“I did believe it, but I don’t any longer.”
“Why do you not think so now?”
“Because my countrymen have forsaken me. I have no equipment, no supplies. I am too weary. Even if I wanted to go to the summit, without such things it is impossible. The British will arrive soon to find me.”
The abbot nodded slowly.
“He says those British sahibs have already sent word to him that you are here to steal the mountain and ask that he stop you until they arrive to capture you. But he think it is difficult for you to steal something so big.”
The abbot’s face broke into a smile as Ang Noru began to speak to the abbot in Tibetan, his normally taciturn voice growing agitated and emotional.
The monk closed his eyes as he listened. There was a long pause before he responded, also at some length. When he had finished, he gestured to one of the monks supporting him to relay his reply to Josef. The monk did so in perfect German, slowly, word for word, so that Josef understood as if it was coming from the mouth of the abbot himself.
“The Sherpa says you are a man able to climb the mountain and that I should help you. But you should know that I have never wanted the mountain climbed. The triumph of the man who first treads the summit of Chomolungma means nothing here. It is as vain and temporary as the mandala. But I have thought much about your arrival, and perhaps this time it is not the case. I may be old, my spirit waning, but I can still feel that the world beyond the mountains is in great pain. Many are standing on the edge of oblivion.
“The Sherpa says you were sent by your masters to do their bidding, to make them even more glorious by climbing the mountain, but perhaps the Mother Goddess has deceived them and called you here instead to do her bidding. I think she wishes you to walk her heights to send a message visible to all the world to stop while it can.”
With that said, the abbot called another monk to his side. He whispered something into his ear before motioning to the two monks supporting him to help him turn. Together they slowly walked away as the monk the abbot had spoken to led Josef and Ang Noru from the hall in silence.
They followed him deeper still into the dark warren of the monastery, finally coming to an ancient, studded wooden door. The monk produced a heavy iron key and unlocked it. Swinging back the door, the monk took a butter lamp from a niche in the corridor wall and entered. As the amber light filled the room, they saw that it was full of wooden boxes, baskets, and canvas bags. Everywhere they looked were bundles of tents, bags of clothing, rolls of sleeping bags, coils of rope, even a wall of brass oxygen cylinders stacked to one side. Stenciled lettering on the sides of the crates read, “British Everest Expedition, 1924”; “Everest, 1933”; and Everest Reconnaissance, 1935.” Josef looked into some of them, finding can after can of food, rows of bottles, cups, plates, cooking utensils. In one there was an old gramophone with a stack of recordings, in another an artist’s painting set with a collapsible easel.
The monk said something to Ang Noru who in turn spoke to Josef. “The sahibs always ask the abbot to look after best equipment after expedition until next visit but then return with even more boxes. The abbot thinks that you will find everything you need here. He says the decision of what you must do now is yours, but if you eat a lot of this food and rest, such a decision will come easier.”
Ang Noru suddenly stepped away from Josef to a pile of new boots. Picking one up, he turned back to Josef and said, “See, my friend? I always know the English have extra boots.” Cursing in his own language, the Sherpa threw it at the wall with all his force. Turning to Josef with tears in his eyes, Ang Noru said, “With these things I swear to my ancestors now that we will do what all those sahibs could not.”
81
The North Col, Mount Everest—23,600 feet
May 13, 2010
3:30 p.m.
When Quinn and Stevens pulled in to the North Col camp, there was a brief burst of radio from the Base Camp. The last thing Quinn heard Bill Owen say was, “Well tell them all to fuck off. I’ve got climbers on the hill!”
Quinn repeatedly tried to call back, but there was nothing. Exhausted from the long pull up the ice wall to the North Col, with the afternoon cloudily closing in and the temperature plummeting, there was little they could do beyond settle into their tent and set about melting the pots of snow needed to rehydrate and warm their bagged meals. Silently contemplating the pan stacked with slowly melting snow, Quinn wondered aloud why Owen had vanished off the air, imagining that Sarron was in some way behind it.
“Well, if he is, we’ll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it,” was all Stevens would say. But then, as if intended to settle Quinn’s nerves, he pulled a small automatic pistol from inside his climbing suit. A vivid, blood-red dot of light instantly beamed up onto the tent’s curved ceiling from a laser sight set beneath the pistol’s stubby barrel. “Ruger, nine millimeter, steel barrel, polymer composite frame, integrated laser sight,” Stevens said as he zigzagged the red dot across the yellow skin of the tent. “Perfect tool for this job.”
The sight of the gun shocked Quinn. It was little bigger than the one the collector had given him in Munich. The recall of that night at the Weisshaus unsettled him still further. He saw again the jet of blood spraying from Dirk Schneider’s neck as he spun to his death … The thought of what even a small gun like that could do made Quinn recoil away from it, forcing him out of the tent with the excuse of making contact with any other team that might be up there on the North Col to see if they knew anything about what was happening in the Base Camp.
Many tents were dug into the high col but only one was occupied—three Spaniards on their last acclimatization rotation and due to go down in the morning. When Quinn pushed himself into the small lobby of their already cramped tent and explained about his loss of contact with his expedition leader, one of them, an impressive set of dreadlocks hanging from beneath his loose wool cap, began to work their radio to find out what was happening back in the Base Camp. Another translated the crackly bursts of Spanish that flicked back and forth.
Things were confused, he said, but the word seemed to be that a group of Chinese soldiers had arrived by truck out of the blue to aggressively search Owen’s camp. It was said that they had been tipped off that his team was going to film the raising of a Tibetan flag on the summit and then release it on the Internet as a “Free Tibet” protest. When the soldiers had found a packaged bundle beneath the cot of a cook boy and opened it to reveal some large Tibetan flags, they had gone berserk, arresting everyone in Owen’s Base Camp. Beyond that, there was little more that anyone knew.
Quinn thanked the Spaniards and, in the growing dark, carefully moved back to his own tent. Nearing it, he thought he heard Stevens talking on their satellite phone. He tried to make out what the man was saying, but it was impossible. When he touched the zip of the tent, the talking fell silent. Crawling in, Quinn asked for the phone. Stevens gave him a sideways look that betrayed his suspicion that Quinn had heard him making the call. “Just phoned the wife in London. All fine there, whatever may be going on here,” he said, trying to sound casual as he tossed the phone across to him.
Quinn didn’t believe it for a second—the man wore no wedding ring—but he said nothing. Picking up the phone for himself, he tried to call Owen. No reply. It was the same with the phones of the team’s other two guides. Nothing. Reaching for his radio again, Quinn scrolled through frequencies, trying to pick up other teams who were transmitting. He received some buzz in various languages until finally he heard an American guide he knew. Quinn asked him what had happened to their team in Base Camp.
The laid-back Californian confirmed the story that the Spaniards had told, humorously embellishing the details. “Henrietta Richards was ready to call in a napalm strike on Beijing she was so mad. Some German dude was ranting and raving he was from the Munich Police. He said he was going to have all the Chinese arrest
ed, like they would give a shit. One of the soldiers pushed Henrietta Richards so Owen punched him out. That was the end of it, man. Within five minutes, they were all on their way to Lhasa in the back of army trucks.”
The call ended with the American saying, “Neil, you’re on your own up there now, buddy, and if you do have a Tibetan flag, I’d ditch it, and fast.”
Switching off the radio, Quinn looked across at Stevens who had listened to every word. “We should eat and then sleep. We’ve got a job to do, whatever might now be waiting for us when we get back down,” was all the ex-soldier said.
82
From early the next morning, the pair made their laborious way up the long, icy ridge that rose from the snow saddle of the col onto the broken rock of the towering North Face. With every heavy step, each retreated further into his own world, forgetting about what might be going on far below, what they must do high above, instead just digging deep into their legs and souls to slowly push their way to the next camp. There, the only luxury awaiting them would be the possibility to switch on to supplementary oxygen to sleep. Through the day their radios remained silent. Even the garrulous American knew nothing more, beyond confirming that Owen’s entire team had definitely been taken away by the Chinese. They were on their own up there in every way.
Despite the bottled oxygen, Quinn slept little that night. When he did, it offered busy, surreal altitude dreams. He awoke frequently, gasping for air, claustrophobic from the oxygen mask, sensations of vertigo spinning his brain. All he could do was lie there in the dark, trying to regulate his breathing as his mind continued to stoke the fragments of his nightmares, a weight of something evil pushing him into the hard side of the mountain. His only response was to silently and quietly transfer the collector’s Leica from the bottom of his rucksack into an inner pocket of his climb suit. It made him feel as if he was at least trying to fight back, but it brought no sleep.
The next day they moved on to the final High Camp at 27,400 feet. Once there, Quinn and Stevens behaved exactly as if they were going to the summit. They got in, went through the interminable ritual of boiling snow to rehydrate, tried to eat a few bites, and then rested until leaving for the Second Step at 1:00 a.m. Setting off, Quinn could feel Graf’s old Leica in the mesh pocket inside his down suit. All the previous day, whenever he had thought about it, he had wrestled with whether he should try to switch it if they did find another. He still didn’t know but a voice said that he should for Graf, for Henrietta, for the truth. But was that really correct? Hadn’t this search for the truth already killed and maimed? Wasn’t it for the best if it was all destroyed?
Quinn’s mind continued to travel in circles as he gradually worked his way up the slope. The higher he climbed, the slower he went. The questions receded, his body subsuming his mind into the sole task of achieving upward motion until he settled into his usual summit-day rhythm of ten steps before resting. Each time he stopped, he leaned forward on his single ski pole, sucking in more air from his mask, his headlamp lighting only the ground before him. Nothing would exist beyond that roundel of illuminated snow or rock until the sun came. It was always that way beyond the High Camp.
By the time the batteries in his headlight had died and the sun was starting to rise, Quinn was pulling himself up onto the Second Step. To a yellowing dawn light, he slowly made his way up the rocky gully onto the step proper. There, he waited for Stevens on the same snow ledge where he had lost Nelson Tate Junior the year before. He looked for the boy’s body. Dawa and Pemba had told him that they had moved it down off the climbing line, laying it to rest in a slightly lower rock crevice. It seemed that there had been a lot of snow over the winter. Quinn couldn’t see anything, not even the older bodies below the step he remembered seeing after being hit by the rock fall.
Stevens’ arrival stopped his search. Quinn pointed to the buttress at the end of the ledge and then slowly lead Stevens along the narrow ledge. There, at the end, they both edged their way around the rock buttress before ducking down into the entrance of the small cave. Entering into the darkness of the rock again, Quinn understood it for what it really was: a tomb. He was momentarily transfixed to the spot forcing Stevens to squeeze around him to get inside. “Okay, if this is the place, let’s get on with it,” he said as he passed. “Quinn, you will need to change the batteries in your headlamp and put it back on. We need all the light we can get to do this properly.” Kneeling next to the snow mound, Stevens took off his rucksack and, from within, pulled out two small equipment cases. Laying them on the cave floor, Stevens worked on his own headlight before using its renewed beam to light his opening of the first plastic case.
Quinn’s gloved fingers felt thick and awkward as he fumbled to replace the batteries and switch his own light back on again. When he did, the smoky beam scythed into the shadows, ice crystals sparkling back at him from the black walls. For an instant, he saw projected onto them the image of him fighting, and failing, to save Nelson Tate Junior. Looking down at where he had first found the boy, the light reflected on something projecting from the ice. It was the syringe he had used. Seeing that Stevens was already concentrating on using his ice axe to hack away at the snow mound that filled the rest of the cave, Quinn gently put his hand flat on it and slipped it into his thigh pocket.
Turning back to look again at the snow pile, coursing the beam of his headlamp over it, the tube of light picked up the faint outline of something within. A shadow locked inside, a dark form that gave structure to the mound of ice and snow. Quinn tried to move closer but was blocked by Stevens. The ex-soldier was working as aggressively as the altitude would permit, smashing into the snow and ice with his ice axe without care or caution for whatever lay within. The sight revolted Quinn. As if sensing the disgust behind him, Stevens turned to shout at Quinn to help.
Pushing alongside to do so, Quinn began to pull away chunks of the snow crust in a gentler fashion. It was still laborious work. The snow broke easily, but the ice beneath was rock hard. For some time, they chipped and chiseled with the picks of their axes, gradually removing the cold chrysalis that had encased the frozen body for seventy years. When the chopped snow and ice accumulated, they kicked it out of the mouth of the cave down the North Face. Watching the wind tear it away, Quinn noticed that the new day was turning ominous. Beneath an iron sky, cloud was building in the valleys below, patches of it dense, with an almost purplish hue. It was a bad sign.
He mentioned it to Stevens but to no reply. Instead, the ex-soldier picked up the first case he had opened and took out a small handheld plastic wand. It was a metal detector. Quinn had seen similar, only bigger, at airport security. Connecting a small earpiece, Stevens pushed its bud under his thermal cap into his ear. The detector switched on, he ran the probe over the buckle of his own climbing harness as a test before proceeding to sweep it over the broken snow and ice before him. Quinn couldn’t hear the detector’s signal but could see the three green LEDs on the unit. They changed to a bright red when the wand hovered above what must have been the corpse’s chest. The burst of scarlet light briefly illuminated a broken head above, as if bathing it with new blood.
Quinn saw two black holes where eyes had once been. Below, sharp projections of bone jutted through remnants of flesh and skin that had once been a nose. Lower still were two bare rows of teeth, stripped of lips, locked together in the permanent bite of death. The sight made Quinn swallow hard as Stevens unzipped the front of his thick down suit and, switching the wand off, pushed it inside. When the hand reappeared, it was holding a large black survival knife with a deep, full blade, jagged saw-teeth along the top edge.
With the tip of the knife’s blade, Stevens immediately dug further into the remaining snow and ice at the point indicated by the metal detector. The excavation revealed a thick gabardine-type material, grey in the half-light of the cave. Lifting the knife, Stevens stabbed down into it. The ex-soldier then began sawing with the jagged back of the knife,
moving upward to the nape of the corpse’s neck, cutting through the frozen wind jacket. Putting the knife aside, he used both hands to rend the frozen material apart as if about to gut a deer. The sight within caused Quinn to struggle for breath. Even Stevens stopped short, seemingly forgetting himself in his surprise, twisting back to look at Quinn and say, “Fuck, there really is a camera. I thought it was bullshit.”
Quinn was equally stunned by the sight of the silver camera suspended from a thin leather strap around the corpse’s neck. It was a Leica 111, almost identical to the one in his chest pocket. Adrenaline flooded Quinn’s body at the thought of what it could contain, of what he should do about it.
The collector was right.
Henrietta was right.
The truth was lying there in front of him.
Stevens cut the camera’s leather straps with the knife and gently prized it from the frozen body with the tip of the knife. Pulling an insulated red plastic bag from his pack, he opened it and put the camera inside. Sealing it, the package went into his rucksack.
“Okay, Stevens, we have what we came here for,” Quinn said. “We should properly identify the body, cover it, and then leave. I’ve brought some material we can use.”
Stevens stared back, shaking his head. “You still don’t get it, do you? You need to go. There is nothing more for you to do here.” Reaching for the second equipment case, he removed a small package wrapped in black duct tape. Setting it on the corpse’s chest, he started to hollow a cavity underneath the body with the blade of his knife.
Summit: A Novel Page 40