82

From early the next morning, the pair made their laborious way up the long, icy ridge that rose from the snow saddle of the col onto the broken rock of the towering North Face. With every heavy step, each retreated further into his own world, forgetting about what might be going on far below, what they must do high above, instead just digging deep into their legs and souls to slowly push their way to the next camp. There, the only luxury awaiting them would be the possibility to switch on to supplementary oxygen to sleep. Through the day their radios remained silent. Even the garrulous American knew nothing more, beyond confirming that Owen’s entire team had definitely been taken away by the Chinese. They were on their own up there in every way.

Despite the bottled oxygen, Quinn slept little that night. When he did, it offered busy, surreal altitude dreams. He awoke frequently, gasping for air, claustrophobic from the oxygen mask, sensations of vertigo spinning his brain. All he could do was lie there in the dark, trying to regulate his breathing as his mind continued to stoke the fragments of his nightmares, a weight of something evil pushing him into the hard side of the mountain. His only response was to silently and quietly transfer the collector’s Leica from the bottom of his rucksack into an inner pocket of his climb suit. It made him feel as if he was at least trying to fight back, but it brought no sleep.

The next day they moved on to the final High Camp at 27,400 feet. Once there, Quinn and Stevens behaved exactly as if they were going to the summit. They got in, went through the interminable ritual of boiling snow to rehydrate, tried to eat a few bites, and then rested until leaving for the Second Step at 1:00 a.m. Setting off, Quinn could feel Graf’s old Leica in the mesh pocket inside his down suit. All the previous day, whenever he had thought about it, he had wrestled with whether he should try to switch it if they did find another. He still didn’t know but a voice said that he should for Graf, for Henrietta, for the truth. But was that really correct? Hadn’t this search for the truth already killed and maimed? Wasn’t it for the best if it was all destroyed?

Quinn’s mind continued to travel in circles as he gradually worked his way up the slope. The higher he climbed, the slower he went. The questions receded, his body subsuming his mind into the sole task of achieving upward motion until he settled into his usual summit-day rhythm of ten steps before resting. Each time he stopped, he leaned forward on his single ski pole, sucking in more air from his mask, his headlamp lighting only the ground before him. Nothing would exist beyond that roundel of illuminated snow or rock until the sun came. It was always that way beyond the High Camp.

By the time the batteries in his headlight had died and the sun was starting to rise, Quinn was pulling himself up onto the Second Step. To a yellowing dawn light, he slowly made his way up the rocky gully onto the step proper. There, he waited for Stevens on the same snow ledge where he had lost Nelson Tate Junior the year before. He looked for the boy’s body. Dawa and Pemba had told him that they had moved it down off the climbing line, laying it to rest in a slightly lower rock crevice. It seemed that there had been a lot of snow over the winter. Quinn couldn’t see anything, not even the older bodies below the step he remembered seeing after being hit by the rock fall.

Stevens’ arrival stopped his search. Quinn pointed to the buttress at the end of the ledge and then slowly lead Stevens along the narrow ledge. There, at the end, they both edged their way around the rock buttress before ducking down into the entrance of the small cave. Entering into the darkness of the rock again, Quinn understood it for what it really was: a tomb. He was momentarily transfixed to the spot forcing Stevens to squeeze around him to get inside. “Okay, if this is the place, let’s get on with it,” he said as he passed. “Quinn, you will need to change the batteries in your headlamp and put it back on. We need all the light we can get to do this properly.” Kneeling next to the snow mound, Stevens took off his rucksack and, from within, pulled out two small equipment cases. Laying them on the cave floor, Stevens worked on his own headlight before using its renewed beam to light his opening of the first plastic case.

Quinn’s gloved fingers felt thick and awkward as he fumbled to replace the batteries and switch his own light back on again. When he did, the smoky beam scythed into the shadows, ice crystals sparkling back at him from the black walls. For an instant, he saw projected onto them the image of him fighting, and failing, to save Nelson Tate Junior. Looking down at where he had first found the boy, the light reflected on something projecting from the ice. It was the syringe he had used. Seeing that Stevens was already concentrating on using his ice axe to hack away at the snow mound that filled the rest of the cave, Quinn gently put his hand flat on it and slipped it into his thigh pocket.

Turning back to look again at the snow pile, coursing the beam of his headlamp over it, the tube of light picked up the faint outline of something within. A shadow locked inside, a dark form that gave structure to the mound of ice and snow. Quinn tried to move closer but was blocked by Stevens. The ex-soldier was working as aggressively as the altitude would permit, smashing into the snow and ice with his ice axe without care or caution for whatever lay within. The sight revolted Quinn. As if sensing the disgust behind him, Stevens turned to shout at Quinn to help.

Pushing alongside to do so, Quinn began to pull away chunks of the snow crust in a gentler fashion. It was still laborious work. The snow broke easily, but the ice beneath was rock hard. For some time, they chipped and chiseled with the picks of their axes, gradually removing the cold chrysalis that had encased the frozen body for seventy years. When the chopped snow and ice accumulated, they kicked it out of the mouth of the cave down the North Face. Watching the wind tear it away, Quinn noticed that the new day was turning ominous. Beneath an iron sky, cloud was building in the valleys below, patches of it dense, with an almost purplish hue. It was a bad sign.

He mentioned it to Stevens but to no reply. Instead, the ex-soldier picked up the first case he had opened and took out a small handheld plastic wand. It was a metal detector. Quinn had seen similar, only bigger, at airport security. Connecting a small earpiece, Stevens pushed its bud under his thermal cap into his ear. The detector switched on, he ran the probe over the buckle of his own climbing harness as a test before proceeding to sweep it over the broken snow and ice before him. Quinn couldn’t hear the detector’s signal but could see the three green LEDs on the unit. They changed to a bright red when the wand hovered above what must have been the corpse’s chest. The burst of scarlet light briefly illuminated a broken head above, as if bathing it with new blood.

Quinn saw two black holes where eyes had once been. Below, sharp projections of bone jutted through remnants of flesh and skin that had once been a nose. Lower still were two bare rows of teeth, stripped of lips, locked together in the permanent bite of death. The sight made Quinn swallow hard as Stevens unzipped the front of his thick down suit and, switching the wand off, pushed it inside. When the hand reappeared, it was holding a large black survival knife with a deep, full blade, jagged saw-teeth along the top edge.

With the tip of the knife’s blade, Stevens immediately dug further into the remaining snow and ice at the point indicated by the metal detector. The excavation revealed a thick gabardine-type material, grey in the half-light of the cave. Lifting the knife, Stevens stabbed down into it. The ex-soldier then began sawing with the jagged back of the knife, moving upward to the nape of the corpse’s neck, cutting through the frozen wind jacket. Putting the knife aside, he used both hands to rend the frozen material apart as if about to gut a deer. The sight within caused Quinn to struggle for breath. Even Stevens stopped short, seemingly forgetting himself in his surprise, twisting back to look at Quinn and say, “Fuck, there really is a camera. I thought it was bullshit.”

Quinn was equally stunned by the sight of the silver camera suspended from a thin leather strap around the corpse’s neck. It was a Leica 111, almost identical to the one in his chest pocket. Adrenaline flooded Quinn’s body at the thought of what it could contain, of what he should do about it.

The collector was right.

Henrietta was right.

The truth was lying there in front of him.

Stevens cut the camera’s leather straps with the knife and gently prized it from the frozen body with the tip of the knife. Pulling an insulated red plastic bag from his pack, he opened it and put the camera inside. Sealing it, the package went into his rucksack.

“Okay, Stevens, we have what we came here for,” Quinn said. “We should properly identify the body, cover it, and then leave. I’ve brought some material we can use.”

Stevens stared back, shaking his head. “You still don’t get it, do you? You need to go. There is nothing more for you to do here.” Reaching for the second equipment case, he removed a small package wrapped in black duct tape. Setting it on the corpse’s chest, he started to hollow a cavity underneath the body with the blade of his knife.

Quinn, at a loss as to what to do next, could only stare at the time-stripped face in the ice. He couldn’t even recognize if it was Becker or Ang Noru. It seemed dreadful that he didn’t know. Reaching forward to try and find something, anything, that would tell him, Stevens aggressively pushed his arm back. “I said fucking go, Quinn. Now! Wait for me well beyond the bottom of the Second Step. The weather is closing in. We’ve been here too long already.”

He started to reply, but Stevens interrupted him. “Quinn, there is nothing to discuss. My instructions are clear, whether you like them or not. I am going to blow your old Nazi out of his fucking foxhole, and if you don’t get moving, you’ll go up with him. I mean it.”

“There is no bloody way I’m letting you do that. Even if you don’t give a shit about the body—it may not even be a bloody German—what about the fucking avalanche risk?” Quinn shouted back.

In an instant, Stevens had reached back into his suit and pulled out the small pistol, the red dot of its laser sight igniting to settle on the center of Quinn’s chest.

“I don’t give a shit about that either.” The red beam flicked twice from Quinn to the cave entrance. “I have my job to do here. I will do it and you must go. If you want to try and stop me, my orders are clear. Your only witness is long dead.”

He gestured again with the gun for Quinn to leave the cave, waving the barrel slightly, the red dot now jumping up and down on Quinn’s heart as if registering its beat.

With no alternative, Quinn slowly moved out and onto the rock buttress that led back onto the snow ledge. The clouds were now pushing in tight to the side of the mountain. He vanished into them as he climbed away alone.

At the foot of the Second Step he didn’t stop to wait for Stevens or look for Nelson Tate Junior. Quinn felt that he had totally betrayed the body in the cave and just wanted to be away from the accursed place.

Fifteen minutes later he heard a muffled boom behind him like distant thunder. This time, he did halt. Quinn knew it wasn’t any coming storm. Saying a silent prayer for the mortal remains of Josef Becker or Ang Noru, he then vowed that, even if it was the last thing he ever did, he was going to switch the cameras before they made it back to Base Camp.