The Edge (7 page)

“He's their technical advisor. He's a climber.”

“Is he a good climber?”

“I've never seen him climb, but I've read about him. He's made some righteous ascents. I like him. I think you will too.”

Zopa nodded.

“What do you think of Phillip and Cindy?”

Zopa shrugged. Which was a pretty good answer.

“Has Phillip told you where we're climbing?”

Zopa shook his head. “He has never been here before. He has not left camp. He uses his computer to look at topographical maps and photos, which you know are worthless in picking a place to climb.”

“He's not looking on the Internet because there's no signal.”

“So the woman has said. It is no big thing. I don't think it matters where we climb as long as it is in Afghanistan on the appointed day. I have found some good places.”

“Why didn't Sun-jo come?”

“Busy.”

“Doing what?”

“Speaking, endorsing gear, making money.”

“This might have been good publicity for him.”

“He does not need publicity. He needs to go to school. He almost has enough money to support his mother and pay for his and his sister's tuition. Another month, and he will have enough money to keep everyone he loves alive forever without common worries.”

“Did he know I was going to be here?”

“He doesn't know anything about this climb. He doesn't know that I am here. I did not tell him.”

“He would have come if he had known.”

“Which is why I did not tell him.”

“He'll be upset when he finds out.”

“He will be relieved that he did not know.”

“I don't understand.”

My not understanding was not surprising, which is part of the Zopa mystery. When I met Zopa on Everest, my father described him as a cagey monk. He said that it was hard to say what Zopa's motivation was for agreeing to do something. Like Plank, Josh had donated money to the monastery to get Zopa to lead me to the top of Everest, but it turned out that Zopa was really leading Sun-jo to the top.
He's not taking you up there just to do me a favor or because I gave money to the temple,
Josh had said.
There's another reason—more likely half a dozen reasons—he agreed to do it. And you and I will probably never know what all of them are.

“You are a climber,” Zopa said. “Your father is a climber, and your mother. I was never a climber. I was a Sherpa. I helped real climbers to the tops of mountains. Were it not for the money, I would not have climbed, nor would have my son, Ki-tar. Climbing was a means to an end, and the end was not the summits. The end was supporting our families. Sun-jo is not a climber. Because of you, he no longer has to climb mountains. So you are correct he would have climbed if he knew you were going to be here, but only because you are his friend.”

“He didn't reach the top of Everest because of me,” I protested. “He reached the summit on his own two feet.”

Zopa shrugged.

“They showed me a list of all the climbers and where they were to climb,” he said. “Sun-jo was to climb Kilimanjaro.”

Mount Kilimanjaro is in Tanzania. I'd always wanted to climb it and wished . . . I smiled. This was exactly why Plank hadn't told anyone where they were climbing beforehand.

“Of course I crossed Sun-jo's name from the list,” Zopa continued. “They were disappointed, but they did not give up. They asked if I would be one of their climb masters. I was not interested, but I did look at the climbs that did not yet have climb masters. Your name was on the list for the Pamirs.”

“How long ago was this?”

“A month and a few days.”

“They only asked me a couple of days ago.”

“I know.”

“How did you know that I would say yes?”

“I did not know.”

“So you agreed to lead the climb on the off chance that I would say yes?”

Zopa nodded. “But I hoped you would say no. You should not have come. You should not have brought your mother.”

“Why?”

“This is not going to be a good climb.”

“In what way?”

Zopa shrugged.

“Then how do you know it's going to be a bad climb?”

“A feeling.”

Uh-oh. Zopa's feelings were often a lot like reality. He sometimes knew, or felt, things before they happened. All climbs have disaster as a possible outcome, but I had a feeling this was different.

“What kind of feeling?”

“Something violent is going to happen here.”

“Maybe you're picking up all the past violence in Afghanistan.”

“Possible. That has happened before.”

I started to feel a little better.

“So if you thought something was going to turn sour, why didn't you say no?”

“Because I thought you would say yes.”

“At first I said no. I wasn't going to come here, until it looked like JR and the film crew would lose the gig.”

“Gig?”

“Job,” I translated.

Zopa shook his head. “I wish you had said no.”

I'd been wishing the same thing until I saw Zopa. “We'll be fine. All climbs are safe if you do them correctly.”

“You cannot control nature, or human nature. I can smell a bad climb.”

I gave him a grin. “You smelled it all the way from Kathmandu to Kabul?”

Zopa returned the grin. “That is a good question. I have always wondered if you make a climb bad by thinking it is going to be bad ahead of time. It is difficult to know. Climbs go bad by what people do. Climbs go bad by what people think. And sometimes climbs just go bad.”

“I hope you're wrong about this one. Why didn't you have me climb the chimney and join the others?”

“So I could talk to you.” He picked up his pack and glanced up at the opening. “Your mother has made it through the chimney and is organizing the climbers for their rappel.”

There was no possible way he could know this by looking up through the chimney, which was partially blocked, but with Zopa you never knew. I picked up my pack.

“We will take all the packs,” Zopa said.

Hauling seven packs between us wasn't going to be easy. Zopa must have sensed my hesitation.

“I will ask Elham to help us,” he said.

“Evening prayer,” I reminded him.

“Too early for evening prayer. He has plenty of time.”

He called Elham into the cave. Apparently Zopa was right about the prayer time because after a brief conversation (of which I didn't understand a word), Elham cheerfully slung a pack over each shoulder.

I followed the cagey monk and the rifle-toting Afghan back out into the light.

I WAS GULPING
water as the five ropes were hurled over the cliff. I offered my water bottle to Zopa. He finished it off. Evening prayer had commenced. Elham was behind us, kneeling toward Mecca on a small prayer rug he had pulled out of his little pack.

The ends of the ropes were curled at our feet like brightly colored snakes, each a different color. The sun was sinking behind the cliff. If the climbers didn't hurry, we'd be heading down the unstable scree to base camp using headlamps.

Zopa and I tilted our heads back and shaded our eyes from the bright sun. Five shadowy figures appeared on the edge with their backs to us. I wondered how Mom was going to handle the rappel. A free-fall race to the bottom, or a synchronized controlled descent? Most climbers, me included, liked the free-fall race.

“We will see who is in control,” Zopa said. “The climbers or the climb master.”

They pushed off at the exact same moment. Apparently Mom was in control. Synchronized. Which is not that easy, because the cliff routes are all different, even though the climbers are only strung twenty feet apart. They have to pay attention not only to their route but to the rate of descent of the person next to them. Mom was in the middle, two climbers on her right, two on her left. She was controlling the descent with fifteen- to twenty-foot pitches. At first the line was a little ragged, but by midcliff everyone seemed to have caught the rhythm. Push off. Drop twenty. Push off. I'd done synchronized rappels many times, but I'd never seen it from the ground. It was an impressive thing to watch. They all touched down at the exact same moment.

“Nice job!” Mom congratulated them as they unhooked their harnesses and retrieved their ropes.

The climbers were drenched in sweat. They took their helmets off. Three guys and a . . .

My breath caught in my throat. The girl shook out her long, damp black hair and smiled at me. Her eyes were pale blue. Her copper-colored arms were bare and chiseled. My legs went weak, and it wasn't from crab walking across the scree with two packs.

She stripped off her climbing gloves and put her long-fingered hand out. “
Bonjour.
You must be Peak. I am Alessia Charbonneau.”

I took her hand. Speechless. This had never happened to me before. I thought I might have had a minor stroke.

“I am a very big admirer of your father and your mother,” Alessia said.

She was still holding my hand. Or maybe I wasn't letting go. I hadn't even glanced in the direction of the other climbers since I laid eyes on Alessia, but I could hear them chugging water and murmuring in the background like Alessia and I weren't standing on the same slope, or in the same country. That's when I realized I hadn't said one word to Alessia.

Say something!

“Nice rappel.”

Are you kidding me? Nice rappel? That's what comes out of my mouth?

“Your mother insisted,” Alessia said. “She wanted to test our control after the difficult climb through the chimney. I thought I would get some rest when we arrived at camp. I did not sleep well last night because of my excitement, but Zopa”—she released my hand; it felt like someone had just cut my rope—“is, how do you say, a task maestro.”

“Master. Taskmaster.”

“Ah,
oui,
my English is . . .”

“Your English is excellent. My French is, well, nonexistent.”

“You know Zopa?”

“Yes.” But of course no one really knew Zopa. “I was on Everest with him.”

“You were on Everest?”

Her blue eyes got that
look.
It was like I had just said I'd met God. I immediately regretted telling her because—

“You reached the summit?”

I shook my head. I almost met God.

She looked sympathetic, but not in the you-loser-if-I-had-been-on-Everest-I-would-have-made-it-to-the-top sense, which I appreciated.

“Just to be on Everest,” she said, wistfully.

“It was great,” I said, but in truth, it wasn't that great. It was cold, and there wasn't much air to breathe.

“Zopa was the climbing”—she had to think about the word—“master.”

“Technically my dad was in charge of the climb. Zopa was kind of the lead Sherpa. He's reached the summit many times.”

“He did not tell us this. In fact, he did not say anything about his climbing experience.”

I wished I'd followed his lead.

“Why did he not have you climb the chimney?”

I wanted to shrug. If any of the other climbers had asked this, I would have shrugged. But I kept my shoulders where they were and said, “He needed help with the gear.”

Alessia laughed. “So you were Zopa's Sherpa.”

“Who's a Sherpa, mate?”

This came from another climber. He was a little older than me. Australian, by his accent. Apparently Alessia and I were not alone on the mountain. There were other climbers. The spell was broken.

“Peak was on Everest this year too,” Alessia informed everyone.

Now I really regretted saying the
E
word.

The Aussie stuck out his huge hand. “The name is Rafe. Rafe Rounder. Why didn't you climb the chimney?”

I shrugged.

“I've been to Everest,” Rafe continued, loud enough to be heard in Uzbekistan. “Topped it a few weeks ago. You're Peak, right? Met your dad at base camp. Righteous dude.”

“South side?” Mom asked.

He nodded. “Fifteenth to summit.”

Mom can spot a liar from ten miles away. There are basically two routes up Everest. The southern route, which is in Nepal, and the northern route, which is in Tibet. We had climbed the northern route. There was no possible way Rafe could have met my dad in base camp on the south side, in a different country.

“Didn't see you in base camp,” Rafe said suspiciously, glancing at Alessia with a slight grin.

There were so many things I could have said . . .
That's because we were on the northern route. You have to be at least sixteen to climb the southern route, and I was fourteen at the time.
Or,
That's because we weren't on the Nepal side, and neither were you.
If we'd had a cell or satellite signal, I could have proved this in about thirty seconds. Everyone who summits Everest is listed, with the time and date of their summit, their climbing group, and their age. I've checked this list every year since I was seven years old. I didn't remember a Rafe Rounder on the list. And it was a short list.

“Base camp was crowded,” I said. “A lot of climbers this year.”

Mom gave me a smile. Zopa smiled too. Climbers are evaluated by their climbing skills, not by their mouths or past climbs.

“I'll say,” Rafe said. “It was like a shopping mall at Christmas. But I'm still surprised I didn't bump into you.” He gave Alessia a sly look. It was obvious that Rafe had a crush on her and he was trying to crush me.

I wondered if what Zopa had smelled was Rafe Rounder.

“Enough talk of Everest,” Alessia said, to my relief, and introduced me to the other two climbers, Aki and Choma. I don't think they had any idea what had just been said during the exchange about Everest. Aki was from Japan. Choma was from Ukraine. They didn't appear to understand or speak much English, but they had bright, enthusiastic smiles. They were both fifteen or sixteen years old.