At noon Li summoned Abe to the Tomb. The stone hut was circled by trucks and
look formidable. Li was sitting inside the hut with the officer plus several men who
had arrived with the convoy. Five of the six wore military uniforms.
Abe knew what they would want.
'Mr. Corder is taking the prisoner to cross our international border.' Li was almost
too angry to speak. 'We have found footprints. You must lead our soldiers to find him.'
'I have a very sick patient,' Abe said. 'She needs to go to a hospital.'
'The Chinese government is humanitarian,' Li reminded Abe.
'Then send Gus out.'
'This is a serious matter,' Li said. 'Internal affairs of the Chinese people, you see.'
'Help Gus,' Abe said. 'And I will help you.'
Li reversed the proposal. 'Help us,' he said. 'Then we will help you.'
Abe said, 'All right.' To save Gus, he had to risk sacrificing Daniel. That seemed to be
how it was written.
Though Thomas volunteered to track Daniel all the way to hell for them, the
Chinese would only take Abe to guide the patrol. They trusted him because he had
proved himself untrustworthy. They preferred to use the enemy they knew.
Abe set out at the head of the soldiers. There were six of them, including Li. Two
had rifles.
The footprints – amorphous in the sunny slush – led south up the trail to Everest.
At the giant stone arrow where the expedition had gone right, Abe turned left. He had
never been this way but knew where the tracks would lead, toward the Chengri La,
out from this Utopia.
The high altitude punished the soldiers and Li. Abe watched their gasping and
nausea with detachment. He considered leading them on a wild goose chase up a
subsidiary valley, but there was no need to. If they actually caught up with Daniel,
they would simply find the truth. Their fugitive was dead.
Abe stayed alert for places where Daniel might have buried the body beside the
trail. He was convinced Daniel was alone by this point. For all he knew, Daniel had
tucked the body under some rocks back at camp and then dived uptrail to mislead
them. One thing was certain. Presented with the corpse, the Chinese would cancel this
hunt and they could all leave the mountain for good. Mile after mile, there was no
body. The tracks led on, huge footprints deformed by the sun.
'We should return to camp now,' Abe said at three o'clock.
The sun had warmed the air and beautiful veils of white spindrift curled on the
mountainside. Underfoot the glacier groaned and snapped. Deep underneath rocks
exploded into powder. On either side of the trail, little sunballs rolled down the banks.
'No,' Li said. 'Walk more. More slowly.'
Shortly afterward, two of the soldiers became very ill. They sat on rocks, holding
their heads, with vomit on their pants and boots. The officer shouted at them, then
sent them back to camp.
Li and the remaining soldiers grew more and more uncoordinated. Hopping across a
glacier stream, one fell into the water. Farther on, another twisted his knee. It was
painful to see them groping onward. Each wore the grimacing mask of altitude
sickness. Abe wondered if Daniel had meant to punish the Chinese so badly. Probably
not, he decided. This wasn't about revenge.
Abe tried again at four o'clock. 'We have to go down.'
Li was weaving in place. Everybody else was sitting. 'They will escape,' he said.
Abe didn't argue. They could believe what they wanted.
Li consulted the others. He came over to Abe and pointed at a ruddy young soldier.
'You go more with this soldier,' he told Abe. 'We will go down now. You have the
responsibility.'
The Chinese boy, perhaps eighteen years old, climbed to his feet with an automatic
rifle slung across his back.
He smiled at Abe with the solidarity of top athletes, and Abe nodded to him with
faraway recognition. He had been roped to gung ho kids like this on a hundred
different mountains. Once upon a time he had been this boy. Under different
circumstances, they might have been heading off for the summit together. Abe
started up with the soldier in tow.
He felt strong and lithe and fast, and was grateful for the hair on his face and
hanging down over his eyes. They had reached 20,000 feet, but the air felt rich and
smooth to him. He bounded from stone to stone, almost playful. I belong here, Abe
thought with surprise. Not so long ago, he had been convinced this wasteland was
unfit for any animal.
The Chinese boy was soon struggling for breath, but Abe didn't slow down. He
wanted to exhaust the boy. If possible, he wanted to make him ill. Abe knew it was
imperative that he return with the soldier boy. It was one thing to supposedly abet a
supposed escape attempt. It would be an altogether different issue if Abe showed up
in camp alone. Regardless of whether the soldier had fallen off a cliff or slipped into a
crevasse or even decided to defect to Nepal, Li and the officer would cry foul. The
entire expedition would suffer then, Gus worst of all. Abe gave the soldier some water
and received some words he took to be thanks.
The irony was that only by pursuing Daniel faster could Abe hope to slow the
pursuit. The faster they went, the more likely he could wear this boy down. But no
matter how fast they went, the soldier didn't sicken or quit. Somehow he kept up.
At the end of another half-hour, Abe tapped his watch face and pointed at the
sinking sun. He gestured downward. As it was, they would be descending to camp in
darkness, probably hampered by the rest of the sick and tired patrol. He had a single
headlamp and no bivouac gear.
The young soldier chewed at his lower lip, trying to decide. Their valley had plunged
into twilight. The air turned cold and as blue as cornflowers. Abe took off his glacier
glasses and replaced them with his spare wire rims. Underfoot, the wet snow was
already crystallizing.
Up ahead, a butt of green ice formed yet another twist in the trail. Abe could just
make out a cast of penitentes at the turn, their sharp icy spires tilted towards the
summit. Five minutes more and they turned the corner to come upon a high, wide
glacial basin. They had entered what Robby, the photographer, called the magic hour,
that space before sunset when the light painted every shape with color.
The basin unfolded like vast, iridescent wings, as if a gigantic angel had quickfrozen
in flight and crashed here between two mountains. The sides of the basin swept
upward in long, simple curves, resting to the right upon the steep slopes of Everest
and to the left upon some darker nameless satellite peak. Not much higher from
where Abe and the soldier now stood, the wings joined at their neck. The basin
pinched together forming a ridge. That was the passageway. They were looking at the
Chengri La.
There, in a wildfire of gold and red alpenglow, they found Daniel.
He was not alone. The monk was strapped to his back with climbing rope. When
Daniel turned to look at them – the soldier had shouted something in Chinese – the
monk's head turned with him, lifelike, grinning.
