The Kingdom

“You’re done?” Russell asked. “Are you sure?”

“We’re sure,” said Sam.

Marjorie said, “We’re happy to take you anywhere you’d like to go.”

“We need to do some research before we continue,” Remi said.

“We can help with that too.”

Sam put a little steel in his voice: “The hotel, please.”

Russell shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

From inside the lobby, they watched the Mercedes pull away. Sam pulled his iPhone from his pocket and checked the screen. “Message from Selma.” He listened to it, then said, “She’s dug something up on the King family.”

Back in their room, Sam put the phone on Speaker and hit Speed Dial. After thirty seconds of crackling, the line clicked open. Selma answered with, “Finally.”

“We were on a tour with the King twins.”

“Productive?”

“Only in that it reinforced our urge to get away from them,” said Sam. “What’ve you got for us?”

“First, I’ve found someone who can translate the Devanagari parchment you found at Lewis’s house.”

“Fantastic,” Remi said.

“It gets better. I think it’s the original translator-the A. Kaalrami from Princeton. Her first name is Adala. She’s almost seventy and is a professor at . . . Care to guess?”

“No,” Sam said.

“Kathmandu University.”

“Selma, you’re a miracle worker,” Remi said.

“Normally, I would agree, Mrs. Fargo, but this was dumb luck. I’m e-mailing you Professor Kaalrami’s contact info. Okay, next: after hitting dry hole after dry hole in researching the King family, I ended up calling Rube Haywood. He’s sending me information as he gets it, but what we’ve got so far is interesting. First of all, King isn’t the family’s true surname. It’s the anglicized version of the original German: Konig. And Lewis’s first name was originally Lewes.”

“Why the change?” asked Remi.

“We’re not entirely sure at this point, but what we do know is Lewis immigrated to America in 1946 and got a teaching job at Syracuse University. A couple years later, when Charles was four years old, Lewis left him and his mother and started his globe-trotting.”

“What’s next?”

“I found out what business Russell and Marjorie are handling there. One of King’s mining concerns-SRG, or Strategic Resources Group-acquired permits from the Nepalese government last year to conduct, and I quote, ‘exploratory studies related to the exploitation of industrial and precious metals.’”

“Which means what, exactly?” Remi asked. “That’s an awfully vague mission statement.”

“Intentionally vague,” Sam said.

Selma replied, “The company isn’t publicly traded, so information is hard to come by. I found two sites that are being leased by SRG. They’re to the northeast of the city.”

“A tangled web,” Remi said. “We’ve got the King twins overseeing a family mining operation in the same place and at the same time Frank disappears while looking for King’s father, who may or may not have been ghosting around the Himalayas for the past forty years. Am I forgetting anything?”

“That about covers it,” Sam said.

Selma asked, “Do you want the particulars on the SRG sites?”

“Hold on to it for now,” Sam replied. “On the surface it seems unrelated, but, with King Charlie, you never know.”

After asking the Hyatt’s concierge to arrange a rental car, they took to the road, with Sam driving and Remi navigating, a Kathmandu city map flattened against the dashboard of the Nissan X-Trail SUV.

One of the few lessons they’d learned (and had since forgotten) from their last visit to Kathmandu some six years earlier came rushing back to them soon after leaving the hotel.

Except for major thoroughfares like the Tridevi and the Ring Road, Kathmandu’s streets rarely bore names, either on maps or signs. Verbal directions were given relative to landmarks, usually intersections or squares-known as chowks or toles respectively-and occasionally to temples or markets. Anyone unfamiliar with such reference points had little choice but to rely on a regional map and a compass.

In Sam and Remi’s case, they were lucky. Kathmandu University lay fourteen miles from their hotel in the foothills on the extreme eastern outskirts of the city. After spending twenty frustrating minutes finding the Arniko Highway, they made smooth progress and arrived at the campus only an hour after setting out.

Following signs in both Nepali and English, they turned left at the entrance, then drove up a tree-lined drive to a brick-and-glass building fronted by an oval plot brimming with wildflowers. They found a parking spot, walked through the glass entrance doors, and found an information desk.

The young Indian woman sitting at the counter spoke Oxford-tinged English. “Good morning, welcome to Kathmandu University. How may I help you?”

“We’re looking for Professor Adala Kaalrami,” said Remi.

“Yes, of course. One moment.” The woman tapped on a keyboard below the counter and studied the monitor for a moment. “Professor Kaalrami is currently meeting with a graduate student in the library. The meeting is scheduled to end at three.” The woman produced a campus map, then circled their current location and that of the library.

“Thank you,” Sam said.

Kathmandu’s campus was small, with only a dozen or so main buildings centered atop a rise. Below were miles and miles of green terraced fields and thick forests. In the distance they could see Tribhuvan International Airport. To the north of this, just visible, were the pagoda-style roofs of the Hyatt Regency.

They walked a hundred yards east down a hedge-lined sidewalk, turned left, and found themselves at the library’s entrance. Once inside, a staff member directed them to a second-floor conference room. They arrived as a lone student was leaving. Inside, seated at a round conference table, was a plump elderly Indian woman in a bright red-and-green sari.

Remi said, “Excuse me, would you be Professor Adala Kaalrami?”

The woman looked up and scrutinized them through a pair of dark-rimmed glasses. “Yes, I am she.” Her English was thickly accented with a lightly musical quality common to many Indian English speakers.

Remi introduced herself and Sam, then asked if they could sit down. Kaalrami nodded to the pair of chairs opposite her. Sam said, “Does the name Lewis King mean anything to you?”

“Bully?” she replied without hesitation.

“Yes.”

She smiled broadly; she had a wide gap between her front teeth. “Oh, yes, I remember Bully. We were . . . friends.” The glimmer in her eyes told the Fargos the relationship had gone beyond mere friendship. “I was affiliated with Princeton but had come to Tribhuvan University on loan. That was long before Kathmandu University was founded. Bully and I met at a social function of some kind. Why do you ask this?”

“We’re looking for Lewis King.”

“Ah . . . Ghost hunters, are you?”

“I take that to mean you believe he’s dead,” Remi said.

“Oh, I do not know. Of course I’ve heard the stories about his periodic manifestations, but I have never seen him, or any genuine pictures of him. At least, not in the last forty years or so. I’d like to think if he were alive, he would have come to see me.”

Sam pulled a manila folder from his valise, pulled out a copy of the Devanagari parchment, and slid it across the table to Kaalrami. “Do you recognize this?”

She studied it for a moment. “I do. That is my signature. I translated this for Bully in . . .” Kaalrami pursed her lips, thinking, “Nineteen seventy-two.”

“What can you tell us about it?” Sam asked. “Did Lewis tell you where he found it?”

“He did not.”

Remi said, “To me, it looks like Devanagari.”

“Very good, my dear. Close, but incorrect. It is written in Lowa. While not quite a dead language, it is fairly rare. At last estimate, there are only four thousand native Lowa speakers alive today. They are mostly found in the north of the country, up near the Chinese border, in what used to be-”