Summit: A Novel

by Harry Farthing

  Quinn, at a loss as to what to do next, could only stare at the time-stripped face in the ice. He couldn’t even recognize if it was Becker or Ang Noru. It seemed dreadful that he didn’t know. Reaching forward to try and find something, anything, that would tell him, Stevens aggressively pushed his arm back. “I said fucking go, Quinn. Now! Wait for me well beyond the bottom of the Second Step. The weather is closing in. We’ve been here too long already.”

  He started to reply, but Stevens interrupted him. “Quinn, there is nothing to discuss. My instructions are clear, whether you like them or not. I am going to blow your old Nazi out of his fucking foxhole, and if you don’t get moving, you’ll go up with him. I mean it.”

  “There is no bloody way I’m letting you do that. Even if you don’t give a shit about the body—it may not even be a bloody German—what about the fucking avalanche risk?” Quinn shouted back.

  In an instant, Stevens had reached back into his suit and pulled out the small pistol, the red dot of its laser sight igniting to settle on the center of Quinn’s chest.

  “I don’t give a shit about that either.” The red beam flicked twice from Quinn to the cave entrance. “I have my job to do here. I will do it and you must go. If you want to try and stop me, my orders are clear. Your only witness is long dead.”

  He gestured again with the gun for Quinn to leave the cave, waving the barrel slightly, the red dot now jumping up and down on Quinn’s heart as if registering its beat.

  With no alternative, Quinn slowly moved out and onto the rock buttress that led back onto the snow ledge. The clouds were now pushing in tight to the side of the mountain. He vanished into them as he climbed away alone.

  At the foot of the Second Step he didn’t stop to wait for Stevens or look for Nelson Tate Junior. Quinn felt that he had totally betrayed the body in the cave and just wanted to be away from the accursed place.

  Fifteen minutes later he heard a muffled boom behind him like distant thunder. This time, he did halt. Quinn knew it wasn’t any coming storm. Saying a silent prayer for the mortal remains of Josef Becker or Ang Noru, he then vowed that, even if it was the last thing he ever did, he was going to switch the cameras before they made it back to Base Camp.

  83

  Rongbuk Monastery, Rongbuk, Tibet

  May 1, 1939

  9:00 a.m.

  Josef and Ang Noru did eat and sleep well the night they were shown the storeroom. The next morning, they awoke late at 9:00 a.m. feeling completely rested for the first time in a long time. Over a long, good breakfast they decided how it had to be, then set to sorting the equipment and supplies needed to climb the mountain, even if one of the first things Josef brought out from the storeroom was the gramophone left by the 1936 British expedition. He set it on a packing crate outside the small, whitewashed room where they were staying, its lid propped upward as if pointing to the summit beyond the monastery. A very young monk was instructed in the art of winding it whenever its music slowed and the jaunty, syrupy sound of Noel Coward singing “A Room with a View” varnished the stillness of the valley, making Ang Noru and Josef smile as they worked.

  Their main difficulty, with so much choice from the storeroom, was in narrowing their selection. Every time he returned to it, Josef was further surprised at what he found. It was more lavishly stocked than the quartermaster’s at Garmisch barracks. Opening more of the crates, Josef found that a lot of it was useless for the climb ahead—luxuries that might appeal to fat stomachs in London committee rooms but turned those that actually came to Tibet. He uncovered champagne, bottles of the finest French wine, and hundreds of small tins and jars of delicacies. He read their labels phonetically, trying to pronounce the contents within, only better understanding the true nature of “foie gras,” “quails in aspic,” “Carlsbad plums,” “patum peperium” when he opened them and dipped the blade of his knife to touch the contents on his tongue. He saw no place for any of them on the mountain. As he roamed the dusky storeroom, Josef recalled again Ang Noru’s words concerning the need to live quietly on the mountain, to work lightly up it with only the bare essentials.

  Slowly, their own little room filled with new coils of rope, a stack of pitons and carabiners, the smallest tents they could find, four sleeping bags, sealed cans of fuel, tins of biscuits, bags of flour, can after can of food, even some English cigarettes and sweets. In one visit to the room Ang Noru had shouted, “We use air from England?” holding up one of the long oxygen cylinders.

  Josef had shaken his head and laughed. “No, Ang Noru, English air only good for Englishmen. You and I will share Tibetan air.” To Josef’s surprise, the Sherpa stopped what he was doing to walk over and pat him on the back.

  When Josef wondered aloud as to how they were going to get everything to the mountain, Ang Noru said that the abbot had instructed the monks and the villagers, such as there were, to assist. Later in the afternoon, a toothless man in thick, dirty clothes, a pendulum of turquoise and coral hanging from one stretched earlobe, approached them. He mumbled to Ang Noru that he had five yaks and two sons who would help them get up the glacier to the mountain. Two strong young monks then appeared to say that they were also to go with them. From that moment Josef broke the equipment into five big loads for the yaks and seven smaller loads for each of them. Stripped down to his shirtsleeves despite the cold, his field cap pushed back onto the crown of his head, he raced, with renewed energy, to get everything ready. When they started to tire, Josef switched the gramophone record to another by Benny Goodman.

  The change of tempo to the blasting swing sound motivated him to reconsider every pile once again, discarding another round of gear he deemed superfluous. Finally satisfied that they had what they needed, they ate some more and rested before Josef unwrapped the new Leica camera he had been saving for the climb. Inserting a roll of film, he started to take photographs of the Sherpa around the monastery and up at the mountain, showing Ang Noru how to do the same until the roll was finished.

  That evening they were summoned again to see the abbot. With difficulty, he blessed them, touching his forehead to theirs and placing cream-colored silk scarfs around their necks. His eyes seemed to show both joy and grief as he mumbled his prayers.

  Leaving the monastery building, Josef tucked the scarf in close around his neck, taking comfort in its soft silk, the thought of what he was about to embark upon sending a continual nervous tremor through his body. Unable to sleep, he continued to work on into the dark of the night.

  To the echoes of the abbot’s words and watched by the ghosts of the journey that had led him to that place, Josef prepared the final items he now knew he needed for the summit.

  They left at sunrise. A heavy frost lay on the ground, but Josef took heart from the sight of a cloudless sky. It made up for the lack of sleep and the pain of the cold in his fingertips as he tied the loads onto the yaks.

  The sleepy beasts were reluctant to leave until a jab of a stick into each of their anuses provoked furious movement. Josef’s small walking party followed behind, laden too under heavy packs. As Rongbuk Monastery receded, Josef thought that he heard the low drone of horns, but he couldn’t be sure.

  It took four long days for their strange caravan to arrive at the foot of the mountain where they stopped in the lee of the valley side and made camp in the snow and rocks. A few projecting pieces of wood and an old cairn of stones were the only indications that man had ever been there before.

  The next morning, Josef and Ang Noru rested as they watched their companions depart, unburdened from their loads. They sat on the bundles left behind, drinking tea and smoking stale English cigarettes, watching the figures become little more than black ants in a universe of white. Only when they had completely vanished did Josef and Ang Noru turn their attentions to the North Col high up above them and the massive wall of ice they had to climb to reach it.

  Drawing an imaginary line diagonally across i
t with a gloved finger, Ang Noru said, “Many porters die on this wall, Josef. Need for care.” Josef realized that it was the first time Ang Noru hadn’t called him “Sahib.”

  “We will be careful,” Josef replied. “You should know that when we have a route to the top of the ridge, I consider that your work with me is done. From there I can go it alone.”

  Reaching inside his pocket he took out Schäfer’s envelope and handed it to the Sherpa. “Inside this envelope I have put some money and the details of someone who will help you if you can cross into Nepal and get a message to her. You will be free.”

  The Sherpa looked at him quizzically. “But I am free already, Josef. Besides, who will take your photograph on summit? You should think less and drink more tea. Important here to drink much tea, even if you are not English.”

  Ang Noru tried to give the envelope back but Josef refused it.

  “Okay, but whatever happens, you keep that envelope.”

  84

  Between the First and Second Steps,

  Northeast Ridge, Mount Everest—28,090 feet

  May 16, 2010

  11:53 a.m.

  With each pull of his straining lungs, Quinn bitterly contemplated the godless air burial he had just heard. Stevens’ cleanup operation was complete. Even the smallest of blasts would have amplified within that rocky hollow to eject the body out into the void, the burst of explosives scouring the alcove clean of its seventy-year secret in an instant. If it hadn’t been shattered by the blast, then it would have been by the contact it made with the sharp rocks on the long, long fall to the glacier below.

  His breath steadying, Quinn told himself to put it all from his mind, to get going. It was too cold to wait any longer. The wind had increased dramatically. It was now barreling up the face, ripping and tearing at him. As far as he was concerned, Stevens could fend for himself. Setting off along the exposed traverse that led back to the ridgeline, Quinn hunched forward, forcing each leaden step, bracing his body against relentless punches from the fierce gusts that began to bring flurries of snow. His visibility soon dropped to only a few yards, making him search for the remnants of old fixed ropes in the snow and rocks at his feet to find the way.

  With every new step, he bargained with the mountain, pleading for a release from the elemental beating. Validating the offers he was making, Quinn mentally removed the collector’s camera from inside his chest pocket and wove complex, improbable scenarios of when and where he would swap it for the one now in Stevens’ pack. He settled on the fact that they would both be exhausted when they made it back to the High Camp. Even Stevens would have to sleep at some point. He would switch it then. It had to be done, whatever the risks. It was the only pledge he could offer the mountain in exchange for his deliverance—a deliverance he wasn’t sure he deserved.

  Back up on the ridge, the wind was launching itself over the edge to twist and boil above the ten-thousand-foot drop straight down to the Kangshung Glacier below. One of the gusts was so strong it forced Quinn to fall onto all fours to prevent himself from being blown off the ridge. On his hands and knees, he clipped his fate into a blue nylon rope that led across the ridgeline. It looked the most recent of the tangle that lined the way. It was the only thing he could do.

  In a stuttering stop and go, he began to follow its line, making his precarious way along the upper edge of the mountain. A bulb of dark rock began to fleetingly appear before him through the streaking snow and cloud. Quinn knew it was Mushroom Rock, the unusual three-foot-high formation that stood proud on the crest of that part of the ridge. The sight brought some mental relief from the weather’s assault. They had cached extra oxygen beneath it on the way up. His current cylinder would be nearly empty by now and the thought of the additional oxygen was a comfort, pulling him onward. It would make him warmer and help him to move down faster. He could even permit himself the luxury of a few minutes’ rest at four-liters-per-minute flow, double what he had been using all day, a much-needed boost to continue the treacherous descent.

  Quinn dug deeply as he approached the bulb of rock, jamming his feet hard into the top of the mountain ridge, leaning his left shoulder out into the wind, occasionally having to tug the old rope he was following up and out of the snow to move his carabiner along it. Constantly working his fingers inside his down mittens and wiggling his cramped toes inside his double boots, he desperately tried to keep his weakened circulation moving to his extremities and stop the extreme cold from freezing them. When his goggles began to catch big snowflakes that congealed around the frames, he swiped them away to keep sight of that blue rope. It led the way to his survival.

  With some relief, Quinn finally arrived at the rock to huddle down next to it, needing to recover from that last push through the fierce weather before he could do anything more. Feeling the hard rocks jabbing through the knees of his suit, their rough edges digging into his patellae, he was, at first, too tired to even alter his position. Wiping his ski goggles again with the back of his gloved hand, he twisted his head to search the base of the rocky projection for the two oxygen cylinders that they had left there on the way up. Orange and marked with two big black X’s, he told himself that they would be easy to find.

  But, in those conditions, they weren’t. Unable to see them, Quinn pulled up the goggles, squeezing his eyes against the icy blast to peer into the grey and white, desperate for a glimpse of orange. With his gloved hand, he probed in vain at a small mound of snow that had built up on the lee side of the column of rock even if he knew already that it was too small to be hiding them, that they hadn’t even put them there. Quinn pulled his goggles back down with the realization that the cylinders had been taken. He recalled Stevens lagging behind him on the way up.

  Did he move them to be able to control their descent?

  Quinn wasn’t in a position to wait to find out, determined not to if that really was Stevens’ intention. Getting back onto his feet, he resumed his weary trek along the ridge, his experience telling him that he must push as hard as he could to try and get down over the First Step and past Green Boots Cave before his existing bottle gave out.

  He did make it to the First Step.

  Slowly climbing down the steep rocks, it was almost as if he could feel his oxygen flow gradually dwindle and then cease. He fought on, regardless. Green Boots Cave, Green Boots Cave, he started to repeat over and over in his head. It was the next identifiable feature of his path to safety, that rocky overhang that housed the body of a dead Indian climber whose green plastic Koflach boots still projected out for everyone passing to see. From there it would be on to the Exit Cracks. There the route turned down the face. Gravity would help pull him still lower through the yellow rocks of the Yellow Band and down to the High Camp.

  Feeling his way along a low wall of rock like a blind man, his useless oxygen mask angrily pulled down from his mouth as if it was somehow to blame for his predicament, Quinn was slow to realize that he had made it to his first objective. He was even slower to notice the masked figure in the black down suit approaching him through the swirling snow. When it finally registered, he straightened up to see that the other climber was holding an orange oxygen bottle out to him, two black X’s on its side.

  I have to have it.

  Quinn stretched forward to take it, the cylinder his only desperate thought, no sense of awareness left for the second black shape uncoiling itself from beneath the overhang and rising up behind him.

  Standing tall, the second figure raised the other double-X oxygen cylinder. It arced down onto the back of Quinn’s neck, the Englishman going down like a felled tree, oblivious to the cause of his collapse.

  85

  Rongbuk Monastery, Rongbuk, Tibet

  May 8, 1939

  5:00 p.m.

  While the Gurkhas busied themselves unloading their equipment, Macfarlane sat on the monastery’s steps gazing in awe at the massive mountain that dominate
d the valley. Zazar, as always, had vanished inside.

  The English officer, too tired to follow the formalities of his arrival, waited until the increased chill of the approaching night forced him to move. Stiffly getting up to go inside, he was met by the Gurkha sergeant.

  “Zazar says the monks have told him there is a room for you to use while you prepare yourself for your return to Sikkim. Zazar also says the monks tell him that the German and the Sherpa have already escaped into Nepal by the Lho-La Pass and that you have no jurisdiction there, so your hunt is over.”

  Macfarlane muttered, “Zazar says, Zazar says,” under his breath and followed the sergeant to the room, saying nothing more. All he wanted to do was rest.

  Entering the simple room, the lieutenant was surprised to see a gramophone on the floor. Next to it was a bottle of Chateau Latour 1913 and an enameled tin mug, the initials “G. L. M.” painted on the bottom. A piece of paper lay on the gramophone’s disc, the playing arm pinning it down.

  Raising the arm, Macfarlane pulled out the note:

  Engländer,

  Schau aus dem Fenster hinaus.

  Solltest Du mich suchen, dort oben findest Du mich.

  Nichts für Ungut,

  Mad Dog

  The German was lost on him but the music hall reference wasn’t.

  Winding the gramophone, Macfarlane lowered the needle onto the now-spinning recording and reached for his pocketknife to uncork the bottle. It was a fine wine. Opening it, he thought he should let it breathe and smiled at the irony. After that he dug into his kit bag for the small German-English dictionary he had brought with him, originally to help his understanding during Schmidt’s expedition.

  By the time Noel Coward had trotted into his fourth chorus of “Mad Dogs and Englishmen,” Macfarlane had finished his first enamel cup of wine and thought he understood the German’s message: