Fearful Symmetry: A Thriller

by McBride, Michael

  “Everyone make sure to eat and drink your fill,” Brooks said. “We have a rough journey ahead of us.”

  “How far is it to the next camp again?” Warren asked.

  “Only five thousand feet—”

  “That’s not even a mile,” Julian interrupted.

  “—straight up.”

  With the clopping of hooves, their trail boss, Zhang, appeared from the road on the other side of the wooden hovel, leading a hairy mule. Its breath plumed around the bit in its mouth. All of their packs were strapped to its back in a gravity-defying mound. Their hydro bladders were holstered on its flank for easy retrieval. The last thing they could afford to do was become dehydrated, especially as they ascended into the mist surrounding the peaks.

  Zhang beamed, showcasing a smile lacking the two front teeth in the upper row. His skin was wrinkled and leathered by the elements, his dark eyes hooded, and his slender frame concealed beneath multiple layers of clothing. His black braids hung from beneath his fur-rimmed hood. He gestured to the mule like a showcase model presenting a new car.

  “You like?” he said.

  “That’s a world-class mule, for sure,” Brooks said. “You didn’t steal it, did you?”

  “No, no. I buy. I pay with money I find in bag here.”

  His smile grew impossibly wider.

  Brooks regretted asking. He didn’t trust Zhang as far as he could throw him. Anyone whose primary skill set involved moving unnoticed across hotly contested borders without incurring the wrath of the Chinese or the Indians or any of the bands of thieves stalking these trails suggested he was accustomed to smuggling a lot more than tourists through the mountains. That Brooks had already heard him converse in Tibetan, two different dialects of Chinese, a kind of pidgin Indian, and passable English suggested he was also a lot smarter than he wanted anyone to believe. His rural bumpkin façade might have been just for show, but his allegiance to the money they were paying him seemed genuine enough.

  A reddish-orange aura spread across the jagged horizon to the east as the sun prepared to rise.

  Brooks stood and turned to face the Himalayas. Somewhere up there was what he had traveled all this way to find. He could feel it. There was just one thing that continued to gnaw at him, despite his best efforts to rationalize it away. If Brandt had known it was up there all this time, why had he not returned to gather more evidence to share with the world? After all, it was a discovery of the highest order, a revolutionary finding that would change the field of evolutionary anthropology forever. And why would he wait until death was imminent to share what he had found with Brooks, when any of his predecessors would have jumped at the chance to be a part of history?

  Or maybe Brandt had done the exact same thing with them and had simply withheld that information from Brooks. Perhaps Brandt himself had returned on numerous occasions and been unable to find what he had simply come upon by accident the first time. For all Brooks knew, he was just another in a long line of anthropologists Brandt had wound up like tin soldiers and turned loose in the Tibetan wilds. After all, as he had learned only recently, it wasn’t out of character for Brandt to hide the truth. Who knew if there was really anything up there at all? He couldn’t rule out the possibility that the plaster cast was an elaborate fake. Or perhaps he just didn’t want to.

  None of it mattered in the grand design. If there was a chance that Brandt’s story was true and the discovery of a lifetime was up there, then it was a chance he had to take. In this case, even returning home empty-handed wouldn’t be considered an outright failure. This was the adventure he needed to break out of the monotonous routine into which he’d settled. This was what he had envisioned for his life when he first realized that anthropology was his calling. One of the four most remote areas on the planet awaited him, where few humans had ever set foot, and even fewer Westerners. If there was one place where life could have evolved and thrived in complete isolation, this was it.

  Brooks felt a surge of adrenaline and turned to face the others.

  “All right people. Are you ready to make history?”

  Three

  Duoxiongla Pass

  Motuo County

  Tibet Autonomous Region

  People’s Republic of China

  October 12th

  Five Days Ago

  A damp fog clung to the steep foothills through which they trekked for the majority of the morning. At best, the visibility was maybe a quarter of a mile; at worst, Brooks could barely see the others, mere feet away. The path was formed of smooth stones the size of baseballs, polished by hundreds of years of brutal wind and seasonal runoff, and glazed with a layer of ice that made it nearly impossible to remain upright. The ferns and rhododendrons enclosing the path sparkled with a layer of frost that seemingly turned from water to ice at will. The meandering route followed the topography, skirting granite escarpments hundreds of feet tall and bridging whitewater streams that plummeted from the mist and raced unimpeded down the mountainside. Only occasionally did the snowcapped peaks appear high above, taunting them.

  Somewhere beyond them was what they had traveled all this way to find.

  Brooks had never experienced weather even remotely like this. It didn’t rain or snow as much as the air itself seemed to turn to ice against what little bare skin remained exposed. It felt as though microscopic organisms were taking bites from his cheekbones and forehead. He tried not to dwell on the cold because he knew it was only going to get worse.

  He wore a hybrid hoody that zipped up to his nose, almost high enough to conceal his neoprene balaclava. The jacket had a Pertex shell and synthetic microfiber thermal insulation that was supposed to be nearly impervious to everything the environment could throw at it, but he doubted the manufacturer had ever tested it in wind like this. It buffeted him with such force that he’d taken to walking nearly doubled over and bracing himself with a walking stick. The skin around his sunglasses was abraded to such an extent that it was dotted with blood. There were even times when he had no choice but to drag his pack behind him for fear of the wind using it to lift him like a kite. He knew better than to complain, though, not that anyone would have been able to hear him over Warren’s incessant griping.

  It was almost a relief when they finally ascended from the fog and into the snow, where at least they occasionally felt the presence of the sun on their bodies, despite the howling wind that battered them with snowflakes.

  The path vanished beneath the seamless accumulation, the top layer of which was crisp and sounded like Styrofoam when they broke through it. The first time Adrianne fell, she slid nearly fifty feet straight down the mountain before she managed to catch an ice-rimed granite pinnacle. They all strapped on their crampons after that. The spikes made the mere act of walking difficult, but they granted solid traction. Most of the time, anyway.

  Zhang claimed to know exactly where the trail ran beneath all of the snow. He wore a parka with fur reminiscent of a lion’s mane around the hood and a gap-toothed grin that never left his face. He shouldered the mule’s haunches when it balked at some of the steeper switchbacks and brushed the frozen spume from its muzzle. When it tired he fed it one of the dried roots he stored in his jacket pocket and kept clenched between his molars like a toothpick.

  “You eat, you no get tired so fast,” he’d said and laughed when Julian spit the offered piece onto the ground and shoveled snow into his mouth.

  “Christ, man! It tastes like ass!”

  “You no like ass? Good news for Dorje.”

  He clapped the mule on its flank and urged it faster.

  Despite his initial reaction, Julian persevered and made seemingly endless notes about the root. He believed to it be of the Rhodiola genus, but couldn’t be certain of the species. Whether or not the effects were psychosomatic, he claimed to feel less fatigued and mentally sharper and searched for the source plant in the windswept lee behind every rock outcropping.

  Faded prayer flags beaten to ribbons by the wind sn
apped with such force that they nearly bent the sticks to which they were moored to the ground. Mountains of talus reared up from the accumulation at random intervals, rubble left behind from crumbled cairns and structures that Adrianne said were originally built some forty thousand years ago by a nomadic tribe known as the Qiang, who herded long-horned Tibetan sheep through these mountains and erected these stacked-stone domiciles as shelters from the elements. What little remained of the largest of these dwellings hardly deterred the insistent wind long enough for them to eat protein bars and drink what little water remained thawed in the hydro bladders against the mule’s flank.

  The trail grew even steeper from there, forcing them to crawl in spots.

  By the time they reached the summit of the trail, it already felt like they’d been climbing for days in the thin air. The sun vanished behind the clouds and the storm commenced in earnest, sheeting sideways with such ferocity that the snow looked like the fin of a shark where it blew from the peak of Mt. Duoxiongla. It froze to their clothing on contact and somehow found its way under their sunglasses and inside of their clothes. Or at least that was how it felt. It became impossible to separate the wind from the frozen needles it hurled through them in the same fashion as a tornado impelled blades of grass through telephone poles. They had to shout to be heard and none of them risked looking up from the treacherous footing.

  The mule Zhang had apparently named Dorje brayed when he drove it over a slick precipice, beyond which there appeared to be nothing but open air. It locked its legs and skidded down the narrow switchback, its burden threatening to send it careening over the edge. The wind blew so hard across the northeastern face that the snow had no chance to stick. The loose talus was covered with ice and slid out from beneath their feet, tumbled down the path, and bounded out over the sheer pitfalls.

  At the top of an especially steep section, the mule planted its haunches on the ground and refused to take another step. Zhang gave a sharp tug on the reins, but it didn’t budge. He braced his feet and tried again. The mule lost traction and slid down at him so fast he had to lunge uphill to keep from being plowed over the edge. The mule righted itself on trembling legs within inches of plummeting to its death.

  “We have to unburden her!” Brooks shouted over the screaming wind and reached for one of the straps.

  Zhang slapped his gloved hand.

  “You must not make lose balance! She will get cargo down!”

  “The trail’s too steep!” Adrianne shouted. “She’ll fall to her death!”

  “You no understand. This what mule do.”

  “I’ve had just about enough of this nonsense!” Warren shouted. He pushed past Julian on the narrow trail. “I need to get off of this infernal mountain before—”

  He lost his footing and slid on the ice, a scarlet-jacketed blur streaking past their feet. With a scream and a spray of snow, Warren fired down the path and launched out over the rocks and into the storm.

  Brooks dove for his colleague’s hand. He caught a fleeting glimpse of the terror on Warren’s face.

  And then he was gone.

  Four

  Excerpt from the journal of

  Hermann G. Wolff

  Courtesy of Johann Brandt, Private Collection

  Chicago, Illinois

  (Translated from original handwritten German text)

  November 1938

  It is hard to believe that a mere six months ago I had never set foot outside of the Fatherland, nor had I any reason to believe I ever would. Now, here I am, half a world away from the only home I have ever known and standing on the brink of this new and wondrous frontier. The vessel that ferried us from Genoa to Ceylon—across the Mediterranean and Red Seas and the Indian Ocean—is but a distant memory and already I feel like I have known my new friends all of my life, even though we were only recently introduced. We were all recruited for the expedition by the Ahnenerbe—upon Augustus König’s recommendation and Heinrich Himmler’s personal insistence—from the ranks of the Schutzstaffel and academia. None of us had the slightest idea what we had been volunteered for, only that declining such an honor would not be a prudent choice. Not that we objected. Let it not be said that when the Reichsführer promised the world, he did not deliver. Not only would we have the unprecedented freedom to pursue our professional agendas, upon our return we would be granted the highest academic standing offered by the NSDAP.

  By the time we reached Calcutta, the staging grounds for the journey to come, our group was as tight-knit as any family, with the exception of König, who maintained separate quarters to demonstrate his authority even when we transferred ships in both Colombo and Madras, on the Bay of Bengal.

  While the rest of us explored the sweltering, seething streets of Calcutta, experiencing the outrageous contrast between squalor and excess, and haggling with merchants who would sell their very souls for the right price, König sought refuge from streets that reeked of the impoverished in the wilds, with only his rifle to keep him company.

  None of us cared, for we were boys turned loose in a fairytale land, albeit one inflicted upon the land like a festering wound, between the ricelands and the bustling bay. We drank whisky [sic], took tea, and gorged ourselves upon festive-colored meals that curled the hair in our nostrils, singed our tongues, and passed through us like fire while we awaited news from the Viceroy in Simla, who ultimately granted our request—thanks in no small part to pressure exerted by Berlin—to travel on to Sikkim, where we would again find ourselves ensnared in a morass of bureaucracy and diplomacy.

  Unlike its repugnant Bengali cousin, Sikkim is a majestic land. It is a steep slice of land rising from within sight of the ocean up into the clouds, like a great tent spike driven into the black heart of an otherwise vile and uncivilized land. The narrow-gauge train that carried us as far as Siliguri reminded me of a toy I played with as a child, especially as it passed through forests of bamboo that towered thirty meters over our heads and across trembling wooden bridges that spanned waterfalls of such violence that their roar drowned out even the omnipresent ruckus of the engine and the clamor of the wheels. I filmed it all with an awed sense of fascination for which words alone are insufficient. It was as though I were on a faraway planet, surrounded by species of flora and fauna so unlike anything with which I was familiar it is as though they shared no commonalities whatsoever. I found myself thinking that if there were indeed one place in this world where the roots of our mystical Aryan origin could be hidden, it was this.

  The monsoon rains fell warm and with such ferocity it was as if the globe had been suddenly turned upside down and the seas had become the skies. The very hillsides crumbled before our eyes, opening chasms through which the floodwaters swept with murderous intent. One mudslide nearly buried half of the train and it took us three days to dig it back out. While König hunted this strange land on his own, of course.

  Every stop along the way found Johann Brandt with his calipers and eye charts, measuring and cataloguing the native populations with a boyish grin on his face. Despite his inability to communicate with the natives, nearly every man or woman he approached allowed him to poke and prod to his heart’s content, thanks to his natural charm and charisma. We are not even close to our destination and already he has accumulated more plaster casts of faces than we can comfortably accommodate and has crates filled with racial and hygienic documentation for the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and its eugenicists, with whom he is in frequent contact.

  Kurt Eberhardt and Otto Metzger are content to take in the sights and sounds and the unusual culinary delicacies made from Lord only knows which kind of meat and seasoned with spices forged from the flames of hell themselves. Like me, their mission lies ahead of them and there’s little we are able to contribute, outside of documenting everything we see for posterity.

  Looking back now, I hardly remember Ghoom or Darjeeling, for the moment the snowcapped Himalayas reared from the horizon and impaled the clouds, I could think of nothing else. It was uncons
cionable to even imagine that we would soon be up there, standing on top of the world itself, where few men have ever dared venture. It was a feeling unlike any I had experienced before. Metzger described it as a physical sensation of euphoria, like the moment before climax, but that was too commonplace an occurrence to do it justice.

  We are on the verge of making history—whether or not we find mythical Shambhala and the tracks of our Aryan ancestors—and the film of our expedition will be not only the first of its kind, it will play in theaters and universities alike. It will be a documentary of historical significance that will allow us to bring the same sense of awe we feel right now to an entire generation of Germans who have known little more in life than the taste of shoe leather from the heels of their oppressors.

  From Kalimping we traveled by auto, while our supplies completed the final leg of the journey to Gangtok heaped on the backs of yaks. The dwellings reflected an interbreeding of the neighboring styles, from the Indians to the Chinese, and especially the Mongols. The monasteries and temples stood apart from and towered over the adjacent structures and could be seen from every vantage point. Their walls were slanted and their windows made of paper. Their ornate eaves made them look like they were wearing enormous golden hats. The streets were bare and windswept and as hard as marble. They led upward into hills bristling with trees that reminded me of those back home.

  Everything appeared dirty, from the tattered prayer flags snapping on the constant gales to the whitewashed buildings to the people themselves. Even the sheep and goats herded down the main thoroughfare were a shade of brown I found more than a little repulsive.

  We passed men and women dressed in a style beyond my limited comprehension. Monks in red robes chanted mantras and counted prayer beads with such speed it was impossible to believe they could keep accurate count. There were chortens with spinning prayer wheels, like slabs of meat on vertical spits, and offerings of objects of all types, from the exquisite to the mundane and everything in between. Incense filled the air in fingers of smoke that dissipated on the breeze. Eyes followed our procession, from faces chafed by the elements and eroded by age. We were accompanied the entire way by the clatter of prayer wheels that looked like rattles and made a distinctive clicking sound when their handles were spun between two rubbed palms.