The Abominable: A Novel

the prearranged signal from the Deacon that all the loads had come up and he was cutting the rope from below and coming up himself—so we pulled the long pulley rope up, tied it onto one of the rucksack loads, made sure the rucksacks and other loads were secure over where we had to climb up off the ledge onto the North Col proper, and then we went back to the top of the rope ladder to wait.

After an endless wait, feeling the ladder and fixed ropes tugging and jiggling under our testing hands like a line with a big fish on it but never sure in the silence whether it was our friend or nine or ten Germans climbing toward us down there in the cloud, the Deacon emerged from the fog, climbed the last 30 feet or so to the ledge in the clear air, dumped the huge coil of fixed rope he’d brought up with him, and laboriously pulled himself up and over to where we were waiting with outstretched, ready-to-help arms.

“Shall we pull the ladder up behind you?” asked Reggie.

Too tired to speak for the moment, the Deacon shook his head. A moment later, and after we’d given him a brief snort of English air, he said, “Leave it in place. I brought a full-sized axe and two hatchets from Camp Three in one of those loads. When the Germans start climbing up that ladder in the morning, we’ll wait…wait…wait until they’re high enough on it, then cut it from here.”

So that’s why he’d brought up the fixed rope that we had rigged as a handhold along the length of the vertical section, but especially alongside the caver’s rope ladder. Without that rope there’d be nothing to cling to if the ladder suddenly gave way.

“We’ll have to post a guard here through the night,” said Jean-Claude. “Les boches may start climbing the ladder at any time. Or perhaps they will fool us by chopping steps on the slope and ice wall.”

“No,” said the Deacon. He paused another minute to regulate his breathing and said, “I don’t think they’re coming tonight. It’s been so cloudy down there for the past two days, I’m not even sure they saw the ladder and fixed ropes.”

“But they will follow our footsteps to them,” Pasang said.

The Deacon managed a tired nod. “True. But in the daylight, I think. And Sigl will send someone up the rope ladder to test it.”

“You are sure it’s Bruno Sigl down there, then?” said Reggie.

The Deacon shrugged. “Sigl or someone just like Sigl. It doesn’t really matter. They’ll be climbers and right-wing German political fanatics and I can only hope that their political fanaticism overwhelms their climber’s common sense. But no guards for us tonight. We’re going to haul as much of that gear as we can across the Col to Camp Four, get as warm as we can get, and sleep for as long as we can. It’s a calculated risk—and there’ll be hell to pay if the Germans do come up that ice cliff in the dark—but we all need the rest.”

“But if Sigl and his killers do come up that rope ladder tonight…,” I began. I was happy when the Deacon interrupted me; I really hated hearing my voice tremble the way it was.

The Deacon put his hand on my shoulder. “We’re too tired already, Jake. We’ve had almost no sleep for three days and nights at altitude. And sometime in the morning we’ll all have to start climbing again, no matter what the weather’s like. I say we sleep now and deal with the Germans in the morning, when they try to make it up here to the North Col.”

No one said anything for a moment, but then, one by one, each of us nodded. “Reggie, Dr. Pasang,” said the Deacon, “if you’d be so kind—drag one or two of those heavy loads across the Col top to Camp Four and please set out our sleeping bags there. We have extra bags in each load if you need them. The Unna cooker is in the load I chalk-marked Number One…we should get that out tonight and set it up in the vestibule of the tent, even if we wait till morning to use it. Pasang, perhaps you could coil and carry these hundreds of feet of rope from both the bicycle pulley and from the caver’s ladder railing. Just set it outside one of the tents at Camp Four, along with whatever load you can drag there.

“Jake, Jean-Claude,” he continued, “why don’t you come with me over to the wonderful bicycle-pulley-lifting thing and we’ll cut all the tie-downs and pull up all the anchors and stakes and lug that metal monstrosity over to this part of the ledge.”

“Why, Ree-shard? We have already cut and coiled the long rope that worked from the pulley. Why bring the bicycle machine here?”

“Because we don’t have any boiling oil handy,” said the Deacon.

10.

We slept relatively well, despite everyone’s headaches and the return of my terrible coughing. My guess is that none of us dreamt of Germans machine-gunning our tent with their Schmeissers. We should have, probably, but I don’t think any of us did. We were just too damned tired.

When I woke in the cold night, I would turn a valve, enjoy a little foot- and finger-warming oxygen, and drift back to sleep. The others were doing likewise, except for Pasang, who I believe slept straight through without any English air. I didn’t truly awaken until almost seven a.m. according to the watch my father had given me.

Pasang and Reggie were heating coffee and a pot of something to eat on the Unna cooker just outside the tent vestibule. The day was sunny. The air was cold but still. The sky above the North and North East ridges was a heart-stopping blue.

“Where are J.C. and the Deacon?” I asked, alarmed.

“They went to stand guard near the top of the rope ladder around four thirty this morning,” said Reggie. “Before it started getting light.”

“I’ll check in with them and then come back for coffee and breakfast,” I said between coughs. I was busy strapping my crampons on.

“Oh, the Deacon asked me to tell you to wear your Finch duvet jacket on the outside of everything else,” said Reggie. “If you must use the Shackleton anorak, he said to put it under the goose down jacket. Oh, and keep the goose down trousers I made for you on the outside as well, and, he said, keep your goose down hood up at all times.”

I noticed for the first time that both Reggie and Dr. Pasang were dressed that way, hoods up and tied tight. “Why?” I said.

“The Deacon says that we’re within range of the three rifles,” answered Pasang. “Especially his own Lee- Enfield with the telescopic sight. The balloon fabric on the Finch jackets is a dull white—harder to see against the snow of the North Col and the first part of the North Ridge than our gray Shackleton jackets.”

“Okay.” We were dressing in winter camouflage now. I wondered what other new wonders this day would bring.

“Here,” said Reggie. “Two thermoses of moderately hot coffee. You can share them with J.C. and Richard.”

The thermoses in the large pockets of my down jacket, long ice axe in hand, mini-Very pistol in my free hand, I hurried across the North Col to the ice ledge, remembering to keep my head down most of the time. It felt foolish to waddle along that way, but the idea of being a sniper’s target made my testicles want to crawl back up into my body.

J.C. and the Deacon weren’t on the ice ledge but were lying prone against a wall of snow and ice on the North Col proper about 40 feet from the head of the ladder. I plopped down beside them and handed out the thermoses.

“This is very welcome, thank you, Jake,” said the Deacon, accepting one thermos and setting it in the snow while his hand returned to steadying the large pair of binoculars. I’d forgotten to bring my own glasses from Camp IV. J.C. handed me his.

“They’ve been moving around since dawn,” Jean-Claude said. “Burying the dead and scattering or burying the ashes of the tents.”

“Burying the…,” I said and looked through the binoculars.

Down at the remnants of Camp III, eight men, their faces mostly hidden behind white scarves or handkerchiefs, all wearing white overparkas, were indeed dragging away the last bodies of our murdered Sherpas. Others were shoveling ashes and detritus from the previous night’s destruction onto large flat tarps.