Karl Freytag. Twenty-six years old. Sole heir to the Freytag industrial complex specializing in commercial chemicals, particularly insecticides and herbicides. He had begun climbing during college holidays, and before he was twenty he had formed an organization of German climbers over which he presided and which published a most respectable quarterly review of mountaineering. He was its editor-in-chief. There was a packet of offset reprints from the review that described his climbs (in the third person) and accented his capacities as a leader and route- finder.
His letters were written in a brittle, perfect English that did not admit of contractions. The underlying timbre suggested that Freytag was willing to cooperate with Herr Bowman and with the international committee that had sponsored the climb, but the reader was often reminded that he, Freytag, had conceived of the climb, and that it was his intention to lead the team on the face.
Anderl Meyer. Twenty-five years old. He had lacked the means to finish his medical studies in Vienna and had returned to earning his living as a carpenter with his father. During the climbing season he guided parties up his native Tyrolean Alps. This made him the only professional in the team. Immediately upon being forced to leave school, Meyer had become obsessed with climbing. By every means from scrimping to begging, he had managed to include himself in most of the major climbs of the last three years. Jonathan had read references to his activities in the Alps, New Zealand, the Himalayas, South America, and most recently in the Atlas Range. Every article had contained unreserved praise for his skill and strength (he was even referred to as a 'young Hermann Buhl') but several writers had alluded to his tendency to be a loner and a poor team man, treating the less gifted members of his parties as anchors against his progress. He was what in gambling would be called a plunger. Turning back was, for him, the ultimate disgrace; and he would make moves on the face that would be suicide for men of more limited physical and psychic dispositions. Similar aspersions had been cast on Jonathan, during his years of active climbing.
Jonathan could form only the vaguest image of Meyer's personality from the letters. The veil of translation obscured the man; his English was stilted and imperfect, often comically obtuse because he translated directly from the German syntax, dictionary obviously in hand, and there were occasional medleys of compounded nouns that strung meaninglessly along until a sudden terminal verb tamped them into a kind of order. One quality, however, did emerge through the static of translation: a shy confidence.
Jonathan sat in bed, looking at the piles of letters and sipping his Scotch. Bidet, Freytag, Meyer. And whoever it was might have been alerted by Mellough.
KLEINE SCHEIDEGG: July 9
He slept late. By the time he had dressed and shaved, the sun was high and the dew was off the meadow that tilts up toward the north face of Eiger. In the lobby he passed a chatting group of young people, their eyes cleansed, their faces tightened by the crisp thin air. They had been out frolicking in the hills, and their heavy sweaters still exuded a chill.
The hotel manager stepped around the desk and spoke confidentially. 'They are here, Herr Doctor. They await you.'
Jonathan nodded and continued to the dining room entrance. He scanned the room and discovered the group immediately. They sat near the floor-to-ceiling windows that gave onto the mountain; their table was flooded with brilliant sunlight, and their colorful pullovers were the only relief from the dim and sparsely populated room. It looked as though Ben had assumed, as the natural privilege of his experience and age, social command of the gathering.
The men rose as Jonathan approached. Ben made introductions.
'Jonathan Hemlock, this here's Gene-Paul Bidette.' He clearly was not going to have anything to do with these phony foreign pronunciations.
Jonathan offered his hand. 'Monsieur Bidet.'
'I have looked forward to meeting you, Monsieur Hemlock.' Bidet's slanted peasant eyes were frankly evaluative.
'And this is Karl Freytag.' Amused, Jonathan matched the unnecessary force of Freytag's grip. 'Herr Freytag?'
'Herr Doctor.' He nodded curtly and sat down. 'And this here's Anderil Mayor.' Jonathan smiled professional approval into Meyer's wry, clear blue eyes. 'I've read about you, Anderl,' he said in German.
'I've read about you,' Anderl answered in his soft Austrian accent.
'In which case,' Jonathan said, 'we have read about each other.' Anderl grinned.
'And this lady here is Missus Bidette.' Ben sat down immediately his uncomfortable social duty was discharged.
Jonathan pressed the offered fingers and saw his reflection in her dark sunglasses. 'Madame Bidet?' She dipped her head slightly in a gesture that was, at one time, a greeting, a shrug at being Madame Bidet, and a favorable evaluation of Jonathan—a gesture altogether Parisienne.
'We just been small-talking and eyeballing the hill,' Ben explained after Jonathan had sent the waiter after a fresh pot of coffee.
'I had no idea this mountain Jean-Paul has been talking about for a year now would be so beautiful,' Madame Bidet said, taking off her sunglasses for the first time that morning and letting her calm eyes rest on Jonathan.
He glanced up at the Eiger's cold, shadowed face and the long wisps of captured cloud at the summit. 'I would not say beautiful,' Bidet offered. 'Sublime, perhaps. But not beautiful.'
'It is the possibility of conflict and conquest that is beautiful,' Freytag clarified for all time and for all people.
Anderl peered at the mountain and shrugged. Obviously he had never thought of a mountain as beautiful or ugly: only as difficult or easy.
'Is that all you are having for breakfast, Herr Doctor?' Freytag asked as Jonathan's coffee was served.
'Yes.'
'Food is an important part of conditioning,' Freytag admonished.
'I'll bear that in mind.'
'Meyer here shares your peculiar eating habits.'
'Oh? I didn't know you were acquainted.'
'Oh, yes,' the German said. 'I contacted him shortly after I organized this climb, and we have made several short climbs together to attune him to my rhythms.'
'And you to his, I assume.'
Bidet reacted to the cool tone of the exchange by inserting a hasty note of warmth and camaraderie. 'We must all use first names. Don't you agree?'
'I'm afraid I don't know your wife's first name,' Jonathan said.
'Anna,' she offered.
Jonathan said the full name to himself and repressed a smile that only a native English speaker would understand.
'How are the weather reports?' Karl asked Ben officially.
'Not real good. Clear today; maybe tomorrow. But there's a bunch of weak fronts moving in on us that makes it pretty dicey after that.'
'Well, that settles it,' Karl announced.
'What does that settle?' Jonathan asked between sips of coffee.
'We must go now.'
'Have I time to finish my coffee?'
'I mean, we must go as soon as possible.' Ben squinted at Karl incredulously. 'With the possibility of a storm in three days?'
'It has been climbed in two.' Karl was crisp and on the defensive.
'And if you don't make it in two? If you're pinned down up there in heavy weather?'
'Benjamin has a point there,' Jean-Paul interposed. 'We must not take childish risks.'
The word 'childish' rankled Karl. 'One cannot climb without some risk. Perhaps the young face these risks
