Summit: A Novel

by Harry Farthing

  The young boy, seeing Josef do this, pulled Josef’s arm down and shook his head. Mimicking the firing of flintlocks and cannon at any unwanted visitor who sought to use that route, he pointed Josef back to the side of the fort above the cliff. Then, before Josef’s eyes, he transformed his small hand into a grubby spider whose curling, flexing legs commenced to climb diagonally up the cliff face.

  Josef waited until midnight before he and Phurbu slipped out of the silent town and started up the steep scree slope that led to the cliff. He moved quickly but cautiously, unwilling to risk a noisy slide back down the steep, loose rocks or another encounter with a dog, the boy following close behind.

  At the foot of the cliff, they stopped. Josef looked down through the clouds of his own breath at the young boy. In the faint light of a quarter-moon, he saw only a toothy grin and two big eyes. When the small head that contained them started nodding and bobbing back at him, seeming to urge him on in its own guttural language, Josef pushed him down on a rock to sit and wait while he pulled the coil of rope from his rucksack. He wanted to share the child’s enthusiasm, but he knew that the ancient leader who built the castle had been correct to have confidence in the cliff. It was a treacherous and difficult wall, no easy climb in daylight, far worse in the dark.

  The rope uncoiled, Josef picked Phurbu up, gripping his narrow chest between his hands, mentally weighing him. The boy felt incredibly light, little more than a birdlike frame beneath his ragged yet thick clothes. For a moment the boy’s feathery weight made Josef think back to little Ilsa. The memory sickened him. Quickly setting the child down, Josef took one end of his rope and tied it around his own waist before knotting the other around the child’s tiny middle. Looping the remainder of the long rope over his shoulder, he then tied it off so that only a short length remained between them. He next took the boy’s face between his two hands and, staring into his eyes with as stern an expression as he could make, said slowly and emphatically, “You follow me. Near. Understand?” The boy wouldn’t understand the words but Josef hoped that the severity of the gesture and the short, tight rope that now joined them would make his intent clear.

  Roped together they set off parallel with the bottom of the cliff. When he’d studied it through the binoculars, Josef had identified two fault lines that ran up the cliff. One was to the left of the rock face’s center, a dark scar that ran almost vertically from the top to the bottom. The second, commencing slightly further to the right, rose up in a fainter stepped diagonal to the very top right corner of the cliff. The two fissures were the only two natural climbing lines that Josef was able to discern on the otherwise sheer wall. Of the pair, the vertical crack was the more pronounced from a distance and Josef wanted to explore that one first, even though, when he had pointed it out to Phurbu, the boy had held his nose and feigned retching in reply—somewhat confusing Josef at the time.

  Moving across to the point where he thought that crack started, an overpowering stench of human waste began to engulf them until the little boy stopped and, after tugging at Josef’s sleeve, began to hold his nose again and spit vehemently at the ground. Josef sternly yet quietly told him to stop it, but understood what the boy meant. The line of the fissure was being used as a drainage chute from the castle above. The runoff ahead of them was slick with decades of partially frozen filth. Far above, Josef could even make out the boxy outline of the latrine that projected from the smooth wall of the fort.

  The boy tugged at the rope and pointed further along the cliff toward the second line, so Josef allowed Phurbu to lead them both down and around the icy tongue of effluent that ran down the hill and then back up to the bottom of the cliff face to approach the other fault. When they reached it, Josef saw to his relief that it was dry, also set back deeper in places than it had appeared from a distance. It was climbable.

  The boy immediately sprang onto the rock and started upward, forcing Josef to grab him by an ankle to stop him. He pulled him back down. Enough was enough. Josef was going to lead from now on. He didn’t second anyone on a climb, even if they knew the way. After checking his rucksack was tightly cinched and his axe was secured, Josef paid out some rope between them and then began to climb himself, the boy following a little way behind.

  The German moved up the diagonal break in the rock, slowly and positively, checking each handhold twice before putting any weight on it and, wherever possible, wedging himself as much as he could into the crack he was following. With each upward move, he hung the short length of rope that ran between him and the boy over any projections in the rock he could find. It might hold them if one of them started to slip or fall. Wherever the broken groove in the rock widened sufficiently to present a natural ledge, Josef would, as quietly as possible, knock in a piton, a necessary precaution for what would be a hasty descent.

  It was slow, precise work to climb the groove in the faint moonlight, but gradually Josef felt the emptiness of the cliff growing beneath them and the heavy presence of the castle growing above.

  The upper third of the wall began to tax even Josef’s climbing ability. He slowed, increasingly having to feel in the dark to find anything that felt like a good hold. The delays were starting to put too much tension into his legs, tiring them. Reaching up for another handhold, he told himself to speed up.

  With a surge of relief, his fingers touched the hard edge of another ledge.

  We can rest here for a little.

  But before his hand could even close on the sharp stone, a hawk suddenly exploded from the rock above.

  The female peregrine startled Josef, the surge of air from its rigid wing feathers pushing dust and dirt from its aerie into his eyes. Temporarily blinded and disorientated, his feet scrambled for grip as he grabbed at the ledge. The boy below screamed, a hail of small rocks raining down on him. He slipped and fell until jerked to a sudden halt by the rope that made him cry out again.

  Josef held on to the edge of cold rock as tightly as he could, the rope taut below him, the small boy swinging on the end like a pendulum. Slowly the German regained his footing, until, with one arm, he was able to pull the rope back up to him and connect the thrashing boy with the rock face once more. When they were both secure, he listened apprehensively for any reaction to their disturbance from the castle above but heard only the boy cursing and complaining from below. Josef tugged sharply on the rope and growled at the boy to be quiet, even if the mistake had been his.

  Silence returned only to be interrupted by a scratching noise close to Josef’s head. He pulled himself up to see two downy hawk chicks peering out at him from their bare nest within the rock. One of them edged forward, determined to peck at the monster invading its tiny world. Josef pushed it back into the little alcove and, when he was satisfied that the chicks were the only living things watching them, started to climb again until the rope tightened once more and stopped. He instantly gave it a strong pull to tug the small boy past the distraction of the peregrine’s young.

  After another long sequence of climbing moves, Josef was finally able to clamber over the very top of the cliff onto the narrow ledge that jutted out from the base of the castle. He cursed silently to himself when he felt its wall. It was completely smooth. It offered no holds. Any windows were set far above, no possibility of climbing up to them. Nailing in another piton to secure the rope, he waited for Phurbu to join him, asking himself how the boy knew they could gain access to the castle from this point. He saw no immediate answer.

  When the boy arrived, he seemed sulky from his near fall and squatted, distracted, on the ledge, offering no clues when Josef pointed at the castle. Josef wondered if the rope around his middle had hurt him in some way when it arrested his fall. He asked quietly and reached down to poke Phurbu’s stomach to see if there was any injury, but the boy just batted his hand away. Tying him into the piton instead, Josef gave up on an answer and moved to the very end of the ledge to the right to see if he could find a wa
y from there.

  There was none.

  Returning to the boy, Josef saw that he was sitting hunched forward, nonchalantly dangling his legs over the edge while he looked down into his jacket. A faint squeaking noise was coming from within. Sensing Josef’s approach, the boy quickly closed the jacket and folded his arms in front of his chest.

  After Josef had sat back down alongside him, he held out his hand to the boy.

  Little Phurbu feigned ignorance.

  Grasping the lad’s jacket, Josef forced it open to reveal one of the peregrine chicks cowering inside.

  Seizing the writhing, downy chick from the struggling boy, Josef had an idea. Swatting away the boy’s grabbing hands, he put the chick into his rucksack and closed it up. He then unclipped the child from the piton and pointed to the castle.

  Phurbu didn’t move, holding out his hands for the chick, but Josef just shook his head, saying, “Nein, nein, nein,” as he waved a finger at him. He then pointed up into the castle again before nodding positively and smiling. Understanding quickly, Phurbu gave up on the bird and scampered away along the ledge. In an instant, he was climbing up and under the latrine that projected out from the castle wall and then, with his feet wedged on the wooden framework below, squeezing his way up through its foul hole to disappear into the castle.

  Josef followed as the rope between them snaked up the sewer until he was forced to stop. Although the latrine’s hole was no impediment for the small boy, Josef’s body was much too large to pass through it. Taking the pick of his ice axe, he knocked in another piton to secure himself and then spent the next thirty minutes gagging on the stench as he perched on the frame below and broke away the wood perimeter of the opening with his axe. When eventually Josef had created a hole big enough to squeeze up through, he also finally emerged inside the castle walls, disgusted and stinking.

  Scheisse!

  Once inside, Josef quickly untied the rope from the boy and pulled the peregrine chick free from his rucksack. As it flapped and clawed, he held it above the reach of the small boy, who jumped and snatched at it from below. “Nein,” Josef whispered down at him again before lowering the chick almost into his outstretched hands and then lifting it back up, repeating, “Ang Noru, Ang Noru, Ang Noru” and smiling some more to initiate the game.

  The boy kicked him in the shin, grinned cheekily, and then vanished into the black of the castle, leaving Josef with only the young hawk for company.

  67

  Guy’s Hospital, Southwark, London, England

  October 5, 2009

  6:15 p.m. (British Summer Time)

  Martin Emmerich had been a serious challenge to Henrietta, but she prevailed. With every questioning, Quinn had stuck to his “no memory” line, more often than not with Henrietta sitting alongside him as a representative of the British authorities. With a serene smile etched onto her lips, she similarly deflected Emmerich’s every attempt to get to the truth of what Quinn had really been doing in Munich.

  Once, in his fury at their constant stonewalling, Emmerich, a patient man, completely lost his temper. Screaming at them both, he pointed out that it was only because of him that Quinn was even alive. “And for that I will be eternally grateful to you,” Henrietta had replied, “particularly, I must say, as it gives me the possibility to kill him in the future, which may well be necessary if he doesn’t stop causing me so much trouble.”

  Her comment had only enraged the German police officer even more. Emmerich did not find Henrietta Richards quaint or amusing. He didn’t understand who she was, what she was even doing there. Beginning to suspect that Quinn must be an undercover British operative and she was some sort of handler, he was not particularly surprised to finally receive a phone call from the Federal Police commissioner informing him that there had been a deal with the British and he must let the matter go. Within minutes Martin Emmerich had been standing aside to watch Quinn transferred to London by air ambulance, realizing that he had been totally outplayed by Henrietta Richards at every turn.

  That day’s trip home had been long and painful for Quinn. Henrietta had warned him on the way that it was no coincidence that the hospital chosen for his return was in Southwark, fifteen minutes from the MI6 HQ. Preparing him for the fact that they were going to be frequent bedside visitors, Henrietta suggested that the first thing Neil do after their arrival was tell her the full story of the ice axe. Despite being tired from the journey, as soon he was installed in his new private room he did so, much as he’d done for Graf, recounting every twist and turn, leaving no detail out, not even the gorak cave.

  Henrietta took the news calmly, listening silently, jotting specific points down in a notebook. Particularly, it seemed to Quinn, those that he had learned from Graf; the Der Stürmer editorial, the recollections of the old Gebirgsjäger Dieter Braun in Garmisch, the fact that Becker had traveled to the Himalayas with Schmidt’s expedition.

  Finishing his explanation, Quinn said to her, “You don’t seem so surprised?”

  “I’m not, Neil, even if the detail of what you learned with Graf is fascinating.”

  “How long have you known?”

  “‘Known’ is too strong a word: ‘suspected’ is better. Since the early ’70s, I suppose.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, I stumbled across it working in the embassy filing room one afternoon just as my interest in Everest was growing. It was only a few old papers really, marked as transferred to Kathmandu from the British Mission in Tibet, which was fairly hastily abandoned after the Chinese invasion. They were dated to 1939 and one of them raised suspicions of an SS plot to climb the mountain whilst another gave details of a British lieutenant being sent with a patrol of Gurkhas to stop it. Sadly, I made the mistake of casually raising the matter with the ambassador at a diplomatic event the very same evening. Not only did he deny it all vehemently but all the papers had vanished by the time I could return to the filing room.”

  “Why do you think that was?”

  “I used to think back then that it was because climbing Everest was seen as so exclusively ours. It was a British narrative with no space for mention of any other nation. But actually it was much more specific than that. The British authorities must have known that the Germans, or I should say now, the German Josef Becker, got too close to success for their comfort and became desperate to hide the fact. Even though the papers disappeared, I knew I hadn’t imagined the whole thing because I was able to track down the records of the British Army officer involved.”

  “Who was he?”

  “A Lieutenant Charles Macfarlane of the Coldstream Guards. There was actually no reference in the regimental archives of him ever visiting Tibet but I did learn that he was demoted to second lieutenant at the end of a secondment to the 2nd Gurkha Rifles in Darjeeling in the summer of 1939. No reason was given. He was killed five years later at Anzio with the rank of acting captain, posthumously adding the Military Cross to a series of decorations won during the course of the war. The regiment’s wartime almanac remembered him as a ‘brave and, above all, utterly honorable man.’ A statement I always thought at odds with the fact that he had once been stripped of rank. From what you have told me we can probably assume that it was as a punishment for failing to catch Becker. And if he didn’t catch him, then Becker may well still be up there as Graf believed.”

  “The collector was definitely convinced of that.”

  “Well, we can’t be sure until we go back. Don’t forget there is a Tiger Sherpa to add to the picture. It might even be him that’s still up there.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. As you can imagine, after the name Ang Noru came up I was intrigued. I asked Dawa about it as soon as he was better. He told me his ancestor Ang Noru was possibly the strongest porter at altitude of his day, but suffered severe frostbite when he climbed on Everest in 1933. Ang Noru blamed the British, who, in return, labeled him
a ‘troublemaker’ and never invited him to work on another of their expeditions. After that he only worked for Germans until he disappeared in 1939. At the time most people in Darjeeling said he must have drunk too much one night and wandered down into the valley river and drowned, but evidently there were other whispers that he was killed on the order of the British who wanted him silenced. Dawa, however, doesn’t believe any of these things and suspects that actually Ang Noru went back to Everest one last time.

  “I think I would have enjoyed comparing notes on all this with your collector. Although he approached the truth from a very different starting point, his objective sounds the same as mine—to discover it, to protect it, and above all, to stop it from being used for harm. Together I believe we would have worked the whole thing out quite quickly.”

  “I think that’s true. He was an interesting character. I was only with him for a few days yet it seems now that I knew him all my life. Is that odd?”

  “Not really, Neil. As Graf believed, there is a darker side to the mountains. It feeds on the risk, the ambition, the inherent potential in aspiring to reach the highest summits for failure, for betrayal, for lies instead.” She hesitated, her face momentarily revealing to Quinn a fatigued sadness she normally kept hidden. “Also the extreme loss and sorrow caused by the deaths on those mountains; that never-ending feeling for those left behind of having been robbed by the mountain of something beautiful and irreplaceable to your lifetime. I think Graf manifested something that subconsciously accompanies giving your life to the hills as you have done.”

  Neil lay back in the hospital bed, the weight of all the mayhem and suffering that had followed him since his last climb forcing his spirits down and making his wounds from Munich ache. “Well, it doesn’t feel so subconscious now.”