‘I’m not fat! It’s just the coat, you cheeky old git,’ Eddie replied, grinning, as they shook hands. ‘How’ve you been?’
The Nepali shrugged. ‘All right, I suppose.’
Eddie made introductions. ‘Nina, this is Jayesh Rai. I worked with him in Afghanistan when I was in the SAS — he’s a Gurkha. Jayesh, this is my wife, Nina Wilde.’
‘Namaste,’ said Jayesh.
Nina almost extended her hand to him, before remembering from her research on the country that it was considered impolite for a man to shake a married woman’s hand. ‘Namaste,’ she echoed instead. He gave her a tiny nod that she took as approval. ‘I’ve never met a Gurkha before. You’re supposed to be the best soldiers in the world, aren’t you?’
‘They like to think so,’ Eddie sniffed.
‘Better than SAS. Got some stories about Chase,’ Jayesh told her. ‘Caught him once in training. Jumped out of a bush behind him and put my blade to his neck. Thought he was going to soil himself.’
She turned to Eddie, unable to hold in a smile. ‘Really?’
‘Nope,’ he said, frowning at his former comrade. ‘He’s full of… poop.’ Jayesh’s stony face almost displayed something resembling amusement. ‘So, you got transport?’
‘Truck outside,’ the Nepali said. ‘Two hours to the end of the road. Got something else to go up the mountain. Come on, then.’ He donned a brimless felt cap and a multicoloured scarf, then started for the exit.
‘Right charmer, isn’t he?’ said Eddie as he and Nina followed him outside.
‘He’s… brusque, yeah,’ she agreed. ‘So are the Gurkhas really that good?’
He dropped his voice. ‘Annoyingly, yeah. If you’re ever in a fight, you don’t want to be on the opposite side to the Gurkhas. Don’t tell him I said that, though.’
They wedged their bags into the rear bed of a dented Toyota pickup truck. ‘Cigarette, Chase?’ asked the Gurkha, offering a crumpled golden packet.
‘I gave up,’ the Englishman told him.
That produced Jayesh’s first visible display of emotion: surprise. ‘Gave up? You?’
‘Realised it wasn’t doing me any good, so I quit. And I’m definitely not going to start smoking again — I’ve got a little girl now.’
Jayesh shook his head. ‘Weird world,’ he muttered, though it wasn’t clear which of the two revelations he found more unexpected. ‘Okay, get in.’
They boarded, Jayesh taking the wheel after reluctantly stubbing out his cigarette. Eddie regarded the gloomy mountains ahead. ‘Glad I brought my warm socks,’ he said. ‘You ready for this, love?’
‘Yeah, I am,’ said Nina. ‘Let’s go in search of history.’
‘I know it’s the name of your book, but it’s still a rubbish catchphrase,’ Eddie replied. She glared at him. ‘Think we’d better move before she chucks me out on the street,’ he told Jayesh.
‘She hasn’t already? Must be love,’ the Gurkha remarked before starting the engine.
Jayesh’s estimate of the journey time proved optimistic, the road into the mountains in a dismal state of repair. But when the bumpy ride finally ended in a small village, Nina was even less impressed by the mode of transport the Nepali had arranged for the final ten miles. ‘You’re kidding, right?’
He shrugged. ‘This, or walk.’
‘I might walk!’
A trio of yaks, outfitted with colourful saddles and reins, had been brought to them by a round-faced local woman. ‘You’ve ridden a camel,’ Eddie reminded his wife. ‘This won’t be any harder.’
‘I hated riding a camel,’ she retorted.
‘So hopefully this’ll be an improvement!’
It wasn’t. ‘Next time I have the urge to travel to the butt-end of beyond,’ Nina complained, desperately uncomfortable after straddling her shaggy-haired mount’s broad back for an hour, ‘remind me of this, will you?’
‘Not much point, is there?’ Eddie said with a smug smile. ‘I do that every time, and you always still want to come.’
‘You know, everyone hates a smart-ass…’
But the reason for the switch from four wheels to four hooves was clear. The terrain had soon become impassable for even the most capable off-roader, and only grew more extreme as they gained altitude. The narrow path they were following clung in places to steep cliffs, the yaks brushing the rock faces on one side while overhanging steep slopes the other. However, the animals, though ungainly-looking, were stable and sturdy, plodding tirelessly uphill.
The weather improved as they went higher. It was bitingly cold when the wind blew, but the clouds had parted enough for the midday sun to break through, lighting up the snowy wastes with an almost unnatural clarity. Nina’s mood improved a little as she took in the stark beauty around them. ‘Jayesh!’ she called. ‘How much further?’
Their guide was at the head of the little caravan, wreathed in cigarette smoke. ‘About four kilometres to go,’ he reported after consulting a map. He pointed at a mountain ahead. ‘Go around that side and up, monastery should be there.’
Nina surveyed the peak. ‘So that’s Dragon Mountain? It’s weird thinking that an ancestor of mine was here a hundred and seventy years ago — and that I knew nothing about it until now. Why wouldn’t Mom have told me?’
‘Maybe she didn’t want you to rush off after him,’ Eddie said. ‘Would you want Macy to come up here?’
‘Perhaps? When she was old enough? Okay, fair point,’ she conceded, before a note of parental longing entered her voice. ‘She must be missing us — I know I’m missing her.’
‘Me too. But she sounded okay when we rang from Kathmandu, and Holly said everything was fine. I’m more worried about what happens when we get to this monastery.’
‘Why are you worried?’
‘You tell ’em you’ve worked out their secret, and they invite you to come and see it in person, but only if you don’t tell anyone? That’s not suspicious or anything. But it’s one of the reasons I asked Jayesh to give us a hand — in case things turn iffy.’
‘Oh God. Please don’t tell me that you asked one of your old army buddies to bring guns to a Buddhist monastery.’ An alarming thought struck her. ‘You haven’t brought that stupid hand cannon of yours, have you?’
‘No, I sold the Wildey before Macy was born,’ replied Eddie, slightly offended. ‘A gun in the same apartment as a kid? I’m not an idiot. Plus I got fed up of the faff of New York’s gun rules.’
‘Good.’
‘But Jayesh still came prepared. Didn’t you, mate?’
The Nepali held up a polished automatic pistol. ‘Great,’ said Nina, sighing in despair.
‘He’s more of a budda-budda Buddhist. But he’s got something quieter too.’
Jayesh reached under his coat to draw something from behind his back. ‘Yeah.’
‘It’s a kukri,’ Eddie explained as Nina goggled at the eighteen-inch blade he had produced. It resembled a machete, though curved inwards past the dark wooden hilt rather than straight. ‘Gurkha knife. They use ’em for all kinds of stuff, but in a fight… put it this way, you want to be well clear even if you’ve got a gun. I’ve seen a Gurkha chuck one of those and score a bullseye from over a hundred feet away — and it hit so hard, the blade went right through the wood.’
Jayesh put on a performance, flipping and spinning the kukri in his hand so quickly that Nina could barely follow before balancing it by the point of the blade on a fingertip — all while his yak continued its wallowing plod. ‘Second World War, Gurkha unit killed a whole German squad without using a single bullet,’ he said proudly. He tossed the blade into the air, then snatched it as it fell and smoothly returned it to an elaborate leather scabbard across his lower back.