The Eiger Sanction

the weather, our route—things like that.'

'Tell 'em nothing, that's my motto. Fuck 'em.'

'No. I think you should cooperate a little. If you don't, they'll make copy out of their imaginations.'

Ben tied off the last of the kits and opened a bottle of beer from his supply on the dresser. 'Whew! I've been busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. But I got you people ready to move out at a minute's notice. There's a report of a cone of high pressure moving in, and you know that bitch- kitty of a hill ain't going to give you more than two or three days of weather.' He tossed a ring of ice pitons off his bed and stretched out.

Jonathan asked for his evaluation of the climbers, and Ben screwed up his face. 'I don't know. Too much of a mixed bag for my taste. That German kid's too cocky-assed.'

'I have a feeling he's a good climber, though.'

'Could be. But he ain't many grins in a bivouac. He's got all the makings of a first-class snot. Doesn't seem to realize that we were making major climbs when he was still shitting yellow. Now that Austrian boy—'

'Anderl.'

'Yeah, Anderl. Now, he's a climber. He's got the right look. Kinda looks like you did.' Ben leaned up on one elbow and added pointedly. 'Thirteen years ago.'

'All right. All right.'

'Hey, ol' buddy? Toss your poor crippled friend another can of beer?'

Jonathan grunted up and did so, noticing for the first time that Ben was drinking American beer, an extravagance in Switzerland. But like most big American beer drinkers, Ben had no taste for the relatively thick German product. Jonathan leaned against the window and watched the rain. He saw Anderl out on the meadow, his arm around a girl who had his jacket over her head. They were returning to the hotel. 'What do you think about Jean-Paul, Ben?'

'Not so good. The way I peg it, you are just a gnat's ass inside the age limit for this kind of go. And he's on the other side of the line.'

Jonathan did not agree. 'He looks to me like he has a lot of staying power. There's generations of peasant endurance in the man.'

'If you say so, ol' buddy.' Ben swung his legs down and sat up, his tone changing suddenly, like a man who is finally getting to the point. 'Back at my place you said that maybe you wouldn't be making this climb after all. Is that still the way it is?'

Jonathan sat on the windowsill. 'I don't know. There's a job I have to do here. The climbing's really only side action.'

'Pretty big league, for side action.'

'True.'

'What kind of job?'

Jonathan looked into Ben's laugh-lined face. There was no way to tell him. Out beyond the window there were islets of snow on the meadow being grayed and decayed by the ram. 'The skiers must be cursing this rain,' he said for something to say.

'What kind of job?' Ben persisted. 'Does it have something to do with that Mellough guy?'

'Only obliquely. Forget it, Ben.'

'Kinda hard to forget. After you left, all hell broke loose at the lodge. There were government men all over the place, talking tough and generally making asses of themselves. They were scouting out in the desert and getting themselves lost and organizing patrols and cutting around with helicopters. They had the whole county in an uproar before they were through.'

Jonathan smiled to himself at the image of a CII operation of this type: all the coordination of a joint Arab/Italian invasion. 'They call it undercover work, Ben.'

'Is that what they call it? What happened out there anyway? When you brought back the shotgun, it had been fired. And no one ever saw Mellough and his boyfriend again.'

'I don't want to talk about it. I have to do what I do, Ben. Without it, I would lose my house and things I have spent years collecting.'

'So? You lose your house. You could still teach. You like teaching, don't you?'

Jonathan looked at Ben. He had never really thought about whether or not he liked teaching. 'No, I don't think so. I like being around good heads that appreciate my mind and taste, but as for simple teaching—no. It's just a job.'

Ben was silent for a time. He finished the beet and crushed the can in his hand. 'Let's call off the climb,' he said firmly. 'We'll tell 'em you're sick or something. Trouble with hemorrhoids, maybe.'

'My Achilles anus? No way, Ben. Forget it.' Jonathan wiped the haze from the window with the back of his hand and peered out at the misted mountain. 'You know what's weird, Ben?'

'You.'

'No. What's really weird is that I want another shot at the hill. Even forgetting the thing I have to do here, it's something I really want to do. You understand the feeling?'

Ben fiddled for a moment with a coil of nylon line. 'Of course I understand it. But I'll tell you something, ol' buddy. The sweet smell of decay is heavy in the air.'

Jonathan nodded.

Conversation among the team at luncheon centered on the weather, which had settled to a steady, plump rain which occasional gusts of wind rattled against the windows. They knew it would bring fresh snow to the Third Ice Field and, higher, to the White Spider. Much depended on the temperature on the face. If it was cold, and the snow dry and powdery, it would slip off in regular hissing slides, leaving the glaciated perennial ice and neve clean enough for a climb. If, on the other hand, the temperature should rise and make the snow moist and cohesive, it would build up, poising on the 60° inclines of the ice fields, ready to avalanche at the slightest disturbance.

Ben knew Jonathan had studied the surface of the North Face during his conditioning climb up the west flank two days before.

'Could you see much?'

'Yes. The weather was clear.'

'Well?' asked Karl.

'It looked fine, for Eiger. The snow was old and crusted. And the whole face was dryer than I've ever seen it.' Jonathan was referring to the inexplicable 'drying up' of the North Wall that had been in progress over the past thirty years. Pitches that had been expansive snowfields in the late thirties were wet and icy rock by the end of the fifties. 'One good thing. The Hinterstoisser Traverse was almost clear of ice.'

'That does not affect us,' Karl announced. 'My route does not include the Hinterstoisser Traverse.'

Even the phlegmatic Anderl shared the general silence this statement generated. Jonathan's cup of chocolate hovered for an instant in its rise to his lips, but he recovered quickly and sipped without comment, denying Karl the pleasure of shocking him. That Traverse, to which a young German had given his name in death, had been the key to all successful ascents of the mountain. No team had ever bypassed that critical bridge and made the summit, and only one team that had dared returned alive.

'I shall detail my route after luncheon,' Karl said, shunting away the negative silence.

With a gentle smile concealing his thoughts, Jonathan watched Karl over his cup for a moment, then he shifted his attention to the meadow and the mountain beyond.

The climbing team had reserved a table overlooking the meadow, and they generally sat with their backs to the restaurant, trying to ignore the presence of the Eiger Birds who, by now, had arrived en masse.

Several times during each meal, waiters had arrived with notes from the more affluent or aggressive Eiger Birds inviting the climbers to supper or to some evening entertainment which, if accepted, would have elevated the host in the eyes of his peers. These notes were always passed to Ben who took pleasure in slowly tearing them up unread in full view of the smiling, waving sender.

The discerning ornithologist would have distinguished three species of Eiger Bird among the flittering gathering that babbled in half a dozen languages.

The gratin of the Eiger Bird society were internationally famous idlers who had flown in from midsummer Stapes on their annual pleasure migrations to have their