’
Despite the hair spilling across her face, René could still see the line of tears on Anu’s cheeks. The soldier moved closer still, leaning his whole body forward so that his face was only an inch from hers. His right hand had begun kneading the inside of her thigh, moving deliberately higher with each turn.
René’s mouth went dry as he stumbled backwards. He reached out to steady himself on the wall behind when the soldier to his right shunted him off balance, sending him sprawling to the ground. René hit the stone floor hard, knocking the wind out of himself and gasping for air. Clambering to his knees, he raised his arms to steady himself when the soldiers descended on him once again. They hoisted him up in one movement and pushed him back along the corridor.
Then came Anu’s scream, a high-pitch sound that wavered and abruptly ended.
René squeezed his eyes shut, imaging the soldier’s beefy hand being clamped over her mouth. Zhu would be waiting for him in the interrogation room. He turned back towards it, all the strength drained from his legs.
The same sentence kept drumming over and over in his head: ‘Everyone has something more to lose’.
God help him, so did little Anu.
Chapter 28
WIND SCORCHED ACROSS the mountainside, whipping the loose fabric of the tent’s fly-sheet into a frenzy of movement that clattered like gunfire. Shara and Bill sat huddled together, rocking backwards and forwards in a vain effort to stay warm. They had draped the sleeping bags over their thighs. Snow collected in the folds like piles of icing sugar.
‘Come on, Luca. Come on,’ Bill muttered under his breath. The wind buffeted against his hunched shoulders, slowly stripping away the last vestiges of warmth. By his side, Shara’s whole body convulsed from cold. Her lips looked waxy, with a bruised tinge to them, and her eyes were squeezed tight against the blowing snow.
Bill reached up, pulling the fly-sheet a little higher above her shoulders. He knew there was precious little time left before she became fully hypothermic. The misgivings he had been feeling about her were suspended, replaced by an urge to protect her from the terrible cold.
‘He’s not coming back, is he?’
The words sounded slurred, dropping out of Shara’s numb lips.
‘He’ll be back.’
As she closed her eyes again, Bill twisted his neck round in the direction Luca had taken. The horizon was just a blur of streaming snow with no distinction between ground and sky.
‘Please God, let him come back,’ he murmured, fighting to stop his own body from shaking.
At first, Shara barely registered the arm lifting her off the ground. Then she tried to stand but her legs buckled underneath her and Luca had to force her arm over his shoulder and take her full weight.
‘Let’s go,’ he yelled across at Bill, who uncurled himself and staggered to his feet.
With his other hand, Luca grabbed Shara’s canvas bag and began half-pushing, half-dragging her through the snow. They trudged off in the direction he had come, heads held low against the storm. Every few steps Shara’s knees would give way and Luca grunted from the effort of keeping her off the ground. A little further on, he stopped. Taking his GPS from his pocket, he peered down at the small, grey screen, damp from snow. Then, a few seconds later, they were on the move again, following a slightly different bearing.
Shara was beginning to sli
p from Luca’s grasp, her body a dead weight on his shoulder, when a huge wall of rock suddenly loomed over them. Luca followed its course, running his gloved hand along the side before stopping twenty paces later and swinging off his rucksack. Bending low, he pushed it under an overhang of rock.
Checking that Bill could see him, he flattened himself against the ground and slithered underneath, pulling Shara down with him by one arm.
Inside, it was dark and perfectly quiet.
After the incredible noise of the blizzard, the sheer absence of sound felt disorientating, as if he had just lost one of his senses. From inside his jacket pocket, Luca pulled out a small, plastic lighter and with numb fingers, managed to spark the flint and hold his thumb down on the gas.
A bubble of light swelled inside the cave.
It was much bigger than he had thought, almost high enough to stand up in. A strong, acrid smell hung in the air. Wriggling forward, he made space for Shara and half-dragged her through the opening. Pulling her deeper into the cave, he propped her up against the side and wiped some of the snow off her face. She was trembling violently, her cheeks ghostly pale.
‘I can’t . . . I can’t . . .’
‘It’s OK,’ said Luca. ‘We’re safe. Everything’s going to be OK.’
Tears trembled on her lashes but didn’t spill. Shara just stared ahead with a stunned expression as Luca reached into the top section of his rucksack and pulled out a miniature Petzel head-torch. He squeezed the elastic band over his forehead and thumbed the switch across, filling the cave with the white light from the high-powered LEDs. He then pulled out his own sleeping bag, tucking it around Shara’s legs.
‘I’m going to get the stove going,’ he said, just as a rucksack was flung through the gap and came crashing down on the floor beside them.
Bill hauled himself under the lip, before collapsing inside. After a moment’s stillness he turned, plugging his rucksack back into the entrance and sealing out some of the wind.
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