The Eiger Sanction (15 page)

Immediately upon waking, he was eager for the climb on Big Ben Needle. Once or twice in his climbing career he had experienced this scent of victory—this visceral hunch. He had it just before he set a time record on Grand Teton, and again when he introduced a new route up the Dru into the mountaineering handbooks. His hands felt strong enough to punch holds into the rock, if need be, and his legs carried him with more than vigor and ease, with a sensation of moon gravity. He was so finely tuned to this climb that his hands, when he rubbed the palms together, felt like rough chamois gloves capable of adhering to flat, slimy rock.

After his shower, he neither shaved nor combed his hair. He preferred to be rough and burry when he met the rock.

When Ben knocked at his door, he was already tying off his boots and admiring their feel: broken in from his recent training climbs, but the cleats in excellent condition.

“You look mighty ready.” Ben had just gotten out of bed and was still in his pajamas and robe, grizzled and carrying with him his first can of beer.

“I feel great, Ben. That needle of yours has had it.”

“Oh, I wouldn't be surprised if it took some of the shine off you before it's all over. It's near four hundred feet, mostly grade 6.”

“Tell your cooks we'll be back in time for lunch.”

“I doubt that. Especially considering you got to drag a tired old man along behind you. Come to my room and I'll get dressed.”

He followed Ben down the hall and into his rooms where he declined the offer of a beer and sat watching dawn quicken, while Ben slowly found and donned the various elements of his climbing gear. The finding was not easy, and Ben grumbled and swore steadily as he shoveled clothes out of drawers onto the floor and emptied boxes of random paraphernalia onto his rumpled bed.

“You say I'm going to pull you along behind, Ben? I had imagined you would lead. After all, you know the route. You've been up before.”

“Yeah, but I ain't one to hog all the fun. Goddam my eyes if I can find that other sock. Can't stand wearing socks that don't match. Puts me off balance. Hey! Maybe if I worked it out just right I could make up for these missing toes by wearing a lighter sock on that foot! 'Course I'd run the risk of ending up with the opposite of a limp. I might find myself up an inch or two off the ground, and that'd play hell with my traction. Hey, get off your ass and kick around in this stuff and see if you can find my climbing sweater. You know, the old green one.”

“You're wearing it.”

“Oh, yeah. So I am. But lookee here! I ain't got no shirt on under it!”

“Not my fault.”

“Well, you ain't helping much.”

“I'm afraid if I got out into the middle of the room they'd never find me again.”

“Oh, George would come across you when she put all this mess away.”

“George cleans up your room?”

“She's on my payroll, and she's got to do more to earn her keep than just be a spittoon for your sperm.”

“You have a delicate sense of imagery, Ben.”

“No shit? All right, I give up. Goddam my eyes if I can find them boots. Why don't you let me use yours?”

“And I go up barefoot?”

“Considering how sassy-assed and prime you're feeling, I didn't figure you'd notice the difference.”

Jonathan leaned back in the chair and relaxed with the dawn view. “I really do feel good, Ben. I haven't felt like this for a long time.”

Ben's characteristic gruffness fled for a moment. “That's good. I'm glad. I remember how it used to be for me.”

“Do you miss climbing much, Ben?”

Ben sat on the edge of his bed. “Would you miss it if someone ran off with your pecker? Sure, I miss it. I'd been climbing since I was eighteen. At first, I didn't know what to do with myself. But then...” He slapped his knees and stood up. “Then, I got this place. And I'm living high on the hog now. Still...” Ben wandered over to the closet. “Here's my boots! I'll be goddamed!”

“Where were they?”

“In my shoe rack. George must have put them there, goddam her.”

Over breakfast in the glittering, empty restaurant kitchen, Jonathan asked if Miles Mellough had done anything of interest after the fight.

“He worry you, Jon?”

“Right now I'm only worried about the climb. But I'll have to deal with him after I get back.”

“If he don't deal with you first.”

“Say it out.”

“Well, one of my help heard this Mellough and his friend having a set-to in their rooms.”

“Your help spends a lot of time with their ears to doors?”

“Not usually. But I figured you might want me to keep an eye on these guys. Anyway, the fancy one was some kind of pissed off at the way the other guy let you set him up. And the big fellow said that it would be different next time. Then later on they ordered a rental car from town. It's parked out front now.”

“Maybe they want to take in the countryside.”

“What's wrong with our guest cars? No, I figure they want to get somewhere in a hurry. Maybe after they've done something to be ashamed of. Like killing somebody.”

“What makes you think they're going to kill somebody?”

Ben paused, hoping to make an effect, “The waiter told me the big fellow carries a gun.” Jonathan concentrated on sipping his coffee and denied Ben the expected reaction. Ben tore off the top of a can of beer. “You don't seem much bothered about that guy carrying a gun.”

“I knew he did, Ben. I saw it under his coat. That's why I stepped on his nose. So he wouldn't be able to see clearly. I needed walking away time.”

“Here I was thinking you had a mean streak, and all the time you was just doing what you had to do.”

“You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“I could cut out the tongue that spoke evil of you, ol' buddy.”

“I was just trying to stay alive.”

“And that's why you want the shotgun?”

“No, not for protection. I need it for attack. Come on! That hill's eroding out there. There won't be much left of it by the time you get ready.”

Jonathan's boots crunched over the loose fall rock around the base of the needle which beetled out overhead, still black on its western face in the early morning. A rock drill, a hammer, and fifteen pounds of pitons, snap rings, and expansion bolts clanged and dangled from the web belt around his waist.

“Right about here,” he judged, guessing the position of a long vertical crack he had observed the day before. The crack, averaging four inches in width and running up from the base for a hundred feet, seemed to him to be the highway up the first quarter of the face. It was after the fissure petered out that the mushroom top began its outward lean, and then the going would be more challenging.

“Is this the way you started up, Ben?”

“It's one way, I guess,” Ben said noncommittally.

They roped up. “You don't intend to be very helpful, do you?” Jonathan said, passing the loose coils of line to his partner.

“Hell, I don't need the practice. I'm just along for the ride.”

Jonathan adjusted the straps on the light pack Ben had insisted he carry for training. Just before taking to the rock, they urinated into the arid ground, pressing out the last drops. Numberless beginners have overlooked, in their eagerness to start, this propitiatory libation to the gods of gravity, and have rued the oversight when they were later faced with the natural problem while on the face, both hands engaged in the more pressing matter of survival. The only solution available under such circumstances is not calculated to make the climber a social success during the press of congratulations following the climb.

“OK, let's go.”

The move up the crack went quickly and uneventfully, save in places where the fissure was too wide for a snug foot jam. Jonathan drove no pitons for climbing, only one each thirty feet or so to shorten the fall, if there was one.

He enjoyed the feel of the rock. It had character. It was well-toothed and abrasive to the grip. There were very few good piton cracks, however. Most of them tended to be too wide, requiring one or two additional pitons as wedges, and they did not drive home with the hard ring of the well-seated peg. This would matter more once they began the three hundred feet of outward-leaning climb. Jonathan realized he would have to use the drill and expansion bolt more than he cared to. He had always drawn a fine, but significant line between piton and expansion bolt. The conquest of a face by means of the piton had elements of seduction about it; the use of the drill and bolt smacked of rape.

They moved smoothly and with high coordination. Ben tied off and belayed from below, while Jonathan inched up as far as his rope would allow before finding an acceptable purchase from which to belay Ben up to him. Ben's passage was always faster. He had the psychological advantage of the line; he used the holds and grips Jonathan had worked out.

Even after the crack petered out and progress slowed, Jonathan's feeling of indomitability persisted. Each square meter of face was a gameboard of tactics, a combat against the unrelenting, mindless opposition of gravity in which the rock was a Turkish ally, ready to change sides if the going got rough.

They niched up, Ben's experienced and sympathetic pressure on the line lending it cooperative life, always slack when Jonathan was moving, always snug when it alone held him on the face. For some time there had not been a free purchase where either man could hold to the rock without rope or piton.

Jonathan began to tire; the drag of his pack and the knotting pressure on thighs and calves were constant mortal reminders. But his hands were still strong, and he felt fine. Particularly did he enjoy the touch of the rock, warm where the sun was upon it, cool and refreshing in the shade. The air was so clean it had a green flavor, and even the salt taste of his sweat was good. Nevertheless, he did not object when, after three hours and with two-thirds of the face under them, Ben called for a rest.

It was another quarter of an hour before they found a slim lip of rock into which they could plant their heels. Jonathan tapped in extra pitons, and they hung there side by side against the ropes, facing outward, squatting on their haunches to rest their legs. Their bodies leaned some twenty degrees away from the face, which itself inclined ten degrees from the vertical. Ben struggled with his pack and produced a loaf of hard-crusted bread and a thick disc of cheese which he had carried along out of Alpine tradition. They ate with slow satisfaction, leaning out against their ropes and looking down at the small knot of thrill-seekers who had gathered near the base of the needle once someone at the lodge had seen men on the face of this seemingly impossible pillar.

“How you feeling, ol' buddy?”

“Just... really great, Ben.”

“You're climbing fine. Best I ever seen you climb.”

“Yes. I know I am.” Jonathan's admiration was frank, as though he stood outside himself. “It might just be a fluke—a coincidence of conditioning and temperament—but if I were on the Eigerwand right now...” His voice trailed off as his imagination overcame each of the Eiger's notorious obstacles.

Ben returned to an old theme. “Why go at all, Jon? What do you want to prove? This is a great climb. Let it go at this.”

Jonathan laughed. “You certainly have it in for the Eiger.”

“I just have this feeling. That isn't your mountain, ol' buddy. She's knocked you off twice before. Hell's bells! This whole thing is screwy-assed! That fairy down there waiting to shoot you up. Or you waiting to shoot him up. Whichever it is. And all this about checking up on the men you're going to climb with. I don't know what's going on, and I don't think I want to know. But I got a feeling that if you try to take the Eiger while your mind's on these other things, that hill's going to flick you off onto the rocks. And youknow that's going to smart some!”

Jonathan leaned out, not caring to talk about these matters. “Look at them down there, Ben. Miniature people. Miniaturized by the Japanese technique of slowly decreasing their intake of courage and individuality until they're only fit to serve on committees and protest air pollution.”

“Yeah, they ain't much, are they? They'd sure get their cookies if one of us was to fall off. Give them something to talk about for the better part of the afternoon.” Ben waved his arm. “Hi, turds!”

Those below could not hear, and they waved back vigorously and grinned.

“How'd you like a beer, ol' buddy?”

“I'd love one. Why don't you shout down for room service. Of course, the boy would deserve a considerable tip.”

“We got beer.”

“I hope you're kidding.”

“Never. I kid about love and life and overpopulation and atomic bombs and such shit, but I don't ever kid about beer.”

Jonathan stared at him with disbelief. “You carried a six-pack of beer up this rock? You're insane, you know that.”

“Maybe insane, but not stupid. I didn't carry it. You did. I put it in your pack.”

Jonathan contorted his body and grappled a six-pack out of his backpack. “I'll be goddamned! I think I'm going to throw you down on those rubbernecks.”

Wait until I finish this beer."