Operation Snake

by Nick Carter

  "Ghotak has been in the mountains?" I questioned, gazing at his boots.

  "This morning," he answered. "I go into the mountains twice a week to meditate in solitary peace."

  "It is true," I heard Khaleen whispering to me. "He has done so for years. A holy man must meditate in silence and solitude, it is written, attuned to the nature around him."

  Her father brushed the girl's cheek with his lips and bowed to me. He turned to Ghotak.

  Tomorrow, when I return, your evil schemes will be at an end. The people will have learned the truth."

  I watched Ghotak's face as the old man strode off, but it's impassiveness told me nothing. The monk and his men watched for a while and then turned and walked off. Khaleen and I stayed to watch the small figure grow smaller and still smaller until finally it was lost to sight against the towering peaks. We walked back to the house, and it was dark when we finally arrived.

  "I will come to you again tonight, Nick," Khaleen whispered. I pressed her tiny waist, half encircling it with one hand.

  "I must do something, Khaleen," I said. "It may take long or it may not. Will you wait for me?"

  "The English journalist?" she asked quietly. I would have smiled but there was such sadness in her voice.

  "No, little one," I said. "Something else."

  "I will wait," she said. "No matter how late you are."

  Khaleen went to her room, and I waited for a while and then stole from the house. The Sherpas were at the pass, but I couldn't depend on that. It was very dark as I approached Ghotak's quarters in the rear of the temple. I moved along the building line and saw a light coming from the windows. It wasn't enough. Hell, anybody could leave a light on. I knew that if Ghotak was going to head for the mountains he would have to be on his way pretty soon. If he were up to something, he had to make his move before day broke, and the climb into the mountains would take hours itself.

  I was about to move from the wall of the meeting hall when I saw the blue-shirted loose-sleeved guard suddenly silhouetted against the light from the window. He carried a thick length of wood and no doubt a knife somewhere on him. I crouched in the shadows and waited for him to return as he passed the window. In moments he was back, heading away from me. I moved out and nearly reached him when he heard the sound of my footsteps. He whirled, tried to bring the club up, but I got to him first with a sharp chop in the throat. He gasped, clutched at his throat. I tore the club from his hands and clouted him across the scalp with it. He collapsed in a heap and I stepped over him. It had happened so fast that I doubted whether he saw who had belted him in the dark.

  I moved to the window and peered in. Ghotak was in the room, seated cross-legged on a mat on the floor. He was puffing on a water-pipe and writing on a parchment scroll. I shot a glance at the guard. He'd be out for a half hour at least, but there might be others coming. Peering in the window again I took another look, glanced at my watch and decided I had to wait around. There was still time for him to move out. I took the guard and, using his own shirt and some leaves, bound and gagged him and dragged him into some brush nearby. I settled down for a vigil outside Ghotak's window, checking in on him every half hour. He continued writing on the parchment until finally he set it aside and smoked his water-pipe in short, staccato puffs. I glanced at my watch and realized that if he were going after the patriarch he should have been on his way by now. I dropped low, passed under the window edge and started back through the darkened village.

  He was there. I should have been satisfied and yet I was uneasy, with the same uneasy feeling I had had at Hilary Cobb's cryptic remark. The monk was entirely too calm. He knew, certainly as well as we did, that when the patriarch returned it would discredit the whole edifice of spiritual power he had built up for himself. Why the hell was he so calm about it all then? I wished I knew the answer to that. The house was in total darkness when I returned and I went to my room, thinking that perhaps Khaleen had gone to bed and fallen asleep. But a small, warm hand reached out from beneath the fur blanket and I quickly undressed, putting Wilhelmina and Hugo on the floor beside the bed. I slipped under the blanket with her and found her eagerly, deliciously, reaching for me, her hands reaching out to welcome my body against hers, her soft legs thirsting to open the portals of ecstasy for me.

  We made love and held each other and made love again, almost as though we were both trying to shut out the thought of the old man out in the blackness, alone in the raging winds of snow and the towering sheets of ice. When we finally went to sleep, utterly spent and surfeited, I cradled her in my arms as one might hold a sleeping child.

  In the morning when I awoke, she was still beside me. She stirred and we lingered in the shut-away world of each other's arms. When we finally rose, Khaleen made breakfast as I shaved and, as if by some silent agreement, neither of us spoke of that which was most in our thoughts. Khaleen busied herself with housekeeping chores as the morning wore on and I went outside. My eyes were inexorably drawn to the towering peaks that rimmed the village. I was filled with an angry restlessness that grew worse as the day wore on and Khaleen's father failed to appear. I'd never been on a mission where so much was going on and so little was happening. I even found myself feeling bitter about Harry Angsley and his damned fever. He ought to have been here on this thing. The English were more experienced and more fitted by nature for this kind of cat-and-mouse game. We Americans are too direct, too action-oriented for it. Of course, I couldn't know it then, but the action I craved for was building up to a fast eruption.

  Hilary Cobb, looking statuesquely beautiful in a white sweater and a colorful Campbell tartan kilt, came down the sheet, saw me and headed over to where I stood.

  "Has he come back yet?" she asked bluntly. Her busybody, snooping, directness only grated on my angry, apprehensive unrest.

  "None of your damned business," I growled. I saw her eyebrows raise slightly and her eyes narrow immediately after.

  "You're consistent, anyway," she snapped. "Always unpleasant. I take it that you've heard nothing and you're getting rather uptight about it."

  I could have cheerfully wrung her neck for that bit of accurate analysis. She glanced at her watch.

  "If you tell me he's had time to get back by now I'll kick your ass all the way Mount Everest," I snarled. I held her eyes in a long piercing exchange and suddenly saw them soften and change expression. She blinked, looked away a moment and then held her gaze on me.

  "Do you believe in the yeti?" she asked quietly, soberly, almost like a little girl.

  "You, too?" I fairly shouted. "No, goddamnit, I don't believe in good fairies, banshees or abominable snowmen." I turned on my heel and strode off, muttering to myself. Khaleen was at the window as I strode in, grabbed my heavy parka and started for the door. She didn't have to ask where I was going.

  "I will go with you," she said simply.

  "No," I said brusquely, and then, softening my voice, I held her for a moment. "It is best I go alone. I will take two of the Sherpas with me. I think perhaps your father may have been trapped in a snow-slide or a clogged pass. We'll bring him back."

  She clung to me, kissed me quickly and stepped back. I walked out wishing I felt as confident as I'd sounded. I wasn't buying any damned abominable snowman, but I did fear that something had happened to the old man. All I could see in my mind was Ghotak's form the night before, sitting calmly, puffing on his pipe. I rounded up two Sherpas, and we struck out into the forbidding towers of snow and ice that looked down at us with such unyielding disdain. The patriarch's tracks were clear and easy to follow in the snow. As we climbed higher, and the snow on the ground grew deeper, his tracks were even easier to pick up, and we made good time. He had gone deep into the mountains and the trail grew steeper and more dangerous. I finally saw a snowcovered ridge ahead at the top of the steep ascent we were negotiating, and I pointed to it. The Sherpa nodded in agreement, and we headed for it. It seemed a likely place for him to have made camp. I reached it first and saw the remai
ns of the campfire. The blue pack he'd brought along was scattered on the ground and the snow was trampled and roughened. I followed the ledge to where it curved around a section of the mountain, and now one of the Sherpas halted and I heard his voice, strangled and high-pitched, cry out in terror. I turned and he was pointing to the snow.

  "Yeti!" he cried, gasping out the word. "Yeti!" I followed the direction of his arm and saw the tracks in the snow, the damnedest tracks I'd ever seen. It was the print of a huge bear, I first said to myself, since claw marks were clearly visible. But instead of a pad it bore the imprint of a human sole and heel. I knelt down and looked at the imprint in the snow more closely. There were more, a number of them, and I studied each one closely. The shape and outline of a foot was clearly there, but ended in the spread pads of an animal with long claws. I'd never seen a track like it before, and the creature, whatever it was, had dragged something with it through the snow. I followed the tracks, and the Sherpas followed me. Rounding another turn, I saw the shattered, blood-stained form with a heartsick feeling. I went over to it and recognized the clothes. The shape was barely discernable as a man. The partriarch Leeunghi had been literally torn apart, huge gouges of flesh ripped away, one arm torn from its socket, the legs twisted in grotesque shape. His chest lay bare with tremendous raking strips of flesh peeled from it, and the end of a smashed rib poked out through the skin.

  "The yeti," the Sherpas kept repeating in a monotone, making the word into a solemn chant.

  "Nonsense," I said. "He was killed by an animal, probably some huge bear."

  They shook their heads in disagreement and pointed again to the chilling tracks. I had no explanation for those weird tracks and could only surmise some land of bear peculiar to these mountains. All I knew was that there was a mutilated, torn, shredded body and there had to be some logical, reasoned explanation for it. An abominable snowman was neither logical nor reasoned. The old man had plainly been killed by a creature of great strength with claws and fangs. A giant bear was not only logical but the only probable explanation, except perhaps a form of huge snow leopard. One of the Sherpas had a large blanket in his pack, and we wrapped the bloodied, mutilated form in it and tied it securely. Then we began the slow, dangerous journey back down with our grisly burden.

  Finally we reached level land and headed for the village. As we neared, others came over to ask, and the Sherpas spoke to them. I heard the word yeti repeated over and over, and the questioners ran off to spread the word. I knew that before I reached Khaleen, she would have heard it. The Sherpas directed me where to take the body to prepare it for burial. There would be a funeral pyre, of course. Finally I started back to the house. Ghotak was seemingly blessed with luck and I found out he was quick to capitalize on it. As I surmised, Khaleen had heard before I arrived, and I found her kneeling in prayer. She got up and faced me, and the tears were in her voice not in her eyes.

  "The yeti has spoken," she said simply. "Ghotak will prevail It cannot be otherwise, now."

  "Your father was killed by some animal, Khaleen," I said. "A bear or perhaps a snow leopard. There is no abominable snowman, Khaleen."

  "It is best you leave, Nick," she said. "I am yours. I will go with you. But first I must go to the meeting hall. Ghotak has called a meeting, and the temple hall will be filled. I must go and bow to him for my father's honor."

  "No," I said sharply. "Don't go. Don't give up to him."

  "But I must," she said. "The challenge was accepted and Ghotak has won. It is a matter of honorable custom that I appear for my father and bow to Ghotak."

  "All right, go," I said. "But tell the people that it was an animal that killed your father. It was."

  Her arms crept up around my neck and she gazed up at me.

  "Nick, you are so big, so strong, such a man of action," she said. "You cannot believe there are things beyond ordinary explanation. Your kind of man, whom you call a literal man, does not admit the unknown. You must seek a logical reason for everything. Here, we know better."

  I bit my lips. I was up against that stone wall of ingrained beliefs again but this time I couldn't back off. This time I had to meet them head on. I'd played it their way and a good man lay dead and Ghotak was about to pick up the pieces. I'd had enough of Snake Gods and spirit transference and yetis and all the superstitious customs. I had to go in my way now.

  "Come on," I said roughly. "I'll go with you to the meeting." I left with Khaleen and started for the temple hall. I could see crowds streaming to the building, and we were nearly there when Hilary Cobb caught up to us.

  "I'm sorry," she said to Khaleen, and I'd never heard her voice so softly tender. "I'm terrible sorry." Her eyes flicked up at me as Khaleen nodded her grateful acceptance and clung to my arm.

  "I see you've heard of Ghotak's call to the faithful," Hilary said, falling in step beside me. I nodded grimly.

  "He doesn't waste any time," I commented.

  "What's he up to, Yank?" she asked.

  "Still digging for that story," I said. "No dice, Hilary."

  "Sorry, I can't help that," she said. "It's my job. It's part of me."

  "I hope there won't be a story for you to get," I answered. "That's my job." I took the chance to sound her out again and found I didn't like the answer any better. "And, as I told you, doll, if you get it you can't do anything with it from here," I said.

  "And as I told you," she answered, "don't count on it."

  Between the news of what had happened and Ghotak's call, the place was filled to overflowing. Ghotak's strong-arm boys had rounded up what stray followers hadn't intended to show. He was addressing the crowd as we arrived, telling them how the events had shown conclusively that Karkotek's spirit and wishes spoke through him. I saw that his men were spread through the crowd, petitions in hand. Khaleen and I walked down the aisle toward the platform. I left her side, vaulted onto the stage and faced the crowd.

  "Ghotak lies again," I shouted. "The patriarch Leeunghi was slain by an animal, some wild, fierce animal. But there is no yeti. The yeti is but an old man's tale to frighten children."

  I heard the angry rumble from the crowd and saw Ghotak point his finger at me.

  "The foreigner laughs at our ways," he shouted. "He scoffs at our legends and violates our sacred beliefs. Look here, each and every one of you." He clapped his hands and I turned to see two of his men appear carrying the long, rope-like form of a dead snake across their arms, letting it drape down on each side.

  "The foreigner killed this snake," Ghotak shouted. "It was found by one of my men hanging from the window ledge of the room where he stays at the house of Leeunghi. He takes pleasure in mocking our knowledge and trampling on our sacred beliefs."

  I felt my anger exploding. The wily bastard had had this one ready and waiting, all set up for me.

  "I never saw that snake," I shouted. "Ghotak lies again."

  The crowd rumbled in anger. Ghotak leaned forward toward me. "You say you are innocent of killing this snake?" he asked.

  "I am entirely innocent," I answered.

  "Then there is but one way to find out," he said, a glitter of triumph in his flashing, black eyes. "The test of the cobra. You will do battle with a cobra barehanded. If you live, it will mean you are innocent and Karkotek has spared your miserable life. If the cobra wins, your death will avenge your evil deed and Karkotek will be pleased."

  I looked out at the crowd and then turned to Ghotak.

  "It is that or I turn you over to them," he said.

  "Either way I'm out of your hair," I said to him quietly.

  He shrugged. "What is your decision?"

  I was trapped, and the clever bastard knew it. The crowd was seething, boiling. I could feel the desire for vengeance rising up from them like an evil cloud. A little prodding from Ghotak and they'd take me apart bone by bone. But more than that, if I refused it would be an admission of guilt and at best I'd be tossed out. Certainly, they'd never listen to anything I might say, and I couldn't let
that happen. I needed another chance at Ghotak, another shot at breaking up his skillfully constructed house of national treachery. I glanced at the monk and saw the thin, triumphant smile edging his lips, and his eyes, glittering in victory, bored into me. Khaleen was in the aisle, frozen in one spot, and I saw Hilary behind her, looking up at me with her blue eyes wide as saucers. Fighting a cobra barehanded sounded like a one-way ticket to the undertaker, but what the hell, maybe I'd be lucky and draw a near-sighted serpent. I turned one last possibility over in my mind. Wilhelmina lay snug against my shoulder, I could take her out, blast a hole wide enough to see Mount Everest through it in Ghotak, and try to run for it. Glancing at the crowd, I decided that my chances were better with the cobra. But more than anything else, if I could somehow survive, I'd come out innocent of Ghotak's charge and be able to take it from there. The crowd would at least hear me out then. It wasn't much but it would have to do. I smiled grimly to myself. I'd wanted direct action. I was sure as hell getting it. I grinned up at Ghotak and saw the flicker of surprise in his eyes.

  "Bring on the snake, pal," I said. Ghotak turned to the crowd and I could see he was a little offstride at the casualness of my attitude. He didn't know how good an actor I was.

  "The foreigner will meet the test of the cobra," he intoned. "The cobra never lies. We go to the pits."