The Meadow

by Adrian Levy

  The helicopter stayed steady just long enough for Altaf to haul John inside. As they rose high in the sky, the vast landscape merged into one enormous, crinkled canvas. John looked down through the glass, exhausted and panting, trying to identify his route. ‘We have to go back for the others!’ he shouted, worried that with every second that passed he risked lose his bearings. Saklani smiled, ignoring him. ‘You’re safe now,’ he told him. ‘We’re the good guys.’

  The minute the helicopter touched down in Srinagar, news of John Childs’ recovery broke in the press. Jane Schelly, Julie Mangan and Cath Moseley saw a television newsflash at the government guesthouse where they were now staying, next door to Saklani’s complex. ‘Hostage released. It was the best news we could have possibly hoped for,’ recalled Jane. As far as they understood it, John had been given up by the kidnappers, which meant there was a chance that the others might be freed too. Jane, Julie and Cath were delighted, but couldn’t help also feeling jealous. They had to talk to John fast. He was the bridge to their missing partners.

  But how to get to him? Since arriving at the government villa from the unwelcoming UN guesthouse, they had been pretty much cut off from the outside world. None of the reports they saw, generated by Embassy staff or from General Saklani’s office, carried any of the details that the BBC’s Yusuf Jameel had put together in the Press Enclave. Nothing at all was coming from the kidnappers’ camp. For the past four days Jane, Julie and Cath had been left to dwell on every possible gruesome and bloody scenario: death, gunshot wounds, grenade injuries. But they had been given no hard facts at all, not even been told who al Faran was. And the vacuum had been filled with a torrent of rumours in the local Kashmir and Urdu-language press: one of the hostages had been fatally injured after falling down a crevasse; all of them had been smuggled across the border and were in Pakistan; the kidnappers had pledged to shoot the hostages if the Indians launched any kind of rescue attempt.

  Jane, Julie and Cath were at sea. The only people they had talked to regularly were their families back home and the diplomatic liaison officers Philip Barton and Tim Buchs. Barton was still struggling to find a secure phone line, and had brought them very little news from the Indian side, bar the repeated mantra that a ‘massive search’ was ongoing, while Buchs was wrapped up in trying to assist John Childs, with more senior US State Department officials said to be flying up from New Delhi.

  Surely finding John would lead to the location of the others, Julie reasoned. What was his physical condition, they asked. The diplomats confessed that they knew no more than the women did, as he had not yet been debriefed. They saw on the news that John had been transferred by ambulance to army headquarters, where it was expected he would receive medical treatment.

  A few hours later, General Saklani emerged to make a brief statement. John Childs, he said, was in remarkably good health given his recent ordeal, and was ‘an excellent witness’. But by the end of the day, the women had still not got anywhere nearer him. And then the story suddenly changed: John Childs hadn’t been released by the kidnappers. He had escaped. This revelation, with all its terrible possible consequences for those left behind, winded Jane, Julie and Cath.

  John Childs was overwhelmed by the attention, surrounded by crisp officers and attentive diplomats. ‘From the moment I reached safety I kept saying to everyone, “Look, I can take you to the place, it’s near the Amarnath pilgrimage route. Jane knows the place too, she was there a week ago, but we have to move quickly, before the kidnappers get the hostages away.” I said it to the Governor’s advisor who picked me up, and to the US State Department people who greeted me in Srinagar. To the army and FBI. But nobody was listening.’ It seemed to John that everyone just wanted him to shut up, with the FBI and the State Department being the most forceful. ‘They arranged for a satellite phone so I could call home, for which I was very grateful. But they warned me not to say too much about my rescue to anyone. As far as I could see, they were trying to stop me shooting my mouth off, and said they intended to get me out of Srinagar as quickly as possible. I can only guess they were thinking more about their relationship with India than about the hostages and our ordeal.’

  Weak and still disorientated, John did not argue. Instead, he did what he always did when he felt threatened: retreated into his shell. As the hours ticked by, a gnawing realisation washed over him. ‘I saw that I was not going to be able to help the others at all, and I knew full well that my escape would have made our captors more livid and vengeful.’ It was a shocking realisation that would never leave him. As the diplomats and officials fussed around him, he began to contemplate the truth of the situation: that he had traded his life for theirs. The others would have done the same, he told himself at one point, thinking back to Don’s attempt to slip off. But there were no happy endings and no clean-cut choices in a dirty war – that much he had learned from his brief, claustrophobic time inside the gujjar hut. Explorers and adventurers of all kinds knew as much: that there will come a time, whether on the exposed face of some crag or lost in the wilderness, when the choices you have to make will ultimately challenge your humanity. Most of all, he was dreading meeting Cath, Julie and Jane, who he knew would have a million questions. He owed it to them to tell them as much as he could, but to make matters worse his gut was still in spasms from the aftermath of his physical ordeal. He was sick, weak, injured and confused, and desperate to get back to his predictable life in Connecticut.

  Finally, on 9 July, as they hung around the government guesthouse feeling ‘hollow and lost’, as Julie put it, Jane caught sight of a thin, limping man being led into the compound, surrounded by a sea of American and Indian officials. He was barely recognisable as the man she had met in the Meadow. He was covered in cuts and bruises, both feet were heavily bandaged and he seemed overwhelmed. Someone brought him over. He was shaking uncontrollably, and Jane thought she could only imagine what he must have been through. The instant he saw the women’s expectant faces he shrank back, unable to make eye contact.

  The women tried their best not to crowd him, seeing from his physical condition (and guessing at the mental scars) that he had gone through hell. ‘Was anybody injured?’ Julie asked. ‘No,’ he replied in a barely audible whisper. The women squeezed in a little closer. The other hostages were in relatively good spirits, he continued, although Keith was suffering from altitude sickness as a result of them being made to climb over a very high pass. Jane asked how they were bearing up psychologically. She brightened visibly when John told her that Don had become a bridge between them and the kidnappers, the most capable man he had ever met. ‘He told me that the militants called him chacha, or uncle,’ Jane recalled. Despite his age, they had been impressed by his agility and speed on the mountain paths, John added. They had also commented on the fact that he wore a beard, joking that he must secretly be a Kashmiri Muslim. ‘It was just such a huge relief to know he was OK,’ said Jane.

  John told them how they had walked long distances at extreme elevations, sometimes at night. The most frightening thing had been the fear of falling. However, they had all survived relatively unscathed, and had been provided with some food. Staying in the gujjar huts had been a miserable experience that John had no wish to repeat, he said, but the kidnappers had in the main been polite and accommodating. ‘What do you think are their chances of a release?’ Julie asked, getting to the point. It was the question the Indians would never answer, and the one John had dreaded being asked. He could not bring himself to tell the women that he believed he had fled as they were being marched to their death. He was ‘reasonably optimistic’, he said quietly. The al Faran leadership had ‘promised’ none of them would be harmed. But his heart was not in it.

  The conversation petered out. A brusque woman from the US Embassy bustled over, saying it was time for John to leave. Just before the FBI and Tim Buchs whisked him away, Jane took him to one side. ‘She asked me how I had escaped, and I told her I’d taken advantage of my sickness and the dark
ness. She asked me how Don had felt about escaping, and I said that he felt as I did, that it was the only way out. Jane then looked deep into my eyes and said gently, “Why couldn’t you just bring Don with you?” I was silent. I was bowled over by this, the hardest question of all. It was impossible to look her in the eye and tell her the truth. I could have. But I didn’t.’

  Jane, Julie and Cath returned to their quarters feeling more alone than ever, certain that John Childs’ actions had significantly reduced their loved ones’ chances, although no one in authority would confirm it. Julie rang home to update her mother, trying to keep things upbeat. ‘The American told her that no one had been harmed in any way,’ Anita said. ‘They were being fed and well looked after. It was not knowing if he was hurt that was the most distressing. Julie had been crying, worrying about him being hurt. Now she knew at least he was all right.’

  But back in Srinagar, sitting glassy-eyed before the television, the women were confronted by another newsflash. A young German woman, Anne Hennig, looking ashen and terrified, was telling reporters in Pahalgam, between heavy sobs, how she had just scrambled down from Chandanwari, the mountain village that served as the first-night stop for the Amarnath pilgrims. A group of gunmen had appeared from nowhere that morning, and abducted her boyfriend in broad daylight from a trekking path, she said. She had no idea where they had taken him, or who they were. What was his name, a reporter asked. ‘Dirk,’ she said. ‘Dirk Hasert, a twenty-six-year-old student from Erfurt. Please help him.’

  A few hours later, a petrified Anne joined Jane, Julie and Cath in Srinagar. The women flocked around, trying to comfort her. They knew exactly what she was feeling. Another room at the government guesthouse was now occupied, as they were all plunged into despair.

  Across Church Lane, between the chinar trees, a soft light was still on in the second-floor bedroom of a five-storey building. A low-watt bulb burned into the early hours, illuminating a frugal room in which an old man sat at a bureau, his grey-haired head cupped in his hands. General Saklani understood exactly what was going on. An al Faran search party looking for Childs had scooped up the next best thing.

  EIGHT

  Hunting Dogs

  On 8 July, almost fifteen miles above Pahalgam, in a clutch of stone huts known as Zargibal, a single column of militants arrived, travelling head to tail like hunting dogs. Sitting in a tree-filled dip at nine thousand feet, a couple of hours’ trekking distance from where John Childs had escaped his captors, the hamlet served as a way station for pilgrims heading for the Amarnath Cave. The gunmen’s arrival must have been sometime after 11 a.m., as a local chai-wallah, Abdul Bhat, who operated a seasonal stall here, recalled that his stomach was rumbling, but lunchtime prayers had not yet been called.

  At first he thought they were Indian Army soldiers, but when he saw their clothes, a mixture of ragged, unwashed kurtas and second-hand khaki, he realised straight away that they must be ‘guest mujahideen’, as Kashmiris respectfully called foreign militants. Trying not to stare, he guessed they were most likely members of the Movement, since these days this mountain area was their heartland. For the past two years it had felt as if Sikander and the Afghani were everywhere. But, he wondered fearfully, what were the mujahids doing here now, in broad daylight, with soldiers all around?

  Mr Bhat was as much for azadi, or freedom for Kashmir, as the next man, members of his family having gone ‘over there’ in 1990, entering Pakistan-administered Kashmir to train at ISI camps. But if these gunmen were caught in Zargibal they would be shot on sight, and the hamlet destroyed by the security forces for harbouring them. Mr Bhat had no idea that these were militants from the al Faran kidnap party, driven to take extraordinary risks by the Turk, who was determined to recapture the escaped American hostage, to rescue both his reputation and the fortunes of Operation Ghar.

  The gunmen were desperate, having been out on the mountainsides for eight hours, first going down to Chandanwari and then back up the trekking route in the direction of the cave, with John Childs still nowhere to be seen. Silently, Mr Bhat cursed them. ‘Anyhow, they’ll be dead sooner rather than later,’ he thought as he brought down his hatch, striking the bolt. Kneeling so he could not be seen, he held his breath. He didn’t want any trouble.

  He was clutching a cup of green tea in the dark when a sharp knock made him jump. Someone shouted in heavily accented Urdu through the wooden slats: ‘We’re looking for a foreigner. American.’ Mr Bhat froze. He could tell from the voice that this man was probably a Pashtun from the Pakistan–Afghan border, where the most feared fighters of all originated. He squeezed his eyes shut. ‘He might be limping,’ the man continued. Mr Bhat said nothing. ‘We’ve seen a tent.’ He gulped. The tent. They were talking about the one pitched just outside the village belonging to a blond, curly-haired foreigner. He had arrived two days back, and everyone in the village had taken to him. As Mr Bhat blurted out, ‘I can’t help you,’ he wondered if there was anything he could do to help the outsider. He was not an American. He was no one’s enemy. Should he raise the alarm? Should he try to signal to the foreigner to beware? ‘We’ll be back for you later, dada,’ the militant snapped, before bringing his rifle butt down on the hatch with a loud thwack.

  The foreigner in the tent had arrived alone on the afternoon of 6 July, saying he was on his way up to the Hindu cave. He had stopped for tea, surprising Mr Bhat, who had never spoken to an ‘angresi’ before. Most of those who passed through were in the company of guides and pony-wallahs, who steered them straight to Pissu Top and then on to the cupric blues of Sheshnag Lake. But this traveller had sat down and chatted in broken Hindi, a language Mr Bhat knew a smattering of too. The foreigner had asked for the date of the full moon, and Mr Bhat had replied that it was not until 12 July, six days’ time. ‘Then I’m too early,’ the blond man had said with a grin. ‘Hans Christian,’ he continued, introducing himself with a proffered hand. ‘I am Hans Christian Ostrø from Oslo.’ Mr Bhat touched his heart. ‘Aadaab,’ he said, by way of a Kashmiri greeting. Well, that’s what a Kashmiri Muslim would say to a Hindu, but Mr Bhat was unsure what customs this blond-haired outsider kept. He followed Hans Christian to the edge of the hamlet and watched, amazed, as he quickly erected a black one-man tent close to the trekking path. ‘Hans,’ he had said to himself, trying not to stare too much at that blond hair.

  Over the next two days, Hans and Mr Bhat had got into a pattern. Hans would rise at dawn, and set off on his own up the mountains, towards Sheshnag or on a circuit around Mahagunas Top. In the afternoon he returned to drink Lipton chai with Mr Bhat and chat about the world. He was a natural entertainer. ‘I remember him picking up two five-gallon jerry cans of fuel, balancing them on either end of a pole that he spun around his head,’ Mr Bhat recalled. The villagers gave him the nickname nar gao, ‘the Ox’. At night, Hans had cooked for himself. A vegetarian, he shunned the mutton-based Kashmiri diet. A few locals, Mr Bhat among them, had come over to his fire to watch. He whittled wood for them, making whistles and toys, and let them handle the large army knife he kept tucked in his belt, explaining that it was a bayonet that he had kept after recently concluding his military service. He pulled a hard-man face, turning red and making everyone laugh. ‘He said he would defend us against the Indian soldiers who slunk through daily, stealing chickens and throwing their weight around,’ Mr Bhat said. He had even aped attacking one passing army patrol from behind, clowning behind the Indian soldiers, who seemed not to notice him, in what the villagers regarded as a suicidal gesture.

  ‘The Ox’, they called him, but there were many sides to Hans. On his second night he had called everyone together and started to dance in a jerky, classical Indian style. Afterwards he explained that he was Bhima, son of the Hindu wind god, and that he had the strength of a hundred elephants. Bhima’s job was ‘to protect the pious so they could live in the forest without fear’, he told them earnestly. This was kathakali, he explained, a dance from Kerala, in India’s far south. He had been
studying it before coming up here, and after this trek he was going home to Oslo to put on a show. His first venture as director/producer/promoter. It reminded the village elders of the bhand pather, the travelling Kashmiri folk players who had wandered the valley back in the days before the war, when Muslims could enjoy a Hindu pageant without feeling like traitors.

  As the guest mujahideen party moved off, Mr Bhat was sure it was not Hans they were looking for, but hoped the foreigner would have the sense to run anyway. There was another thump on his hatch. He winced. ‘Hello, Mr Bhat. You in there? It’s Hans Christian. What’s going on?’ Mr Bhat wanted to cry out, ‘Run away! There are gunmen here!’ But as he strained to peer through the gaps in the wooden shutter, he saw the gunmen running back. They knocked Hans to the ground. ‘Hey, what’s up?’ Hans yelled as somebody took a swing at him. Mr Bhat cursed his own cowardice. He watched as the mujahids grappled with the foreigner, who put up an impressive fight, throwing off the first two who came at him and felling a third with some deft punches: left, right and then the belly. A fourth militant was about to shoot when someone slapped him, shouting that they needed to take this man alive. ‘Hans fought like a black bear,’ Mr Bhat recalled. ‘He whipped out his army knife and took cover behind a hut.’ For the next hour there was a standoff, with the foreigner and his knife pitched against half a dozen heavily armed militants. For a while it looked as if Hans might even outsmart them, but then Mr Bhat saw two men working their way behind him. They clubbed his legs from beneath him with a shovel, and Mr Bhat watched, horrified, as several militants sat on Hans’s chest, roped his arms together and dragged him down to his tent, which they rifled through before leaving the village, climbing towards the heights.