The Eiger Sanction

cuckold—at least an emotional cuckold. Jonathan pictured him with a nightcap, a candlestick in one hand, and a pispot in the other.

It was an unkind image, so he shifted his attention to Karl Freytag who at that moment was carefully and significantly advancing an argument proving that the route Jean-Paul had taken up the Dru the season before had been poorly chosen. When Jean-Paul laughed and said, 'All I know is that it got me to the summit and back!' Karl shrugged, unwilling to continue reasoning with a man who took the matter so lightly.

Karl's face was broad and regular, but too immobile to be interesting; he was handsome without being attractive. His blond—really colorless—hair was fine and lank, and he combed it back in a flat pompadour from his wide, aggressively intelligent forehead. He was the tallest man in the party by two inches, and his excellent body tone enabled him to maintain his rigid sitting posture without appearing foolish.

'Well!' Jean-Paul said, breaking off his chat with Karl and turning to Jonathan and Anna. 'You two don't seem to have been chatting.'

'We were comparing silences,' Jonathan said, 'and hers turned out more interesting than mine.'

'She's a remarkable woman.' Jean-Paul looked at his wife with undisguised pride.

'I believe that.'

'She was in ballet before her unfortunate marriage, you know.' Jean-Paul was in the habit of protecting himself by beating others to the assumption that the union had been socially and emotionally morganatic. It was not only that he was a manufacturer; his company made a comically common household article.

Anna laughed softly. 'Jean-Paul likes to think he snatched me from the stage at the height of my career. Actually, age and declining popularity were working toward the same goal.'

'Nonsense!' Jean-Paul asserted. 'No one could ever guess your age. How old do you think she is, Jonathan?'

Jonathan was embarrassed for both of them.

'My husband admires frankness, Doctor Hemlock. He considers tact to be a kind of deviousness.'

'No but. Come on, Jonathan. How old would you say Anna is?'

Jonathan lifted his hands palms up in a gesture of helplessness. 'I—ah—imagine a man would only consider her age if he were trying to decide whether the praise should go to Nature or to the lady herself.'

It had not been very good, but Anna applauded mockingly, soundlessly tapping the tips of three fingers into her palm.

Sensing that nothing of consequence was going to be talked about here, Karl rose and excused himself. Jean-Paul moved down one chair to tighten the party.

'It is certainly magnificent,' he said, looking dreamily out to the Eiger. 'It's a perfect choice for my last mountain.'

'Your last?'

'I am no longer young, Jonathan. Think of it! At forty-two, I shall be the oldest man to climb it. These two young men are fantastic climbers. We shall have our work cut out, you and I. You are—forgive me but—you are...?'

'Thirty-seven.'

'Ah! Just my wife's age!'

She closed her eyes and opened them tiredly.

To change the subject, Jonathan asked, 'Are you interested in climbing, Anna?'

'Not especially.'

'But she will be proud of me when I return, won't you, dearest?'

'Very proud.'

'I don't know when I've felt so good,' Jean-Paul said, stretching his arms athletically and allowing one to drop across Anna's shoulders. 'I feel I have achieved the best conditioning possible at my age. Each night for the past six months I have performed a complicated set of calisthenics. And I have been religious about them. I work so late that my poor wife is usually asleep when I join her.' He laughed and patted her.

'By now she must be very eager,' Jonathan said, 'to see you make the climb.'

Anna glanced at him, then looked away to the windows which were beginning to dapple with a light rain.

From habit Jean-Paul cursed the break in the weather, but his experience in these Bernese Alps told him that the preceding sunshine, not this rain, was the exception.

'This will bring fresh snow to the upper reaches,' he said matter-of-factly.

'Yes, some,' Jonathan agreed. He refilled his cup and excused himself to step out onto the terrace where he stood under an overhanging eave and enjoyed the smell of the rain.

The sky was zinc, and the color of the few gnarled evergreens that clung to the rocky soil of Kleine Scheidegg had been subtracted to olive drab by the loss of sunlight. There was no wind, and he sipped his coffee and listened to the rustle of rain in the meadow grass.

They were a cool lot. One of them, at least, was cool. He had met the possible sanction targets, but no gesture, no nervousness, no glance had given him a hint. Jonathan would be on dicey ground until Search contacted him with the target's identity.

Gray and listless mists concealed the upper third of the North Face. He recalled the ghoulish pun German sports writers resurrected each time a team attempted the Eiger. Instead of Nordwand, North Wall, they called it the Mordwand, Murder Wall. The days were past when German and Austrian youths threw their lives against the Eigerwand with reckless Wagnerian Todeslieb; great names had mastered the face: Hermann Buhl, Lionel Terray, Gaston Rebuffat; and dozens of lesser men had climbed it, each eroding, with his success, a fragment of the glory accruing to the task; but nonetheless, as he stood in the half-shelter sipping his coffee and looking across the meadow, Jonathan experienced an expanding desire to try again the face that had twice driven him back.

On his way up to Ben's room, he passed Anderl in the corridor, and they exchanged nods of greeting. He had taken an instant liking to this short, sinewy lad with his mop of dark hair so obviously unused to the comb, and his long strong fingers designed by nature for finding and clinging to the smallest indentations in the rock. It would be too bad if Anderl turned out to be the sanction target.

His knock at Ben's door was answered by a booming, 'Fuck off!'

Jonathan opened the door and peeked in.

'Oh, it's you, ol' buddy. Come on in. And lock the door behind you.'

Jonathan moved a coil of nylon line off the spare bed and stretched out. 'Why the fierce greeting?'

Ben had been packing the haversacks, evenly distributing the weight, but making sure each pair of kits contained every necessity for a good bivouac, should the team break into two climbing ropes. 'Oh, I thought you were one of those reporters.' He grumbled something to himself as he snatched tight a strap. Then, 'Goddam my eyes if they ain't been pecking at my door every five minutes. There's even a newsreel team here. Did you know that?'

'No. But I'm not surprised. The Eiger Birds are here in force now. The hotel's filled up and they're spilling over into Alpiglen and Grindelwald.'

'Fucking ghouls.'

'But the fattest cats of all are right here in the hotel.'

Ben tied off one of the haversacks with a grunt, 'Like who?'

Jonathan mentioned the names of a Greek merchant and his recently-acquired American society wife. The management of the hotel had erected a large rectangular oriental tent that gave onto one of the telescopes on the terrace. The tent was hung in silk and equipped with heaters and a small refrigerator, and the telescope had been reserved for their personal use, after being scrubbed down carefully with disinfectant. Every social precaution had been taken to insulate them from the company of the lesser Eiger Birds, but the Greek's penchant for lavish waste and gross practical jokes had instantly attracted the attention of the press.

Jonathan noticed a powerful brass telescope in the corner of the room. 'You bring that with you?'

'Sure. You figure I'm going to line up with a pocketful of coins to watch you on the face?'

'I'm afraid you're going to have to make your peace with the newsmen.'

'Why?'

'It would be best if you kept them informed, once' we're on the hill. Just basic statistics: how high we are,