Hotel Shambhala, Lhasa, Tibet
May 31, 2009
4:50 p.m.
Sarron stared up at the asbestos-paneled ceiling of his hotel room in Lhasa. He had stopped the plump Han Chinese hooker from dressing. Even if her high-pitched squeals of faked appreciation had reminded him of a yak calf with a hoof caught in barbed wire, he wasn’t finished with her yet.
Watching her dimpled backside wobble to the bathroom, he reached for his cigarettes. He had seen her hanging around the hotel when he returned from the airport and thought she might distract him. It hadn’t worked. His body was still tense with rage, violently seething. He had debt up to his eyeballs, contacts around the world that no longer returned his calls, the Indian Intelligence Bureau investigating him for arms trading, and now this fuckup on Everest.
He lit a cigarette and watched its smoke twist and turn upward as he told himself again that the summit bonus, his ticket out, was gone. The closing words of his last telephone conversation with Tate Senior burned once more in his ears. “Sarron, don’t expect another cent from me. Understand also that my lawyers are going to find everything there is in this world that has your name on it and tie it up in such a storm of endless legal bullshit that it will be frozen harder than my s—” The incensed American had been unable to complete the word “son.”
Lying back on the stained nylon bed cover, Sarron felt the walls of the small room closing in on him. The feeling made him tremble with anger and aggression, his mind raced, flicking involuntarily between thoughts of violence and pain. Struggling to suppress the urge to smash both the cheap room and the slovenly whore to pieces, he snatched the glass ashtray from the nightstand and perched it on the center of his chest over his tattoo of the 1er Bataillon de Chasseurs Alpins regimental badge as if it might pin him to the bed. Telling himself to calm down, he drew heavily on the cigarette, filling his lungs with smoke.
Now exhale.
Slow.
Inhale again.
The cigarette burned as Sarron steadied his thoughts.
Looking down to ash the cigarette, the old tattoo, distorted and magnified through the thick glass, caught his eye. It resembled little more than an ugly black bruise now. The sight of it made him think back to a time when it was crisp and new, to the lull during that vicious fighting in Chad when it had first been inked. He was going to have to fight like that now for his survival.
Inhaling deeply again on the cigarette, feeling his lips curling back against his teeth, he told himself if that was to be the case then the people who had let him down were going to be the first casualties.
Quinn.
Pemba.
Dawa.
They were all up there with the boy.
They should have done better—that fucking Quinn, especially.
Brooding about the Englishman, Sarron was reminded of what Wei Fang, the Chinese liaison officer, told him happened after he had left the tent. How Dawa had handed Quinn that old ice axe, insisting that he take it even when Quinn tried to refuse.
Why did Dawa do that?
Why did Quinn seem so spooked by the axe?
What is its significance?
Something inside Sarron cautioned that he needed to know the answers to those questions, and that he should limit his opening salvo of the coming battle to stun, not kill, until he did. Even if it was nothing, Dawa and Quinn had used that axe to humiliate him and, in return, he would make sure that it would be used to punish them when the time came.
Stubbing out the finished cigarette in the ashtray, he got up from the bed, retrieved his cell phone from his discarded clothes, and called a number in Kathmandu. He issued a stream of instructions before throwing the phone back onto his clothes and motioning the returning Chinese girl facedown onto the bed.
Just as he was saying, “Bitch, you are going to fuck me silently this time,” and reaching to the floor for her underwear to stuff into her gap-toothed mouth to ensure she complied, his phone rang again. Seeing the same Kathmandu area code on the screen, Sarron answered, shouting, “What now? Haven’t I made myself clear?”
“I don’t think so. Well, not yet anyway,” said the refined English voice on the other end of the phone.
“Who is this?”
“Sarron, it’s Henrietta Richards. I have been asked to look into the death of Nelson Tate Junior by the US Ambassador to Nepal. I have some questions for you.”
“FUCK OFF!” Sarron screamed.
The hooker flinched on the bed as the cell phone flew across the room to shatter against the far wall.