The Zemu Glacier, Northwest Sikkim—15,250 feet
April 3, 1939
8:45 a.m.
Lieutenant Macfarlane was finishing his breakfast in the otherwise empty mess tent of the expedition camp. There was a thick fog outside and it was unusually quiet now that the raucous Schmidt and his equally noisy team were exploring the mountains above. He was happy to have the place to himself that morning with just the cooks and some of the porters for remote company. It was even better that it was his first without one of the splitting headaches that had dogged him since their arrival at the glacier. Opening the copy of Douglas Freshfield’s Round Kangchenjunga that Smethwick had lent him as they were leaving Darjeeling, he called for some more tea and biscuits. Appetite’s back too.
Studying the pictures of the hidden mountains that surrounded him, Macfarlane tried to imagine what it must be like to be up there above the clouds. He was not a climber and Colonel Atkinson had been emphatic that he was not to try to be. His role, as the colonel put it, was “to be supervisory, not participatory,” something he had immediately reinforced when he arrived to see them off and saw Smethwick hand over the mountain book to the lieutenant as a parting gift.
“Read that book, by all means, old fellow, but make sure you stay off those bloody mountains,” Atkinson had cautioned. “It’s the only place where the Hun won’t be able to get up to any mischief, and I have been ordered to send you back to London in one piece as a condition of your presence on this expedition. Once that fat führer and his cohorts take to the snows, let them get on with it. Go and bag some of that wildlife I mentioned. It should be fine hunting.”
It was true. Macfarlane did like to hunt. When time permitted from the busy routine at the barracks, he had made trips with some of the Gurkha to track the wild pigs and the small, nervous antelopes that picked their way through the tropical forest below the hill station. He had been invited twice by other officers to try for tiger, but, beyond the impressive sight of some big, splayed paw prints in the soft orange mud of a jungle stream, they had never found one, which had been a dissappointment.
On the long trek from Gangtok to the Zemu, he fleetingly saw some of Atkinson’s wildlife but with no desire or capacity to shoot any of it. From the moment they entered the upper Tista Valley, Macfarlane had been absolutely pummeled by the effects of altitude. At times it had been so bad his only wish had been for someone to shoot him. He could only look on with envy at the porters and the likes of Becker, who seemed totally unaffected however high they went.
Becker …
He still hadn’t fully worked that one out, even if he thought he was now closer to an answer. The “farmworker,” as Schmidt had labeled him, was elusive, ephemeral even. He floated silently on the margin of Schmidt’s team, detached from its brutish camaraderie and enthusiastic lack of serious purpose. He actually seemed closer to the Sherpas and the porters, more at ease moving with them along the tracks and trails that had led them into the hills. Becker was usually accompanied by one Sherpa in particular, Ang Noru. They didn’t seem to say much to each other, but they were never far apart. If they did speak, it appeared to Macfarlane to be in a very simple German. He didn’t have the ability to follow what they were saying, although he did detect the occasional word of English being thrown in, particularly by the Sherpa. Any time that he himself tried to engage Becker in conversation, he was met with an immediate shrugged response of “Kein Englisch” before the German quickly moved away with a shake of his head. It was a pity because of Schmidt’s team, Macfarlane suspected that Becker was probably the best of the bunch.
For that matter Ang Noru was also equally reticent to speak to him. This was unusual because the majority of the porters, particularly the climbing Sherpas, were chatty within the limitations of their rudimentary English. It made him recall Smethwick’s warning about the man, even if, at first, it was difficult to see why he merited it.
The Sherpa Ang Noru, although tough and undoubtedly dour, was an indefatigable workhorse. Soon however he had heard from the other climbing Sherpa about how Ang Noru had been higher than all of them except for Namgel, that he had even been to Everest, proving to be one of the strongest on the mountain until his feet suffered frostbite. Ang Noru had made the mistake of blaming the English sahibs for it, they said, because they gave him boots that were too small and refused to change them when he asked. He had lost all his toes as a result and now only the Germans would give him work. When Macfarlane tried to imagine what it must be like to suffer such injuries yet still have to continue to use your feet to make your living, he understood that it could make a man somewhat bitter. In fact, the English officer thought that Becker and Ang Noru complemented each other. They were both quiet loners within the current company, which was probably what pushed them together.
But why had Schmidt described Becker as a “farmworker”?
At one communal meal in the mess tent, Macfarlane had taken the opportunity to study Becker’s hands. He didn’t have the rough, thick-fingered hands of the farm laborer. They were wiry and thin, moving with a delicate dexterity and precision more suited to a piano player or a watchmaker. Yet one of his fingers had been caught in some form of accident. A long, still-livid scar pushed from the very tip back to the first knuckle. It had no fingernail. Maybe Becker did work with machinery, but Macfarlane didn’t think that it was a thresher or a plough. There was something else about Becker that suggested his background wasn’t farming. His climbing clothes were much more specialized than those of the others in Schmidt’s party. Becker’s equipment was equally purposeful. He was never without his ice axe, his backpack, and a coil of rope once they neared the glacier.
When Schmidt announced that Becker and Ang Noru would be accompanying him on a first trip to bag a peak, it had all become a little clearer to the English officer. Becker was obviously some kind of professional mountain guide from the Bavarian Alps, brought along by Schmidt to ensure that the fat man made it to the top of a mountain so he could brag about it on his return to his beloved Nazi Germany. If Ang Noru had Everest experience and was as good as the other Sherpas said he was, toes or no toes, then Schmidt must have instructed Becker to team with him.
That has to be it.
Leaving the mess tent later, his breakfast over, Lieutenant Macfarlane looked up into the blanket of thick cloud and wondered how they were doing up there. Schmidt was a big man, always red-faced and out of breath at any altitude. Becker and the Sherpa were going to have their work cut out to get that man to the top of anything. If the day cleared, he would use the expedition’s telescope to see how they were progressing. Firstly however, he was going to have a chat with the porters to see if there was word of anything worth hunting down the valley.