The Abominable: A Novel

When the red dust settled, we were surrounded in two groups: the majority of the bandits encircling the Sherpa porters and ponies, and the leader with about a dozen armed men surrounding Reggie, the Deacon, J.C., Pasang, and me. The many rifles weren’t exactly pointed at us, but they weren’t pointed away from us either. All I could think of as I looked at these men was that we’d somehow traveled centuries into the past and come across Genghis Khan and part of his Horde.

Reggie stepped forward and began talking to the leader in rapid Tibetan—or some dialect of Tibetan. It didn’t sound quite like the Tibetan she’d used when talking to the djongpen headmen and villagers in Yatung, Phari, Kampa Dzong, and the many smaller villages we’d passed, bargained with for food, or camped near.

The bandit leader showed strong white teeth and said something that made his fellow bandits laugh. Reggie laughed with them, so I had to assume the comment wasn’t at her expense. (At J.C.’s, the Deacon’s, and mine, perhaps.) I didn’t care as long as the bandits didn’t shoot us—but even as I cravenly thought those words, I realized that when these bandits carried away our mules with all our gear and oxygen tanks and tents and food and Reggie’s and Lady Bromley’s money, our expedition would be over for good.

The bandit leader barked something, still grinning like a madman, and Reggie translated: “Khan says that it’s a bad year to go to Cho-mo-lung-ma. All the demons are awake and angry, he says.”

“Khan?” I repeated stupidly. Perhaps we had gone through some sort of hole in time. For whatever reason, it didn’t seem that odd to have Genghis Khan’s Mongol hordes descending upon us.

“Jimmy Khan,” said Reggie. She said something to the oddly named leader, turned, went back to the mule that Pasang always kept tethered right behind her white pony, and returned with two small packing boxes. After bowing slightly and saying something with a smile, she offered the first box to Khan.

He took a curved blade not much shorter than a full scimitar from his leather belt and pried the box open. Inside, cradled in straw, was another, smaller box, this one made of polished mahogany. Khan tossed aside the packing crate, and several of his men—all smelling to high heaven of horses, human sweat, smoke, dung, and horse sweat—crowded their mounts closer so that they could see.

Khan sheathed his knife and pulled two chrome-plated, ivory-handled American western-type revolvers from the mahogany box. Boxes of cartridges were inlaid in red velvet. The other bandits gave up a collective “Ahhhhhrrrhhh”—half admiration, half anger or jealousy, it sounded like—and Khan snarled something at them. They fell silent. The other group of bandits surrounding our clumped-together Sherpas were watching carefully.

Reggie said something in this Tibetan dialect and offered Khan the second, larger box. Again he ripped open the carton and this time he held up a box and shouted at his men.

In the crate were stacked box after box of the distinctive Rowntree’s English chocolate samplers. Khan started tossing the boxes to his men. Suddenly the majority of the bandits shouted and fired off their rifles, and our Sherpas had to hold on to the ponies and mules for dear life. I lifted my panicked pony’s front hooves off the ground again.

Khan opened the first box, lifted an oval chocolate delicately out of its paper wrapper—his filthy fingers almost the color of the chocolate—and daintily tasted it.

“Chocolate over almond,” he said in English. “Very very good.”

“I hope you will all enjoy them,” said Reggie, also speaking English now.

“Be careful of the demons and yeti,” said Jimmy Khan. He fired his rifle, spurred his shaggy horse, and the Mongol Horde disappeared in a red dust cloud back toward the northeast whence they’d come.

“Old friend?” asked the Deacon as we managed to re-form our long line and begin the trek toward the Tinki La again.

“Sometimes business associate,” said Reggie. Her face was red with the dust that had been kicked up by the horses. I realized that we were all dust-covered and that the layer of dust on us was quickly turning to red mud in the freezing drizzle.

“Jimmy Khan?” I heard myself asking. “How on earth did he end up with that first name?”

“He was named after his father,” Reggie said and tugged at her stubborn pony’s reins to lead it up the first steep part of the trail toward the 16,900-foot-high pass called Tinki La.

For the first three days we’re pinned down at Base Camp. The Deacon is going nuts. I’m going nuts in my own way—worried to death that the altitude keeps giving me headaches, causing me to vomit at least once a day, stealing my appetite, and keeping me awake at night. Even rolling over—on the rocks under the tent floor, each one of which my body has memorized by the second night—sends me gasping up out of my light doze, laboring to breathe. It’s ridiculous. Base Camp is at a mere 16,500 feet of altitude. The real climbing doesn’t begin until we’re above the North Col, almost half again as high as this low base. Sixteen thousand five hundred feet isn’t that much higher than the alpine summits I’ve frolicked on in the past year, I keep telling myself. Why the trouble here and not there?

You usually spent less than an hour on those summits, idiot, my rational self explains. You’re trying to live here.

I don’t really want to hear from my damned rational self these miserable three days. I also do my best to hide my condition from the others, but J.C. shares the Whymper tent with me and has heard me vomiting, has heard me gasping in the night, and has seen me on top of my sleeping bag panting on all fours like a sick dog. The others must notice my lassitude when we share meals and planning sessions in Reggie’s Big Tent, but no one says anything. As far as I can tell, neither Reggie nor the Deacon is bothered by the altitude, and Jean-Claude was over his light symptoms on the second day here at Base Camp.

Despite the terrible cold, wind, and weather, we don’t spend all of our first days at Base Camp cowering in our tents. The first full day there, despite the blizzard and temperatures twenty below zero Fahrenheit, saw us staggering around in the whiteout, unpacking and sorting all the gear. The mules were sent back to Chodzong with a few Sherpas since there was no grass here for them, and the yaks were tethered in a sheltered spot a half mile closer to the river north of us, where the poor hairy beasts could paw through the drifting snow on the riverbanks for what little forage they could find.

A large Whymper tent has been set aside as J.C.’s workshop, where he checks the oxygen tanks, their frames, the Primus stoves, and our other equipment. He has a better set of tools than poor Sandy Irvine had a year ago, for all of Irvine’s excellent fixes and repairs and jury-rigging of ladders and O₂ sets, but the current tool kit is still relatively primitive. Jean-Claude can solder but not weld; take cameras, watches, stoves, lanterns, crampons, and other things apart and reassemble them with the right tools, but has a minimum of spare parts for replacement; he can bang metal back into shape but not forge new pieces if something is damaged seriously enough to warrant it.

Luckily, after two days of testing, J.C. informs us that only fourteen of our hundred oxygen tanks have lost pressure, and nine of them only partially, as opposed, the Deacon tells us, to more than thirty out of a total of ninety of the oxygen canisters in Norton, Mallory, and Irvine’s expedition the year before. Their thirty tanks had leaked so much by the time they got to Shekar Dzong and took inventory, the tanks were essentially worthless. Sandy Irvine’s redesign to the Mark V oxygen system during his trek in last year, combined with further improvements, especially in gaskets and valves and flow meters, via the talents of George Finch, Jean-Claude, and J.C.’s blacksmith-turned-industrialist-steel-manufacturer father, have evidently done the trick. If we fail on this expedition—fail even in our limited goal of finding Lord Percival Bromley’s remains on the lower half of the mountain—it shouldn’t be for lack of what the Sherpas call “English air.”

As I say, we aren’t idle. On the second day, after our yak and mule loads have laboriously been repacked into porter loads, other crates set out to stay here in Base Camp or set aside to be cached at Camps I, II, or III, we four sahibs and Pasang meet alone in Reggie’s Big Tent to finalize our strategy.

“Our date for summiting remains May seventeenth,” says the Deacon as the four of us crouch over the topographic and hand-drawn maps laid out on the circular floor of Reggie’s tent. A hanging lantern hisses above us. Pasang stands in the shadows, guarding the laced-up entrance from any random intruders.

“What’s your date for finding Cousin Percy?” Reggie asks.