Tsang Province, Tibet
April 21, 1939
3:00 p.m.
It had taken Macfarlane’s patrol two attempts to cross the Sepu-La. The first, inspired by the urgency of Zazar’s news that the German and the Sherpa had passed that way, rushed them headlong into a fierce whiteout five hundred feet below the top of the pass.
It was the Tibetan who had led them back with frozen fingers and feet to collapse exhausted and hypothermic in the very same cave where the monks at Lachen Monastery told Zazar they had met Becker and Ang Noru before they had crossed the pass. The weather forced them to spend four miserable nights there. Unable to go on but without the possibility of turning back empty-handed, Macfarlane could only wait and watch with impatience and frustration as his patrol disintegrated into three units: Gurkhas, Tibetan, and Englishman.
The Gurkhas were brave fighting men, utterly loyal to their leaders and fearless in battle, but they were also tribal, spiritual men who were wary of the elements, assigning such matters to higher powers whom they did fear. In the cave, they presented him with brave, eager faces, yet otherwise kept their own company, sullenly whispering to each other as if defeated prisoners of the weather, aware that no simple stroke of their kukri knives could resolve their predicament.
The Tibetan, on the other hand, simply withdrew deep into the overhang. Draping a heavy blanket over his hooded cloak, he became utterly immobile, as if conserving every ounce of energy for when it might be better used. Macfarlane envied the hateful man’s detachment. It was a skill that eluded him. Only once did Zazar approach him, and, when he did, he said nothing but just handed him a piece of foil paper he had found in the cave. It had come from a European cigarette packet or chocolate wrapper.
Macfarlane needed no words of Tibetan to understand what the man hunter was proving. With every paralyzed day spent under that rock wall, he could think only of his quarry moving further from him and the effect failure would have on his army career. Lonely beneath the cave’s shadowy walls, decorated with other people’s gods and goddesses, Macfarlane turned in on himself, replacing the ancient images with the paintings of his own ancestors lining the walls of his stately family home. Resplendent in red coats, decorated with rows of medals and clusters of stars, generals and brigadiers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers looked sternly down on him over thick waxed mustaches to demand explanation as to why he was going to be the one to ruin their family’s long tradition of military glory and honor. He had to find the German.
To do so, through the mediation of the Gurkha sergeant, he tried to agree to new terms with Zazar for their capture, terms that would see both Becker and the Sherpa returned alive to Darjeeling. Each time they approached the Tibetan to propose a new fee, he would look up at the British officer as if he was a complete fool before pulling his hood forward again to hide his face, saying nothing. Some hours later the sergeant would then report, with obvious embarrassment, that the Tibetan’s demand had actually increased. It was like some perverse Dutch auction.
That morning, when the lieutenant awoke finally to a brighter world of white and blue beyond the cave, they left quickly to slowly break a trail through the now deep snow up to the pass. It was backbreaking, torturous work, but Macfarlane would be denied his chase no longer. Arriving at the flags that jutted up from the new snow to mark the Sepu-La Pass, Macfarlane had looked down at a bare world of humpbacked mountains and valleys that stretched into infinity. The day was so clear and the country so vast that he almost expected to see Becker and the Sherpa walking the far horizon.
Descending from the ridge, following Zazar’s lead, Macfarlane saw that the deep, soft snow was streaked with red, as if it had been sprayed with a thin mist of blood. The Gurkhas pointed to it and talked amongst themselves, becoming agitated, until Zazar stopped, turned back, and tersely shouted something. There was further discussion among the Gurkhas, and then the sergeant stepped out of the narrow trench that they were breaking to wade back through the deep snow and stop next to Macfarlane. “Not omen, sir. Not blood, sir,” he stuttered with an unconvincing smile. “But sand, sir, sand. Red sand blown from the great Asian desert by the north wind during the storm.”
“Of course, Sergeant. Thank you. I am aware that such a thing can happen in the high mountains,” Macfarlane replied. He was telling the truth; as soon as the Gurkha had spoken, Macfarlane recalled reading in the Times of such a phenomenon in the Alps. He had been amazed that the mistral wind could carry sand from the Sahara all the way across the Mediterranean to deposit it on the snowy flanks of the highest Swiss mountains. But on that day, before the Gurkha had spoken, it was not the first explanation that had come to mind.
Zazar didn’t wait for the conversation to conclude. He stamped on ahead into the stained snow at the same driving, relentless pace with which he had led the way since Lachen. Watching him, Macfarlane understood that the man who should have been the most suspicious of omens and portents ignored them all. He was as practical as he was cruel. The lieutenant dug deep, forcing his tired legs to follow.