The Eiger Sanction (29 page)

After his own safety, Jonathan was most concerned about Jean-Paul, who had made only the most minimal arrangements for comfort. Now he slumped his weight against the restraining pitons and stared down into the black valley, receiving the proffered cups of tea dumbly. Jonathan knew there was something very wrong.

The rope connecting two men on a mountain is more than nylon protection; it is an organic thing that transmits subtle messages of intent and disposition from man to man; it is an extension of the tactile senses, a psychological bond, a wire along which currents of communication flow. Jonathan had felt the energy and desperate determination of Karl above him, and he had sensed the vague and desultory movements of Jean-Paul below—odd manic pulses of strength alternating with the almost subliminal drag of uncertainty and confusion.

As the fall of night combined with their physical inactivity to give the cold a penetrating edge, Anderl shook Jean-Paul out of his funk and helped him struggle into his sleeping bag. Jonathan recognized from Anderl's solicitude that he, too, had sensed something defocused and queer through the rope that had connected his nervous system to Jean-Paul's.

Jonathan broke the silence by calling down, “How's it going, Jean-Paul?”

Jean-Paul twisted in his harness and looked up with an optimistic grin. Blood was oozing from his nostrils and ears, and the irises of his eyes were contracted. Major concussion.

“I feel wonderful, Jonathan. But it's strange, isn't it? I remember nothing after the stone knocked me off my stance. It must have been quite an event. Pity I slept through it.”

Karl and Jonathan exchanged glances, Karl was going to say something when he was interrupted by Anderl.

“Look! The stars!”

Wisps of cloud were racing between them and the stars, alternately revealing and concealing their twinkle in a strange undulating pattern. Then, suddenly, the stars were gone.

The eeriness of the effect was compounded by the fact that there was no wind on the face. For the first time in Jonathan's memory, the air on Eiger was still. And, more ominous yet, it was warm.

No one spoke to break the hush. The thick plasticity of the night reminded Jonathan of typhoons in the South China Sea.

Then, low at first but increasing in volume, came a hum like the sound of a large dynamo. The drone seemed to come from the depths of the rock itself. There was the bitter-sweet smell of ozone. And Jonathan found himself staring at the head of his ice axe, only two feet from him. It was surrounded by a greenish halo of St. Elmo's fire that flickered and pulsed before it arced with a cracking flash into the rock.

Faithful to the last to his Teutonic penchant for underlining the obvious, Karl's lips formed the word,“foehn!” just as the first rock-shaking explosion of thunder obliterated the sound of the word.

He stretched the kinks out of his back. Thunder rumbled distantly, and the noise was trebled by the crisper sound of snowslide. He crossed the lobby and looked onto the deserted terrace, lifeless in the slanting light through the window, like a stage setting stored in the wings. It was no longer raining in the valley. All the storm had collected up in the concave amphitheatre of the Eigerwand. And even there it was losing its crescendo as a frigid high from the north drove it out. It would be clear by dawn and the face would be visible—if there were anything to be seen.

The elevator doors clattered open, the noise uncommonly loud because it was not buried in the ambient sound of the day. Ben turned and watched Anna walk toward him, her poise and posture betrayed by makeup that was thirty hours old.

She stood close to him, looking out the window. There had been no greetings. “The weather is clearing a little, it seems,” she said.

“Yes.” Ben did not feel like talking.

“I just heard that Jean-Paul had an accident.”

“Youjust heard?”

She turned toward him and spoke with odd angry intensity. “Yes, I just heard it. From a young man I was with. Does that shock you?” She was bitter and punishing herself.

Ben continued to stare dully into the night. “I don't care who you fuck, lady.”

She lowered her lashes and sighed on a tired intake of breath that fluttered. “Was Jean-Paul hurt badly?”

Ben inadvertently paused half a beat before answering. “No.”

Anna examined his broad, heavily lined face. “You are lying, of course.”

Another, more distant roll of thunder echoed from the mountain. Ben slapped the back of his neck and turned away from the window to cross the lobby. Anna followed.

Ben asked the desk clerk if he could get him a couple of bottles of beer. The clerk was effusive in his regrets, but at that hour there was no way within the rigid boundaries of his printed instructions that he could accommodate.

“I have brandy in my room,” Anna offered.

“No thanks.” Ben cocked his head and looked at her. “All right. Fine.”

In the elevator Anna said, “You didn't answer when I said you were lying. Does that mean Jean-Paul's fall was serious?”

Fatigue from his long watch was seeping in and saturating his body. “I don't know,” he admitted. “He moved funny after his fall. Not like something was broken, but—funny. I got the feeling he was hurt.”

Anna unlocked the door to her room and walked in ahead of Ben, turning on the lights as she passed through. Ben paused for a moment before entering.

“Come in, Mr. Bowman. What is wrong?” She laughed dryly. “Oh, I see. You half expected to see the young man I mentioned.” She poured out a liberal portion of brandy and returned to him with it. “No, Mr. Bowman. Never in the bed I share with my husband.”

“You draw the line in funny places. Thanks.” He downed the drink.

“I love Jean-Paul.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I did not say I was true to him physically; I said I love him. Some women have needs beyond the capacities of their men. Like alcoholics, they are to be pitied.”

“I'm tired, lady.”

“Do you think I am trying to seduce you?”

“I have testicles. There don't seem to be any other requirements.”

Anna retreated into laughter. Then instantly she was serious. “They will get down alive, won't they?”

The brandy worked quickly up the dry wick of Ben's worn body. He had to struggle against relaxation. “I don't know. They may be...” He set down the glass. “Thanks. I'll see you around.” He started for the door.

She finished the thought with atonic calm. “They may be dead already.”

“It's possible.”

After Ben left, Anna sat at her dressing table, idly lifting and dropping the cut glass stopper of a perfume bottle. She was at least forty.

The four figures were as motionless as the mountain they huddled against. Their clothing was stiff with a brittle crust of ice, just as the rock was glazed over with a shell of frozen rain and melt water. It was not yet dawn, but the saturation of night was diluting in the east. Jonathan could dimly make out the ice-scabbed folds of his waterproof trousers. He had been crouched over for hours, staring sightlessly into his lap, ever since the force of the storm had abated sufficiently to allow him to open his eyes. Despite the penetrating cold that fol-owed the storm, he had not moved a muscle. His cringing posture was exactly what it had been when thefoehn struck, tucked up in as tight a ball as his stance permitted, offering the elements the smallest possible target.

It had broken upon them without warning, and it was not possible to reckon the time it had lasted—one interminable moment of terror and chaos compounded of driving rain and stinging hail, of tearing wind that lashed around them and wedged itself between man and rock, trying to drive them apart. There were blinding flashes and blind darkness, pain from clinging and numbness from the cold. But most of all there had been sound: the deafening crack of thunder close at hand, the persistent scream of the wind, the roar and clatter of the avalanche spilling to the right and left and bouncing in eccentric patterns over the outcropping of rock that protected them.

It was quiet now. The storm was gone.

The torrent of sensation had washed Jonathan's mind clean, and thought returned slowly and in rudimentary forms. He told himself in simple words that he was looking at his pants. Then he reasoned that they were covered with a crust of ice. Eventually, he interpreted the pain as cold. And only then, with doubt and wonder, but no excitement, he knew that he was alive. He must be.

The storm was over, but the dark and the cold only slowly retreated from his consciousness, and the transition from pain and storm to calm and cold was an imperceptible blend. His body and nerves remembered the fury, and his senses told him it had passed, but he could recall neither the end of the storm nor the beginning of the calm.

He moved his arm, and there was a noise, a tinkling clatter as his movement broke the crust of ice on his sleeve. He clenched and unclenched his fists and pressed his toes against the soles of his boots, forcing his thickened blood out to his extremities. The numbness phased into electric tingle, then into throbbing pain, but these were not unpleasant sensations because they were proofs of life. The dark had retreated enough for him to make out Karl's bowed and unmoving back a few feet from him, but he wasted no thought on Karl's condition; all his attention was focused on the returning sense of life within himself.

There was a sound just beneath him.

“Anderl?” Jonathan's voice was clogged and dry.

Anderl stirred tentatively, like a man checking to see if things were still working. His coating of ice shattered with his movement and tinkled down the face. “There was a storm last night.” His voice was gruffly gay. “I imagine you noticed.”

With the advance of dawn came a wind, persistent, dry, and very cold. Anderl squinted at his wrist altimeter. “It reads forty meters low,” he announced matter-of-factly. Jonathan nodded. Forty meters low. That meant the barometric pressure was two points higher than normal. They were in a strong, cold high that might last any amount of time.

He saw Anderl move cautiously along his ledge to attend to Jean-Paul, who had not yet stirred. A little later Anderl set to the task of brewing tea on the spirit stove, which he placed for balance against Jean-Paul's leg.

Jonathan looked around. The warmth of thefoehn had melted the surface snow, and it had frozen again with the arrival of the cold front. An inch of ice crusted the snow, slippery and sharp, but not strong enough to bear a man's weight. The rocks were glazed with a coat of frozen melt water, impossible to cling to, but the crust was too thin to take an ice piton. In the growing light, he assessed the surface conditions. They were the most treacherous possible.

Karl moved. He had not slept, but like Anderl and Jonathan he had been deep in a protective cocoon of semiconsciousness. Pulling himself out of it, he went smoothly and professionally through the task of checking the pitons that supported him and Jonathan, then he exercised isometrically to return circulation to his hands and feet, after which he began the simple but laborious job of getting food from his kit—frozen chocolate and dried meat. All through this he did not speak. He was humbled and visibly shaken by the experiences of the night. He was no longer a leader.

Anderl twisted against the rope holding him into his nook and stretched up to offer Jonathan a cup of tepid tea. “Jean-Paul...”

Jonathan drank it down in one avaricous draught. “What about him?” He passed the metal cup back down and licked the place where his lip had adhered to it and torn.

“He is dead.” Anderl refilled the cup and offered it up to Karl. “Must have gone during the storm,” he added quietly.

Karl received the tea and held it between his palms as he stared down at the rumpley and ice-caked form that had been Jean-Paul.

“Drink it,” Jonathan ordered, but Karl did not move. He breathed orally in short, shallow breaths over the top of the cup, and the puffs of vapor mixed with the steam rising off the tea.

“How do you know he is dead?” Karl asked in an unnaturally loud, monotonic voice.

“I looked at him,” Anderl said as he refilled the small pot with ice chips.

“You saw he was dead! And you set about making a cup of tea!”

Anderl shrugged. He did not bother to look up from his work.

“Drink the tea,” Jonathan repeated. “Or pass it over here and let me have it before it gets cold.”

Karl gave him a look saturated with disgust, but he drank the tea.

“He had a concussion,” Anderl said. “The storm was too much. The man inside could not keep the man outside from dying.”

For the next hour, they swallowed what food they could, exercised isometrically to fight the cold, and placated their endless thirsts with cup after cup of tea and bouillon. It was impossible to drink enough to satisfy themselves, but there came a time when they must move on, so Anderl drank off the last of the melted ice and replaced the pot and collapsible stove in his pack.

When Jonathan outlined his proposal for action, Karl did not resist the change in leadership. He had lost the desire to make decisions. Again and again his attention strayed and his eyes fixed on the dead man beneath him. His mountain experience had not included death.

Jonathan surveyed the situation in a few words. Both the rock and the snow were coated over with a crust of ice that made climbing up out of the question.

A frigid high, such as the one then punishing them with cold could last for days, even weeks. They could not hole up where they were. They must retreat.

To return down Karl's chute was out of the question. It would be iced over. Jonathan proposed that they try to get down to a point just above the Eiger-wand Station Window. It was just possible that they might be able to rope down from there, despite the beetling overhang. Ben, waiting and watching them from the ground, would realize their intention, and he would be waiting with help at the Window.

As he spoke, Jonathan read in Anderl's face that he had no great faith in their chances of roping down from above the Station Window, but he did not object, realizing that for reasons of morale, if nothing else, they had to move out. They must not stay there and face the risk of freezing to death in bivouac as, years before, Sedlmayer and Mehringer had done not a hundred meters above them.

Jonathan organized the rope. He would lead, slowly cutting big, tublike steps in the crusted snow. Karl would be next on the rope. A second, independent line would suspend Jean-Paul's body between them. In this way Karl could belay and protect Jonathan without the additional drag of Jean-Paul, then, when they were both in established stances, they could maneuver the load down, Jonathan guiding it away from snags, Karl holding back against gravity. As the strongest in the party, Anderl would be last on the rope, always seeking a protected stance in case a slip suddenly gave him the weight of all three.

Although the dangers of the descent were multiplied by bringing Jean-Paul with them, no one thought of leaving him behind. It was mountain tradition to bring your dead with you. And no one wanted to please the Eiger Birds by leaving a grisly memento on the face that would tingle and delight them at their telescopes for weeks or months until a rescue team could retrieve it.

As they packed up and tied Jean-Paul into the sleeping bag that would act as a canvas sled, Karl grumbled halfheartedly against the bad luck that had kept them from bagging the mountain. Anderl did not mind retreating. With surface conditions like these, it was equally difficult to move in either direction, and for him the challenge of climbing was the point of it all.