The Invisible. Andrew Britton

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СКАЧАТЬ wasn’t enough for her. Nor was it enough to satisfy her extremely demanding employers. Instead, her goal was to pull the readers into the photograph, to draw them away from the article itself. It was a lot to aspire to, as the magazines she worked for employed some of the best writers in the business. Moreover, it was nearly impossible to capture the grandeur of the things she saw on a regular basis. Still, judging by the awards and accolades she had racked up over her short career—including the prestigious Hasselblad Award in 2006—she had managed to make her mark in an industry brimming with talent, and that was no small feat.

      Rebeka had embarked on her current career after winning a regional photography contest at seventeen years of age. She’d started shooting on an amateur basis in 2002 with a secondhand Minolta Dynax 8000i. The camera had been a gift from a spoiled cousin who’d since moved on to more expensive hobbies, and she’d fallen in love with it instantly. Her love of travel, however, dated back to her childhood, and she sometimes wondered why it had taken her so long to work her two favorite hobbies into what had become a spectacular career. She had grown up on the Soča River in the Julian Alps, not far from the famed Predjama Castle, and she credited the gorgeous scenery of her childhood with sparking not only her interest in nature, but her desire to see as much of it as possible.

      Since leaving Frommer’s the previous year, she had embarked on freelance assignments for Time, Newsweek, Le Monde, National Geographic, and Nača žena in her native Slovenia, just to name a few. Those assignments had given her the opportunity to visit fourteen countries over the course of two short years, in addition to the twelve she’d already seen, and she had thoroughly documented her journeys—not only with her camera, but also in her journal, by far her most treasured possession. Every assignment carried with it the promise of a new adventure, but as she stared out the window, ignoring the unpleasant sway of the bus on the steep mountain road, she couldn’t help but think that the snowcapped peaks surrounding the Hunza Valley had surpassed her wildest expectations. A brief shower earlier in the day had given way to a spectacularly clear blue sky, and the afternoon sun made the snow-topped spires in the distance glisten in ways she could never hope to capture on film. It didn’t happen often, but there were times when she knew she could never do justice to the scenery, and while those moments were among the most thrilling of her personal life, they were hard to accept professionally. Still, she wouldn’t have traded the sight for anything.

      After a while the bus rocked slightly to the right as it swept around the mountain, and the splendid sight of Tirich Mir—the highest peak in the Hindu Kush range—faded from view as the bus began the long descent into Khunjerab National Park. Disappointed with the change in scenery, Rebeka turned in her seat and let her gaze drift over her fellow passengers. The vehicle was filled to capacity, which wasn’t surprising, given the time of year. Many were climbers destined for the world’s most challenging peaks, and they were assured of permits only during the summer months. She had traveled with these people for weeks on end, and she’d come to know most of them fairly well.

      Sitting directly across from her was Beni Abruzzi, the rakish, handsome, long-limbed climber from Brescia. He was talking—with animated gestures, as always—to Umberto Verga, his stocky Sicilian cousin. Umberto rarely spoke, and when he did, it sounded more like a series of grunts than actual speech, but Beni was only too happy to pick up his cousin’s slack. He’d served as a caporal maggiore, an infantry corporal, in the Italian army. He’d also spent some time in Iraq, a fact he’d mentioned more times than Rebeka cared to remember. Abruzzi had spent hours bragging about his military exploits, and while Rebeka believed most of his stories, she wasn’t impressed in the least. Unsurprisingly, the Italian’s gaze was presently fixed on the trio of pretty Norwegian nurses who had joined them in Tashkurgan. That had been two hours earlier, and forty minutes before the bus crossed from China into Pakistan via the Khunjerab Pass, the highest point on the Karakoram Highway.

      There was also the downtrodden group of Danish climbers who’d arrived at K2 four days earlier with the goal of summiting, only to turn back at base camp in Concordia, and a small knot of aging Canadian trekkers. There was even a renowned American geologist by the name of Timothy Welch. The professor emeritus from the University of Colorado seemed to spend a great deal of time staring at his hands and muttering under his breath, which Česnik found both amusing and a little unnerving.

      Beni managed to catch her eye, but she turned away before he could fix her with his usual lascivious stare. To cover her reaction, she hastily pulled her journal out of her Berghaus pack, undid the clasp, and started to scribble a few notes, catching up on the events of the past few days. It was hard to concentrate under the lean climber’s intense gaze. She’d done her best to make her disinterest clear, but her efforts had clearly been wasted. Although she was just twenty-three—the same age as Abruzzi—Rebeka had accomplished a great deal in her young life. For this reason, she tended to look down on many people her own age. She knew it was snobbish, but she couldn’t help it; she was a driven woman, and that meant things like men, sex, and partying didn’t figure high on her list of priorities.

      At the same time, she knew her looks had given her a considerable boost in her current career—that they would have helped her in any career. She took this in stride, though, and it didn’t change the way she viewed her success. After all, she’d seen the recent U.S. edition of Outside magazine, and her picture on the page of contributing journalists had not been any larger than that of the editor in chief, a decidedly unattractive Swede in his midsixties. This discovery had only confirmed what she already knew: that it was her talent—not her looks—that had made her one of the world’s most sought-after young photographers.

      She looked up, startled out of her reverie as the bus shuddered, the driver downshifting suddenly. Craning her neck, Rebeka saw a number of vehicles parked alongside the road up ahead, men milling about on the paved surface. As the bus rolled forward, the scene came into focus, and she saw something that chilled her blood.

      Rifles. Every man in sight was heavily armed, and there were plenty of men. Judging by the low rumble of voices in the surrounding seats, everyone else was just as confused and concerned as she was. Passports and visas were frequently checked on the KKH, but this wasn’t one of the scheduled stops. As far as Rebeka knew, they still had miles to go before they reached the next Pakistani checkpoint. Tensions between General Musharraf’s government and that of Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh had been rising steadily over the past few months, but this was the first time she’d seen any tangible evidence of the escalating situation.

      She only hoped she was right, that it wasn’t something else entirely. Bandits had always been a problem on the Karakoram Highway, though guarding against them was usually just a matter of taking the proper precautions, such as not traveling alone or after dark. As it stood, it was midafternoon, still light, and they were nowhere near the Line of Control—the heavily guarded border that separates the disputed territory between Pakistan and India. In short, these were about the best conditions a traveler on the KKH could ask for.

      The bus ground to a gentle halt, and the doors at the front banged open. The air in the vehicle seemed unusually thick, and no one was making a sound. Rebeka realized they were waiting to see what would happen, just as she was. But then a man appeared at the front, and the collective tension seemed to drain away. The man standing next to the driver and surveying the passengers was wearing the uniform of a Pakistani army captain. Rebeka felt her breath come a little bit easier, and she wasn’t concerned in the least when the captain asked them all to disembark and present their passports. Realizing that the soldiers might poke through their belongings, she slipped her journal under her coat. She wouldn’t be surprised to get back on and find some items missing from her pack, and while most of it was replaceable, the journal was the one thing she couldn’t bear to lose.

      She was sitting near the back of the vehicle, so she had to wait for the passengers up front to disembark. As they began to line up on the side of the road, documentation in hand, Rebeka saw a rare opportunity and decided to take it. The soldiers seemed to be unusually wrapped up in their task, so she dug out her camera—a СКАЧАТЬ