The Rich Man’s House

by Andrew McGahan

  Walter Richman himself was also by then active on the climb. He had overseen the early stages of the campaign from his headquarters in New York, visiting the Wheel only intermittently. But after the completion of Base Camp he transferred his office to an executive suite on the Artemis, and placed his name on the climbing roster.

  From then on, his routine was much the same as any of the five hundred other climbers on the list. First, from the Artemis it was a three-day hike up to Base Camp. (Helicopters could land on the Plateau, but it was a risky procedure and reserved for emergencies.) After a day’s recovery, climbers would then don their lightweight suits and begin the ascent proper, laden with whatever their assigned burden happened to be: supplies or a pack of panels for a hut or perhaps a chemical toilet. Climbers were expected to ascend between five hundred and a thousand metres in a day, before resting overnight in the established huts. Ascending and descending teams slept in alternating huts along each line. In a pinch, a single hut could sleep eight climbers, and in a full emergency, could squeeze in sixteen, briefly.

  At eight thousand metres, a High Base Camp had been established, where a small population of technicians lived and worked in a collection of large HAEV workshops. Here, climbers were issued with the full HTF suits that they would wear for the rest of their ascent. From High Base Camp they then pushed on, day by day, hut to hut, until finally they reached the last hut in the line. At this point they might merely deliver their load and immediately descend, or, if they were lucky, they might be assigned to route-breaking above the hut.

  The latter was the prize assignment, as it meant real climbing, breaking new ground on virgin faces, with no fixed lines laid ahead. Otherwise, the climber, load delivered, merely faced the long descent back to Base Camp and then to the Artemis for a few days R and R, before starting all over again. By the later stages of the expedition, with the leading huts placed high on the Wheel at twenty kilometres and above, a full ascent and descent could take five or six weeks. So, any chance to do real climbing at the top, amid so much tedious up and down work, was precious.

  Many climbers, indeed, could not bear all the laboured waiting for such a brief chance, and so quit. Others, whose individualistic mountaineering ethics were offended by such a massed and coordinated assault, by its bureaucracy, and by its building of so much infrastructure on the mountain—vandalism, one disgruntled critic called it—also resigned in disgust after a few times up and down.

  But most remained, and climbed with a will. For the reward was worth any price—a chance to stand at last upon the very Hand of God. This was key. Richman, at the campaign’s beginning, had promised that every climber involved would be allowed their own moment of victory on the Wheel’s peak. In other mountain campaigns, the summit was usually attained only by a single assault team, gaining all the glory, while the support teams missed out. But on the Richman expedition, every climber who had contributed would get their chance at the top. After all, once the network of huts was complete, and once the initial assault team had gained the summit, it would be no great matter to keep the whole system in operation for a few months longer, the time it would take for the rest of the climbers to rotate up and have their own turn.

  You couldn’t say fairer than that.

  Even so, many wondered who exactly would be in that initial assault team, for even if everyone else got to reach the top eventually, the first to do it would be the ones the world remembered.

  That Richman himself would be in the team was a given; after all, he was paying for everything. (So at least it was thought.) But who would be the other lucky three? Expedition management’s only comment was that everyone’s climbing hours were being logged and assessed, and when the time came, the best climbers would be chosen.

  Of the expedition’s slow, perilous ascent up the last ten thousand metres of the Wheel’s western face, passing from the familiar air and weather of the troposphere into the alien world of the stratosphere, this brief account will not try to tell. The successes, the disasters, the deaths, are all well attested. Suffice to say that in November 1974, two years after the establishment of Base Camp, Hut 122 was completed and stocked at an altitude of twenty-four thousand six hundred metres, just a touch under five hundred vertical metres from the summit.

  All now lay ready for the initial assault team’s final ascent to the Hand of God. That team, of course, had been chosen some weeks before the hut’s completion, to ensure that they would be only a few camps below on the day that 122 became operational. As expected, leading the team was Richman—and in truth, as he had by then put in as many climbing hours as anyone, there was no reason he should not be there.

  But the other three members were interesting choices. For a start, though all three were excellent climbers, none were elite climbers. There were dozens of far more renowned and more expert mountaineers on the roster, all of whom had put in their fair share of the work. But instead Richman selected three climbers less experienced than himself—and for that matter, younger. Richman was twenty-eight, none of the other three was older than twenty-four. And last, though this was not known at the time, the finances of each of the chosen three was parlous. One was newly-wed and newly a father to twins, heavily over-mortgaged on his house in Australia. Another was trying to prop up a failing hiking business in the USA. The third had a chronic gambling problem.

  The question has to be asked thus: were these circumstances known to Richman when he made his selection, and did they influence his choice? The answer, given the events, seems plain.

  Richman’s summit team left Hut 122 on the appointed morning, and climbed without issue to the supply dump earlier established two hundred metres higher up the ridge. From there, taking it in turns to go lead, they climbed laboriously, over six hours, up a last sheer face to reach the final approach. There now remained only a walk of some ninety metres along a knife-edge spine angled at about thirty degrees. With Richman in the lead, the team set out. But halfway along the spine, with the Hand of God in full view, Richman paused and turned, seemingly to address his three companions following behind.

  At the same moment, radio connection with the team was temporarily lost. Only the TV telecast, shot from the top of Observatory Mount via telephoto lens, remained continuous, showing the four huddled in apparent discussion. The consultation lasted ten minutes, after which Richman turned and pressed on alone up the spine. At the same time, the radio link with the team was re-established.

  The three left behind climbed no closer, though they recorded events with their cameras. And so Richman covered the last fifty yards by himself, and at 3.15 p.m. on 14 November 1974, he stepped all alone onto the palm-of-a-hand-like platform that sits between a thumblike protrusion to one side, and a curled-fingers overhang on the other: the first man to stand within the famous Hand of God.

  He remained there for half an hour, making speeches over the radio for posterity and posing for photographs taken by the three men lower down. He ignored all questions from expedition headquarters, descended finally to join the other three men, then continued on down to Hut 122. Whereupon he soon declared, via an announcement from expedition management, that all teams on the mountain, even those ascending, must immediately begin to descend to Base Camp, and that no support would be given to anyone who tried to press on for the top. The summit of the Wheel was now officially closed.

  As can be imagined, the climbers further down the mountain were disbelieving and outraged. They had been promised their moment on the summit, how dare Richman take that away! Several teams rebelled, and set off upwards from higher camps in defiance.

  But Richman and his team disabled Hut 122’s power and water linkages as they left, rendering it useless. They then did the same to the next hut down. This put the summit beyond any last-gasp sprint attempt, even for the most foolhardy, and with no fresh supplies being sent up, by order of Richman himself, there was nothing to be done. Complain all they might, the rebel climbers could only withdraw.

  They
went bitterly. So great was the hatred for Richman that when the summit team was only three kilometres down the mountain, an armed security team was sent up to escort them the rest of the way. By the time they reached High Base Camp they had retreated behind an impenetrable wall of bodyguards, and Richman was speaking to no one apart from his own media connections. Upon reaching Base Camp, the four were whisked away by helicopter, and that was that. Walter Richman had stolen the Wheel for himself, and gotten away clean.

  To this day, Richman’s three companions have never spoken a word in public of their part in the adventure. So—what did the billionaire say to them, that afternoon upon the summit ridge?

  Richman’s own version—issued in a press release from the Artemis—went like this: while climbing the final ridge a realisation had come to him. He saw suddenly that it would be wrong for more than one climber to stand in the Hand of God, let alone for hundreds of climbers to do so. It would, he realised, reduce something sacred and otherworldly to little more than a trampled tourist spot. So he had decided, even as the summit came in view, that only one man—to represent all the hundreds in the expedition—would go to the peak, and that it was fitting that this one man, as leader of entire enterprise, be himself. Oh, he knew it would be unpopular with his fellow climbers, but that was a burden he was prepared to accept for the sake of the mountain.

  The other three climbers were, supposedly, so moved by Richman’s revelation that they agreed to stand back and let him go on alone, even though the summit lay plain in their sight. For which nobility, said Richman, they should be forever applauded.

  Which is all very well. But even though none of the three have ever made any definitive statements to deny Richman’s version, it became evident in the months following the expedition, through a series of investigative reports in major climbing magazines, that each of the three had come into a considerable amount of money.

  Ten of millions of dollars, in fact.

  Which can lead to only one conclusion. Richman had bribed them that day on the ridge. He had offered them so much money, that even with the summit and eternal fame a mere fifty yards away, they had succumbed. He may even, perhaps, have threatened them with worse alternatives if they refused his offer, knowing their financial straits.

  Either way, they accepted. Older climbers, no doubt, might have resisted; more famous and financially secure mountaineers might have shouldered Richman aside and charged for the summit regardless. But the three younger, inexperienced and economically struggling men that Richman had chosen to be present that day looked at the immense riches on offer—and bowed their heads. And so Walter Richman got his wish, to be the only man in history to defeat the Wheel.

  And no one was ever going to follow him. With amazing speed, in the wake of the great ascent, the twin lines of HAEV huts, and the electrical cables and water pipes that fed them, were dismantled and carried down the mountain. High Base Camp and then Base Camp came down too, and last of all, the two support ships that had spent nearly four years in Bligh Cove hauled anchor and sailed away.

  This was—according to Richman—an act of environmental guardianship, done to ensure that the Wheel was returned to its natural state. But common opinion in climbing circles was that Richman was merely ensuring that no one else could use the huts and the camps and the other gear to one day repeat his achievement.

  For all these crimes, Richman has remained a loathed figure ever since among the mountaineering community. He has never climbed seriously again—no expedition or team would have him. And yet, in the wider world, he has not only escaped opprobrium for his actions on the Wheel, he has become—by some at least—admired. He is seen as a figure of restraint and wisdom. A conservationist, even.

  It helped that his was the sole voice of the expedition. The contracts of everyone else who signed up for the campaign expressly forbade them from talking to the press or publishing their own accounts, either during the climb, or afterwards. And though of course plenty did talk about it publicly later on, those who were too outspoken and too critical of Richman were aggressively pursued by his lawyers.

  So the official version of the expedition was Richman’s to control. He wrote two books, one a general history of the campaign, the other a more personal retelling, both of which cast him as the undoubted hero, the man who had saved the great mountain from an undignified ravaging. There was also a documentary series and a feature movie, both funded and approved by Richman, and both exalting him.

  In short, in the battle for public opinion, Richman easily outgunned his critics. Oh, the world knew well enough what he had done, the promises he had made and broken, the bribes and the lies, and all for no better reason, despite his fine talk, than to gratify his own ego.

  The world knew all that.

  And didn’t care. They loved him anyway. They loved his charm. They loved his sheer villainous chutzpah and his refusal to be apologetic, and they loved the impotent fury of those who spoke out against him. They loved him as only other super-celebrities are loved, and gave him the same grace: the right to be above moral judgements.

  In the forty years since, he has flourished in the radiance of that adoration. He has grown ever richer, ever more famous, ever more beyond reproach, no matter how questionable the nature of his business dealings. Until, at last, with no other worlds left to conquer, he has returned to the Wheel, the site of his ascension long ago, both literally and figuratively, and with his billions he has purchased it.

  Or as good as. He has purchased Theodolite Isle, the only access to the Wheel, and will build his monstrous house there upon its height. And in doing so he will claim the Wheel, a wonder that should belong to all the world, to all of us, as his private property.

  13

  OVER CIGARS

  The world’s richest man—well, one of the world’s richest men—smelled of leather and wood, and, ever so faintly, of something evocatively chemical that Rita finally decided was jet fuel.

  Such at least was the conclusion she came to after three hours in Walter Richman’s presence. She had been trying to place the third scent ever since the moment of their introduction in the Saloon, when she had risen, disconcerted, to shake his hand.

  He had drawn her in close, the way some men do, his free hand touching lightly on her shoulder, and she had received her first physical sense of him: his surprising tallness; the strength of his long, weathered face; and finally, the composite masculine smell about him that somehow was the essence of wealth and power. All of it came in an instant, along with a single flash of naked scrutiny from his grey-blue eyes.

  Then he had released her and declared to the room, ‘Shall we get straight to the food? I’m starved!’

  They had eaten in the grand Dining Hall; four courses, predictably superb but thankfully not overly avant-garde; the setting candlelit and intimate, despite the room’s huge size. Richman was seated at the head of the table and Rita was placed at his right hand, so that occasionally, as he leaned towards her to emphasise some point or other, the mysterious chemical tang, sharp but pleasant, had wafted over her again. Now, with the meal completed, and the group having returned to the Saloon for post-dinner drinks, she had pinned down the answer.

  It was whisky that did it. Richman had opened a bottle of a certain fabulously rare single malt from the Scottish Highlands to offer around, and the aroma of whisky had always reminded Rita of petrol. She declined the whisky, but it was then that she realised: fuel was the third scent that accompanied Richman. The other two, leather and freshly sanded wood, came no doubt from some expensive brand of cologne he had splashed on before coming down to dinner. But the third was accidental: jet fuel, clinging to his clothes after his trip in his helicopter. So yes, she had been right about that much, it was a moneyed smell.

  But the scent was lost now in any case, giving way to clouds of smoke, for Richman, Kushal and Madelaine were indulging in cigars along with their drinks. Eugene, though not smoking, was on whisky as well. Only Clara and Rita
had stuck with wine at this late stage, Rita opting for a chardonnay—Russian River not Napa Valley, according to the barman, whatever that meant—and Clara choosing a red.

  It was a restful moment. The six of them (Kennedy had not been present at dinner, busy presumably with security matters) were reclining in chairs and couches set at a safe distance from the Saloon’s giant hearth. A bright blaze was burning there, great logs of some aromatic wood crackling—Theodolite Isle was treeless, so the wood must have been shipped in for this single purpose, at who only knew what expense—and around it the rest of the Saloon was lost in dimness.

  The snugness of the setting—the soft couches, the whisky, the fire—was heightened by the fact that outside the wind had been rising all evening and was now moaning audibly about the Observatory. Whenever Rita looked up to the windows of the Atrium dome, she could see wraiths of icy fog racing across the Terrace above. Occasionally a deeper thrum would signify an even stronger gust, and the very stone foundations of the Mount seemed almost to tremble underfoot.

  ‘It’s nothing out of the ordinary,’ Richman assured Rita, catching her glance up to the high windows as for a moment the moan of the wind became a thin shriek. ‘In fact, for this time of year, it’s an average night. You ought to hear it when a gale really kicks up. Even through the triple-glazing. But it’s a wonderful sound, don’t you think?’

  He was reclining on the same couch as Rita, having invited her to join him when they all settled. He was dressed casually in a white shirt and green corduroy pants, and she was struck again by how vigorous he appeared, his pose lithe and relaxed, his hands large and well muscled, his hair grey but shoulder length and lustrous. She would have guessed him to be a hale sixty years old at most, if she hadn’t known he was seventy-one, and she supposed that—were she a person of a different persuasion—she might well have found him attractive.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you must like the wind, if you plan to always spend winters here. At least, I read somewhere that you plan to.’