by Trevanian
"How did it go?"
She glanced up at him, then away. "I forget."
"No, come on. Let's hear it. I'm easily conned, as you know."
She shook her head and smiled faintly. "I surrender. I can't handle it on this level. I can't sit here and swap cool, mature words with you. I'm..." She looked up, desperate at the paucity of words in the face of human emotions. "I'm sorry. Really."
"Why did you do it?" He was not going to melt.
"Try to be a little fair, Jonathan. I did it because I believed—I still believe—you have to take this assignment."
"I've taken the assignment, Jemima. Things worked out just fine."
"Stop it! Don't you know what it would mean if the other side had a major biological weapon before we did?"
"Oh, of course. We have to keep it out of their hands at all costs! They're the kind of heartless shits who might drop it on some unsuspecting Japanese city!"
She glanced down. "I know you don't think it makes any difference. We talked about it that night. Remember?"
"Remember? You're not a bad in-fighter."
She sipped her wine, the silence heavy on her. "At least they promised me that you wouldn't lose your painting."
"They kept their promise. Your conscience is clear."
"Yes." She sighed. "But there's still this problem I have."
"What's that?'
She said it matter-of-factly. "I love you."
After a pause, he smiled to himself and shook his head. "I've underrated you. You're a great in-fighter."
The silence grew denser, and she realized that she must abandon this heavy line of talk lest he simply walk away. "Say, I saw you walking around yesterday with a most un-Jemima type—blond and Anglo and all. Was she good?"
"Adequate."
"As good as—"
"No."
"I'm glad!"
Jonathan could not help smiling at her frankness. "How did you know I was here?"
"I studied your file in Mr. Dragon's office, remember? This assignment was detailed in it."
"I see." So Dragon had been so sure of him that he had included this sanction. Jonathan despised being predictable.
"Will I see you tonight, Jonathan?" There was bravery in her voice. She was willing to be hurt.
"I have a date to climb a hill today. We'll be up there overnight."
"What about tomorrow?"
"Please go away. I have no intention of punishing you. I don't want to hate you, or love you, or anything. I just want you to go away."
She folded her gloves in her lap. She had made up her mind. "I'll be here when you come down from the mountain."
Jonathan rose and dropped a bill on the table.
"Please don't."
Her eyes brimmed suddenly with tears. "Why are you doing this, Jonathan? I know this isn't a one-way thing. I know you love me too."
"I'll get over it." He left the cafe and walked to the hotel with vigorous strides.
True to type, the Swiss guide grumbled and complained that they should have started with the first light of dawn. As it was, they would have to pass the night on the mountain. Jonathan explained that he had all along intended to pass the night there, for the conditioning. The guide classified himself: At first he did not understand (genus, Teutonic), then he refused to budge (species, Helvetic). But when Jonathan offered to double the fee, there was a sudden comprehension coupled with the assurance that the idea of spending a night on the mountain was a splendid one.
Jonathan had always found the Swiss to be a money-loving, dour, religious, money-loving, independent, well-organized, money-loving people. These men of the Bernese Oberland are fine mountaineers, always willing to face the rigors and risks of rescuing a climber trapped on the face of a mountain. But they never fail to send a carefully itemized bill to the man they have saved or, that failing, to his next of kin.
The climb was rigorous enough, but relatively uneventful. Jonathan would have resented the guide's interminable complaining about the cold during the overnight bivouac, had it not served to keep his mind from Jemima.
Back at the hotel the next day, he received his bill. It seemed that, despite the double fee there were many little items still to be paid for. Among these were medical supplies they had not used, food for the bivouac (Jonathan had brought his own to test the freeze-dried rations), and a charge for "1/4 pair of boots." This last was too much. He called the guide to his room and questioned him. The guide assumed an attitude of cooperation and weary patience as he explained the obvious. "Shoes wear out; you would not deny that. Surely one cannot climb a mountain barefooted. Agreed? For Matterhorn I usually charge half a pair of shoes. Eiger is more than half the altitude of Matterhorn, and yet I only charged you for a quarter pair. I did this because you were a pleasant companion."
"I'm surprised you didn't charge me for wear on the rope."
The guide's eyebrows lofted. "Oh?" He took up the bill and scanned it minutely. "You are perfectly right, sir. There has been an omission." He drew a pencil from his pocket, licked the point, and painstakingly wrote in the neglected item, then corrected and checked the total. "Can I be of further service?" he asked.
Jonathan pointed to the door, and with a curt bow the guide left.
Jonathan's undefined sense of tension and anticipation was exacerbated by the depression Switzerland always brought upon him. He considered the placement of the magnificent Alps in this soulless country to be one of nature's more malevolent caprices. As he wandered around the hotel aimlessly, he came upon a group of lower-class Eiger Birds playing the fondue-kirsch-kiss game and giggling stupidly. He turned back toward his room with disgust. No one really likes Switzerland, except those who prefer cleanliness to life, he thought. And anyone who would live in Switzerland would live in Scandinavia. And anyone who would live in Scandinavia would eat lutefisk. And anyone who would eat lutefisk would...
He paced up and down in his room. Ben would not arrive until the next day, and Jonathan would be damned if he would spend an unnecessary day in this hotel, among these people, an object of curiosity for the early-arrived Eiger Birds. His telephone rang. "What!" he snapped into the receiver.
"How did you know it was me?" Jemima asked.
"What do you have planned for tonight?"
"Making love with you," she answered without hesitation.
"Dinner first at your cafe?"
"Great. Does this mean everything is all right between us?"
"No." He was surprised at her assumption.
"Oh." The line was silent for a moment. "See you in twenty minutes."
"Fifteen?"
Night had fallen quickly around the cafe terrace, as it does in the mountains, and they sipped in silence the last of their brandy. Jemima had been careful to make no allusions to their time together in Long far away, and he failed to notice the inset of cool air slipping down from the flanks of Eiger.
"Jonathan?"
"Hm-m?"
"Am I forgiven?"
He shook his head slowly. "That isn't the point. I would never again be able to trust you."
"And you would want to?"
"Sure."
"Then you're really saying we might have made something of it."
"I'm pretty sure we could have."
"And now no chance? Ever?"
He did not answer.
"You're a warped man. And you know something else? You haven't kissed me yet."
He corrected the oversight. As their faces drew slowly apart, Jemima sighed, "Corn in Egypt, man. I didn't know lips had a memory of their own."
They watched the last yellow light desert the ragged crests surrounding them.
"Jonathan? About that business at your home..."
"I don't want to talk about it."
"It wasn't really the money that hurt you, was it? I mean—we were so good together. All day long, I mean. Not just in bed. Hey, you want to know something?"
"Tell me."
She laughed at herself.
"Even after taking your money, I had to overcome an impulse to go back and make love to you again before I left. That would really have made you angry when you found out, wouldn't it?"
"Yes. Really."
"Say, how's the crazy one? What's his name?"
"Mr. Monk? I don't know. I haven't been back for some time."
"Oh?" She knew that bode poorly for her.
"No." Jonathan stood up. "I assume your room has a bed."
"It's pretty narrow."
"We'll work it out."
She knew better than bring up the past again that night.
KLEINE SCHEIDEGG: July 8
He took a late supper in the hotel dining room at a table somewhat apart from the thin scattering of patrons.
He was not pleased with himself. He felt he had handled the Jemima business badly. They had risen early, taken a walk through the tilted meadows, watched the dew make the tips of their shoes glisten, taken coffee on the terrace of her cafe, chatted nonsense, made jokes at the expense of passersby.
Then they shook hands, and he left for his hotel. The whole thing was unclean. Particles of emotion clung to their relationship. She was a presence down there in the village, waiting, and he was annoyed with himself for not making a clean break. He knew now that he would not punish her for her perfidy, but he also knew that he would never forgive her for it. He could not remember ever having forgiven anyone.
Several of the guests had dressed for dinner—early-arrived Eiger Birds. Jonathan noticed that half of the terrace telescopes had been roped off for the private—and costly—use of people nominated by the hotel management.
He pushed food around his plate without appetite. There were too many unsettled things churning at the back of his mind. There was Jemima, and the sanction assignment, and the knowledge that Mellough might have alerted his target, and the despised Eiger Birds. Twice he had noticed himself being pointed out by men in tuxedos to their young/pretty/dumb companions. One middle-aged ogler had waved him a tentative semaphore of greeting with her napkin.
It was with relief that he heard a familiar voice booming through the dining room from the lobby beyond.
"Goddam my ass if this ain't something! What the hell you mean you ain't got a room for me?"
Jonathan abandoned his coffee and brandy and crossed the dining room to the desk. The hotel manager, a tight little Swiss with the nervous propriety of his class, was attempting to calm Big Ben down.
"My dear Herr Bowman—"
"Dear Herr's ass! Just stick your nose back in that book and come up with my reservations. Hey, ol' buddy! You're looking good!"
Jonathan gripped Ben's paw. "What's the trouble?"
"Oh, this rinky-dink's screwed up my reservations. Says he can't find my telegram. From the looks of him, he couldn't find his tallywhacker with a six-man scouting party."
Jonathan realized what was going on. "The Eiger Birds are starting to fly in," he explained.
"Oh, I see."
"And our friend here is doing everything he can to create vacancies he can sell to them at inflated prices." Jonathan turned to the listening manager. "Isn't that it?"
"I didn't know this person was a friend of yours, Dr. Hemlock."
"He's in charge of the climb."
"Oh?" the manager asked with extravagant innocence. "Is someone going to climb our mountain?"
"Stop it."
"Perhaps Herr Bowman could find a place in the village? There are cafes that—"
"He's going to stay here."
"I am afraid that is impossible, Herr Doctor." The manager's lips pursed tightly.
"All right." Jonathan drew out his wallet. "Make up my bill."
"But, if you leave..."
"There will be no climb. That's correct. And your incoming guests will be very angry."
The manager was the essence of agonized indecision.
"Do you know what I think?" Jonathan said. "I think I saw one of your clerks sorting a batch of telegrams in your inner office. It's possible that Mr. Bowman's was among them. Why don't you go back and look them over."
The manager grasped at the offer to save face and left them with a perfunctory bow.
"You met the others yet?" Ben asked, looking around the lobby with the undisguised distaste of a competitor.
"They haven't arrived."
"No shit? Well, they'll be in tomorrow then. Personally, I can use the rest. My hoof's been acting up the last couple of days. Gave it too much workout while you were at the place."
"How's George Hotfort?"
"Quiet."
"Is she grateful that I didn't turn her over to the authorities?"
"I guess. She ain't the kind to burn candles."
The manager returned and performed a masque of surprised delight. He had found Ben's telegram after all, and everything was in order.
"You want to go directly to your room?" Jonathan asked as the uniformed bellhops collected Ben's luggage.
"No. Guide me to the bar and buy me some beer." They talked late into the night, mostly about the technical problems of the Eigerwand. Twice Ben brought up the Mellough incident, but both times Jonathan turned him back, saying they could talk about it later, maybe after the climb. Since he had arrived in Switzerland, Jonathan had come more and more to believe that he would make the climb. For long periods of time, he forgot what his real mission was. But this fascination was too expensive a luxury, so before turning in for the night he asked to borrow again all the correspondence between Ben and the climbers who would arrive the next morning.
Jonathan sat up in his bed, the letters arranged in three stacks on the blankets, one for each man. His concentration circumscribed by the tight pool of his bedside lamp, sipping at a glass of Laphroaig, he tried to fashion personalities from the scant evidence of the correspondence.
Jean-Paul Bidet. Forty-two years old. A wealthy manufacturer who had by dint of unsparing work expanded his father's modest shop into France's foremost producer of aerosol containers. He had married rather late, and had discovered the sport of mountain climbing while on his honeymoon in the Alps. He had no climbing experience outside Europe, but his list of Alpine conquests was formidable. He had made most of his major climbs in the company of famous and expensive guides, and to a degree it was possible to accuse him of "buying" the peaks.
From the tone of his letters, written in a businessman's English, Bidet seemed congenial, energetic, and earthy. Jonathan was surprised to discover that he intended to bring his wife along to witness his attempt at the meanest mountain of them all.
Karl Freytag. Twenty-six years old. Sole heir to the Freytag industrial complex specializing in commercial chemicals, particularly insecticides and herbicides. He had begun climbing during college holidays, and before he was twenty he had formed an organization of German climbers over which he presided and which published a most respectable quarterly review of mountaineering. He was its editor-in-chief. There was a packet of offset reprints from the review that described his climbs (in the third person) and accented his capacities as a leader and route-finder.
His letters were written in a brittle, perfect English that did not admit of contractions. The underlying timbre suggested that Freytag was willing to cooperate with Herr Bowman and with the international committee that had sponsored the climb, but the reader was often reminded that he, Freytag, had conceived of the climb, and that it was his intention to lead the team on the face.
Anderl Meyer. Twenty-five years old. He had lacked the means to finish his medical studies in Vienna and had returned to earning his living as a carpenter with his father. During the climbing season he guided parties up his native Tyrolean Alps. This made him the only professional in the team. Immediately upon being forced to leave school, Meyer had become obsessed with climbing. By every means from scrimping to begging, he had managed to include himself in most of the major climbs of the last three years. Jonathan had read references to his activities in the Alps, New Zealand, the Himalayas, South America, a
nd most recently in the Atlas Range. Every article had contained unreserved praise for his skill and strength (he was even referred to as a "young Hermann Buhl") but several writers had alluded to his tendency to be a loner and a poor team man, treating the less gifted members of his parties as anchors against his progress. He was what in gambling would be called a plunger. Turning back was, for him, the ultimate disgrace; and he would make moves on the face that would be suicide for men of more limited physical and psychic dispositions. Similar aspersions had been cast on Jonathan, during his years of active climbing.
Jonathan could form only the vaguest image of Meyer's personality from the letters. The veil of translation obscured the man; his English was stilted and imperfect, often comically obtuse because he translated directly from the German syntax, dictionary obviously in hand, and there were occasional medleys of compounded nouns that strung meaninglessly along until a sudden terminal verb tamped them into a kind of order. One quality, however, did emerge through the static of translation: a shy confidence.
Jonathan sat in bed, looking at the piles of letters and sipping his Scotch. Bidet, Freytag, Meyer. And whoever it was might have been alerted by Mellough.
KLEINE SCHEIDEGG: July 9
He slept late. By the time he had dressed and shaved, the sun was high and the dew was off the meadow that tilts up toward the north face of Eiger. In the lobby he passed a chatting group of young people, their eyes cleansed, their faces tightened by the crisp thin air. They had been out frolicking in the hills, and their heavy sweaters still exuded a chill.
The hotel manager stepped around the desk and spoke confidentially. "They are here, Herr Doctor. They await you."
Jonathan nodded and continued to the dining room entrance. He scanned the room and discovered the group immediately. They sat near the floor-to-ceiling windows that gave onto the mountain; their table was flooded with brilliant sunlight, and their colorful pullovers were the only relief from the dim and sparsely populated room. It looked as though Ben had assumed, as the natural privilege of his experience and age, social command of the gathering.
