The Abominable: A Novel

split vertically with three wide cracks running up towards the top of Step Two.

“This climb you just did, if you’d also done the overhang to the summit, is rated ‘Very Severe.’ The technical free climb of the Second Step—above twenty-eight thousand feet, please recall, where even when one is hauling heavy oxygen equipment, your body and mind are dying every second you stay at that altitude or increase it—the rating of the Second Step is beyond the Alpine Club’s ‘Very Severe’ rating system. It may be impossible to climb such a rock face at such an altitude. And then there is the Third Step waiting for us higher on the ridge, the last real obstacle, I believe, except for a pyramid snow slope that one has to climb just below the last summit ridge— that Third Step may be even more impossible.”

Jean-Claude just stares at the Deacon for a long silent moment.

Then J.C. says, “So you had to see if we—or actually if Jake—could do such a comparable free climb. And then haul me up like a bag of laundry. And he did…so…I don’t understand. Does this mean you believe we can do the same sort of climbing above twenty-eight thousand feet?”

The Deacon smiles in earnest now. “I believe we can try without it amounting to suicide,” he says. “I believe I can do the crux of the Second Step, and now I think that Jake can as well, and that you will be an able third partner, Jean-Claude. This doesn’t give us the summit of Everest—we simply don’t know what’s beyond the Second Step, save for perhaps Mallory’s and Irvine’s frozen corpses, which might also be at the base of the Second Step—but it means we have a fighting chance.”

I coil the last of the rope, secure it over my shoulder and rucksack, and think about this. In my angry heart I forgive the Deacon somewhat for putting us through this go-get-my-pipe charade. Mallory had free-climbed that solo, after climbing it following the Deacon—the sporting thing to do, Mallory had said, according to the Deacon, since he, Mallory, had the advantage of the rappel recon.

We head out toward the distant car, almost two hours of rough hiking after our climbing day, and I feel like my insides are flying. My heart—or soul, or whatever’s in there at the core of who each of us is—has taken happy flight and is soaring above us.

The three of us are going to climb Mount Everest.

Whatever the outcome is of finding the remains of Lord Percival Bromley—and I assign that a very low probability—the three of us are going to make our attempt, alpine style, at the summit of the tallest mountain in the world. And the Deacon now thinks that we can climb that dreadnought bow of the vertical face of the Second Step. Or at least that I can.

From this moment on, a new fierce fire burns in me, and it continues to burn in the weeks and months ahead.

We are going to climb that goddamned mountain. There is now no other choice or alternative.

The three of us are going to stand on the summit of the world.

Chapter 6

Der Mann, den wir nicht antasten lassen.

I haven’t been to Germany in the year I’ve spent in Europe, doing almost all of my climbing in France and Switzerland, although we met more than a few German climbers in Switzerland: some Germans were friendly; many more were not. When I first met Jean-Claude and the Deacon, the three of us staring at the North Face of the Eiger and agreeing that the face was simply beyond the climbing techniques and technology of our day, there was a team of five very intense, very self-serious, very unfriendly Germans nearby who were talking as if they were actually going to try to climb die Eigerwand—the wall of the North Face. They didn’t, of course. They barely got beyond the Bergschrund and scrambled around a bit on the first 100 feet or so of slope before abandoning their bold quest.

For our trip to Germany, the Deacon and I first travel back to France, where he has to conclude some financial business, cross Switzerland to Zurich and then north to the border, where we change trains, since at the time railroad stock ran on different-gauge rails in Germany than in all the surrounding countries. This was a defensive military measure on the part of Germany’s neighbors, of course, even though the former land of the Kaiser had been defanged by the Versailles Treaty. The Deacon tells me in soft tones, even though we have a private compartment to ourselves (thanks to Lady Bromley’s expense account), that the current Weimar Republic government is a rather inefficient and mostly left-wing debating club.

Then on to Munich in the morning.

It is a rainy day, low gray clouds moving quickly westward, in the opposite direction of the train, and my first impressions of November 1924 Germany are a bit confused.

The villages are tidy—overhanging eaves, some modern buildings mixed in with homes and public buildings that look like they were there in the Middle Ages. Cobblestones wet from the rain reflect what little daylight there is. Some of the men visible walking the village streets are dressed like peasant farmers or overall-clad factory workers, but I also catch glimpses of men in modern double-breasted gray business suits carrying leather briefcases. But everyone I see out the train windows—peasants, workers, and businessmen alike—looks…weighed down. As if the gravity here in Germany is greater than in England, France, and Switzerland. Even the young men in business suits hurrying under their rain-slicked umbrellas look slightly bent, slightly stooped, heads bowed, gazes lowered, as if each were carrying some invisible burden.

Then we move through an industrial area that is all long, dirty brick and cinderblock buildings amidst mountains of slag. A few towers and industrial chimneys throw up great fingers of flame that seem to cast an orange spotlight on the scudding rain clouds. I see no human beings in this landscape as I watch mile after mile of these ugly industrial monoliths and their mountains of cinders, slag, sand, and sheer refuse slide past my train car windows in the rain.

“In January of last year,” the Deacon says, “the German government fell behind on reparation payments that were part of the treaty. The mark dropped from seventy-five to the dollar in nineteen twenty-one to seven thousand to the dollar by the beginning of nineteen twenty-three. The German government asked the Allies to grant a moratorium in reparation payments, at least until the mark began to regain some value. The response of the Allies was given by the French. Former Premier, now Prime Minister Poincare sent in French troops to occupy the Ruhr and other industrial sites throughout the heart of Germany. When those troops arrived last year, January of ’twenty-three, the mark dropped to eighteen thousand to the dollar and had reached one hundred sixty thousand to the dollar and then a clear one million marks to the dollar by August first last year.”

I try to understand this. Economics always bored me, and while I’d read that French troops had gone into Germany to occupy the industrial area, I certainly hadn’t paid any attention to what effect such an occupation would have on Germany’s economy, such as it was after the Great War.

“By November of last year,” says the Deacon, leaning close to speak in little more than a whisper, “it would have taken a German four billion marks to buy a dollar. With the Ruhr French troops overseeing all industrial production, river traffic, and steel exports, Germany was effectively cut in two. So the German industrial workers, essentially working while under armed guard and supervision of the occupying French troops in each of those factories we’re passing, declared a general strike last year—and in most of these factories, as in the Ruhr, real production of steel or anything else has come to a stop because of the German workers’ passive resistance, active sabotage, and even guerrilla warfare. The French keep arresting and deporting and even lining up and shooting the presumed leaders of this slowdown, but it makes no difference.”

“My God,” I say.

The Deacon nods toward the men and women in the street. “Last year those people knew that even if they had millions of marks in their bank account, it wouldn’t be enough to buy them a pound of flour or a few raggedy carrots. Forget being able to pay for several ounces of sugar or a pound of meat.”

He took a deep breath and pointed through the rain-streaked window toward the suburbs of Munich we were entering. “There’s a lot of frustration and anger out there, Jake. Be careful when we go to meet Sigl. Americans, even though they helped win the War, are an oddity. But many, not all, hate the British and French on sight, and Jean-Claude might not have been physically safe here in Munich.”

“I’ll be careful,” I say, without even being sure of what “careful” will demand or amount to in this strange and sad and angry country.