Philip Kerr - Esau

Swift nodded. ‘At last,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you agree.’

‘You really think we could do it?’ he asked. ‘You know, the Himalaya is a big place. It won’t be easy.’

‘Not the Himalayas, Jack. The Sanctuary. And more especially, Machhapuchhare. You may have found the skull on Annapurna but all the most recent sightings of the yeti have been on Machhapuchhare.’

Jack winced.

‘There’s something I haven’t told you,’ he admitted. ‘The skull wasn’t found on Annapurna.’

He explained how he and Didier had been climbing Machhapuchhare illegally when the accident occurred.

‘You know, you could be right,’ he concluded thoughtfully. ‘Maybe there is another reason no one’s allowed to climb Machhapuchhare. Maybe the locals know something we don’t. Maybe that’s why no one’s ever found the yeti. Maybe no one’s been allowed to find it.’

‘In which case it’ll be like I said,’ agreed Swift. ‘Officially, for the purposes of the grant proposal and the Nepali Government, we’ll be in the Sanctuary on a fossil-hunting expedition. But the reality will be that we’re in and around Machhapuchhare and searching for the Abominable Snowman.’

Jack shook his head.

‘To hell with that,’ he said. ‘Abominable Snowman, bullshit. That stuff’s for the comics. This, this is science. We’re going there to find Esau.’

The Pentagon’s guided tour was free and given every half hour on weekdays between 9:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m., except on public holidays. Even non-U.S. citizens were permitted to take it, provided they brought their passports. In the so-called Commander in Chief’s corridor you could see a model of a Stealth SR-71, an aircraft that technically at least was still a secret. It was this willingness on the part of the military to open its headquarters to the public and to brag about its toys that made Bryan Perrins dislike the Pentagon and its DoD personnel. Either you had secrets or you didn’t. Whenever he had a meeting there he always half expected the door to open and the uniformed tour guide to back in — he always walked backward in order to keep an eye on his flock of visitors — followed by a group of Okies, their wide-eyed faces still full of hot dogs bought from the stand in the middle of the Pentagon’s courtyard.

In his late forties, Perrins looked more like some upmarket clothing designer than the Deputy Director of Intelligence. He wore a sharp suit and a dark, designer-stubble beard and sat well back from the boardroom table, almost as if he was attending the meeting of the Committee on Overhead Reconnaissance in the role of observer.

There were a lot of uniformed experts, all of them saying the same thing. Operation Bellerophon, organizing U2 overflights in the Indian subcontinent, had drawn a blank. One of the experts, a USAF general, was still droning on with his excuses.

‘Because of the need to husband our resources, and to ensure that the highest quality photography was obtained from each overflight, it was the practice not to launch a mission unless weather over the area was predicted to be less than twenty-five percent. Unfortunately the weather has been stacked against us. Several flights yielded no usable photography at all. Nevertheless we still managed to acquire a moderately complete mosaic of the region, but with zero result.

‘Attached to your reports, gentlemen, is a summary of weather forecasts in the area. As you can see, we are now firmly in the grip of winter, and despite the obvious urgency of the situation I would not recommend resumption of U2 overflights until at least the end of February.’

When at last the air force general sat down, Reichhardt sighed, took off his lightly tinted glasses, patted his bald head almost as if he had just had his hair cut, and thanked him.

‘I had hoped that this meeting would surface some intelligence that might be of use,’ he said quietly. ‘I must confess that I’m a little disappointed by this lack of progress. However I guess we all knew that whatever we did or did not find, the ultimate responsibility for dealing with this Bellerophon situation would devolve to the CIA.’

Perrins smiled and drew himself closer to the table.

‘Bellerophon,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I looked it up, just as you suggested, Bill, and since this whole responsibility is about to devolve to intelligence anyway, I think maybe we ought to change that codename. Did you know that a letter of Bellerophon means a document that is either dangerous or prejudicial to the bearer? On account of how Bellerophon was thrown off Pegasus when it got stung by a horsefly. We’ll let you know whatever name the computer generates.’

Perrins smiled thinly, enjoying Reichhardt’s chagrin. The NRO director looked as if he had found something unpleasant on the soles of both of his shoes.

‘Naturally we’re already exploring a number of lines of action involving field personnel,’ continued Perrins. ‘Given the background noise in the area, it’s always been our view that any action taken would of necessity be covert. You can rest assured that whatever new action program is decided, we will execute it aggressively and I’m confident that we’ll find what we’re looking for.’

Aware that the game belonged to Perrins now, Reichhardt nodded. His own department had failed. There was nothing more to be done except to eat the shit that Perrins was offering to him. But even so, he had learned to be pessimistic where the optimism of the CIA was concerned. Perhaps he might still manage to keep a foot in the CIa’s door.

‘Let’s hope so,’ he said. ‘Let’s see now. Our next scheduled COMOR get-together is tomorrow. Perhaps you might lay out some of those lines of action then.’

‘Bill, why don’t I call you?’ said Perrins. ‘When we’re ready to read you the menu.’

‘Yes,’ said Reichhardt, squirming with irritation. He could see that Perrins was enjoying himself. ‘Why don’t you do that?’

‘Fat chance,’ Perrins said to himself as soon as he was sitting in his car on the way back to Langley.

The headquarters of the CIA was a very different proposition from the Pentagon. An uncomplicated, modem, white, seven-story building in a pastoral setting of woods and lawns, the nearest Langley got to tourists was the occasional pleasure boat sailing north up the Potomac, the odd demonstration on the CIA exit off the George Washington Parkway, and maybe the Bubble.

The Bubble was a dome-shaped auditorium that seemingly stood alone but was in fact connected to headquarters by an underground tunnel. It was where people without security clearances were allowed to come into contact with agency personnel. It was in the Bubble that Perrins’s boss had been sworn in as DCI by a justice of the Supreme Court. And back in the seventies, it was in the Bubble that TV had been brought into the Agency for the first time, with 60 Minutes and Good Morning America .

There were very few journalists allowed through that secret corridor and into the heart of the CIa’s headquarters. Perrins was about to have a meeting with one of the few who was.

Having worked as a foreign correspondent for a number of newspapers and television networks prior to his joining National Geographic, Brindley had always enjoyed a close relationship with the CIA. At first the relationship had been informal and restricted to the odd conversation on a subject of mutual interest. But over the years the relationship had developed to the point where Brindley agreed to seek specific information or other personnel needed by the Agency.

As a journalist, Brindley had always been something of an action man, the kind of reporter who got into remote and inaccessible parts of the world, often at no small risk to himself. He was the type who joined expeditions to climb unclimbed mountains or penetrate impenetrable jungles, and when he first joined the staff of National Geographic, it had been as the magazine’s senior editor in charge of expeditions.