Summit: A Novel

by Harry Farthing

  “It is not in my nature to shut up with my nonsense,” Graf weakly slurred, straightening his head back to look again at Sarron.

  Spitting blood from his mouth, Graf appeared to savor its taste before speaking again, this time with a greater strength.

  “By dwelling within the macabre, surrounding myself with it, embracing its artifacts, its twisted people, its inherent evil, I often wondered if all along I wasn’t really just courting a gruesome fate. Perhaps simply seeking to put myself on an equal footing with the rest of my family for when I meet them in the next world. It would save the embarrassed silences and inevitable recriminations as we caught up on what I had been doing for the last sixty-five years, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t think anything, you fool. Just tell me about the ice axe.”

  Oleg Vishnevsky pushed past Sarron to grab Graf by the throat, pushing the point of the SS dagger against his chest.

  “You will tell us everything, old man, or I will cut out your heart.”

  “Then you should treasure it, Ivan, because, to my immense inconvenience, it’s always been a good one.”

  59

  Landsberger Strasse, Munich, Germany

  September 19, 2009

  9:10 p.m.

  Quinn was thrashing the old motorcycle to keep up with the new BMW sedan, the wild ride beginning to unnerve him. Raindrops and spray from the speeding car’s tires lashed the scratched visor of his crash helmet, causing it to refract the city lights into blinding yellow stars. Every time they sped across tramlines set into the street, the bike’s front wheel slid on their greasy metal, threatening to spit him off. Other traffic was following too close behind: if Quinn did fall it would just go straight over him. With a shudder, he remembered how Pemba had been killed.

  When the BMW’s left indicator began to flash bright amber and they turned into a side street, Quinn hoped it signaled their arrival at Graf’s storage unit. Following the car, he watched it stop in front of a metal roller door and flash its main beams twice. Schneider quickly got out, and, hunched against the rain, unlocked a side door to disappear inside. A metal roller door wound itself up enough to permit Quinn to ride the motorcycle straight inside, its headlight briefly revealing an array of stacked and covered furniture before he hit the kill switch.

  Getting off the bike and arranging it on its center stand, Quinn moved to start taking off his bags.

  “You won’t be needing any of that,” Schneider said as three other men stepped into the storage area from the street outside. “Just step away from the motorcycle and get into the back of the car.”

  “What?”

  “You heard exactly what I said, Quinn. Do it now.”

  Quinn looked at the men closing in on him, taking in the black bomber jackets, the faded jeans and high-laced boots beneath, the shaved heads, and most of all, the clubs two of them were carrying. Ducking his head, still clad in its white crash helmet, he tried to plunge through them to the street only to be floored with multiple blows across his helmet and back. Hands seized him, pushing him down as they tore off the helmet and dragged him relentlessly out to the car. Forcing him into the backseat, Quinn was sandwiched by a skinhead on each side.

  When Schneider got into the driver’s seat, he had Quinn’s ice axe, taken from the kit bag strapped to the motorcycle. He passed it to the third man getting into the front passenger seat.

  Quinn tried to struggle only to be elbowed hard in the face by the thug on his left. The contact set his head reeling, his eyes flashing white against the wet darkness.

  “Stop, Quinn,” Schneider said. “You’re not getting out.”

  “What the fuck?” Quinn slurred in reply.

  “Quinn, I know that you and Graf are working on something to do with this old ice axe and he is mistaken if he thinks he can keep it for himself. He thinks he’s so rich and clever, that he can buy me, but my loyalties are with Stefan Vollmer now. This is his time, a new beginning for the true German to kick out the immigrants that stink up our streets, to have a currency that is our own, to rebuild the army we are denied …”

  Schneider continued to rant as the car raced west from the center of Munich. Heading into the outskirts, it sped past monotonous housing projects and massive illuminated warehouse buildings to pull into a crowded parking lot. Groups of people were emerging from the lines of parked cars to walk toward the shadowy hulk of a building at their center. In the dark it looked like a bunker, flat and low, but as Quinn was strong-armed from the car toward it the headlights of other arriving cars revealed a dilapidated framework that projected above the roof to read, “Saturday Night Fever.” It must have once been some sort of nightclub or disco. Nearing the main entrance where there was a queue to get inside, Quinn saw a smaller, newer red neon sign that shone, “Das Weisshaus.” The s’s were shaped as lightning bolts, the two in the middle repeatedly flicking to white to flash “SS.” The blinking lights showed that those waiting to enter were also predominantly skinheads.

  Quinn was hustled in through a side entrance, Schneider going on ahead with the old ice axe in one hand to disappear into the depths of the building while Quinn was stopped by the three others from the car and told to wait. Inside, the house PA was obscenely loud. A deep guttural voice distorted over a sonic feedback of thrashing guitars and pounding drums so deafening that something popped within Quinn’s right ear. He could hear it whistling when the drilling music stopped, but the quiet only lasted a second as a huge roar erupted from a crowded dance floor. The cheer quickly mutated into a repetitive chant of “Oi! Oi! Oi!” as two hundred right arms began to drive from chests to the ceiling in a uniform Nazi salute. In their center, a large swastika flag rose up on a long, flexible pole. As it began to wave from side to side, the chant changed to “Sieg heil! Sieg heil! Sieg heil!” until the thrashing guitars and beating drums broke into another crazed anthem and the seething mass began to pogo again.

  Quinn took in the building around him. It was a huge, matte-black barn that stank of stale beer, body odor, and leather. Condensation was falling in large drops from the ceiling as if the very structure itself was sweating. On the far wall, a film of total war was playing. He stared across the bouncing, crazed crowd at the grainy, black-and-white images being projected. Stuka bombers hung momentarily in the air before diving down vertically to drop bombs like defecating birds. Tiger tanks rolled past burning farmhouses and dead livestock. Lines of thin prisoners were shot in the back of the head to fold forward into deep pits already lined with dead bodies.

  When the portrait of a blond SS officer filled the wall, it set off another cheer from the crowd; more followed in rapid sequence. Some were studio shots, perfect blond haircuts and tight, humorless smiles staring back from above that infamous black uniform. Others had been taken in combat. Dirt-streaked, battle-weary faces now set above mottled, almost modern-looking camouflage jackets. The one constant throughout was the death’s-head insignia, the skull and crossbones of the SS leering back from every picture.

  The images began to be accompanied by the shout of a name on the house PA that set off more shouts and straight-arm salutes from the crowd.

  “Kurt ‘Panzer’ Meyer!”

  “Sieg heil!”

  “Sepp Dietrich!”

  “Sieg heil!”

  “Michael Wittman!”

  “Sieg heil!”

  The SS roll call went on and on until a number of pictures of the same man began to overlap. The first showed a young officer in a ceremonial uniform, another next to Heinrich Himmler studying a map, a third receiving an Iron Cross from Adolf Hitler.

  The pictures of the man multiplied all over the wall as the officer’s name was drawn out in a long raucous scream.

  “JURGEN PFEIFFER!”

  The name was met with the biggest cheer of all.

  “SIEG HEIL!”

  Quinn looked on as yet another
photo of Pfeiffer appeared. He was standing in a court, wearing simple fatigues shorn of any insignia. A large number “42” on a white card was hanging around his neck.

  The picture grew ever larger until it covered all the others. It incensed the crowd, driving it wild, until the image began to burn from the center to reveal more film of flaming villages and racing Panzer tanks, and the music launched into another thrashing song dedicated to the SS officer. “Jurgen Pfeiffer! Jurgen Pfeiffer! Jurgen Pfeiffer!” the chorus screamed, the crowd picking up the new chant and starting to bounce maniacally once more.

  A push in Quinn’s back signaled him to move. With more shoves, he was directed to a private room beyond the bar. When its heavy door was shut behind him, a quiet fell, pierced only by a residual squealing in Quinn’s ear. The walls of the room around him were decorated with old Nazi propaganda posters set in heavy metal frames and triangular black flags that each displayed a different white rune of an SS regiment. A man in his midthirties in a black suit with a white open-collar shirt sat at a table in its middle with Schneider to the side of him. The old ice axe was lying on the table to their front. The lean-faced man looked up at Quinn.

  “Hello, Mr. Quinn, my name is Max Schalb and I work for Stefan Vollmer. I understand from Dirk here that you know something about this old ice axe that might interest my boss. Take a seat.”

  Quinn said nothing in reply, staying standing.

  Schneider, agitated by Quinn’s silence, spoke. “Come on, Quinn. I know from the Internet work I have done for Graf that this Nazi axe is, in some way, linked to Mount Everest, that you found it there. Tell us what you know about it.”

  Quinn ignored Schneider to say directly to Schalb, “Look, it’s just an old axe, whatever this weasel might have told you. There is absolutely nothing more to it for you or your boss, whoever the hell he is.”

  “Tough guy, huh? Dirk, perhaps a little dance might warm him up, then we’ll try again.”

  Schneider got up from the table and motioned to the two skinheads standing at the door to take Quinn from the room. Seizing his arms, they pulled him out and to the edge of the heaving dance floor. There, for a second, Quinn was able to pull back and stop himself. As he did so, he could have sworn that the lights dimmed slightly, and the volume of the thrashing music increased.

  A flickering image of a burning building crumbling as German storm troopers ran for cover filled the far wall as a boot rammed into the small of his back. The kick flung him into the slam-dancing mass. Hateful, grimacing faces began to scream and spit at him. He caught snatches of shouts, fragments of words and sentences in harsh German as he began to be spun around by grabbing hands pulling him still further into the crowd.

  “Du hurensohn!”

  “Schwuchtel!”

  “Jude!”

  A straight-arm punch hit Quinn hard in the side of the head. Others immediately followed to send him reeling to the floor where a kick hit him full in the stomach. It winded him totally.

  Quinn couldn’t compress his chest. He couldn’t even choke, his lungs and diaphragm paralyzed. Panic flooded his brain as he lay on the floor. Above him, in the black of the ceiling void, a huge disco mirror-ball hung motionless.

  Finally able to draw a breath, anticipating more stamping and kicking, Quinn curled himself into a ball, pulling his legs up into his groin, hugging his ankles with his hands.

  But the new onslaught never came.

  Everything stopped—the music, the shouting, the screaming—everything.

  The house lights went on and the crowd, pulled back, leaving Quinn lying at its center. Twisting his bleeding face upward, he squinted into the unfamiliar light to see two figures push out from the crowd. It was Max Schalb, with Schneider standing a little behind him, holding the ice axe.

  Schalb stepped further forward until he alone was standing over Quinn. Making a tutting noise as he shook his head, he held up a hand in signal to the crowd to remain silent. When he had their complete compliance, he lowered his arm and started to slowly take off his suit jacket. He carefully folded it lengthways and handed it back to Schneider. Schalb then undid his silver cufflinks and unbuttoned his crisp white shirt before taking that off also. Beneath was a tight, long-sleeved white T-shirt that he pulled up and over his head to reveal a pale yet intensely muscular torso completely covered in tattoos, an intricate pattern of Germanic script, SS runes, the numbers “18” and “88,” and, over his heart, a single black swastika.

  At the sight of the tattoos, the crowd began chanting and shouting until the man quieted them once more with another wave of his hand. He exchanged the shirts with Schneider for the ice axe as he motioned others to pick Quinn up.

  Strong hands wrenched Quinn from his ball, pulling his hands from his legs and tugging him onto his feet. When he was upright, the tattooed Schalb feinted a head-butt into his face, stopping a few centimeters before he made contact. Quinn instinctively flinched back and when he moved his head forward again it met the man’s face close in to his.

  “Still not ready to talk to me?” Schalb asked, his lips almost touching Quinn’s bruised and bleeding face. “Well, you will be soon.”

  The man stepped back to address the crowd in a tirade of German, constantly turning to direct his words equally to everyone around him, raising the axe into the air like a sword to reinforce what he was saying. The crowd cheered in response, edging in ever nearer as if readying to rip Quinn to pieces.

  Schalb continued to goad them, whipping them into even greater frenzy until gesturing for silence once more. When he had it, he stepped toward Quinn again, the wooden shaft of the axe still above his head, leaving no doubt that, this time, he was going to hit him.

  The man brought the wooden shaft down onto the side of Quinn’s neck as if trying to cleave his head from his shoulders.

  Just before it impacted, Quinn closed his eyes and, in desperation, squeezed the trigger of the small pistol he had concealed in his right hand.

  At the same instant, Dmitri Vishnevsky, who had been watching everything from near the main entrance, unloaded the magazine of his Uzi into the ceiling, aiming for the old mirror-ball hanging from its center.

  The heavy blow snapped Quinn’s head back.

  His body followed it, released from the grip of captors startled by the violent burst of machine-gun fire showering plaster and broken glass onto the crowd.

  The tiny automatic fired three times as he fell backward.

  The first bullet projected sideways into the leg of an onlooker.

  The second grooved Dirk Schneider’s neck, severing the carotid artery.

  The third bullet disappeared into a ceiling now sparking and smoking with exploding lights.

  Hitting the floor, the back of Quinn’s head smashed against the concrete and the little pistol spun from his hand just as the mirror-ball fell, exploding like a nail bomb when it met the floor.

  There was total panic and mayhem. People scattered wildly, ducking for cover or trying to escape. Amidst them, Schneider spun and spun, gagging and clutching at his throat as it sprayed a jet of arterial blood.

  Quinn made a weak effort to get up and away. He felt someone grab at him with one hand and try to pull him through the crowd but, broken from the kicking and still senseless from the blow of the axe, he was a dead weight. He heard the man shout something at him in a language he didn’t recognize and then let go.

  Quinn tried to get up again only for Schalb, slick with Schneider’s arterial blood, to slam himself onto him. Pinning him to the ground with his wet tattooed body, the German screamed instructions until help came to pull Quinn back onto his feet once more.

  Without ceremony this time, the axe forgotten in the confusion of the gunfire, Schalb immediately drove a fist into Quinn’s stomach.

  The punch doubled the Englishman over, breathless again, as the other men holding him began dragging Quinn
to the side of the club through the screaming, panicking crowd.

  Double doors sprang wide open, and the cold night air rushed in. Through swelling eyes, Quinn made out the rear of a Mercedes panel van reversing toward the open doorway, grey fumes billowing from the tailpipe as the engine revved frantically. When the van was nearly touching the building, its wheels skidded to a halt, spitting gravel into the club like bullets.

  The van’s rear doors split and opened. Quinn began to struggle desperately at the sight of the two men inside tugging black ski masks down over their faces. They moved forward to pull him in, Max Schalb following and closing the doors behind them.

  The vehicle began to speed away, a burst of machine-gun fire from the club chasing it.

  60

  Tsang Province, Tibet

  April 11, 1939

  11:45 a.m

  Squinting his eyes against the harsh sunlight, Josef began to pick out the sharp point of the fortress of Kampa Dzong in the far distance, the castle rising up on its own narrow crag, dominant and dangerous in that otherwise empty, silently hostile land. At Wewelsburg, Josef had told himself that Tibet would be a land of snow and ice but what he encountered on the long descent from the Sepu-La was very different. The snow of the high pass quickly vanished, and the country that stretched out below soon became an ochre desert of blasted rock and gravel, dust and mud.

  Tramping ever further into it, Josef knew why he had conjured something softer and more hospitable in his mind’s eye. It had been easy, comforting even, in the fearful uncertainty of Himmler’s castle to conjure Tibet as a mountain land permanently in the thrall of Christmas, a place of pine branches bending beneath balanced slices of new snow, of long, sparkling icicles, of brooks covered with sheets of clear ice that trapped air bubbles, a place where he, as a mountain man, would be at home. But it proved to be just one more deceit. The arid, barren plain they followed offered none of those things.

  With every heavy step a desperate loneliness grew in Josef as he and Ang Noru forced themselves ever onward under the pale blue sky, constantly fighting against a bitter northwest wind that robbed the land’s harsh brightness of any heat, feet being pummeled by the rocks and rubble of the faint pathway marked occasionally by small towers of rocks or the bleached bones of long dead yaks or mules. Ang Noru worked tirelessly, as did their two ponies, but none of them offered much companionship. When they had first set off together from the Zemu, Josef had tried to converse with him more as a friend but soon gave up when the Sherpa showed little inclination to do the same. He suspected that Ang Noru didn’t really trust him. Josef didn’t seek to change the situation. It was enough to focus on the demands of their brutal trek, to follow the way that Ang Noru sullenly indicated, to wonder why the hell he sometimes struggled to keep up with a man who had lost all his toes to frostbite …