Kingdom (36 page)

Suddenly they came to a halt. Nancy wiped the sweat and dust from her eyes and saw that Jack was standing with his hands on his hips and Jen was pacing frantically up and down on a short, sandstone ledge. And then she realized with a sick lurch what the problem was: they were faced with a chasm that dropped away in front of them, almost perpendicularly. It plunged down into a distant crevasse that must have been driven into the mountainside aeons ago, during some geological cataclysm. The chasm was about ten feet wide, and close to where they were standing lay a length of rope. Anchored around a tree, the rope snaked across the sandstone ledge and disappeared over the edge of the crevasse. On the other side of the crevasse, Nancy could make out the other end of the rope, tied around another tree. But it had been hacked through and all that remained was a frayed end. The monks had cut it down, there was no way across.

She glanced at Jen; for the first time since they had met him, he seemed to have lost his habitual calm. Even just after they had got him out of the net, he had still sustained an air of detachment, but now she could see that he was exceptionally agitated.

Jack, still panting, said, ‘We could almost jump it; it’s tantalizing.’

Nancy stepped up to the edge. It was impossible even to see the bottom of the crevasse; the rock sides plunged straight down, with occasional patches of scrubby vegetation clasping to its sides. She certainly couldn’t jump it, whatever Jack thought. Jen was shaking his head and muttering in Chinese, leaning out and scanning the chasm to the left and right as far as they could see. There appeared to be no narrower point in either direction, and besides, the jungle was dense; it would take hours even to clamber a hundred feet up or down the sides.

Without even telling them what he was doing, Jen threw off his rucksack and unsheathed Nancy’s kukri, which he had been carrying since they began their march. Then he disappeared back into the jungle. For a few moments, Nancy and Jack stared at each other in confusion, and then they heard a thwacking noise. It sounded as if Jen was chopping down a tree.

Looking down the steep path, Nancy could see Jen smashing the kukri onto the trunk of a tree ten yards tall. It was slender, the circumference of a man’s neck. She couldn’t imagine it would be strong enough. Now Jen turned to them and shouted up breathlessly:

‘Here – you can cut off the branches whilst I do this, so that we can drag it up the path to the ledge.’

They hurried down the path and Jack began to hack off the lower branches while Nancy pulled them away and flung them down the slope. After a few minutes of furious work, Jen had cut through the trunk, but the tree remained stubbornly upright, its higher branches still intertwined with those of neighbouring trees. With a sigh of frustration, Jen began slicing at the upper limbs, levering himself up, holding on with one hand. Jack grasped the leafy extremity of one of the higher branches and, pulling as hard as he could, bellowing with anger and exhaustion, dragged the felled tree to the ground. Frantically, Jen began to trim off the remaining branches, and within a few minutes they were hauling it back up to the ledge. Nancy could hardly believe that they had managed to do it all so quickly. They were all now drenched in sweat from their exertions, but she could see in the faces of the two men that they were determined to get over to the other side as quickly as possible.

Once on top of the ledge, they manoeuvred the log into place. Without hesitating, Jen grasped hold of the log with both hands and let his body hang. For a moment he vanished under the lip of the crevasse, but then Nancy saw him swinging his way across the void, like a monkey in the forest canopy. It looked easy, but the thought of doing it herself made Nancy nearly sick with vertigo and fear. On the other side, Jen dragged himself up onto the path and then, using a length of rope he had taken from Jack’s bag, he dextrously tied the two ends together and the bridge was restored. They now had a log to stand on, and at shoulder height a rope to hold on to.

‘You go first,’ said Jack, his voice hoarse.

There wasn’t time for fear; that would come later, thought Nancy. Not looking down, she shuffled her way across, hearing Jack behind her. The rope swung and creaked as they handed themselves across. On the other side, she breathed deeply, aware that she was trembling violently. No one said anything; they began to move at once along the path.

Night was falling. In faded light they struggled upwards, until they had outstripped the treeline once more and the vegetation had thinned out. Nancy thought they must be nearing the precipitous ledge where they had first observed the monks and Herzog. For the first time since they had scrambled onto the outcrop below, they could see the entire length of the lush valley, and at intervals of a mile or so they could see tiny bobbing lights.

Jen pointed at the valley floor. ‘Search parties.’ As they were swaddled in night, Nancy perceived – quite distantly, almost as if she was detached from her destiny – that she was reaching the limits of her endurance. And yet she was so very near to the end now, or to some sort of culmination. She could no longer imagine what she might encounter, if she managed to catch up with Anton Herzog. Back in Delhi, she thought she had a clear idea of Herzog – urbane, driven, eccentric, but fundamentally explicable in the terms of her trade, the terms of her ordinary world. Layer upon layer of complexity had been added to this picture; new identities and new motives had piled up at every stage, and she had lost all notion of what he might really be like. She suspected she had never encountered anyone remotely like him before; his skills and personality seemed to be almost boundless, uncategorizable and exceeding the normal limits.

And it seemed a long way from the bustling streets of Delhi to this narrow precipice, a last bridge of stone, stripped bare even of lichen and moss, a barren promontory that would deliver her up to her fate.

She looked up the path. She could just perceive that Jen was moving forward. Relentless, she thought. What was it that had made them so driven, so urgent – was it a force within them, or something beyond – something in the restless night, some ancient power of the mountains, beyond their comprehension?

Now she saw that Jen was turning towards the rocks, and then suddenly he ducked his head and disappeared.

‘He’s found it,’ Jack was shouting, hurrying towards the gap in the rock-face.

And Nancy, her heart pounding, laboured in pursuit.

In the darkness, Nancy heard a voice. A cracked, desperate voice, it hardly sounded like Colonel Jen.

‘They’ve gone. We’re too late.’

The dull sound echoed around the rocks. Nancy was too stunned to say anything, but she heard Jack sighing in disappointment beside her.

‘Did they leave no sign, no trace?’ he was saying.

Breathless from the last sprint towards the cave, Nancy put a hand out to the dank wall. She leaned forward, thinking she might be sick.

Then, in a changed voice, Jen said:

‘Wait. Look.’

Nancy turned to see the Colonel staring into the darkness at the side of the cave entrance, transfixed by something he had seen. He ducked into a crouch and flicked on a cigarette lighter. The feeble flame cast dancing shadows on to the cave walls. And there in the shadows, just a trace, a suggestion in the half-light, Nancy saw it. There was something on the floor. With the next flicker of the flame, she saw it was not a thing. It was a person.

‘Is it Herzog?’ she gasped. In a second she had joined Jen. ‘Is he dead?’

The figure lay a couple of yards from the smoking remnants of the fire – at first they had missed him in the darkness. A plastic sheet had been slung across the body; the head was lolling to one side. There were no signs of life. Jen held the cigarette lighter above the man’s face. Now Jack, shaking his head, knelt beside the figure and scrutinized his face.

‘Oh, God,’ he said, in a low voice. ‘It’s him all right. He must have had a terrible fever – he’s barely recognizable.’

The man’s gaunt cheeks were sunken into grotesque hollows, the skin stretched like parchment across them. Matted grey hair was pasted to his scalp. His face was so white and pale that it was hard to imagine that blood had ever flowed under his skin. Jen gingerly placed two fingers on his neck, searching for a pulse.

Suddenly, like a reptile’s, the man’s dark eyes flickered open.

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Jack, recoiling in shock.

‘Quickly, help him,’ said Nancy. ‘Get him some water.’

Jack was scrabbling in his satchel.

‘He doesn’t just need water, he needs drugs.’

He pulled out a bottle of pills. Jen looked at it doubtfully.

‘I don’t think we’ll be able to get them down him.’

Now, Herzog was making a noise, his eyes bulging with the effort.

‘Pa . . . pa . . .’

At first it sounded like a death rattle, but then it became recognizable as an attempt to speak. Jen looked at the two Westerners in silent appeal.

‘What’s he saying? What does he want?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Jack.

‘Pie . . .’ Herzog was wheezing. ‘Pie . . .’

Then Nancy saw it and almost shrieked:

‘Pipe! There on the ground. The pipe – he wants the pipe . . .’

An arm’s length from the dying man lay a slender black opium pipe.

‘Jen, do something. Fix it. He’s desperate for it. He must be in grave pain.’

Jen passed the lighter to Jack and picked up the pipe. He looked inside it. ‘The pipe’s empty – we’d better hope there’s some more somewhere . . .’

Nancy was staring in disbelief at the dying man’s skull-like face. The dry lips parted again. She could see his tongue moving. Now Jack pulled a water bottle out of his bag and passed it to her. She unscrewed the cap and touched it to his lips and carefully let a few drops fall into his mouth. Slowly the man turned his eyes towards her and uttered a single word:

‘Belt.’

Jen whipped off the blue sheet, revealing a wasted, skeletal body, barely clad in filthy rags, the rancid feet unshod, covered in sores. A money belt was slung around his emaciated hips, and Jen opened it roughly, felt inside and brought out a ball of opium.

Working quickly, Jen heated the opium on the tip of a knife. When it began to smoulder he tipped it into the pipe. Then he placed the jade mouthpiece between Herzog’s lips and held it there.

‘Take it. Breathe,’ he said.

For a moment they were silent, all of them transfixed by the glowing coals of the pipe bowl. As Herzog breathed, the coals flamed into life. ‘Keep breathing,’ said Jen.

Again the bowl darkened and then again it ignited. Then, very slowly, a skeletal hand reached out from amongst the rags to take hold of the stem of the pipe. Jen released his grip and sank back onto his heels as the wraithlike figure took over.

Two minutes later, the bony hand let the pipe fall back into the sand. None of them had dared to speak – they were waiting, uncertain, apprehensive. Now Herzog turned his head towards them.

‘Thank you.’

He coughed and then touched his knuckles to his mouth. ‘May I please have some more water.’

Nancy carefully pressed the water bottle to his lips again. This time he drank a few gulps.

‘Thank you very much.’

His voice was hardly as Nancy remembered it; thinner, ravaged by his illness. He was barely audible, and she could hardly recall that he had once been such a charismatic, forceful man. Yet there was something, some vestige of – she wasn’t sure what it was – a lingering intensity in the gaze he turned towards her, which made her look down in silence. No one knew what to say, and the cave was still until, finally, the wraith spoke again.

‘Please . . . Can someone help me? I need . . . something like a pillow. To lift me up . . . Otherwise it is hard to breathe . . . To speak . . .’

His voice tailed off into the flickering darkness. Jack arranged his satchel into a makeshift pillow and carefully lifted the man’s feeble head. The man moaned as he was moved and then sighed as his head sank back. His eyes opened again and scanned their faces until his gaze rested once again on Nancy. This time she held the gaze, leaning forward to hear his whispered speech.

‘I am glad, Nancy Kelly, that you have finally come.’ The eyes closed again and then after a few seconds, reopened. Now the first hints of a wry smile played at the corners of his lips.

‘Every magician needs a medium and every King needs a Queen. You were sent for, and now you have come.’

‘He’s delirious,’ Jack said. ‘He must still be feverish.’ ‘Wait,’ Nancy said, raising her hand. ‘Herzog. We know why you came to Pemako, we know what you were looking for. Your father was Felix Koenig, we know you were hunting the Nazis’ Aryan dream. I spoke to Maya, I . . .’

But then she stopped. Everything she could think of saying sounded wrong. Herzog’s charisma was igniting, coursing through the cave. She imagined his spirit, his force, filling the entire valley beyond. She felt small and insignificant next to him. Finally she had found him but she had no idea where to start.

Urgently, Jack asked, ‘Herzog, what happened to you? What have you been doing in Tibet and where is the terton? Where are the monks?’

There was no answer. Jack pressed on desperately, ‘Herzog, what has happened to you?’

At last the wraith spoke again:

‘I found it and now I know the truth.’

Jack and Nancy stared at each other in confusion. Then Nancy leaned forward, speaking very clearly, lest the man was really delirious:

‘You found the terma? You found the Book of Dzyan?’

Herzog grimaced in pain and closed his eyes for a moment. Then he said, ‘You are motivated by forces beyond your understanding, dear girl. You have pursued me desperately, but you don’t really know why. Is that not true?’

And Nancy knew it was indeed the truth. All the time she had grappled with this uncertainty, she had never fully undertstood why she had been drawn to Tibet, why she was doing any of this, why she was determined to find this man she hardly knew. The question had perplexed her and she had confronted it, only to reel away in renewed perplexity. She had set it aside and it had recurred every time she tried to forget it. She had been drawn, perhaps even summoned – and she now realized, with a sick feeling, that she had felt all along that her actions were determined not entirely by herself, but by something beyond her.