By now the remaining militia men were going through the tents and removing anything of value. Gerry winced as they fumbled with the expensive camera equipment, but Jamie only had eyes for the interrogator who walked towards the remaining captives with a high-stepping mountain man’s stride. The gunman had tawny, leopard’s eyes and unsmiling, mongoloid features. The eyes surveyed them, deliberately going over each man in turn, then, with a slight frown, turning to Sarah. What did the frown mean? Maybe she reminded him of someone. Maybe killing women was against his rules. Then again, this man didn’t look as if he had any rules.
The Tibetan rapped out a string of orders. Immediately, half of the remaining men pushed the film team towards the entrance of the hollow, gesturing at them to pick up the camera equipment on the way. Gerry shot Jamie a helpless glance as they were led off with a pair of gunmen on either flank, but he had worries of his own. One of the remaining captors attempted to usher Sarah away, and as she was led off protesting loudly, he moved to go with her. The result was a rifle butt in the belly that doubled him over and left him dry-retching into the earth.
‘My wife,’ he choked. ‘I have to stay with my wife.’ Christ, he felt as if he’d been kicked by a donkey. His spleen was somewhere in there and a ruptured spleen was going to be bloody inconvenient in the middle of the Himalayas. He let out a long gasp and fell forward on his knees with his face to the ground. A pair of scuffed leather boots appeared in front of his nose. He noticed that one was laced up with packaging string.
He raised his head and looked up into a pair of merciless amber eyes. The barrel of the Kalashnikov hooked on to his scarf and drew him upwards.
‘King’s, isn’t it?’ the interrogator said in perfect public-school English. ‘I went to Trinity myself and we thought you chaps were nothing but a bunch of smelly, beer-swilling Reds.’
XLV
THE BLANK-EYED buildings of the ruined monastery perched precariously on a cliff at the head of the long valley, clinging like moss to the fractured grey stone. They’d marched for hours without a break and Jamie and Sarah were dead on their feet by the time they arrived just as darkness fell. Throughout the trek the Englishman’s head had been filled with questions for the commander of what he now realized was a group of Tibetan insurgents loyal to the deposed Dalai Lama, but the leader only smiled grimly and told him to save his breath.
When they reached the monastery they were allocated a tiny monk’s cell on the second level. While Jamie checked the contents of his rucksack, Sarah spread her sleeping bag on the stone bed and closed her eyes. Before she lapsed into sleep she whispered, ‘What was that stuff about the wife, Saintclair? You haven’t even asked me yet.’ He tried to come up with a suitably clever reply, but her breathing told him she was already unconscious. Exhausted beyond words, he leaned against the bare mud wall and allowed his head to fall between his knees.
After what felt like only seconds, a hand touched his shoulder and he opened his eyes to find one of the young Tibetans smiling shyly at him. He followed the boy down to the ground floor where the commander sat by a yak dung fire reading what appeared to be the documentary producer’s diary.
He looked up as Jamie entered.
‘Tell me why you wish to visit our sacred place?’
‘This is madness, of course,’ he said when Jamie had finished. ‘The wujing and the PLA patrol the roads and the passes. It was only a matter of time before you were discovered. If the wujing had taken you they would have raped the woman and shot you all, then left your bodies in a gully for the vultures. You were fortunate that we found you first. I have sent the film-makers back; we cannot afford to have our faces emblazoned on Sky or the BBC. The porters will also return once they have helped replenish our stores.’
‘Why have you kept us here?’
He found himself fixed by the unblinking predator’s eyes. ‘Because you intrigue me. Your story is so unlikely it could well be true, but there are other possibilities. Perhaps you are CIA, who abandoned us many years ago, but who have lately been attempting to woo our representatives in Washington. Or maybe this is one of those subtle puzzles the Chinese are so fond of and you have been sent to spy on us, or draw us into a trap. If that is the case, we will all die together.’
‘I told the truth.’ Jamie waited for a reaction, but none came. ‘You know all about us, but I know nothing about you?’
The guerrilla stared from the window into the darkness. ‘We do not go by our given names, for it could endanger our families here and in India, but you may call me Tenzin. As to what we are,’ he paused for a moment, seeking the precise definition, ‘why, we are ghosts.’