The Business

'You let me know if I can be of any help.' He spread his arms wide. 'I am at your disposal, Kate.  I have a lot of contacts.  Smoke?' He pulled a little painted tin from one pocket of the grubby parka and took out a slim hand-rolled cigarette.

'No, thank you.'

'Mind if I do?'

I glanced round at the counter. 'I take it you're not expecting the quickest of service.'

'Ten, fifteen minutes on a good day.' He lit the roll-up with a Zippo.  Some smoke rolled across the table.  Not a cigarette, then, a joint.  He must have seen me sniff. 'You sure?' he asked, through a smoke-wreathed grin.

'A little early in the day for me,' I told him.

He nodded. 'Heard you saw the old lady yesterday.'

'The Queen Mother?  Yes.'

'Is that a weird fucking set-up, or what?'

'Weird just about covers it.'

'She say anything about the Prince?'

'She wanted my opinion on his marriageability.'

'Yeah, she's been talking about that a lot recently.'

'Do you visit her often?'

'Na.  Just been the once, when I first got posted here, three years ago.  But, like I say, I got contacts everywhere.' Above the oil-on-water glasses, his sun-bleached eyebrows arched. 'So, what's happening with the Business here?  I keep getting hints there's some sort of major shit coming down, or maybe not shit, maybe more like major ma

'No, I'm flattered.'

'So, what's happening?' He leaned closer again. 'What was all that stuff out on Juppala last year?  And down on the valley floor here and upstream.  All that laser range-finding and drilling and surveying shit.  What's all that about?'

'Infrastructure improvements,' I said.

'On Mount Juppala? You kidding me?'

I sipped my tea. 'Yes.'

He laughed. 'You aren't going to tell me a damn thing, are you, Kate?'

'No.'

'So why did they send you?'

'Why do you think anybody sent me?  I'm on sabbatical.  I can go where I like.'

'Weird time of year for a holiday.'

'A sabbatical isn't a holiday.'

'So why did you come?'

'To see what the place is like at this time of year.'

'But why?'

'Why not?'

He sat back, shaking his head.  He attached a roach clip to the remains of the joint and sucked hard, brows knotted with either concentration or the sharpness of the hot smoke. 'Whatever,' he said, on an in-drawn breath on top of what he'd already smoked.  He pinched the roach out and left it folded in the teacup's saucer. 'So, where do you want to go?'

'When?'

'Whenever.  I got a Jeep.  Get places Langtuhn's limo won't.  Anywhere you want to go, let me know.'

'That's very kind.  I may take you up on that.  Are you free this afternoon?'

'Sure.  Where to?'

'You're the local knowledge.  Suggest somewhere.'

'Well, there's — ah-hah!  Hey, that was quick.  Here's breakfast.'

'Uncle Freddy?'

'Kate, dear girl.  You made it to Thulahn then, yes?'

'Yes.  Managed to avoid the prayer flags.  Been having a look round.  Done the palace and bits of the city, seen the old Queen and had a guided tour of the lower valley and the nearest town just this afternoon.  The weather's atrocious now.  Nearly didn't make it back.'

'Prince returned yet, is he?'

'No.  He's not due back from Paris for another few days.'

'Oh, he wasn't going to Paris, dear girl.  He was in Switzerland,' Uncle Freddy said.  'At CDO.' CDO is what we usually shorten Château d'Oex to.

'Oh.  Well, no, he's still not due back until next week.'

'Jolly good.  Did you give the Queen Mum my regards?'

'No.  I didn't know you knew her.'

'Audrey?  Oh, golly, yes.  From way back.  Meant to say.  Thought I had.  Senility, probably.  Still.  She didn't mention me, then?'

'I'm afraid not.'

'Not to worry.  Heard she'd gone a bit batty actually, if not totally ga-ga.  How did she seem to you?'

'Eccentric in that sort of feral way that old English ladies go sometimes.'

'Probably the altitude.'

'Probably.'

'Who was your guide if the Prince isn't back?'

'The honorary US consul.  Youngish chap, second-generation hippie.  Secured me a breakfast that was surprisingly edible and then took me down to Joitem in his Jeep.  It's a bit like Thuhn except lower down and flatter and surrounded by rhododendron bushes.  Visited an abandoned monastery, saw a few farms and prayer windmills, nearly skidded off the road into ravines a few times, that sort of thing.'

'Sounds terribly exciting.'

'And you?  I've tried you a few times and you never seem to be in.'

'Oh, just faffing about as usual.  Driving.'

'You should get a mobile.'

'What?  One of those things you hang above cots?'

'No, Freddy, a phone.'

'Pah!  And disturb a good drive by having a phone go off in my ear?  I should cocoa.'

The skies were clear the next day, though confusingly (for me and probably no one else in Thuhn) snow swirled everywhere for a few hours beneath that cloudlessness; a stiff, freezing wind blasted down from the mountains and across the city and the palace and seemed to scour most of the snow away, brushing it off down the valley in tall, white, dragging shrouds and gathering it into huge drifts beneath the river's steeper banks.

Josh Levitsen had warned me about wind chill the day before and, anyway, this wasn't the first time I'd been in a cold place.  I made sure I had a scarf over my mouth and nose when I went out, dressed in Western gear again, but even so the ferocity of the chill was stu

The children were nowhere to be seen.  The city seemed deserted.  My eyes watered in the icy blast and the tears froze almost instantly on my skin; I had to keep turning and bending and brushing drops of salty ice away and rubbing feeling back into my cheeks.  I pulled the scarf up higher and eventually found my way down to the Wildness Emporium, where the Sikh brothers fussed over me and poured me warm paurke — tea with roasted barley flour and sugar in it; it tasted much better than it should have.  There also I bought a polarised ski mask for my eyes and a blue neoprene thing that fitted over the rest of my lower face and made me look a little like Ha

Suitably kitted up, with not a square centimetre of bare skin left exposed to the elements, I left the brothers happily counting even more of my dollars and set off into the wind again.

People were keeping indoors.  It was the best time to see the city just as a set of buildings and the spaces in between them.  I walked all over it until hunger and chance brought me within sniffing distance of the Heavenly Luck Tea House around lunch time, and then sat, extremities tingling, tucking into dhal bhut (sticky rice with lentil soup poured over it) and jakpak kampa (spicy stew with mystery meat).  A watery yoghurt called dhai — pretty similar to a plain lassi — washed it all down.

The other diners — all seriously quilted, mostly male, some still wearing pointy hats — laughed and gri