Summit: A Novel

by Harry Farthing

  “Henrietta, yes. Thank you,” Quinn said, sitting in the empty chair in front of her. When Sanjeev handed him the tea in a flower-patterned porcelain cup and saucer, it looked ridiculous in his big hands, still calloused and raw from the climb.

  “Neil, I’m sorry to drag you here so soon after your return to Kathmandu. I’m sure you need to rest but I have been asked to look into what happened to Nelson Tate Junior by the US authorities in Nepal,” Henrietta said, changing her tone and quickly getting to the point.

  “I suspected as much, Henrietta. I understand the need for clarity,” he replied. Setting down his tea, Quinn then pulled out the draft email of explanation from his day sack. He passed it across to her. “I thought it best to try and write the whole damn mess all down.”

  Henrietta took the pages. When she saw there were five, all filled with type, she turned to Gupta and said, “Sanjeev, can you pass me a copy of my book?” Sanjeev quickly handed her a thick hardback book. The dust jacket read, “From Picadilly to the Sky: The British Quest to Climb Everest, 1921–1953 by Henrietta Richards.”

  She passed the heavy book to Quinn almost as if in return for his note, saying, “Neil, I want to carefully read your email while I have you here, so why don’t you take a look at my latest while you’re waiting.”

  Beginning to read, she quickly stopped and looked at Quinn.

  “Have you sent this already?”

  “No. It’s just a draft at this stage.”

  “Good. My advice is to hold it back. From what I am hearing, Nelson Tate Senior is not a particularly reasonable man and anything you send him is likely to be little more than fodder for his lawyers, who are going to twist your words in any way they can. I already know that Sarron is saying you abandoned the boy and I can understand your desire to explain yourself, but you should let it be through an independent source like me rather than directly, however uncomfortable that makes you. Obviously that assumes you didn’t desert the boy, something your note will confirm I presume?”

  “Of course, Henrietta. Frankly I would rather it was me still up there, not him.”

  “That’s a noble sentiment, Neil, but you’re not, so you need to get ready for the legal onslaught that is undoubtedly going to come your way. You won’t be the first guide to be sued for losing a client on Everest.”

  “I know. Ironically I studied law at Bristol University and worked at Peckett, Cross & Avon in London for six months in 1990 before I quit to become a mountain guide.”

  “Yes, you told me that once before. I suspect it’s not going to be much help. Tate is telling the US ambassador that he is going to be utterly relentless in punishing whoever was responsible for his son’s demise. I also know that Sarron has already filed a report in Lhasa with the Chinese, and, whilst I am unable to get my hands on it, I am sure it is consistent with what he has been telling anyone who will listen—that the responsibility is yours. This whole affair is going to get even messier than it is already, so given that Sarron is really not my favorite cup of tea let me read this carefully now and see what I can do to get to the truth. Have a look at my new book while you wait—it might restore your faith in the mountain a little.”

  At first Quinn found it hard to concentrate on the meticulously detailed hardback, distracted by the intensity with which Henrietta was studying his email. With a red pen, she was making notes and marks next to every paragraph, leaving him feeling as if he was having his poorly done homework marked in front of him. Wishing his life was still that simple, he reopened the thick book to the section of photographs in the center.

  Quickly flicking through the images of tweed-jacketed English gentlemen backdropped by mountain monasteries or taking tea in the shadow of Everest, he arrived at the final picture to see that it was the classic image of Tenzing on the summit in 1953. As he looked again at the very picture that had started him on his own journey to the mountain, it struck him painfully that his Everest career was over, whatever the outcome of that meeting. The thought made him shut the book and wait in silence instead.

  When Henrietta finally finished studying his note she said, “It’s thorough, I’ll give you that. Can you send it to me electronically?”

  “Given what you have already said, should I do that?”

  “You can trust me, Neil.” Holding up the note, she asked, “Dawa and Pemba will corroborate all this I assume?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well that’s good, because I will be seeing them also. I must say that the thing that worries me is that Tate Junior’s death is not clear-cut. Do you think that Sarron’s oxygen was defective?”

  The question shocked Quinn because he hadn’t mentioned Pemba’s speculation about it in his report, focusing only on the hard facts and the timeline of their climb as best he could recall.

  “I didn’t say that in my notes.”

  “No, Neil, you didn’t. But that is what they are saying on the street.”

  Quinn shrugged his shoulders. “I’m really not sure. Something was wrong with the kid’s system on the summit even if I must say that mine was working perfectly. When we got down to the Glacier Camp, Pemba was saying he thought some of the cylinders were defective but as you’ll have read in my email he didn’t actually use his on the way up, trying for a summit without Os when he wasn’t feeling that well which really didn’t help matters. I rather put his comments down to trying to deflect attention from his own error. Dawa wouldn’t say much on the subject but maybe the Sherpas did talk more about it amongst themselves. You know how they are. Anyway we left the kid’s cylinder on the summit next to my ice axe so there’s no way to get it now and check. Personally, I think it was more a case of one of those days when little things start to go wrong and slowly but surely everything snowballs out of control.”

  “Do you think the summit bonus might have clouded your judgment at any point during the expedition?”

  There it was again—another thing he had made no mention of in his email.

  Quinn began to feel uneasy.

  “No, even if Sarron did become slightly obsessive about it, but I suppose it was a lot of money.”

  “How much money, Neil?”

  “One hundred thousand dollars; Sarron promised me ten percent.”

  Henrietta tutted once loudly at him and then very deliberately shook her head.

  “Actually, Neil, you are on the low side with that. Tate Senior is a billionaire. The Kathmandu rumor mills, whose sources, I assume, are predominantly Sarron’s many creditors, think that the summit bonus was actually five hundred thousand dollars. Even Pashi the barber could have told you that.”

  She watched Quinn as the information sank in. His eyes closed a little, and his face stiffened, revealing to her that only then did the whole performance on the summit finally make sense to him.

  “Well, however much it was, it won’t be paid,” Quinn replied with a grim shake of his head. “The kid is dead and I’m sure that Tate Senior is going to want his pound of flesh from all of us in return, as you say. Frankly, I wonder if he isn’t right too.”

  Henrietta paused and then angling her head slightly said, “Tell me about that old ice axe you mentioned finding on the Second Step.”

  “It’s just an old axe. Lucky for me, I guess, that I found it when I did, but beyond that I can’t see it’s really relevant to the big picture.”

  “It’s not George Leigh Mallory’s, is it?”

  Quinn shook his head quickly, revealing his disbelief, a little frustration even, that she was thinking about details like that given the greater scheme of things.

  The woman really is bloody relentless.

  “No, Henrietta. I don’t think it is. It’s just an old axe, anyone could have left it up there.”

  29

  Wewelsburg Castle, NORTH RHINE-WESTPHALIA, Germany

  October 17, 1938

  1:27 a.m.
>
  Standing at gunpoint on the bridge, Josef was swamped with the realization that his whole escape had been a sham, an amusement for Himmler that had killed both his friends. While he was being directed back into the castle’s triangular courtyard at gunpoint, Josef even heard one of the other officers behind him say, “Yes, I know I lost my bet. I will pay up in the morning, but it was worth it for the entertainment. It was quite impressive, just as Jurgen predicted it would be.”

  The other officers dispersed to leave Josef with only the man who had stopped him. “On the premise that you understand your escape is impossible and would involve you being shot before you set one foot outside the castle, I am going to put away this pistol and ask you to join me for a conversation inside,” the SS-obersturmführer said as he opened the flap on his pistol holster. Waiting for a nod from Josef, he put his Luger away as two guards appeared, falling in alongside his prisoner. The officer then turned on his heels to lead the way across the cobbled courtyard and enter the castle’s most imposing entrance.

  Inside they followed a banner-strewn corridor lined with polished suits of armor and thick brocade curtains drawn over unseen windows until they entered a large baronial hall. A log fire was raging in an open hearth at the end of the room. A simple yet massive fireplace surrounded it, the heavyset stone carved with swastikas and other symbols. On the mantel was a wrought-iron candelabrum, twisted and hammered to resemble entwined oak branches, that supported twelve red candles burning with smoky, yellow flames. A set of large golden SS runes, cast into the center of the black candelabra’s tree, shimmered beneath their candlelight.

  A long, highly polished table ran the length of the room. Pfeiffer pointed Josef to sit at it.

  In its center were Josef’s boots still tied together by the laces. Observing Josef notice them, the SS officer said, “Your boots. They survived their fall, I am pleased to say. Sadly, your friend was not so fortunate. Please excuse me a moment while I go and get some things. Try not to let your hand bleed on the table in the meantime.” He passed Josef a folded white handkerchief that he took from inside his jacket and left the room.

  The two guards moved behind Josef in silence as he wrapped the handkerchief around his blood-soaked, bound finger and rested it inside the top of his shirt, trying to keep it upright. To take his mind off its throbbing pain, he contemplated the three immense tapestries that were hung on the wall opposite him. Newly woven, threads still brightly colored, the first panel to the left of the wall depicted helmeted, black-clad SS troops fighting furiously behind a barricade as two helmetless comrades, one with his head swathed in a bloody bandage, administered aid to a wounded SS officer at their feet. The officer was lying back in a scarlet pool of his own blood, his Luger pistol still at the ready in his hand.

  The next panel, in the center, showed the same SS soldiers but this time stripped down to baggy black trousers, jackboots, and white shirts with rolled-up sleeves as they tilled the bloodstained soil that stretched into the distance until blocked by a range of fierce-looking, snow-covered mountains. The third and final panel was a pastoral scene of a smiling, happy family. The father, recognizably the wounded SS officer, healed and out of uniform, was standing alongside his blond wife and four perfect children in front of a thatched, whitewashed farmhouse. The family was linking arms as the father pointed proudly across the same land, its acres of golden corn ripe for harvest, toward the mountains in the distance, now a soft purple, their snows receded to the tops of the highest summits.

  Josef’s attention was brought back to the table by the return of the SS officer who sat opposite, placing a leather folder and a sheathed SS ceremonial dagger to his front. Lifting the knife, he drew its deep blade from the black and silver sheath. Reaching forward, he inserted the point under the laces of Josef’s boots and with his other hand pulled them back to him. The instant he applied pressure on the blade, it sliced through the heavy laces as if they were made of silk. Looking at Josef, he then laid the knife down in the center of the massive table that separated them; the tip of its blade pointed directly toward Josef. The flickering glow of the fire picked up the Gothic script engraved down the center of the knife’s polished blade:

  meine ehre heißt treue

  The officer’s pale eyes stared into Josef’s. “Gefreiter Josef Becker of the 99th Gebirgsjäger, I should introduce myself, as there was no time for such pleasantries in Munich. I am SS-Obersturmführer Jurgen Pfeiffer of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler. I am the personal adjutant to the reichsführer of the SS.” He paused to let his introduction sink in before continuing. “Gefreiter Becker, what do you notice about the knife you see before you?”

  Josef looked at it and back at the officer. “It’s sharp.”

  Pfeiffer studied Josef a little longer then said with a slow, exaggerated nod, “Yes, it is, isn’t it? It could kill you in a second. What else do you see?”

  “The blade says, ‘My honor is my loyalty.’”

  “It does. Do you have any loyalties, Gefreiter Becker?”

  “Yes.”

  “Given that you have committed crimes against your führer, your race, and your country, to what, then, or to whom, perhaps, are your particular loyalties?”

  “My family and my friends.”

  “Of course. Family and friends, those ever-convenient refuges of self-justification invoked, without conscience, by every petty criminal and gangster the moment he realizes his pathetic little game is up. As this evening’s events have substantially reduced the number of your friends, for the purposes of this conversation I must ask then that you give further thought to your family as we speak.”

  Pfeiffer looked once again at the knife. “What else do you see, Becker?”

  “The blade is double-edged.”

  “Yes. What does that make you think of?”

  Josef was drained, exhausted. He’d had enough games.

  “Nothing.”

  “I know climbing can be tiring, Gefreiter Becker, but I do advise you to humor me.”

  Pfeiffer gestured to the two guards to leave.

  In an instant they were gone, the door shutting behind them.

  Josef was now alone with the SS officer. He looked at the cold, unblinking eyes before him, seeing a faint reflection of the fire burning in the hearth.

  “That there are two edges to the blade,” Josef replied pedantically.

  “Exactly. Two. Sharp. Edges.” Pfeiffer stated each word individually as he stared at Josef. “Hence, it cuts both ways, a concept that you should focus on as you listen to what I am about to explain to you. Shall I begin?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “No.” Pfeiffer picked up the knife and started to gently stroke one edge of its blade with his thumb. “You forfeited that right when you took it upon yourself to smuggle Jews. Crimes such as yours against the Reich are automatically punishable by the death sentence. Fortunately for you, I have the power vested in me by the reichsführer to override that sentence in order that you might do something for us. However, the task still has an edge to it. It could kill you, although that would only happen in the moment of your own failure, which is therefore more up to you than to us, so it could be seen as a slight improvement on your current situation.”

  Pfeiffer turned the knife over and repeated the movement on its second edge, then with the flat of the blade he opened the leather folder in front of him. Inside was a thin stack of white cards.

  “To ensure that you quite literally apply your heart and soul to the operation I have selected you for, we also have the other edge of the blade. Do you like playing cards? I am sure you do, isn’t that how all Wehrmacht gefreiters pass the time?”

  With the tip of the knife, the SS officer slowly arranged the white cards in a row of seven as if laying out a hand. Inserting the knife blade under each card, he began to turn them over revealing that they were photographs. He stopped after
the first three, the faces of Gunter, Kurt, and Josef.

  Lifting the knife, Pfeiffer stuck the point first into the face of Gunter and lifting the photo, then laid it down on top of the photo of Kurt. Pushing again on the knife, it stuck through into the second photo and again he lifted them, both impaled on the tip of the blade as he coldly looked at Josef.

  Getting up from the table, Pfeiffer said nothing but walked to the fireplace where he pulled the two photographs from the end of the blade and tossed them into the flames. Returning to the table, he used the knife again to turn over the next three photographs.

  Josef found himself looking at the faces of his mother and his two sisters alongside his own photograph until Pfeiffer blocked his view by laying the knife blade over the top of them.

  “Forgive me if I am being a little melodramatic, but I assume I am making your situation clear?”

  Looking away in horror, Josef glanced up again at the three tapestries behind Pfeiffer, wishing with all his heart that the SS officer before him was the one bleeding out in the first panel. If Josef could have anything to do with it, this man wouldn’t survive to look at any mountains with his family.

  His eyes traveled into the mountainous distance of the tapestries, and then all the pieces suddenly fell into place. With utter hatred, he returned his eyes to the SS officer. “So what is it you want me to climb?”

  Lifting the knife once again, Pfeiffer used it to flick over the final photograph.

  “This.”

  30

  The Khumbu Hotel, Thamel, Kathmandu, Nepal

  June 5, 2009

  2:35 p.m.

  Entering the Khumbu Hotel, Quinn was quickly pulled aside by the doorman who said breathlessly, “Mr. Neil, you must watch out, sir. Two men looking for you this morning. I say you not here, not know where you are. They are bad men, Mr. Neil, very bad men. The type that is fucking the mother.”