Hell Is Above Us: The Epic Race to the Top of Fumu, the World's Tallest Mountain (17 page)

At this point, Junk was convinced. He apparently walked to the window and waved off Simon Phelps, who had been waiting outside just in case any kind of violence ensued. Phelps took the opportunity to head up to McSorley’s Bar on 3
^rd
Street for a beer.

Hoyt and Junk shook on the deal. Before leaving, they agreed to hide their plans from the press. What they were doing broke many laws of wartime. In addition, they did not want news of the mountain’s height to get out. That could lead to some other half-crazed climber making a bid at the same time, albeit unlikely given the state of the world. One or the other would share the news with other climbers when they returned. If they returned.

Hoyt exited the establishment first. Junk walked outside a few moments later. Greeted by the warm spring day, Junk probably inhaled deeply and looked forward to the future. He was probably also surprised to see Hoyt standing right next to him.

“
I almost forgot!” Hoyt said and then punched Junk hard in the mouth. Junk fell to the street, lips dripping blood as if to fructify the teeth he had already lost on the cobblestone. Hoyt stood over him and yelled, “That is for my mother, you pant-fowling ape!” He followed this declaration with a kick to Junk’s stomach. Hoyt finished: “Now that we have settled this business, we may proceed. I will see you on the mountain, sir, and may the best man win!”

Chapter Seven: “Souls at Sea” with Gary Cooper

According to records from the Criminal Investigation Division of United States Navy, the pirates took everything off of the ship. Money. Communications systems. Weaponry. The weapons they stole were not those commonly found in the hands of pirates. After all, they had boarded a U.S. Navy battle cruiser, full of torpedoes, mines, and guns. The items would bring a high price on the black market. It would keep the pirates afloat, literally, for many more years. They had managed to sneak up on the cruiser by posing as a fishing trawler when they were, in fact, a stolen British naval trawler. The U.S.S. Stamford approached the smaller boat with the intent of boarding and confirming the hold contained nothing but fish. When the Stamford was within a quarter mile of the mysterious vessel, the “fishermen” fired a series of 4-inch guns concealed under heaps of nets and lines. They destroyed the cruiser’s radio antennae first so no military backup would arrive for some time. The two boats closed their distance. The pirates took this opportunity to wipe out every man on the Stamford’s deck in a barrage of gunfire, boarded in less than one minute, tied up the remaining sailors, and took the United States for hundreds of thousands of dollars in weaponry. After ensuring the surviving sailors were safely on life boats, far from the burning, sinking wreckage of the Stamford, the pirates chugged away into the South Atlantic night.

Landing in Bermuda (but steering well clear of the American bases located on British soil), the pirates went to their favorite local haunt, “The Bloviated Mule,” which was unknown to almost anyone other than the locals and a few American tourists who liked to wander from the main town of Hamilton. The pirates probably toasted everything from their fresh victory at sea to little girls (the captain’s preference) to Burma, their homeland. These men were far from their country of origin, but such was the nature of their businesses. The war had provided them with more opportunities than just pirating. They smuggled weapons for Southeast Asian governments and freedom fighters alike. They did privateer work for China, attacking Japanese destroyers in the South Pacific. Business was so good and their reputation so brutal and efficient, they began to take on work further abroad. Sensing the United States’ coming involvement in the war, the Axis Powers
had started to pay pirates handsomely – these pirates included - for simply creeping up on American naval ships and reeking havoc. Tonight’s marauding had been just one example of the tactics they used on the current mission.

The captain’s name was
Than
, but no one was allowed to call him that. To remark that
Than
was a fan of the United States and its popular culture would be an understatement. His favorite reading material was Hollywood gossip magazines he stole off of other ships. He traded weapons and other booty for canisters of gangster films and then watched them with his own projector whenever docked at a port with an electrical outlet. So deep was his infatuation with all things American he demanded his crew call him Gary Cooper. And it was this same obsession that led him to rename his boat several years earlier from Eidolon Yacht (a Whitman poem) to
Souls at Sea
, a Gary Cooper film from 1937.

The Burmese pirate Gary Cooper had been coming to Bermuda and the Bloviated Mule for over a decade. Even before the war, back when he mostly pirated in the South Pacific, Cooper would take “holidays” to Bermuda in order to be closer to the nation he worshipped so much. In Bermuda, he was close enough to feel America’s cultural pull, but far enough away to minimize the odds of capture or death. He had never been to the United States, nor did he expect to ever get there. For hours he would sit on the docks on the western side of the island and stare longingly at the horizon, dreaming of President Roosevelt in a wheelchair made of pure gold, spoon-feeding caviar to Fay Wray while she took a champagne bath. Both of them were making the “come here” gesture with their index fingers. Cooper would then sigh, get up, and amble slowly back to the bar to continue his drinking, fighting and raping.

On May 18
^th
, 1941, Cooper was approached by another salty patron of the Bloviated Mule by the name of Kevin O’Neil. He was a captain of a vessel out of Boston illegally shipping goods to the mainland from Bermuda and the Caribbean Islands. The Hawley-Smoot Tariff had stopped all such importing in the 1930’s, but O’Neil knew no other life and so he continued. Quietly. That night, O’Neil sauntered over to Cooper and handed him a letter. He had intended to give it to the bartender for safe keeping should the paths of the two captains not intersect, but luck would have it otherwise. The letter O’Neil passed along was from a friend of O’Neil’s named Aaron Junk. Cooper spoke perfect English, but could not read it. This led to O’Neil reciting the letter to Cooper.

In the letter, Junk remembered Cooper fondly from the Nanda Devi expedition. “You were a gentleman, even when you were stealing my beloved 1903 Victrola and the crew’s prized pornographic photographs. I regard you highly and consider you someone I can bring into my trust.” The letter went on to offer Cooper four hundred thousand dollars to sail Junk, five other individuals, and almost one ton of mountain climbing equipment from Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts to Calcutta and then back again in early December. Payment would be made in two installments; half at the beginning of the journey and the other half when Junk and team were standing safely on United States soil. “We expect to be picked up on the southeastern most point of Chappaquiddick on the evening of May 22 one hour after sunset.”

Cooper had intended to track down and loot more American warships over the next few weeks, but that could wait. Germany and Italy were not paying him or his crew enough to pass up this offer. They had four days to go a long distance. Cooper gathered his men and set sail immediately.

O’Neil had phoned ahead to let Junk know Cooper was in. Now Junk waited on South Beach on the island of Martha’s Vineyard at the specified time. Although not his usual temperament, Junk must have felt deep apprehension. He was almost broke for the first time since his youth. His investments including recent wagers had not been panning out making this an inopportune time to be heading off to Nepal. He found himself selling off many of his business concerns in order to pay the pirates, the waiting Sherpa, and to pay off the losses of some recent gambling debts. Money be damned. He had to make this trip. He had to win this row, and he was willing to live off of the dole in order to make it happen.

Waiting on the beach with him was the team he had picked in a rush to accompany him to the top of the world. Each one of them was a desperate choice – another reason for Junk’s likely apprehension. Any sane person was involved in the war effort or some other noble project and would immediately reject any offer to essentially drop everything and commit suicide. There had been no way for Junk to sweet-coat his sales pitch to these individuals. “How would you like to leave the relative safety of the American mainland to enter a
Hieronymus Bosch
painting come to life? Arrival at the mountain is highly unlikely, but if you do get there, success is not an option.” What else could he possibly say that would not be deception? Swindling men out of the contents of their strongboxes was one thing, but Junk was not the sort of fellow to intentionally swindle men out of their lives.

After asking every able-bodied person he knew, some odd individuals agreed. First there was Joseph Cole. Cole was a top-notch climber, having scaled multiple peaks in the Swiss Alps including the Matterhorn and the Dent Blanche. Once before having been to the Himalaya, Cole had not succeeded in an attempt on K2, but that expedition had reached higher than any other up to that point. Cole was of moderate height and weight with a pairing of bright blue eyes and ink-black hair one usually finds only in the Irish. Junk had never climbed with Cole, but had heard he was in a class all of his own. When not climbing, Cole was a physicist. Since the war in Europe began, he had been doing classified work for the United States Government at Michigan State University. Recently unclassified documents from the Physics department suggest that Cole’s role in the project had been to ascertain at what temperature the atmosphere catches fire. His written notes from that time suggest the job was too unsettling for him; they begin to digress toward irrelevant but less troubling topics such the best recipe for shepherd’s pie, a half-written screenplay about a lovelorn lighthouse keeper, and so forth, until notes on actual physics end entirely. He was soon kicked out of the research project for being “unstable.” Not one week after, Cole heard from Junk - only four days before the rendezvous at Chappaquiddick. Cole had nothing else to do and had no family, so the assault on Fumu made perfect sense. He grabbed his equipment and hopped on a plane for Boston right away.

Next was Frederick Morrow, a professor of Psychology at Harvard, focusing on memory. He was also an occasional gambling and climbing friend of Junk’s. Morrow rarely climbed anything bigger than what could be found in the northeastern United States, although he had once successfully climbed the Maroon Bells in Colorado. The experience had been harrowing for him. He had been trapped at the top overnight by foul weather and required rescue. However, based on the regularity and technical precision of his climbs locally, his talents were unquestionable.

Also on the journey was a woman. No female had ever climbed in the Himalaya and Junk had no interest in changing that. He would never have chosen a woman for such a harrowing and manly adventure under normal circumstances, but his options were limited. Her presence on the expedition was truly one of the stranger aspects of Hoyt and Junk’s story.

According to the recollection of some of Junk’s old South Boston friends, approximately one week before leaving on the expedition (his friends thought he was “going to New Hampshire for a long repose”), Junk had gotten an unexpected knock on his door. It was an old gambling chum by the name of Nick Fontana. Fontana entered without being invited, looked out the door and windows apprehensively, and drew the blinds without asking. He was accompanied by a small woman dressed in a man’s trench coat and wearing a long blond wig covering most of her face. He guided her everywhere as if she had no sense of direction or balance. Fontana started telling Junk a long tale of gambling debts and angry mafia. They had already twice beaten up Fontana, and he had the black eye and broken thumb to prove it. “They said they’re gonna kill her, Aaron” Fontana apparently yelled. “Because I’m delinquent on five measly large they’re gonna kill Dollface!” Fontana first asked for money to pay off the thugs. Junk refused because of his own financial straits. Fontana apparently thought this may happen because he had asked for money so often before. So he turned to his true intended request. “Hide her, Junk.” Fontana himself was going to Juarez, Mexico to hide, but he suspected the mob would catch up sooner or later. He wanted this woman safe. “She’s the love of my life. Hide her for me, Junk. You’ll be doing something that guarantees you a place in Heaven at the same table with the Big Guy.”

Fontana was asking too much. Junk explained he could not; he was going out of town for a long time and he simply could not watch this woman, whoever she was. As if not hearing him, perhaps seeing uncertainty in his eyes, Fontana hugged Junk, patted him on the shoulders, and walked out, leaving the woman behind. On his way out, he said “She speaks no English, so you’ll have to talk slowly.” With the exception of a prostitute from Baxter Street, Fontana was never heard from again by another living soul.

When she removed her wig, Junk saw the woman was some sort of Indian. She was also lovely. Junk wrote to his friend Simon Phelps, “I asked her very slowly what her name was. She quickly responded, in perfect English, that her name was River Leaf. I thought she didn’t speak English. She explained that ‘Fontana is an imbecile. I’ve seen him trip over a fire hydrant, stand up, and trip over it again. He thinks I don’t speak English because he never speaks to me. Nor does he care.” Before it was time to retire for the night, Junk was able to get out of her that she was a member of the Great Sioux Nation. As the Nation’s territories disappeared in Minnesota, taken piece by piece by the “Great Father” (the United States government), her mother had asked the young girl to leave and try to make a life for herself in the white man’s world. She would have more luck there. Needless to say, she did not. She got Nick Fontana. Years of suffering at the hands of belligerent providence had made this young woman as pliant as a broken American warmblood.