Summit: A Novel

by Harry Farthing

  In doing so, he was as discreet in his political affiliations as he was with everything else about his private life. However, in 2007, a young policeman in Munich had revealed that, through a series of dummy companies, Vollmer had been making significant financial donations to the German far-right NPD party and possibly sponsoring other underground neo-Nazi groups. The revelations had sent Vollmer running to Monaco, where he now lived full-time, the Hyperborea both his home and, by the look of it to Sarron, his fortress. There he abandoned his former discretion, vowing publicly to rebuild the far right across Europe and prepared to use his vast fortune in any way necessary to do so.

  The entrance of his host interrupted the Frenchman’s contemplation. Blond, tanned, wearing a red polo shirt and white slacks, Vollmer moved effortlessly into the room, more tennis professional than businessman, holding the old ice axe in his right hand as effortlessly as if it was a carbon-fiber framed racquet.

  “Bonjour, Monsieur Sarron, welcome to the Hyperborea.”

  Sarron rose from his chair to meet the German. They shook hands with a firm grip, both making deliberate eye contact until Vollmer stood back and deliberately turned the axe upside down to hold it like a golf club. Taking a step back, he gave a practiced swing at an imaginary ball and said, “This old axe has already cost me much more than it is worth, so I hope that you are here to offer me something better?”

  “I am,” Sarron coldly replied.

  Both sitting, Sarron proceeded to explain what he had learned from Graf about the axe in his hands.

  Vollmer listened carefully saying only, “Interesting,” as he pulled his face close to the steel axe head to study its tiny swastika.

  “Then you might be even more interested to hear that, despite what happened in Munich, it seems that the Englishman who found that axe on Everest is still alive,” Sarron continued. “It leads me to believe that others will soon want to find out what else is up there and, if it is as I suspect, will do everything to stop people like you getting their hands on it.”

  “People like me? What does that mean?”

  “You know well what that means, Vollmer. I am not a policeman and you are not a communist. You are someone that could use such a story to promote their own stated interests and intentions.”

  “That is indeed true but do you think there is really more waiting up there? It seems a long jump from this ice axe to a frozen camera full of summit photos …”

  “Perhaps … but is that a risk you can afford to take?”

  “Sarron, I can afford anything, which I am sure is the principal reason why you are here.”

  “No, I am here because I am the one person, beyond the Englishman, who can retrieve whatever else is up there and, if it does prove to be a photograph of an elite Nazi climber on top of Everest in 1939, I am also sure that you are the one person that would like to own it.”

  “Okay, Sarron. I’m listening. What’s your proposal?”

  Sarron outlined his plan and its financial terms while Vollmer looked out on the Monaco harbor through the dark-tinted windows. When the Frenchman had finished, Vollmer said nothing for a few minutes before turning back toward Sarron and raising the axe up in the air as if imagining it flying a swastika on a distant mountaintop.

  “That’s a very expensive offer given that I have little interest in the contents of the pockets of some frozen Wehrmacht soldier; I could easily find similar myself if I were to dig around in the permafrost of Norway or Finland.

  “No, the only thing that interests me is the rare chance, as you have explained, that you could find the climber’s camera with actual summit photos still preserved. Such photographs would indeed have a high value to me and on that basis alone I am prepared to make a counteroffer. However it will have to be an ‘all or nothing deal,’ one that places the risk, as you call it, back onto your shoulders.”

  Sarron stared at Vollmer as he silently listened.

  “I propose to fund you to go back to Everest,” Vollmer continued, “and will pay you an additional 2.5 million euros for a bona fide summit photograph if it exists. If it doesn’t, I will pay you nothing more than the initial expenses.”

  Sarron opened his mouth to negotiate but Vollmer quickly stopped him. “Take it or leave it, Sarron, you won’t get a higher offer. And one more thing, I want this axe now as a sign of good faith.”

  “Okay, Vollmer, I’ll take the deal but you can’t have the axe. Well not yet anyway.”

  “Why?”

  “I need to kill someone with it first.”

  70

  Wewelsburg Castle, NORTH RHINE-WESTPHALIA, Germany

  April 18, 1939

  7:30 p.m.

  “Enter.”

  Pfeiffer stepped forward into the shadows of the reichsführer’s circular office in the North Tower.

  “Please sit,” Himmler said, his head still turned down to the papers he was working on.

  Pfeiffer walked toward the desk to do as he was ordered. For five minutes, he waited in silence, taking in the medieval room around him, the intricately carved heavy oak desk he was sat before, even the granite stand adorned with iron skulls and SS runes that served as a paper knife holder. Above him, the doglegged spokes of the black sun painted onto the circular ceiling radiated out to the tower wall like some form of antenna.

  Something was wrong. What information had been sucked into that office? How was he involved? Trying to anticipate what it might be, Pfeiffer questioned his recent actions. They had all been in service of the reichsführer, all successful. He appreciated he had been heavy-handed in dealing with that group of Czech intellectuals agitating against increased German control in Bohemia and Moravia but it was no worse than anything Reinhard Heydrich was doing.

  A final signature and the closure of the letter blotter signaled Pfeiffer was about to find out what was the problem.

  “The British know about Operation Sisyphus,” the reichsführer said reaching for another file. Opening it, he took out a letter. “I have heard from Hans Fischer in Darjeeling. Evidently, the British Army liaison officer on Schmidt’s expedition sounded the alert not long after Obergefreiter Becker left for Tibet.”

  “This is disappointing, Herr Reichsführer. Do the British know where Becker is going?”

  “At the moment it seems not, but I suspect that in time they will work it out. I have called you in as I wish to invoke the contingency detailed in your file note WBB12/125a should this operation be compromised.”

  “But it is not yet compromised, Herr Reichsführer. Becker could be climbing the mountain as we speak.”

  “He could be, but on the other hand, he could also be in the hands of the British. His family, the mother and two sisters, should be immediately moved into protective custody in Lichtenburg. Next month we will be opening our first facility solely for women at Ravensbrück. They are to be transferred there as soon as possible. Have them terminated twenty-four hours after their arrival and make a report to me of how well Director Koegel handles the process. He needs to get that camp to maximum efficiency as soon as possible. It will be an interesting early test of its readiness.”

  “But—”

  “No buts, my dear Jurgen. What about the mischling in India?”

  “Magda von Trier is in Hyderabad now.”

  “Our reach is long. Send an agent from our embassy in Calcutta to deal with her.”

  “All this can be done, but if Becker climbs the mountain, won’t we have some explaining to do when he returns?”

  “We will explain nothing. I always considered that your plan had a fatal flaw and these actions are also appropriate to its remedy should Operation Sisyphus prove to be successful.”

  “Herr Reichsführer?”

  “You can’t make a common criminal one of the most famous men in the Reich. Even if Obergefreiter Becker succeeds, his moment in the sun will be extremely
brief. I suspect it will end in a fatal climbing accident in the mountains of Bavaria that he loves so much, not long after his return.”

  “I understand, Herr Reichsführer.”

  “I knew you would. Now tell me about what you have been up to in Bohemia. I have heard good things from Reinhard.”

  71

  Tsang Province, Tibet

  April 21, 1939

  3:00 p.m.

  It had taken Macfarlane’s patrol two attempts to cross the Sepu-La. The first, inspired by the urgency of Zazar’s news that the German and the Sherpa had passed that way, rushed them headlong into a fierce whiteout five hundred feet below the top of the pass.

  It was the Tibetan who had led them back with frozen fingers and feet to collapse exhausted and hypothermic in the very same cave where the monks at Lachen Monastery told Zazar they had met Becker and Ang Noru before they had crossed the pass. The weather forced them to spend four miserable nights there. Unable to go on but without the possibility of turning back empty-handed, Macfarlane could only wait and watch with impatience and frustration as his patrol disintegrated into three units: Gurkhas, Tibetan, and Englishman.

  The Gurkhas were brave fighting men, utterly loyal to their leaders and fearless in battle, but they were also tribal, spiritual men who were wary of the elements, assigning such matters to higher powers whom they did fear. In the cave, they presented him with brave, eager faces, yet otherwise kept their own company, sullenly whispering to each other as if defeated prisoners of the weather, aware that no simple stroke of their kukri knives could resolve their predicament.

  The Tibetan, on the other hand, simply withdrew deep into the overhang. Draping a heavy blanket over his hooded cloak, he became utterly immobile, as if conserving every ounce of energy for when it might be better used. Macfarlane envied the hateful man’s detachment. It was a skill that eluded him. Only once did Zazar approach him, and, when he did, he said nothing but just handed him a piece of foil paper he had found in the cave. It had come from a European cigarette packet or chocolate wrapper.

  Macfarlane needed no words of Tibetan to understand what the man hunter was proving. With every paralyzed day spent under that rock wall, he could think only of his quarry moving further from him and the effect failure would have on his army career. Lonely beneath the cave’s shadowy walls, decorated with other people’s gods and goddesses, Macfarlane turned in on himself, replacing the ancient images with the paintings of his own ancestors lining the walls of his stately family home. Resplendent in red coats, decorated with rows of medals and clusters of stars, generals and brigadiers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers looked sternly down on him over thick waxed mustaches to demand explanation as to why he was going to be the one to ruin their family’s long tradition of military glory and honor. He had to find the German.

  To do so, through the mediation of the Gurkha sergeant, he tried to agree to new terms with Zazar for their capture, terms that would see both Becker and the Sherpa returned alive to Darjeeling. Each time they approached the Tibetan to propose a new fee, he would look up at the British officer as if he was a complete fool before pulling his hood forward again to hide his face, saying nothing. Some hours later the sergeant would then report, with obvious embarrassment, that the Tibetan’s demand had actually increased. It was like some perverse Dutch auction.

  That morning, when the lieutenant awoke finally to a brighter world of white and blue beyond the cave, they left quickly to slowly break a trail through the now deep snow up to the pass. It was backbreaking, torturous work, but Macfarlane would be denied his chase no longer. Arriving at the flags that jutted up from the new snow to mark the Sepu-La Pass, Macfarlane had looked down at a bare world of humpbacked mountains and valleys that stretched into infinity. The day was so clear and the country so vast that he almost expected to see Becker and the Sherpa walking the far horizon.

  Descending from the ridge, following Zazar’s lead, Macfarlane saw that the deep, soft snow was streaked with red, as if it had been sprayed with a thin mist of blood. The Gurkhas pointed to it and talked amongst themselves, becoming agitated, until Zazar stopped, turned back, and tersely shouted something. There was further discussion among the Gurkhas, and then the sergeant stepped out of the narrow trench that they were breaking to wade back through the deep snow and stop next to Macfarlane. “Not omen, sir. Not blood, sir,” he stuttered with an unconvincing smile. “But sand, sir, sand. Red sand blown from the great Asian desert by the north wind during the storm.”

  “Of course, Sergeant. Thank you. I am aware that such a thing can happen in the high mountains,” Macfarlane replied. He was telling the truth; as soon as the Gurkha had spoken, Macfarlane recalled reading in the Times of such a phenomenon in the Alps. He had been amazed that the mistral wind could carry sand from the Sahara all the way across the Mediterranean to deposit it on the snowy flanks of the highest Swiss mountains. But on that day, before the Gurkha had spoken, it was not the first explanation that had come to mind.

  Zazar didn’t wait for the conversation to conclude. He stamped on ahead into the stained snow at the same driving, relentless pace with which he had led the way since Lachen. Watching him, Macfarlane understood that the man who should have been the most suspicious of omens and portents ignored them all. He was as practical as he was cruel. The lieutenant dug deep, forcing his tired legs to follow.

  72

  Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Main Building),

  King Charles Street, London, England

  November 5, 2009

  12:05 p.m. (Greenwich Mean Time)

  “Well, it all seems fairly straightforward to me. Mr. Quinn here will go back up and sort out this mess as soon as conditions permit, which I understand will be this coming spring. Her Majesty’s Government would obviously have preferred it to be sooner, but evidently winter is not the best time to try and climb Mount Everest.”

  Quinn mouthed, “You don’t say,” quietly to himself as the civil servant continued to talk. “As you already know, Ms. Richards,” the man emphasized the “Ms.” with a drawn-out nasal burr, “we have found someone with previous Everest experience to accompany him—a Captain Mark Stevens. He was in the Paratroop regiment and undertakes sensitive security projects for us on a regular basis. The pair of them will go up to the”—he stopped to glance at a document on his desk—“Second Step. Once there, they will investigate the site where Mr. Quinn says he found the old ice axe and retrieve or dispose of any additional articles of interest depending on what is practical. The retrieved articles will then be couriered to London to be destroyed to the satisfaction of both the British and German authorities. This process will be coordinated by our representative in loco, which will be you, Ms. Richards, and also a representative of the German authorities.” He consulted the paper again to read, “Inspector Martin Emmerich of the Bavarian State Police.”

  The civil servant raised a bushy eyebrow at Emmerich who was seated alongside Quinn and Henrietta.

  “Which is you, sir, I trust?”

  Martin Emmerich nodded in return, slightly bemused by the combination of the man’s plummy Old Etonian voice and his archaic, chalk-stripe suit. The permanent undersecretary immediately turned his attention back to Henrietta.

  “By undertaking this exercise, Ms. Richards, I am assuming that we can put this irritating little matter to bed once and for all and permit Her Majesty’s Government to focus on more pressing world matters. I can’t imagine that there is anything particularly complicated to any of this. People climb Everest all the time these days, don’t they? It is not even as if they have to get to the top.”

  The horse-faced man gave a desultory shrug of his shoulders, clearly convinced that arriving at the Second Step on Everest was as taxing as his morning walk to Cobham railway station to catch the 7:26 into Waterloo. Quinn opened his mouth to correct the error, prompting Henrietta to kick the side of his ankle before he could utter a
word. Turning to look at her, Quinn saw her head shake ever so slightly as if to say, “Don’t you dare.”

  Biting his tongue, he looked instead through the immaculately clean window of the old ministry building. Outside, Whitehall was cold and grey, damply making its way into winter. The trunks of the trees lining the street were black and greasy from years of traffic fumes, the leafless branches above disfigured from decades of pollarding that had rendered them miserable and sore like over-chewed fingernails. Quinn too felt miserable and sore. He had only been discharged from the hideous concrete tower of Guy’s Hospital a few days before. He still hurt like hell when the painkillers wore off. A walk of more than a hundred yards was a struggle. A return to Everest seemed impossible.

  His attention was brought back into the room by the civil servant speaking to him directly. “Mr. Quinn, you will need to sign a confidentiality agreement bound by the Official Secrets Act to cover your participation in this matter. There are obviously to be no subsequent books or slideshows about this little Everest escapade. You do understand that?”

  “Obviously,” Quinn replied in sarcastic repetition.

  The civil servant’s face twitched a little at the cold stare that followed, forcing Henrietta to jump back into the conversation in her most enthusiastic headmistress voice. “Yes, it really will be quite routine. Mr. Quinn and Captain Stevens will be joining a British commercial climb organized by Bill Owen, an expedition outfitter I know well. He’s ex-army himself, and we can trust him to be totally discreet. It will be explained to the rest of the team that Mr. Quinn is acting in the capacity of private guide to Captain Stevens, who, after a failed attempt on the difficult West Ridge with the British Joint Forces team in 2006, is returning to make the summit this time by the Northeast Ridge route.