The Cloud Maker

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.’

‘Send them now,’ Zhu ordered. He began folding shut the fly-sheet of his tent, then paused. ‘And make sure one of them is that idiot private.’

The sergeant saluted then continued back along the line of tents, squatting down by Chen’s. He banged on the tent frame before reaching forward and pulling open the zipper. The lieutenant was there, sitting with his back to the entrance.

‘Sir, the captain wants you to bring the satellite imagery to his tent.’

Chen didn’t turn, instead only raising his right hand in response. The sergeant nodded briefly, then straightened up, walking back to his own tent, grateful to be out of the cold.

Chen remained absolutely still, letting the open tent door flap in the wind. He had been in the exact same position for nearly an hour, staring down at the rucksack by his feet. Eventually, he closed his eyes, feeling the nervous weight press down on his chest, stifling his breathing.

He had no choice. He was going to have to tell the captain.

After they had first made camp, Chen had unfolded his laptop and pressed the start button. Nothing happened. He rubbed his hands over the cold metal before pushing the button again, craning his head down to listen for the soft whir of the hard drive booting up. Nothing. With a growing sense of dread, he’d swivelled the computer over in his hands and immediately realised what was wrong.

The battery was missing. Someone had deliberately removed it.

He’d immediately looked in the bag for the spare, but it had been taken too. Then he realised something else was missing. The map. He had carefully folded it inside the screen of the laptop.

Falkus… It had to be him. Chen had left the pelican case with all the communication equipment by the entrance to his tent the previous evening. Even the small rectangular batteries for the GSM 900 satellite phones had been pulled out from the protective foam casing and were gone.

Chen had frantically tried to find a way of rewiring the solar panels to link directly into the power adaptor. He knew it wouldn’t work, but tried anyway, cutting back the plastic coating on the wires with the razor edge of his survival knife and twisting the metal fibres together. The panels only had the power to trickle charge the batteries and without a single flicker of power he had eventually given up, leaving a tangled heap of wires at his feet.

There was no other choice. He was going to have to tell the captain he no longer had the map.

Chen inhaled slowly, steadying his breathing. When they had studied the maps together at Menkom, he remembered the monastery as being due east from the cliff edge. But due east led them straight into this impassable avalanche of rocks, and even if they did manage to find a way through, the gulley behind looked impossibly steep. Had he made a mistake? Was the monastery really on another bearing altogether?

If only he had the damn’ maps!

Eventually Chen rocked forward on to his knees. He slowly manoeuvred his massive frame round inside the tent and laced up his snow-covered boots.

As he stepped out into the wind, he shivered from the sudden change in temperature. His right hand instinctively went up to the top pocket of his winter jacket, resting on the photos of his family that he knew were carefully tucked inside. Tilting his chin up defiantly, he took a deep breath.

He was an officer of the PSB, not some common villager. Zhu would have to treat him by the book.

He trudged forward purposefully, passing the line of tents, but as he drew closer to Zhu’s, his pace slowed further with every stride. The wind tugged at his hair. Once again he felt a shiver run down his spine.

This time, however, it had nothing to do with the cold.