Summit: A Novel

by Harry Farthing

  Braun pointed to Quinn’s ice axe. “That’s an aschenbrenner. You know of him, of course, Aschenbrenner, the man known as ‘Himalaya Pete.’ He left two legacies, disgrace on Nanga Parbat when it was said he skied away from his Sherpas, leaving them to die, and his design for the ice axe, which we all used back then. It was Gebirgsjäger standard issue. I have one up there on the wall.” He raised his shaky hand to point back over his shoulder to the wall behind him. “They worked well in the hills and, with a few modifications, could be useful in hand-to-hand combat, although a sharpened trenching spade was always better.”

  He moved the wavering hand to his side to reach for his spectacles, which were resting on a pile of black, leather-bound ledgers on a small table. He put them on with difficulty and then gestured to be given the axe. Passing it across to the outstretched hand, Quinn saw that on his ring finger Braun was wearing a silver ring, the design on it also an edelweiss.

  Graf spoke some more to Braun before explaining to Quinn. “I have told him that we want to know if this axe brings back any memories. I said that we think that the ‘99’ on the shaft stands for a regiment, that the ‘J. B.’ on the other side are initials. Also that the swastika dates it to the Nazi years.”

  For a while Dieter Braun just held the axe in both hands, slowly rotating the head and looking at it, lost in thought. Then he looked up at the savage mountains that filled his tall window. Outside, it had started to snow, the first hesitant flakes of autumn floating down into the garden.

  Braun began to speak again, Graf translating as he went. “The 99th was one of our regiments. I was in the 98th, and with the 100th, the 79th, and the 54th, we made the 1st Gebirgsjäger Division based here in Garmisch. The Americans still occupy our barracks to this day. You passed them on the way here.”

  Dieter Braun smiled grimly before continuing.

  “I joined up when the 1st Division was formed in April 1938. I was twenty years old, a naive city boy who chose the Gebirgs because he wanted to do some skiing. Can you imagine how stupid that felt a few years later?” He shook his head slowly as if answering his own question.

  “But the individual regiments were older than that. The 99th had existed since the Great War. It was a proud regiment, Bavarians mostly, tough mountain folk. They had little time for people like me from the city.”

  He studied the initials “J. B.” again by holding the axe shaft almost against the tip of his nose and then pointed the collector to the stack of leather ledgers on the side table, Graf making a comment to Quinn that Braun said he couldn’t remember so many names these days, but the ledgers were old regimental rosters that might help.

  The collector began to study the first of the books as the old soldier fell silent, content to drink his vodka and look out at the falling snow, the axe lying across his blanketed lap.

  After ten minutes of silence, Graf looked up from the second of the ledgers and asked Braun something in German, conversing with no translation until he finally turned to Quinn. “In October 1938, three Gebirgsjäger were court-martialed for Treason against the Reich. Their names were Kurt Müller, Gunter Schirnhoffer, and Josef Becker. They were all Heeresbergführer within the 99th. A Heeresbergführer is an army mountain guide, Neil. Dieter says that although he didn’t know them personally, he does remember the scandal. It was a huge disgrace for the entire division. SS troops were assigned to their barracks for a long time after to keep an eye on them all. Evidently the three were working for a smuggling ring based in Munich. Whenever they could get away from the regiment, which was often as they did a lot of mountain training, they moved contraband in and out of Switzerland. They did it by going over the highest, most inaccessible mountain paths in the Alps. He thinks there is a detail of their charges in another of his books.”

  Braun looked at Quinn and, with a finger, beckoned him to move close. Taking the Englishman’s arm, he pointed it weakly to the sheer north face of the mountain that rose dramatically up beyond the sunroom’s window and spoke directly to him. Quinn followed his raised hand to consider the treacherous wall of rock himself. Even with his experienced eye he struggled to make out a climbable line.

  “Dieter says that now that he thinks about it, he recalls that one of the three was an outstanding climber. Not long after he had joined up, he and the other new recruits were permitted to break from their drill to watch the man climb the face he is pointing you to. He did it totally alone without any ropes or support. He says it was an incredible feat to have witnessed.”

  “Which of the three was it?”

  “I am surprised you need to ask. J. B., of course … Josef Becker.”

  Looking again at the sheer wall of rock, Quinn said aloud, “That would be a very extreme climb even today,” before asking, “What were the three smuggling when they were caught?”

  “Oh, they were efficient with their time—they were German, after all. Jewish refugees on the way out; mostly foreign currency, some cigarettes on the way back in.”

  “What does he think happened to them?”

  Graf turned back to Braun, asking the same question in German.

  The old man laughed before replying.

  “Dieter says whenever the scandal was referred to within the 1st Division, it was always said that the three were sent to put a swastika on the top of Mount Sinai as punishment.”

  Quinn raised his eyebrows in question.

  “It’s schadenfreude, Neil Quinn. I thought that was a German concept with which you British were familiar. It was their black joke for the fate of the three.”

  “Which was really?”

  “Either the firing squad at Dachau or the guillotine at Stadelheim Prison for crimes such as theirs. They were never sure which.”

  Dieter Braun said something more, as if asking Quinn a question, forcing the Englishman to look again to the collector for translation.

  “Dieter says it’s likely that he’ll be seeing them again soon. He wants to know if you would like him to ask which it was.”

  54

  Heiliggeistrasse 67, Munich, Germany

  September 19, 2009

  12:00 p.m.

  Sarron entered the crowded bar on the narrow Heiliggeistrasse. Pushing his way roughly through its noisy patrons, he quickly picked out Hagen Kassner’s hard, lean face projecting above the bar counter. It had been some years since he had last seen him, but the man hadn’t changed, still every bit the legionnaire Sarron remembered soldiering with in Africa.

  Kassner pointed him to a door at the side of the bar and, taking a bottle of cognac and two glasses from a shelf, followed him through. In the quiet of the private back room, he first saluted and then poured two full glasses of the brandy, passing one to Sarron.

  “Vive la mort, vive la guerre, vive le sacré mercenaire,” they toasted in unison, downing the contents of the tumblers in one.

  While Kassner quickly refilled the two glasses, his face broke into as much of a smile as it ever permitted itself. “Jean-Phillipe. It’s been a long time. It was good to get your call. I expected you here earlier,” he said, offering Sarron a seat and returning his full glass.

  “I took the long way round. I had to avoid Switzerland. Can’t risk border controls at the moment.” Sarron knew well that he could easily have cut three to four hours from his journey by going through Switzerland, but their border checkpoints were the only ones that now remained in the center of Europe. By slipping south through the Mont Blanc tunnel into Italy and losing himself in that fast flow of traffic that continually pounds eastward past Milan and then up through Austria, he could move between countries without risk of scrutiny but at the expense of a much longer journey.

  “My friend, there is no need for explanations here. It is only that I was looking forward to remembering some of our old times together. Later, when the bar is closed perhaps?”

  Sarron nodded. “Have the others arrived
?”

  “Yes, this morning. They were here off a private plane, but they had a meeting arranged with some Serbische. Yugo Mafia guys, I think. They said to tell you they were feeling a bit—how did they say it?—‘naked’ and wanted to sort it out before you arrived. They should be back soon. Wait here for them. Enjoy the brandy. I will send in some food. I need to get back to the bar for now.”

  “The Englishman?” Sarron asked as Kassner was leaving.

  “Nothing so far, although I do have this for you.” Kassner stopped and took a folded piece of paper from a back pocket that he passed to Sarron. “It will get you started. I’ll send the others in when they return.”

  “Merci, mon ami,” Sarron said, raising his glass to the tall man.

  He opened the fold of paper. It was a printout of the home page for Wunderkammer Graf Antiquitäten, the shop of Bernhard Graf. He first noted the address, Theatinerhof 6, Munich, locating it on a street map of the city hung on the wall. It was not so far away from the bar and he had to fight the urge to go there immediately.

  Telling himself to slow down on the brandy and wait for the others, Sarron studied the paper’s photographs of the type of antiques the shop sold. It was instantly obvious that it was an expensive, if strange, antiques store in the very center of what he knew to be an expensive city.

  Maybe Quinn had found something linked to Mallory and Irvine. This Graf he was visiting certainly looked like the kind of person that might be interested in such a story. If so, perhaps it really did have enough value to get Sarron back from the brink. He was going to need to play this slow and get the full details before he could deal with Quinn the way he intended.

  Half an hour later, the parlor door swung open, and Oleg and Dimitri Vishnevsky came into the room.

  Sarron was instantly surprised at their appearance. He hadn’t seen them since they’d fled Nepal eighteen months earlier. Although they always looked fit and strong, the tall blond twins were no longer the scruffy, disheveled mountain bums he knew but now were immaculately dressed in dark designer clothes and well-cut black leather jackets.

  “Where have you two been? Robbing Hugo Boss?” Sarron asked, recalling Kassner’s comment.

  “No,” they said as a pair.

  As each took Sarron’s outstretched hand to shake it, he noticed the expensive gold watches on their wrists. “You both look well. Richer too. Things must be good.”

  “When we returned, we found the new Russia more friendly to a couple of deserters than it might once have been,” Oleg Vishnevsky replied with a hard smile. As he spoke, his brother dropped a hand-tooled, leather Gucci overnight bag onto the table with a heavy thump.

  Unzipping it, Dmitri lifted out a bundle of white cloth from which he unwrapped an Uzi submachine gun. “On loan from our Yugo friends here,” he said, passing the weapon to Sarron.

  Reaching in again, he produced an AKM rifle with a collapsible stock.

  “Qu’il est beau,” Sarron responded as he rapidly stripped the first gun of its magazine, cocked it, and then let the mechanism strike on the empty chamber with a click.

  Oleg Vishnevsky sat down and helped himself nonchalantly to a brandy using Kassner’s empty glass. “We are here, Sarron, because you called and because we owe you. You gave us a chance when we were lost, with nothing, and we don’t forget something like that in Russia.”

  He drank from the glass and then passed it to Dmitri, who also took a swig before he said, “And because, despite everything we now have, we sometimes miss the Himalayas.”

  He raised the glass up as if in a toast to the mountains.

  “So what now?” demanded Oleg.

  Sarron handed him the piece of paper he had been studying. “I think we should make a start here.”

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  “Patience, boys. Patience.”

  55

  Breitenauer Strasse 21a, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany

  September 19, 2009

  1:00 p.m.

  Visibly tiring, the old soldier directed the collector to more books and albums of photographs stored in a stacked bookcase, requesting that he also turn on a tape recorder on one of the shelves. A marching tune began to play, instantly turning the room’s clock back to a different time.

  “Es war ein edelweiss, ein kleines edelweiss,” long-dead mountain troopers sang as Braun, his cup empty once more, began to doze. Fearing the cup would drop from his hand, Quinn put it on the table and then studied the sheer face of the Waxenstein again.

  It really is a hell of a climb.

  Graf interrupted his contemplation of what it would be like to solo such a wall by passing him a sepia-tinged photograph. “That’s a group photo of all the Garmisch Gebirgsjäger’s noncommissioned officers being officially reissued Nazi Heeresbergführer badges in the spring of ’38. See if you can find Becker in the photograph. There’s a magnifying glass in my case. Next to it, you will also find another batch of my own photographs; they show the different German expeditions that went to the Himalayas in the late ’30s. See if you can then identify Becker in any of those.”

  When Quinn opened Graf’s attaché case, he was shocked to see a black Luger pistol lying in the main pocket of the case. Carefully taking out the photos and the magnifying glass alongside it, Quinn began to study the lines of Heeresbergführer arranged in the old photograph. It took some time to match the face to the name from the many listed on the mount below but eventually he found it.

  Quinn analyzed the details of the young man that bulged out at him through the thick lens. Compared to the others standing alongside him, Josef Becker appeared to have been quite short, slight even. About twenty-seven or twenty-eight, Quinn thought, but possibly younger. He was fine-featured and tanned, his eyes noticeably bright. A shock of light-colored hair pushed from under the peak of his field cap, which was tilted slightly back off his forehead and combined with a faint smile to give him an irreverent, almost humorous look: the look of the typical, happy-go-lucky climber in fact.

  Moving on to the Himalayan climbing team photographs, Quinn finally stopped at one labeled, “Schmidt, 1939.” There, standing at the end of a row of very amateur-looking climbers assembled in front of a building called the Hotel Nanga Parbat, was the same Josef Becker.

  “Yes, he’s here with Schmidt’s expedition in 1939.”

  Quinn studied this second image of Becker. He was without either his cap or his smile this time. Stood slightly apart from the others, he looked cold and determined, his face thinner, much older than the year between the two photographs.

  “So he went with Schmidt,” Graf said. He thought for a moment. “Go back to that original Heeresbergführer photo, find Schirnhoffer and Müller, and see if either of them also made it to Darjeeling with Schmidt’s expedition.”

  It took some studying, but Quinn could only conclude that they hadn’t.

  “I am thinking that perhaps Becker might have gone to Everest with only that Sherpa you mentioned, just as Maurice Wilson did a few years before,” Graf said as he continued to read from a large, black leather–covered folder. “What an impossible task.”

  “Yes, I know. And it killed Wilson. Becker must have known it would probably kill him.”

  “But, think about it, Neil. Becker had been caught smuggling Jews. In those days Treason against the Reich meant automatic court martial followed by the death penalty, whoever you were. Normally there would have been no possibility of a reprieve, but maybe someone high up did offer him a deal to climb the mountain instead. As I have said, anything was possible, however horrible it may seem to us today. I have his charge sheet here in this ledger. It lists the family of Jews that Becker was caught smuggling. The youngest, Ilsa Rosenberg, was only seven years old. What a fucking time it was.”

  Graf’s use of the expletive shocked Quinn, who had grown accustomed to the man’s considered eloquence. It bro
ught a darkness into the room.

  “What would have happened to them?”

  “Shot, I imagine. Men, women, children, it wouldn’t have mattered. Maybe they were brought down and sent to a camp. The Bone Mill—Mauthausen, the Austrian concentration camp—opened around that time, although I think that one was more for political prisoners. Whatever, their ultimate fate would have been the same. Death. Talking of concentration camps, we should be going. I want you to see the Dachau Memorial Site on the way back to Munich. If that doesn’t make you understand what we risk with this matter, nothing will.”

  The sound of the front door opening set the collector moving quickly to pour a new drop of coffee into Braun’s cup, swill it around to mask the vodka, and then hastily return the now two-thirds-empty bottle to his case with the ledger and the Heeresbergführer photo. After, he leaned down behind the old soldier’s chair to click his oxygen up a notch.

  “It will help him sleep a little better,” he said to Quinn, who was looking again out of the room’s wide picture window for a final view of the cliff that Becker had climbed. It was rapidly disappearing, the top already lost in the low cloud that was now pushing down into the valley.

  Braun’s daughter seemed disappointed when Graf told her they couldn’t stay longer as they didn’t want to be caught by the snow. It was a thin excuse. Her face dropped its guard for a second, revealing to Quinn a hopeless, faintly pleading look. She was trapped in her duty to her father.