The Eiger Sanction (24 page)

“Yes.”

“Then you'd better get along. I assume Madame Bidet is awaiting you.”

“She told you...”

“No.” Jonathan turned away and looked out through the window to where the mountain's presence was a bulky starlessness in the night sky.

After a minute, he heard the young man rise and walk out of the dining room.

Not a hair out of place, not a wrinkle in her dress, she stood looking at him calmly, almost contemptuously, sure of his discretion.

“May I offer you a nightcap?” he asked, pushing open his door.

“That would be nice.” She passed before him into his room.

They sipped Laphroaig in silence, an odd bond of comradeship between them based on their mutual realization that they constituted no threat to each other. They would never make love; the qualities of emotional reserve and human exploitation they shared and admired insulated them from each other.

“Blessed are the meek,” Anna mused, “for we shall inherit them.”

Jonathan was smiling in agreement when suddenly he stopped and listened attentively to a distant rumbling.

“Thunder?” Anna asked.

Jonathan shook his head. “Avalanche.”

The sound pulsed twice to higher volumes, then subsided. Jonathan finished his Scotch.

“They must be very frightening when you are up there,” Anna said.

“They are.”

“I cannot understand why Jean-Paul insists on making this climb at his age.”

“Can't you?”

She looked at him dubiously. “Forme?”

“As you well know.”

She dropped her lavish lashes and looked into her whiskey glass.“Pauvre être,” she said quietly.

There were noticeable changes in emotional disposition around the breakfast table. Ben's funk had worn away and his more typical hardy humor had returned. The crisp weather and a strong high pressure cone that had moved in from the north inflated his hopes for the success of the climb. The recent snow on the higher ice fields had not had time to glaciate and bind to the perennial neve, but so long as the weather held, a major avalanche was not likely.

“Unless afoehn comes in,” Karl corrected morosely.

The possibility of afoehn had been in the back of each climber's mind, but there was nothing to be gained by mentioning it. One could neither predict nor protect himself from these vagrant eddies of warm air that slip into the Bernese Oberland infrequently. Afoehn would bring raging storms to the face, and the warmer air would make the snow unreliable and avalanche-prone.

Karl's mood had changed also since the evening before. A kind of self-indulgent petulance had replaced the typical nervous aggression. This was due partly, Jonathan imagined, to regret over having spilled his emotional garbage at Jonathan's feet. It was also due in part to his having made love to Anna, a burden his sin-sodden Protestant morality could not face glibly the next morning in the presence of the husband.

And indeed Jean-Paul was dour that morning. He was tense and irritable and their waiter—never a model of skill and intelligence—received the brunt of his displeasure. It was Jonathan's belief that Jean-Paul was struggling with inner doubts about age and ability now that the moment of the climb was approaching inexorably.

Anderl, with his face creased in a bland smile, was in an almost yoga calm. His eyes were defocused and his attention turned inward. Jonathan could tell that he was tuning himself emotionally for the climb, now only eighteen hours away.

So it was by social default that Jonathan and Anna carried the burden of small talk. Anna suddenly stopped midphrase, her eye caught by something at the entrance to the dining room. “Good God,” she said softly, laying her hand on Jonathan's arm.

He turned to see the internationally known husband and wife team of film actors who had arrived the day before to join the Eiger Birds. They stood at the entrance, slowly scanning about for a free table in the half-empty room until they were satisfied that no one of importance had missed their presence. A waiter, a-quiver with servility, hastened to their side and conducted them to a table near the climbers. The actor was dressed in a white Nehru jacket and beads that conflicted with his puffy, pock-marked, middle-aged face. His hair was tousled to a precise degree of tonsorial insouciance. The wife was aggressively visible in floppy pants of oriental print with a gathered blouse of bravely clashing color, the looseness of which did much to mute her bread-and-butter dumpiness, the plunging neckline designed to direct the eye to more acceptable amplitudes. Banging about between the breasts was a diamond of vulgar size. Her eyes, however, were still good.

After the woman had been seated with a flurry of small adjustments and sounds, the man stepped to Jonathan's table and leaned over it, one hand on Anderl's shoulder, the other on Ben's.

“I want to wish you fellows the best kind of luck in the whole wide world,” he said with ultimate sincerity and careful attention to the music of his vowels. “In many ways, I envy you.” His clear blue eyes clouded with unspoken personal grief. “It's the kind of thing I might have done... once.” Then a brave smile pressed back the sadness. “Ah, well.” He squeezed the shoulders in his hands. “Once again, good luck.” He returned to his wife, who had been waving an unlit cigarette in a holder impatiently, and who accepted her husband's tardy light without thanks.

“What happened?” Ben asked the company in a hushed voice.

“Benediction, I believe,” Jonathan said.

“At all events,” Karl said, “they will keep the reporters' attention away from us for a while.”

“Where the devil is that waiter!” Jean-Paul demanded grumpily. “This coffee was cold when it arrived!”

Karl winked broadly to the company. “Anderl. Threaten the waiter with your knife. That will make him come hopping.”

Anderl blushed and looked away, and Jonathan recognized that Freytag, in his attempt at humor, had blundered into an awkward subject. Embarrassed at the instant chill hisfaux pas had brought to the table, Karl pressed on with a German instinct for making things right by making them bigger. “Didn't you know, Herr Doctor? Meyer always carries a knife. I'll bet it's there under his jacket right now. Let us see it, Anderl.”

Anderl shook his head and looked away. Jean-Paul attempted to soften Freytag's brutishness by explaining quickly to Jonathan and Ben. “The fact is, Anderl climbs in many parts of the world. Usually alone. And the village folk he uses as porters are not the most reliable men you could want, especially in South America, as your own experience has doubtless taught you. Well, in a word, last year poor Anderl was climbing alone, in the Andes, and something happened with a porter who was stealing food and—anyway—the porter died.”

“Self-defense isn't really killing,” Ben said, for something to say.

“He wasn't attacking me,” Anderl admitted. “He was stealing supplies.”

Freytag entered the conversation again. “And you consider the death penalty appropriate for theft?”

Anderl looked at him with innocent confusion. “You don't understand. We were six days into the hills. Without the supplies, I would not have been able to make the climb. It was not pleasant. It made me ill, in fact. But I would have lost my chance at the mountain otherwise.” Clearly, he considered this to be a satisfactory justification.

Jonathan found himself wondering about how Anderl, poor as he was, had collected the money for his share in the Eiger climb.

“Well, Jonathan,” Jean-Paul said, evidently to change the subject, “did you have a good night?”

“I slept very well, thank you. And you?”

“Not at all well.”

“I'm sorry. Perhaps you should get some rest this afternoon. I have sleeping pills, if you want them.”

“I never use them,” Bidet said curtly.

Karl spoke. “Do you use pills to sleep in bivouac, Herr Doctor?”

“Usually.”

“Why? Discomfort? Fear?”

“Both.”

Karl laughed. “An interesting tactic! By quietly admitting to fear, you give the impression of being a very wise and brave man. I shall have to remember that one.”

“Oh. Are you going to need it?”

“Probably not. I also never sleep well in bivouac. But with me it is not a matter of fear. I am too charged with the excitement of the climb. Now Anderl here! He is amazing. He tacks himself to a sheer face and falls asleep as though he were bundled up in a feather bed at home.”

“Why not?” Anderl asked. “Supposing the worst, what is the value in being awake during a fall? A last glimpse at the scenery?”

“Ah!” Jean-Paul ejaculated. “At last our waiter finds a moment for us in his busy schedule!”

But the waiter was coming with a note for Jonathan on a small silver tray.

“It is from the gentleman over there,” the waiter said.

Jonathan glanced in the indicated direction, and he experienced a stomach shock. It was Clement Pope. He sat at a nearby table, wearing a checked sport coat and a yellow ascot. He waved sassily at Jonathan, fully realizing that he was blowing Jonathan's cover. The defensive, gentle smile came slowly to Jonathan's eyes as he controlled the flutter in his stomach. He glanced at the other members of the party, trying to read the smallest trace of recognition or apprehension in their faces. He could distinguish none. He opened the note, scanned it, then nodded and thanked the waiter. “You might also bring M. Bidet a fresh pot of coffee.”

“No, never mind,” Jean-Paul said. “I no longer have a taste for it. I think I shall return to my room and rest, if you will excuse me.” With this he left, his stride strong and angry.

“What's wrong with Jean-Paul?” Jonathan asked Anna quietly.

She shrugged, not caring particularly at that moment. “Do you know that man who sent you the note?” she asked.

“I may have met him somewhere. I don't recognize him. Why?”

“If you ever see him again, you really should drop a hint about his clothing. Unless, of course, he wants to be taken for a music hall singer or an American.”

“I'll do that. If I ever see him again.”

Anderl's attention was snagged by the two young twits of the day before who passed the window and waved at him. With a shrug of fatalistic inevitability, he excused himself and stepped out to join them.

Immediately afterward, Karl invited Anna to join him in a stroll to the village.

And within three minutes of Pope's appearance, the company was reduced to Jonathan and Ben. For a time they sat sipping their cool coffee in silence. When he looked casually around, Jonathan saw that Pope had left.

“Hey, ol' buddy? What's got into John-Paul?” Ben had changed from the mispronunciation based on print to one based on ear.

“Just jumpy, I guess.”

“Now, jumpy's a fine quality in a climber. But he's more than jumpy. He's pissed off about something. You been drilling his wife?”

Jonathan had to laugh at the directness of the question. “No, Ben. I haven't.”

“You're sure?”

“It's a thing I'd know.”

“Yeah, I guess. About the last thing you guys need is bad blood. I can just see you on the face, thumping on each other with ice axes.”

The image was not alien to Jonathan's imagination.

Ben was pensive for a while before he said, “You know, if I was going up that hill with anybody—excepting you, of course—I'd want to be roped to Anderl.”

“Makes sense. But you better keep your hands out of the larder.”

“Yeah! How about that? When he decides to climb a mountain, he don't fool around none.”

“Evidently not.” Jonathan rose. “I'm going to my room. See you at supper.”

“What about lunch?”

“No. I'll be down in the village.”

“Got a little something waiting for you down there?”

“Yes.”

Jonathan sat by the window in his room, staring out toward the mountain and bringing his thoughts into order. The bold appearance of Pope had been a surprise; for an instant he had been off balance. There had been no time to consider Dragon's reasons for so blatantly rupturing his cover. Because Dragon was chained immobile to his dark, antiseptic cell in New York, it was the face and person of Clement Pope that were universally recognized as SS Division leadership. There could be only one reason for his making so flagrantly open a contact. Jonathan became tight with anger at the recognition of it.

The anticipated knock came, and Jonathan crossed to the door and opened it.

“How's it been going, Hemlock?” Pope extended his broad businessman's hand which Jonathan ignored, closing the door behind them. Pope lowered himself with a grunt into the chair Jonathan had been occupying. “Nice place you got here. Going to offer me a drink?”

“Get on with it, Pope.”

Pope's laugh lacked joy. “OK, pal, if that's the game you want to play, we'll use your ball park. Dismiss formalities and get to the nitty and the gritty. Right?”

As Pope tugged a small packet of note cards from his inside coat pocket, Jonathan noticed he was starting to run to fat. An athlete in his college days, Pope was still strong in a slow, massive way, but Jonathan estimated that he could be put away fairly easily. And he had every intention of putting him away—but not until he had drained him of useful information.