Summit: A Novel

by Harry Farthing

  Hearing an echo of the FCO official’s orders in Stevens’ description of their mission, Quinn took task with the word “destroy.” Imagining what that might mean, Quinn said if they did find any mortal remains, they must be respected. He suggested that after they had made the search and recovered any artifacts, they should cover any remains with an old tent fly weighed down with some rocks, maybe even go as far as to leave it with some more modern clothing, some old plastic boot shells, in order to make it look more recent and less interesting. Even as Quinn said the last detail, he knew it sounded ridiculous. He’d overplayed it. Stevens just stared back at Quinn and said, “Yes, we could do that. Alternately, you could use that stuff to cover the body of that sixteen-year-old you left up there last year.” They spoke even less after that.

  Quinn knew that something bad was coming from the ex-paratrooper just as it was from Sarron. He tried to make sense of it all but came to only two conclusions. First, there was no trust. Second, given that he had Graf’s old Leica camera hidden at the bottom of his kit bag, there probably shouldn’t be.

  At lunchtime the next day, Henrietta Richards and Martin Emmerich arrived.

  Henrietta hadn’t visited the Rongbuk for fifteen years. She refused to be driven the final part of the new Chinese road, insisting she walk into the camp instead. She made a triumphant arrival at the mess tent, the Sherpas rushing to greet her, bedecking her with silk kata scarves in expression of their welcome. Once inside she held court as they reverently served her tea and biscuits, her presence in the Base Camp the event of the season. Everyone came by to pay their respects to the world’s leading expert on Everest, ostensibly there to research yet another book about the great mountain. When Quinn could finally enter the tent and greet her amongst the throng, she fixed a sharp eye on him and mouthed, “You need to speak to Martin. He has some news of Sarron. I’ll catch up with you when all this brouhaha has settled down.”

  He quickly left to find Emmerich outside, being escorted to the tent allocated to him for his stay. The German was feeling the altitude with a pulsing migraine so severe it was making him squint and arch his neck forward as he stumbled along. Quinn took control of him from the Sherpa and asked about Sarron as he led Martin to his tent. Through short, panting breaths, Emmerich told him that he was indeed still free, and that a routine surveillance operation in Monaco had recorded an unknown man, later identified as Sarron, visiting the yacht Hyperborea. He struggled to explain what that meant but the Englishman got there before him. “Martin, you can save your breath,” Quinn said. “I’ve heard the name Vollmer before. I think we can assume that Jean-Philippe Sarron has teamed up with the one person as eager to have proof of a Nazi summit as we are to hide it.”

  Quinn helped Emmerich into his tent, lectured him on drinking as much fluid as possible, and then just stood there looking up at the black mountain towering over him. He could feel the storm coming even if the forecast was good.

  79

  Everest North Base Camp, Rongbuk Valley, Tibet—16,980 feet

  May 11, 2010

  6:30 p.m.

  All the talk at the climbers’ dinner that evening was of the team’s imminent departure for the summit. Neil Quinn and his client would be leaving the next day. The remainder of the team was to follow a few days later. Everyone was excited, the mess tent filling with an electricity of anticipation and suppressed fear that almost made its poles vibrate with static. Bringing in the various courses of the meal, Pani, the assistant cook boy, was listening carefully to the expedition members talking. The more he heard, the more excited he also became. He had to tell himself to be patient. He knew the climbers would want to eat huge amounts if they were shortly going up. The meal would take time. He just smiled back at them as he worked, thinking of the money.

  The supper finally finished, table cleared, dishes washed, Pani slipped away to the storage tent where he also slept. There, when he was absolutely sure that no one was in earshot, he quietly made one more call on the new mobile phone given to him by the two Russians in Nyalam. Waiting once again for that familiar voice message followed by the electronic beep that signaled he should speak, he thought of those two kind friends of Neil Quinn, so keen for news of how he was doing on the mountain. That evening, understanding its importance to them, he said his message twice to be sure they got it. “Your friend Neil Quinn leave Base Camp for Everest summit tomorrow morning. I say you again, Neil Quinn leave Base Camp for summit tomorrow.”

  Putting his precious phone away, Pani felt pleased with himself. He was sure that the two Russians would be happy to hear that their old friend was going to the summit once more; they had seemed so interested in news about the climb. He was also happy for himself because, even if at times it had been a bit difficult to keep it a secret from the other Sherpas, it really was a lot of money for nothing. All he’d had to do was leave a short message each time Quinn returned from the mountain to the Base Camp and then a final one for when he was going to the summit. The Russians had paid him a hundred dollars up front and assured him that he would get another fifty each time he left a message.

  So that’s another two hundred now, Pani thought happily. Plus the men had told him he could keep the phone and another present they would bring him if he kept it all a secret. And I have! Three hundred dollars was as much as his pay for the entire trip, and he would also be returning to Kathmandu with a new Chinese telephone. He only had to wait now for the Russians to visit him in the Base Camp and pay up as they promised they would do. Pani was a happy cook boy that night.

  Sarron was also satisfied to get that final message. He knew the summit weather window was fast approaching, but until he received that last call, his plan couldn’t start. For the last five days he had been waiting for it, holed up in a small lodge in the village of Tingri, fifty miles to the north of the Base Camp. That time of year the place was crawling with tourists, climbers, and Chinese soldiers. Keeping a low profile, he let the Vishnevskys go about the business that needed to be done. The hours had dragged, stuck in that simple room, wondering whether there was even going to be a camera. What if Graf had been wrong? Without it, Vollmer had been clear, there would be no more money.

  The only way Sarron could break his mind from the uncertainty was by shifting it to how he was going to kill Neil Quinn. His hatred for the British guide was so intense that it made him pace the room, talking to himself, acting out an end game with hacks and stabs of the ice axe, its edges carefully sharpened with a whetstone in preparation. With Quinn dead and an old frozen camera in his possession, Sarron could finally move on. And there had to be a camera—why else would Quinn be going back up? From the moment that Wei Fang had emailed him the Everest permit requests for that season, which showed Quinn as a member of Owen’s expedition, Sarron knew what he was returning for.

  His plan now relied on that happening. Even so, he had found it a struggle to control himself as he spied on Owen’s team coming through Nyalam on their way to the mountain. It took all his willpower to not go over to the team’s hotel in the middle of the night and stab Quinn as he slept. But he needed the camera first. Quinn’s death, although essential, could only come after, and when it did, Sarron promised himself, it would be more spectacular than just stabbing him in his sleep. Reluctantly, he had bided his time as the two Russians had dealt with the cook boy, setting up their eyes and ears within Quinn’s camp.

  When Owen’s team had moved on to start acclimatizing on Everest, Sarron and the two Russians had gone in the opposite direction to the mountains west of Shishapangma. At first, he thought they should climb that mountain to prepare themselves for the trip to altitude on Everest, but, even there, the possibility of being seen by someone who might recognize him was too great. Anyway, they didn’t need to go that high. As long as they could go once to at least twenty-three thousand feet, they would be ready to get up to the high camps on Everest and do what needed to be done.

  The
message signaled it could start at last. The next evening they would go to the Base Camp. Stopping only as long as it took to deal with the cook boy, they would then move on to the glacier, keeping themselves a day behind Quinn as he moved up through the higher camps on the hill. They were going to do it fast and light, taking only the minimum kit: high-altitude suits, sleeping bags, oxygen masks, and radios. Sarron knew that the high camps would now be totally stocked for the forthcoming summit attempts. All the oxygen and food they needed was already up there.

  80

  Rongbuk Monastery, Rongbuk, Tibet

  April 30, 1939

  4:00 p.m.

  Josef spent the days after their arrival totally lost despite the fact that he was at his destination. He passed the time mostly walking the Rongbuk Glacier, desperately trying to process Schäfer’s abandonment of Operation Sisyphus. Thinking alternately of climbing the mountain or escape, he knew that he could do neither. He had no equipment to go up, he had little possibility to get away. Even if he could, the risk to his family, to Magda was too great. There was no way out.

  Returning to the monastery, exhausted by the hike and the painful uncertainty of what should be his next move, Josef saw the distant figure of Ang Noru approaching. When they met, the Sherpa said immediately, “The monks say a runner has come from Shekar saying that the British now know we are coming to the Rongbuk, that we wish to steal Chomolungma from them. The abbot of the monastery is greatly disturbed. He wants to see you. You must come back with me now.”

  Josef said nothing in reply, simply adding the British to his desperate situation as he followed wearily behind.

  At the monastery’s chorten, he wanted only to sit and drink some water, to recover a little from the punishing pace Ang Noru had set for their return, but it wasn’t possible. A pair of older monks was waiting to take them inside immediately.

  Following them into the main monastery building, Josef felt unsteady on his feet, the metal studs of his boots slipping and rattling on the stone floor, black flagstones rounded at the edges and polished smooth by generations of bare feet.

  For a moment, he imagined he was stepping across the back of a giant tortoise. Josef told himself again that he really did need to drink some water and rest. But given no chance to pause, he and Ang Noru were shown the way through an ornately carved doorway hung with a heavy curtain of once rich but now dusty and faded silk. They stepped into a wood-paneled hall. To its center, a square roof opening let a shaft of white light fall to the floor, tentacles of sweet incense smoke wandering into it to slowly dissolve, bright dust particles hanging as if suspended on invisible threads.

  Eyes growing accustomed to the half-light that surrounded it, Josef saw opposite a raised dais, also draped with embroidered silk. In its center was the silhouette of a cross-legged man in heavy robes and a tall curved hat that rose up and forward like the helmet crest of an ancient Greek warrior. The abbot, Josef assumed, was leaning forward and staring down at the perfect square of light on the floor between them. He made no movement at their arrival, gave no acknowledgement that he even noticed their entrance.

  Looking around at the dark sides of the hall, Josef saw many other monks sitting motionless on benches. Above, a gallery looked down from every side of the room, its balustrade lined with more monks. The silence was perfect except for the click of Josef’s boots as he walked on toward the shaft of light. It was so strong, so sharply defined, he was almost reluctant to step into it, but, looking ahead at the platform, intent only on reaching the man who had summoned him, he lifted a foot to step through.

  Immediately he felt Ang Noru’s hand on the back of his jacket, holding him still. His boot hovered mid-air, penetrating the shaft of light, illuminated and amputated from the rest of his body. “Stop. Look. Mandala,” the Sherpa whispered in fast succession as he pointed to the square of light on the floor.

  Pulling his raised foot back, Josef looked down. His first thought was that it was a painting he had nearly trodden on. He could see the edge of a square wooden frame. Within, it was filled entirely with sand that had been dyed in bold colors, intense and vivid after his long journey through pale, broken shades of rock, snow, and earth. The bright yellows, reds, greens, purples, and oranges shone up from the floor, as if determined to remind him that their colors still existed in the world.

  Looking back up toward the abbot, Josef saw the outline of a frail hand lift to point at him and then back at the floor. His eyes followed the pointing hand down again. This time, they traveled beyond the blocks of colors into its complex geometry. Breathing in the overpowering scent of the incense, he felt himself being absorbed into the mandala’s every detail. He began to see intricate filigrees, every fine line laid out like the edges of an ornamental garden with beds full of flowers, jewels, crowns, and stars. The patterns confused his already tired mind, the shapes and forms twisting and turning until, with a stab of shock, he recognized the four swastikas that pinned each corner of the grand design’s outer square. He quickly turned his gaze from their marks into the center of the composition.

  It was a perfect circle entirely filled with a flower. A ring of eight rounded petals fanned out, each holding an eyeball. The eight lidless white spheres, every iris a different color but each with an identical black pupil, stared unblinkingly up at him. The very center of the flower contained an image of a goddess sitting cross-legged. Her left hand was cradling a globe in her lap. Her right palm was raised in warning, as if demanding Josef stop and look. Behind was a triangular mountain edged in black. It was the great mountain outside. Her mountain. The mountain he had thought he could climb. My mountain. From each of its three sides projected the triangular summit of a smaller mountain. The effect was of a six-pointed star—a star he recognized as readily as the swastikas, a star he had seen vilified in newspapers, daubed on the walls of shattered businesses, on the abandoned documents of terrified people he had guided over the mountains …

  The memory of it all brought Josef’s fatigue and misery crashing down onto him. He almost buckled under it, but held himself upright to stare into the picture yet more. The mandala began to speak to him, telling him that it wasn’t even a painting. He saw every individual colored grain of sand arranged before him. They poured into his body like an hourglass, slowly filling him, images of his journey to that place rising to their surface: the fight in the chang hall, the cliff below the fort, the hawk chick, Schäfer’s letter. The images turned darker, colder: Magda crying on the boat, the SS dagger on the table, Kurt sliding to his death, Gunter’s bandaged hands drenched in blood, the little girl Ilsa, the shots ringing out over the valley, the explosion of the chapel.

  With each new memory, Josef felt an overwhelming desire to make amends, to right the wrongs, to bring the dead back to life, to keep those still living alive. The wave of pure compassion submerged his heart until it overflowed into his arms and began to drip from the ends of his fingertips. It pooled around his feet to form small red rivers of blood that raced away from him into the woods as a distant pair of light beams began to twist and turn up the hill …

  Josef passed out.

  When he came to, he was already sitting up on the stone floor, supported by two monks. Ang Noru immediately gave him sips of the coldest water from a brass bowl. Its chill revived him as a low bench was brought forward. The monks helped Josef up onto it, sitting each side to support him as he continued to drink.

  Slowly recovering his senses, Josef reached up and felt the side of his face. It was coated with sand. With horror, he looked again at the mandala and saw the damage his fall had wrought on it. Brushing the grains from his cheek, he hung his head in shame until a bell rang out, the chime clear yet gentle.

  Josef lifted his head at the sound to see the abbot now standing before him on the other side of the broken mandala, two young monks also supporting him. The man looked impossibly old, his paper-thin skin loose around his skull, his eyes cloudy.
Shakily, he raised his right hand and clicked his fingers together to issue a strong snap that belied any weakness. Immediately four monks approached the damaged sand picture and knelt, one on each side. They reached into their robes and brought out short, coarse-bristled brushes, waiting.

  A second finger snap even louder than the first set them instantly into motion. In perfect time they each placed the brushes on the edge of the picture and began to slowly drag the stiff bristles through the colored sand. Each brush continued the destruction of Josef’s collapse, pushing through the remaining design like tanks driving through ripe cornfields. Josef watched as the picture dissolved in on itself until it became only a swirl of sand they brushed into the center to stand like a small grey mountain between him and the abbot.

  The abbot began to speak, very quietly.

  Josef strained to listen to words he didn’t understand until Ang Noru began translating.

  “The Rinpoche asks if you are now feeling better.”

  Josef nodded.

  The abbot spoke some more and then smiled.

  “He thanks you for starting the destruction of the sand mandala. It has to be so. Everything is temporary, beauty, life, our world itself, everything. He says that you are tired, that you have come a long way to be here.”

  “Tell him it is true. I have.”

  The abbot spoke more, pausing so Ang Noru might repeat what he was saying.

  “They tell him that you are here to climb Chomolungma alone. He says to tell you that there was such a man before who wished to do this, the Englishman Wilson. That man told the Rinpoche that he had seen the horror of total war and then went to the mountain never to return. They say he did not go far up the mountain, but the Rinpoche thinks that perhaps he didn’t have to in order to find what he was really seeking. He asks if you think you can go to the top and return? Is that what you are really seeking?”