Escape from Kathmandu (7 page)

We shot the gap between a speeding cab and the traffic cow, with three inches to spare on each side, and were through the intersection before I even had time to blink. No problem. Now
that’s
timing.

After that, it was just a matter of navigation. I took us the wrong way up the one-way section of Durbar Marg, to shorten our trip and throw off pursuit for good, and having survived that it was simple to make it the rest of the way to Thamel.

As we approached Thamel, we passed the grounds of the Royal Palace; as I mentioned, the tall trees there are occupied day and night by giant brown bats, hanging head down from the bare upper branches. As we passed the palace, those bats must have caught the scent of the yeti, or something, because all of a sudden the whole flock of them burst off the branches, squeaking like my handbrake and flapping their big skin wings like a hundred little Draculas. Buddha slowed to stare up at the sight, and everyone else on the block, even the cow on the corner, stopped and looked up as well, to watch that cloud of bats fill the sky.

It’s moments like that that make me love Kathmandu.

In Thamel, we fit right in. A remarkable number of people on the street looked a lot like Buddha—so much so that the notion hit me that the city was being secretly infiltrated by yeti in disguise. I chalked the notion up to hysteria caused by the Traffic Engineers’ Intersection, and directed our Hero Jet into the Hotel Star courtyard. At that point walls surrounded us and Buddha consented to stop pedaling. We got off the bike, and shakily I led him upstairs to my room.

So. We had liberated the imprisoned yeti. Although I had to admit, as I locked us both into my room, that he was only partway free. Getting him completely free, back on his home ground, might turn out to be a problem. I still didn’t know exactly where his home was, but they don’t rent cars in Kathmandu, and the bus rides, no matter the destination, are long and crowded. Would Buddha be able to hold it together for ten hours in a crowded bus? Well, knowing him, he probably would. But would his disguise hold up? That was doubtful.

Meanwhile, there was the matter of Adrakian and the Secret Service being on to us. I had no idea what had happened to Nathan and Sarah and Freds, and I worried about them, especially Nathan and Sarah. I wished they would arrive. Now that we were here and settled, I felt a little uncomfortable with my guest; with him in there, my room felt awfully small.

I went in the bathroom and peed. Buddha came in and watched me, and when I was done he found the right buttons on the overalls, and did the same thing! The guy was amazingly smart. Another point—I don’t know whether to mention this—but in the hominid-versus-primate debate, I’ve heard it said that most primate male genitals are quite small, and that human males are by far the size champs in that category. Hurray for us. But Buddha, I couldn’t help noticing, was more on the human side of the scale. Really, the evidence was adding up. The yeti was a hominid, and a highly intelligent hominid at that. Buddha’s quick understanding, his rapid adaptation to changing situations, his recognition of friends and enemies, his
cool
, all indicated smarts of the first order.

Of course, it made sense. How else could they have stayed concealed so well for so long? They must have taught their young all the tricks, generation to generation; keeping close track of all tools or artifacts, hiding their homes in the most hard-to-find caves, avoiding all human settlements, practicing burial of the dead…

Then it occurred to me to wonder: If the yetis were so smart, and so good at concealment, why was Buddha here with me in my room? What had gone wrong? Why had he revealed himself to Nathan, and how had Adrakian managed to capture him?

I found myself speculating on the incidence of mental illness among yetis, a train of thought that made me even more anxious for Nathan’s arrival. Nathan was not a whole lot of help in some situations, but the man had a rapport with the yeti that I sadly lacked.

Buddha was crouched on the bed, hunched over his knees, staring at me brightly. We had taken his sunglasses off on arrival, but the Dodgers cap was still on. He looked observant, curious, puzzled. What next? he seemed to say. Something in his expression, something about the way he was coping with it all, was both brave and pathetic—it made me feel for him. “Hey, guy. We’ll get you back up there. Namaste.”

He formed the words with his lips.

Perhaps he was hungry. What do you feed a hungry yeti? Was he vegetarian, carnivorous? I didn’t have much there in the room: some packages of curried chicken soup, some candy (would sugar be bad for him?), beef jerky, yeah, a possibility; Nebico malt biscuits, which were little cookielike wafers made in India that figured large in my diet… I opened a package of these and one of jerky, and offered some to him.

He sat back on the bed and crossed his legs in front of him. He tapped the bed as if to indicate my spot. I sat down on the bed across from him. He took a stick of jerky in his long fingers, sniffed it, stuck it between his toes. I ate mine for example. He looked at me as if I’d just used the wrong fork for the salad. He began with a Nebico wafer, chewing it slowly. I found I was hungry, and from the roundness of his eyes I think he felt the same. But he was cool; there was a procedure here, he had me know; he handled all the wafers carefully first, sniffed them, ate them very slowly; took the jerky from between his toes, tried half of it; looked around the room, or at me, chewing very slowly. So calm, so peaceful he was! I decided the candy would be okay, and offered him the bag of jelly beans. He tried one and his eyebrows lifted; he picked one of the same color (green) from the bag, and gave it to me.

Pretty soon we had all the food I owned scattered out there on the bed between us, and we tried first one thing and then another, in silence, as slowly and solemnly as if it were all some sacred ritual. And you know, after a while I felt just like it was.

About an hour after our meal Nathan, Sarah, and Freds all arrived at once. “You’re here!” they cried. “All right, George! Way to go!”

“Thank Buddha,” I said. “He got us here.”

Nathan and Buddha went through a little hand ritual with the fossil shell necklace. Freds and Sarah told me the story of their adventures. Sarah had fought with Adrakian, who escaped her and ran after us, and then with Valerie Budge, who stayed behind with Fitzgerald, to trade blows and accusations. “It was a joy to pound on her, she’s been coming on to Phil for months now—not that I care anymore, of course,” Sarah added quickly as Nathan eyed her. Anyway, she had pushed and shoved and denounced Budge and Fitzgerald and Adrakian, and by the time she was done no one at the Sheraton had the slightest idea what was going on. A couple of Secret Service men had gone after Adrakian; the rest contented themselves with shielding the Carters, who were being called on by both sides to judge the merits of the case. Naturally the Carters were reluctant to do this, uncertain as they were of what the case was. Fitzgerald and Budge didn’t want to come right out and say they had had a yeti stolen from them, so they were hamstrung; and when Freds returned to see what was up, Nathan and Sarah had already ordered a cab. “I think the Carters ended up on our side,” Sarah said with satisfaction.

“All well and good,” added Freds, “but there I had old Jimmy right at hand, no yeti to keep me polite, and man I had a bone to pick with that guy! I was in San Diego in 1980 and along about six o’clock on election day me and a bunch of friends were going down to vote and I argued
heavily
with them that we should vote for Carter rather than Anderson, because Anderson would just be a gesture whereas I thought Carter might still have a chance to win, since I don’t believe in polls. I really went at it and I convinced every one of them, probably the peak of my political career, and then when we got home and turned on the TV we found out that Carter had already conceded the election a couple of hours before! My friends were so mad at me! John Drummond threw his beer at me and hit me right here. In fact they soaked me. So I had a bone to pick with old Jimmy, you bet, and I was going to go up to him and ask him why he had done such a thing. But he was looking kind of confused by all the ruckus, so I decided not to.”

“The truth is I dragged him away before he could,” said Sarah.

Nathan got us back to the problem at hand. “We’ve still got to get the yeti out of Kathmandu, and Adrakian knows we’ve got him—he’ll be searching for us. How are we going to do it?”

“I’ve got a plan,” I said. Because after my meal with Buddha I had been thinking. “Now where is Buddha’s home? I need to know.”

Nathan told me.

I consulted my maps. Buddha’s valley was pretty near the little airstrip at J—. I nodded. “Okay, here’s how we’ll do it…”

I spent most of the next day through the looking glass, inside the big headquarters of the Royal Nepal Airline Corporation, getting four tickets for the following day’s flight to J—. Tough work, even though as far as I could tell the plane wasn’t even close to sold out. J—wasn’t near any trekking routes, and it wasn’t a popular destination. But that doesn’t mean anything at RNAC. Their purpose as a company, as far as I can tell, is not so much to fly people places as it is to
make lists
. Waiting lists. I would call it their secret agenda, only it’s no secret.

Patience, a very low-keyed pigheadedness, and lots of baksheesh are the keys to getting from the lists to the status of ticket-holder; I managed it, and in one day too. So I was pleased, but I called my friend Bill, who works in one of the city’s travel agencies, to establish a little backup plan. He’s good at those, having a lot of experience with RNAC. Then I completed the rest of my purchases, at my favorite climbing outfitters in Thamel. The owner, a Tibetan woman, put down her copy of
The Far Pavilions
and stopped doing her arm aerobics, and got me all the clothes I asked for, in all the right colors. The only thing she couldn’t find me was another Dodgers cap, but I got a dark blue “ATOM” baseball cap instead.

I pointed at it. “What is this ‘ATOM,’ anyway?” Because there were caps and jackets all over Nepal with that one word on them. Was it a company, and if so, what kind?

She shrugged. “Nobody knows.”

Extensive advertising for an unknown product: yet another Great Mystery of Nepal. I stuffed my new belongings into my backpack and left. I was on my way home when I noticed someone dodging around in the crowd behind me. Just a glance and I spotted him, nipping into a newsstand: Phil Adrakian.

Now I couldn’t go home, not straight home. So I went to the Kathmandu Guest House, next door, and told one of the snooty clerks there that Jimmy Carter would be visiting in ten minutes and his secretary would be arriving very shortly. I walked through into the pretty garden that gives the Guest House so many of its pretensions, and hopped over a low spot in the back wall. Down an empty garbage alley, around the corner, over another wall, and past the Lodge Pleasant or Pheasant into the Star’s courtyard. I was feeling pretty covert and all when I saw one of the Carters’ Secret Service men, standing in front of the Tantric Used Book Store. Since I was already in the courtyard, I went ahead and hurried on up to my room.

“I think they must have followed you here,” I told our little group. “I suppose they might think we really were trying a kidnapping yesterday.”

Nathan groaned. “Adrakian probably convinced them we’re part of that group that bombed the Hotel Annapurna this summer.”

“That should reassure them,” I said. “When that happened the opposition group immediately wrote to the King and told him they were suspending all operations against the government until the criminal element among them was captured by the authorities.”

“Hindu guerrillas are heavy, aren’t they?” said Freds.

“Anyway,” I concluded, “all this means is that we have a damn good reason to put our plan into effect. Freds, are you sure you’re up for it?”

“Sure I’m sure! It sounds like fun.”

“All right. We’d better all stay here tonight, just in case. I’ll cook up some chicken soup.”

So we had a spartan meal of curried chicken soup, Nebico wafers, Toblerone white chocolate, jelly beans, and iodinated Tang. When Nathan saw the way Buddha went for the jelly beans, he shook his head. “We’ve got to get him out of here
fast
.”

When we settled down, Sarah took the bed, and Buddha immediately joined her, with a completely innocent look in his eye, as if to say: Who, me? This is just where I sleep, right? I could see Nathan was a bit suspicious of this, worried about the old Fay Wray complex maybe, and in fact he curled up on the foot of the bed. I assume there weren’t any problems. Freds and I threw down the mildewed foam pads I owned and lay down on the floor.

“Don’t you think Buddha is sure to get freaked by the flight tomorrow?” Sarah asked when the lights were off.

“Nothing’s seemed to bother him much so far,” I said. But I wondered; I don’t like flying myself.

“Yeah, but this isn’t remotely like anything he’s ever done before.”

“Standing on a high ridge is kind of like flying. Compared to our bike ride it should be easy.”

“I’m not so sure,” Nathan said, worried again. “Sarah may be right—flying can be upsetting even for people who know what it is.”

“That’s usually the heart of the problem,” I said, with feeling.

Freds cut through the debate: “I say we should get him stoned before the flight. Get a hash pipe going good and just get him
wasted
.”

“You’re crazy!” Nathan said. “That’d just freak him out more!”

“Nah.”

“He wouldn’t know what to make of it,” Sarah said.

“Oh yeah?” Freds propped himself up on one arm. “You really think those yetis have lived all this time up there among all those pot plants, and haven’t figured them out? No way! In fact that’s probably why no one ever sees them! Man, the pot plants up there are as big as
pine trees
. They probably use the buds for food.”