Philip Kerr - Esau

‘But why do you have to blow it up?’ asked Cody. ‘There must be some easy way to fry the satellite’s computer banks and wipe out the information it’s gathered? I could probably do it for you.’

‘Nice idea, Byron. But you still don’t get it,’ said Boyd. ‘Retrieving the pictures of Uncle Sam’s backyard — that’s only half the point of the exercise. There’s a lot of classified intelligence-gathering technology on that bird. And I mean state of the art. It’s not the kind of tin thing you want to leave lying around for someone to find and take to pieces. We really can’t afford to give those slope scientists a leg up for their own spy satellites. So, when I find it, I have to make sure it’s completely destroyed.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Warner. ‘You said there was a small thermonuclear generator on board, right?’

‘ S’right. Powered by a radioisotope, just like Jack said. Jack, you’re in the wrong business. You should be doing my job.’

‘Now hold on a second,’ insisted Warner. ‘If you blow that up, it could be disastrous. Even a small explosion could be environmentally disastrous.’

‘Fooo-oooo-ooo-duh!’

‘Yeah, I heard you before.’

‘No, no, you’re not listening to me. This is something different, don’t you see? The explosion would disperse the radioactive isotope right across the hidden valley the yetis inhabit like... like an aerosol, poisoning them and their whole environment. What kind of isotope is it, do you know?’

Boyd shook his head irritably. He was beginning to regret this whole conversation. The weather was almost clear now. It was time to be setting off.

‘No matter,’ said Warner. ‘Even if you were to assume that the isotope is not plutonium, say the weakest kind of isotope, like cobalt 60, with a half-life of only five years, an explosion would make the whole valley quite uninhabitable, by anyone or anything.’

‘C’mon. Give me a break.’

‘No, really. Everything would die, Boyd. And if it turned out to be something like plutonium 239, then you’d be talking about a half-life of twenty-four thousand years. Either way, you simply can’t do it. You know there’s just a chance that this part of the world is so high up that it might escape the fallout from all those bombs. Don’t you think it deserves a chance...?’

Boyd picked up his helmet. ‘I’ve heard enough—’

‘I don’t think you have.’ Warner was becoming agitated. ‘You say you were listening to our conversation with your bug? Well, were you? Didn’t you hear what I had to say about this creature? This creature is much closer to us than a mere cousin like the chimpanzee. Boyd, this is like your brother, for God’s sake.’

‘You know? I never did like my brother much. He lives in Wisconsin too. If you see my meaning, friend.’

‘Please listen to him,’ implored Swift. ‘What you’re proposing, it would be like murder.’

Boyd grinned wolfishly and then nodded down at Jameson’s lifeless body.

‘As you may just have noticed, Swifty, I don’t really have a problem with that concept.’

‘Worse than murder. Genocide.’

‘Storm’s over. I gotta be moving.’

‘The storm will have wiped out the trail,’ said Cody. ‘No one’s going to take you there, to the Alpine forest. We’d rather die first.’

‘That so?’

Boyd pointed the gun straight at Cody, then at Jutta, then at Jack, and then at Swift.

‘I do believe you would die to protect these apes,’ he laughed. ‘How about that? Lucky for you, I’m just kidding.’ He tapped the side of his head with the barrel of his gun. ‘Lucky for you, one of the porters already told me the way to go. Lucky for you, I also figured out who my best guide is going to be. Someone who won’t mind leading me straight there. I won’t even need to wave my gun.’

‘And who might that be?’ demanded Swift.

‘Someone who’s been there lots of times,’ said Boyd. ‘Rebecca, that’s who. Who better than her to lead me to this little hidden valley of yours?’

Boyd was looking pleased with himself.

‘Reckon I’ll just take my time and follow her tracks. Shouldn’t be too hard in all this fresh snow. By the way, you can forget trying to call anyone on the radio or via e-mail. I already fixed the satellite mast.’

‘You’ll never make it by yourself,’ said Jack. ‘We’ll come after you.’

‘I wouldn’t advise it,’ said Boyd. ‘I’ve been trained. You’ve no idea how much I can do by myself. And you may have noticed, I have a skill with this thing. I’ll be carrying a rifle too. That’s a rifle with a telescopic sight, and real bullets, not hypodermic syringes. I see one of you people coming after me, I’ll blow you away. ’Sides, I already thought of a way to keep you all in here. Short of killing you all, that is. Only first I gotta show our hairy friends the way out of here.’

Stepping back into the airlock door, he threw open the outer section to reveal sunshine and a blue sky.

‘Whoooa,’ he said, taking a deep, almost euphoric breath. ‘Get a lungful of that air. Looks like it’s gonna be a nice day.’

Holding the gun at arm’s length, Boyd came back into the clamshell and approached the squeeze cage.

‘Nobody try anything,’ he said, stepping over Jameson’s body. ‘Unless you want to cuddle up to your friend on the floor. If you want to feel heroic, sing the Stars and Stripes. C’mon, back up all of you.’

‘D’you think it’s a good idea, just letting a wild animal loose in here?’ said Cody. ‘It could be dangerous. Remember what happened to Jack.’

‘I’m the one with the gun,’ said Boyd, drawing the bolts on the cage. ‘Remember what happened to Miles.’

He opened the door and then moved away.

‘You know, I hate to see a beautiful animal in a cage.’

For a moment Rebecca remained seated in the corner of the cage, eating mouthfuls of muesli and feeding Esau, and showing no inclination to escape from her captivity. But gradually she became aware that something had changed in her circumstances and, pressing her infant dose to her breast and grunting gently, she stood up.

‘Oh-keh! Oh-keh!’

‘That’s the girl,’ said Boyd. ‘Time you took a little walk around the yard. Cheetah.’

Slowly Rebecca emerged from the squeeze cage. She stared apprehensively at Jameson and, squatting down beside him, wiped some blood onto her finger and then into her mouth. The taste brought a frown to her features, as if she recognized that something was wrong. She prodded Jameson for some signs of life and, finding none, uttered a quiet whimper and then walked fearfully toward the open doorway. Swaying one way and then the other, like a caged elephant, she looked around, as if she half expected someone to try to stop her from leaving.

‘Oh-keh! Oh-keh!’

Swift met the yeti’s penetrating stare and nodded.

‘Okay,’ she said, and raised her hand in farewell. ‘Okay.’

Rebecca turned toward the door, already uttering an increasingly loud series of hoots. Then she was gone.

Boyd nodded with satisfaction.

‘There, that wasn’t so bad, was it? I don’t think she’s dangerous at all.’

He followed her to the doorway.

‘Like I say, don’t anyone think of leaving the clamshell. Not unless you think you can stay one step ahead of a speeding bullet.’

Swift started to curse him and then checked herself as she saw a sudden ray of hope. Standing outside the clamshell, apparently unseen by Boyd, and armed with a pistol, was Ang Tsering.

Tsering must have heard the gunshot that killed Jameson, must have seen Boyd holding a gun on them. Swift thought he must have found a gun somewhere in Boyd’s lodge and that he would surely shoot or attempt to disarm Boyd as soon as he could. Even when the assistant sirdar was only a few feet behind Boyd, Swift still expected him to step forward and hit the American smartly over the head; right up until the moment that Boyd started speaking to Tsering without even turning around, as if he had always known the Nepalese was there. As if he didn’t need to worry about him. As if they were working together.