Patrick Woodhead - The Cloud Maker (2010)

As she carried Babu to the door, he started squirming in her arms, his eyes locked down towards the floor.

‘ Shara, wait! ’ he said, pointing over her shoulder.

‘ Not now, ’ Shara said distractedly. ‘ We’ve got to go. ’

With Babu still trying to break free of her grip, she swept out the door and into the corridor beyond, leaving Bill alone in the sudden quiet of his chamber.

Two hours later, the bolts on the door to Bill’s room were softly drawn back.

As the door inched open, the gentle draught of air made Bill stir in his sleep, but not wake. Drang stepped silently into the room. His eyes remained fixed on Bill’s face, the scar on his face glinting in the light. He moved further into the room, his felt boots padding over the stone floor.

With his eyes still fixed on the bed, he crouched down, his hands feeling across the stone floor. Eventually his fingertips connected with the beads he was looking for and with another quick glance at Bill’s sleeping form, he retreated back towards the door.

In the corridor outside, he lifted the prayer beads towards the nearest lamp, so that it cast a dim light across the silver clasp. He was right to have come back.

He had seen that sign before.

Chapter 43

‘Keep it tight.’

The words drifted up the cliff-face to where Chen stood, his stance wide and his arms flexing as he hauled on the rope. He grunted from the effort, his powerful shoulders swinging forward with each great heave. A moment later Zhu appeared, his gloved hands clinging to the rock while the rope snapped taut at his waist.

As Chen watched him worm his way on to the ledge, he stared into the captain’s face, at the black eyes and thin, pursed lips. Zhu was sheet-white, his cheeks devoid of the slightest hint of colour. He looked as if he were about to be sick.

Coiling in the slack, Chen wiped his forehead on the sleeve of his heavy winter jacket. He had practically pulled the captain up the entire cliff-face and, despite their difference in size, it was heavy work. As they went higher, it had slowly dawned on him that Zhu was more or less a dead weight, his eyes moving nervously in a constant rhythm from the rock to the rope and back again.

It was almost unbelievable, but there was only one explanation – Zhu was scared of heights.

‘Are you OK, sir?’

For a moment Zhu didn’t answer. He simply moved past Chen to the back of the ledge, pressing his shoulders against the rock.

‘How much further?’ he murmured.

Chen looked up, watching the other soldiers climbing in pairs along the line of the ledge. They were getting close to the top, maybe a hundred metres more to go.

‘Another twenty minutes. No more.’

Zhu nodded. He was trying to steady his breathing and tiny beads of sweat had collected on his upper lip.

Chen watched him curiously for a moment. It was hard to believe this was the same man who had so casually ordered the execution of the monk in Drapchi or the rape of the little girl in Lhasa headquarters.

Zhu caught his gaze and his expression hardened.

‘Don’t you ever say a word about this,’ he hissed.

‘No, sir.’

Chen turned away, staring down into the valley below. Blurred from the height, he could see the single tent. It was all that remained of their campsite and in it, he knew, the Westerner would be either dead or dying.

All night they had heard his desperate whimpering. It was soft, little more than a murmur, but Chen had been unable to sleep through it. It had echoed round the campsite, the undercurrent of another’s suffering silencing everyone at dinner. Only Zhu had eaten heartily, spooning out extra portions of noodles and, unusually, making idle conversation with the men.

From the sheer amount of blood lost, Chen was almost certain the knife had severed the Westerner’s femoral artery. By now, he must surely have bled to death. Many years ago he had seen a construction worker injured in the same way. A crane had malfunctioned, the wire cabling slicing his artery in two. Blood had pumped ceaselessly on to the dusty ground, the life seeping from the man with terrifying ease.

Zhu had surely known that. He had known that such a knife wound, left untreated, would inevitably lead to a slow and painful death.

Chen had come across many ruthless men at the Bureau. While out in the field, they chose between life or death, using torture whenever it served their purpose. It was how the Bureau operated.

From their first meeting at Drapchi, Chen had thought Zhu was the same as the others. The ruthlessness he displayed was simply part of the job. But last night something had switched inside him and Chen had finally seen things the way they really were. Expedience was only one part of the equation for Zhu. What really drove him was pleasure.

He had decided to let the Westerner bleed to death when, at any stage, he could have put a bullet in the back of his head and been done with it. But for Zhu violence was not merely a means to an end. Violence was the end. He was a sadist, Chen realised. A man made genuinely happier by the suffering of others.

When they had struck camp in the morning, no one had approached the Westerner’s tent. There was only silence from within and the soldiers had left it standing, like a tombstone to mark his unburied body.

Behind him, Chen heard the sound of coughing. He turned to see Zhu still standing with his shoulders pressed against the rock.

‘What’s the route from the summit?’ he asked, his face ashen.

Chen reached behind him automatically to touch the back of his rucksack, where he knew his laptop was sitting protected by its hardened casing.

‘We head south, sir. Nearly five kilometres across the glacier floor. I think it’s due east after that, but I shall check.’

‘Then get moving,’ Zhu said, waving his hand impatiently. ‘I want to reach the monastery before nightfall.’

Chen nodded his head, and without another word started up the ledge once more, paying out the rope as he went.

Four hours later Zhu held open the corner of his tent with his gloved right hand, blinking as the afternoon light reflected off the snow. He cursed as the icy wind sent the smoke from his cigarette twisting away behind him.

They had made it across the flat ground of the glacier with ease, but now a new obstacle stood in their way.

Reaching behind him for his Leica Ultravid 20 binoculars, he adjusted the focus and stared ahead at the problem: the piles of rock stacked in front of their new campsite. The scene was apocalyptic, as if half the mountain had somehow collapsed during the night, leaving debris strewn in every direction. Finding a route through that would be difficult. It would also be highly dangerous.

With his spare hand, Zhu stubbed his cigarette out in the pristine white snow. Perhaps they had made a mistake. Perhaps there was no route through here after all.

His attention was drawn to the SOF sergeant walking between each tent, checking on the men. His head was angled to one side as he tried to shelter his face from the worst of the wind. With each pace his boots punched through the crust of snow, so that he sank down into the powder beneath. He trudged past the line of tents slowly, tightening the guy ropes and double-checking that everything had been properly stowed away.

Eventually, he made it to Zhu’s tent and saluted.

‘Everything all right, sir?’

Zhu nodded distractedly.

‘Send out two men to find a route through the rocks,’ he said. ‘And get Lieutenant Chen to report here immediately with the satellite mapping.’

The sergeant hesitated for a second, shifting uncomfortably from one leg to the other.

‘With all due respect, sir, the sun will be down in no more than an hour. The weather’s worsening. I thought perhaps we might send out scouts tomorrow morning instead.’