Clive Cussler: The Kingdom

King stared at them, a pleasant smile fixed on his face, until Zhilan returned with his now correctly cubed drink. She stood at his side, waiting as he tasted it. “That’s my girl,” he said. “Run along, now.” To the Fargos: “How goes your dig on that little island? What’s it called?”

“Pulau Legundi,” Sam replied.

“Yeah, that’s right. Some kind of-”

“Mr. King-”

“Charlie.”

“Zhilan Hsu mentioned a friend of ours, Frank Alton. Let’s save the small talk for now; tell us about Frank.”

“You’re also a direct man. You share that quality too, I’m guessin’, Remi?”

Neither of them replied, but Remi gave him a sweet smile.

King shrugged. “Okay, fair enough. I hired Alton a few weeks ago to look into a matter for me. Seems he’s up and disappeared. Poof! Since you two seem to be good at findin’ what ain’t easily found, and you’re friends of his, I thought I’d touch base with you.”

“When did you last hear from him?” Remi asked.

“Ten days ago.”

“Frank tends to be a bit independent when he’s working,” Sam said. “Why do you-”

“Because he was to check in with me every day. That was part of our deal, and he stuck to it until ten days ago.”

“Do you have any reason to think something’s amiss?”

“You mean, aside from him breakin’ his promise to me?” King replied with a hint of annoyance. “Aside from him takin’ my money and disappearin’?”

“For argument’s sake.”

“Well, the part of the world he’s in can be a tad hairy sometimes.”

“And that is?” Remi asked.

“Nepal.”

“Pardon? You said-”

“Yep. Last I heard, he was in Kathmandu. Sort of a backwater burg, but it can be tough if you ain’t got your wits about you.”

Sam asked, “Who else knows about this?”

“A handful of folk.”

“Frank’s wife?”

King shook his head, took a sip of whiskey. He screwed up his face. “Zee!”

Zhilan was at his side five seconds later. “Yes, Mr. King?”

He handed her the tumbler. “Ice is meltin’ too fast. Get rid of it.”

“Yes, Mr. King.”

And then she was gone again.

Scowling, King watched her walk away, then turned back to the Fargos. “Sorry, you were sayin’?”

“Have you told Frank’s wife?”

“Didn’t know he had one. He didn’t give me emergency contact info. Besides, why worry her? For all I know, Alton’s taken up with some Oriental woman and is gallivantin’ around down there on my dime.”

“Frank Alton wouldn’t do that,” Remi said.

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“Have you contacted the Nepalese government?” asked Sam. “Or the American embassy in Kathmandu?”

King gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “Backward, all of ’em. And corrupt-the locals, that is. As for the embassy idea, I considered it, but I ain’t got the months it would take for them to get their butts in gear. I’ve got my own people on the ground there workin’ on another project, but they ain’t got the time to spend on this. And, like I said, you two have got a reputation for findin’ what other folks can’t.”

Sam said, “First of all, Charlie, people aren’t things. Second, hunting for missing persons isn’t our specialty.” King opened his mouth to speak, but Sam raised his hand and went on: “That said, Frank’s a good friend, so of course we’ll go.”

“Fantastic!” King slapped his knee. “Let’s talk nuts and bolts: how much is this gonna cost me?”

Sam grinned. “We’re going to assume you’re kidding.”

“About money? Never.”

“Because he’s a good friend, we’ll foot the bill,” Remi said with a little edge to her voice. “We’ll need all the information you can give us.”

“Zee’s already put together a file. She’ll give it to you on the way out.”

“Give us the condensed version,” Sam said.

“It’s a bit of a wheels-within-wheels situation,” King said. “I hired Alton to hunt down someone who’d disappeared in the same region.”

“Who?”

“My dad. When he first disappeared, I sent a string of folks out to look for him, but nothin’ came of it. It’s like he fell off the face of the earth. When this latest sighting came up, I beat the bushes for the best private eye I could find. Alton came highly recommended.”

“You said ‘latest sighting,’” Remi observed. “What does that mean?”

“Since my dad disappeared, there’ve been rumors of him popping up from time to time: a dozen or so times in the seventies, four times in the eighties-”

Sam interrupted. “Charlie, exactly how long has your father been missing?”

“Thirty-eight years. He disappeared in 1973.”

Lewis “Bully” King, Charles explained, was something of an Indiana Jones type, but long before the movies came out: an archaeologist who spent eleven months out of the year in the field; a globe-trotting academic who’d visited more countries than most people knew existed. What exactly his father was doing when he disappeared, Charles King didn’t know.

“Who was he affiliated with?” Remi asked.

“Not sure what you mean.”

“Did he work for a university or museum? Perhaps a foundation?”

“Nope. He was a square peg, my pop. Didn’t go for all that stuff.”

“How did he fund his expeditions?”

King offered them an aw-shucks smile. “He had a generous and gullible donor. To be fair, though, he never asked for much: five thousand here and there. Workin’ alone, he didn’t have much overhead, and he knew how to live cheap. Most of the places he traveled, you could live for a few bucks a day.”

“Did he have a home?”

“A little place in Monterey. I never sold it. Never did anything with it, in fact. It’s still mostly the way it was when he went missin’. And, yeah, I know what you’re gonna ask. Back in ’seventy-three I had some people go through his house lookin’ for clues, but they didn’t find nothin’. You’re welcome to look for yourselves, though. Zee’ll get you the info.”

“Did Frank go there?”

“No, he didn’t think it’d be worth it.”

“Tell us about the latest sighting,” Sam said.

“About six weeks ago a National Geographic crew was doing some spread on an old city out there-Lo Manta somethin’ or another-”

“Lo Monthang,” Remi offered.

“Yeah, that’s the place. Used to be the capital of Mustang.”

Like most people, King pronounced the name as he would the horse.

“It’s pronounced Moos-tong,” Remi replied. “It was also known as the Kingdom of Lo, before it was absorbed by Nepal in the eighteenth century.”

“Whatever you say. Never did like that sort of stuff. Fell kind of far from the tree, I guess. Anyway, in one of the photos they took there’s this guy in the background. A dead ringer for my dad-or at least how I think he’d look after nearly forty years.”

“That’s not much to go on,” Sam said.

“It’s all I’ve got. Still wanna take a crack at it?”

“Of course we do.”

Sam and Remi stood up to leave. They shook hands all around. “Zee’s got my contact info in there. You’ll be giving her updates. Let me know what you find. I’d appreciate regular reports. Good huntin’, Fargos.”

Charles King stood in the doorway of his Gulfstream and watched the Fargos return through the gate, mount their scooters, then disappear down the road. Zhilan Hsu came walking back through the gate, trotted up the plane’s stairs, and stopped in front of King.

“I do not like them,” she said.

“And why is that?”

“They do not show you enough respect.”

“I can do without that, darlin’. Just as long as they live up to their reputation. From what I’ve read, those two have a real knack for this kind of thing.”