Summit: A Novel Read online

  Climbing along the ridge until he was directly above it, Josef slowly slipped down the roof to arrive directly above the entranceway. There, he hung from the gutter and dropped onto the top of the small parapet roof that projected out from the main wall. He crouched there for a while, studying the best way down. Then, considering each hand and foothold one at a time, Josef began to climb down the right side of it.

  The cobbles of the road bridge started to come up to meet him. He could see no guard but told himself that when he reached the bridge he was going to have to move quickly and silently to get to the dark woods beyond. He cursed the loss of his boots, but there was nothing he could do about that for the moment. Foot down, hand down, foot down, hand down, he went, until, preparing himself for the dash he would have to make when he hit the bridge, Josef stretched his left foot down to make contact with the top of the wall that lined the side of the bridge.

  His bare foot pawed the air.

  “If you move your foot about five centimeters to the left and a little lower, you will find what you are looking for,” a crystal-clear voice said from the dark.

  The sound made Josef start.

  His immediate thought was to chance a jump to the side of the bridge, into the unknown below.

  “If you jump, Gefreiter Becker, you will fall about ten meters. It probably won’t kill you, but it is somewhat rocky down there. It would likely shatter your legs, and I could ensure you quite some time without treatment so that it did end up killing you. I suggest you step onto the bridge and put your hands up instead,” the voice continued, as if reading Josef’s mind.

  Josef followed the instructions, stepping onto the parapet wall and down into the middle of the cobbled roadway as a floodlight somewhere beyond the bridge flicked on to wash Josef in a blinding white light.

  An SS officer clad in a peaked cap and a long, black leather overcoat calmly stepped out of the shadows at the end of the bridge and walked toward him.

  “Time to stop now, I’m afraid. No more climbing for tonight,” the officer said, pointing a pistol directly at Josef.

  The officer’s face slowly appeared beneath the peak of his black cap. It was the same blond SS-obersturmführer who had released Josef from the gestapo. Four more SS officers appeared behind him and began to walk across the bridge back toward the castle entrance. They were chatting and laughing amongst themselves. Josef also recognized one of them immediately.

  “Most impressive, my dear Jurgen, even if only one of your candidates has successfully passed your audition. Gentlemen, it is late; we will speak further in the morning. Good evening to you all,” said the man that Josef knew from photographs in the newspapers to be the reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler. He left the group to stride quickly back into his castle. He stared into Josef’s eyes as he passed but without uttering another word.

  26

  The Khumbu Hotel, Thamel, Kathmandu, Nepal

  June 5, 2009

  8:45 a.m.

  The note had been waiting for him at the reception when they checked in late the night before.

  Its scrawl of ballpoint read:

  Mr. Neil Quinn,

  Telephone message from Mr. Sanjeev Gupta:

  Miss Richards would like to see you.

  She suggests at midday, tomorrow.

  Usual place.

  Quinn had met Henrietta Richards enough times to know that it was not a suggestion in the slightest. She would expect him, seated in the lounge of her apartment on Sukhra Path, at precisely twelve noon. No time would be wasted on any other arrangements.

  It was not the first time that he had been summoned. If you trod enough summits in the Himalayas, then, sooner or later, you would also be stepping into Henrietta’s apartment to explain yourself to her satisfaction. Never having felt a need to be anything less than honest about his achievements, he had little to fear from her inquisitions. He actually used to quite enjoy them, always awed by her incredible knowledge of the mountains, even if recently they had begun to leave him with the faint feeling that she thought he was selling himself short, that he could do better than the repetitions of the traditional climbs by which he made his living. He never left an interview without a recommendation of some old climbing book he should read or some obscure route that he should “try if he had a bit of time to himself.” It got under his skin a little because he knew she was right.

  This time, however, her intense scrutiny of his failure was the last thing he needed. He had other things to do. Most of all, he had to communicate with Nelson Tate Senior, tell him what really had happened up there. Quinn had tried to telephone when they stopped at Xangmu on the way back but couldn’t get through. In a way it was a relief. He wondered how such a call could work anyway. The Tates’ pain, probably also their anger, and his own still-raw emotions, would undoubtedly get in the way of proper explanation. By the time they had made it back to Kathmandu, he had decided the correct thing to do was to first prepare an email and set down all the facts. He had to get his side of the story to them before the shouting and crying started.

  Stepping out from the calm of the hotel into the vibration and fumes of the busy street, Quinn could feel the prestorm heat and humidity already pushing down on the frantic city, the heavy rain clouds churning above. Waiting on the side of the road, alert for the first free rickshaw or tuk-tuk, he realized that maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing that he was seeing Henrietta after all. She was a stickler for the truth of a matter, and he could also give her a copy of the email for an unbiased opinion. Thinking of the nearest Internet café where he could sit quietly and write, Quinn pushed his hair away from his still-bruised and battered forehead. That first long shower when he arrived back at the hotel always rendered it completely unruly. He needed to get it cut, particularly if he was going to see Henrietta later that day; everyone knew she was not fond of hippies.

  Quinn finally waved down an empty bicycle rickshaw, shouting, “The Annapurna Café” over the traffic noise. The small Tamang rider wearing an Inter Milan soccer shirt, a pair of cutoff denim jeans, and flip-flops stopped, gesturing for Quinn to get on the ripped bench seat behind him. The thick, tanned muscles on the man’s right thigh then bulged as he stood forward on a pedal and pushed down with all his modest body weight, no further instructions needed.

  Cogs reluctantly caught, the chain clattered in protest, and the rickety contraption arced out in slow motion to join the suicidal ballet of vehicles already competing for space in the road. Gathering speed, it threaded its way through Thamel, the tourist center of Kathmandu, rattling down the crowded roads and pavements, passing the neon-bright shops overflowing with colorful souvenirs and pounding with music, occasionally swerving to avoid opportunistic street kids loudly offering eclectic alternatives such as tiger balm or wooden flutes.

  Soon, the wheezing, twanging rickshaw pulled up at the Annapurna. Thrusting some dirty rupee notes at the rider’s outstretched hand, Quinn got off. He entered the café, buying a coffee and time on a computer at the back. There, with numb frost-nipped fingertips, he began to slowly type. He wrote and wrote for nearly the next two hours, digging as far into what happened as his tired mind would permit, questioning everything he remembered. It wasn’t easy. There is no such thing as perfect recall of what happens at over 27,000 feet. When finished, he felt spent, empty-headed, as if he had just put down his pen at the end of a three-hour university exam.

  Quinn printed a copy to give to Henrietta Richards, and saved the email in his account as a draft. Rather than sending it to her and then to the Tates, he thought he should wait just in case something else came to him as he was explaining himself to Henrietta. Also she had a habit of picking up on anything that didn’t sound right and he wanted to be sure that his note was correct. Exchanging the five printed pages for the lightweight Gore-Tex jacket in his day sack, Quinn stepped back out into the street. It was even busier than before as people hurried to get thi
ngs done before the rain came.

  Pushing through the crowds, he walked quickly to the alley that led to Pashi’s Barbershop, ducking his head to pass beneath the rows of embroidered souvenir T-shirts that hung across the entrance like prayer flags. They swayed above him, their fantastic multicolored threads a last nod to the hippies, hundreds of pairs of exquisitely stitched Buddha eyes looking down at him. Before he could even leave their rainbow glare and enter the barbershop, the proprietor greeted Quinn in the passageway like a long-lost friend. Pashi immediately pointed to the fresh dressing on Quinn’s forehead and, with his habitual friendly smile, asked directly, “What is this, Mr. Neil?”

  Suddenly reminded of the falling ice and rocks on the Second Step, Quinn made an exaggerated wince. “Oh, that. It was a rock, Pashi. A close one.”

  “And this?” Pashi pointed to the gash on Quinn’s upper cheek from the broken vodka bottle.

  “Cut myself shaving.”

  “But you still have beard, Mr. Neil,” Pashi said too quickly. Trying to correct his error, he continued, “Bad joke. I’m sorry to hear that you have difficult climb this time, Mr. Neil. Come in. Hair long. I think you will also need shave and head massage if seeing Henrietta Richards later.”

  Taking his place in front of the cracked mirror, feeling faintly irritated that Pashi already knew that he had been summoned to see Henrietta Richards, Quinn took in the place once more. Most definitely not a hair salon, it was an old-style barber’s, third-world Spartan. The unfinished shelves were scattered with skinny, pointed scissors and homemade cutthroat razors that ended in old-fashioned safety blades, murderous in their efficiency, questionable in their sterility. To each side of the dirty mirror before him were pictures of American beefcakes from the ’70s, modeling mullets or perms, all with thick, droopy mustaches. It was like being eyed up by the John Holmes fan club.

  Covering all the remaining wall space were hundreds of expedition postcards, stickers, and pennants. All the climbers went there when they got back into Kathmandu, and Pashi, customary fabric topi perched on his head, always wanted to talk. It was said that the by-product of all his chatter was that he knew nearly as much mountain gossip as Henrietta Richards. Usually Quinn entered into the spirit of it, but this time as he sat in the old swivel chair, a wave of fatigue and sadness hit him hard, prompted by the knowledge that his disaster on the mountain was now seemingly common fare for all. It rendered him silent.

  The barber, seeing something darker in Quinn’s face than the wounds, took the hint. He set about his work quietly, clicking scissors the only sound. While Pashi’s fast fingers hovered around his head, Quinn looked at himself in the grimy mirror. The bruising from the impact of the rock was spreading beyond the edges of a new dressing to show darker purple and blue, a hint of yellow even, within the tan of his forehead. The cut on his cheek was heavily scabbed, still criss-crossed with the butterfly strips now curling up at the ends from the moisture of his morning shower.

  Thinking again of the fight with Sarron, Quinn tensed and then exhaled so deeply that Pashi momentarily stopped, asking if everything was okay. Quinn nodded that he was fine but pointed to the cut, warning him to be careful of it when he did the shave.

  When the shave was done, the little man covered Quinn’s entire face with a cold, damp towel, pushing it down onto its contours and massaging the jaw to clean off the residual soap. It felt as if he was being suffocated. Quinn flashed back to the Second Step. He was there again, within that tiny cave, but this time alone, trapped inside its mound of ice, freezing but alive, desperately clawing at it to get out …

  Pashi pulled the towel away with a flourish, leaving Quinn staring at his naked, beaten face as if it were that of a stranger. He began to make out the skull within. His shadowy eye sockets darkened to become black holes. His nose and lips burned away, leaving only a hollow grin.

  What the hell is happening to me?

  “Head massage, Mr. Neil? Head massage?”

  The words sped up with urgency, snapping Quinn back. Still shaken from the tricks his mind had been playing, he stammered a little as he replied, “Yes, Pashi, yes, but not near my forehead.”

  The little man went to work first on his neck, kneading deep into the muscles, electric shocks of relief springing up Quinn’s spinal cord into his head. Pashi’s small, strong fingers then manipulated his skull, rotating thumbs pushing in tight under his ears. With it, a welcome clarity returned and Quinn began to think instead of how he was going to handle Henrietta Richards.

  “All finished,” Pashi eventually announced.

  Quinn got up from the chair, rolling his head around his shoulders, while the little man fussed over him, attentively brushing off any stray hairs. It made him feel guilty he had been so silent and abrupt.

  “Sorry I wasn’t very talkative, Pashi. A lot on my mind,” he said and, in consolation, paid Pashi a good tip.

  The barber smiled as he took the money. “Don’t worry, Mr. Neil. I understand completely. I am only sorry that you don’t have haircut before you climb. I could have told you many reasons why not a good idea for you to go to Everest with the Frenchie. Be careful, Mr. Neil. Be very careful.”

  Ducking back out into the street, Quinn noticed that the rows of staring T-shirts had gone. The traders had brought everything in and were closing the doors of their shops in anticipation of the grey sky unleashing the first rainstorm of the day. Feeling the first drops when he crossed the main street, Quinn stepped straight into a bar to wait out the worst of it, telling himself he needed a stiff drink before the even greater scrutiny of Henrietta Richards. Drinking his first whiskey, he watched through the window as the deluge began, thinking again about that gorak cave on the Second Step.

  27

  Durbar Marg Intersection, Kathmandu, Nepal

  June 5, 2009

  11:26 a.m.

  Pemba died not long after the third car hit him.

  His new 150 cc Hero Honda, his pride and joy, was now little more than a twisted piece of metal blocking the road. A laptop computer, thrown from the Sherpa’s satchel, lay to one side of it. Shattered by cartwheeling down the tarmac before being crushed by the many car wheels that drove over it, the laptop had shared the same fate as its owner when the out-of-control motorcycle had reared up in the rain and flung them both into the path of oncoming traffic.

  A crowd of onlookers on the pavement watched as the heavy rainfall pummeled the young Sherpa’s broken head, the cheap Chinese motorcycle helmet that surrounded it split cleanly in two like the shell of a walnut. His lifeless body was propped up against the high curb of the street, bright red blood flowing from his soaking T-shirt into the torrent of monsoon rain that cascaded along the side of the road. The crimson stream mixed with the dirty water and the refuse it carried, slowly dissolving into its filthy grey.

  Fixated despite the driving rain, the bystanders stared at the scene, sharing the macabre fascination of yet another motorcycle accident. When the ambulance finally took the body away, they also drifted off, content in the collective observation that the number of motorcycle accidents always increased when the monsoon came. There would be more tomorrow and the day after. No other conclusion was necessary.

  No one had seen what really occurred anyway. That first downpour of the day hid it all. Not a single person witnessed the car pulling alongside the small red and chrome motorcycle as it tried to accelerate its way home through the rapidly increasing rain. Nobody noticed the passenger door slam outward into the bike and its rider, causing him to lose control as the motorcycle bucked wildly into the oncoming traffic, handlebars flicking from lock to lock. No one had been watching anything until they stopped to watch Pemba die on the side of the road.

  The stolen Maruti Suzuki car had vanished before the motorcycle even came to a rest, its two occupants satisfied that the nasty fall the Sherpa undoubtedly suffered was suitably within their orders from Sarron. It ha
d been opportunistic, quick, and convenient. They had a busy afternoon and evening ahead with two more to deal with, particularly after missing the first one at his hotel that morning.

  The car’s passenger handed the driver a photo of Dawa and shouted an address. The small car immediately turned to the left, across the oncoming traffic, to head for the other side of Kathmandu.

  28

  Apartment E, 57 Sukhra Path, Kathmandu, Nepal

  June 5, 2009

  11:55 a.m.

  Quinn ducked into the entrance of the old Rana Palace building, shaking himself like a wet dog before taking off his jacket. Ascending the stairs to the third-floor apartment, the taste of Japanese whiskey still on his tongue, the post-climb ache burning in his shins and thighs the higher he got, he slowly left the deluge behind. Arriving on the coconut mat in front of the white gloss-painted door with the brass “E” in the center, it was as if he had also left Asia behind.

  The instant he knocked, Sanjeev Gupta opened the door and let him in, taking the soggy jacket from Quinn’s hand in the same deft movement. Inside, as always, the apartment was an oasis of English calm. The flower prints, the shelves lined with colorful mountaineering books, the dishes of potpourri, the stark line of alphabetized grey filing cabinets that ran along one wall, the aloof black cat skulking in a corner, they all combined to make it feel like the headmistress’ rooms at some elite girls’ school in Surrey.

  Henrietta Richards looked up at Neil from her upright chair in the center of the main living room, her lap covered in papers. To her side was a table laden with bound notebooks and loose-leaf files. In a corner on a desk, Quinn could see her computer; its screen burned vividly with a report that she and Gupta must have been working on. Observing him over the top of her half-moon reading glasses, taking in his battered and bruised appearance alongside a faint smell of whiskey and rainwater, Henrietta said, “Hello, Neil. Excuse me if I don’t get up, but as you can see, I am rather in the middle of something. You can sit there. Would you like some tea? Milk, no sugar, isn’t it? Sanjeev will do the honors.”