The Adventures Of Indiana Jones (8 page)

“A man like Ravenwood is not easily coerced,” Belloq said.

“Did I mention coercion?”

“You didn’t have to,” Belloq said. “I appreciate the need for it, which is enough. In certain areas, I think you’ll find that I am not a squeamish man. In fact, if I say so myself, quite the opposite.”

Dietrich nodded. Again there were footsteps outside the door. He waited. The door was opened. A uniformed aide, dressed in that black tunic Dietrich so disliked, stepped inside. He said nothing, merely indicated with a backward nod of his head that they were to follow him.

Belloq moved toward the door. The inner shrine, he thought. The sanctum of the little house painter who has dreams of being the spirit of history but who fails to realize the truth. The only history in which Belloq was interested, the only history that made any sense, lay buried in the deserts of Egypt. With luck, Belloq thought. With any luck.

He saw Dietrich move ahead. A nervous man, his face as pale as that of someone stepping, with as much dignity as he can muster, to his own execution.

The thought amused Belloq.

T
HE
DC-3
CRUISED
over the white slopes of the mountains, skimming now and then through walls of mist, banks of dense cloud. The peaks of the range were mostly invisible, hidden in the frosty clouds, clouds that seemed motionless and solid, as if no wintry wind could ever disperse them.

A devious route, Indy thought, staring out his window, and a long one: across the United States to San Francisco, then Pan Am’s China Clipper, arriving after many stops in Hong Kong; another rickety plane to Shanghai, and finally this aging machine to Katmandu.

Indy shivered as he imagined the frigid bleakness of the Himalayas. The impossible crags, the unmapped gulleys and valleys, the thick snow that covered everything. An inconceivable environment, and yet life flourished here, people survived, labored, loved. He shut the book he’d been reading—the journal of Abner Ravenwood—and he looked along the aisle of the plane. He put his hand in the back pocket of his jacket and felt the wad of money there, what Marcus Brody had called “an advance from the U.S. military.” He had more than five thousand dollars, which he’d begun to think of as persuasion money if Abner Ravenwood hadn’t changed in his attitude toward him. A touch of bribery, of
la mordida.
Presumably the old man would be in need of money, since he hadn’t held any official teaching post, so far as Indy knew, in years. He would have gone through that great scourge of any academic discipline—the pain of finding funds. The begging bowl you were obliged to rattle all the time. Five grand, Indy realized, was more money than he’d ever carried at any one time. A small fortune, in fact. And it made him feel decidedly uncomfortable. He’d never had more than a cavalier attitude toward money, spending it as quickly as he made it.

For a time he shut his eyes, wondering if he would find Marion with her father still. No, it wasn’t likely, he decided. She would have grown up, drifted away, maybe even married back in the States. On the other hand, what if she was still with her father? What then? And he found himself suddenly unwilling to look Ravenwood in the eye.

All those years, though. Surely things would have changed.

Maybe not, maybe not with somebody as single-minded as Abner. A grudge was a grudge—and if a colleague had an affair with your daughter, your child, then the grudge would be long and hard. Indy sighed. A weakness, he thought. Why couldn’t you have been strong back then? Why did you have to get so carried away? So involved with a kid? But then, she hadn’t seemed like a kid, more a child-woman, something in her eyes and her look suggesting more than a girl going through adolescence.

Drop it, forget it, he thought.

You have other things on your mind now. And Nepal is just one step on the way to Egypt.

One long step.

Indy felt the plane begin to drop almost imperceptibly at first, then noticeably, as it ploughed downward toward its landing spot. He could see emerging from the snowy wastes the thin lights of a town. He shut his eyes and waited for that moment when the wheels struck ground and the plane screamed along the runway as it braked. Then the plane was taxiing toward a terminal building—no more than a large hangar that had apparently been converted into an arrivals-and-departures point. He got up from his seat, collected his papers and books, took his bag from beneath the seat and began to move down the aisle.

Indiana Jones didn’t notice the raincoated man just behind him. A passenger who had embarked in Shanghai and who, throughout the last part of the journey, had been watching him down the aisle.

The wind that ripped across the airfield was biting, piercing through Indy. He bent his head and hurried toward the hangar, holding his old felt hat in place with one hand, the canvas bag in the other. And then he was in the building, where it wasn’t much warmer, the only heat seeming to be that of the massed bodies crammed inside the place. He quickly passed through the formalities of customs, but then he was thronged by beggars, children with lame legs, blind kids, a couple of palsied men, a few withered humans whose sex he couldn’t determine. They clutched at him, imploring him, but since he knew the nature of beggars from other parts of the world, he also knew it was best to avoid dispensing gifts. He brushed past them, amazed by the activity inside the place. It was as much a bazaar as an airport building, stuffed with stalls, animals, the wild activity of the marketplace. Men burned sweetbreads over braziers, others gambled excitedly over a form of dice, still others seemed involved in an auction of donkeys—the creatures were tethered miserably together in a line, skin and bone, dull eyes and ragged fur. Still the beggars pursued him. He moved more quickly now, past the stalls that belonged to moneychangers, to vendors selling items of unrecognizable fruits and vegetables, past the merchants of rugs and scarves and clothing made from the hide of the yak, past the primitive food-stands and the cold-drink places, assailed all the time by smells, by the scent of burning grease, the whiff of perfume, the aromas of weird spices. He heard someone call his name through the crowd and Indy paused, swinging his canvas bag lightly to warn the beggars off. He stared in the direction of the voice. He saw the face of Lin-Su, still familiar even after so many years. He reached the small Chinese man and they shook hands vigorously. Lin-Su, his wrinkled face broken into a smile that was almost entirely toothless, took Indy by the elbow and escorted him through a doorway and out onto the street—where the wind, a savage, demented thing, came howling out of the mountains and scoured the street as if it were bent on an old vengeance. They moved into a doorway, the small Chinese still holding Indy by the arm.

“I am glad to see you again,” Lin-Su said in an English that was both quaint and measured, and rusty from lack of use. “It has been many years.”

“Too many,” Indy said. “Twelve? Thirteen?”

“As you say, twelve . . .” Lin-Su paused and looked along the street. “I received your cable, of course.” His voice faded as his attention was drawn to a movement in the street, a shadow crossing a doorway. “You will pardon this question, my old friend: Is somebody following you?”

Indy looked puzzled. “Nobody I’m aware of.”

“No matter. The eyes create trickery.”

Indy glanced down the street. He didn’t see anything other than the shuttered fronts of small shops and a pale light the color of a kerosene flame falling from the open doorway of a coffeehouse.

The small Chinese hesitated for a moment, then said, “I have made inquiries for you, as you asked me to.”

“And?”

“It is hard in a country like this to obtain information quickly. This you understand. The lack of lines of communication. And the weather, of course. The accursed snow makes it difficult. The telephone system is primitive, where it exists, that is.” Lin-Su laughed. “However, I can tell you that the last time Abner Ravenwood was heard from, he was in the region around Patan. This much I can vouch for. Everything else I have learned is rumor and hardly worth discussion.”

“Patan, huh? How long ago?”

“That is hard to say. Reliably, three years ago.” Lin-Su shrugged. “I am very apologetic I can do no better, my friend.”

“You’ve done very well,” Indy said. “Is there a chance he might still be there?”

“I can tell you that nobody had any knowledge of him leaving this country. Beyond that . . .” Lin-Su shivered and turned up the collar of his heavy coat.

“It helps,” Indy said.

“I wish it could be more, naturally. I have not forgotten the assistance you gave me when I was last in your great country.”

“All I did was intervene with the Immigration Service, Lin-Su.”

“So. But you informed them that I was employed at your museum when in fact I was not.”

“A white lie,” Indy said.

“And what is friendship but the sum of favors?”

“As you say,” Indy remarked. He wasn’t always comfortable with Oriental platitudes, those kinds of comments that might have been lifted from the writings of a third-rate Confucius. But he understood that Lin-Su’s Chinese act was performed almost professionally, as if he were speaking the way Occidentals expected him to.

“How do I get to Patan?”

Lin-Su raised one finger in the air. “There I can help you. In fact, I have already taken the liberty. Come this way.”

Indy followed the little man some way down the street. Parked against a building there was a black car of an unfamiliar kind. Lin-Su indicated it with pride.

“At your disposal I place my automobile.”

“Are you sure?”

“Indeed. Inside you will find the necessary map.”

“I’m overwhelmed.”

“A small matter,” Lin-Su said.

Indy walked round the car. He glanced through the window and looked at the broken leather upholstery and the appearance of springs.

“What make is it?” he asked.

“A mongrel breed, I fear,” Lin-Su said. “It has been put together by a mechanic in China and shipped to me at some expense. It is part Ford, part Citroën. I think there may be elements of a Morris, too.”

“How the hell do you get it repaired?”

“That I can answer. I have my fingers crossed it never breaks down.” The Chinese laughed and handed a set of keys to Indy. “And so far it has been reliable. Which is good, because the roads are extremely bad.”

“Tell me about the roads to Patan.”

“Bad. However, with any luck you will avoid the snows. Follow the route I have marked in the map. You should be safe.”

“I can’t thank you enough,” Indy said.

“You will not stay the night?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Lin-Su smiled. “You have . . . what is that word? Ah, yes. A deadline?”

“Right. I have a deadline.”

“Americans,” he said. “They always have deadlines. And they always have ulcers.”

“No ulcers yet,” Indy said, and opened the car door. It creaked badly on its hinges.

“The clutch is stiff,” Lin-Su said. “The steering is poor. But it will take you to your destination and bring you back again.”

Indy threw his bag onto the passenger seat. “What more could a man ask from a car, huh?”

“Good luck, In-di-an-a.” It was like a Chinese name, the way Lin-Su pronounced it.

They shook hands, then Indy pulled the car door shut. He turned the key in the ignition, listened to the engine whine, and then the car was going. He waved to the small Chinese, who was already moving down the street, beaming as if he were proud to have loaned his car to an American. Indy glanced at the map and hoped it was accurate because he sure couldn’t expect highway signs in a place like this.

He drove for hours along the rutted roads Lin-Su had marked on the map, aware as darkness fell of the mountains looming like great spooks all around him. He was glad he couldn’t see the various passes that swept down beneath him. Here and there where snow blocked the road he had to edge the car through slowly, sometimes getting out and scraping as much snow from his path as he could. A desolate place. Bleak beyond belief. Indy wondered about living here in what must seem an endless winter. The roof of the world, they said. And he could believe it, except it was a mighty lonesome roof. Lin-Su apparently could stand it, but then it was probably a good place for the Chinaman to have his business, the importing and exporting of lines of merchandise that were sometimes of a dubious nature. Nepal—it was where all the world’s contraband came through, whether stolen objects of art, antiquities or narcotics. It was where the authorities turned eyes that were officially blind and forever had their palms held out to be slyly greased.

Through the margins of sleep Indy drove, yawning, wishing he had some coffee to keep him going. Mile after dreary mile he listened to the springs of the mongrel car creak and squeal, to the squelch of tires on the snow. And then unexpectedly, before he could check his destination on the map, he found himself on the outskirts of a town, a town that had no designation, no sign, no name. He pulled the car to the side of the road and opened the map. He switched on the interior light and realized he must have reached Patan because there wasn’t any other sizable community marked on Lin-Su’s map. He drove slowly through the straggling outskirts of the place, dismal huts, constructions of windowless clay shacks. And then he reached what looked like the main thoroughfare, a narrow street—little more than an alley—of tiny stores, passageways that led off at sinister angles into shadows. He stopped the car and looked around him. A strange street—too silent in some way.

Indy was suddenly conscious of another car cruising behind him. It passed, swerved as if to avoid him, picked up speed as it moved. When it disappeared he realized it was the only other car he’d seen all the way. What a godforsaken hole, he thought, trying to imagine Abner Ravenwood living here. How could anybody stand this?

Somebody moved along the street, coming toward him. A man, a large man in a fur jacket, who swayed from side to side like a drunk. Indy got out of the car and waited until the man in the fur jacket had come close to him before speaking. The man’s breath smelled of booze, a smell so strong that Indy had to turn his face to the side.