The Best American Mystery Stories, Volume 17 (22 page)

“If we can leave early enough so that I can get back to open the store by eleven, I'll drive you in my van.”

 

We arrived at the trailhead around eight in the morning. It was a clear day, and the mountains to the south shone in their pristine majesty, but the usual feeling of anticipation that I experienced when heading into the backcountry was tempered by the businesslike atmosphere of our expedition. Before driving off in his van, Owen pulled me aside.

“Be careful, Sierra,” he said once more, as we stood on the gravel shoulder of the road, away from the others.

“Jesus, Owen, don't tell me you're developing a conscience.”

“Fine. Fuck yourself, then.”

“You fuck yourself, too, Owen.” I smiled at him, he smiled back, and then he disappeared, trailing a cloud of blue-gray exhaust.
Needs a ring job
, I thought, and then I walked back to my new best friends.

In addition to George and Thanh, there was a burly Russian in his midforties, Yuri, and Omar, probably from the Middle East, around forty years old. The other two also looked to be from the Middle East; they were Bob, a big man, around fifty, with a scar running diagonally from his right temple across his cheekbone, and Gord, who looked soft, and much younger, no more than thirty. Their accents contradicted their names, and I decided that “Bob” wouldn't mind if, at least in my own mind, I called him Scarface.

Their ski equipment looked new and serviceable, but their packs looked like they had been picked up at an army surplus store. They were sturdy green canvas with heavy straps; not ideal for a strenuous trip in the mountains.

Since I carried our communal gear, my pack was heavy; it took a while for my muscles to adjust as we started up the steep trail. However, I quickly realized that my pace was not going to be a problem. A couple of my companions had trouble putting the skins on their skis, and Gord was in poor physical shape and had limited skiing experience. I had counted on making the crossing in three days but packed supplies for an extra day. I started to wonder whether that margin would be sufficient.

 

We trudged up an abandoned logging road for the first hour, and then I cut off onto an old prospectors' trail that led more directly to the alpine. Large cedars shut off the sky, and we made our way slowly in the silent gloom. I was in the lead, and my charges struggled in single file behind me. Periodically I'd hear someone stumble or curse as their ski became entangled in some underbrush. It was my policy to ignore minor problems. Anyone who ventures into the backcountry should put up with a reasonable amount of discomfort and frustration. Learning is motivated by the desire to avoid exactly such problems.

By noon the trees were getting smaller and patches of sunlight dappled the snow. I had been stopping every hour, encouraging the group to hydrate as well as to layer down to lighter clothing. Even though it was quite cold, the effort of laboring uphill with heavy packs caused the body to overheat.

Because the trail was so narrow, these stops did not allow me to observe anyone in the party except George, who followed right behind me, and Yuri, who was behind him. They appeared to be handling the pace reasonably well, though Yuri's clothing was drenched from sweat. He had ignored my suggestion to layer down.

Around one o'clock we left the tree line behind us, and we were treated to the alpine in its full magnificence. The terrain sloped off to our right, and the steep apron of Mount Veringer rose to our left. The vista ahead revealed a series of flat snowfields intersected by deep gullies, and beyond the plateau, the snow-clad peaks this side of the U.S. border.

I called a halt, and my exhausted troops gathered while I set up my small stove and made lunch. As I waited for water to boil, I tried to assess their condition.

Yuri had changed into some dry clothes, Scarface appeared to be actually enjoying the outing, and Thanh and Omar looked tired but okay. Gord, legs splayed wide, was sitting in the snow, his back against his pack, his eyes closed, his face of a deathly pallor. George was squatting on his heels next to him, speaking in low tones right into his ear. I went over, and George looked up at me in a hostile manner.

“I can take some of his load,” I suggested.

“No! He'll be okay,” George said roughly, staring at me.

Fine
, I thought,
I don't want to touch your fucking dope
. I stood for a moment, looking down at Gord. He was panting rapidly. We were only half as high as we would eventually get, and already he was having trouble with the altitude.

“Is lunch ready?” George demanded.

I walked back to the stove.

Gord continued to sit with his eyes closed while the rest ate. He refused any food, and a couple of times he made dry retching sounds. George had a swift conversation with Yuri, and the Russian took something out of his pack and then went over to Gord with a bottle of water. I saw Gord swallow something, and within fifteen minutes he made a miraculous recovery. We set out again.

 

I kept the group going until sunset, to make up for our slow pace, and thus we managed to cross most of the plateau.

With help from Scarface and Thanh, I made some snow platforms for the kitchen and started melting snow to make hot tea to revive the troops. Gord was again wilting, but the others seemed in reasonable condition.

After everyone was warmed up with tea, I set up the two tents. George and Yuri hauled Gord into their tent and put him into his sleeping bag while I prepared dinner. I threw my bag into the other tent, which was occupied by Thanh, Omar, and Scarface. George insisted that all the packs be piled just outside his tent; he and Yuri made seats for themselves, with their backs resting against the pile. George was using his headlamp to read, every once in a while glancing up to observe our progress in the kitchen. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but I detected hostility in his look.

Yuri had taken off his toque, and I noticed that he had brown hair that started low on his forehead. The hair had been cropped short, but it was very thick, and his hat had flattened it on his head. This, along with his pointed nose, gave him a distinct resemblance to a porcupine I had once known. Yuri had picked up a tree branch somewhere along the way. He now took out a vicious-looking knife and set to whittling a series of perfectly formed toothpicks. As the evening progressed, I noticed that when George was not looking, Yuri would furtively reach into his pack and take a large swig from a flask.

The sky was spangled with a profusion of stars, and our open-air kitchen was humming with activity. Thanh, it turned out, was quite the cook.

“I worked in a restaurant,” he said. “That's the only job an honors degree in philosophy prepared me for.”

“I keep hearing about doctors who come to Canada and end up driving a cab.”

“I got my degree here.”

“So you were quite young when your family came to Canada?”

Thanh did not answer. I noticed that George was glowering at him.

It took George fifteen minutes to rouse Gord so that he could come out and have some dinner. Despite having his sleeping bag wrapped around him, Gord was shivering, and to me it looked like he had a serious fever. Yuri gave him several pills to swallow with the little food that he could gulp down.

I cleaned up the kitchen while everyone went to bed, except George, who continued to read, and Yuri, who continued to turn out his perfect toothpicks. I figured that by the end of the trip he would have enough for a large tray of hors d'oeuvres. As I headed for my sleeping bag, I heard Yuri say something to George. I recognized the word
talk
in Russian, as well as Thanh's name. George quickly came over as I was preparing to enter the tent that held Thanh, Omar, and Scarface. He grabbed my shoulder. I'm somewhat vertically challenged, and as he brought his face close to mine, I had to look up to meet his glare. There was a crazy ferocity in his dark eyes, and something told me that it would take little to set him off.

“You can't sleep in there,” he said, as he squeezed my left shoulder with what I thought was unnecessary force.

“You want me in your tent, George?” I smiled in what I thought was a seductive fashion. His expression indicated that the implied proposal did not appeal to him.

“We only have two tents, George,” I said as I removed his hand from my shoulder.

“That's your problem,” he said, and he walked back to his perch next to Yuri.

It took me less than half an hour to dig a snug snow cave. I lined it with a tarp, laid my sleeping bag inside that, put my underclothes in the bottom of my bag, and crawled in. After a few minutes I was warm, and as I lay on my stomach, I stared out the small opening of my shelter. I could see a slice of the peaks that lay to the south. They were washed in diamond moonlight, with a backdrop of velvet black sky punctured by a sprinkling of stars.

I had to revise my opinion; George was definitely in charge of this expedition. The drug industry was taking on an international flavor. Perhaps the bags were not full of B.C. bud but a more valuable cargo from the Middle East. Maybe I should have asked for a higher fee. I wondered if Owen knew.

Yuri definitely looked like Russian mafia. Where did they figure in all this? And if indeed the drugs had originated in the Middle East, why bring them in via Canada?

It seemed that my meager knowledge of Russian could prove useful in the next few days.

I wondered what Lana was doing at that moment. I hadn't thought about her in months.

 

Though she had escaped her Doukhobor community in the interior of B.C. when she was eighteen, Svetlana had not shed her love of Tolstoy. She taught me some Russian so that I could share her appreciation for the master, in his original language.

Lana was twenty-two and had almost finished her nursing degree when I met her in Nelson. She was petite, and her red hair reached to her waist. Her dress and her quiet manner still spoke of her rustic origins, but there was a willfulness, a rebellious defiance toward convention, a core of craggy determination that underlay her gentle exterior. By the time I realized the strength of her resolutions, it was too late.

She gave me six years, six years punctuated by my long absences for several first ascents in the Andes and for a couple of expeditions to the Himalayas, six years when she never really knew whether I'd come home in a body bag.

By that time she was twenty-eight and I was thirty-four. In retrospect, I could see that she was right, that it was time to make a decision. But I was looking at the peaks and did not notice that my companion was slipping from my side.

When I came back from that first Everest expedition, she had removed all her belongings from the ramshackle house that her presence had transformed into a home. I should have gone after her. But I didn't. I was convinced that she would be back.

I went on the second Everest trip and again failed to summit. When I came back, Lana had gone to work in the hospital in Trail. Later I heard a rumor that she got married, but didn't believe it. I was convinced that the door was still open. By this time I had developed something of a reputation as a climber, and I used that to tear a swath through the impressionable young women of Nelson.

I was thirty-seven when I returned from my last trip to Everest. I had a broken collarbone and was emaciated from two months at high altitude. While I was recovering, I drove down to Rossland. I spotted Lana entering a grocery store, holding the hand of a toddler. I was about to approach her when she was joined by a tall, good-looking guy who had an infant with red hair in a back carrier. I heard the clerk address him as Dr. Whitmore.

I walked out of the store and drove back to Nelson at well above the speed limit.

 

The next day I started breakfast before the sun rose, and we were on the trail at dawn. Long purple shadows were cast by our figures as we trudged across the snow, and cold pink light licked at the peaks ahead.

My clients shivered as they warmed up from their exertion, but seemed like they were in working condition. Even Gord moved at a steady pace, though he appeared to be something of a zombie. During breakfast Yuri had given him some pills again.

By midmorning we were making the first of our steeper ascents. Even I found it difficult. My pack was much too heavy, my back was starting to spasm, and my legs were burning. Maybe I was getting too old for this shit. But I thought about the piece of land I'd buy, somewhere up in the mountains, and the house I'd build.

My companions were all starting to show signs of strain. Surprisingly, Gord shuffled on much as before, his eyes glazed and with a fixed stare ahead. Yuri was panting, and sweat poured off his face.

The slope was too steep to attack directly; our skins would not hold at that angle, and I had to serpentine back and forth. This served its purpose but forced us to make sharp turns every ten minutes. As long as we were going straight, not much skill was required to handle the skis, but turns, many of which were almost one hundred and eighty degrees, required experience, strength, and balance. Especially with heavy packs and in steep terrain, it was easy to fall over. Getting up required removing the pack, and even thus unburdened, it took a great deal of effort to get vertical with one's tangled skis stuck in the deep snow. Each such incident was exhausting, and my companions quickly learned that it was best not to fall over. Omar, unfortunately, fell regularly, and his legs were trembling after a couple of hours. I called for a short rest stop and advised everyone to hydrate and eat as much as they could from the snacks I had prepared in the morning. Yuri appeared not to need the encouragement to hydrate, as he took long swigs from his bottomless flask. I wondered how much of his pack was composed of refills for that little silver container.

We continued on our uphill track through the rest of the morning, and we were now getting high enough so that the view was magnificent. Behind us, the flat snowfields we had crossed the previous day; ahead, a series of peaks etched in cobalt blue. Unfortunately, along with the view came the effects of less oxygen, and now even George and Scarface were visibly panting. Thanh had pain etched on his face, and though he didn't complain, he winced with every step.