Julian cried out as he ran toward the end of the logs and launched the ice tool high into the air.
Brooks watched it arch out over the river, the rope unraveling behind it. The tool flipped end over end until the rope weighed it down. The pick streaked straight toward the flooded area to his left.
It was going to make it.
The ground over there was submerged and didn’t appear nearly as stable. Most of the trees had been carried off, leaving pits of mud above which swirling eddies formed. The pick would undoubtedly stick, but how long would it be able to remain in place when the river pulled Julian’s weight against it.
Brooks pushed off from the tree and splashed toward where it would land. His feet sank into the mud past his ankles and the deceptive current tugged at his legs with greater force than he anticipated. He’d barely taken two strides when the rope tightened and jerked the ax in reverse.
He looked toward the opposite side of the river as Adrianne screamed behind him.
Julian left his feet and flew backward into the spume, his arms and legs extended out in front of him like the appendages of a doll. He hit a boulder and tumbled over the side, vanishing into the impenetrable shadows in the crevices between the rock and the cliff.
The ice tool struck the river with a splash before Brooks could even think about diving for it. The rope slithered across the surface and streaked straight down toward the bottom, drawing taut as it stretched back over the rocks. It went suddenly slack and vanished into the water.
“Julian!” Brooks shouted. He strode toward the river and sank to his knees in the mud. The current battered him and he had to drive his hand into the ground to keep from being carried away. When he looked up again, an arc of blood spattered the escarpment and a dark shape moved quickly through the mist.
He flipped over and saw the fear in Adrianne’s eyes.
“Run!” he shouted.
Brooks pushed himself up from the mud and barreled blindly into the forest after her.
Thirty-four
Excerpt from the journal of
Hermann G. Wolff
Courtesy of Johann Brandt, Private Collection
Chicago, Illinois
(Translated from original handwritten German text)
February 1939
A better man than I would have gone back for the others. I have come to terms with my cowardice, and yet I fear I might never learn the fates of my colleagues Johann Brandt and Kurt Eberhardt. I will never forget the war cry of our Master Hunter, who managed to hold the beasts at bay until the sun had risen into the sky. Nor will I forget his sacrifice, for were it not for his bravery and unparalleled skill with a rifle, I likely never would have escaped the accursed valley with my life, such that it is. I can only imagine my father’s shame. He is a man who returned from the Great War against his will, kicking and screaming for another go at the forces of King George. Only his scorn and public disgrace await me in the Fatherland, where there will be questions for which even my best answers are insufficient.
So I squat on the trail in the home of a Luoba [sic] farmer, who allows me to stay in his barn in exchange for my labor in the cassava fields, while I patiently wait for my colleagues to emerge from the valley. It has been three weeks now. Three infernal weeks of eating rice with tapioca and bolting the doors at night against a threat the old man calls Yeh-Teh [sic], which can be heard clawing at the wooden doors and walls, even over the braying of the mules kind enough to share their stables with me.
I know in my heart that my friends are all dead, but I still pray they found their way safely from the clutches of Motuo and through the mountains to the south into Bootan [sic]. Only monks frequent the trail, herding hairy yaks with the devil’s horns, their red robes sweet with the smell of incense. They pass me in the fields without a glance, as though I do not exist in their eyes. It is a feeling with which I am intimately acquainted, for unlike König and Brandt, who have an aura of greatness about them, I am but the simple son of a soldier whose only potential claim to glory now sits inside trunks in the back of a cave, the cans rusting and the film beginning to disintegrate.
I might as well not return at all without the film our benefactor commissioned and the rest of my team, from whom such amazing discoveries had been expected. My welcome would undoubtedly consist of prompt dismissal from the ranks of the SS and reassignment to the lowliest position available in the Ministry of Propaganda, assuming I escaped service as cannon fodder for the Soviet Russians. I have a mind to stay here with the mules until I have worn out my welcome and the bitter winter claims me. Let them find my frozen corpse a thousand years from now and wonder which manner of primitive life form I was to have passed from this world sitting still enough to freeze to ice.
Had König survived, he would have returned to a parade in his honor and his own personal ladder through the ranks of the Ahnenerbe. Eberhardt and Metzger could have staked their claim to any university position they fancied. After reading a mere fraction of his research, I have no doubt Brandt would have been able to write his own ticket to whatever hallowed halls of academia awaited such men of vision. Even had I my films, my reward would have been relegation to a darkroom where countless hours of splicing and editing awaited me and where thousands of hours of uneventful footage could be cobbled into a single unremarkable travelogue featuring five mildly entertaining men, the most uninteresting of whom left the others behind to save his own skin.
I recall our time on the ship bound for Ceylon and the dreams of grandeur we shared, while strange foreign lands passed over the rails. Five boys with the mysteries of the world waiting to be laid bare before them. I remember the wine and the laughter we could no longer suppress at the comedic notion of finding some primitive Eden filled with perfect physical specimens of Nordic heritage, whose ancestry we claimed despite our complete lack of physical resemblance.
Metzger had been engaged to marry the daughter of a farmer, whose lands would have one day made him wealthy. Eberhardt’s family owned a percentage of an Austrian salt mine and König’s father had left him the keys to the kingdom. Only Brandt—who was orphaned as a boy—and I had come from nothing, while only I would return to it, and with even less than I had initially set out. If only I could return the wealthy son of a heroic adventurer or a brilliant anthropologist whose observations would provide a rallying cry for our entire nation. Then it would not matter if I returned empty-handed or alone, for having nothing was vastly different than being nothing. Had I the slightest ambition I would have filmed our final hours in Motuo or collected König’s rifle or salvaged the work of the other three. Then I would have at least had something of value beyond this pathetic notebook filled with this often-incoherent drivel.
We have failed in our mission. More to the point, I have failed in mine. At least the others have an excuse. What is mine? I ran because König told me to and I never once looked back? The sound of his murder so traumatized me that I waited a dozen kilometers away until I finally gave up and abandoned my colleagues without even bothering to learn their fates? That I had potentially left them in dire straits, to die at the hands of something I never once saw, not even when all I had to do was press my eye to the gap between slats in the door while I was safely bolted behind it? Something that might very well have been exactly what we had been dispatched to find? Oh, yes, I am sure the Reichsführer-SS and I would share a haughty laugh as I regaled him with those tales.
I find myself wondering if a death by freezing in these horrible mountains or in a British cell in Sikkim or by ostracization in the Fatherland could be any worse than the one offered in the valley below, which on a clear day appears as a benign green smudge through the notch between snowcapped peaks. Was not a swift death preferable to a protracted one? Would an admitted coward not seek out the more swift and merciful end?
There is a certain logic to the course of action I now ponder. The last place the eagle would look for the fish is on dry land. The wolf would never expect to find the rab
bit in its own den. Perhaps there is still the possibility of reward greater than that offered by a quick death. If I could collect my cans of films, the notes and research of the others, and the trophies of our expeditionist, then I would not be returning empty-handed, but rather with the fruits of all of our labors. I would be the sole heir to the rewards each entitled us. Failing at that, I would at least be spared an agonizing death in the cold or from the shame of a coward’s homecoming.
Perhaps I should invest further thought into this notion, for at this moment I have nothing but time. These monks who come and go with impunity…surely there is something I can learn from them, whatever tool allows them to survive where we, as a group, failed. And what better distraction than a man in a bright red robe when attempting to sneak through the land of the bull?
I will seize the next opportunity to follow from afar.
Maybe the heavens will smile upon me just this once.
Thirty-five
Yarlung Tsangpo River Basin
Motuo County
Tibet Autonomous Region
People’s Republic of China
October 17th
Today
A crashing sound ahead of him and Adrianne went down hard. She finally allowed the terror to catch up with her and started to cry. Her back shuddered as she buried her face in her hands and kicked at the detritus.
Brooks collapsed to the ground beside her, exhausted. He’d burned through every ounce of energy long ago and was running on adrenaline fumes that weren’t going to last much longer.
“We need to keep moving.”
He took her by the arm and attempted to help guide her to her feet. She rose only as far as her hands and knees.
“Did you see his face?” she whispered.
Brooks looked away. The expression of horror on Julian’s face was the last thing he wanted to think about now.
“Come on. We can’t afford to stay still for very long.”
“It doesn’t matter. They’ll find us soon enough. We’re dealing with an apex predator. Its instinct isn’t to colonize or spread its seed. Its dynamics are very simple. It hunts and it feeds. That’s all. We represent competition for resources, and that’s one thing it can’t allow.”
“We’re also easy prey.”
“I don’t necessarily think that’s the case. Remember the tiger in the cave? It was killed, but its remains weren’t consumed, they were scavenged. And think about the men entombed in the cliff. They were all brutally beaten to death, but not so much as a bite had been taken from any of them. They’d been killed and left to rot, then someone collected them and interred them where they weren’t likely to be found. If you were to encounter our civilization for the first time, it would appear exactly the same.”
“But we’re dealing with animals, and animals kill will with the sole intention of consuming their prey.”
“You know as well as I do that we aren’t dealing with animals.”
Brooks said nothing. He had been fighting that admission with everything he had. To accept that they were dealing with a species evolved from a higher order mammal like Homo sapiens was to concede every slim advantage they held, if only in his mind. The most effective predators were those that killed without thought or conscience. Sharks were the perfect example of nature’s most effective hunters. They were always in motion and attacked anything that moved. They never overpopulated their own ecosystems. They savaged their prey without mercy or pity. The prospect of dealing with a hominin version capable of higher thought was the most frightening idea Brooks had ever considered.
Adrianne struggled to her feet and turned in a circle. The dark forest closed around them like a fist, making it impossible to see more than a dozen feet in any direction.
“Where are we?” she finally asked.
“I’d guess roughly three miles south of the point where we pitched camp. If I’m right, then the bridge that will take us out of here is about six or seven miles…that way.”
He pointed toward what he estimated to be northwest.
“We’re already on the other side of the river. We should just keep heading south and take our chances in Nepal or Burma.”
“It’s one thing crossing the Himalayas on an established route. Attempting a blind crossing is another thing entirely. Mt. Everest is nearly thirty thousand feet and lies directly between us and Nepal. We couldn’t make that climb on our best day, let alone the way either of us feels right now.”
“I’m fine.” She turned away, but he’d already seen the sweat pouring from her hairline and the flush of her cheeks. There was no hiding her ragged breathing or the way she unconsciously massaged her temples. “What about heading due east until the river doubles back into India?”
“Think about the canyons we had to navigate to get here. If there was another way around, don’t you think someone would have found it by now? There’s a reason the Chinese haven’t been able to build a road through here, even with the modern equipment at their disposal.”
“Stop shooting down every suggestion I make!”
“I’m just being realistic.”
“You’re being an asshole!”
Brooks took her by the hand, but she jerked it away. Her skin was startlingly warm.
“I want to get out of here just as badly as you do. Believe me. We can’t afford to make a mistake, though. Whatever’s out there not only knows where we are, but where we need to go. And every second we waste arguing costs us what little lead we have.”
“So what do you propose then?
“They know we have to head for the bridge and they’ll expect us to come from this side of the river. They won’t expect us to double back.”
“There’s no way we’ll be able to cross the river again, let alone climb up the cliffs lining it.”
“And yet that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
This time when he took her hand, she didn’t resist. He guided her through the forest, toward the mountains to the east, the white slopes of which rose into the storm clouds through the canopy. All of the mountains encircling them looked the same; it would be exceedingly easy to get turned around and head off in the wrong direction. If countless generations of Sherpas and Lhobas and any number of smaller tribes hadn’t found an alternate egress through the Himalayas, then what were their chances? They would freeze to death in the treacherous valleys, where no one would even know to look for them.
It suddenly struck Brooks just how unlikely it was that any of them would be missed.
Their guide was a paid mercenary who smuggled Lord only knew what across some of the most dangerous borders on the planet. Warren was single and often repulsively arrogant. Julian was estranged from his family and fearless to the point of recklessness when it came to climbing. Adrianne was a driven grad student whose work was her life. Brooks’s only real attachment was to an institute whose founder was the only man alive who knew where they were. And Brandt had already demonstrated his powers of deception and manipulation.
How many teams had he sent into these very hills to be slaughtered by a species only he had somehow survived? And more importantly, why had he sent them here now?
What did he have to gain from their deaths? Brooks couldn’t fathom a single thing. The real question was what did he have to gain if they managed to accomplish their objective and return with the viral DNA they’d been sent to acquire? It wasn’t about obtaining the proof he could hold up for the world to see; the plaster cast could have easily been used to that effect, if not as conclusively. There had to be something more to it, some motivation that Brooks was missing. And therein, he feared, lay the key to their survival.
The mountains rose even higher above them as they ran. The mist receded toward the peaks as the sun ascended somewhere above the clouds. Every time they burst from the cover of the trees and into a clearing, he expected death to be waiting for them, and every time he was surprised to find only another dense thicket waiting for them. The river grew louder to the
ir left as it slowly worked its way southeast. Between the ruckus of their passage and the thunder of the Yarlung Tsangpo echoing from the cliffs it had spent eons eroding, they wouldn’t have been able to hear anything crashing toward them through the underbrush, let alone stealthily stalking them, until it was too late.
They’d never made it this far east. Beyond the sheer cliffs and the icy mountains, which served as an impasse and had thwarted every invading horde and army, lay the People’s Republic of China. Were the river navigable, it would eventually take them south into India and the slums of Calcutta on the Bay of Bengal. This far to the north, though, it was a wild, white-capped beast filled with uncategorizable rapids and waterfalls that had defied commerce for millennia. Even if they had a vessel, it would be smashed to bits—and them right along with it—before they were even out of Motuo.
The ground grew steeper and the deciduous trees gave way to bushy pines, which thinned enough to reveal a series of towering yellow granite escarpments from the crevices of which the gnarled trunks of dead trees protruded. Carrion birds wheeled overhead in the drizzle, their black forms intermittently vanishing into the clouds and reappearing again. The river advanced ever closer. The occasional thoom marked the descent of a tree from the runoff on the opposite side.
The forest abruptly gave way to the granite cliffs that served as the barrier to the Himalayas to the east. To either side of the river were now sheer faces of granite that had to be at least a hundred feet tall and served to channel the water between them into rapids and troughs that collided with such force that the air was opaque with spume. Anyone unfortunate enough to be swept into the gorge would find himself beaten and broken against the rocks and drowned even before he could be gored by the wooden projectiles fired downstream by the current.
Fearful Symmetry: A Thriller Page 22