36

POSTCARD FROM THE EDGE

Suraj Alley, Thamel, Kathmandu, Nepal

“I am sorry, miss, but I am not cutting the ladies’ hair,” Pashi Bol said to the attractive tourist who had just entered his tiny shop. “I’m not after a haircut,” Beth replied as the barber’s scissors quickly rejoined the battle with the mop of hair on a recently returned trekker. “A friend just asked me to drop off some cards and stickers from an expedition he was on. He thought you might like them for your walls.”

“And what expedition was that?” Pashi asked curiously but kept snipping.

“Snowdonia Ascents Shishapangma,” Beth said slowly and deliberately. “My friend, the expedition leader, wanted to come by himself for his usual post-climb haircut, but he has been a bit tied up since he got back to Kathmandu.”

Pashi instantly stopped what he was doing to look back at Beth and nod her toward the line of waiting chairs. For the next few minutes she recalled the movie Edward Scissorhands as the little barber raced to finish what he was doing. The second the newly shorn traveler had paid and left the shop, Pashi turned the sign on his door to Closed and drew the grubby venetian blinds on the windows to each side.

“If Mr. Neil Quinn is the expedition leader you are talking about then he is in most trouble, miss,” Pashi said as he turned to Beth with a worried look in his eyes. “Many people are looking for him, saying he killed the Taiwanese climber and her friend.”

“He didn’t.”

“I know that, miss. Mr. Neil is one of the good ones. I have a police friend who is also. The detective says he knows it is nonsense, a Chinese lie, but there are those more powerful than him that are paid a lot to be sure that they do believe it. Is Mr. Neil safe?”

“Yes, as much as he can be for the moment. But we urgently need to find Henrietta Richards. He said that you might know where she is.”

“Miss, I am afraid that is another person who is also in great danger, also now missing,” Pashi responded anxiously.

“Yes, we went to her apartment last night, but she was not there. Instead Neil Quinn was attacked by a Chinese man who was already inside her apartment.”

“That would be the one the Tibetans call ‘Yama.’ He is tracking the man that burned. Yama believes he gave Henrietta Richards something important before he died.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“No, miss. I do not know. It seems that she was taken ill at the house of the British ambassador last night but vanished on the way to hospital.”

“Do the Chinese have her?”

“I very much hope not,” Pashi said while he took one of the expedition postcards from the bundle that Beth had brought. He walked to a wall, answering a rattle of his locked front door with a shout of “Closed. Thanking you. Later!” as he stretched up to unpin another postcard from amongst the many and replace it.

He gave the card he took down to Beth.

“Henrietta Richards asked me to give Neil Quinn this if I saw him. Perhaps you could pass it on.”

Beth looked at the faded postcard of the mountain of Makalu as someone tried the handle of the glass door again, this time with more force.

On the back was written, Your next climb. We need to speak. HR. Beneath, hastily drawn, was the ghost moth symbol.

“Still most closed!” Pashi said again raising his voice in the direction of his rattling door.

“Open up now—police!” came the shouted reply.

Pashi froze. Lowering his voice, he said to Beth, “Quickly,” pointing her toward another doorway at the rear of the barbershop. Sliding back its bolt, he pushed her through just as the glass of the front door shattered behind them. Masked men burst in shouting, “stop! police!” as Beth almost fell into a cavernous sweatshop.

Before her, row after row of workers, young men and women, were hunched over gray sewing machines that rattled with bright cotton threads, towers of multicolored T-shirts alongside them. Startled by Beth’s entrance, lines of brown eyes looked up in unison, then widened to white panic at the shouts of “Police!” that followed her in.

An older lady walking between the aisles blew a loud blast on a piercing whistle then began to scream instructions. The workers jumped up from their stations to flee the police raid, but quickly became trapped in their narrow aisles, overturning the metal worktables, screaming and falling in their panic to get out.

Pashi turned back from Beth to try to hold his door shut, shouting “Go, miss! Go!” at her.

Beth joined the stampede toward a narrow single side door that had opened onto the street.

A logjam of escaping workers soon blocked it. Seeking an alternative, she looked back to see the door Pashi was vainly pushing against pulse twice, then slam open. The force flung the small barber to the floor, the first masked men pushing through to fall on the little barber like hungry hyenas.

Another man, unmasked, entered alone to scan the hall. Beth recognized him as the one she had seen leaving Henrietta Richards’s apartment the night before, instantly understanding this was the “Yama” that Pashi had mentioned. In return, the man’s black eyes narrowed to lock onto Beth’s blond hair, out of place amidst the other people there.

He leapt toward her.

An alternative escape door had opened on the far side of the hall through which a young Sherpa was looking in at the commotion and talking rapidly into a cellphone.

Beth darted toward it.

Yama instantly followed, flinging people and sewing benches aside.

Trailing an arm, Beth toppled an immense pile of T-shirts that fell back onto her pursuer as she raced to the door where the Sherpa stretched to pull her through into a kitchen that was hot and crowded, steam billowing from boiling pans, oil crackling and spitting from scalding woks. He kept hold of her hand to tug her on, between cooks and waiters.

The black-suited man soon burst through the door after her. With both hands, he shoved aside a cook who was unwittingly blocking his way. The man fell against his stove with a scream. A wok overturned, the cooking oil slopping onto a burner to explode into a tower of yellow flame. The fireball instantly engulfed the cook’s white jacket and hair as it ballooned up to the ceiling.

Beth’s pursuer pushed that cook away to run on, snatching up a meat cleaver on the go from an already bloody chopping board heaped with dissected chicken. Swinging the deep blade wildly, he began to slash a path through the kitchen. A waiter, unable to get out of the way, caught a slicing blow to the side of the neck and became a spraying scarlet pirouette.

Beth and the Sherpa ran out into the busy café area followed by their frenzied pursuer. The café’s patrons screamed and jumped up, terrified by what was happening. Tables and chairs scattered as people dived for the exit or off the open terrace. Out on the pedestrian street they all ran toward the traffic of the main road.

Yama jumped down the café steps after them.

The Sherpa tugged Beth onward and out into the traffic, dodging motorcycles and bicycles.

An orange Suzuki car suddenly swerved to a halt in front of them.

The back door opened.

“Get in,” the driver screamed from within.

Beth didn’t need telling twice.

The door lock was slammed down as Yama flung himself against the stationary car, one hand grabbing at a door handle.

Unable to open it he became totally enraged, attacking the vehicle with the meat cleaver, hacking at the hood and the windshield, the glass fracturing into a broken mosaic but not breaking. He struck at it again. This time the blade pierced the glass and lodged as the driver floored the accelerator.

The cleaver was torn from the Yama’s hand as the vehicle sped away. Beth realized it was Temba Chering in the passenger seat as the younger driver, wearing a pilot’s flight jacket, drove expertly and extremely quickly through the Kathmandu traffic.

“Do you know where Neil Quinn is?” Chering asked.

“Yes.”

“Good, we need to get him to Henrietta Richards.”

Beth realized her left hand still held the now-crumpled postcard that Pashi had given her. She looked at it and said, “Yes, we do.”

Two MSS agents lifted a bruised and bloodied Pashi into his own barbershop chair. Despite being stunned from repeated punches to the face, the little man understood that he was alone and in trouble. The roll of tape produced to secure his wrists to the armrests confirmed it.

Yama returned, crazed and sweating from his failed pursuit of Beth. Ordering the agents to block the broken door with their backs, he moved in front of Pashi. “I am Yama, barber-man. You will have heard of me. It is time to talk.”

“I don’t know anything,” the barber said defiantly. Yama just turned to eye the crude tools of Pashi’s trade arranged on the shelf next to the basin and, slowly and methodically, began to wash his hands. When he turned back to face Pashi he was feeling the edge of a straight razor with his thumb.

“We’ll soon see about that,” he said, looking around at all the postcards and images on the walls then laying the razor’s edge on the terrified man’s cheek. “Why don’t we start with what you know about the ghost moth?”

Pashi swallowed but said nothing.

The razor began to cut, slow and deep.

The barber squeezed his face against the pain forcing his mouth to stay closed, no sound permitted.

Yama said nothing either. He just stared as he cut, wondering how much this little man could endure. Few lasted more than a minute or two.

The silent wait was interrupted by a café chair smashing one of the barbershop’s windows from the outside. The shattered glass collapsed like broken ice.

A barrage of rocks and bottles began to pound on the backs of Yama’s men blocking the broken door.

The head of an ice axe broke the other shop window, then reached in and ripped away the venetian blind to better reveal what was going on inside.

The sight caused a great roar of anger from the street.

A mob began shouting, “Release him! Release him!” and “This is Nepal. Not China! Get out!” as they hurled anything they could find. Without hesitation, the Chinese began firing warning shots in return and urging Yama to leave through the sweatshop door. Seeing no alternative, he further sliced the razor across the barber’s cheek and, hidden within a phalanx of armed agents, retreated. Tears of relief mingled with the blood coursing down Pashi’s cheek as the first of the Thamel crowd reached him.