A welcoming party was waiting for them impatiently at the foot of the icefall. Twenty members of the expedition – Westerners and Sherpas alike – were there to clap and cheer them out of the last danger zone.
‘You made it! You made it!’ Sasha was bouncing up and down with joy, hugging first Alex, then Kami, as cameras flashed off on all sides.
‘Respect!’ Kurt told them both earnestly, ‘I’m in awe of your achievement. And jealous as hell!’
Kami found himself cracking up into tears. The goodwill flooding over them was so genuine, the clamour so packed with emotion that he couldn’t prevent it.
‘Take this,’ Sasha gave Kami a tissue and he dabbed at his eyes.
The young Sherpa felt an alien sensation overwhelming him; the glorious feeling of being safe. That the dangers were over. That the mountain couldn’t touch them any more.
‘I had a bet you were going to make it!’ Lopsang told him, his eyes sparkling with pleasure. ‘Tenzing owes me a hundred rupees!’
For Kami it was a sheer delight to see the faces of his fellow Sherpas. They jostled round him, slapping him on the back, embracing him extravagantly and asking a thousand questions at once.
‘Any frostbite? Bits fallen off?’
More than anything he wished that Jamling and Nima could have been there. And Shreeya of course.
‘Get the packs off,’ Kurt ordered, ‘come and celebrate the proper way.’
The two climbers shrugged off their rucksacks, allowing themselves to be hustled over to the mess tent by the jubilant team.
‘There’s a shower waiting for you two guys when you’re ready,’ Sasha teased them.
‘Are you trying to tell us we stink?’ Brennan laughed.
‘Well ... ’ A well-aimed toilet roll hit her on the shoulder.
Plates of Sherpa stew were placed in front of the two men. They both fell on the food, spooning it down quickly, ravenous for the calories after days of surviving on muesli bars and hi-energy drinks.
‘Let me see the papers,’ Alex demanded. ‘Did we get plenty of coverage?’
‘Did we ever?’ Sasha told him with an impish grin, ‘your face is all over them like a rash.’
A laptop was quickly fetched and Alex began to scan the pages of the online editions, his face creasing with pleasure as he saw the sheer amount of coverage.
‘Check this out, Kami,’ he said, pulling him to his side so he could see the laptop screen.
Sasha had been super busy, emailing out copy and pictures to all the main press agencies. Brennan had been able to borrow the Japanese team’s satellite module at the col, sending the ‘summit’ shots instantly back to Base so no time had been lost.
The result was a resounding media victory for Brennan. The New York Times had run the summit shot across half of the front page with the banner headline;
TODAY – EVEREST: TOMORROW – THE WHITE HOUSE?
Beneath the picture was a positive thousand-word article outlining Brennan’s political views and hopes for reform at the highest level. The report ended:
Alex Brennan’s triumphant ascent of Everest reveals a core of steel and a single-minded focus that will serve him well on the forthcoming presidential campaign. If he can connect with the people he could go (once more) all the way to the top.
Virtually all of the newspapers had used Kami’s shot of Brennan, the raised ice-axe signifying victory, his weary, ice-burned face split by a summit-sized grin. There was no doubt it was an iconic image, loaded with power and personality.
But it was not what it seemed. And Kami couldn’t forget that.
Of course, everyone had believed the photo was taken on the true summit.
But it made him feel like he was an accomplice to a trick, a fraud. It was a feeling that had been growing inside him during the descent; one of ever-more regret that they had not been able to push for that final section of the climb.
The shame of not getting Shreeya’s shrine bell to the top.
Kami felt a gentle tug at his sleeve.
‘Come to the shrine,’ Tenzing urged him, ‘before you forget.’
Kami made his excuses to the Westerners, slipped his boot inners on and followed Tenzing out onto the glacier. Suddenly he remembered. ‘How about Nima? And Jamling? Have you got any news?’
‘Nothing on either,’ Lahkpa replied with regret, ‘Nima seems to have vanished. Jamling is still in the hospital.’
Kami mulled on this slightly depressing news as they walked over to the chorten and performed a small ceremony of thanks.
He mumbled some improvised words to praise the gods for their care, but he felt hollow inside. He should have been rejoicing, but in a very real sense the climb had not been completed. A tiny piece of the story was missing and he felt sure that the gods must know that.
And surely, he thought, it would trouble them as it did him?
They returned to the tent where the team were looking at a laptop, viewing the still pictures from the climb.
‘What about your summit shot Kami?’ Sasha asked.
‘Yeah,’ Tenzing agreed. ‘I want to see it too.’
‘Ah ... well … mmm … ’ Kami’s mind floundered for a response but he simply didn’t know what to say.
He heard Brennan cough loudly as the mess tent quietened down.
He risked a swift look at Brennan, wanting his help, but all he saw in those bloodshot eyes was a glint of silent warning. He felt a ripple of panic in his belly; neither of them had thought that anyone would raise this question of Kami’s summit shot.
‘It’s OK … ’ Kami muttered, ‘I didn’t go there to get a photo … there are more important things.
Brennan leaned across the table and slid the laptop back towards him.
‘I hold my hands up on that one,’ he said, ‘with the excitement of the radio call and all that I must have forgotten.’
‘You forgot it? You didn’t get a summit shot of Kami?’ Sasha said, outraged. ‘He risked his life to get you there and you couldn’t spare a hundredth of a second to point the camera in his direction?’
‘We didn’t have a lot of time … ’ Kami said, painfully aware of how unconvincing his voice sounded.
‘OK,’ Sasha continued, ‘but it still sucks ... ’
Tenzing dragged the laptop out of Brennan’s grasp and clicked back to Brennan’s summit shot.
‘Anyway you did a bad job of this one,’ he said accusingly to Kami. ‘No summit pole. No summit flags.’
Some of the other Sherpas clustered in to see, murmuring with agreement as they too noticed the missing details of the shot.
‘That’s true,’ Lopsang said to Kami, ‘You should have got him next to the summit pole.’
‘Give the guy a break will you?’ Brennan snapped, ‘he’s hardly used a camera before.’
He flipped down the lid of the laptop and stuffed it in its carrying bag. A sticky, uncomfortable few moments followed as the irritable exchange hung in the air.
‘Anyway!’ Kurt broke the spell. ‘We got the coverage we need and there’s plenty more interviews to come.’
‘To Kami!’ Brennan accepted a glass of whisky and raised it for a toast, ‘he was a real hero up there.’
The room erupted in a cheer for Kami as he felt his head start to spin.
‘Drink! Drink!’ Someone pressed a celebratory mug of beer into Kami’s hand but he felt so wiped out he knew he couldn’t face it.
Lopsang and Tenzing helped him to one of the tents and he abandoned himself to the deepest sleep of his life.
After seventeen hours dead to the world, Kami was up and about. It was not long after dawn and his head was pulsing with a savage headache. He had to gulp down litres of water to quench his thirst.
Kami didn’t get any sympathy. In fact, to his amazement, the first thing he was
told by Tenzing when he entered the mess tent for some tea was that he was expected to join four of the other Sherpas on a trip up to Camp Three.
Back on the mountain. Back up high.
‘We need to dismantle the camps. Bring down the tents and all the gear,’ Tenzing told him.
‘But ... ’ Kami was gutted to get the instruction. He craved rest as he had never craved it before and it all seemed totally unfair. Wasn’t there some special time out for those who had been to the summit?
He bit his tongue. But Tenzing couldn’t help notice the flash of anger that crossed his face.
Something else rankled Kami as he ate some porridge for breakfast; Alex Brennan certainly wouldn’t be going back up again through the dangerous icefall to retrieve the kit. Instead he would be taking it easy down here at Base, luxuriating in the yurt and doing more of the endless radio and TV interviews which had been scheduled.
Where was the justice in that?
Kami wanted to launch some bitter words at Tenzing. He had done so much. Given everything. And still he had to give more.
‘I know it’s tough,’ Tenzing told him with some sympathy, ‘That’s the way it has to be.’
And so began a further forty-eight hour Sherpa raid on Everest, the clear-up operation that Kami had never anticipated. Not only was he physically at his weakest, but his mind was churning with resentment at having to do this final task.
They stayed a night at Camp One, then headed up for Three. The trail up through the Cwm was a real slog; deep monsoon snow sapping their strength. But finally they reached Camp Three and stripped it down. Every last tent peg, sleeping bag and snow stake was packed away, and they descended with monster loads to Camp Two where they slept through the night before finally returning to Base.
Kami took a cold-water shower, ate a huge meal of corned beef and potatoes then went to his tent. He wasn’t in the mood to see anyone but not long after, looking strangely ill-at-ease, Brennan came to see him.
‘Just to show you I’m as good as my word,’ Brennan told him.
He slipped a blue airmail envelope out of his pocket and handed it to Kami.
‘Thank you.’
Kami placed the envelope in his lap, hardly daring to touch it, like it was a religious offering, or a wounded bird.
‘Don’t you want to open it?’ the American asked.
Kami opened up the envelope with trembling hands. Inside was a thick wad of dollar bills.
‘Count it,’ Brennan ordered.
Kami plucked out the money and counted it out onto his sleeping bag. The cash had that enticing, sharp, musty and metallic smell of brand new notes. Each of the fifty dollar bills was crisp and clean, he noticed, so unlike Nepali rupee notes which were invariably scuffed or torn.
He put five hundred in a pile, then made another. That was now one thousand dollars and he stopped at that point and looked questioningly at Brennan.
‘I thought about what you did up there,’ Brennan shrugged. ‘I figure you deserve more.’
Two more piles stacked up before Kami was done.
‘Two thousand dollars should put a smile on your face,’ Brennan said.
‘Yes, sir. Thank you very much.’
‘I just don’t want you to be … disappointed about the way things worked out,’ Brennan said, hesitantly.
Kami hung his head. He knew exactly what Brennan was talking about.
‘And ... I wanted to be sure that you were happy.’
‘I am happy, sir. Really.’
Kami picked up his wallet to place the money inside; as he did so a few items fell out onto the sleeping bag – his identity card, a folded letter from Shreeya – and the business card the journalist had given him at Namche.
Brennan was on it in a flash.
‘What’s this?’ he asked. He examined the card closely, the blood running out of his face. ‘Why have you got this?’
‘Erm ... well. You see … ’
‘I don’t see, Kami!’ Brennan’s anger rose in a flash. ‘Please tell me you’re not thinking about contacting this man. Not after everything that happened with Nima and Pemba’
‘No, sir, that would never happen ... ’
‘Has he offered you money? For bad stories about me?’
Kami was silent.
‘This man is a scumbag, Kami. He writes lies and destroys people’s lives. I want you to promise me that you will never, ever contact him.’
‘I promise. I promise.’
‘And you mustn’t talk to Sasha either. Not about me and specially about … about you know what.’
‘I understand. Really.’
‘I hope so, Kami. I really do.’
Brennan put the card in his pocket and quit the tent.
Kami was shaken by the attack of rage and paranoia and it took him some time to recover.
But then he got to thinking about the money and he took it back out to stare at it again, wondering if he was dreaming this moment. Two thousand US dollars! A quick visit to one of the money changers in Namche Bazaar would convert it into more than twenty thousand rupees, a king’s ransom in Nepal. Kami had rarely had possession of more than fifty rupees in his life so this instant fortune was almost terrifying in its scale.
But what it represented was something beyond price; with this bonus Kami could buy himself out of the marriage contract with Laxmi. The money meant a future with Shreeya was now possible. He stared at the clutch of bank notes, thinking how bizarre it was that a stack of paper could mean so much.
His mind turned to Shreeya and he felt the tender glow he always felt when he thought of her.
Then, turning the little shrine bell over in his hands, he was seized with a terrible surge of guilt.
How was he to explain to her that he still had the bell? He had sworn on the gods that he would never tell a soul that they had faked those summit shots, so what excuse could he come up with when she realised he still carried her gift?
A new idea struck him. He could throw the bell away, drop it off one of the suspension bridges into the Dudh Kosi river. But the bell was an integral part of the puja ceremony, a holy object. Discarding it in such bad faith would be an open invitation to bad fortune. The gods are ever watchful, Kami knew, and they would not let such a provocation go unpunished.
Next morning Kami begged paper and pen from Sasha. He wrote a letter to Laxmi’s father, explaining that he was now in a position to pay back the dowry three times over as the man had demanded.
‘Please send me back a message to say that you accept the money,’ he concluded, ‘and that the marriage contract is now over.’
He sealed up the money and letter in an envelope and sought out one of the expedition’s two mail runners. Unencumbered by large packs, these fleet-footed athletes could cover in one day what would take an ordinary person four long days of toil.
Kami’s package would be in Laxmi’s father’s hands within a matter of days. With luck, he would have a reply within the week.
Watching the mail runner set off down the glacier was an emotional experience for Kami and a whole bunch of fears and second thoughts assailed him. What if the man was robbed by bandits? An accident could befall him. He might tumble off a path and die in a ravine.
There was so much at stake.
He could have held onto the money, of course, waited a couple of weeks until the end of the expedition and sorted things out then. But he didn’t want to wait. He feared his own conscience too much. If he got another attack of guilt like the previous night he might succumb to the urge to give the money back to Brennan, and then where would he be?
Back at square one, doomed to marry a girl he didn’t love.
A pair of dark black ravens followed the runner as he loped away from Base Camp, sparring and dueling just a few metres above his head.
Kami hop
ed that was not a bad omen.
Chapter 11
The following day marked the beginning of the final stage of the great expedition; the dismantling of Base Camp and retreat back down the valley to Lukla.
Just eight days remained before the Westerners would fly out to Kathmandu.
The entire team set to it with great urgency. They had been up high for more than eight weeks and the desire to get out of Base Camp was universal. It had been eight weeks without family contact. Eight weeks on the unpalatable expedition diet. Eight weeks breathing in thin, cold, gritty air that left the human body unsatisfied with every breath.
No wonder everyone was desperate to escape.
Most of the Sherpas had been through this before and they didn’t even need instruction. Strings of yaks began to arrive from Dingboche and Pheriche, Base Camp coming alive with a whole new shifting community of wild-looking herders and porters.
‘We don’t want any man carrying more than twenty kilos,’ Brennan ordered. Not that it made a shred of difference. The porters were paid by the kilo and they carried the maximum they thought they could bear.
They laughed at the Westerners who voiced sympathy for their plight. As far as they were concerned it was every man for himself and the more money to be made the better.
At last it was done. The expedition was packed up and ready to roll. All that was left on the glacier to show they’d ever been there were the raised tent platforms, now strangely deformed, the puja cairn with its wind-tattered prayer flags and the clouds of crows which fought for scraps of food.
Kami was happy to see the back of the place. Every step from now on would take him closer to a reunion with Shreeya. He took the glacier trek in his stride, feeling strong on the seven-hour descent.
On the first night of the pull out the expedition reached the yak herders’ settlement at Gorak Shep. Kami was unloading his yaks when he suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder.
‘I got some news for you,’ Tenzing told him with a beaming smile. ‘Jamling’s doing alright.’
Kami felt a wave of relief wash over him.
The Everest Files Page 17