The Abominable: A Novel

captured by three white-coated attendants not thirty feet from me. That crazy man had been shuffling along straight toward me around the lake as though he were on a mission which only he could carry out, and Hess gives me the creeps in the same way as I’d felt looking at that man coming toward me past the Swan Boats pavilion.

I still have no clue as to what “last November’s action” was, but it sounds military. It may explain why so many men at the table are wearing quasi-military brown shirts with epaulets.

I search my memory for news from Germany in November 1923, but I’d spent that month climbing on and around Mont Blanc and couldn’t recall hearing any radio news or reading any pertinent reports in newspapers— most of which were in French or German—the few times we stayed in Swiss hotels. The past year has been a climbing vacation almost completely out of time for me—up until we read of Mallory’s and Irvine’s disappearance on Everest—and whatever “action” happened here in Munich the previous November hadn’t caught my attention. I presume it was some more of the political idiocy that Germany has been cranking out from both sides of the political spectrum ever since the weak Weimar Republic came into power after the toppling of the Kaiser.

Whatever it was, it’s irrelevant to the reason we came all this way to Munich to interview Bruno Sigl.

What isn’t irrelevant are the names of the six mountain climbers whom Sigl is now introducing—the six hairy-armed men sitting on the bench along our side of the long table.

“First, allow me to introduce our co-lead climber, along with myself, among my climbing colleagues,” Sigl is saying, palm out toward the tanned, thin-faced, solemn-looking bearded man to my immediate right. “Herr Karl Bachner.”

“Meeting you is a true honor, Herr Bachner,” says the Deacon. Then he repeats it in German. Bachner nods slightly.

“Herr Bachner,” continues Bruno Sigl, “has been the mentor of many of Munich’s and Bavaria’s top climbers—which, of course, means the top climbers in the world—at the Akademischer Alpenverein Munchen, the climbing club of the University of Munich…”

How many times during my years at Harvard had I wished that my college had a formal climbing club such as Munich’s? While there were a few professors who climbed and helped us organize our Alaskan and Rockies expeditions, the founding of the Harvard Mountain Club was still a few years in my future.

“Herr Bachner is also a leader in the now merged Deutscher und osterreichischer Alpenverein,” says Sigl.

This is German that even I can understand. I knew from the alpine journals that Karl Bachner had been the prime mover in uniting the German and Austrian alpine clubs.

Sigl gestures toward the next two young men beyond Bachner. “You have read, I presume, of the recent ice-climbing exploits of Artur Wolzenbrecht…”

The man closer to me nods in our direction.

“…and his climbing partner, Eugen Lowenherz.”

I know that the young men were famous for designing the much shorter ice axes—ice hammers, really—and thus, with the help of pitons and ice screws, what climbing Brits like Deacon derisively tend to call “the dangle and whack school,” rapidly climb straight up ice walls that would defeat our old-fashioned attempts to carve steps in the ice.

“Artur and Eugen climbed the direct route up the North Face of the Dent d’Herens last week in sixteen hours,” says Sigl.

I whistle in astonishment. Sixteen hours for a direct North Face ascent of one of the most difficult faces in all of Europe? If it is true—and the Germans never seem to lie about their ascent claims—then these two men drinking beer to my right have opened a new era in the history of mountaineering.

The Deacon says in a rapid-fire German something he later translates for me as “Gentlemen, does either of you have one of your new ice axes with you?”

It’s Artur Wolzenbrecht who reaches under the table and brings out not one but two short ice axes, their shafts less than a third the length of my own wooden axe’s, their blades far more pointed and curved. Wolzenbrecht sets the two revolutionary climbing instruments on the table in front of him, but he does not hand them to the Deacon or me for closer inspection.

It doesn’t matter. Just looking at the shortened ice hammers (for want of a better term), I can imagine the two men hacking their way straight up the icy North Face of the Dent d’Herens, driving in long pitons or their newly designed German ice screws all the way for their safety. And I’m sure that they used the 10-point crampons as well—invented in 1908 by the Englishman Oscar Eckenstein but rarely used by British climbers. Now frequently used by this new generation of Bavarian ice climbers. Cramponing and short- ice-hammering their way up a giant ice face. It’s beyond ingenious—it’s brilliant. I’m just not sure if it’s fair, if that makes any sense.

Sigl introduces the last three climbers—Gunter Erik Rigele, who, two years ago, in 1922, successfully adapted the German piton for use on ice; a very young Karl Schneider, about whom I’d read amazing things; and Josef Wien, an older climber—his head shaved bare for some reason—whose stated goal in the alpine journals was to lead joint Soviet-German expeditions to Peak Lenin and to other impossible climbs in the Russian Pamirs and the Caucasus.

The Deacon expresses, in smooth German, his and my sense of being honored to meet these great Bavarian climbers. The six men being complimented—seven including Bruno Sigl—don’t even blink in response.

The Deacon takes another long drink of beer from the heavy stein and says to Bruno Sigl, “Can we begin our discussion now?”

“It will not be a ‘discussion,’ as you call it,” snaps Sigl, his Bavarian courtesy suddenly and totally absent. “It will be an interrogation—as if I’m in a British courtroom.”

I gape at this, but the Deacon only smiles and says, “Not at all. If we were in an English courtroom, I would be wearing a funny white wig and you would be in the dock.”

Sigl frowns. “I am only a witness, Herr Deacon. It is the defendant—the usually guilty party—who sits in the dock in British courts, no? The witness sits…where? On the chair near the judge, ja? ”

“Ja,” agrees the Deacon, still smiling. “I stand corrected. Would you prefer that we speak in German so that all your friends can understand? I’ll translate for Jake later.”

“Nein,” says Bruno Sigl. “We will speak English. Your Berlin accent grates on my Bavarian ears.”

“Sorry,” says the Deacon. “But we agree that you were the only witness to see Lord Percival Bromley and his fellow climber Kurt Meyer swept to their death by an avalanche, is this not true?”

“By what authority, Herr Deacon, do you interrogate…or even interview me?”

“No authority whatsoever,” the Deacon says calmly. “Jake Perry and I came to Munich to speak to you as a personal favor to Lady Bromley, who, understandably, simply seeks more details about her son’s sudden death on the mountain.”

“A favor to Lady Bromley,” Sigl says, the sarcasm audible in his voice even through the heavy German accent. “I presume there is money changing hands as part of this… favor.”

The Deacon merely continues smiling and waits.

Finally Sigl slams down his empty stone stein, waves the attentive waiter over for a new one, and grumbles, “Everything I saw of the accident I reported both to German newspapers and in the German alpine journal and in a letter to your Royal Geographic Alpine Club journal.”

“It was a very short report,” the Deacon says.

“It was a very quick avalanche,” snaps Sigl. “You were on both of Mallory’s earlier Everest expeditions. I trust you saw snow avalanches? Or at least in the Alps?”

The Deacon nods twice.

“You know, then, that one second the person or persons are there, the next second they are not.”

“Yes,” agrees the Deacon. “But it is difficult to understand what Lord Percival and the man named Meyer