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They chatted with Selma for a few more minutes, then disconnected.
“What now?” asked Remi.
“I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of the creepy King twins.”
“You even have to ask?”
“They’ve been nipping at our heels since we got here. I say it’s time we turn the tables on them—and on King Senior himself.”
“Covert surveillance?” Remi said with a gleam in her eye.
Sam stared at her a moment, then smiled thinly. “Sometimes, your eagerness scares me.”
“I love covert surveillance.”
“I know you do, dear. We may or may not have what King is after. Let’s see if we can convince him we do. We’ll shake the tree a little bit and see what falls out.”
12
KATHMANDU, NEPAL
Knowing the King twins were in Nepal minding one of their father’s mining concerns, Selma took but a few hours to ferret out the details. Working under the banner of one of King’s many subsidiaries, the exploratory dig camp was located north of Kathmandu in the Langtang Valley.
After another trip to the surplus store, Sam and Remi packed their gear into the back of their newly rented Range Rover and set out. Though it was nearly five o’clock and nightfall less than two hours away, they wanted to get far away from the King twins, who Sam and Remi felt certain weren’t about to leave them alone.
As the crow flies, the mining camp was not quite thirty miles north of the city. By road, it was over three times that distance—a short drive in any Western country but a daylong odyssey in Nepal.
“Judging by this map,” Remi said in the passenger’s seat, “what they call a highway is actually a dirt road that’s a bit wider and slightly better maintained than a cow path. Once we pass Trisuli Bazar, we’ll be on secondary roads. God knows what that means, though.”
“How far to Trisuli?”
“With luck, we’ll be there before nightfall. Sam . . . goat!”
Sam looked up to see a teenage girl escorting a goat across the road seemingly oblivious to the vehicle bearing down on them. The Range Rover skidded to a stop in a cloud of brown dust. The girl looked up and smiled, unfazed. She waved. Sam and Remi waved back.
“Lesson relearned,” Sam said. “No crosswalks in Nepal.”
“And goats have the right-of-way,” Remi added.
Once clear of the city limits and into the foothills, they found the road bracketed by terraced farm fields, lush and green against the otherwise barren and brown slopes. To their immediate left, the Trisuli River, swollen with spring runoff, churned over boulders, the water a leaden gray color from scree and silt. Here and there, they could see clusters of shacks nestled against the distant tree line. Far to the north and west stood the higher Himalayan peaks, jagged black towers against the sky.
Two hours later, just as the sun was dipping behind the mountains, they pulled into Trisuli Bazar. Tempted as they were to stay in one of the hostels, Sam and Remi had decided to err on the side of slight paranoia and rough it. However unlikely it was that the Kings would think to look for them here, Sam and Remi decided to assume the worst.
Following Remi’s directions, Sam followed the Range Rover’s headlights out of the village, then turned left down a narrow service road to what the map described as a “trekker’s waypoint.” They pulled into a roughly oval clearing lined with yurt-like huts and rolled to a stop. He doused the headlights and turned off the ignition.
“See anyone?” Sam said, looking around.
“No. It looks like we have the run of the place.”
“Hut or tent?”
“Seems a shame to waste the ugly patchwork pup tent we paid so much money for,” Remi said.
“That’s my girl.”
Fifteen minutes later, under the glow of their headlamps, they had their camp set up a few hundred yards behind the huts in a copse of pine. As Remi finished rolling out their sleeping bags, Sam got a fire going.
Sorting through their food supply, Sam asked, “Dehydrated chicken teriyaki or . . . dehydrated chicken teriyaki?”
