In the Palace of the Khans (10 page)

The man in the water reached out as he came, took him by the arm and helped him stagger up to the next man, and so on up the steps. Even the ones standing clear of the water were drenched with rain and spray, but they grinned cheerfully at him as they handed him on. His leg muscles were like jelly. Someone at the top tried to help him towards a big Humvee but he shook him off and turned and watched his father climb the steps, looking tired and shaky, and as glad as Nigel had been of the helping hand on his arm.

“Well done, Niggles. All right? Not Lucy's idea of a good time.”

“How long till she gets here?”

“Not too long. The inflatable will be quicker than we were.”

“Sirs wait in auto?” said one of the men. “Hotting is on.”

“Good idea,” said Nigel's father. “Come on, Niggles. We'll perish in this wind.”

Nigel realised that he was shuddering with cold as he stumbled along the wharf. The Humvee's windows were one-way glass, reflecting the light. The man waiting beside it, as drenched as all the others, helped them out of their life-jackets and saluted smartly as he held the door for them.

“Thanks,” Nigel mumbled, and scrambled into the lovely fug. His father squelched down beside him on the expensive leather, rubbed his sleeve up and down the fogged window and peered out.

“They'll be all right, Niggles,” he muttered. “These people know what they're doing. There goes their chopper. Those pilots are brave men. Maybe it'll be a bit easier with the rest of us out of the machines.

“Wait … there's Lucy …”

All of a sudden Nigel was weeping. Furious, he dragged his sopping sleeve across his face.

“And the President …” said his father. “Where's the girl?… Oh, he's got her. Looking like she did this sort of thing every day of the week … Two, three more women in life-jackets. That'll be the guards. How many were there in the chopper?”

“Three, I think.”

“That's it, then. God, that's a relief!”

From the break in his voice Nigel realised that he was weeping too.

CHAPTER 6

The bath was ready and waiting when Nigel had stumbled into his suite. An anxious old man called Drogo had shown him to the bathroom and told him by signs and a smattering of English to leave his clothes by the door, then nipped in and removed them as soon as Nigel's body was decently submerged.

He lay in the lovely warmth, listening to the come-and-go battering of rain against the window and the drum-rolls of thunder, and letting the life tingle back into his dead-meat muscles and the shock and panic drift away into the sweet-scented steam, until he heard a knock on the bathroom door.

“Your case is in your room, sir,” said a man's voice. “The President will be ready to receive you in twenty minutes. I shall come and fetch you.” The man's English was pretty good but with a strong accent.

“Fine,” called Nigel. “I'll be ready.”

His bedroom was twice the size of his parents' room at the embassy, with gleaming panelled walls, paintings of lakes and mountains, a log fire blazing in the grate and a faint odour of scented smoke. He dressed luxuriously in front of it, then watched the storm until he heard a knock on the door.

He had barely looked at the hunting lodge when they'd staggered in from the lake. He'd had an impression of a long, low wooden building, big as several barns, vaguely seen through the downpour, and then a lot of shiny wood inside.

His parents' room was next to his on a landing at the top of a gleaming stairway. The man who had knocked—dark, stocky, black suit, purple tie, white shirt, white gloves—watched impassively as Nigel ran and hugged his mother, both of them laughing with the final release of tension. He gave them about twenty seconds, then coughed and waited for them to let go of each other.

“The President sends his regrets,” he said. “He has been called away. The Khanazhana will receive you in the luncheon room. Please to follow me.”

Taeela was standing at the window looking out at the swirling veils of rain and the storm-tossed trees. She turned as they entered and curtseyed, much more confidently this time, to Nigel's mother.

“My father is called out,” she said. “The Sikorski is found at where the lake empties down the gorge. Our men radioed how they see it across the water on some rocks.”

“Good lord!” said Nigel's mother. “Do they know about the men who were in it?”

“They make signals, but it is hard to see in the rain. My father has gone to see what is to be done. He is sorry to leave you. These are his people. He must look after them. Now we will eat. I hope you are hungry.”

“Famished,” said Nigel's mother.

It was a pleasant, medium-sized, wood-panelled room with two large windows looking out over the invisible lake. They sat at a table laid for five at one end of the room, leaving an empty chair at the head of the table. Two serving maids wearing dazzling white aprons over high-collared purple tunics with silver buttons brought them a series of dishes with half a dozen different sauces to try. Taeela didn't know the English words for most of the food, and her stiffness broke up into laughter as they tried to work out between them what everything was. At the same time her rather anxious English relaxed and she started talking much more as she used to when Nigel came to the palace. They were getting along fine when the President came in.

“Sit, sit,” he said, as he strode to his place and settled into his chair. “I must apologise for having deserted you.”

“Of course you had to,” said Nigel's mother. “Taeela has looked after us beautifully. I hope your men are all right.”

“It is hard to tell. The Sikorski came down in the water close to the entrance to the gorge and was blown onto the rocks on the far side. The men are all out and ashore. Their radio was damaged in the landing, but from their hand signals we understand that some of them are sufficiently injured to need medical attention. They have first aid supplies and my doctor was aboard, so he will be able to do what he can for them, unless he himself is injured. We will send down one of our inflatables as soon as the storm eases. The forecast is that it should do so briefly later in the day.”

The maids had been offering him food while he talked, and he'd helped himself without apparent thought and started to eat, talking between mouthfuls.

“Forgive me,” he said. “There are urgent arrangements to be made. It was as well we left the helicopters when we did. Both of them suffered damage on landing. With our extra weight it could have been much worse. One can perhaps be repaired, the other will need specialist equipment. Furthermore a section of the roadway has been washed into the lake. The place is passable on foot, but not by motor vehicles, so we shall have to wait until the storm system has blown past. If the forecasts are right this should be in two days' time, so it should be possible to watch the fish-owls on Monday, along with your visit to the dam site, if you can stay the extra day, and then return to Dara Dahn by road. I must in any case be back in time for the ceremony on the Thursday, which I trust you will also be able to attend.

“The alternative would be to skip the fish-owls and arrange for cars to meet us the other side of the landslip. That would gain us an extra day, or perhaps two, but in storm-weather the journey would be considerably more than the standard eight hours. The choice is yours. Mrs Ridgwell?”

“Oh, it won't be any hardship to stay, Mr President. I'd give anything to see the fish-owls, and if it means Nick gets a bit more fishing …”

“If I may just call the embassy, if that's all right, sir,” said Nigel's father. “I doubt my mobile will work in the mountains.”

“There is a secure telephone line. The major domo, Mizhael, will show you. But I must ask you, Ambassador, to say nothing that gives any indication of my movements, nor that our security guard is currently depleted and the helicopters out of action.”

“No problem, sir. We arrived safely, and because of the weather are staying on an extra day. Of course I shall have to make a report of our visit to the dam site, but there's no reason I should say anything about the journey, except perhaps to mention the skill of the pilots in difficult conditions.”

Ambassador-talk, thought Nigel. He's really laying it on.

He caught Taeela's eye and winked. She pursed her mouth, suppressing a smile, and glanced at her father. He must have noticed the exchange, for he paused with a forkful of fish half way to his mouth and looked at her severely.

“A lesson in diplomacy, my dear,” he said. “You are going to have to play hostess this afternoon and see that our guests are amused. Mizhael will make any arrangements. Now, if you will forgive me …”

He rose, so they did too. One of the maids came across with a tray, picked up the remains of his meal and followed him out.

“So, what will we all do?” said Taeela brightly, already playing the hostess for all she was worth. “When the rain stops, His Excellency will catch fish for our supper, yes?”

“I don't guarantee to catch any,” said Nigel's father, joining in her game.

“You will catch three fine fish for my supper, your Excellency. I wish this. Mizhael will tell the cook that you bring … are bringing them.”

“Your wish is my command.”

“Good. And Mrs Ridgwell and Nigel will look for birds. I will come too. We will ride my horses. What birds do you wish to see, Mrs Ridgwell?”

“Oh, anything. It doesn't matter.”

“Come on, Mum” said Nigel. “You're talking to the Khanazhana. If she says you would like to see a great pink hoopoe, someone will make sure it happens.”

“I don't think they get hoopoes up here, darling.”

“Come on, Mum!”

“Oh, well. A black-throated kingfisher, I suppose. They're very local, but there might be some here.”

“You shall see a black-throated kingfisher. I will speak to Mizhael,” said Taeela, laughing. “Now I'll stop being the Khanazhana. I'm Taeela. I'm Nigel's friend.”

“Well, in that case I'm Lucy and this is Nick. That's what Nigel's other friends call us. What about when your father is here?”

“Ah … Perhaps you ask him, uh, Lucy.”

“As soon as I get the chance.”

They'd lunched very late, and the rain and wind had begun to ease by the time they'd finished. A guard and driver were waiting for Nigel's father with a Jeep, and he was off before the last drops fell. When the sky cleared Taeela, in full riding kit and looking like an advertisement in a glossy country magazine, met Nigel and his mother in the front hall, and they were driven the few hundred yards to the stables, where three absurdly handsome ponies were waiting for them, along with a couple of bodyguards, a woman and a man, with two more ordinary-looking horses.

Nigel had ridden a bit in Chile, and his mother had apparently been horse-mad when she was a kid, but then got interested in too much other stuff to keep it up. Taeela, of course, rode like a princess, because that was what her father expected of her.

They followed a trail up through the trees, and out onto the open mountainside like the one on the video of the snow ibex, a vast slope twinkling with little rivulets after the rain and strewn with boulders, tussocks of scrawny grass clinging to whatever soil had lodged there, and scattered clumps of stunted bushes. Their emergence surprised a large bird that must just have caught some small mammal and started to tear it apart. It looked round with shreds of meat hanging from its beak, then lumbered into the air and soared away with the limp carcass dangling from its talons. A steppe eagle, Nigel's mother decided.

The track turned and led them slantwise across the slope. The air up here seemed magically clean. They could see for uncountable miles in every direction except to the south-west, across the lake, where about ten miles away the next instalment of the storm was working its way towards them.

There were plenty of birds to see, active after the rain. Taeela must have longed to put her beautiful horses through their paces and show her guests what they could do, but she kept to a sedate walk beside Nigel's mother, halting when she wanted to use her binoculars, borrowing them so that she could look too, and asking questions about the birds. Nigel, still stiff from his swim, was happy not to have to do anything more demanding. They'd already ridden as far as he felt like when he noticed the bodyguards muttering to each other, and looking to his left he saw why. The thunder was already faintly audible

“Hey, isn't it time we turned back?” he said. “We don't want to get soaked.”

Taeela stared contemptuously at the coming cloud-mass.

“No problem, mister,” she said in her Bart Simpson voice, wheeled her pony round and set it to a rapid canter. Nigel's mother and the female guard kept up but Nigel followed more cautiously, and the male guard stayed with him. He'd expected Taeela to go careering down through the wood, but she reined in and waited for them to catch up then rode down at a sensible pace. The first rain-veil swept up from the lake as they reached the stables.

Nigel dismounted, groaning.

“Me too,” said his mother. “I shall have to have another bath or I'll be stiff as a bench.”

“And sore,” said Nigel. “I didn't notice a lot of kingfishers, Taeela.”

“All down by the lake. They take a lesson from your father, how to fish. I'll send my father's … what is the word? She rubs you, makes you better.”

“Masseuse?”

“Good, I'll send her to you, uh, Lucy. After that she can punch Nigel.”

“Isn't she amazingly sane?” Nigel's mother whispered as they went upstairs. “Considering the crazy life she leads.”

He came down in an almost trance-like state of relaxation after his massage. The masseuse had turned out to be one of the maids who'd waited on them at lunch. Her name was Marizhka. She'd been bossy and unsmiling, and spoke no English, but whatever she'd done had really worked. His aches were almost gone, and he was hungry all over again after his ride.