Читать книгу Thieves of the Black Sea - Joe O'Neill - Страница 24

Young Foster Crowe was just ten years old when his father called him to his study one afternoon. While lighting his pipe, which was filled with stringy brown tobacco, Foster’s father gave his son some surprising news—he was to accompany his father on a hunting expedition to Nepal.

Foster would spend a semester away from his boarding school in Belgium, which he had attended since the age of six. This was the first time that Foster’s father had invited him anywhere other than the occasional deer hunt in the woods surrounding their small castle—an estate that had been in their family for over twelve generations.

His father, being a military man, was a very strict disciplinarian, and most of Foster’s summers were spent ironing his own clothes, polishing shoes, cleaning horse stables, and continuing his studies. Each morning, at precisely seven o’clock, his father gave him—and his room—a full inspection, and any grievances were given a black mark. Five black marks, and he would have to bend over his father’s knee and have his backside whipped with a riding crop.

Foster was an only child, and his mother had died giving birth to him. His father, uninterested in rearing a child by himself, had Foster sent away to a school in Belgium. His actual name was Viscount Frederick von Crowe. His nanny since birth, an Algerian woman, couldn’t pronounce the name “Frederick,” so she called him “Foster.”

The name stuck.

Six weeks later, Foster found himself on the deck of a clipper ship sailing through the Suez Canal. His father had insisted he work to earn his board, so most of the time Foster could be found scrubbing the decks, coiling the lines, washing dishes or laundry, and on occasion, helping the crew hoist and tighten the many sails.

The Suez Canal, completed just three years prior, shaved months off the journey as they would be spared sailing down the coast of Africa and cutting through the Cape of Good Hope.

Foster was amazed at the sights and sounds of Calcutta and by the nautical journey they had taken to get there, which took only six weeks, followed by a caravan to Kathmandu, which took three weeks. Nepal was notoriously closed to any foreigners, but Foster’s father had bribed the right officials. After Kathmandu, it had been a four-day journey to the town of Pokhara.

In Pokhara, his father hired two sherpas; they purchased the appropriate provisions, and their hunting party disappeared into the Annapurna range of the Himalayan Mountains. His father justified his time away from school by saying a little “worldly” experience would do him good.

Foster always wanted to be close to his father, yet his father remained distant and aloof. A tall man with jet-black hair and a narrow moustache, his father almost never smiled and rarely showed emotion. He was a decorated Belgian soldier who had fought in the Force Publique in the Congo and helped subdue Congolese insurrections. He smoked his pipe incessantly and spent every waking moment watching everything around him, his eyes darting about like a lizard eyeing a fly. Nothing escaped his father’s gaze, and every mistake Foster made was instantly recognized, ridiculed, and corrected. His father seemed to relish, a little too much, finding fault in all of Foster’s endeavors and personal traits.

His father loved hunting for sport more than anything else in the world. Their castle in Belgium was adorned with hundreds of stuffed heads from animals killed by his father over the years. Tigers, wolves, lions, cheetahs, apes, deer, antelope, and even the full body of a black bear stood at attention in the cold stone interior. Each animal head was displayed with its mouth open, in an attempt to emulate its terrifying nature.

On this expedition, his father was hunting a rare tiger only found in the high altitude of the Himalayas. The tigers were said to live only above 10,000 feet and were able to navigate the steep and treacherous terrain of the stark landscape. Even in the snowy landscape, these tigers were little more than ghosts, as there was scant evidence of their existence.

Foster wanted nothing more than to please his father by killing a tiger. He practiced shooting each day—his father had given him a brand new Springfield 1871 rifle, a new model from the United States. It was the first gift his father had ever given him, outside of one present each year on Christmas day.

Day after day, Foster practiced shooting until his shoulder was so sore from the rifle’s recoil that he could barely move it in any direction. Every night, he studiously cleaned the rifle both inside and out. After dousing it with linseed oil, Foster carefully oiled the chamber and ran a cotton cloth over and over the steel barrel. He polished the handle with a homemade beeswax formula. When he’d finished, it was so shiny that Foster could see his reflection in the wood.

When they set out on the trek, his father informed the sherpas they were planning on going to Machapuchare—a smaller mountain in the Annapurna range.

The sherpas looked at each other and then shook their heads. In broken English, they explained that the mountain was revered and considered to be sacred to the Hindu god Shiva and not to be climbed.

Foster’s father took out some gold sovereigns, enough money to feed these men’s families for a year, and then told them, in no uncertain terms, that they were going to climb Machapuchare.

The sherpas looked at one another and had a brief discussion in Nepalese. In agreement, they took the coins and then hoisted the bags on their shoulders to begin the arduous trek.

“Do you think we should go if this mountain is sacred, Father?” young Foster had asked.

His father shook his head at him.

“Do we look like simple peasants who believe in superstitions?” he replied and then set off behind the sherpas.

It took two weeks to reach Machapuchare, and the hunting had been almost completely fruitless. The only thing his father managed to shoot was a wild yak—which the sherpas made into stew and then prepared the hide, which later would be dried and made into jackets and pants.

Reaching the base of the mountain at last, Foster noted the stillness in the air. He felt like he was trespassing on sacred ground. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched. A few times he even looked over his shoulder to see if someone was watching him from behind, but each time he saw only the mountain staring back at him. At night, in the confines of his small tent, Foster swore he could hear voices in the wind.

As they continued up the mountain, the air became thinner as they climbed higher and higher, and it became more difficult to hike. Foster needed to stop for a break every five or ten minutes. His surroundings became nothing but rock, snow, and ice.

Setting up camp well below the summit, his father declared they would camp for two days to rest and hunt.

The next morning, Foster and his father headed out to hunt early, before daybreak. The air was cold and Foster stomped his feet as they walked. He was still sleepy, but he knew better than to complain to his father. The sun had just come up on the horizon, and Foster struggled to keep up with his father’s long stride.

They had walked for two hours in silence when, after coming around a bend, they saw a huge albino tiger standing right in their path!

The tiger was massive, perhaps three or four hundred pounds, and looked to be of the Bengal variety. Albino tigers were the rarest of all tigers, and only a select few had ever been seen in the wild. The big cat’s fur was completely white, save for the black stripes down its body and head. Its coat was wet around the back, and droplets of water dripped from its rib cage. The cat was gently licking the melted snow off a rock and did not notice Foster or his father nearby.

Quickly and silently, Foster’s father brought the rifle stock to his shoulder, steadied his gaze down the front sight at the end of the barrel, and aimed the chamber right at the cat’s midsection. After taking a quick breath, he relaxed and allowed his right index finger to pull back on the steel trigger. Foster mimicked his father, bringing his own rifle to his shoulder and looking through the sight at the tiger. He understood that he was to wait for his father to fire first.

Instead of firing, his father’s rifle jammed!

The tiger, hearing the click, looked up and growled and looked right at Foster.

“You’ve got the shot, Foster, take him down!” his father shouted.

Foster pressed the butt of the rifle against his shoulder, allowed his right index finger to caress the trigger, closed his right eye, and brought the tiger within his sight.

The tiger growled, but it did not attack. Perhaps a hundred feet away, it stared at Foster and growled again. Looking into the tiger’s eyes, Foster felt a strange, otherworldly connection to it. For a moment, Foster could swear he could hear the tiger’s thoughts.

“Take the shot!” his father ordered.

But Foster did not shoot. He thought of all those animal heads in their trophy room in their cold castle. He looked at the tiger and something from deep within his soul told him not to shoot—he just couldn’t see a reason to. All this time, all he wanted to do was please his father, but in that moment, he didn’t care about his father’s approval at all. He knew, intrinsically, what he was doing was wrong.

Lowering his rifle, he looked up at his father.

“No,” he whispered.

His father hit him in the face with the back of his hand, knocking Foster down, then grabbed the rifle, brought it up and pointed it at…nothing.

The tiger was gone.

His father glared down at Foster, his rifle in his hand, in disbelief that his son had passed up such an easy shot.

“An albino tiger! You passed up an albino tiger! A once in a lifetime animal. You ever pass up a shot like that again, I’ll shoot you myself.”

He threw down the rifle at Foster, who was now bleeding profusely from his lip.

The next day, the sherpas packed up the camp to move to higher ground. Foster’s father hadn’t spoken him to him all night, and Foster traveled in the rear of the caravan—away from the sherpas and his father. It was as if he had been banished by his father. Walking far in the rear, the snow crackling beneath his feet, and his breath dissipating in the mountain air, Foster felt so very alone. He should have felt safe being with his father, but instead, he felt as if he were unwanted. That his father wasn’t just disappointed in him—more that he was no longer wanted on the hunt at all.

They trekked through the snow all morning and then came to a narrow crossing that required the group to walk in a single-file line. Foster stayed in the rear, still fearful of his father, who gruffly barked out orders at the sherpas.

After a few moments, Foster’s father proceeded across the narrow path, followed closely by the two helpers. The crossing was only about eighteen inches in width and required each climber to press his back against the cliff behind and sidestep down the path.

As his father and the sherpas moved farther away from him, Foster felt a tinge of fear as he looked down the sheer face of the cliff. It was at least a thousand-foot drop to the ground below.

Foster felt a gust of wind and his entire body froze in paralysis. His palms instantly became clammy and wet. He realized that one false move would send him plunging to his death. He tried hard to control his shallow, nervous breathing.

His father called out to him as he was about halfway across the pathway.

“Foster, hurry up, we don’t have all day!”

Taking a deep breath, and steadying his gaze to focus on nothing but the trail, young Foster was about to take his first step when, suddenly, his father let out a horrible scream followed by the terrified screams of the two sherpas.

Just one moment before, Foster had been staring at his father and the two men, and the next moment they had dropped from sight.

The path had given way under the weight of the three men!

His father continued to scream as he was plunged down the mountain. Foster watched in horror as his father and the two sherpas fell faster and faster until they landed with a ‘thud’ on the snow-packed ground a thousand feet below. As Foster watched, everything seemed to move in slow motion. It felt like an eternity before his father hit the ground.

Aghast, Foster stared down at his father’s unmoving body, splayed out in an unnatural position on the cold plateau of the Himalayan tundra.

“Father!” Foster yelled, but his father’s body didn’t move an inch.

“Father!” he yelled again, his voice bouncing off the cliff and echoing in the valley below.

His father’s body never moved.

He was dead, as were the two sherpas.

After standing there for ten minutes, still in disbelief about what had just happened, Foster finally managed to move his legs and looked around. He couldn’t possibly move forward as there was now a fifteen-foot gap in the narrow path. His only solution was to return to the place they had camped the night before.

Slowly, Foster moved away, taking one last look at the lifeless figure of his father. Another gust of wind blew through his hair, and Foster noticed the complete silence around him. Nothing moved. Everything was still as though frozen in time.

For three hours he walked until he found the spot where they’d been the night before but now it was just an empty, snowy patch of land. Foster sat down and pulled out a hunk of chocolate, took a bite, and then returned it to his pocket. He really wasn’t hungry.

It was still daylight, so he decided to keep moving to keep his body warm. He didn’t think of his father. He didn’t cry. He just wandered in solitude along the mountain trail, until he came upon a strand of Buddhist flags stretched between two rocks. The flags were somehow peaceful, colored like a rainbow. They flickered in the wind like the flames of a candle.

He was completely lost, but at least now he’d seen a sign of life.

All of his gear had been lost. He no longer had a tent, a sleeping bag, a stove, or even a lantern. Fortunately, he was dressed warmly enough, but the only supplies he carried on his person were a hunting knife, a compass, and some chocolate.

Foster stood there, watching the flags snapping in the wind, when he was suddenly awed by the sight of the Himalayan mountain range in front of him, like gods emerging from a mist. He had never bothered to notice their beauty before, as his father would have admonished him for such novelty.

He spent the rest of the day constructing a snow fort, as his father had taught him, then dragged himself inside to settle in for the night.

Lying in the snow, his back against a rock, Foster hugged his knees and brought them up to his chest. The snow was a bit cold underneath him, but his wool pants did an excellent job of keeping him warm. Pulling his hood even further down his face to block the cold, he slowly felt himself fall into sleep as the sun descended and the day turned to night. It was a fitful sleep, and he awoke a dozen times during the night to the sound of the wind swirling around him in the starkness of the night and the snapping of the Tibetan flags. After hours of tossing and turning, he finally managed to drift into a deep sleep.

He awakened with a start to someone smashing through his snow fort with a stick and then poking him in the shoulder.

Looking up, he saw a man dressed in a brown jacket made entirely of yak fur. A brown hood partially covered his face. The man stomped into the fort, wearing massive brown leather boots lined with yellow fur and caked with mud, and waving a long stick made from a mangled piece of wood with a huge knot in the middle.

The man looked like some kind of snow yeti.

He poked Foster again.

Foster immediately stood up and realized he was just an inch or two shorter than the man in fur. The man reached into his pocket, causing Foster to take a couple of nervous steps back, but instead of a weapon, the man brought out a large hunk of yak cheese, called chhurpi and offered it to Foster. Foster took the cheese and practically inhaled it, he was so hungry.

The man pulled back his hood and Foster could see that he was an older Nepalese man, maybe sixty. His head was bald, but his eyes were the most sparkling shade of green.

“Hello Foster. My name Lhak-Pa. Must follow me.”

Foster stared at the man, who smiled at him.

“How did you know my name?”

“All in good time. Come, need to get off this mountain. Not good to disturb Machapuchare. Do not speak for three days—must mourn father.”

“But, who are you? How did you find me?” Foster asked.

“No questions now. Must get early start. Storm is coming. Follow close behind me.”

With that, the man turned and started heading down the mountain path. He walked farther and farther away until Foster decided to jog and catch up to him. He didn’t know anything about the man, or how the man had found him. At the moment, he was just thankful he wasn’t alone anymore.