Summit: A Novel

by Harry Farthing

  Englishman,

  Look out of the window.

  If you want to find me, that’s where I am.

  No hard feelings,

  Mad Dog

  Pouring himself a second cup of the vintage wine, Macfarlane did go to the window and look out at Mount Everest towering above him in all its glory.

  Josef Becker was up there, whatever the monks might be saying.

  He wants me to know.

  Another cup of wine accompanied the question of what kind of man could have the courage to face such a mountain. A little mad maybe, but Becker was no dog; he was as honorable and brave an alpinist as George Leigh Mallory, the man from whose cup he must be drinking.

  And that Sherpa is with him.

  A Sherpa, branded difficult and disloyal by Macfarlane’s superiors, that Becker had gone back for at Kampa Dzong, knowing full well that he was risking everything, including his life, to free him.

  The same Sherpa that Macfarlane had simply sold to Zazar in a pathetic attempt to save his own skin …

  The realization left Macfarlane feeling disgusted at the deal he had made.

  It was little more than a devil’s bargain, and it was wrong. Was his own honor not worth more than that, more than Colonel Atkinson’s disapproval, more than blind loyalty, more than trying to prevent another country’s man from achieving what his own could not, however hard they tried? Becker was neither saboteur nor assassin. He was only a climber, at worst a trespasser into Tibet, nothing more.

  With resignation Lieutenant Charles Macfarlane realized that if he was to be true to himself, rather than his superiors, his ancestors, his country even, then his hunt was indeed over, but not for the reason suggested by Zazar. He was contemplating a fourth cup when the Gurkha sergeant came to the door and said, “The Zatul Rinpoche wants to speak with you, Lieutenant Macfarlane, sir.”

  Feeling flushed from the wine on an empty stomach, he followed the sergeant out into the courtyard. There they met Zazar. The man hunter looked at Macfarlane, a triumphant smile creasing his leathery face as he spoke to the sergeant.

  “Zazar says that a villager has told him that the German and the Sherpa have not gone to Nepal by the main glacier but took the smaller one that runs off to the east to Chomolungma. Zazar says that there is only one way in and out, that they won’t be able to run up there. We have them, sir!” the sergeant reported.

  Macfarlane turned away from both Zazar and the sergeant to enter the monastery, thinking, There is only one mad dog in the Rongbuk.

  To his shame, he was the one that had brought it there.

  86

  Green Boots Cave, Northeast Ridge, Mount Everest—27,890 feet

  May 16, 2010

  4:53 p.m.

  A mask over my mouth?

  Oxygen?

  Where am I?

  Slowly twisting his head from side to side, Quinn understood he was propped against the rock wall of Green Boots Cave, a climber to each side of him. The shelter of the overhang was giving a temporary respite from the driving wind and snow.

  An oxygen mask being held over his mouth was indeed bringing him back to life, but it wasn’t Quinn’s. It belonged to the climber to his left. His own mask, useless since he had run out of oxygen, was pushed down around his neck.

  His goggles also removed, Quinn struggled to recognize his rescuers through frosty, blurred eyes. The only thing he could make out for sure was that they were too big to be Sherpas.

  Drawing down hard on the oxygen, he told himself that he must have blacked out from a lack of it. He wondered if the two climbers spoke English. He began to say, “Thank you,” as a third climber moved in front of him.

  Pulling up his own goggles and unclipping his oxygen mask, Sarron revealed his face, saying, “Ça suffit. He is conscious now.”

  The oxygen mask over Quinn’s mouth was abruptly pulled away by the other climber, who immediately pushed it back onto his own face.

  “Save your English manners for those who might appreciate them, Quinn,” the Frenchman said. “The only thing that you are going to be truly thankful for this day is when it ends. You will be envying the quiet fate of Green Boots here, much like your antiques-dealer friend.”

  At the mention of Graf, Quinn started to struggle.

  Instantly, the two other climbers gripped him firmly, locking his body hard against the uneven rock.

  Sarron lifted the old ice axe and, after holding it close to Quinn’s eyes so that he could see exactly what it was, rested the sharpened metal end spike on the Englishman’s cheek. “Stop. Moving. Stay. Still,” he shouted over the wind, stressing each word with a push.

  Quinn flinched each time the point pierced into his cheek.

  Pulling the axe away, Sarron leaned in close to Quinn’s bleeding face. “I heard that you like sticking ice screws into people’s eyes. Not so much fun being on the receiving end, is it, fucker?”

  Quinn could only stare back in silence.

  “Huh, I thought so!” Sarron shouted. “I bet you never imagined I would hit you so high on the mountain. Beautiful, for so many reasons. First, it permits me to take what I need with no witnesses. Second, it allows me to push you off the Kangshung face and give you a very long time to remember me as you fall. And, third, that putain Henrietta Richards can put it in her fucking record books as the highest ambush in history.”

  Sarron took a long Tibetan knife from inside his climb suit. He unsheathed it and slipped the narrow blade under Quinn’s oxygen mask, which was hanging on his chest. Hooking it out and up on the end of the long blade, Sarron tensioned the razor-sharp edge to easily slice through the elastic straps. The mask fell loose.

  The Frenchman lifted it up, slicing its red oxygen supply tube as he did so. For a moment he just held the severed mask in his hand, looking at it as if it was a surgically removed heart. “Remind you of Munich, Oleg?” Sarron asked before tossing it back over his shoulder.

  “You won’t be needing that anymore. I control your oxygen now,” he said looking back at Quinn. He motioned to the person on Quinn’s left. “Dmitri, give him some more of yours. I need him lucid for the next part.”

  The silent climber put his own mask back over Quinn’s mouth.

  Quinn was able to suck in five deep breaths before Sarron gestured for the mask to be pulled away once more.

  “To be honest, it is very difficult to resist cutting your miserable throat right now, you English bastard. However, I need you to tell me some things first.” He paused before asking, “Find what you were looking for up there on the Second Step?”

  “No,” Quinn replied.

  “Sure?”

  “Yes. Fuck you.”

  Sarron pushed the blade of the knife back up toward Quinn’s face.

  “No, Neil Quinn, it is I who will be fucking you with this knife if you don’t answer me.”

  The blade stroked Quinn’s face, his skin twitching at its touch.

  “Now I ask again: What did you find? Did you find a camera up there?”

  Quinn said nothing before a push of the blade produced an involuntary, “Yes.”

  “I knew it. Where is it?”

  “I don’t have it.”

  “Of course you don’t. Oleg, search his pack.”

  The second figure pushed Quinn forward and pulled off his rucksack. Digging into the top, he pulled out the empty oxygen bottle on its severed tube and threw it down the slope of the hill. The Russian rifled deeper, discarding the other survival items inside before concluding there was nothing else.

  “It must be inside his suit,” Sarron said.

  Quinn deliberately started to struggle.

  “Hold him, both of you.”

  As the Vishnevskys forced Quinn hard back against the rock wall, Sarron moved the point of the knife down under Quinn’s chin to his throat, pushing it into
the skin to stop him from moving. With his other hand, he ripped open the wind flap to the front of the Englishman’s suit and pulled down the zip inside. Lowering the blade of the knife, he pushed open the right side of the suit. It moved back easily. When he tried the left side, it was heavy against the knife. Sarron quickly pushed his hand onto Quinn’s chest and felt the camera in the mesh pocket within.

  “This is it, isn’t it?” he said as he looked back up into Quinn’s face.

  Not waiting for any reply, Sarron reached into the suit and seized the old Leica. Once it was free, he nodded to himself, holding the camera up in his left hand.

  “So you don’t have the camera, huh? You shit!” he shouted at Quinn, pulling back his right hand and punching the hilt of the knife within his clenched fist into the side of Quinn’s face. Quinn’s head smacked back against the stone. He slumped forward, senseless from the blow.

  Sarron put the camera inside his own suit, saying, “Get him up.”

  The two Russians each put a shoulder under Quinn’s arms and pulled him to his feet.

  Sarron, pointing beyond the overhang, shouted, “Up onto the ridge.”

  Quinn, head still reeling from the punch, blood flowing from his nose, was unable to stand.

  Forced to use all their considerable strength, the brothers held him up and turned him back out into the blast of the weather. Sarron, his words now lost in the wind, followed, constantly gesturing for them to be faster, with the knife in one hand, the old ice axe in the other.

  Quinn tried to collect himself as they moved, but the blow to his head and the renewed oxygen starvation made it impossible to think clearly. He had to do something, or he was going over the edge. In a vain attempt to slow the Russians, he raised his feet, dropping his full weight onto them.

  It caused them to falter for a moment, but with another hard pull, they moved on toward the top of the ridge where a ramp of snow launched a grey maelstrom of cloud out over the abyss.

  Just before the lip of the snow cornice, they stopped.

  Sarron shouted something more, but those words too were lost.

  Quinn tried to push back from the edge, only for Sarron to begin jabbing at the small of his back with the axe, determined to use it to send the Englishman over the edge.

  In one last desperate effort, Quinn raised his right boot and brought it down as hard as he could. The sharp steel crampon ripped through Oleg Vishnevsky’s down suit, stabbing through muscle and flesh to lodge into bone.

  The Russian bowed from the pain as Quinn twisted around with the other brother. Both of them toppled forward over Sarron, beginning to fall down the mountainside. They left Oleg Vishnevsky behind them, collapsed onto his knees. He instinctively tried to stand up but his broken lower leg buckled and he fell, the snow cornice under him collapsing. The man vanished, the wind masking his screams, the swirling cloud consuming his plummeting fall.

  Quinn and the second Russian continued to roll down the face, gathering speed until both were stopped by a black projection of rock. Dmitri Vishnevsky quickly forced himself on top. Clenching Quinn’s head between his hands, the Russian struck it back against the rock. The impact spiked into Quinn’s skull with a white flash that left colored spots dancing before his eyes.

  One of the spots remained, a point of bright red light that hovered on his attacker’s chest. Quinn fixated on the firefly, questioning its brilliance, its persistence. Just as his addled, oxygen-depleted brain understood what it really was, the red light burst over him in a wet explosion of blood and feathers.

  The Russian, killed in that instant, fell onto Quinn, cracking his head back once more onto the rock, knocking him senseless again.

  Half opening his eyes, Quinn thought he saw Stevens approach and lean down to check that the Russian was dead.

  He tried to say something to him, to warn him, but no words came.

  Stevens looked at Quinn, reaching for him.

  Sarron lunged from out of the cloud.

  The long Tibetan knife disappeared into the side of Stevens’ neck.

  It was the last thing Quinn saw.

  87

  The North Col, Mount Everest—23,600 feet

  May 9, 1939

  7:50 p.m.

  For three full days Josef and Ang Noru slaved to make a route up the steep snow face to the North Col, cutting steps into the steepest ice with their axes and fixing rope along the most exposed sections. When it was finally complete, they ascended twice from their glacier camp with supplies and equipment, putting up two tents on the high col, much as they had on the Zemu. One tent they filled with supplies; the other was for themselves. Now huddled inside it on the evening of their second carry, they debated whether they should make a third. Ang Noru was in favor, but Josef disagreed. He could feel how much each round trip up the massive snow face was wearing him down. They had enough already for a push to the top. It would be lightweight, desperate even, but it was always going to be like that. They had to go for it while he still could.

  They left at daybreak carrying everything they thought they would need to get to the top. Despite their heavy burdens, they made good progress across the snowy saddle of the col and onto the never-ending white crest that led to the rising black layers of rock beyond.

  The day awoke bright and clear, but soon a haze veiled the sun, and fuller, thicker clouds began to rise up, their edges laced with hints of color, changing from yellow to orange to brown. The wind steadily increased as they struggled on, bowed under their packs, huddling into their thick clothes for warmth as the temperature plummeted.

  Before long the cloud had thickened still further to become a grey-purple conveyor belt that drove relentlessly over them, completely blocking the upper part of the mountain from their view. When it started to lash them from the side with thick snow, they had no alternative but to turn around.

  Descending through the worsening conditions, Josef’s curses were insulated within the scarf that wrapped his face. His tired legs plunged into the ever-deepening snow, Ang Noru always two steps behind, until they made it back to their camp, where the pair dragged themselves inside their tiny tent. Ice-bound and exhausted as the storm raged around them, they lay there, unable to move, their world reduced to the drilling sound of flapping canvas, the numbing cold, and flurries of windblown snow that built up around them however much they tried to keep it out of the tent.

  When the dark of the night began to close in, they reluctantly pulled themselves from the shelter of the tent to lash ropes over it to prevent it from being blown away. Then they collapsed the storage tent down on itself, weighting it with blocks of ice. Returning inside their pathetic canvas refuge, they wedged themselves against its sides, accepting that all they could do was shiver, endure, and hope that the little tent wasn’t going to be blown off the ridge.

  The raging storm continued on through that night and all the next day. Their extremities lost all feelings from the cold. They used every bit of energy they had to boil snow into water and make tea. They picked at dry food. They stopped talking, each retreating into his own frozen hell, hoping only for salvation from the weather.

  During their second night, Josef told Ang Noru that, whatever the conditions, they must try to break out of that place in the morning or they would surely both die there. Josef had to get the Sherpa off the mountain if he could.

  Digging up and out of the tent’s entrance as the sun was rising, they saw that the wind was still pushing over the col, but the snow had stopped. The cloud looked a little brighter, as if better weather might be following it. They prepared themselves to leave, slowly, methodically, as if the act of kitting up momentarily reprieved them from their desperate predicament. Finally, they tied themselves together with a rope, silently accepting they were bound to the same fate, whatever their attempt at survival would provide.

  Pushing themselves out of the tent, almost completely
submerged by new snow, they stood in a white world without horizon. A hunched reading from Josef’s small brass compass offered their only clue to direction.

  Josef waded ahead through the snow following the trembling bearing to the tip of a tent pole tied with red tape they had used to mark the end of the rope fixed up the long exit gully.

  Stabbing his ice axe down and working it around to make a hole, Josef finally saw the frozen, matted line of hemp within. He tugged it repeatedly upward, the rope slicing up through the soft snow, finally breaking through the white waves like a whale breaching.

  Together they followed the rope down over the edge, gripping it tightly as they floundered and slid in the deep powder that now filled the path they had cut. Spindrifts of loose ice blew down on them. Occasionally the snow beneath their crampons broke away altogether to leave them hanging on to the rope, struggling to hold themselves against the soft side of the mountain as it crumbled beneath their desperate feet.

  At the end of the fixed rope, they dropped out of the cloud to see what they had both already silently anticipated. Their painfully prepared trail down the immense ice face was gone. Josef, refusing to be defeated, immediately started breaking a new path.

  They had completed seven rope lengths when they both heard a “crack” like a rifle shot. After a moment’s hesitation, the whole slope started to slip with a growing roar.

  Josef and Ang Noru were plucked from the hillside.

  Accelerating downward, the snow beneath them began to fold and break, sucking them in.

  Josef lost sight of Ang Noru.

  He couldn’t breathe.

  Instinct said, Twist your body over onto your front.

  He tried once.

  Twice.

  Each time he was wrenched back by the snow.

  With one last lunge, Josef made the move stick, digging the head of his axe downward and automatically lifting his toes up and back so that his crampon spikes didn’t catch and flip him down the face into a cartwheel that would never stop.