The Business

'That's very kind.  I may take you up on that.  Are you free this afternoon?'

'Sure.  Where to?'

'You're the local knowledge.  Suggest somewhere.'

'Well, there's — ah-hah!  Hey, that was quick.  Here's breakfast.'

'Uncle Freddy?'

'Kate, dear girl.  You made it to Thulahn then, yes?'

'Yes.  Managed to avoid the prayer flags.  Been having a look round.  Done the palace and bits of the city, seen the old Queen and had a guided tour of the lower valley and the nearest town just this afternoon.  The weather's atrocious now.  Nearly didn't make it back.'

'Prince returned yet, is he?'

'No.  He's not due back from Paris for another few days.'

'Oh, he wasn't going to Paris, dear girl.  He was in Switzerland,' Uncle Freddy said.  'At CDO.' CDO is what we usually shorten Château d'Oex to.

'Oh.  Well, no, he's still not due back until next week.'

'Jolly good.  Did you give the Queen Mum my regards?'

'No.  I didn't know you knew her.'

'Audrey?  Oh, golly, yes.  From way back.  Meant to say.  Thought I had.  Senility, probably.  Still.  She didn't mention me, then?'

'I'm afraid not.'

'Not to worry.  Heard she'd gone a bit batty actually, if not totally ga-ga.  How did she seem to you?'

'Eccentric in that sort of feral way that old English ladies go sometimes.'

'Probably the altitude.'

'Probably.'

'Who was your guide if the Prince isn't back?'

'The honorary US consul.  Youngish chap, second-generation hippie.  Secured me a breakfast that was surprisingly edible and then took me down to Joitem in his Jeep.  It's a bit like Thuhn except lower down and flatter and surrounded by rhododendron bushes.  Visited an abandoned monastery, saw a few farms and prayer windmills, nearly skidded off the road into ravines a few times, that sort of thing.'

'Sounds terribly exciting.'

'And you?  I've tried you a few times and you never seem to be in.'

'Oh, just faffing about as usual.  Driving.'

'You should get a mobile.'

'What?  One of those things you hang above cots?'

'No, Freddy, a phone.'

'Pah!  And disturb a good drive by having a phone go off in my ear?  I should cocoa.'

The skies were clear the next day, though confusingly (for me and probably no one else in Thuhn) snow swirled everywhere for a few hours beneath that cloudlessness; a stiff, freezing wind blasted down from the mountains and across the city and the palace and seemed to scour most of the snow away, brushing it off down the valley in tall, white, dragging shrouds and gathering it into huge drifts beneath the river's steeper banks.

Josh Levitsen had warned me about wind chill the day before and, anyway, this wasn't the first time I'd been in a cold place.  I made sure I had a scarf over my mouth and nose when I went out, dressed in Western gear again, but even so the ferocity of the chill was stunning.

The children were nowhere to be seen.  The city seemed deserted.  My eyes watered in the icy blast and the tears froze almost instantly on my skin; I had to keep turning and bending and brushing drops of salty ice away and rubbing feeling back into my cheeks.  I pulled the scarf up higher and eventually found my way down to the Wildness Emporium, where the Sikh brothers fussed over me and poured me warm paurke — tea with roasted barley flour and sugar in it; it tasted much better than it should have.  There also I bought a polarised ski mask for my eyes and a blue neoprene thing that fitted over the rest of my lower face and made me look a little like Hannibal Lecter but which was much more effective than the scarf.

Suitably kitted up, with not a square centimetre of bare skin left exposed to the elements, I left the brothers happily counting even more of my dollars and set off into the wind again.

People were keeping indoors.  It was the best time to see the city just as a set of buildings and the spaces in between them.  I walked all over it until hunger and chance brought me within sniffing distance of the Heavenly Luck Tea House around lunch time, and then sat, extremities tingling, tucking into dhal bhut (sticky rice with lentil soup poured over it) and jakpak kampa (spicy stew with mystery meat).  A watery yoghurt called dhai — pretty similar to a plain lassi — washed it all down.

The other diners — all seriously quilted, mostly male, some still wearing pointy hats — laughed and grinned and talked at me in machine-gun Thulahnese and I just grinned like an idiot and laughed when they laughed and made dumb faces and fanned my mouth in what was apparently a quite hilarious manner when I bit on a chilli in the stew and nodded and shrugged and mugged and whistled and just generally behaved like a complete cretin for about forty minutes, and then finally left the place with a huge smile on my face under the blue neoprene Hannibal Lecter mask, feeling full, content and warm as well as perfectly, blissfully happy and with the sense that I'd just spent one of the most pleasantly communicative and life-affirming lunches I'd ever experienced.

'Kathryn?'

'Mr Hazleton.'

'You are well, I hope?'

'I'm fine.'

'And your stay in Thulahn, is that going well?'

'Very well.'

'I've never been.  Would you recommend a visit?'

'That depends on your tastes, Mr Hazleton.  It's fine if you like lots of mountains and snow.'

'You don't sound very enamoured of the place, Kathryn.'

'I like lots of mountains and snow.'

'I see.  I was wondering.  I was trying to decide whether you'd decided.  Trying to make up my mind whether you had made up your mind, or not.'

'Uh-huh.'

'You're being very reticent, Kathryn.'

'Am I?'

'Is there somebody else there in the room with you?'

'No.'

'You're upset with me, aren't you?'

'Upset, Mr Hazleton?'

'Kathryn, I do hope you believe me when I say I had nothing to do with the contents of that disc.  It came into my possession and I confess I thought to turn it to my advantage, but what else was I supposed to do? …Kathryn, if I'm wasting my time with this call, tell me and I'll hang up. Perhaps we can talk again later.'

'What was the purpose of your call, Mr Hazleton?'

'I wanted to know if you'd come to a decision regarding the contents of the disc I had delivered to you.  Have you decided to do nothing, or are you still mulling it over?'

'Oh, I'm mulling.  Mulling away furiously here.'

'Are you, Kathryn?'

'Would I lie to you, Mr Hazleton?'

'I imagine you would if you thought it was the right thing to do, Kathryn.'

'Well, I'm still thinking.'

'The problem hasn't gone away, I'm afraid.  Right now, even as we speak, Mrs Buzetski is —'

'Boston.  She's in Boston, and she's not really visiting an old school chum at all.'

'Ah.  You know.  You must have spoken to Stephen.  How is he?  Do you think he suspects anything yet?'

'I'm sure I couldn't say, Mr Hazleton.'

'I'd better go, Kathryn.  Give my regards to the Prince when he gets there, will you?'

In the late afternoon Langtuhn Hemblu appeared and announced he was to take me to the Foreign Ministry for the formalities to be completed.  I was to bring my passport.  I asked him to wait and changed into my ethnic clothes, then we took the Roller a short distance down into the crowded city to a squat building with plain-painted walls.

I was shown into a large room where a bulbously tiled cylindrical stove in one corner radiated heat and four young, yellow-robed clerks perched on high stools behind tall desks.  All four stared at me and then put their heads down and scribbled furiously when a tall, bald, orange-robed man appeared from a door to one side of the big stove, announced he was called Shlahm Thivelu, Senior Immigration Officer, and invited me into his office.