The Eiger Sanction (26 page)

Pope stared at him with bulbous, confused eyes. He still did not know what had happened to him.

Jonathan enunciated slowly. “You are going back to the States. Right now. And I am never going to see you again. That's right, isn't it?”

Pope nodded heavily.

Jonathan helped him to his feet and, bearing most of his weight, to the door. Pope clung to the frame for support. The teacher in Jonathan exerted itself. “To waste: to tear up, to harm, to inflict or cause to be inflicted physical punishment upon.”

Pope clawed his way out, and Jonathan closed the door.

Jonathan opened the back of his portable typewriter and got out makings for a smoke. He sat deep in the chair, holding the smoke as long as he could on the top of his lungs before letting it out. Henri Baq had been a friend. And he had let Pope go.

Jemima had sat across from him in the dim interior of the cafe for a silent quarter of an hour, her eyes investigating his face and its distant, involute expression. “It's not the silence that bothers me,” she said at last. "It's the politeness.'

Jonathan tugged his mind back to the present. “Pardon me?”

She smiled sadly. “That's what I mean.”

Jonathan drew a deep breath and focused himself on her. “I'm sorry. My mind is on tomorrow.”

“You keep saying things like that—I'm sorry, and pardon me, and please pass the salt. And you know what really bothers me?”

“What?”

“I don't even have the salt.”

Jonathan laughed. “You're fantastic, madame.”

“Yeah, but what does it get me? Excuses. Pardons. Sorrys.”

He smiled. “You're right. I've been miserable company. I'm—”

“Say it and I'll kick your shin!”

He touched her fingers. The tone of banter evaporated instantly.

Under the table, she squeezed his foot between hers. “What are you going to do about me, Jonathan?”

“What do you mean?”

“I'm yours to do with, man. You could kiss me, or press my hand, or make love to me, or marry me, or talk to me, or hit me, or... you are shaking your head slowly from side to side, which means that you do not intend to hit me, or make love to me, or anything at all, right?”

“I want you to go home, Gem.”

She stared at him, her eyes shining with hurt and pride. “Goddam you, Jonathan Hemlock. Are you God or something? You make up your set of rules, and if somebody hurts you or tricks you, then you come down on him like a machine of fate!” She was angry because unwanted tears were standing in her eyes. She pushed them away with the back of her hand. “You don't make any distinction between a person like Miles Mellough and somebody like me—somebody who loves you.” She had not raised her voice, but there was anger in the crisp consonants.

Jonathan counterpunched with the same hard tone.

“Come on now! I wouldn't be in this thing if you hadn't stolen from me. I brought you to my house. I showed you my paintings. And briefly I loved you. And you know what you did? You gave Dragon the leverage to force me into this situation. A situation I have goddamned little chance of surviving. Tell me about love!”

“But—I had never met you when I took on the assignment!”

“You took the money in the morning.Afterwards .”

Her silence admitted the significance of the sequence. After a time, she tried to explain, but gave it up after a few words.

The waiter arrived with a carafe of coffee, and his presence froze them in an awkward hiatus. They cooled during the pause. When the waiter left, Jemima settled her emotions with a deep breath and smiled. “I'm sorry, Jonathan.”

“Say 'I'm sorry' again and I'll kick your shin.”

The sting of the conflict was gone.

She sipped her coffee. “Is it going to be bad? This thing on the mountain?”

“I hope it doesn't get to the mountain.”

“But it's going to be bad?”

“It's going to be wet.”

She shuddered. “I've always hated that phrase: wet work. Is there anything I can do?”

“Nothing at all, Jemima. Just keep out of it. Go home.”

When next she spoke, her voice was dry, and she was examining the situation fairly and with distance. “I think we're going to blow it, Jonathan. People like us hardly ever fall in love. It's even funny to think of people like us inluv . But it happened, and we did. And it would be a shame... it would be a goddam shame...” She shrugged and looked down.

“Gem, some things are happening to me. I, ah—” He was almost ashamed to say it. “I let Pope go today. I don't know why. I just... didn't care.”

“What do you mean? You let Pope go?”

“The particulars don't matter. But something funny... uncomfortable... is happening. Maybe in a few years—”

“No!”

The immediate rejection surprised him.

“No, Jonathan. I am a grown-up, desirable woman. And I don't see myself sitting around waiting for you to get mature enough, or tired enough to come knocking at my door.”

He thought about it before answering. “That makes good sense, Gem.”

They sipped their coffee without speaking. Then she looked up at him with growing realization in her harlequin eyes. “Jesus Christ,” she whispered in wonder. “It's really happening. We're going to blow it. We're going to say goodbye. And that will be that.”

Jonathan spoke gently. “Can you get a flight to the States today?”

She concentrated on the napkin in her lap, pressing it flat again and again with her hands. “I don't know. I guess so.”

Jonathan rose, touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers, and left the cafe.

The climbers' last meal together was strained; no one ate much except Anderl, who lacked the nerve of fear, and Ben who after all did not have to make the climb. Jonathan watched each of his companions in turn for signs of reaction to Clement Pope's arrival, but, although there were ample manifestations of perturbation, the natural pressures of the impending climb made it impossible to disentangle causes. Bidet's ill humor of the morning had ripened into cool formality; and Anna did not choose to emerge from behind her habitual defense of amused poise.

Karl took his self-imposed responsibilities too seriously to indulge in social trivia. Despite the bottle of champagne sent to the table by the Greek merchant, the meal was charged with silences that descended unnoticed, until their weight became suddenly apparent to all, and they would drive them away with overly gay small talk that deteriorated into flotsam of half sentences and meaningless verbal involutions.

Although the room was crowded with Eiger Birds in garish informal plumage, there was a palpable change in the sound of their conversation. It lacked real energy. There was a sprinkling of girlish laughter allegro vivace sforzando over the usual drone of middle-aged male ponderoso. But underlying all was a basso ostinato of impatience. When was this climb going to start? They had been there two days. There was business to conclude and pleasure to pursue. When could one expect these falls—God forbid they should happen?

The actor and his florid mate entered the dining room late, as was their practice, and waved broadly to the climbers, hoping to create the impression that they were privileged with acceptance.

The meal closed on a businesslike note with Karl's unnecessary instructions that everyone get to sleep as soon as possible. He told the climbers that he himself would make the rounds of the rooms two hours before dawn, waking each man so that they could steal out before the guests and reporters knew they were gone.

The lights were off in Jonathan's room. Filtered moonlight from the snow beyond the window made the starched linen of the bed glow with its own phosphorescence. He sat in the dark; in his lap lay the gun Pope had left for him, heavy and clumsy with the silencer that gave it the look of an iron-monger's mutant. When he had picked it up at the desk (the gift of candy from one man to another arching the desk clerk's eyebrows) he had learned that Pope had departed for the States after receiving first aid for what he had creatively described as a series of slips in his bathtub.

Despite his need for sleep before the climb, Jonathan dared not take a pill. This night was the target's last chance to make his defensive move, unless he had decided to wait until they were on the face. Although a hit on that precarious mountain would endanger the whole rope, it would certainly leave no evidence. Jonathan wondered how desperate the target was; and how smart.

But no use sitting there worrying about it! He pushed himself out of the armchair and unrolled his sleeping bag on the floor opposite the door where anyone entering would be silhouetted against the hall light. After sliding into the sleeping bag, he clicked the pistol off safety and cocked the hammer—two sounds he would not have to make later when sound might count. He placed the gun on the floor beside him, then he tried to sleep.

He had no great faith in these kinds of preparations. They were the kinds his sanction targets always made, and to no avail. His mistrust was well founded. In the course of turning and adjusting his body in search of a little sleep, he rolled over on the gun, making it quite inaccessible under his sleeping bag.

He must have slept, because he experienced a plunging sensation when, without opening his eyes, he became aware of light and motion within the room.

He opened his eyes. The door was swinging ajar and a man—Bidet—was framed in the yellow rectangle. The gun in his hand was outlined in silver against the edge of the black door as he stealthily pressed it closed behind him. Jonathan did not move. He felt the pressure of his own gun under the small of his back, and he cursed the malignant fate that had put it there. The shaded bulk of Bidet approached his bed.

Although he spoke softly, Jonathan's voice seemed to fill the dark room. “Do not move, Jean-Paul.”

Bidet froze, confused by the direction of the sound.

Jonathan realized how he had to play this. He must maintain the soft, authoritative drone of his voice. “I can see you perfectly, Jean-Paul. I shall certainly kill you if you make the slightest undirected movement. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” Bidet's voice was husky with fright and long silence.

“Just to your right there is a bedside lamp. Reach out for it, but don't turn it on until I tell you.”

There was a rustle of movement, then Jean-Paul said, “I am touching it.”

Jonathan did not alter the mesmeric monotone of his voice, but he felt instinctively that the bluff was not going to hold up. “Turn on the lamp. But don't face me. Keep your eyes on the light. Do you understand?” Jonathan did not dare the excessive motion required to get his arms out of the sleeping bag and scramble about under it for his gun. Do you understand, Jean-Paul?"

“Yes.”

“Then do it slowly. Now.” Jonathan knew it was not going to work!

He was right. Bidet did it, but not slowly. The instant the room flooded with eye-blinking light, he whirled toward Jonathan and brought his gun to bear on him where he lay incongruously in the eiderdown cocoon. But he did not fire. He stared at Jonathan with fear and anger balanced in his eyes.

Very slowly, Jonathan lifted his hand within the sleeping bag and pointed his finger at Bidet, who realized with a dry swallow that the protuberance within the bag was directed at the pit of his stomach.

Neither moved for several seconds. Jonathan resented the painful lump of his gun under his shoulder. But he smiled. “In my country, this is called a Mexican standoff. No matter which of us shoots first, we both die.”

Jonathan admired Bidet's control. “How does one normally resolve the situation? In your country.”

“Convention has it that both men put their guns away and talk the thing out. Any number of sleeping bags have been preserved from damage that way.”

Bidet laughed. “I had no intention of shooting you, Jonathan.”

“I guess it's your gun that confused me, Jean-Paul.”

“I only wanted to impress you. Frighten you, perhaps. I don't know. It was a stupid gesture. The gun isn't even loaded.”

“In which case, you would have no objection to tossing it onto the bed.”

Bidet did not move for a moment, then his shoulders slumped and he dropped the gun onto the bed. Jonathan rose slowly to one elbow, keeping his finger pointed at Jean-Paul, as he slipped his other hand under the sleeping bag and retrieved his gun. When Bidet saw it emerge from beneath the waterproof fabric, he shrugged with a Gallic gesture of fatalistic acceptance.

“You are very brave, Jonathan.”

“I really had no other choice.”

“At all events, you are most resourceful. But it wasn't necessary. As I told you, I did not even load the gun.”

Jonathan struggled out of the bag and crossed to his armchair where he sat without taking his gun off Bidet. “It's a good thing you decided not to shoot. I'd have felt silly wiggling my thumb and saying bang, bang.”

“Aren'tboth men supposed to put their guns away after a Mexican—whatever?”

“Never trust a Gringo.” Jonathan was relaxed and confident. One thing was certain: Jean-Paul was an amateur. “You had some purpose in coming here, I imagine.”

Jean-Paul examined the palm of one hand, rubbing over the lines with his thumb. “I think I shall return to my room, if you don't mind. I have made an ass of myself in your eyes already. Nothing can be gained by deepening that impression.”