The North Col, Mount Everest—23,600 feet
May 13, 2010
3:30 p.m.
When Quinn and Stevens pulled in to the North Col camp, there was a brief burst of radio from the Base Camp. The last thing Quinn heard Bill Owen say was, “Well tell them all to fuck off. I’ve got climbers on the hill!”
Quinn repeatedly tried to call back, but there was nothing. Exhausted from the long pull up the ice wall to the North Col, with the afternoon cloudily closing in and the temperature plummeting, there was little they could do beyond settle into their tent and set about melting the pots of snow needed to rehydrate and warm their bagged meals. Silently contemplating the pan stacked with slowly melting snow, Quinn wondered aloud why Owen had vanished off the air, imagining that Sarron was in some way behind it.
“Well, if he is, we’ll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it,” was all Stevens would say. But then, as if intended to settle Quinn’s nerves, he pulled a small automatic pistol from inside his climbing suit. A vivid, blood-red dot of light instantly beamed up onto the tent’s curved ceiling from a laser sight set beneath the pistol’s stubby barrel. “Ruger, nine millimeter, steel barrel, polymer composite frame, integrated laser sight,” Stevens said as he zigzagged the red dot across the yellow skin of the tent. “Perfect tool for this job.”
The sight of the gun shocked Quinn. It was little bigger than the one the collector had given him in Munich. The recall of that night at the Weisshaus unsettled him still further. He saw again the jet of blood spraying from Dirk Schneider’s neck as he spun to his death … The thought of what even a small gun like that could do made Quinn recoil away from it, forcing him out of the tent with the excuse of making contact with any other team that might be up there on the North Col to see if they knew anything about what was happening in the Base Camp.
Many tents were dug into the high col but only one was occupied—three Spaniards on their last acclimatization rotation and due to go down in the morning. When Quinn pushed himself into the small lobby of their already cramped tent and explained about his loss of contact with his expedition leader, one of them, an impressive set of dreadlocks hanging from beneath his loose wool cap, began to work their radio to find out what was happening back in the Base Camp. Another translated the crackly bursts of Spanish that flicked back and forth.
Things were confused, he said, but the word seemed to be that a group of Chinese soldiers had arrived by truck out of the blue to aggressively search Owen’s camp. It was said that they had been tipped off that his team was going to film the raising of a Tibetan flag on the summit and then release it on the Internet as a “Free Tibet” protest. When the soldiers had found a packaged bundle beneath the cot of a cook boy and opened it to reveal some large Tibetan flags, they had gone berserk, arresting everyone in Owen’s Base Camp. Beyond that, there was little more that anyone knew.
Quinn thanked the Spaniards and, in the growing dark, carefully moved back to his own tent. Nearing it, he thought he heard Stevens talking on their satellite phone. He tried to make out what the man was saying, but it was impossible. When he touched the zip of the tent, the talking fell silent. Crawling in, Quinn asked for the phone. Stevens gave him a sideways look that betrayed his suspicion that Quinn had heard him making the call. “Just phoned the wife in London. All fine there, whatever may be going on here,” he said, trying to sound casual as he tossed the phone across to him.
Quinn didn’t believe it for a second—the man wore no wedding ring—but he said nothing. Picking up the phone for himself, he tried to call Owen. No reply. It was the same with the phones of the team’s other two guides. Nothing. Reaching for his radio again, Quinn scrolled through frequencies, trying to pick up other teams who were transmitting. He received some buzz in various languages until finally he heard an American guide he knew. Quinn asked him what had happened to their team in Base Camp.
The laid-back Californian confirmed the story that the Spaniards had told, humorously embellishing the details. “Henrietta Richards was ready to call in a napalm strike on Beijing she was so mad. Some German dude was ranting and raving he was from the Munich Police. He said he was going to have all the Chinese arrested, like they would give a shit. One of the soldiers pushed Henrietta Richards so Owen punched him out. That was the end of it, man. Within five minutes, they were all on their way to Lhasa in the back of army trucks.”
The call ended with the American saying, “Neil, you’re on your own up there now, buddy, and if you do have a Tibetan flag, I’d ditch it, and fast.”
Switching off the radio, Quinn looked across at Stevens who had listened to every word. “We should eat and then sleep. We’ve got a job to do, whatever might now be waiting for us when we get back down,” was all the ex-soldier said.