II: Chasing the story
Pat Leahy was halfway through the fattest joint of his life when the wild boy, Gimme, climbed in through his window.
Time was dragging its heels as Leahy registered the sound of the intrusion, the movement of the boy in his room. Gimme could have slit his throat and taken his wallet in the time it took Leahy to realise what was going on. He smiled a big, hundred dollar smile at the boy who, by now, was sitting on the edge of the old table Leahy used as a desk.
"A man wants to talk to you," said the boy in Kashmiri, speaking slowly for Leahy's benefit. "He says he has work for you." Then, true to Leahy's nickname for the boy, he held out a hand and said his only English phrase, "You gimme cash, mister?"
Leahy was still smiling.
The boy clicked his teeth, then he went over to where Leahy's jacket hung on the back of the door. He took out his wallet and withdrew a crumpled twenty rupee note. "The man's name is Abdullah Nawaz," he said. "You go to Shalimar Bagh tomorrow at midday. He will recognise you."
With that, Gimme jumped up to the sill and slipped out of the window into the sultry darkness of the city.
Leahy stared at the black shape of the window, still smiling.
~
A ceaseless stream of rickshaws, over-laden taxis, horse-drawn tongas, hawkers, soldiers and veiled women filled the narrow lanes of Srinagar. Leahy hated the city at this time of day. Even after three — or was it four? — years, he detested the heat and the smells. He shouldered his way through the throng, late and wondering what lay in store for him.
As ever, he relaxed as soon as he entered Shalimar Bagh, a Mogul garden full of running water, fountains, fragrant flowers.
He paused in the sparse shade of a chenar tree and surveyed the scene, gently flapping the cloth of his shalwar kameez, stirring the hot air about his body. To the tourists who still came to Kashmir despite the troubles he might easily pass as a local, with his clothing and his sun-darkened skin, but to the people of the city he was clearly an outsider, a white man.
"Mr Leahy."
He turned, nodded in greeting to the tall man who had addressed him. "And you are...?"
The stranger smiled and nodded. He was a Pathan, lean and aristocratic, with his head bound in a kind of turban and his grey beard dyed a vivid red with henna. A man of the country, come down from the mountains, Leahy guessed. "I am indeed," he said, deflecting Leahy's enquiry. "I wish to engage your services as a researcher, Mr Leahy."
"Oh yeah?" said Leahy, warily. "What kind of research?" He guessed he wasn't exactly going to be checking out this guy's family tree.
"Some acquaintances of mine wish to discover the identity of a certain individual," said the man. "I understand you have the kind of contacts that will allow you to achieve this."
Leahy had come east in response to that corny old cliché: to find himself. These days he found himself stoned out of his head most of the time, supporting himself by rowing tourists around Dal Lake in a shikara and by selling occasional stories and features to the western press — with journalists still banned from the occupied territory, there were plenty of opportunities for casual stringers like Leahy. It was clearly his press contacts that this man was referring to.
"What's the deal?" he asked, suddenly sick of all the subterfuge.
"This man is a guest of my acquaintances," said Nawaz. "But he appears unwilling to divulge his identity."
Leahy laughed, a sudden bark of a laugh, startling Nawaz. He'd worked it out — he was sure of it! These "acquaintances" had kidnapped a westerner and they didn't have a clue who to ask for the ransom. It happened all the time: there were always stories of travellers getting kidnapped by bandit gangs. Often, they were just stories, but Leahy knew enough to take this man seriously.
It took Leahy no time at all to come to a decision. If the stupid sucker held out against them for much longer he'd just be another corpse in a mountain gorge. Find out who he was and he might just get out in one piece. At any rate, there was a story in it for Leahy. It was months since he'd had anything like this.
"Okay," he said to Nawaz. "It's going to cost you. You're going to have to tell me everything about this 'guest'. Okay?"
Nawaz tipped his head and smiled. "Naturally," he said. He turned and started to walk through the gardens. "My acquaintances encountered the man in a remote village in Baltistan," he told Leahy. "He was confused and claimed to be lost."
Baltistan was a bleak, semi-desert region, deep in the Karakorum Mountains. It was less than a hundred miles from Srinagar, but Leahy had never been there. Technically, the region was under Pakistani control, but in truth it was as lawless as any part of Kashmir. You'd have to be a fool to travel there alone.
"He must have had papers," said Leahy. "A visa, a passport ... tickets, maybe? Letters? Anything like that?"
Nawaz shook his head. "He had none of these things. If he had, then my acquaintances would not require your services."
Leahy nodded. "What does he look like?" he asked. "Can I meet him? Maybe he'd talk to me."
Nawaz shook his head again. "It is a long and arduous journey," he said. "My acquaintances would not welcome you." Then he reached into his robe and produced a small photograph, which he handed to Leahy.
The picture was fuzzy, with strange washed out colours. It showed a man in his twenties: pale, with dark collar-length hair. He was wearing jeans — Levi's, Nawaz assured him — a weatherproof jacket, and new-looking hiking boots. Average height, average build, no distinguishing features.
Leahy tucked the picture into his pocket. It could have been just about anybody, he realised.
~
Leahy wasn't too troubled by the vagueness of all this, at first. This was a pretty vague kind of place, full of pretty vague kinds of people. It was probably some fresh-faced young graduate, finished his degree in Media Studies or Accountancy and out to See The World before starting on the nine to five.
Leahy knew the type. Innocents abroad, they never knew what they were getting themselves into. You saw them all the time in Srinagar: come up here to "do" the Vale of Kashmir. He'd been one himself, a few years back. This poor sucker had wandered off the usual college kid trail, too stoned to remember his own name. He'd probably already been robbed before he was kidnapped — that would explain the lack of ID.
Leahy had contacts in the state governor's office and the local police, but the best way was to start asking around on the street. Even when these kids travelled alone, they always met up with others on the trail — that was what most of them came here for: to get stoned and meet other stoned middle class kids like themselves. Someone would be missing him before too long, Leahy was sure. Someone would recognise him from the photograph.
~
Asif Ahmed shrugged, spreading his hands wide. "Forgive me if I appear unenthusiastic," he told Leahy. "I hear such tales frequently, and usually they are not true. You tell me you are a journalist, but where is your proof of this incident, Mr Leahy?"
Asif was usually one of Leahy's most useful contacts. He edited a news-sheet that had been proscribed shortly after the state government was dissolved in 1990. Now, he sat back, popped another barfi into his mouth and began to chew noisily.
Leahy's proof was the wad of rupees Nawaz had paid him, but he hadn't let on to Asif that he was in the pay of the kidnappers. He rose and thanked Asif for his time.
Asif put a hand on Leahy's back and gestured with his free hand indicating the lake, the spangled mosaic of lotus flowers, water hyacinths and houseboats, and the city spread out beyond. "This is the real world, Mr Leahy," he said. "You would be well advised not to lose sight of it."
Leahy scrambled off Asif's houseboat into his shikara and rowed slowly back to the city. He was becoming intrigued. The kid must have passed through Srinagar, but he had left no tracks behind. Leahy had asked around at all the tourist spots — the old fortress, the 7th century temple — tagging on to little knots of travellers to see if anyone recognised the pale, dark-haired kid in the photograph. But all he had got for his efforts were a few rupees for selling a Danish girl a bit of grass. His contacts in the police and the governor's office had offered him no more than Asif. He was running out of options.
So, the next day, he crossed over the Line of Control into the Karakorum Mountains. This land was controlled by Pakistan, but in truth it was a tribal, feudal land. Bandit country.
The gangs out here were legendary. So many stories had sprung up about them that truth and popular imagination had long since merged. Most called themselves freedom fighters, but often that was just a cover for gun-running, or drug smuggling. As Asif had reminded him, a lot of the stories were just tall tales, the local equivalent of the urban legend, but like all such myths, they were founded on reality. He knew there were gangs out here — he'd written enough about them — and his current job was proof enough that they were still at work.
He rode up through the Burzil Pass in the back of a Jeep full of chattering American birders. They weren't worried about the intimidating frequency of the army patrols, or about the national sport of kidnapping westerners — all that concerned them was the lammergeier gliding swiftly around a knuckle of cliff up ahead.
He left them in the town of Udrit. This was the nearest sizeable settlement to the village where the kidnap had taken place. The kid must have passed through here.
A boy with a badly twisted leg tugged at Leahy's shalwar kameez, holding a hand up for baksheesh. Leahy pulled his clothes free. "Have you seen a white man about as tall as me?" he asked in Kashmiri.
The boy merely looked at him with big eyes. Leahy tossed him a note and turned away, regretting it instantly as other street kids descended on him. He cursed himself. He was acting like a college kid, himself.
He found the bazaar and sure enough, he spotted three westerners arguing with a hawker over some knickknacks. Even out here — a cramped jeep ride along a rough track with sickening drops to either side — they came. Pretty soon there would be a McDonalds on the corner and a Holiday Inn down by the river.
"Excuse me," he said. He spoke to the hawker and settled a price for the small carving — still ridiculously high, but far cheaper than the girl would have managed.
She smiled at him so gratefully he wondered just how grateful, then he remembered why he was here. "I'm looking for someone," he said. He showed her the picture. "Maybe a friend of yours. I'm trying to track him down. Ring any bells?"
"Hey, you speak real great English," said the girl, with an Australian accent. She was short and blonde, an exoticism out here that made her seem even more beautiful to Leahy.
He shrugged. It was as if he had slipped into a kind of limbo, between east and west. He only seemed authentic to dumb college kids like this one. "I learn good," he said, smiling. Figuring his chances.
Her two friends — a boy with a tufty, adolescent beard, and another skinny blonde — muttered to her, clearly wanting to get her away from Leahy.
"Hey, John, Rache — this guy's looking for someone. Here — he's got a photo. You think that's Doug?"
"Doug?" said Leahy. "A friend of yours? Are you expecting to meet him here?"
The boy shook his head. "Doug's a jerk. And he never came up here — went back down to Goa, I reckon."
The same old story. A lot of people knew someone a bit like Leahy's mystery abductee, but it never quite fitted. He could have been anybody, for Christ's sake.
~
He woke, his head thumping from the cheap beer and pot.
He struggled with the zip and dragged himself clear of the small tent. The girl — Lizzy — was down by the river, lying naked on a wide flat rock. John and Rache weren't up yet, it seemed.
He went down to the river and plunged into the icy water.
When he rose to the surface she was laughing at him. Jesus, he hadn't done anything like this for ages. Well, weeks, at least.
Later, he lay by her side on the rock, contented again. Lizzy said, "You know what I reckon? I reckon your missing friend is just like you: a Mister Nobody. Living on the fringes, accountable to nobody. Not quite a part of any world, doesn't know where he belongs."
Leahy said nothing. He didn't want to spoil it by arguing. It was a nice idea, and it would explain a lot about how this guy seemed to have left no mark on the world, but Mister Nobody doesn't wander around in Levi's and shiny new hiking boots. That's the kit of a tourist, somebody who does belong somewhere, to somebody.
Later, back in the town, he managed to track down a working telephone. Eventually, he got through to the number Nawaz had given him. "Mr Nawaz?" he said, over the random crackles and whizzing sounds of the line. "Progress is slow, I'm afraid. No, no: I have people working on it, we'll have something soon, I'm sure. I followed a lead and I'm in Udrit now. Listen, I really think it would help if I could meet the guy. He's bound to be more forthcoming with me. I can write a story on it, get a bit of publicity. That way we're bound to find out who he is."
Nawaz didn't sound too convinced, but he said he would contact Leahy soon.
~
They came for him at night. He was staying in what was loosely called a rest-house, sharing a floor with the cockroaches and about a dozen other assorted travellers.
He heard the low voices, and looked up to see the proprietor pointing him out to two men. They led him outside to where a third man stood in the dark street.
"Abdullah Nawaz sends his greetings," the man said.
Leahy nodded, wondering what, exactly, he had let himself in for. He thought of Lizzy, relieved that she and her two friends had headed south that morning. "Where are we going?" he asked, although he knew they wouldn't tell him.
They walked. The short man who spoke English led the way and the other two followed behind Leahy. They headed out of the town and up a track into the mountains. The night air was bitterly cold and Leahy pulled his shalwar kameez tightly around himself. He had to keep his eyes fixed on the ground, terrified that he would miss his footing in the dark. He hadn't come prepared for this kind of shit, but then, he made himself realise, he hadn't really come prepared for anything. He'd grown lazy, lost touch with the real world.
That night, he was reacquainted with it quite comprehensively.
As dawn lit the snowy peaks gold and silver against an ultramarine sky, they were still walking.
Leahy's feet were bleeding, he could feel it in his shoes. His legs were aching, his feet swinging like lead weights. He felt sick, too — either with altitude or sheer exhaustion.
And up ahead, the short leader kept walking, not showing the slightest sign of fatigue.
They came to the camp some time towards the middle of the day, their leader jabbering a greeting to a lone guard in a dialect Leahy didn't recognise. A stream had cut a deep gorge through a high rampart of cliffs. The gorge was in darkness, but as Leahy's eyes became accustomed to the gloom, he made out a group of men camped amid a sparse cluster of pine trees.
When Leahy saw the kidnap victim in the flesh for the first time, what struck him most was his sheer blandness. Ordinary looks, ordinary clothing, ordinary features. It was as if someone had taken every college kid who had ever passed through Kashmir and averaged them all out.
Leahy opted for the direct approach. He went up to the man, who had risen to his feet at their arrival. "Patrick Leahy," he said, holding out his hand. "Pleased to meet you."
The kid just looked at his hand with a dumb smile on his face. "Pleased to meet you, too," he said. "Can you tell me what's happening? Are you with these guys?"
He spoke English with a mid-Atlantic blandness to match his looks.
Leahy stuck with the direct approach. "I'm a journalist," he said. "And I'm covering the story of a young westerner who's been kidnapped. Only nobody knows who he is and nobody is missing him, and if someone doesn't start wanting him to be set free pretty damned soon he's going to end up as vulture meat. You follow what I'm saying?"
He just looked blank.
"Listen, mate. If I can find someone who wants you back, then I can give these guys a good reason to keep you alive. So who are you? Where are you from?"
"I'm sorry," said the kid. "I wish I could help you. But I just can't seem to remember anything much before I met these men."
"It's not me you'll be helping," snarled Leahy. "It's you."
He was out of his depth, he realised. Somehow he had just thought it would all fall into place if he could talk to the kid. He turned away, spat into the dry ground. Jesus. What was he doing out here?
~
He tried and tried to figure the kid out. Tried asking him direct questions, tried drawing him by saying dumb things, or contentious things — how Mick Jagger should never have quit the Beatles in '67, or how Adolf Hitler was a pretty neat guy, despite his bad press. But the kid never picked him up on his inaccuracies or outrageous claims.
Leahy found that, most of the time, he couldn't quite take the situation seriously. The anonymous bandits, the unidentified kid — it was as if he had stepped into a story, stepped out of reality. He blamed the dope.
After a hard, cold night, Leahy couldn't take any more. He remembered Asif, his editor friend, warning him not to lose sight of the real world: he had to get back to Srinagar, he had to sort his life out. "Right," he told "Mohammed", the leader of the little group of bandits. "I've seen enough. I think I can pin him down if you'll just take me back to Udrit."
Mohammed looked at him impassively.
"Come on," said Leahy, determined not to start begging. Not yet. "You want a name for this guy so you can screw his rich family for some money, no? How are you going to do this if you don't let me find out his name for you?"
Mohammed smiled then. That was when Leahy knew he was in a creek-load of shit.
"You have family, Mister Leahy?" said Mohammed. In such a reasonable tone.
~
At first he had suspected that the kid was all a part of it, but his suspicions didn't last long. These bandits didn't need that kind of subterfuge to kidnap a westerner like Leahy. They could just pick them off the streets any time they wanted.
Leahy had walked right in and asked for it. He should have known not to come up into the mountains, but he had felt the pull of a story, a chance to make some kind of name for himself. And also, he had to admit, a chance to maybe help some dumb college kid who could have been him a few years ago.
They stayed in that gloomy ravine for days. They talked, or rather, Leahy talked and the kid listened. It was a kind of catharsis for Leahy, sucking out the bitterness that had accumulated over the years, lancing the boil of his cynicism.
He still couldn't fathom the kid out. It was as if his mind had been completely wiped, returned to a childish naivety. It must be drug-related, he suspected. That was all it could have been.
The escape was over in a matter of seconds.
They were lying in the darkness of the late afternoon, eating tiny portions of khyatsir with their fingers. This mush of rice and pulses seemed to be the only thing these bandits ate.
"How long has it been?" asked Leahy. "I'm losing track. It seems so long ago... so far away..." He was rambling, drifting.
A single gunshot echoed around the steep walls of the ravine.
Instantly the bandits were rushing about, shouting. Leahy made out the word sina — army. Something must have brought a patrol into this valley. Pakistani or Indian, he didn't care: it was the army!
For a short time, as more gunshots echoed in the ravine, the bandits forgot about Leahy and the boy. Leahy took his fellow hostage by the arm and drew him into the shelter of a pile of boulders. "This is our chance," he hissed. "If you spot an opening just run for it as fast as you can. You're still in your western clothes — the soldiers won't shoot at you."
"But what about you, Pat?"
Leahy shrugged. "I'll take my chances too. All I'm saying is that your chances are better, okay?"
The bandits remembered them. Already some of the men were scrambling up the ravine, like two-legged ibex on the scree. One of the remaining bandits grabbed Leahy by his hair and hauled him out into the open.
Leahy met the kid's eye, then drove his elbow into the bandit's ribs. "Run!" he cried. "Go on, kid, run!"
In an instant, the boy was out of the mouth of the ravine, sprinting through the gunfire.
Leahy felt something strike his head, and then, in a semi-conscious stupor, he was being dragged up the ravine.
~