Quinn got out his radio and called down to Base Camp.
“Quinn to NHBC. Over.”
Sarron’s hard, Gallic voice responded immediately. “Quinn? Talk to me. What’s going on up there? Why haven’t I heard from you? And Nelson? Are you on the summit? Over.”
“We are on the summit. Repeat: on the summit. Nelson and Pemba in bad shape. Yves, Lhakpa, Dawa, myself, okay. Is Ross MacGregor safely back at High Camp? Over.”
“Yes, but how bad is the kid?” The heavy French accent snapped back, any radio formalities instantly forgotten.
“Os frozen or blocked. Not sure which. No Os for last forty-five minutes. Exhaustion. Probable severe frostbite to both hands.”
“Merde!” The shout of rage made the radio crackle and distort. “What the fuck are you doing up there, Quinn? Let me speak to him; I need to patch him through to his family in America.”
Quinn looked at the barely conscious boy slumped next to him. “Not a good idea at the moment, too weak. If he improves, we will call them on the sat phone.”
He already knew there was no way he was going to make that call.
“No! You won’t do it. We must make the call. I repeat: we must make the call. We need a summit photo and a call. Do you understand me, Neil Quinn? A summit photo and a call home.”
“I hear you, but he’s in a bad way. It’s not the right thing to do.”
“Fuck the right thing! You must do it!”
Quinn looked out from the summit, wondering why he was even wasting precious time having the conversation.
“Speak to me, Neil Quinn. Is he standing?” the Frenchman continued, relentless.
Quinn didn’t reply, contemplating turning the radio off.
Sarron became incensed at the lack of a response. “Answer me!” he screamed as he swept a laptop computer off the communications table. It audibly clattered onto the rocky floor of the expedition’s mess tent. “I said fucking well answer me!”
“No, he is not standing. Descent will be difficult. I repeat: descent will be difficult.”
“Put him on the radio now!”
Quinn relented, pulling the kid’s oxygen mask back down and putting the radio up to the boy’s mouth. A series of uncontrollable tremors ripped through Nelson Tate’s body as Quinn said, “He’s on. Make it fast.”
“Bonjour, Nelson, my young friend. You’ve done it, boy. Do you hear me? We’ve done it! You are the youngest guy to have climbed the Seven Summits. It’s a world record. We have a new world record. Ça va? Bien, huh?”
The kid looked confused before slurring a faint “yeah” in reply.
“We’ll get you a summit photo and then get you down, okay? Want to call your parents at home, kid?”
“Home?” the boy questioned pleadingly, looking to Quinn as if he had the power to instantly make it happen.
Before Quinn could say anything in reply, there was a burst of interference from the radio receiver followed by a repeated, “Hello. Hello. Hello.”
Sarron had patched them through to the kid’s family in America, regardless.
“Bonsoir, Long Island. This is Jean-Philippe Sarron speaking, your Everest expedition leader. Are you ready?” There was a pause, then Sarron screamed at the top of his voice, “Well, here it is. SUUUUUMIIIIIT!” He drew the word on and on, in a never-ending howl, as if commentating on a last-minute goal in a Paris Saint-Germain soccer match.
A distant yet equally prolonged cheer went up in staticky reply.
“Neil Quinn, tell us all, mon ami, what is it like up there today on the top of the world?”
Quinn groaned inwardly, before being compelled by the return of silence to speak into the radio. “Hello, everyone. This is Neil Quinn here with Nelson, giving you a late-night call from the highest point on earth. We are on the summit of Mount Everest. I repeat: we are on the summit of Mount Everest!”
The radio distorted yet again as another cheer went up from the assembled group in Tate Senior’s study. From amidst the cacophony, a deep, languid voice began to speak. “Thank you, Mr. Quinn. Good job, sir. How are you, Junior? What’s the view like from up there? Can you see us all down here?” The voice became a self-satisfied laugh as a champagne cork popped loudly in the background.
Against his better judgment, Quinn held the radio up to the kid who, after a long pause, said only, “Buddy?”
“What was that, Junior?” came the immediate reply.
The kid said nothing more.
“Daddy, I think he’s asking to speak to his dog,” a shrill voice said in the background followed by some laughter.
It abruptly stopped.
“Nelson, do you hear me? How are you, boy? What’s going on up there?” Tate Senior’s voice tightened with urgency as his questioning accelerated.
The kid, silent, just looked down at the snow as Quinn quickly took back the radio.
Steeling himself to sound confident, he said, “Don’t worry. We are doing fine up here. A bit tired but all good. Don’t worry. Nelson’s …”
Sarron cut back in. “Well, there you are, Mr. Tate: a call from the top of the world. Just some photos now, and then we will get your boy back down safe and sound. I will call you again in a few minutes for a fuller update after I am sure we are getting Nelson some fantastique summit photos.”
With a sharp click, the line was cut. A second later, Sarron’s voice screamed out again from Quinn’s receiver, “Get that fucking summit photo, Quinn, then get him down fast! If he loses his fingers, you’ll be responsible, all of you up there! I’ll fucking see to it that none of you ever work on Everest again!”
The radio fell silent.
Neil Quinn looked at Dawa, who had moved back alongside him to listen to the call.
Slowly shaking his head as Dawa shrugged his shoulders in return, the Englishman asked, “How is Pemba now?”
“He good to go down. I help you do photo quick.”
“Okay.”
Quinn unclipped his pack from his ice axe, put it back on, adjusted the routing of his oxygen supply tube and then, together with the Sherpa, got the boy to his feet. They each took an arm to drag Nelson Tate Junior to the very top of the world, passing Yves Durrand and Lhakpa Sherpa with a nod of acknowledgement as they began their own descent.
Quinn and Dawa put the boy down amidst the multicolored jumble of prayer flags, tattered climb banners, laminated photos of loved ones, and discarded oxygen cylinders that litter the summit every spring. The Sherpa sat alongside, supporting the boy with an arm around his shoulders. Quinn pulled up the kid’s goggles to expose as much of his pale face as he dared before reaching to the side of the kid’s rucksack to tug the boy’s short, titanium ice axe from the pack’s side compression straps. He unwound the small white nylon flag that was attached to it before planting the shaft of the axe into the ice in front of the boy. Dawa reached his free hand forward to pull the flag’s one-foot-by-two-foot rectangle taut. Extended, the little flag showed a line drawing of seven ascending triangles across the top with “7 @ 16” written in bold numbers beneath. Below that it read, “Mount Everest, 2009” and, lower still, “www.TatePrivateEquity.com.”
Pulling a small digital camera from within the innermost layers of his clothing, Quinn stepped back and took photo after photo until the camera’s battery, depleted by the cold, finally gave up the ghost. It was Neil Quinn’s ninth time on the summit of Mount Everest, Dawa Sherpa’s sixteenth.