Escape from Kathmandu

III

Well, blow my mind. When I finished reading that letter all I could say was “Wow.” I went back to the beginning and started to reread the whole thing, but quickly skipped ahead to the good parts. A meeting with the famed Abominable Snowman! What an event! Of course all this Nathan guy had managed to get out was “Huhn.” But the circumstances were unusual, and I suppose he did his best.

I’ve always wanted to meet a yeti myself. Countless mornings in the Himal I’ve gotten up in the light before dawn and wandered out to take a leak and see what the day was going to be like, and almost every time, especially in the high forests, I’ve looked around and wondered if that twitch at the corner of my sleep-crusted eye wasn’t something abominable, moving.

It never had been, so far as I know. And I found myself a bit envious of this Nathan and his tremendous luck. Why had this yeti, member of the shyest race in Central Asia, been so relaxed with him? It was a mystery to consider as I went about in the next few days, doing my business. And I wished I could do more than that, somehow. I checked the Star’s register to look for both Nathan and George Fredericks, and found Nathan’s perfect little signature back in mid-June, but no sign of George, or Freds, as Nathan called him. The letter implied they would both be around this fall, but where?

Then I had to ship some Tibetan carpets to the States, and my company wanted me to clear three “videotreks” with the Ministry of Tourism, at the same time that Central Immigration decided I had been in the country long enough; and dealing with these matters, in the city where mailing a letter can take you all day, made me busy indeed. I almost forgot about it.

But when I came into the Star late one sunny blue afternoon and saw that some guy had gone berserk at the mail rack, had taken it down and scattered the poor paper corpses all over the first flight of stairs, I had a feeling I might know what the problem was. I was startled, maybe even a little guilty-feeling, but not at all displeased. I squashed the little pang of guilt and stepped past the two clerks, who were protesting in rapid Nepali. “Can I help you find something?” I said to the distraught person who had wreaked the havoc.

He straightened up and looked me straight in the eye. Straight-shooter, all the way. “I’m looking for a friend of mine who usually stays here.” He wasn’t panicked yet, but he was close. “The clerks say he hasn’t been here in a year, but I sent him a letter this summer, and it’s gone.”

Contact! Without batting an eye I said, “Maybe he dropped by and picked it up without checking in.”

He winced like I’d stuck a knife in him. He looked about like what I had expected from his epic: tall, upright, dark-haired. He had a beard as thick and fine as fur, neatly trimmed away from the neck and below the eyes—just about a perfect beard, in fact. That beard and a jacket with leather elbows would have got him tenure at any university in America.

But now he was seriously distraught, though he was trying not to show it. “I don’t know how I’m going to find him, then…”

“Are you sure he’s in Kathmandu?”

“He’s supposed to be. He’s joining a big climb in two weeks. But he always stays here!”

“Sometimes it’s full. Maybe he had to go somewhere else.”

“Yeah, that’s true.” Suddenly he came out of his distraction enough to notice he was talking to me, and his clear, gray-green eyes narrowed as he examined me.

“George Fergusson,” I said, and stuck out my hand. He tried to crush it, but I resisted just in time.

“My name’s Nathan Howe. Funny about yours,” he said without a smile. “I’m looking for a George Fredericks.”

“Is that right! What a coincidence.” I started picking up all the Star’s bent mail. “Well, maybe I can help you. I’ve had to find friends in Kathmandu before—it’s not easy, but it can be done.”

“Yeah?” It was like I’d thrown him a lifebuoy; what was his problem?

“Sure. If he’s going on a climb he’s had to go to Central Immigration to buy the permits for it. And on the permits you have to write down your local address. I’ve spent too many hours at C.I., and have some friends there. If we slip them a couple hundred rupees baksheesh they’ll look it up for us.”

“Fantastic!” Now he was Hope Personified, actually quivering with it. “Can we go now?” I saw that his heartthrob, the girlfriend of The Unscrupulous One, had had him pegged; he was an idealist, and his ideas shined through him like the mantle of a Coleman lantern gleaming through the glass. Only a blind woman wouldn’t have been able to tell how he felt about her; I wondered how this Sarah had felt about him.

I shook my head. “It’s past two—closed for the day.” We got the rack back on the wall, and the clerks returned to the front desk. “But there’s a couple other things we can try, if you want.” Nathan nodded, stuffing mail as he watched me. “Whenever I try to check in here and it’s full, I just go next door. We could look there.”

“Okay,” said Nathan, completely fired up. “Let’s go.”

So we walked out of the Star and turned right to investigate at the Lodge Pheasant—or Lodge Pleasant—the sign is ambiguous on that point.

Sure enough, George Fredericks had been staying there. Checked out that very morning, in fact. “Oh my God no,” Nathan cried, as if the guy had just died. Panic time was really getting close.

“Yes,” the clerk said brightly, pleased to have found the name in his thick book. “He is go on trek.”

“But he’s not due to leave here for two weeks!” Nathan protested.

“He’s probably off on his own first,” I said. “Or with friends.”

That was it for Nathan. Panic, despair; he had to go sit down. I thought about it. “If he was flying out, I heard all of RNAC’s flights to the mountains were canceled today. So maybe he came back in and went to dinner. Does he know Kathmandu well?”

Nathan nodded glumly. “As well as anybody.”

“Let’s try the Old Vienna Inn, then.”