Olivieri wore his crampons. He had a climbing ax dangling at his hip and poles that Hakan had given him. There were ropes and pitons, but only for emergencies. Once they moved away from the cave, sidling westward, back toward the normal path that would lead them down to Camp Two, the mountain wasn’t steep enough to require them all to be tethered together. But he thought there might be another reason why Hakan didn’t want them all tethered.
Nobody wanted to be tied to a climber who might attempt to murder them at any moment.
A man grabbed his arm. On instinct, Olivieri yanked it away.
“You’re next, professor,” the man said, his voice thickly accented. It might have been Feyiz or his cousin, face hidden like that. Or it might have been something else.
Olivieri wanted to weep. “I don’t think I can.”
“You have to,” the voice said, muffled by a gray balaclava. “We’re going, and we’re all in it together. You’ve climbed a dozen mountains, you told me. This one’s easy.”
Olivieri laughed. It was Feyiz, after all. The guide had such kindness in him, not like his uncle. “Easy in the summer.”
But he started moving. The wind gusted and he stumbled, but Feyiz took his arm and helped him over to the western corner of the ledge. The cold had numbed him already and they had thousands of meters of climbing to do. In good weather they could have made the full descent in a handful of hours. This would be different.
All morning he had felt a sickness twisting inside him. Screams that wanted to erupt from his throat. Frantic tears he had to fight to keep inside. Adam had been possessed, but he wasn’t the only one. Zeybekci had committed murder when the demon had taken the reins of his flesh, and Adam had attempted to do the same. But not Olivieri. The demon had used him as a different sort of puppet. It had gotten down deep in his bones, insinuated itself there and gnawed at all of his doubts, every instant of self-loathing he’d ever felt. It had feasted on the sorrows and regrets that Olivieri believed everyone must have within them. The demon had torn open the wounds on his soul and made him try to take his own life.
It was the demon, he told himself now. Laughing at you. Pulling the strings. He told himself that. But the true hell of the thing was that he couldn’t be sure it had been the demon at all, because the urge remained. As Feyiz led him to the rope line that they had set up to guide them away from the snow-covered rockfall and onto more reliable terrain, he had to fight the temptation to hurl himself off the ledge.
“Come on, professor,” Feyiz said, making sure he was holding onto the guide rope. “It’s time.”
His boots crunched down on the snow and he slipped a few inches. His hands surprised him by holding tight to the rope. He froze a moment, and then started moving west, bent toward the mountain, digging the crampons on his boots into the snow and the mountain beneath.
Death beckoned to him. But the professor held on.
Time, Walker thought. That’s the key.
He held onto the rope line that Feyiz’s cousin had set up, leaning into the mountain. His knees crunched in the snow and his climbing ax tapped his thigh as he shuffled sideways. They were leaving the ark in groups of three or four, moving along the guide rope to a section of the mountain face that Hakan assured them was safe. Already, several groups were gathered in clumps thirty meters to the west, and Hakan had begun to coach them on how to maneuver the descent. With crampons, they could dig at the snow with the toes of their boots and get a good foothold. Facing the mountain, they could descend carefully for the first thousand meters or so, after which they might be able to simply hike down. The frigid air and the blasting winds were a challenge, but now that he’d been out in the blizzard for a short while, Walker felt confident they were not the real danger.
Time, he thought again. They needed to get as far down the mountain face as possible before nightfall. In the midst of the blizzard it was dark enough, but when evening arrived, the temperature would plummet further and even with flashlights, the footing would become more treacherous. He had left all of his samples, all of his notes, back in the cave and he didn’t care. He could write DARPA all the reports they wanted, but only if he got off Ararat alive.
“Let’s go, Father!” he urged. “We’ve got to keep pace.”
Walker kept one hand on the guideline and put the other at the small of Father Cornelius’s back. The priest had been using the same kneeling shuffle as Walker but he’d already become winded. Beyond him, Kim Seong stood at an angle to the mountain, holding onto the rope and watching them patiently. The grooves left behind by the knees and footsteps of the dozen or so who had gone before them had created a path in the snow and she seemed more confident in her balance than Walker felt in his own.
“Father,” he said again, his voice muffled by his balaclava and the whirling snow. Even through the cloth, his face stung.
“I’m doing my best!” Father Cornelius huffed. “I’m an old man, Walker!”
“If you want to get any older, you’re gonna have to put a little more effort into it.”
The priest grumbled, but started to shuffle his knees faster. After a moment, he gave a muttered curse, dug his boots into the snow, and stood up.
“Father, I don’t think that’s a—”
“My knees are killing me,” Father Cornelius said. “If we keep on like that, I’m not going to get anywhere fast.”
Walker didn’t bother to explain how much work lay ahead for the old man’s knees. The priest would either make it or he wouldn’t. If they had to wrap him up in some kind of makeshift travois and slide him down the mountain, that was exactly what they would do. But Father Cornelius had his pride, and Walker did not want to undermine it so soon into the climb.
Grunting and chuffing, Father Cornelius kept one hand against the mountain and the other one wrapped around the guide rope. It wasn’t safe—none of what they were doing was safe—but there were other dangers here, and speed was of the essence.
Time.
“Look at that,” Kim said, nodding westward, into the storm.
Walker turned to see a red glow flickering in the blizzard’s heart, rising at first and then beginning to fall.
“Well, that’s a good sign,” Father Cornelius said.
Walker agreed. Feyiz’s cousin had been instructed to climb down two hundred meters and send up a flare to let them know the descent could be made without difficulty, at least to that point. They all watched as the flare flickered momentarily, its light refracted a million times inside the white, rushing silence of the storm, and then it vanished, hidden in the driving snow.
“Your superiors will be disappointed,” Father Cornelius said, his voice a muffled rasp. “With you coming back empty-handed.”
Walker saw him slip, the snow buckling under his left foot, and reached out to steady him. The priest went down on one knee but was back up in a moment. Kim had a hand on his back as well, and she met Walker’s gaze and gave a small nod, letting him know that they were in this together. Whatever might come, they were getting Father Cornelius off the mountain.
“Under the circumstances, I don’t think they can really hold me responsible, do you?” Walker asked. His fingers were already stiff and cold inside his gloves. He looked forward to no longer needing the guide rope.