Patrick Woodhead - The Cloud Maker (2010)

At the sound of his voice, the figure’s head suddenly jolted upwards, revealing pale eyes that glowed in the half-light. The apparition wailed, a pitiful, strangled sound that sent Luca leaping backwards in fright. He bumped into the far wall, nearly toppling the statue. Somewhere in the confusion, his thumb slipped from the lighter wheel, plunging him into darkness once again.

He ran back, hemmed in on both sides by the tight walls of the tunnel, his hands brushing against them. Then it came again – the howl from the darkness. He fumbled with the lighter, and a few sparks flashed before the flame finally caught. Hurling himself up the ladder, Luca used his shoulder to barge open the heavy trapdoor into the corridor above.

For a second he stopped there, his hands on his knees, staring down into the black void as he tried to catch his breath.

‘Don’t panic,’ he said to himself, trying to steady his breathing. ‘Just don’t panic . . .’

Then he shook his head. Screw that. This was exactly the time to panic.

Sprinting off down the corridor, he reached the gilded door of the ante-chamber from where they had taken the monk. It was shut, with no light coming from underneath. Ahead was another stairway. Luca pounded up the steps, taking three at a time. Reaching the top, he bent down and fumbled across the tread.

The piece of chocolate was there! He was on the right track. Feeling a new surge of energy, he started running again, the sound of his boots dulled by the heavy stone walls.

On the lower level by the trapdoor, in a corner hidden from the light of the candle, a figure stood motionless. It listened, senses well attuned to the dark. Concealed under the hood of blue monastic robes, clouded pupils stared out sightlessly, instinctively following the noise of Luca’s retreat along the level above.

Then, without a sound, the figure turned, fading back into the shadows.

Chapter 39

At the base of an enormous cliff, Captain Zhu stood with a thick-weave blanket wrapped around his shoulders. It was early-morning and a heavy mist hung in the cold air. He had taken the blanket off one of the yaks and the lingering smell seemed to seep through every pore of his skin, worsening his already foul mood.

Five hundred yards from where he stood, the patrol’s tents were arranged in a semi-circle around a low fire. Thin wisps of smoke smouldered up from the wood and wet heather crackling feebly. The whole camp was still. It was their third day in the same position.

Zhu stared at the cliff-face, the same thoughts circling over and over in his mind. Something wasn’t right. He could feel it.

When they had first begun interrogating the villagers, none of them had said a word. But as the women were forced to stand on the banks of the stream in the sweltering heat of the midday sun, the weaker of them soon collapsed. One woman, skeletal from illness, eventually pointed to the cliff-face as she sagged to her knees, insisting that was the way the Westerners had gone.

Every day, Zhu had walked underneath the exact same spot, wondering how they could have climbed it. The rock was sheer, reaching up hundreds of feet into the sky. Only the summit was lost in a thick band of cloud that seemed to hang over the mountainside interminably. He shook his head, eyes slowly tracing up and down the overhanging rock. He was missing something, he was sure of it. There had to be an easier way.

His eyes followed the line of a deep-set crack that ran from the summit right down to the base. There was something about it that drew his attention. He stood motionless for several minutes, just staring at it with his eyes blurring in and out of focus. Eventually he turned away from the cliff and lit a cigarette, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs in frustration.

Why were the Westerners here exactly? What was so special about this place? The border and the route to India were over eighty kilometres south of Menkom.

Perhaps he’d been wrong and they weren’t trying to get the boy across the border after all. What if India had never been their destination and there was something here, something beyond these mountains, that they were trying to reach? That was the only possible explanation. Unless . . . unless Falkus had been leading him astray from the very beginning and they’d been wasting their time staring up at that cliff-face.

Zhu turned suddenly, stalking across the scrub and heather back to camp.

Emerging from the fly-sheet of his tent, René stepped out unsteadily into the fresh air. He looked across the valley, enjoying the misty quiet of the morning before yawning heavily. His hand went down the front of his trousers, rearranging himself, as he turned back to the inners of his tent and pulled on a thick knitted jumper that was fractionally too short for him, exposing a patch of hairy midriff.

As René took in the glorious mountain panorama, he caught sight of Zhu striding purposefully towards him. He looked over his shoulder to see if there was anyone else at camp, but everything was still. The captain obviously wanted him.

‘Oh, shit.’

René shook his head and moved slowly towards the fire, poking one of his tea bags into the bottom of a plastic cup. He couldn’t stand it when there were only the two of them in camp. Everything about the captain made his skin crawl.

Each morning the routine was always the same. While two pairs of soldiers scouted in each direction along the cliffs, the others usually left before dawn and set up target practice in one of the fields below the village. René would lie in his sleeping bag, listening to the crack of their QBZ-95 rifles echo across the valley, the sound muted by the damp heather. They would come back a few hours later, tossing the splintered wooden targets on the fire, each one with a fist-sized chunk blown out of the centre by the tight grouping of 5.56mm rounds.

The only other person who stayed in camp was Chen, but he seemed to spend the majority of his time inside his tent, fly-sheet zipped shut, tapping away on a Panasonic Toughbook CF-30 laptop. The computer was lightweight with a magnesium alloy cover and a waterproof screen – standard issue for the elite patrols in the field. Chen had it hooked up to an Inmarsat BGAN system, folding open the halves of the satellite dish like an upended briefcase on a rock by his tent. Above the dish, a long string of solar panels dangled from the top of his tent, the sheets of dull blue silicon absorbing what little energy there was from the clouded sky. Occasionally, Chen’s broad face would emerge and he would minutely adjust the solar panels to better catch the sun before sinking back inside his tent for the remainder of the afternoon.

This often left René and Zhu alone by the fire, and despite the open space René still felt flashes of the same claustrophobia he had suffered in the police cell. But this morning was different. He could tell by Zhu’s stride that he wasn’t prepared to wait any longer. Something was about to give.

The captain arrived by the fire, his eyes as black and lifeless as a shark.

‘They were never heading for the Indian border, were they?’

René looked up in surprise.

‘What? No, I never said they were. They were heading back to Makalu to do some climbing.’

‘So why stop here? Why didn’t they head towards Makalu?’

The pitch of Zhu’s voice had risen alarmingly.

‘Look, I know as much as you do,’ René said defensively. ‘They told the yak herders to come this way instead and Menkom’s the last place they were seen. That’s all I know.’

As he said the village’s name, René’s eyes instinctively switched up the valley towards the blackened houses on the far ridge. Husks were all that remained; broken beams, twisted and collapsed, black from ash. They had seen smoke rising from them for three days now, while the villagers limped their way back along the path to find what shelter they could in the lower fields.