when photography was impossible. Further Carlos held that this road had been built
with slave labor.
For the sake of argument, and because Jorgens was in such a garrulous mood, Abe
challenged him. 'I've heard the story told little different,' he said. 'That it was Tibetans
who built this road, and with a gun at their head.'
The deep dimples in Jorgens's beard vanished. He shot a look at their driver, who
spoke pidgin Mandarin and pidgin Hindi and even pidgin Japanese, but, judging by his
blank look, no English at all. Then he turned a stern look upon Abe.
'You had a chat with Mr. Crowell, I take it.'
'We rode together,' Abe said. 'It was an education.'
'Half an education,' Jorgens qualified it. 'There's always two sides to a story.'
Abe almost spread his hands as if to disown his own remark. He hadn't meant to
trigger a confrontation. At the same time, he didn't appreciate being lectured. Jorgens
went on.
'Take the story of this road, for instance. It took a long time to build this road,' he
said. 'You may not believe this, but the Tibetan workers would stop after every
shovelful to pick the earthworms out of the dirt. Can you imagine? Every shovelful,
stop to save an earthworm's life. Talk about benighted. It drove the Chinese nuts.'
Jorgens stared out at the blank countryside. 'What a country. What a sorry
ass-backward excuse for a country. People going around day and night mumbling
prayers, worshiping stones, prostrating themselves. Frankly I think the Chinese did
these Tibetans a favor. At least these people can see a hint of the twentieth century
now.'
Abe noticed that Jorgens hadn't disputed the charge of slave labor. At best he'd put
a happy face on it. 'Sounds to me like Tibet didn't really need the twentieth century,'
Abe said.
'Tibet.' Jorgens spit the word. 'You have to understand something about this place,
then you'll understand Mr. Crowell's fixation on it. Tibet was called the forbidden
kingdom for a reason. People like us were kept out. But even when we're let in, we're
still out. We're all strangers here. And that's why people like Mr. Crowell feel so at
home here – because nobody knows Tibet, and so we can all imagine it is whatever we
want.'
After that, they rode in silence.
At the top of the Pang La, Jorgens breathed a long whistle. 'My God,' he said. 'Would
you look at this.'
It was indeed a sight. The Himalayan range lay spread before them, a tonnage of
angles and sunlight. Jorgens signaled their driver to stop. The driver scowled and
tapped his wristwatch. Jorgens waved him to a halt anyway.
A second truck pulled up and Li disembarked. Bundled in cherry-colored expedition
parkas, Thomas and Robby and J.J. Packard rose up from their nest atop the boxes
stacked in back. They moved slowly, cold and stiff. But their teeth gleamed in huge
grins and they were excited to be getting so close to the mountain.
A third truck arrived, and more people joined them. Cameras snapped and whirred.
Not a cloud adulterated the blue sky. The air was still. They were twenty miles or
more from Everest, but with the humidity content near zero, there was no haze and it
looked close enough to touch.
Even though Daniel and Gus were missing, Jorgens decided it was time for 'the
Picture' – the official 'before' shot which, months later, would go with the 'after' shot in
their slide shows to prove how Everest was about to ravage them. He called one of
their Sherpas over to round out the group. They put on their best face, eight
mountaineers radiant in their shorts or jeans or Lycra tights, bellies taut, teeth white.
But while Abe steadied his bulky old Pentax on a tripod, they flexed anyway.
The most obvious as usual was J.J. Packard, who whipped off his sweatshirt to
display thick lats like a peacock in rut. He came advertised as a magnificent summit
animal, capable of squatting a quarter-ton of iron draped across his neck, but Abe
wondered. His exhibitionism and dirty blond dreadlocks aside, J.J.'s sheer bulk
seemed more likely to gobble up his oxygen capacity and leave him far behind, and
Abe was curious to see how it would go.
Next to the giant, like spidery twins, Robby Powell 'sucked cheek' in Revo
sunglasses and his buddy Thomas Case postured with a dour, foreboding frown. Both
were wearing the expedition T-shirts that Robby had compared, unkindly – it was
Jorgens's design – to a cheap supermarket tabloid. The logo showed an ice climber
peering into the neon orange cosmic reaches. The title ULTIMATE SUMMIT: EVEREST
NORDWAND galloped across the chest. Under that, in hot purple ink, the shirt bragged,
'Getting High the Hard Way!'
Kelly, their beauty queen, just cocked her head and the sun poured gold on her
Viking locks. Though she was embarrassed by her flat chest and regularly joked that
her butt looked like hams waiting to happen, Kelly was the ultimate tits-and-ass show
to ever play Everest. A schoolteacher in real life, she had consented to model on the
expedition. On her crystal blue eyes alone, magazines and cosmetic companies had
paid the Ultimate Summit $150,000. A pantyhose company had kicked in $80,000
for rights to her legs, providing darker shades to hide the scars. Her hair had gone for
another $35,000 to a shampoo maker, and her skin had fetched still more from a
tanning lotion manufacturer. The rest of their money had come through more
conventional expedition schemes such as T-shirt sales, a book contract – null and void
if they failed the summit, unless there was a death – ten-dollar 'Postcards from the
Edge,' a wristwatch endorsement, and some last-minute corporate check-kiting that
involved the venture's nonprofit status and the future profits from Jorgen's Chinese
permit for Everest the following year. Abe didn't understand it all, nor did he waste
much time inquiring.
Nima Tenzing, the top kick of their climbing Sherpas, looked as grave as a
nineteenth-century chieftain facing the lens of history. Centuries ago, the Sherpas had
migrated from their native Tibet into the high valleys south of Everest in Nepal.
They'd been 'discovered' in the 1930s by Western mountaineers in need of cheap
labor on Everest, becoming famous as 'tigers of the snow' who functioned as high
altitude Gunga Dins, capable of carrying enormous loads by day and cheerfully
delivering cups of tea each morning at dawn to their sunburned sahibs.
Back in Kathmandu, Abe had met a worn-out old Sherpa missing most of the fingers
on one hand. What it had brought to mind was not tales of Himalayan heroism but the
memory of his own father, maimed in service to an oil company that soon after fired
and forgot him. In Nepal, tourism was the number one industry, and with their good
humor and charming English and their appetite for Western fashion, these Sherpas
were less tigers than safari porters who were usually the first to get eaten by the
mountain. Just prior to the first successful ascent of Everest in 1953, Tenzing Norgay
and the team's other Sherpas had been stuck in a converted stable without a toilet
while Hillary and his comrades enjoyed the British embassy building. From then on,
the Sherpas had known their place in the scheme of things.
Glen 'Stump' Wilson, the co-leader, anchored their center. An arbitrator and
construction litigation attorney, Stump was built from the waist down like a pro
