The Eiger Sanction

Jonathan realized how he had to play this. He must maintain the soft, authoritative drone of his voice. 'I can see you perfectly, Jean-Paul. I shall certainly kill you if you make the slightest undirected movement. Do you understand?'

'Yes.' Bidet's voice was husky with fright and long silence.

'Just to your right there is a bedside lamp. Reach out for it, but don't turn it on until I tell you.'

There was a rustle of movement, then Jean-Paul said, 'I am touching it.'

Jonathan did not alter the mesmeric monotone of his voice, but he felt instinctively that the bluff was not going to hold up. 'Turn on the lamp. But don't face me. Keep your eyes on the light. Do you understand?' Jonathan did not dare the excessive motion required to get his arms out of the sleeping bag and scramble about under it for his gun. Do you understand, Jean-Paul?'

'Yes.'

'Then do it slowly. Now.' Jonathan knew it was not going to work!

He was right. Bidet did it, but not slowly. The instant the room flooded with eye-blinking light, he whirled toward Jonathan and brought his gun to bear on him where he lay incongruously in the eiderdown cocoon. But he did not fire. He stared at Jonathan with fear and anger balanced in his eyes.

Very slowly, Jonathan lifted his hand within the sleeping bag and pointed his finger at Bidet, who realized with a dry swallow that the protuberance within the bag was directed at the pit of his stomach.

Neither moved for several seconds. Jonathan resented the painful lump of his gun under his shoulder. But he smiled. 'In my country, this is called a Mexican standoff. No matter which of us shoots first, we both die.'

Jonathan admired Bidet's control. 'How does one normally resolve the situation? In your country.'

'Convention has it that both men put their guns away and talk the thing out. Any number of sleeping bags have been preserved from damage that way.'

Bidet laughed. 'I had no intention of shooting you, Jonathan.'

'I guess it's your gun that confused me, Jean-Paul.'

'I only wanted to impress you. Frighten you, perhaps. I don't know. It was a stupid gesture. The gun isn't even loaded.'

'In which case, you would have no objection to tossing it onto the bed.'

Bidet did not move for a moment, then his shoulders slumped and he dropped the gun onto the bed. Jonathan rose slowly to one elbow, keeping his finger pointed at Jean-Paul, as he slipped his other hand under the sleeping bag and retrieved his gun. When Bidet saw it emerge from beneath the waterproof fabric, he shrugged with a Gallic gesture of fatalistic acceptance.

'You are very brave, Jonathan.'

'I really had no other choice.'

'At all events, you are most resourceful. But it wasn't necessary. As I told you, I did not even load the gun.'

Jonathan struggled out of the bag and crossed to his armchair where he sat without taking his gun off Bidet. 'It's a good thing you decided not to shoot. I'd have felt silly wiggling my thumb and saying bang, bang.'

'Aren't both men supposed to put their guns away after a Mexican— whatever?'

'Never trust a Gringo.' Jonathan was relaxed and confident. One thing was certain: Jean-Paul was an amateur. 'You had some purpose in coming here, I imagine.'

Jean-Paul examined the palm of one hand, rubbing over the lines with his thumb. 'I think I shall return to my room, if you don't mind. I have made an ass of myself in your eyes already. Nothing can be gained by deepening that impression.'

'I think I have a right to some kind of explanation. Your entrance into my room was—irregular?'

Bidet sat heavily on the bed, his body slumping, his eyes averted, and there was something so deflated in his manner that Jonathan had no qualms about the fact that his gun was now within reach. 'There is no more ridiculous image in the world, Jonathan, than the outraged cuckold.' He smiled sadly. 'I never thought I would find myself playing the Pantaloon.'

Jonathan experienced that uncomfortable combination of pity and disgust he always felt toward the emotionally soft, particularly those who lacked control over their romantic lives.

'But I cannot become much more ludicrous in your eyes,' Bidet continued. 'I imagine you already know about my physical limitations. Anna usually tells her studs. For some reason, it inspires them to greater effort on her behalf.'

'You are putting me in the awkward position of having to declare my innocence, Jean-Paul.'

Jean-Paul looked at Jonathan with hollow nausea in his eyes. 'You needn't bother.'

'I'd rather. We have to climb together. Let me say it simply: I have not slept with Anna, nor have I any reason to believe that advances would be greeted with anything but scorn.'

'But last night...'

'What about last night?'

'She was here.'

'How do you know that?'

'I missed her... I looked for her... I listened at your door.' He looked away. 'That is despicable, isn't it?'

'Yes, it is. Anna was here last night. I met her in the hall, and I offered her a drink. We did not make love.'

Jean-Paul picked up his gun absently and toyed with it as he spoke. Jonathan felt no danger; he had dismissed Bidet as a potential killer. 'No. She made love last night. I touched her later. I could tell from—'

'I don't want to hear about it. I have no clinical curiosity, and this is not a confessional.'

Jean-Paul toyed with the small Italian automatic. 'I shouldn't have come here. I have behaved in poor taste; and that is worse than Anna, who had only behaved immorally. Let me ascribe it to the stress of the climb. I had had great hopes for this climb. I thought if Anna were here to see me climb a mountain that very few men would dare to even touch—that might—somehow. I don't know. Whatever it was, it was a senseless hope.' He looked over at Jonathan with beaten eyes. 'Do you despise me?'

'My admiration for you has found new limits.'

'You phrase well. But then, you have the intellectual advantage of being emotionless.'

'Do you believe me about Anna?'

Jean-Paul smiled sadly. 'No, Jonathan. I don't believe you. I am a cuckold, but not a fool. If you had nothing to fear from me, why were you lying there on the floor, anticipating my revenge?'

Jonathan could not explain and did not try.

Jean-Paul sighed. 'Well, I shall return to my room to blush in private, and you will be freed from the duty of having to pity and detest me.' In a gesture of dramatic finality, he snapped back the slide of the automatic, and a cartridge arced from the chamber, struck against the wall, and bounced onto the rug. Both men looked at the shiny brass with surprise. Jean-Paul laughed without mirth. 'I guess I am deceived more easily than I thought. I could have sworn this gun was empty.'

He left without saying good-night.

Jonathan smoked and took a sleeping pill before attempting sleep again, this time in his bed, considering it now safe with the same kind of superstitious faith in anti-chance that prompts bomber pilots to fly into ack-ack puffs, or woodsmen to seek shelter from storms under lightning-cleft trees.

EIGER: July 11

The only sounds they made as they walked single file toward the base of the mountain were the soft trudge of their footfalls and the hiss of Alpiglen grass against their gaitered boots, wet and glistening with dew. Bringing up the rear, Jonathan looked up at the mountain stars, still crisp and cold despite the threat of dawn to mute their brilliance. The climbers walked without the burden of pack, rope, and climbing iron. Ben and three of the young climbers who camped on the meadow had preceded them carrying the heavy gear as far as the foot of the scree slope. The team responded to the silence, the earliness of the hour, and the weight of their objective with that sense of unreality and emotional imbalance common to the verge of a major climb. As he always did just before a climb, Jonathan attended hungrily to all physical stimuli. Within his body he followed the tingle and ripple of anticipation. His legs, tuned high for hard climbing, pulled the flat land under him with giddying ease. The chill brush