“Oh well,” Kirov said, smiling like a fool. “Rather you than me, eh? I don’t like that ice…”
“You have done the Jorasses... in winter?” one of the other three asked.
Kirov looked at him. He was the oldest of the group, silver hair well cut, nails manicured, a look of prosperity about him. “Yes. Some bits good, some bad. The stones…” As he spoke, he remembered the words with which Quayle had coached him, and added a Gaelic shrug for authenticity.
“Which route?” he asked.
“I tried the Macintyre two seasons ago. The weather closed in. Then last year..”
“The ice on the Macintyre?” one said, a little too eagerly. “How thick at the top of the runnel?”
“Well,” Kirov said, “half a metre in places in mid-winter, but now enough for a screw.” And, inwardly, he grinned. Thanks very much, gentlemen. The Macintyre it is. Tomorrow you can discuss the ice with my friend who knows much more than me. He’s looking forward to meeting you up there. If you like the thrills of climbing, you’re in for the thrill of a fucking lifetime. “Well, that’s the coffee finished. I shall get my gear together and one of you can have the good bunk, eh?” Then he began packing his gear into a faded khaki coloured pack, and finally took his skis from where they stood outside in the snow. They had watched him in silence so he thought he would add some authenticity to his story. “I’m night skiing every major glacier in Europe. For a few centimes per kilometer, you can become joint sponsors. It’s a good cause. The children are...”
“I serve charity through other channels,” the silver haired man said. His tone was bored and his eyes gave away nothing, now that talk of the ice was forgotten.
“Oh well,” Kirov said cheerfully. “Good-bye and may God go with you!” And he went around the room, shaking each man’s hand, thinking: if Titus doesn’t get you, then I’ll see you over my gunsight, fucker.
But, as he left, there was one man whose hand he didn’t shake; one man whose presence he didn’t even detect, sorting equipment, down in the tent line.
Quayle sat in a narrow fissure just three feet below the crest. He had selected the spot because, from there, he could see the valley below, and by rolling three feet he could look straight down the big wall itself, the sheer face of the ice field and across to the central couloir. The drop was three thousand feet straight down, the blue ice and black rock becoming one as the light fell.
He had laid out his gear for the night bivouac and, just to be sure, had put a piton into the rock, then made a safety line through to his thigh harness. It was bitterly cold even out of the wind, but that could change in seconds and, in down pants and a heavy down jacket – and with the sleeping bag ready – he sat with his binoculars, watching the valley floor and the twinkle of light from the refuge. Some time later, he took a solid fuel cell from his pack and, setting up the tiny stove, he warmed a tin of macaroni cheese as best he could. At this altitude, nothing ever really boiled, but warm would be better than nothing. To follow it, he would drink cups of sweet tea and, later on, there was soup and high calorie iron rations in the form of chocolate and peanuts, broken up in a bag to be eaten by the handful.
Focusing the Zeiss glasses on the hut, he swung them across the valley floor, pleased when he could find nothing on the darkening western slopes of the Tacul where his support team were dug in, watching the hut like he was. They were invisible on the mountainside; they had done their job as well as he knew they would.
Putting the glasses down, he lifted the tin of food from the burner straight to his lips and hungrily sucked in the thick, cheesy mixture. Then, finally, he dug around in his gear and, finding the ice screws that Lacoste had bought, took a hack saw blade and began to cut through the tip of one. An hour later, he zipped up the down jacket tight and, taking a head lamp just in case, lowered himself off the edge into the darkness.
Below him there was nothing for almost a mile straight down.
After abseiling two hundred feet, he took his barracuda ice axes in hand and began a fast traverse across the ice wall to get hard in the runnel. The axes were specifically designed for ice waterfalls and, with the crampons and the blind faith that ice climbers need in their gear, he was up against the jutting rock shoulder in under fifteen minutes. There he paused to slip a crammer into a small crack and then, leaning back, took the ice screw he had tampered with and, taking a final check of his position relative to the wall and the remaining climb, hammered it in an inch. After he was sure it was in, he turned it, careful not to put too much tension on the weakened head.
As he worked, the wind began to pick up, taking on a more urgent force. Braced against it, he finished his work and, rubbing his hands together, took the crammer from the crack, then began to work his way back to the point he had come down, but now diagonal upward. His axes and crampons slammed into the ice as he moved upward against the frozen face, the wind snatching at his coat and the ice forming on his eyebrows. He stopped to take up the slack in his figure eight and tie off, then moved on, his breathing harsh in the bitter cold, and rolled over the lip, back into his bivouac.
He’d been away only an hour.
Breaking open another fuel cell, he began heating tea, working
