Summit: A Novel

by Harry Farthing

  Launching some deliberately inflammatory questions about early German and Russian intentions to climb Everest, he moved on to research the old axe itself. There were web images of many that were similar. The axe was pretty much typical of the type used between the early ’20s and the late ’60s even if the swastika clearly branded it as having been issued to the German mountain troops—the Gebirgsjäger—within a tighter time period of the ten years that led up to the end of World War Two. He read a little about them. They were once based in Bavaria, to the south of Munich, and had fought continually through the Second World War in Poland, Norway, the Balkans, and the Eastern Front. Maybe a Russian hadn’t needed to go as far as Germany to find the axe?

  The mention of Munich rang a faint bell and Quinn recalled that he had sent that old oxygen cylinder he’d sold on eBay to a collector called Bernhard Graf in the same city. The man had been very determined to win the bidding, pushing up the price aggressively, and, when Quinn had subsequently found out that the weight of the cylinder would make shipping it to Munich much more than initially estimated, hadn’t balked in the slightest at paying the considerable additional cost.

  Quinn dug out his emails from the sale and, in order to reestablish a contact, dropped Graf an email, giving a few hints about an old German ice axe that he might be interested in selling. That done, he moved on from the axe to see if he could find any reference to an Ang Noru, but he found nothing to prove he had ever existed. The Tiger Sherpas were well known and much had been written about them in recent years, but nothing mentioned Ang Noru. It was as if he had been wiped from history.

  Frustrated that every which way he turned he seemed to arrive at a dead end, Quinn increasingly turned to another tactic to fill his long nights. Soraya was the barmaid at the Olav Hotel. Half-Japanese, half-Australian, she was an Olympic-standard snowboarder, they said, petite but athletic with a beautiful, pastel-shaded tattoo of lotus flowers that entirely sleeved one of her arms. When Quinn caught her eye in the bar, she told him she found scars interesting and was impressed by Everest summits. He offered her both in abundance. Warning him she wasn’t into commitment, he gladly took that in return and began to lose his intense interest in mountain archaeology. Whenever he did tune back in to see how his forum questions were doing, he saw a lot of chat, not a little abuse, but nothing concrete to link either Germans or Russians to the north side of the mountain contemporary with the old axe. That was, until he started to receive messages from a “Schicklgruber666.”

  He thought the first was a joke. It was a video clip from the Indiana Jones film Raiders of the Lost Ark showing Nazis torturing Jones’ lost love in her bar in Tibet. A few days later, the second was more serious. It was a grainy black-and-white film of the German explorer Ernst Schäfer traveling through Tibet and sitting at a table with Tibetan elders in Lhasa, the wall behind decorated with SS pennants.

  The messages kept coming through late July and August, one after the other, always in some way linking the Nazis to the mountains or to Tibet. Quinn understood that Schicklgruber666 was walking him so thoroughly and elegantly through the largely unwritten history of Nazi alpinism that he even wondered if it might actually be Henrietta Richards behind it. It was certainly someone with the same levels of knowledge and attention to detail.

  The final message arrived on the last day of August, pinging its arrival just as Quinn was actually reading an email from Henrietta telling him that Dawa had now left hospital and was euphemistically “helping her with her inquiries.” Hoping that meant she would finally get Tate Senior’s lawyers off his back, his attention moved to Schicklgruber666’s latest missive.

  As soon as Quinn clicked on it, it took over his laptop like a virus. To Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” the screen dissolved to black. The music then crescendoed worthy of Apocalypse Now, but only a single cartoon helicopter appeared. It began to fly in circles around the black screen like a fly on a thread, as a snow-covered mountain pushed up from below.

  When the mountain had grown enough to fill most of the screen, and Quinn could easily recognize it as a view of Everest from the north, the helicopter began to hover above its very top. From it parachuted a small, brown-jacketed Adolf Hitler, who proceeded to plant a swastika flag on the summit before goose-stepping around with one arm in the air in a Nazi salute to the sound of a techno-trance mix of the “Horst Wessel Song.”

  The little Hitler was then collected by the helicopter, which flew away, the display falling black and silent once more. Quinn tried to cancel the screen but it remained blocked.

  Slowly, letter by white, Gothic letter, a question appeared as if being loudly typed up onto the screen:

  Mephistopheles, have you put 2 and 2 together yet and arrived at 8848?

  Despite reluctantly concluding that he had, he heard nothing more from Schiklgruber666 after that.

  That mid-September evening, Quinn could only hunch his shoulders as he recognized the arrival of autumn and walk on, unable to fend off the greater chill that always came with being a freelancer. He only had one more booking left, four days in Saas Fee, Switzerland, with a young English climber who wanted to do the Weissmies Traverse and the Nadelhorn, and then he was out of work again.

  Pondering what his next move should be, his cell phone rang. It was the guide Doug Martin, his friend and flatmate. “Neil, I’m in Le Choucas hotel with old Jean Peynard. He told me that there’s a rumor that Sarron has been seen.”

  “What? Here?”

  “Not sure. It’s probably just bullshit. I’ll see what else I can find out but, just in case, stay safe, okay?”

  As soon as the call finished, Quinn’s phone rang again. An international number filled the screen, his heart jumping at the sight of it.

  Sarron?

  “Hello, Mephistopheles,” a voice said when Quinn put the phone to his ear.

  “Mephistopheles eight-eight-four-eight,” it repeated slowly, stressing each syllable before adding, “it almost sounds as if I’m asking to be connected to Zorba the Greek, but I am not, am I, Mr. Quinn?”

  The use of his forum identity followed by his name gave Quinn another jolt.

  “You do know that Mephistopheles is the devil, Mr. Quinn. The devil with whom Faust exchanges his soul for unlimited knowledge. It might be an interesting trade at first but, of course, one that is unlikely to offer much happiness in the longer term.”

  It was no Frenchman speaking. The voice had a German accent even if the English was perfect.

  “Actually I think you might have been slightly mistaken in your hurried selection of a forum name to hide behind. Your sense of irony is to be admired, but I’m afraid you miscast yourself. ‘Faust8848’ is who you really are. You should read more and climb less, Mr. Quinn. Scale some mountains of the mind perhaps, of which you will find that Everest is still the greatest.”

  Quinn moved into the warm entrance of a café to be able to better hear what the eloquent voice was saying, replying testily when it stopped, “Okay, very good, but who are you, and what do you want?”

  There was a pause on the other end of the phone before the voice resumed. “Forgive me, Neil Quinn, if I play a little. The temptation to immediately cast myself as the true Mephisto to your Faustian tragedy is strong, but perhaps I should keep things simple for now and offer my own forum name instead.”

  “Which is?”

  “Schicklgruber … Six … Six … Six.”

  Quinn was lost for words.

  “Have I surprised you some more? I do think that I have. This really is too much fun. Schicklgruber is such an amusing name, isn’t it? Strange then that it should be the maternal name of one of the least comic figures in history, whatever my witty little cartoon might have suggested. Actually, to be truthful, that cartoon wasn’t mine but something prepared for me by the rather talented, if slightly right wing, young friend of mine who organizes my business website. Anyway, I
digress. Where was I? Ah yes, Schicklgruber. You must know that your own, so droll, Mr. Winston Churchill always used to refer to Adolf Hitler as Herr Schicklgruber to very great effect. Sadly, name-calling didn’t assist greatly in preventing the death of six million Jews, but there it is … or was, I should say. But while we are still on the subject of names, why don’t we use another I have? It might put you slightly more at ease, so you can at least talk.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Neil Quinn, this is Bernhard Graf speaking.”

  The collector from Munich, Quinn realized. “But I emailed you months ago.”

  “So you did, but I thought I would give you the summer to better answer some of the questions that were so obviously troubling you before I invited you to come and compare notes on some things that have been troubling me. You have my address, I believe. I would like you to pay me a visit absolutely as soon as you can. Munich is not so far from where I believe you are currently based.”

  “But why should I come all the way to Munich. Can’t we do this by email?”

  “No, we cannot, Neil Quinn. The time for the Internet is over. There are real things for you to see and understand now. And while we are talking of real things, bring that ice axe you mentioned in your email. While you were somewhat disingenuous about its origin, I hardly needed to sell my soul to the devil to conclude that you must have found it on Everest.”

  43

  Ghoom Railway Station, DARJEELING, Northeast India

  March 15, 1939

  3:30 p.m. (British India Standard Time)

  The train funneled out of a dark and dripping final tunnel to emerge into an emerald world of tea plants. The cold of the hill’s stone heart lingered in the wet mist that floated into the open carriages from the surrounding steeply terraced hills. Josef quickly unrolled his shirtsleeves and buttoned the wrists, wishing for his jacket, until the recall of the long, hot journey across India told him to enjoy it.

  Since disembarking from the Gneisenau into the chaos and confusion of Bombay, Schmidt’s expedition had traveled continually by train across an entire subcontinent that was as hot as an oven. Throughout the journey, broken only by a day’s stop in Calcutta waiting for the Siliguri Post train north, Josef had rarely had any idea where they were. There were few landmarks, only desiccated fields scratched into red soil or endless scorched scrubland punctured by stunted thorn bushes that offered no shade, useful only to the type of small, mean bird that impales its prey alive on the spines to keep it fresh. When the occasional building or rocky hill attempted to push up from the flat horizon, it was quickly sliced horizontal by the rippling haze.

  Increasingly drugged by heat and distance, Josef let the empty views from the succession of trains become blank screens on which he projected his own vivid thoughts.

  Magda’s face …

  Pfeiffer’s threats …

  The North Face of Everest …

  His mother and sisters alive …

  Gunter and Kurt dead …

  Little Ilsa …

  He watched them focus and fade in a silent agony of separation, confusion, and loss.

  He missed Magda most of all. After their last night on the boat, she had pleaded with him to escape, writing her family’s new address in Hyderabad in the inside of his Everest book so that he might come and find her when he did. It was an impossible dream. Josef was trapped, pinned to Pfeiffer’s plan by Schmidt’s swastika pin as effectively as a caterpillar on a thorn.

  “Summit or die, Obergefreiter Becker, summit or die …”

  When the train exhaled to a final halt in Ghoom station, Josef’s first impression of Darjeeling was one of faint familiarity. It was an alpine town, the air sharp and thin. He could feel the mountains, even if he couldn’t yet see them. It lifted his spirits a little.

  A sea of expectant faces awaited the train: a mixture of white sahibs in straw hats, stocky porters with tanned bare arms and legs, and tribesmen in heavy wool clothes. The tallest of the whites, a man with a cadaverous, narrow face above a cream linen suit, raised his hat to catch Schmidt’s attention. He shouted his name, “Hans Fischer,” in order to identify himself, directing them to a file of rickshaws, simultaneously unleashing a line of jostling porters to pull their supplies from the wagons to the rear of the train.

  After a long pull up the hill, Josef’s rickshaw, to his surprise, halted in front of what appeared to be a perfect replica of a Bavarian hotel. “Hotel Nanga Parbat” was painted in large, black medieval letters across the whitewashed, heavily gabled front. Fischer’s matronly wife emerged from the front door to be introduced by her husband to Schmidt.

  The equally stern-looking pair then united to show them all in and begin the registration of their new guests. “Damn the English and their need for endless bureaucracy. It gets worse every year,” Hans Fischer said loudly in German as he unbundled a pile of forms and set to work at the reception counter while the team waited, studying the array of maps and pictures that lined the hotel lobby’s walls as individual documents were requested and handed over.

  The display was mostly of Kangchenjunga, Nanga Parbat, or Everest: precise black-and-white photographs that condensed each mountain into a single, unassailable massif that looked impossibly high and treacherous, or hand-colored illustrations that gave the opposite effect, reducing the very same mountains into benign pastel drawings devoid of any scale or difficulty. While Josef contemplated an image of a particularly brutal-looking Everest, another team member commented loudly, “I’m glad we are not trying for that bastard.” The others laughed. Only Josef remained silent, Schmidt watching him intently.

  To turn his team’s attentions elsewhere, Schmidt directed their gazes over a number of team photographs of past German expeditions, name-dropping as he went, until he tapped on a photo of a solitary ice axe planted in a snowy summit. It was flying two small flags, the German swastika above the British Union Jack. He stood back from it, proclaiming loudly, “Take heart, boys, and study this photo of the top of Siniolchu. It is a peak near our destination that my good friend Paul Bauer’s team climbed two years ago. Let it be your inspiration, and let me assure you that our photos will feature only our German flag, whatever our hosts might require.” As he said it he caught Josef’s eye, before continuing. “Dinner tonight will be at 7:00 p.m. Now let’s distribute the keys to the rooms and get everyone settled in. Becker, I need to speak with you and Herr Fischer about some arrangements for the team’s equipment before we go any further. Please join me.”

  Josef walked with Schmidt behind Hans Fischer into a small office on the ground floor. Firmly closing the door behind them, Fischer showed the men to the two chairs in front of his desk and then sat down himself. On the wall behind his seat was a framed swastika pennant.

  Josef glanced up at it.

  “Yes, it is the very same flag that was photographed on the summit of Siniolchu. The expedition leader Paul Bauer presented it to me for my support of German mountaineering,” Fischer said, as if reading Josef’s mind. He paused before adding, “In fact, for my support of Germany in general in this region. Actually I must admit to being surprised that Bauer is not supervising this operation, given its very nature, but I understand that it is a private SS venture, and, of course, I have every respect for that. My nephew is a panzer-grenadier in the Second SS Deutschland, currently in training in Berlin. The reichsführer knows that I am a man who can be fully trusted with his interests in this region.”

  Fischer eyed Josef up and down.

  “Well, how are you feeling after such a long journey? Do you really think that you, one man, can do it?”

  “Fine. Yes, I do,” Josef answered, returning Fischer’s hard stare until he looked away to speak to Schmidt.

  “Well, I hope that the reichsführer has the right man for the job, even if I am inclined to think that perhaps things may not prove to be quite as simple as ima
gined. Turning to the business at hand, there are some things that you should know. Firstly, I have identified the porter who will go with you. He is excellent at altitude, a Tiger Sherpa who has been above twenty-seven thousand feet on Everest. He has an ongoing grievance with the British, whom he hates and who have blackballed him in return, which is obviously beneficial to our cause. He speaks some German, as he has worked not only with German expeditions but also lately for me here at the hotel. He already knows that he is to personally assist Obergefreiter Becker on this expedition but does not yet know that he is to accompany him to Mount Everest. I am trusting that his loathing of the British is such that he will jump at the chance when he does. He is called Ang Noru, and I will introduce you tomorrow morning.”

  Fischer stopped for a moment, as if considering some unspoken detail.

  “I have absolutely no doubt that Ang Noru will help you. For the reasons I have already explained, he is the best you could hope to find. However, I should warn you from the start that he does, like many of the local people here, have one big weakness: drink. As long as you keep him away from that stuff, he’s as good as gold.

  “Which brings me on to another warning, Becker. Darjeeling is a village, a British one at that. You must not do or say anything that might give anyone the faintest idea that you are here for any purpose other than Schmidt’s expedition. The Sherpas are very wily. Any clue that you are up to something different will undoubtedly find its way back to Karma Paul’s ears. He is the local middleman who organizes all the porters, particularly for the British expeditions, and he most definitely knows on which side his bread is buttered, as his masters would say. If he hears what you are up to, it is inevitable that sooner or later the English will find out, and then we will all have some explaining to do.”

  Schmidt turned to Josef. “You heard the man.”

  Josef ignored him, looking back at Fischer to say, “Anything else I need to know?”