Bond raised his hand and was acknowledged by Marquis.
“What do we know about them?”
Not much. They’re all experienced climbers. They came up with the money, and that’s all Nepal cares about. They don’t represent any specific groups. As far as we know, they’re in it only for the sport.” Bond frowned.
Right,” said Marquis. “Are there any other questions?” Otto Schrenk, the newcomer, raised his hand.
“Yes, Mr. Schrenk?”
“Why are we climbing the north face? That is very difficult.” He had a thick German accent.
“It happens to be the most direct route to the aircraft. Also, the politics involved with obtaining permission to climb from the Sikkim side were too complicated. The north, west, and southwest sides of the mountain are in Nepalese territory. Of these, the north face is the safest. There have been deaths there over the years, to be sure, but several people have made it to the top.”
That seemed to satisfy Schrenk. He nodded and folded his arms.
“Anyone else?”
No one said anything.
“Fine, then,” Marquis said, slapping his stomach. “I’m ready to eat!”
The group stood up and stretched, picking up the conversations they had halted a half hour ago.
Bond looked at Hope Kendall, who was gathering her things. Could she really take the next seven or eight weeks being the only woman among such testosterone-heavy human beings as Roland Marquis . . . and himself?
“Just a second,” Bond said to Chandra. “If I’m not back in sixty seconds, you’ll have to eat without me.”
He walked over to Hope, held out his hand, and said, “Hello, I thought I should come over and introduce myself properly.”
She smiled warmly and shook his hand. “I’m glad to be working with you, Mr. Bond. So far the trip is a beaut, don’t you think? I m sorry, I’m afraid I don’t know much about your background.”
“We’ve been here only a day,” Bond said. “The law of inevitable rubbish will descend upon us before we know it. It always happens.
“You’re not going into this with a bad attitude, are you, Mr. Bond? she asked flirtatiously.
“Not at all. As you said, we all have to keep our wits about us. Would you care to accompany me to dinner?”
She shook her head. “I’m already promised to Roland. Some other time, maybe, all right?” She smiled, gave a little wave, then turned and walked away.
Chandra, who had observed the scene, was highly amused. -CHANDRA, if your smile gets any bigger, your face will split in two,” Bond said.
I THINK she’s the wrong girl for you, Commander Bond. Khanu paryo,” he said, meaning that it was time to eat.
Bond replied with what little Nepalese he had learned in the past few days. “Khanu Hos.”
Contrary to popular belief, cuisine in Nepal was quite varied. In Bond’s opinion, Nepalese food in and of itself tended to be rather bland and uninteresting. There was only so much dhal bhat one could eat, and he was going to have plenty of that over the next weeks. In Kathmandu, at least, one could get a variety of international cuisines, and the Chimney in the hotel specialized in some of the finest Russian food he had ever tasted. Founded by Boris Lissanevitch, it is perhaps the oldest western restaurant in Nepal. It took its name from the huge copper chimney and open brick fireplace that occupy the center. It was the perfect place for an intimate dinner with live classical guitar music.
Bond sat with Chandra and Paul Baack. For starters, Bond had Ukrainian borscht made from a famous, “original” Boris Lissanevitch recipe. As a main course Bond chose yogurt-marinated chicken, which was lightly spiced and served skewered with buttered rice pilaf. With it he had aubergine and sun-dried tomato Charlotte with solferino potatoes and a black-eyed-pea stew.
“This is very good,” Baack said, pouncing on an oven-roasted tenderloin with an onion relish and port wine jus. “Why can’t we just stay at this hotel for the next six weeks?”
Chandra had smoked beckti, a Bengal fish. “Yes, it is good, but the Sherpa food is better,” he said, grinning.
“Ha!” Baack laughed. “Are you mad?”
Chandra said, “I’m not mad, but I can be very crazy sometimes.”
The Dutchman laughed again. “What’s your story, Mr. Bond? Why are you on this trip?”
“I was ordered by the men in suits over in Whitehall. They want me to make sure everything is shipshape.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, why do you need a Gurkha to accompany you?”
Bond and Chandra looked at each other. Chandra answered, “Commander Bond is my good friend. We always look after each other.”
“Actually,” Bond said, “the Foreign Office thought it would be helpful for us all to have someone here who knows the territory. Chandra has been on Kangchenjunga before.”
“Really?” Baack asked. He was genuinely interested.
“Only halfway,” Chandra said. “This time I’ll do better. At least to the Great Scree Terrace.”
“Tell me about the equipment our people gave you,” Bond said.
“Ah! Very nice stuff, I can tell you,” Baack said. “Of course, I helped design the satellite linkup. We have an extremely light laptop computer with enough power to last three months. It’s equipped with the linkup, and that will be kept at Base Camp. With the use of cellular phones, every team member can stay in contact with each other and the outside world. We will all use the same channel, although the phones are capable of several private channels. We can even hook up to the Internet from wherever we are. I can send a fax from eight thousand meters if I want.”
“Speaking of faxes, I need to send something to London. You have something handy?” Bond asked.
“Certainly. It’s right here,” he said, indicating a portable computer case at his side. “Would you like to do it now?”
Bond opened his own file folder containing information on the expedition and team members. He found the recently added photo of Otto Schrenk, scribbled a message on a Post-It note, stuck it to the bottom of the photo, then handed it to Baack. The Dutchman opened the case, turned on the computer, noted the phone number that Bond had written, then fed the photo into the machine.
“That should do it,” he said, handing it back to Bond. “I’m in constant contact with London, Mr. Bond, so anytime you want to talk to the Foreign Office, just say so.”
“Thanks. Let me know when you get a reply. And call me James-
He had a good feeling about Baack, and was pleased that he was on the team and looked forward to getting to know him better.
Roland Marquis and Hope Kendall entered the room. She had gone to the trouble to change clothes before coming in to dinner. Instead of the trousers she was wearing at the meeting, she now had on an attractive red evening gown. Marquis had put on a sleek dinner jacket but was still wearing the civilian clothes underneath.
She laughed as she walked by Bond’s table. “I figured that this was mv last chance to be a lady before six weeks of hell.”
“Doesn’t she look marvelous?” Marquis asked.
The three men muttered appreciative comments, then the couple sat at a table isolated from the others.
After a few glances in their direction, Bond decided that the two of them were indeed having some kind of love affair.
Although there was no rational reason for it, this notion gave Bond a twinge of jealousy.
SIXTEEN
THE TREK BEGINS
THE REST OF THE stay in Kathmandu was unremarkable, and local police never connected the deaths of Zakir Bedi and the Nepalese assassin, who might or might not have been Union, to the group of mountaineers staying at the Yak and Yeti. The remaining days were spent exercising and gathering supplies for the trek across eastern Nepal.
One of the more interesting events for Bond occurred the morning after the team meeting. Every member of the expedition had to submit to a physical examination performed by Dr. Hope Kendall. Bond reported to her in one
of the hotel suites at the appointed time and found her to be cool, clinical, and objective, as a physician should be. At the same time, though, she seemed overly intrigued by his body and took her time feeling his muscles, testing reflexes, and looking into orifices. In fact, she was somewhat rough with him, pinching him here, jabbing him there. Perhaps, Bond thought, she was merely a very physical person.
“You sure have a lot of scars,” she said, examining the faint mementos of Bond’s illustrious career that adorned various parts of his naked body. “You’re in the Foreign Office?”
“That’s right.”
“How does someone in the Foreign Office get so many scars?”
“I do a number of outdoor activities for sport. Sometimes you get injured,” he said.
“Hmm, and I think you’re lying,” she said. “You’re some kind of policeman, aren’t you? Sorry, you don’t have to answer that.” He didn’t. She turned to her table and put on a rubber glove. “Okay, Mr. Bond, let’s see how your prostate feels.” 5he wasn’t very gentle with that exam, either.
The expedition members flew in two Twin Otters to the Suketar airstrip near a small village called Taplejung in east Nepal. The stretch of dirt runway, located on a high ridge at 2,000 meters, is at a significantly higher altitude than Kathmandu, at 1,300 meters. The plan was to stay in crude lodges that had been erected in the village specifically for trekkers, then take a steep drop down to the Tamur Khola valley the following day. It was a more direct route to go down and north through the valley rather than east, over the alternate route to Khunjari.
The view was spectacular, and this was only the first day. The Himalayas could be seen from Kathmandu, but there they were so far in the distance that one felt they couldn’t possibly be part of the same country. Here, however, it seemed as if the mountains were just over the next hill. The white-covered peaks spread over the northern and eastern sky, some disappearing into white clouds.
Their immediate surroundings were rich with the colors of spring. The hills were terraced so that farming could be accomplished on a steep surface. Bond thought it was a marvel that anyone could live their lives cultivating this difficult land. Yet, nearly everyone in Nepal did, and they did it well.
The wind was brisker here and Bond could immediately feel the thinness of the air, even at this relatively low altitude. He glanced at his Avocet Vertech Alpin watch that Q Branch had given him. It showed altitude, time, barometric pressure, and cumulative vertical ascent rates. It was three o’clock in the afternoon, but it felt later. The change in altitude made it seem as if he had already spent an entire day exerting himself. One of the Americans, Bill Scott, complained of headache shortly after arriving. Hope Kendall examined him and told him to get plenty of sleep that night.
I want everyone to go to bed immediately after dinner,” Marquis said as they gathered at the small building that served as an air terminal. “We’re to have dinner with the respective families who are putting us up. Remember—eat with your right hand, don’t even gesture with the left, and leave your shoes at the door. Don’t enter a Hindu kitchen unless invited. Let your hosts direct you to a seat. Don’t touch any food unless you intend to eat it. Utensils or food is jutho, or impure, once it has touched your lips or tongue. Everyone eats from their own plate and drinks from their own glass. These people know that all food must be cooked, but just in case, don’t eat anything that has to be washed or that isn’t cooked immediately before it’s served. Remember to offer a good hearty belch at the end of the meal, for that’s a sign of contentment in this country.”
Bond and Chandra helped the others unload the equipment. Bone carried most of his gear in a Lowe Alpine Attack 50 backpack, which was designed primarily as a functional, lightweight summit pack. A lot of the tools for climbing would be carried by the Sherpas until it was time to use them.
Perhaps the best known and most widely respected of all Nepal’s ethnic groups, the Sherpas resemble Tibetans more than other Nepalese. Hundreds of years of living in east Nepal have suitably adapted them to living and working in the mountains. Ever since mountaineers discovered them to be excellent companions ant workers, the Sherpas came into a hitherto unforeseen popularity am prosperity. For an expedition the size of Bond’s, nearly sixty porters would need to be hired.
Chandra, Bond, Paul Baack, and the French climber, Philippe Leaud, had been assigned to a family that consisted of a toothless, smiling old couple. Bond noticed that Marquis and Hope Kendall went into a lodge together. Nepalese were generally intolerant of openly displayed affection or sexuality, and he wondered how they would get around that.
Chandra, reading his mind, said, “Marquis claimed that he and Dr. Kendall were man and wife.”
Leaud made a vulgar comment in French that went over the Gurkha’s head, but he got the drift when the others laughed.
Sunset came and dinner was served on a low table inside the lodge. The food was a traditional dhal bhat, a lentil soup over rice. A few vegetables, or sabji, were served with cumin, garlic, and ginger. Hot tea accompanied the meal. By the time they had finished, Bond and Chandra were ready to turn in, the altitude and food having had a soporific effect on them. Bond unrolled his Marmot Col sleeping bag which wasn’t as warm as the more popular Cwm, but was lighter and more versatile at altitude. The wooden floor was hard, but at least there was the luxury of having a roof over their heads.
“Good night, Commander Bond,” Chandra said as he slipped into his own bag. “Don’t let the kichkinni get you.”
“What?”
“The kichkinni. That’s the spirit of a woman who died in childbirth and reappears as a beautiful and insatiable young woman intent on seduction.”
“Sounds quite pleasant to me,” Bond quipped.
“Ah, but her unlucky lover withers away as she saps his vital energies. The only way you can tell if she is a kichkinni is if you happen to notice that her feet are turned backward!”
“Just her feet?” Bond asked, struggling to get comfortable in the confines of the bedroll.
Chandra laughed loudly. It never ceased to amaze Bond that the Gurkha was always in a good humor. He enjoyed talking, sometimes to Bond’s chagrin, but he had already become an entertaining and intelligent companion. He had started to tell stories of his life in the foothills of Lamjung and Annapurna Himal, a region that the Gurungs have farmed and covered with a network of trails paved with precisely cut and fitted stone blocks.
In the higher regions of our homeland, Gurungs retain Buddhist traditions, Chandra said. “In the lower ones, they’ve converted to Hinduism.”
“What are you?” Bond asked.
A little of both,” Chandra said. “Once you’re born a Hindu, that never changes. The Buddhist religion fits neatly around Hinduism. You will find that in Nepal, many people say they are of both religions.”
Baack began to snore loudly, keeping the other three men up for a while. Chandra continued to talk until finally Leaud said politely “Oui, oui, monsieur, please, I need to sleep now. We have another bedtime story tomorrow night, okay?”
Chandra said, “Sure. Shuba ratri.”
“Huh?”
“That means ‘good night.’ “
“Oh. Shuba ratri.”
“Shuba ratri, Commander Bond,” Chandra said, but there was silence. “Commander Bond?”
Bond was already fast asleep.
Mornings are always the most beautiful part of the day in Nepal. A magical mist accumulates in the valleys and lingers until the sun comes up and evaporates the moisture. The land is clear by mid-morning, but the sight of the fog-laden land put Bond in a reflective mood. He was truly in a land quite apart from England, exotic and mystical. The idea of one day going back to the dull office by the Thames seemed impossible.
Bond and Chandra were up early with the lady of the house, whose duty it was to take care of the family’s religious obligations, which meant that first there was worship of household deities fol-lowed by a visit to the neighborhood t
emple with a tray of small offerings. Bond accompanied Chandra to the temple and watched him perform puja, an offering meant to please divine senses by scattering flower blossoms and red tika powder on images of gods and ringing bells to alert them to his presence. The Gurkha paid special attention to the idol of Ganesh, the portly deity with the head of an elephant. Ganesh is known as the creator and remover of obstacles and brings luck to those who pay special attention to him. Therefore, it was important to pray to him at the onset of any undertaking, otherwise he might convey misfortune and malevolence on travelers.
The Sherpa porters left with the trekking equipment very early in order to set up a campsite in Phurumba by the time the rest of the group arrived there for lunch.
“They’re always so cheerful,” Bond commented to Chandra.
“I would be too if my pay for the expedition would support my family and sometimes my entire village for a year or more,” the Gurkha replied.
Breakfast was served in the lodge at eight o’clock, and it consisted surprisingly of scrambled eggs. They weren’t cooked to Bond’s specifications, but they were nevertheless welcome and he felt rested and ready to begin the mostly-downhill four-hour trek to Phurumba, the first stop on the way to the Base Camp. It would be a long, difficult day. Normally trekkers would stop overnight at Phurumba, but Marquis planned to continue to Chirwa, another four-hour trek . . . uphill.
It wasn’t necessary to wear the heavy warm clothes yet. While it was cool at this altitude, the exertion of trekking could work up a sweat, especially when carrying fifty pounds or more on one’s back. Bond wore a Patagonia Puffball lightweight and windproof shirt, dark denims, thick Smartwool socks, and a pair of Merrell M2 high-top boots. He would save the One Sport boots that Boothroyd had given him for the snow and ice. Water was boiled before leaving the village, and every member of the team got a full canteen and was told to conserve it. They wouldn’t get more until they reached Chirwa.
The trekkers set out by nine o’clock, descending the peak into the misty valley. Dr. Kendall and Marquis walked together at the head of the group. Bond and Chandra trailed along near the back.
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