The Abominable: A Novel

16.

In truth, I never thought we’d make it to the North East Ridge of Everest at 28,000 feet, but when I’d fantasized stepping onto it anyway, I’d always imagined the three of us shaking hands solemnly or slapping each other on the back fraternally or perhaps just staring out at the view of the world from one of the highest places in the world.

As it turned out, we were all too exhausted to move when we actually reached the ridge, and when we did finally move, it was for Jean-Claude to stagger to a nearby rock, tug down his oxygen mask, and tidily vomit. Pasang just stared out to the south as if something awaited him there. When we’d rested and inhaled more English air set at the high 2.2-liter flow, the Deacon, Reggie, and I used our binoculars to scan the lower slopes, looking for the Germans who were working so hard to catch us and kill us.

“There they are,” I said finally, pointing. “All five of them. Just climbing toward the exit cracks above the Yellow Band about three hundred feet northwest of our Camp Six. They’ll be up on our ridge in another thirty minutes.

“See them?” I asked.

“Oui.”

I could actually make out that the climber in the lead—the strongest climber of the five by the looks of his progress and the brevity of his stops—was carrying a rifle slung over his chest. “Do you think that’s Bruno Sigl?” I asked the Deacon.

“How should I know, Jake?” snapped the Deacon. “They all have white winter-combat anoraks with hoods on and are wearing some sort of white scarf or face mask below the goggles. How could I identify Sigl from this distance?”

“But do you think it is?” I said.

“Yes,” said the Deacon and lowered his glasses until they dangled from the thick leather strap. “He’s their leader. He’s their best climber. He’s most intent on finding and killing us. And he climbs with a certain strange aggressiveness. Yes, I think it’s him.”

“I still do not understand something, Ree-shard, Madame Reggie,” said Jean-Claude. He’d taken a little water from his bottle, rinsed his mouth out, and spit in the snow. “What could this Kurt Meyer—or your cousin Percival for that matter, Reggie—have taken from the German government that would make them so insane about retrieving it? After all, England and France are at peace with Germany…for now.”

Reggie sighed. “It’s not the current German government that Percy was assigned to…learn about,” she said. “The Weimar Republic is weak and indecisive. It’s that far-right-wing group of nationalist extremists that the Deacon’s and my…mutual friend…asked Percival to get some damning information on.”

“Deutschland is filled with far-left and far-right-wing nationalist groups,” said J.C.

“Yes,” said Reggie, “but only the Nazis, the group Bruno Sigl and his friends are part of, represent a great danger to Great Britain…and France…in the years and decades to come. At least according to our friend who writes so many cheques and who prefers gold.”

“I’m sick and tired of you two always talking in this cute code,” I said between terrible coughs. I was angry. “Spies—even those on our side—are supposed to work for governments, ministries, secret services, not for individuals who like gold. Just tell us who the hell you’re talking about and how one man can send spies to Germany. We’re risking our lives up here. We have a right to know who this British master of spies is.”

“He sent British spies to Austria in this case,” corrected Reggie. “And you may well meet this man someday yourself, Jake. Until then, we have to decide what to do. Those bast—those Germans—will be on the North East Ridge in another forty minutes or so, and unless we decide what to do quickly, we’ll be in rifle range soon.”

There was silence except for the wind howling. As calm as it had been down on the face and in the gullies, the wind was wild up here on the thin line of the North East Ridge. A moderate spume of spindrift was being flung our way from the summit less than 1,000 feet above us. Now we had to shout to be heard, and it made my aching, constricted, blocked throat hurt all the more for doing so. I decided to shut up and let the others sort things out. In truth, I didn’t give a shit who this British spy boss was. The fact was, he’d gotten Bromley and Kurt Meyer killed, and now it looked likely that he’d finish us off as well.

A hundred or so feet below the ridgeline, Jean-Claude had patted me on the shoulder and said, “Jake, you’re still carrying Mr. Irvine’s ice axe.”

I was. We’d decided it was best to leave Sandy Irvine’s corpse where it lay, since certainly another British Everest expedition would be coming this way in a year, two years at most. If we buried him—and if our expedition had to remain a secret for whatever arcane reason—they’d never find him.

This was the Deacon’s reasoning. But I’d absentmindedly carried Sandy Irvine’s ice axe with the identifying three notches in the shaft almost to the ridgeline here on the east side of the First Step, and when J.C. reminded me, I set it carefully on a boulder, its metal tip pointing downhill to where the body lay out of sight in the gully, laid it where British climbers could find it next year or the year after.

How were we to know that another British expedition wouldn’t attempt Everest until 1933 and would find the ice axe I’d left but not go downhill a couple of hundred feet to search for Irvine himself?

“We have to climb or get around the First Step,” the Deacon was saying. “Put it between the Germans and ourselves. What do you think, Jake…you’re our rock man. Climb it or traverse around the base? If we climb, do we try the large boulders or try to work the rocks on the left side of the ridge, closer to the Kangshung Face?”

I shook myself out of my reverie and took the few steps to the south lip of the ridge. We’d grown as accustomed as one can to climbing with a constant 8,000-foot exposure while clambering around on the North Face, but at least down there we’d had the illusion of a gradual slope before everything went vertical. But from the south edge of this disturbingly narrow North East Ridge, it was a straight vertical drop of more than 10,000 feet to the shark-toothed jumble of the Kangshung Glacier below. Absolutely nothing between us and the glacier almost two miles below us but howling wind.

“Holy shit,” I heard myself say as I peered over the south edge.

“I agree completely,” said Jean-Claude. He was standing by my right shoulder. I didn’t want him behind me right then, jostling me. I stepped back, looked up the North East Ridge at the rocky obstacle of the First Step, and considered it for a long moment of silence broken only by the rising wind. There was an ominous, whirling white cap of cirrus cloud forming over Everest’s summit.

“If we were just free-climbing this First Step the way Mallory and Irvine probably did,” I said, my voice sounding much more authoritative than I really felt, “I’d say stay to the left near the Kangshung Face. Easier climbing. More handholds. But we have good ropes and J.C.’s jumars. With the others able to use the jumars, I think it would be easier for one climber to shed his rucksack and oxygen, climb those tougher boulders to the right—up and over the top—get a good belay stance there, and fix ropes along the way for the rest to jumar up.”

I was certain that the Deacon was going to ask me to do the climbing—I was their rock man after all, it was why they’d brought me along here to the top of the world—but what they didn’t know was that a sharp-clawed lobster had taken up residence in my lower throat and upper breathing tract and was moving around from time to time. Every time it did, it blocked my breathing almost completely.

“I’ll lead this pitch and lay the rope,” the Deacon said at once. “We’ll save Jake for the Second Step. That’s where the real climbing will be called for.”

I didn’t argue. We’d moved to the base of the stacked boulders at the south side of the First Step and were laying out ropes, the Deacon had removed his rucksack and mittens, when suddenly I said, “Wait! What about looking for Bromley’s body on this north side of the First Step? I thought that was the plan.”

Reggie gripped my upper arm. “We did that already, Jake. We found Sandy Irvine instead. It would take hours, days, to search all of those gulleys—and you can see that he’s not dangling from the south face of this ridge. Besides, I think Kami was right—whatever he saw…three figures and then just one…happened on this ridge between this First Step and the higher Second Step, near a boulder that looks like a mushroom. That’s where we’ll look now. After we get past this First Step.”

“Besides, Herr Sigl and his friends are coming too quickly for us to tarry here longer,” said the Deacon.

“But…,” I began and had to stop to cough a minute.

Reggie touched my back. “Pasang,” she called out to the silent Sherpa, “can you give our friend something for his terrible cough?”

“Not more codeine,” said Dr. Pasang. “It would have too much of a soporific effect at this altitude. But I have an ancient Hindu cough remedy in my bag if you’d like to try that.”

“All right,” I said and held out my mitten as Pasang dug around in his rucksack and then in his small medical bag.

Pasang dropped a small box of Smith Brothers Cough Drops into my palm—the new menthol kind that had come out only two or three years earlier.

Reggie looked over her shoulder as she belayed and actually laughed, but I just opened the package and put three of the drops in my mouth.

“I’m ready to climb,” said the Deacon, tying onto a rope and coiling more rope over his shoulder. “Who wants to belay?”

“I will,” said Reggie and J.C. at the same time. Both passed the rope over their shoulders, and Jean-Claude tied it off around the thinnest vertical boulder. Both said “On belay!” at the same instant.

The Deacon shook his end of the belay rope loose, giving himself slack, looked at the ugly heap of steep boulders a moment, and started climbing in that gangly, electrified-spider form of his. His style wasn’t pretty, but it certainly worked well on most rock. He played out the longer rope behind him as he climbed from handhold to toehold to precarious handhold, always moving upward with the spread-eagled speed that climbers used to stay attached to vertical rock if only through sheer fleeting friction.

I turned around and lifted my binoculars. Less than eight hundred yards behind us, the Germans moved onto the North East Ridge—up to our altitude, level with us. I watched as they paused a long moment to catch their breath, and then the tall leader with the rifle slung over his chest said something, gestured, and all five began slogging west toward us.

“Hurry!” I called up to the Deacon.