The Eiger Sanction (20 page)

He was not pleased with himself. He felt he had handled the Jemima business badly. They had risen early, taken a walk through the tilted meadows, watched the dew make the tips of their shoes glisten, taken coffee on the terrace of her cafe, chatted nonsense, made jokes at the expense of passersby.

Then they shook hands, and he left for his hotel. The whole thing was unclean. Particles of emotion clung to their relationship. She was a presence down there in the village, waiting, and he was annoyed with himself for not making a clean break. He knew now that he would not punish her for her perfidy, but he also knew that he would never forgive her for it. He could not remember ever having forgiven anyone.

Several of the guests had dressed for dinner—early-arrived Eiger Birds. Jonathan noticed that half of the terrace telescopes had been roped off for the private—and costly—use of people nominated by the hotel management.

He pushed food around his plate without appetite. There were too many unsettled things churning at the back of his mind. There was Jemima, and the sanction assignment, and the knowledge that Mellough might have alerted his target, and the despised Eiger Birds. Twice he had noticed himself being pointed out by men in tuxedos to their young/pretty/dumb companions. One middle-aged ogler had waved him a tentative semaphore of greeting with her napkin.

It was with relief that he heard a familiar voice booming through the dining room from the lobby beyond.

“Goddam my ass if this ain't something! What the hell you mean you ain't got a room for me?”

Jonathan abandoned his coffee and brandy and crossed the dining room to the desk. The hotel manager, a tight little Swiss with the nervous propriety of his class, was attempting to calm Big Ben down.

“My dear Herr Bowman—”

“Dear Herr's ass! Just stick your nose back in that book and come up with my reservations. Hey, ol' buddy! You're looking good!”

Jonathan gripped Ben's paw. “What's the trouble?”

“Oh, this rinky-dink's screwed up my reservations. Says he can't find my telegram. From the looks of him, he couldn't find his tallywhacker with a six-man scouting party.”

Jonathan realized what was going on. “The Eiger Birds are starting to fly in,” he explained.

“Oh, I see.”

“And our friend here is doing everything he can to create vacancies he can sell to them at inflated prices.” Jonathan turned to the listening manager. “Isn't that it?”

“I didn't know this person was a friend of yours, Dr. Hemlock.”

“He's in charge of the climb.”

“Oh?” the manager asked with extravagant innocence. “Is someone going to climb our mountain?”

“Stop it.”

“Perhaps Herr Bowman could find a place in the village? There are cafes that—”

“He's going to stay here.”

“I am afraid that is impossible, Herr Doctor.” The manager's lips pursed tightly.

“All right.” Jonathan drew out his wallet. “Make up my bill.”

“But, if you leave...”

“There will be no climb. That's correct. And your incoming guests will be very angry.”

The manager was the essence of agonized indecision.

“Do you know what I think?” Jonathan said. “I think I saw one of your clerks sorting a batch of telegrams in your inner office. It's possible that Mr. Bowman's was among them. Why don't you go back and look them over.”

The manager grasped at the offer to save face and left them with a perfunctory bow.

“You met the others yet?” Ben asked, looking around the lobby with the undisguised distaste of a competitor.

“They haven't arrived.”

“No shit? Well, they'll be in tomorrow then. Personally, I can use the rest. My hoof's been acting up the last couple of days. Gave it too much workout while you were at the place.”

“How's George Hotfort?”

“Quiet.”

“Is she grateful that I didn't turn her over to the authorities?”

“I guess. She ain't the kind to burn candles.”

The manager returned and performed a masque of surprised delight. He had found Ben's telegram after all, and everything was in order.

“You want to go directly to your room?” Jonathan asked as the uniformed bellhops collected Ben's luggage.

“No. Guide me to the bar and buy me some beer.” They talked late into the night, mostly about the technical problems of the Eigerwand. Twice Ben brought up the Mellough incident, but both times Jonathan turned him back, saying they could talk about it later, maybe after the climb. Since he had arrived in Switzerland, Jonathan had come more and more to believe that he would make the climb. For long periods of time, he forgot what his real mission was. But this fascination was too expensive a luxury, so before turning in for the night he asked to borrow again all the correspondence between Ben and the climbers who would arrive the next morning.

Jonathan sat up in his bed, the letters arranged in three stacks on the blankets, one for each man. His concentration circumscribed by the tight pool of his bedside lamp, sipping at a glass of Laphroaig, he tried to fashion personalities from the scant evidence of the correspondence.

Jean-Paul Bidet. Forty-two years old. A wealthy manufacturer who had by dint of unsparing work expanded his father's modest shop into France's foremost producer of aerosol containers. He had married rather late, and had discovered the sport of mountain climbing while on his honeymoon in the Alps. He had no climbing experience outside Europe, but his list of Alpine conquests was formidable. He had made most of his major climbs in the company of famous and expensive guides, and to a degree it was possible to accuse him of “buying” the peaks.

From the tone of his letters, written in a businessman's English, Bidet seemed congenial, energetic, and earthy. Jonathan was surprised to discover that he intended to bring his wife along to witness his attempt at the meanest mountain of them all.

Karl Freytag. Twenty-six years old. Sole heir to the Freytag industrial complex specializing in commercial chemicals, particularly insecticides and herbicides. He had begun climbing during college holidays, and before he was twenty he had formed an organization of German climbers over which he presided and which published a most respectable quarterly review of mountaineering. He was its editor-in-chief. There was a packet of offset reprints from the review that described his climbs (in the third person) and accented his capacities as a leader and route-finder.

His letters were written in a brittle, perfect English that did not admit of contractions. The underlying timbre suggested that Freytag was willing to cooperate with Herr Bowman and with the international committee that had sponsored the climb, but the reader was often reminded that he, Freytag, had conceived of the climb, and that it was his intention to lead the team on the face.

Anderl Meyer. Twenty-five years old. He had lacked the means to finish his medical studies in Vienna and had returned to earning his living as a carpenter with his father. During the climbing season he guided parties up his native Tyrolean Alps. This made him the only professional in the team. Immediately upon being forced to leave school, Meyer had become obsessed with climbing. By every means from scrimping to begging, he had managed to include himself in most of the major climbs of the last three years. Jonathan had read references to his activities in the Alps, New Zealand, the Himalayas, South America, and most recently in the Atlas Range. Every article had contained unreserved praise for his skill and strength (he was even referred to as a “young Hermann Buhl”) but several writers had alluded to his tendency to be a loner and a poor team man, treating the less gifted members of his parties as anchors against his progress. He was what in gambling would be called a plunger. Turning back was, for him, the ultimate disgrace; and he would make moves on the face that would be suicide for men of more limited physical and psychic dispositions. Similar aspersions had been cast on Jonathan, during his years of active climbing.

Jonathan could form only the vaguest image of Meyer's personality from the letters. The veil of translation obscured the man; his English was stilted and imperfect, often comically obtuse because he translated directly from the German syntax, dictionary obviously in hand, and there were occasional medleys of compounded nouns that strung meaninglessly along until a sudden terminal verb tamped them into a kind of order. One quality, however, did emerge through the static of translation: a shy confidence.

Jonathan sat in bed, looking at the piles of letters and sipping his Scotch. Bidet, Freytag, Meyer. And whoever it was might have been alerted by Mellough.

The hotel manager stepped around the desk and spoke confidentially. “They are here, Herr Doctor. They await you.”

Jonathan nodded and continued to the dining room entrance. He scanned the room and discovered the group immediately. They sat near the floor-to-ceiling windows that gave onto the mountain; their table was flooded with brilliant sunlight, and their colorful pullovers were the only relief from the dim and sparsely populated room. It looked as though Ben had assumed, as the natural privilege of his experience and age, social command of the gathering.

The men rose as Jonathan approached. Ben made introductions.

“Jonathan Hemlock, this here's Gene-Paul Bidette.” He clearly was not going to have anything to do with these phony foreign pronunciations.

Jonathan offered his hand. “Monsieur Bidet.”

“I have looked forward to meeting you, Monsieur Hemlock.” Bidet's slanted peasant eyes were frankly evaluative.

“And this is Karl Freytag.” Amused, Jonathan matched the unnecessary force of Freytag's grip. “Herr Freytag?”

“Herr Doctor.” He nodded curtly and sat down. “And this here's Anderil Mayor.” Jonathan smiled professional approval into Meyer's wry, clear blue eyes. “I've read about you, Anderl,” he said in German.

“I've read about you,” Anderl answered in his soft Austrian accent.

“In which case,” Jonathan said, “we have read about each other.” Anderl grinned.

“And this lady here is Missus Bidette.” Ben sat down immediately his uncomfortable social duty was discharged.

Jonathan pressed the offered fingers and saw his reflection in her dark sunglasses. “Madame Bidet?” She dipped her head slightly in a gesture that was, at one time, a greeting, a shrug at being Madame Bidet, and a favorable evaluation of Jonathan—a gesture altogether Parisienne.

“We just been small-talking and eyeballing the hill,” Ben explained after Jonathan had sent the waiter after a fresh pot of coffee.

“I had no idea this mountain Jean-Paul has been talking about for a year now would be so beautiful,” Madame Bidet said, taking off her sunglasses for the first time that morning and letting her calm eyes rest on Jonathan.

He glanced up at the Eiger's cold, shadowed face and the long wisps of captured cloud at the summit. “I would not say beautiful,” Bidet offered. “Sublime, perhaps. But not beautiful.”

“It is the possibility of conflict and conquest that is beautiful,” Freytag clarified for all time and for all people.

Anderl peered at the mountain and shrugged. Obviously he had never thought of a mountain as beautiful or ugly: only as difficult or easy.

“Is that all you are having for breakfast, Herr Doctor?” Freytag asked as Jonathan's coffee was served.

“Yes.”

“Food is an important part of conditioning,” Freytag admonished.

“I'll bear that in mind.”

“Meyer here shares your peculiar eating habits.”

“Oh? I didn't know you were acquainted.”

“Oh, yes,” the German said. “I contacted him shortly after I organized this climb, and we have made several short climbs together to attune him to my rhythms.”

“And you to his, I assume.”

Bidet reacted to the cool tone of the exchange by inserting a hasty note of warmth and camaraderie. “We must all use first names. Don't you agree?”

“I'm afraid I don't know your wife's first name,” Jonathan said.

“Anna,” she offered.

Jonathan said the full name to himself and repressed a smile that only a native English speaker would understand.

“How are the weather reports?” Karl asked Ben officially.

“Not real good. Clear today; maybe tomorrow. But there's a bunch of weak fronts moving in on us that makes it pretty dicey after that.”

“Well, that settles it,” Karl announced.

“What does that settle?” Jonathan asked between sips of coffee.

“We must go now.”

“Have I time to finish my coffee?”

“I mean, we must go as soon as possible.” Ben squinted at Karl incredulously. “With the possibility of a storm in three days?”

“It has been climbed in two.” Karl was crisp and on the defensive.

“And if you don't make it in two? If you're pinned down up there in heavy weather?”

“Benjamin has a point there,” Jean-Paul interposed. “We must not take childish risks.”

The word “childish” rankled Karl. “One cannot climb without some risk. Perhaps the young face these risks more easily.”

Jonathan glanced from the mountain to Ben, who turned down the corners of his mouth, closed his eyes, and shook his head heavily.

Anderl had not been a part of this discussion. Indeed, his attention was fixed on a group of attractive young girls out on the terrace. Jonathan asked his opinion on the advisability of climbing with a two-day weather limit. Anderl thrust out his lower lip and shrugged. He did not care whether they climbed in good weather or bad. Either would be interesting. But if they were not going to climb today or tomorrow, he had other things he might give his attention to.

Jonathan liked him.

“So we reach an impasse,” Karl said. “Two in favor of climbing right now, and two opposed. The dilemma of the democratic process. What compromise do you suggest? That we climb halfway up?” His voice was heavy with Teutonic wit.

“It'sthree opposed,” Jonathan corrected. “Ben has a vote.”

“But he will not be climbing with us.”

“He's our ground man. Until we touch rock, he has more than a vote; he has complete control.”

“Oh? Has that been decided upon?”

Anderl spoke without taking his eyes from the girls on the terrace. “It is always like that,” he said with authority. “The ground man has the last word now, and the leader once we are on the face.”

“Very well,” Karl said to cut off discussion on a point he was losing. “That brings us to another issue. Who is to be leader?” Karl glanced around the table, ready to defend himself against any opposition.

Jonathan poured himself another cup and gestured with the pot; his offer of coffee was declined by Karl with a brusque shake of the head, by Jean-Paul who put his hand over his cup, by Anna with a movement of her fingertips, by Anderl who was paying no attention, and by Ben with a grimace, his beer mug still a quarter full. “I thought it was pretty much set that you would lead, Karl,” Jonathan said quietly.

“And so it was. But that decision was reached before the American member of the team had his unfortunate accident and was replaced by a man of such international repute—up until a few years ago, at least.”

Jonathan could not repress a smile.

“So that we start off with a firm understanding,” Karl continued, “I want to make sure everyone is in agreement about who shall lead.”

“You make a good point,” Jean-Paul said. “It is true that Jonathan has climbed the mountain twice before.”

Gallic reasonableness was countered with Teutonic exactitude. “A correction, if I may. The good doctor hasfailed to climb the mountain twice. I don't mean to offend you, Herr Doctor, but I am forced to say that I do not consider a record of failure automatically grants you the right to lead.”

“I'm not offended. Is it all that important to you that you lead?”

“It is important to our group. I have spent months designing a new route that departs in significant ways from the classic ascent. I am sure that once I have gone over it with you, you will all agree it is well thought out and quite feasible. And taking the face by a new route will put us in the record books.”

“Andthat's important to you?”

Karl glanced at him with surprise. “Of course.”

Anderl had pushed his chair away from the table and was watching the power struggle with amusement in the folds of his thin, heavily tanned face.

Anna relieved her boredom by shifting her glance from Jonathan to Karl, the two natural leaders of the group. Jonathan sensed she was making a choice.

“Why don't we leave it at this,” Jean-Paul said, moderating. “This afternoon we shall all go over the route you have planned, Karl. If it looks good to us, then you will be leader on the mountain. But until we are on the face, Benjamin will be in command.”

Karl agreed, certain the appeal of his new route would convince them. Ben concurred with a glum glance at Karl. Jonathan agreed. And Anderl didn't care one way or the other.

“So!” Jean-Paul clapped his hands together to punctuate the end of what had been, for him, an unpleasant encounter. “Now we will take our coffee and become better acquainted with one another. Right?”

“Oh?” said Jonathan. “I had assumed that you and Karl were already acquainted.”

“How so?” Jean-Paul asked, smiling.

“In a business way, I had imagined. Your company makes aerosol containers, his produces pesticides. It would seem natural that...” Jonathan shrugged.

Karl frowned at the mention of pesticides.

“Ah! I see,” Jean-Paul said. “Yes, I can see that it would be a natural error. As a matter of fact, our meeting here is the first. It is sheerest coincidence that we are in related industries.”

Anna glanced out the window and spoke to no one in particular. “In fact, I had assumed that every manufacturer of liquids in Europe had been to our house at one time or another.”

Jean-Paul laughed and winked at Jonathan. “She finds some of my colleagues a little dull.”

“Oh?” Jonathan asked, wide-eyed.

The conversation turned to social trivialities, and after fifteen minutes of this Ben rose and excused himself, saying he wanted to check over the equipment. Anderl decided to help him, and the two of them went off.

Jonathan watched Ben depart with his characteristic hyper-energetic hopping gait with which he compensated for his limp. A thought crossed his mind.

“I hear you were injured last month,” he said conversationally to Karl.

“Yes. A fall. Nothing really.”

“It was your leg, I believe.”

“Yes. I cut it against a rock. I assure you it will not hamper my climbing in the least”

“Good.”

Karl and Jean-Paul fell to chatting about mountains they had both climbed, comparing routes and events. Jonathan had an opportunity to sit back with his cup and examine the three of them at his leisure. There had been nothing in the behavior of any member of the team to suggest he knew what Jonathan was and why he was there.

Anna Bidet's thoughts had turned inward, hidden behind the long lashes which veiled her quick, intelligent eyes. For some time she had been withdrawn, quite content with the company of her own mind. From time to time she would focus out on the men around her and listen for a moment before deciding there was nothing to interest her in the conversation, then she would dissolve back into herself. Jonathan let his eyes rest on her. Her clothes, her rare comments, her glances occasionally flashing in question or amusement, then eclipsing with a sudden drop of the lashes—everything was studied and effective. She was at one time dignified and provocative, a combination that is the exclusive property of Parisian women of a certain class and age.

She emerged from her reverie with the feel of Jonathan's gaze upon her. She returned it frankly and with amusement.

“An interesting combination,” she said quietly.

“What is?”

“Art critic, scholar, and mountain climber. And I'm sure there's more to you than that.”

“What do you make of it?”

“Nothing.”

Jonathan nodded and turned his attention to Jean-Paul, who obviously did not come from her world. His recent wealth fit him like his clothes, a little imperfectly because he lacked the panache to dominate them. He was over age for a major climb, but there was no fat on his sturdy agricultural body. One eye dropped down like a tragic clown's, but his expression was alive with intelligence and conviviality. His nose made a long, thin line starting rather too far up above the eyes and taking a capricious jog to one side about halfway down. The mouth was crooked and mobile enough to grant him that facial plasticity so intrinsic to a French peasant's communication. All in all, the face looked as though Nature had designed a perfectly nondescript mold, then had laid its palm against the muzzle while the clay was fresh and had given a slight twist to the left.

Jonathan appreciated his qualities. His dislike of conflict and his logical moderation made him the ideal lubricant among the dynamic and aggressive personalities common to climbing. It was a pity that he was a cuckold—at least an emotional cuckold. Jonathan pictured him with a nightcap, a candlestick in one hand, and apispot in the other.

It was an unkind image, so he shifted his attention to Karl Freytag who at that moment was carefully and significantly advancing an argument proving that the route Jean-Paul had taken up the Dru the season before had been poorly chosen. When Jean-Paul laughed and said, “All I know is that it got me to the summit and back!” Karl shrugged, unwilling to continue reasoning with a man who took the matter so lightly.