Chapter Three

Into the Abyss

From all accounts, this was a transitional phase for the new marriage. The actions of the young couple certainly support that opinion. This was not unexpected. All marriages have their adjustment phase shortly after the thrill of the wedding and honeymoon. As the excitement diminishes and expectations are reconsidered, reality sets in. For most, this is nothing more than a less smooth time in the relationship as they get on with the business of life as a couple.

But for Derek and Tarja, there’d been one adventure after another—from the moment they met until the day Tarja became a widow. There was no period of quiet, no time of introspection, no meaningful emotional interaction to serve as an anchor for the future. Despite their personal failings and indiscretions, they lived a sort of fairy-tale existence, traveling the globe in their self-imposed, opulent cocoon.

Derek spent much of that time preoccupied with last-minute preparations for the doomed expedition. Certainly this was of necessity, but perhaps he was also escaping the hasty decision he’d made. Subtracting their two-week honeymoon on Bora Bora, Derek had just ten weeks for the final details. Who knows how much of that time was filled with the necessities of a new husband? Or how much that contributed to his demise?

Tarja certainly made good use of those weeks. In addition to finding time for her model lover, she hired a new, more aggressive publicist, recruited a make-up and hair stylist to join her on the expedition, and closed the lucrative deal with Brides R Us magazine. Rumor has it that she was to have become a regular columnist with the rag and planned to shop her ghostwritten pieces to newspapers. We’ll never know for certain—and that’s certainly no loss.

Initially there was no sign of matrimonial trouble on the trek. It may be that Derek had not heard of the hot model who’d entertained Tarja before his arrival, or perhaps he didn’t care. Many men do not consider a lesbian relationship to be infidelity and are, in fact, excited by the thought, regretting only that they weren’t invited along for the ride.

Derek and Tarja were inseparable—at night and by day. Pals say they appeared happy enough, ducking into their spacious tent at odd hours, the young bride giggling, if not exactly blushing.

“Seeing them together was like watching Hollywood movie stars. They radiated magnetism. Together, it was increased by a factor of four. You could get sunburned standing too close to them,” one source on the expedition wrote in an article.

Tarja Sodoc was certainly an odd bride—perhaps one of the oddest in history—and that excludes her peccadilloes. Preoccupied with her looks, behaving daily as a prima donna, she demanded camera time. Whenever the great adventurer gave an interview, Tarja could be counted on to hang on his arm, her chest jutting to maximum, a come-hither look in her misty eyes as she worshiped the camera lens. If Tarja had a love affair beyond herself, it can surely be said it was with the camera.

Despite all the sexual energy generated along the trail, the bloom was definitely off the rose and the honeymoon was over—dead, dead, dead—before the couple ever reached Base Camp, well before either so much as set foot on the mountain itself. The couple was seen standing apart from the rest, engaged in deep, heated conversations, Tarja clearly wanting her way, Derek unwilling to give it.

“For one thing, Derek was very angry about her piggybacking an expansion of her career onto his. He’d thought all that had been settled before they married. Now she was breaking the deal,” a knowledgeable insider says. “The brilliant light of publicity was to be directed solely at him, not diverted to her. Let her build her own career, not steal a portion of his. It was a message he understood, one she ignored. And the stories of her misbehavior had surely reached him by this time. We all knew; surely he did, as well.”

Others disagree. “The man knew nothing. She had him so loaded up on dope he was in his own world.”

The other climbers clearly loved being on the expedition. Jocular Doc smiled as he went about repairing tired and injured feet, dispensing much-appreciated pills, and later administering essential shots. Crystal vamped her way up the trail, initially flirting outrageously with an Italian cameraman, publicly primping before the mirror attached to the forward pole of her tent before trotting off to spend the night with him—and later with others.

“She was quite a lady,” Umberto Prodi says. “The last thing I expected—even as an Italian—was for there to be so much sex on Everest. It came as a real shock. Crystal was fun, but not like you think. She’d been hurt—even I could see that. It was revenge sex. She flaunted it afterward. I suppose that if I’d cared, I could have figured out who she wanted to make jealous—but I didn’t care. It only happened a few times, then she moved on. Me? I had my eye on this little Jap girl.”

Rusty, Crystal’s former paramour, was a sulking observer, kept busy by Crystal filming the expedition and recording interviews with Derek at every opportunity. Who knows what he was really thinking? Anger seemed to lurk just beneath his surface, and his sullen mood disturbed more than one. “He was an odd duck, I’ll say that much,” one of the climbers told me in confidence. “I wouldn’t have wanted to climb alone with him. Or to have angered him in camp.”

Peer, the magnificent Norwegian climbing superstar, gloried in the attention of the European media, but beyond that was available at every water crossing, prepared to do what was necessary for the slippery-footed, of whom there were several. Once the expedition reached snow, he began training the less skilled to help them accomplish a safe summit. Few in history in such a situation were as unselfish and devoted to others as Peer was. He was, in every way, a modern-day George Mallory.

En route up the lovely climbing slopes toward Base Camp, from where the real climbing began, Derek was filmed or gave an interview at every stop. This did not include the staged sections of him trekking beside a yak or Sherpa. When the others rested or sought diversion, Derek worked. Observers say that someone had a piece of him every waking hour. At one stop, it was Crystal and Rusty, at the next it would be an interview with the Italian or Japanese film crews or one of the others.

Not that he minded. In the short decades of his life, he was one of those people who thrived in the intense spotlight of attention. In fact, whenever the camera turned away—say toward his greedy, lovely wife—Derek seemed to fade a bit, to become a pale mirage of his usual self.

At night, Derek worked with his producer recording voiceovers, screening the recordings from that day, selecting what would be used and what would be discarded. The media tent glowed a metallic white late into the night. The consequence of all this hard work and dedication was that, nearly every day, pieces were uploaded and dispatched to New York for airing. SNS prospered from it, while we can only speculate what toll it extracted from Derek.

It’s been said that to a teenage boy a car is a bedroom on wheels. It can honestly be said that this expedition was a traveling bedroom—or rather a mobile tent city of bedrooms. The simple Sherpa played their part, as they are not known for their dedication to one woman. In fact, a well-paid guide will usually acquire several wives. Away from their village, they’ll have sex with any woman they can pay or talk into it. It is their way of life, and who’s to judge? They have few pleasures in their short lives.

On the trek, men Sherpa outnumbered the women by five to one. Two of the women were with their husbands, who kept a close eye on them. The other three were without men, though not without their frequent company. Their Eastern culture has standards that are alien to our own. When it came to sex, the Sherpa, both men and women, live different lives and conduct themselves with different standards. Two of the remaining three women behaved no differently than most of the Western women climbers did. They had a few lovers along the way, but nothing serious.

However, one was very different. Unlike the other women, who were weather-beaten and aged beyond their years, she was attractive. Lighthearted and bubbly, she was also an easy conquest—if such a word applies to a woman who gives herself so readily. It was understood that a bauble or two—even some money—was necessary, but most of all, a man need do nothing more than ask politely.

This should have been no problem—and for the first week it was not. Then the first symptoms appeared. The woman had contracted a venereal disease before setting out and was spreading a nasty form of gonorrhea with every encounter. Doc was busy giving shots left and right, but the infection persisted. It would disappear for a week or two and then return. Doc Calvin was never able to stamp it out entirely.

At first, the pestilence was limited to the Sherpa. But that would change, disastrously so.

Venereal disease wasn’t the only specter to stalk the expeditions. The Italian team was especially hard struck by a persistent bug that produced fevers and diarrhea. “It was inexplicable,” Benito Luci, the team leader, told a reporter on his return. “No one else suffered from it as we did. Only us. We were suspicious from the first. When it persisted, I ordered a watch on our food supplies and preparation. The bug would leave us then, but at the first lax occasion, it returned. I’m convinced we were sabotaged. Someone wanted us to turn back. I know it.”

One of the Italian climbers, in fact, became so ill he was forced to give up. The team was delayed two days as they nursed him. Once he was on his way back, the Italians pressed hard to catch up with the Sodoc expedition.

Among the Westerners, sexual liaisons continued, oblivious to what the Sherpa were about. Once she lost interest in the Italian, Crystal slept her way around; Rusty was no monk, from accounts; Peer was much sought after and not one to say no. The nearby teams bed-hopped nearly every night. On the approach, climbers were at least as preoccupied with coupling as they were with trekking.

For a time, though, it didn’t seem to matter. These were, after all, sophisticated adults. Everyone understood. No harm, no foul.

Each day of the approach march, that mighty peak loomed nearer and nearer. The mountain could not be ignored, as it grew in time to dominate every vista. A sense of excitement and febrile anticipation pervaded the expedition; every eye turned to the massive pyramid towering above. The sensation experienced by all is best described is a sort of fever, an ardor that slowly enveloped all the climbers. As the expedition neared Base Camp, those there say that every climber was talking as if summiting was a certainty.

Seasoned guide Gyurme was head of the Sherpa. Short and sturdy, dogged and determined, he possessed the kind of leadership and prerequisite climbing skill essential to leading that hearty race. From every account, he performed magnificently and did a very efficient job on the way to Base Camp where his luck ran out or his fate was fulfilled—depending on your interpretation.

The Sherpa porters, herders, and climbing guides were oblivious to the Peyton Place they had joined—or perhaps not so much oblivious as amused by it. Westerners routinely travel to Asia to behave strangely without the usual controls on their behavior; these were no different, though it has been noted that climbers typically conducted themselves with greater comportment and dignity. One can only wonder if Derek, de facto leader of the expedition, really grasped the nature of what was taking place right beneath his nose. Or did the distractions of his work and the demands of his needy wife diffuse his focus and divert his attention from matters he should have known about?

Or perhaps there were other reasons why he did nothing.

Derek enjoyed the kind of life every man dreams about—a sort of James Bond-ish existence, but without being shot at. He lived where he wanted, at exotic locations, in incredible luxury, traveled where and how he wanted, and died as one of the most famous people in the world.

Along the way, he never lacked for feminine companionship, bedding desirable women at will. Most of the world’s beauties, from movie stars to models, had been on his arm at one time or another. Three years earlier it had been rumored that the heir to the Danish throne wanted to marry the dashing adventurer. He could have had any woman he desired and certainly had his share, but for reasons known only to him, he wanted Tarja. Like the portrait of Dorian Gray, her beauty was skin deep; the ugly depths of her depravity were concealed within her soul, hidden beneath that glorious facade.

Even though the South Pole is perhaps the most remote and desolate place on earth, the highest point on Antarctica is not especially demanding, as mountains go. It is ironic, in fact, that most of the Seven Summits are not all that difficult to climb. Even Everest, the widow-maker, requires little technical skill. The challenge is its location and extreme elevation.

Vinson Massif stands at just 16,067 feet. It is climbed in the Antarctic summer, and though there is continuous daylight at that time of year, the temperatures linger at minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit. The mountain is accessed by first flying to Punta Arenas, Chile, the world’s southernmost large city, that boasts a population in excess of 100,000. Windy and cool even in summer, it is a smaller version of San Francisco and well off the beaten path. A commercial fishing center, local restaurants serve some of the finest fish dishes in the world. The people live uncomplicated lives, apart from most of the world, separate even from most of Chile.

Vinson Massif is reached after a six-hour flight from Punta Arenas aboard a Russian IL-76 to the Blue Ice Runway at Patriot Hills. There, climbers switch to a Twin Otter that transports them to Base Camp. No trekking here. No weeks spent roughing it. No sir. Not if you have the money. There are typically two additional camps on the approach, and in most cases, from Chile to the peak and back takes a mere two weeks, weather permitting. A cakewalk for any climber of experience.

Derek had already climbed four of the highest mountains when he and his small entourage arrived at Cabo de Hornos, a European-style hotel in the heart of Punta Arenas, beside the traditional main plaza. It was presumably a coincidence that Tarja was staying there, as well.

Or perhaps not.

Pals say Derek and Tarja met at the Cabo de Hornos bar. The attraction was immediate and mutual. Both were to leave the next day for the Antarctic Base Camp, but weather kept them warm and cozy at the resort hotel, dividing their time between the bar and bedroom. By the time the weather cleared, Derek emerged looking as if he’d been drained of every ounce of energy. Tarja, in comparison, positively glowed.

The following week, they summited the spectacular peak, with its majestic view of ice and snow. From South America, they immediately jetted to Africa, where they toured the Serengeti Riff and then climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro together. Very romantic. They were wed a few days later off Mauritius on the yacht of the Sultan of Brunei and promptly flew to Bora Bora for their exotic honeymoon.

None of this, of course, was the coincidence Tarja conspired to make it appear. Since her unceremonious departure from Manhattan, she’d born a deep, abiding grudge. It wasn’t Scarbrough’s rejection that stung; he’d served her purpose and she’d been well paid for her time with him. No, it was Michael Sodoc casting her off like a used coat. Close friends say that she chafed at the humiliation and that she vowed revenge.

“Sodoc was her target. A powerful media mogul, no other man in the world was better positioned to make her the mega-celebrity she lusted to be. Even his new Russian bride was no obstacle. But he was a shrewd man, and women like Tarja were a dime a dozen in his life. She was nothing to him—and that’s what hurt most of all,” says a former hairdresser who knows everything and shares not the confessional seal of secrecy.

When exactly Tarja fixed on Derek no one knows, and it is possible, though unlikely, that this part might actually have been serendipity. Once she began her conquest of the Seven Summits, it was inevitable that the pair would encounter one another at some point. Perhaps that’s why she picked the mountains. Unlike the Kennedy clan, it was not the custom of the senior Sodoc to share his mistresses with his son. It is possible, likely even, that Derek had no idea that Tarja and his father had even slept together.

But Tarja knew, and she understood that Derek was off limits. Or should have been.

Her meeting him in Chile was no accident, a pal says. “She knew he was going there. She arranged to arrive first. It was planned. Even the wedding. She ordered the dress as soon as she came back from Antarctica—even before they left for Africa. She knew what she was after and got it. Revenge.”

All the while, according to reports, upon learning what was taking place beyond his control, Michael Sodoc raged in his Manhattan penthouse/office. Hearing that his only son was traveling with Tarja in Africa, he immediately called Derek. The conversation went nowhere. In fact, it may very well have pushed Derek in the direction Sodoc most dreaded.

Realizing what he was up to, Sodoc dispatched a close confidant, Tom Bauman, in an attempt to talk sense to his son—but by the time Bauman arrived, the couple was wed. From that day until the one when his son died, the senior Sodoc worked to have the marriage annulled.

Friends say there may be another side to this story. In a quiet corner bar in Manhattan, a once-close Derek confidant told me, “Derek knew about Tarja and his father. He knew. He wanted to see what she was like, what all the buzz was about. Then he called me from Chile. He was drunk. He said he had the most wonderful idea. He’d marry the bitch—that’s what he called her, the ‘bitch’—and really stick it to his old man. You’ve got part of it right. It was about revenge. You’ve just got the wrong player.”

Tarja had struck gold, in every way. She managed to marry Derek without a prenuptial agreement. Upon her husband’s death, she stood to inherit hundreds of millions. Should Sodoc have died first, then Derek after him, she’d have received billions and worldwide control of SNS. This because the Russian bride had been locked into an unbreakable prenuptial. In the event of neither, in the case of a divorce, Tarja could have threatened the Sodoc family’s control of their global media enterprise.

The marriage came as a shock to more than the groom’s father and pregnant Russian stepmother. Neither of Tarja’s parents were informed or invited to the wedding. Yet within the week, a careful post-wedding picture appeared on the covers of People and Hello! magazines.

In the most significant way, however, the true romance was over by the time the newlyweds gathered in Nepal. It was apparent to anyone with eyes, almost from the start. Tarja’s obsession with piggybacking her fame on Derek’s back stood in stark contrast to what should have been her true role as a loyal wife. Climbers report frequent disagreements between the couple, followed by passionate reconciliations, though they say the reconciliations became less and less frequent and increasingly less passionate.

Nevertheless, Tarja’s desire to enhance her tarnished public image at her husband’s expense was not the fundamental problem. He surely knew that she wanted to be in the public eye. She’d certainly worked hard enough at it. Had she been more discreet, less greedy, less rushed, her lust for celebrity might very well have been no problem at all. Some men like being known to have sex with a woman whom others desire. That may very well have been Tarja’s appeal to him.

No, that alone was not enough. There was something else, a snake in this garden.

It came as no surprise to those who knew Derek that marriage did nothing to end his wandering eye and single-minded conquest of more-than-willing women. Derek was the kind of man who cheated even when he was happily married. We’ve all known them, men who cheat relentlessly on a perfectly attractive and decent wife, become morose when she leaves them, and then pursue a younger clone of the first wife relentlessly—and once remarried, proceed to cheat shamelessly. For them, the wedding ring is their aphrodisiac.

Within weeks of taking his wedding vows, Derek began a passionate affair with Crystal in New York City while he planned the coverage of the expedition. The pair was inseparable. “They went at it hot and heavy,” a pal said. “They couldn’t keep their hands off each other.”

Crystal, daughter of Cuban immigrants, is a hotheaded Latin beauty and, from all accounts, took her relationship with Derek more seriously than he did. “She was in love,” a source says. “He was her one and only. She fell for him in a way she never had for anyone else, and that includes Rusty. She walked around six inches in the air, that sickening rosy glow all over her. Friends tried to warn her, but she wouldn’t listen.” She was talking about marriage—even though he’d already married Tarja.

“Crystal was stunned and humiliated when Derek dropped her,” a source told me. “It seemed to her that everywhere she went people in the know were laughing at her.”

But Crystal was not unique. In most ways, Derek was more a man’s man than one on whom a woman could depend. Women served one important purpose in his life; with the exception of climbing mountains, the conquest of every reasonably attractive female within striking distance was his relentless goal.

This kind of implacable womanizing among the famous is standard fare and a bit pathetic—though most would say not in Derek’s case. He accepted the occasional rebuke with good cheer and never bragged of his conquests to his friends.

And it should be said in all fairness that Derek did little pursuing. Women threw themselves at him wherever he went. Even with his lovely bride by his side, beautiful women pressed themselves against him, slipped bits of paper with their telephone numbers into his hand, and whispered endearments into his ear. He accepted the attention with a sense of entitlement and good humor.

But in this regard, Tarja had no sense of humor. More than once she shouted at women to get away from her husband, allegedly coming to blows in public twice. Derek took it all as great fun, which only angered Tarja further.

So it was that the couple’s troubles were well developed by the time they arrived in Nepal. It may be that Tarja had learned of his earlier affair with Crystal, and that might well be why she arrived with a girlfriend. They’d certainly not been discreet, and there was always someone willing to tattle. But for Derek it didn’t end with the high-spirited Cubana. One member of the expedition reported seeing Derek emerge from the hotel room of an SNS international producer—not Crystal’s.

“She was hot, no question about it,” the source says. “She’d been chasing him relentlessly for days. That guy had all the luck—until the end, of course.”

Another relates witnessing the early portion of the night Derek spent with a member of the Nepalese Royal family at the palace. “I thought they’d kill him for that. The Royal family in Nepal is sacred. If they fool around, it is with their own—not with outsiders—and certainly not with a Western man. But he got away with it,” a source says. “She was calling him incessantly after that. He told me that royal pussy was no different than the regular stuff.”

There are other stories and rumors of liaisons even before the expedition left Kathmandu. Not all of them were high-class, either. Derek liked to rut with the best of them. Given his reputation, it is easy to believe every story—and we likely don’t even know the half of it.

These liaisons were reasonably circumspect, and it is believed that Tarja was unaware of them—or at least was able to turn a blind eye. To some observers, his behavior was shocking. Why would a man so recently married and to such a well-known beauty want to cheat so openly and frequently?

“I think Derek liked the forbidden. He enjoyed sleazy women; we all knew that. He’d had a close call more than once because of it. Frankly, he preferred raunch to propriety. I don’t think Tarja was enough of a slut to satisfy him—and that’s saying a lot,” a pal says. “If he’d known her better, things might have had a very different ending. The only real mistake she made with that black model was not asking Derek to join in.”

These ready conquests continued for Derek on the trek to Base Camp. There was, as if another example is needed, the incident with Sabrina Bellucci, the producer with the Italian film crew. “I could tell he wanted me,” she told an Italian magazine later. “I can always tell. Any woman can, for that matter. I wanted more access, and I found him attractive. What could be more natural? It all went well, but his producer refused to let me interview him. Still, when he could, he came back. I’m not one for those quick American things, you know, and he was a lusty man. What else could I do?”

Word inevitably spread through the expedition that Derek was up to his usual tricks. Who can say when Tarja learned the truth? A husband is typically the last to know when his wife has an affair; perhaps the reverse is true of a wife when her husband is having multiple affairs. Maybe she really didn’t know, perhaps she pretended it wasn’t going on. It’s more likely that she didn’t want to know. It is even more likely that when she did hear of it, she could not believe it—despite her own behavior.

What kind of man would treat her like that? Worse, what would people think? Her face and figure had graced the covers of a hundred magazines. She was a sought-after beauty who associated with—and had been pursued by—the richest and most desirable men in world. She had her own rutting pack and had picked Derek to receive her favors. How could the man she’d selected treat her like this?

Surely she found it incomprehensible, especially given her arrogance and pride. The easiest course of action was to deny what was going on. So while friends and other men could understand what Derek was up to and accept it, that was not the case with his wife once the reality was thrust into her face. To her, it was an egregious wrong and, quite literally, when the time came, there would be hell to pay.

But first it was necessary that she debase herself. As Tarja’s suspicions were heightened while he was visiting Sabrina, she became what the Chinese call ‘Mrs. Follower.’ She took to tagging after her husband wherever he went. No longer was he given any independence. “I was keeping that wop whore away,” she told her hairdresser. She sat in on every meeting, was present at every discussion, and stayed within arm’s length of him at all hours of the day or night. He didn’t like it, that was clear, but nothing he could say kept her away. Her behavior was a source of amusement to the others; Derek found nothing funny about it at all.

But the reality of the trek to Everest is that it was impossible for her to always be with him.

In the first decades that climbers assaulted Everest, they did so with the honor that has historically accompanied such efforts. Teams helped one another; supplies were stashed at advanced camps with no concern for safety. After all, who would steal? All that has changed in recent years.

Now, large teams employ professional guards or assign guides to guard duty to protect supplies of every kind. At first, thefts of supplies were limited to the Nepalese guides. If they needed crampons, they might steal a pair for use, knowing a Western climber always had a spare. Perhaps they’d help themselves to thermal underwear or high-altitude socks.

A Nepalese expedition comprised primarily of university students which trekked immediately in front of the Sodoc expedition was suspected in the thefts. Girija Dahal gave an interview after the disaster and said, “It was easy to blame us. Our team was most respectable and in no way participated in any theft. I admit not liking Mr. Sodoc, as I thought his behavior toward our goddess was inexcusable, but we played no part in the sabotage. I am, in fact, offended at the suggestion.”

By the time of the Sodoc expedition, foodstuffs, medicine, boots, clothing, anything and everything were routinely stolen. Supplies left at the advanced camps had to be guarded, adding to the cost and size of expeditions. Some items were stolen to be sold, others to be used.

Even that is not all. Teams in competition now use theft as a form of sabotage. Deny another team vital communication equipment, or enough climbing rope, or vital medicine, and you end its chances. In addition to disease, the white man has brought avarice. Nothing is sacred on Everest any longer.

Television reporter Reiki Nadasaka was twenty-seven years old that season. With better than average looks, she’d struggled to make it in the male-dominated Japanese media world. “You cannot imagine the kind of sexual harassment we Japanese women must endure to have any kind of a career,” she told me over drinks. “Japan is very much a man’s world.”

A graduate of the prestigious University of Tokyo, where the elite of Japan have been trained for generations, she found her career stalled at the Nippon News Agency, despite several years of hard work. “My boss made it clear he wanted to sleep with me,” she said in our exclusive interview. “Baka ka! Asshole. He was married, so I thought it would be safe. I wasn’t looking for a husband, or even a long-term relationship, just a way to get out of the cutting room where I was trapped. I’m not proud of it, but others have done the same, even men I know for a fact are not gay, and I’m no better than them.”

The lovely Reiki then recounts her horrendous ordeal in the hands of a man she candidly calls “a pervert.” She goes on, “I don’t know what to call the things he wanted me to do, chikusho f**k, but I don’t consider them to be sex. I was in counseling for months afterward, until the counselor tried to sleep with me, as well. It was no wonder my boss had to exploit vulnerable young women like me to fulfill his lust.”

When she refused to submit any longer, Reiki found herself assigned to the Sodoc Everest expedition, given greater duties than she was prepared for, and provided with no time to train. “He wanted an excuse to fire me, but I refused to let him succeed. It wasn’t easy, but I kept up with everyone and filed excellent stories from the trek before we were forced to turn back.”

Also present on the Japanese expedition was Fuyuto Kirosaki, at one time Reiki’s fiancé and also an employee of Nippon News Agency. “He was a drunk,” she told me a bit defensively. “He used to beat me. What a real teme, son of a b***h. Really! I’m not making this up. And he was jealous of any man who even looked at me. He was sent along at the last minute to make my life hell, to get me to change my mind. But it didn’t work.”

Others see it differently. “She wasn’t qualified for the work she did. She expected the rest of us to pick up her load. She was sleeping with her boss, and that’s how she got the assignment. She arrived in Kathmandu completely ill equipped. We had to go out and find everything she’d need there. She thought her good looks made everything possible. It was hell working with her. Once we were on the hike to the mountain, she complained about everything: the dirt, sore feet, and the food. It was miserable to be around her.”

Asked about Fuyuto, the source told me, “He was all right with her. He’d stopped drinking. I think she drove him back to it. She almost had me drinking. He told me he thought their boss had sent him along as a joke. She used to tease him. She’d flash her naked body at him. I saw her rolling her tongue across her lips once, taunting him. A real yariman, slut. And when she did have sex with one of us, she always made sure he knew. He was only flesh and blood. It was bound to turn out badly. You know women—they cannot help but be trouble. And, frankly, she wasn’t all that good. Certainly not worth all the trouble she caused.”

At first, when Derek allowed her to film him, Reiki thought she’d scored a coup. She walked around the small Japanese campsite bragging she’d bagged the “big one.” But then Derek let himself be filmed by the Italians and others, as well, and she realized she’d gotten nothing special.

“But he gave no one a personal interview,” the source says. “Those he saved for SNS. Once she figured that out, Reiki was determined more than ever to get one.”

The way the petite beauty went about it was obvious to everyone. “She was going to screw him to get it. She thought the campaign went well when she first caught his eye, but that blonde wife of his was having none of it. She’d been having trouble with that Italian. She ran Reiki off with a rock. But Reiki was nothing if not relentless. Tarja couldn’t be everywhere all the time—and she had the Italian to worry about.”

The source says that Reiki gave Derek the eye and he knew what that was all about. One night, when he was left alone for twenty minutes, he went to her tent. Anyone passing by could figure out what happened after that. “From all the noise in there, the way he grunted and groaned, I’d say she gave him a fantastic ride,” the source said. “Better than I ever got out of her—but then, I’m not a billionaire. But when Derek came out of the tent, there was Fuyuto, drunker than hell.”

This and a subsequent confrontation have been well covered in several magazine articles. Fuyuto, reeling about as if he were trying to keep his balance on a ship’s deck in a storm, shouted at Derek. “She’s my woman! What you doing with her?” He waved a bottle of sake over his head. It wasn’t clear whether he intended to throw the bottle or stagger close enough to Derek to brain him with it. In any case, Fuyuto was so furious that he obviously didn’t care whether he wasted the rest of the intoxicant. A dangerous attitude.

“Take it easy,” Derek said, easing away. “We were just discussing an interview. She gets into that stuff pretty deep. You know that.”

Then Reiki came out, clutching an REI fleece shirt to her bare chest. “Fuyuto! What are you doing here? Get away! Get away from here!”

The two argued in Japanese as a circle of men formed to watch. She slapped Fuyuto and the bottle fell out of his hand. It fractured on the rocks, spraying bits of glass and—more important to Fuyuto—sake. He looked stunned for a moment, an expression of loss arching his mouth and dampening his eyes. Whether he was mourning the end of the sake or his relationship with Reiki wasn’t clear. Then his right hand snapped upward and lashed out. He caught her full on the left cheek, the blow landing with a harsh pop. She stumbled backward across the snow, trying to find her balance, and dropped the fleece shirt, revealing the treasures the men were struggling over. Derek, whose romp in the treasure chest had left him fatigued—and who now was spooked by the crazy-faced Fuyuto—decided he wanted no part of this. His decision was reinforced by the sight of Tarja coming at him with bad juju contorting her face. He walked off hurriedly as Fuyuto shouted after him in English, “I will kill you, gaijin! You hear me? I will kill you!”