The Everest Files

by Matt Dickinson

  Brennan was the personification of charm, pressing the flesh with practised ease and seeming to have time for everyone. Kami sensed that there was a genuine excitement in the air; these people really liked Alex Brennan, they believed in him, trusted him.

  ‘Why does he need to come to Everest?’ Kami whispered to Tenzing. He seemed to be a man who already had everything.

  ‘Publicity!’ Tenzing exclaimed with a laugh. ‘Perhaps he wants to be even more famous.’

  There was only one slightly strange thing that Kami noticed – the two burly Americans who had arrived with Brennan on the aircraft were hovering right next to him as he met the trekkers.

  ‘Bodyguards,’ Pemba suggested with a tingle of excitement, ‘maybe they have guns.’

  ‘Why?’ Kami questioned, ‘What are they afraid of?’

  ‘I don’t know, terrorists, assassins, kidnappers.’

  ‘But why would anyone want to hurt him?’

  ‘Think about it,’ Tenzing replied, ‘he’s rich, he’s famous all over America, maybe one day he’ll even be the president. There are plenty of crazy people who would like to kill someone like that.’

  ‘But not in Nepal.’ Kami could not imagine that any Nepali would ever seek to harm someone like Alex Brennan.

  ‘No. But they can’t take any chances.’

  Finally, they made it to the field where the expedition convoy was preparing for departure. Yaks were loaded up and one hour later they were all set.

  The expedition filed out of Lukla as the trek to Base Camp began.

  The first couple of hours went smoothly, the Westerners leading on, chatting excitedly and snapping away on their cameras, and the Sherpas and pack animals following behind. In addition to the load on his back, Kami was in charge of three of the heavily-laden yaks, urging them forward with a mixture of guttural cries and the occasional well-aimed rock.

  The film crew were shooting almost constantly, framing up shots at scenic turns of the trail and firing questions spontaneously at the Sherpas when the mood took them.

  Kami found George the cameraman walking alongside him with the camera running.

  ‘How does it feel to have so much weight on your back?’ George asked.

  ‘Not so bad. I do it every day,’ Kami replied with a smile.

  The truth was that Kami had little energy to waste on conversation. He was carrying two kit bags, a total weight of almost forty kilos, and his legs were feeling it with every step.

  A couple of hours from Lukla the expedition passed through a small village which had suffered a recent tragedy: a landslide had ripped out a large chunk of hillside, sweeping houses and fields away in an avalanche of boulders, mud and splintered trees.

  ‘I want some shots of this,’ Alex Brennan told the camera team, ‘This is the reality of life in the Himalaya.’

  Brennan led the camera crew up the slope, filming as they went while he gave a running commentary on the devastation.

  ‘This is the remains of someone’s house. You can see clothes and other personal stuff in the wreckage here. I can see a doll. A broken cot. I shudder to think how many people must have died in this landslide.’

  Kami and a few of the other Sherpas followed on reluctantly, carrying the film crew’s spare flight cases and an extra tripod. The air smelled bacterial, of musty churned earth and crushed bark with, here and there, the unmistakeable stench of decomposition.

  ‘We shouldn’t be here,’ Tenzing muttered. ‘Disturbing the spirits.’

  Kami nodded his agreement.

  Further up the scarred section of mountain they came across a lone man toiling amidst the debris. Filthy from head to foot, he was evidently bone tired, pulling broken roof beams from the debris field.

  ‘This is incredible,’ Brennan said to camera, ‘this man is actually rebuilding his house with his own bare hands. That just tells you everything you need to know about the spirit of the Sherpa people.’

  Faced with this unexpected invasion, the man just stared at them all with a bewildered look on his face. Kami felt very sorry for him.

  ‘We’re going to help this guy out,’ Brennan said suddenly. ‘I want you Sherpas to give me a hand.’

  So saying, Alex Brennan stripped off to the waist and began hauling rocks onto the platform. The Sherpas just stood there, part ashamed by this unexpected display of human flesh, and part dumbstruck to see that Alex Brennan owned a torso that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a bodybuilders’ convention.

  ‘What’s wrong guys?’ Sasha teased them, ‘You never seen an American before?’

  ‘Come on dudes,’ Brennan urged them. ‘Think of it as a team-building exercise.’

  ‘You heard the man,’ Sasha smiled at the Sherpas, ‘I guess it’s time to get our hands dirty.’

  Kami and the other Sherpas bent themselves to the task, roaming down the slope from the site of the destroyed house and extracting what they could. Sasha worked gamely alongside them, snatching big stones to her belly and staggering up the slope to the building site.

  ‘I’m not paid to do this,’ Pemba grumbled. It seemed to Kami that he never stopped complaining.

  The film crew stuck to Alex Brennan like glue, shadowing him as he darted about the debris field, his torso glistening as it trickled with mud and sweat.

  ‘I think this is what foreigners call a ‘photo opportunity,’ Tenzing told Kami.

  Brennan had a phenomenal work rate. He consistently chose the biggest boulders to shift and the heaviest timbers to pull from the slime.

  But, finally, he met his match.

  A huge great roof beam, buried deep in the debris field with just a short length protruding.

  Brennan braced his feet against bedrock and seized the timber. His hands were so huge they virtually encircled the whole beam. He took a deep breath and pulled back hard.

  No movement. It didn’t budge a single inch.

  Brennan’s brow crinkled at that. A quizzical look swept across his face, as if he was tasting an unfamiliar food.

  ‘You need some help there?’ Sasha asked him with a smile.

  ‘No, no. I’m on it.’

  He tried again but the stubborn shaft of wood was staying put. After much puffing and grunting Brennan gave up on the buried beam and turned to the camera with a shrug and a wry smile.

  ‘I guess there’s always one that gets away.’

  The camera crew moved in closer to Brennan at that point and began an interview with him.

  Kami listened for a few moments as the American chatted, then he got to thinking about that beam. He eyed it up closely, thinking that it didn’t really look so much bigger than the ones he hauled about the hillsides with his father.

  He straddled the rafter and gripped it hard. He bent his legs down and sucked air into his lungs. Then with one smooth upward movement he plucked the beam out of the ground with a great sucking sound of wet mud.

  He let one end of the beam rest on the ground for a second or two while he caught his breath, then he dropped his right arm and let the beam nestle right across his shoulders.

  And only then did he realise that everyone around him had gone silent.

  Kami stopped and turned. The camera was pointing right at him.

  ‘Holy crap!’ Brennan exclaimed. He turned to the crew. ‘Did you get that?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Kami quickly turned, resuming the climb, regretting already that he had drawn attention to himself. He hoped they would stop filming him, but no such luck. A few seconds later Brennan and the crew were hurrying after him.

  ‘That was a pretty awesome piece of work. What’s your name, son?’

  Kami felt a hot flush of embarrassment engulf him.

  ‘Kami, sir.’

  Kami reached the platform where he let the beam fall onto the pile along with the other
timbers.

  ‘Kami, did you say?’ Brennan slapped the young Sherpa hard on the back and then placed his arm around him to twist him towards the camera.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said grandly, ‘I give you Kami Sherpa. Boy of steel. No, let’s make that tungsten!’

  The expedition left the landslide site and picked up the trail towards Phakding. The unexpected work session had broken the ice between the Westerners and the Sherpas, and Kami found himself trekking next to Sasha.

  ‘That was pretty funny what happened back there,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t mean it to be like that,’ Kami blurted out. ‘I was just trying to help.’

  Sasha placed a hand gently on his shoulder.

  ‘Hey, I didn’t mean people were laughing at you.’

  ‘Ok.’ Kami kept his head down.

  ‘Alex didn’t mind, you know. He was laughing along with everyone else.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  They reached a small suspension bridge over a canyon where the team were forced to walk in single file. Kami took the opportunity to pick up his pace, getting sufficiently far ahead of Sasha that the conversation had to stop.

  He felt bad to cut her off like that but he really wasn’t in the mood to talk.

  He felt bad about the incident back at the landslide. All his life, Kami had always hated being the focus of attention.

  And it must have seemed like he was showing off in front of the boss.

  He thought about Shreeya to distract himself, focusing on where she would be at this time of day. Perhaps weaving a blanket with her aunt. Maybe cutting grass for the buffalo or the goats. He wondered if she was thinking about him. And gradually he began to feel a bit better.

  At the small riverside village of Phakding the team eased off their loads and pitched camp on a dusty field. In less than half an hour the tents were pitched, kit bags were distributed to their rightful owners and the kerosene stoves were roaring as the first kettles of boiling water began to sing.

  Later, Kurt set up his satellite dish and connected up his laptop so that he could access the internet.

  ‘The satellite weather prediction is saying rain,’ he told the gathered Sherpas.

  Kami was amazed. It seemed pretty staggering that Kurt’s laptop could connect to a satellite up there in space, and that pictures of swirling weather systems could be viewed with just a few clicks of a mouse.

  ‘That doesn’t help much,’ Nima grunted quietly to Kami, ‘It’s legpower that gets you to the top of Everest, not computers.’

  Alex Brennan took his turn at the laptop and started to browse through a selection of news sites. He skipped the main headlines, concentrating – as far as Kami could see – on articles that were about his own expedition.

  ‘Pictures of himself … ’ Nima whispered to Kami with a wicked giggle. ‘That’s all he’s interested in. Me, me, me and more me!’

  Brennan suddenly whipped round and fixed Nima with a beady glare.

  ‘What was what?’ he asked sternly.

  ‘N-n-n-nothing sir,’ Nima stuttered, his face reddening fast.

  Kami dragged Nima away and they beat a retreat back to the Sherpa tent.

  ‘You and your big mouth,’ Kami admonished him.

  Kurt’s weather prediction turned out to be right and the expedition left the following morning on an overcast and drizzly day. Once again, Kami was placed in charge of three pack animals, lumbering yaks that were carrying towering loads.

  At the northernmost end of Monjo village the expedition had its permits checked at the National Park headquarters.

  Next to the ticket office was a small museum devoted to the culture and ecology of the Everest region. Half of the floor space was occupied by a huge plaster model of the Himalaya and the team gathered round it, quickly identifying Everest, Shishapangma and Cho Oyu.

  Alex Brennan noticed how closely Kami was studying the model.

  ‘Have you climbed any of these?’ he asked Kami.

  ‘No sir. Not yet.’

  ‘Not yet!’ Brennan laughed. ‘I like that. That’s the spirit.’

  As the team left the park headquarters, the sky turned even more threatening and a full-blooded storm kicked off. The Westerners had their rain gear in their small daypacks and were able to Gore-Tex up and keep dry. Most of the Sherpas on the other hand, Kami included, were carrying climbing hardware and expedition food on their backs and had none of their personal gear with them.

  The Sherpas got soaked to the skin as the shower turned to sheeting rain.

  They crossed the river several times as the track meandered up the valley, the river seemingly more swollen from the downpour each time. A sharp, stinging wind came down from the ice-laden peaks to the north. Sleet began to slant down, followed by a brief blitz of hailstones.

  Then came the notorious climb up to Namche Bazaar, a two and a half hour slog which had a justifiably ugly reputation amongst Everest trekkers. Kami was cold but he could deal with that, in fact, from his point of view everything would have been fine on this ever-rising track if only the yaks would have kept moving.

  ‘Haaaaargh! Haaarrgh!’

  Kami became quite hoarse with the constant yelling. He aimed bigger and bigger stones at the beasts’ rumps but they grew surly, stubbornly refusing to budge, staring at him balefully and seeming oblivious to the stinging pain.

  Then came the final push up a series of steps. Twenty minutes of stop start progress. Finally, came the smell of wood smoke filtering through the trees and the expedition saw the spectacular natural amphitheatre around which the remarkable town of Namche Bazaar was built.

  ‘That wasn’t so bad.’ Kurt said.

  Kami disagreed. The constant goading of the yaks had left him exhausted and he was totally drenched. He was grateful that the acclimatisation programme insisted on a forty-eight hour stop here to let those who had recently flown into Lukla adjust to the thin air.

  ‘Three thousand five hundred metres,’ Alex Brennan exclaimed at the mess table that night, ‘only five thousand four hundred to go.’

  The comment got some laughs from those at the table but it was followed by an awkward silence. Kami could see that they were all feeling the altitude here at Namche, George the cameraman had complained of a pounding headache and Sasha was looking pale and washed out.

  ‘We have a photo call tomorrow morning,’ Kurt told them, ‘so we need everyone looking their best. I want the whole team up at the military post at 6 a.m.’

  The press pack arrived that night: a dozen photographers, all men, representing various press agencies and newspapers in the USA, Europe and Asia.

  The Sherpas were amused by the new arrivals. These characters didn’t look like trekkers and they certainly didn’t behave like them. Laden down with camera bags, they wheezed and spluttered into town, dragging themselves to their lodge with cries of relief and calls for whisky and lager.

  ‘Snappers like this spend their lives following politicians and sportsmen around,’ Sasha told Kami and Nima, ‘most of their photocalls are on private jets. This might be a little out of their comfort zone.’

  The lodge was overwhelmed by this marauding horde, the kitchens deluged with requests for pizzas, cheeseburgers and yak steaks, most of which went uneaten when the guests discovered just how little they resembled the familiar comfort food of home.

  But the beer evidently did taste sufficiently familiar, and so did the Scotch. Kami, Pemba and Nima were loaned to the lodge owner by Tenzing and spent the entire evening acting as waiters, trying to keep up with the orders from this hard-drinking crew.

  Most of the photographers paid them little notice, with one exception: a huge guy with the reddest nose Kami had ever seen who called them over to the corner where he was drinking with a buddy.

  ‘Hey! You guys are going up there with Brennan, ri
ght?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Kami thought he resembled one of the frogs that infested the fields back home. The frog man swigged deeply from his bottle of Everest beer.

  ‘Take a seat. Let’s have a little talk about stuff.’

  His drinking partner gave him a dirty look. ‘Leave them alone,’ he said accusingly, ‘They don’t want to get involved in your grubby world.’

  Then he left, weaving an uncertain path across the dining room.

  ‘Don’t take any notice of him,’ the frog man said with a sly laugh, ‘I’m not hustling you guys. I just wanted to ask you how things are going with Alex Brennan.’

  The three Sherpa lads exchanged a glance. The question seemed innocent enough.

  ‘Things are going very well, sir,’ Nima replied earnestly. ‘He’s a great boss.’

  ‘How about that journalist, Sasha? She fitting in OK?’

  ‘No problems, sir,’ Kami told him, ‘a nice person.’

  ‘That’s great. That’s all good news.’

  He drank again and poured some of the beer into a glass which he offered to them. Kami declined but Nima and Pemba took an enthusiastic swig.

  ‘You think those two are an item?’ he asked, his eyes twinkling with mischief as he winked lecherously at them. ‘You know what I mean by that, right? Maybe you’ve seen them sharing a tent in the night?’

  The three Sherpas looked at him in surprise. The question seemed bizarre to them. Kami felt the first stirrings of alarm. This character didn’t inspire much confidence.

  ‘No sir,’ he said firmly. ‘Nothing like that.’

  ‘You see Alex Brennan is engaged to a lovely lady back home. She’s rich and famous like him so people like to read about them in the newspapers. That’s why if there was a photo, for example, of that journalist Sasha coming out of Alex’s tent one morning then it might be worth a lot of money to you guys.’

  Pemba’s expression brightened at the mention of cash.

  ‘How much money?’ he asked.

  Kami didn’t like the way the conversation was going and he kicked Pemba beneath the table to warn him to shut up. But Pemba just glared at him and kicked back harder.