Clive Cussler - The Kingdom

“Wait.” Sam murmured, eyes on the flame.

Five seconds passed.

The flame wobbled, then shot sideways, back toward Sam’s face.

“There!”

“Are you sure?” Remi asked.

“The air feels warmer now too.”

“Wishful thinking?”

“Let’s find out.”

They walked for ten feet, stopped, checked the lighter’s flame. Again it angled backward, this time more strongly. They proceeded twenty more feet and repeated the process, with the same result.

From Remi: “I hear whistling. Wind.”

“Me too.”

Another fifty feet brought them to a fork in the tunnel. Lighter held before him, Sam proceeded down the left tunnel, without luck, then down the right. The flame quavered, then a sudden gust nearly blew it out.

Sam shed his pack. “Wait here. I’ll be back in a flash.”

He switched his headlamp to its brightest setting and disappeared into the tunnel. Remi could hear his feet scuffing along the floor, the sound growing fainter by the second.

Remi checked her watch, waited ten seconds, checked it again.

“Sam?” she called.

Silence.

“Sam, answer-”

Ahead in the darkness his headlamp reappeared.

“Sorry,” he said.

Remi let her head drop.

“No red carpet,” Sam continued. “But would daylight do?”

Remi raised her head, took in Sam’s wide smile. She narrowed her eyes at him and gave him a punch in the shoulder. “Not funny, Fargo.”

As Sam had promised, there was no red carpet, but after twenty feet of walking he brought her to something even better: a set of natural steps winding up a shaft at whose top, some fifty feet away, was a fuzzy patch of sunlight.

Two minutes later Sam pushed himself off the top step and found himself peering down a short sideways tunnel. Instead of rock, the sides and floor were earth. At the far end, through a tangle of grass, was sunlight. Sam crawled toward it, shoved his arms through the opening, then dragged himself out. Remi appeared a few moments later, and together they lay back in the grass, smiling and staring up at the sky.

“Almost noon,” Sam remarked.

They’d been underground all morning.

Suddenly, Sam sat up, his head turning this way and that. He leaned over to Remi and whispered. “Radio static. A portable radio.”

Sam rolled over, crawled to a berm a few feet away, and peeked his head over the side. He ducked down and crawled back. “Police.”

“A rescue party?” Remi asked. “Who would’ve called them?”

“Just a guess, but I’d say our erstwhile exploratory escorts, the King twins.”

“How-”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong. Let’s play it safe.”

They stripped themselves of anything that would indicate where they’d been and what they’d been doing-helmets, headlamps, backpacks, climbing gear, Sam’s map, Remi’s digital camera, the box they’d retrieved from the tomb-and shoved it all back into the tunnel, then packed grass over the entrance.

With Sam in the lead, they headed east, following a ravine and ducking between trees, until they’d put a quarter mile between themselves and the tunnel. They stopped and listened for radio static. Sam tapped his ear and pointed north. A hundred yards away they could see several figures moving through the trees.

Sam whispered, “Put on your best forlorn face.”

“Not much of stretch at this point,” replied Remi.

Sam cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Hey! Over here!”

CHOBAR GORGE, NEPAL

The cell door creaked open. A guard peeked inside, scrutinized Sam for a moment as though he were about to make a dash for freedom, then stood aside. Clothed in a baggy light blue jumpsuit, auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail, Remi stepped into the room. Her face was pink, freshly washed.

The guard said in broken English, “Please sit. Wait,” then slammed shut the door.

Clothed in a similar jumpsuit, Sam stood up from the table, walked over to Remi, and gave her a big hug. He pulled back and looked her up and down and smiled. “Ravishing, simply ravishing.”

She smiled. “Idiot.”

“How’re you feeling?”

“Better. Amazing what a few minutes with a washcloth and hot water can do. Not quite a warm shower or a hot bath, mind you, but a close second.”

Together, they sat down at the table. The space in which the Kathmandu police were keeping them wasn’t so much a cell as it was a holding room. The cinder-block walls and the floor were painted a light gray, and the table and chairs (all bolted to the floor) were made of heavy aluminum. Before them, across the table, was a four-foot-wide mesh-embedded window through which they could see the squad room. Half a dozen uniformed officers were going about their business, answering phones, writing reports, and chatting. So far, except for a few polite but firm commands in rough English, no one had spoken to them in the two hours since they’d been “rescued.”

Riding in the back of the police van in the rapidly fading dusk light, Sam and Remi had watched the passing scenery, looking for the slightest clue as to where they had emerged from the cave system. Their answer had come almost immediately as they crossed over the Chobar Gorge bridge and turned northeast toward Kathmandu proper.

Their underground march to freedom had brought them to the surface a mere two miles from where they’d entered. This realization brought first a smile to Sam’s and Remi’s lips and then, to the bewilderment of the two police officers in the front seat, a gale of laughter that lasted a full minute.

“Any clue as to who raised the alarm?” Remi now asked Sam.

“None. As far as I can tell, we’re not under arrest.”

“We have to assume they’re going to question us. What’s our story going to be?”

Sam thought for a moment. “As close to the truth as possible. We came out here a little before sunrise for a day hike. We got lost and wandered around until they found us. If they push, just stick with ‘I’m not sure.’ Unless they found our equipment, they can’t prove otherwise.”

“Got it. And providing we don’t get thrown into a Nepali prison for some obscure crime?”

“We’ll need to retrieve the-”

Sam stopped talking, his eyes narrowed. Remi followed his gaze through the window to the far left side of the squad room near the door. Standing at the threshold were Russell and Marjorie King.

“I wish I could say I was surprised,” Remi muttered.

“Just as we suspected.”

Across the squad room, the sergeant in charge spotted the King twins and hurried over to where they were standing. The trio began talking back and forth. Though neither Sam nor Remi could hear the conversation, the sergeant’s mannerisms and posture told the tale: he was subservient, if not a little frightened. Finally the sergeant nodded and hurried back into the squad room. Russell and Marjorie stepped back into the hallway.

A few moments later Sam and Remi’s door opened, and the sergeant and one of his underlings stepped inside. They took the seats opposite the Fargos. The sergeant spoke Nepali for a few seconds, then nodded to his underling, who said in heavily accented but decent English, “My sergeant has asked that I translate our conversation. Is this acceptable?”

Sam and Remi nodded.

The sergeant spoke, and a few seconds later the translation came: “If you would, please confirm your identities.”

Sam replied, “Have we been arrested?”

“No,” the officer replied. “You are being temporarily detained.”

“On what grounds?”

“Under Nepali law, we are not required to disclose the answer to that question at the present time. Please confirm your identities.”