Sam checked his phone. “Voice message,” he said. He listened to it, gave Remi a wink, and redialed. Selma’s voice came over the speaker thirty seconds later: “Where are you?”
“In the land of wicker and copper,” Sam replied.
“Pardon?”
“Nothing. Do you have good news for us?”
“Here, hang on.”
A moment later a male voice came on the line. It was Frank Alton. “Sam, Remi . . . I don’t know how you did it, but I owe you my life.”
“Nonsense,” Remi replied. “You saved ours in Bolivia a few times over.”
“Are you okay?” Sam asked.
“A few bumps and bruises, but nothing permanent.”
“Have you seen Judy and the kids?”
“Yes, as soon as I got home.”
Sam said, “Selma, how are things?”
“Absolutely awful,” she replied.
“Glad to hear it.”
Based on a healthy respect of Charles King’s reach, and perhaps a tinge of paranoia, Sam and Remi had instituted the “duress rule”: had Selma or any of them been at gunpoint or otherwise in jeopardy, an answer other than “awful” would have raised the alarm.
Remi said, “Frank, what can you tell us?”
“Not much more than you already know, I’m afraid. Selma’s brought me up to speed. While I agree King’s a snake and he’s not telling the whole truth, I have no proof he was behind my kidnapping. I was knocked out and snatched off the street. I never saw them coming. Can’t tell you where I was held. When I woke up, I was blindfolded until they shoved me out of the van again. When I took the blindfold off, I was standing before the stairs to a Gulfstream jet.”
“Speaking of eerie, did you meet the King twins?”
“Oh, those two. They were waiting for me at the airport. I thought I’d walked into a Tim Burton remake of The Addams Family. I’m guessing they’re the product of King and his Dragon Lady?”
“Yes,” Sam replied. “What’s your take on Lewis King?”
“A hundred-to-one that he’s been dead for decades. I think I was just bait for you two.”
“Our thought as well,” Remi agreed. “We’re still working out the details, but we think it was something to do with an old Himalayan legend.”
“The Golden Man,” replied Frank.
“Right. The Theurang.”
“From what little I was able to gather before I was taken, that’s what Lewis King was after when he disappeared. He was obsessed by it. Whether the thing is real or not, I don’t know.”
“We think it is,” Sam replied. “We’re going to see a man in Lo Monthang tomorrow. With any luck, he’ll be able to shed more light on the mystery.”
17
KALI GANDAKI GORGE,
DHAWALAGIRI ZONE, NEPAL
For the fourth time in an hour, Basanta Thule brought the Toyota Land Cruiser to a stop, the knobby tires crunching on the gravel that blanketed the valley floor. Above, the sky was a cloudless royal blue. The crisp air was perfectly still.
“More stupas,” Thule announced, pointing out the side window. “There . . . and there. You see.”
“We do,” Sam replied, he and Remi glancing out Sam’s rolled-down window. Shortly after leaving Jomsom that morning, they’d made the mistake of expressing an interest in chortens; since then, Thule had made it his mission to point out each and every one. They’d covered less than two miles so far.
For politeness’s sake, Sam and Remi climbed out, walked around, and took a few pictures. While none of the chortens were taller than a few feet, they were nonetheless impressive-miniature temples painted snow-white sitting atop the ridge lines overlooking the gorge like silent sentries.
They climbed back into the Toyota and set out again, driving in silence for some time before Remi said, “Where’s the landslide?”
There was a long pause. “We passed it some time ago,” Thule replied.
“Where?”
“Twenty minutes ago . . . the slope of loose gravel beside the boulder we saw. It does not take much to block the way, you see.”
After another pause for lunch-and a chorten-viewing stop that Sam and Remi tactfully declared their last-they continued north, following the serpentine course of the Kali Gandaki and passing a series of hamlets that were largely indistinguishable from Jomsom. Occasionally they would spot trekkers in the foothills above, ant-like against the mountains in the distance.
Shortly after five o’clock, they entered a narrower section of the gorge. The cliffs towering fifty feet above them closed in, and the sun dimmed. The air wafting through Sam’s open window grew chilled. Finally, after slowing to a walking pace, Thule steered them through an archway of rock barely wider than the Toyota and then into a winding tunnel. The tires sloshed through the stream and echoed off the walls.
Fifty yards later they rolled into an elongated clearing, measuring forty feet wide and a quarter mile long. At the northern end of the ravine was a second slot opening in the rock. To their right, the river gurgled through an undercut section of the cliff.
Thule steered left, made a wide circle so the Toyota’s nose was pointed back the way they’d come, and then braked to a stop. “We will camp here,” he announced. “We will be protected from the wind.”
“Why so early?”
Thule turned in his seat and gave them a broad smile. “Here night falls quickly, along with the temperature. Best to have the shelters erected and the fire started before dark.”
With the three of them working together, they quickly had the shelters-a pair of older Vango siege-style tents-set up and ready for occupancy, complete with eggshell mattress pads and subzero sleeping bags. As Thule got a small fire started, Sam ignited a trio of kerosene lanterns that hung from poles at the edge of their camp. Flashlight in hand, Remi was taking a tour of the ravine. Thule had mentioned that trekkers had in the past found Kang Admi tracks in this area of the gorge. Translated loosely as “snowman,” the term was one of dozens used to describe the Yeti, the Himalayan version of Bigfoot. While not necessarily a blind believer in the legend, the Fargos had encountered enough oddities in their travels that they knew better than to discount it out of hand; Remi had decided to indulge her curiosity.
After twenty minutes, she wandered back into the yellow glow of lanterns around the camp. Sam handed her a wool cap and asked, “Any luck?”
“Not so much as a toe track,” Remi replied, tucking a few strands of loose auburn hair beneath the cap.
“Do not give up hope,” Thule remarked from beside the fire. “We may hear the beast’s call during the night.”
“And what are we listening for?” Sam asked.
“That depends upon the person, yes? As a child, I heard the cry once. It sounded like . . . part man, part bear. In fact, one of the Tibetan words for Yeti is ‘Meh-teh’-‘man-bear.’”
“Mr. Thule, this sounds like a tall tale designed to enthrall tourists,” Remi said.
“Not at all, miss. I heard it. I know people who have seen it. I know people who have found its tracks. I personally have seen a musk ox whose head had been-”
“We get the picture,” Remi interrupted. “So, what’s for dinner?”
Dinner consisted of prepackaged dehydrated meals that when combined with boiling water morphed into a goulash melange. Sam and Remi had tasted worse, but by only a narrow margin. After they finished eating, Thule redeemed himself with steaming mugs of tongba, a slightly alcoholic Nepalese millet tea, which they sipped as night enveloped the gorge. They chatted, and sat in silence for another thirty minutes, before dimming the camp lanterns and retreating to their respective tents.
Once nestled into their sleeping bags, Remi sat reading a trekker’s guide she’d downloaded onto her iPad while Sam studied a map of the area under the beam of a flashlight.
Remi whispered, “Sam, remember what Wally mentioned at the airport about ‘the chokes’?”
“We never asked Thule about it.”
“In the morning.”
“I think now would be better,” she replied, and handed Sam her iPad. She pointed to a section of text. He read: