Reborn by T.M. Parris

Author:T.M. Parris [Parris, T.M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-02-28T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 26

Fairchild stepped out of his hotel two minutes late. Rose was already there.

“Been waiting long?” he asked.

“Just arrived.”

She’d probably been there at least twenty minutes checking for an ambush. That would certainly have been the quickest way of getting rid of her: by calling the police now and get her carted off as a foreigner without a permit. But Fairchild’s idea was better than that. He set off for the main drag, glancing at her as she walked beside him.

“New gear?” Her boots were brand new, strangely similar to his, and her backpack looked heavier. The backpack itself, in fact, looked brand new.

“That’s right.”

“Find a mountaineering shop?”

“Yes.”

“I’m surprised it was still open, at this time of night.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Don’t tell me. An open window round the back.”

“Something like that.”

They got to the main drag. The people-carrier was waiting exactly where Wei Li had dropped him off earlier, and Wei Li was behind the wheel. Fairchild introduced them in English then blanked Wei Li’s outraged stare until they were on the move, with Rose in the back. He explained her presence to Wei Li in Mandarin, keeping an eye on the rear view mirror for any signs of understanding. He was pretty sure she didn’t speak Mandarin, but in any case he didn’t give much of an explanation to Wei Li except that she was coming with them and didn’t have paperwork so they’d have to hide her for the checkpoints. His response was predictably forthright.

“Are you mad? We drive south after all kinds of unrest at Shigatse with an illegal foreigner in the back? Dragon Fire will lose its permit to operate if we’re caught.”

“Well, we need to make sure we’re not caught then. Have you still got that load of camping equipment in the back, that I saw earlier?”

“Yes, for the base camp. They need more supplies up there.”

“Great. So we rearrange things a little. She can slip underneath.”

“What if they search?”

“They won’t.”

“You cannot know that, Fairchild. Even you.”

“They probably won’t. Look, both our names are on the permit. This is a work trip, we’re dropping some gear off, that’s all. We’re not going to Shigatse town, just passing through.”

“Passing through to where?”

“Tingri.”

“Tingri? That’s hours away. I have to be in Lhasa tomorrow. A tour arriving tomorrow night. I said.”

“You can drop us there then come straight back. There’s time.”

Wei Li muttered some words of Mandarin Fairchild wasn’t familiar with, and smacked the steering wheel.

“Just pull in where we can get out of sight of the road.”

Twenty minutes later they came off the main road and drove some way up a side road to be out of sight. Fairchild got out and looked into the back window to find Rose looking back at him expectantly.

“I suppose I need to jam myself into some hidey-hole,” she said. “How far’s the checkpoint?”

“Not far.”

Rose scrambled out and stretched while the men rearranged the equipment, leaving a space for her in the footwell of one of the back seats. “Great,” she said when she saw it.

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