‘Ang Tsering?’ Jutta’s tone was matter-of-fact, even friendly. ‘Are you there? I need to talk to you, please.’
Hearing nothing, she repeated the question and began to unzip the interior door.
‘I don’t want to talk to you.’
‘Well, I have to talk to you.’
‘Didn’t you hear what Mister Boyd told you?’ said Tsering. ‘What he told me? That I was to shoot anyone who stepped outside of the tent.’
‘Yes, but you and I are friends, Tsering. We’ve been friends since the beginning. That’s why I helped you with your German.’
‘I wouldn’t place too much reliance on this help. Miss Henze,’ insisted Tsering. ‘And Mister Boyd is my friend now. He is helping me.’
‘Well, maybe he is, but I can’t believe you’d shoot me.’
‘Be assured it would give me no pleasure. But I have my orders. Please stay inside the tent. There I can assure your safety.’
‘Have you ever heard of the Hippocratic oath, Tsering?’
‘Of course. It is an oath taken by doctors of medicine.’
‘Well then, Jameson sahib has been shot,’ she said. ‘I need to fetch something from my medical bag in the lodge. Otherwise he will die.’
Jutta threw back the outside flap and, still standing inside the doorway, faced Ang Tsering. Smoking nervously and with an automatic pistol in his gloved hand, he looked more uncomfortable than usual. Jutta wondered if he had ever held a gun before, if Boyd had even shown him how to use it.
‘That is far enough please, memsahib. I do not wish to shoot you.’
She glanced down the bloodstained front of her body.
‘As you can see, Jameson has already lost a lot of blood. He is quite likely to bleed to death unless I can help him.’
The assistant sirdar threw away his cigarette and rubbed a hand through his sea-urchin haircut frustratedly.
‘So you can see I simply must have that bag. Perhaps one of the other Sherpas could fetch it for me.’
‘No, this will not be possible. All of the Sherpas ran away as soon as they heard the shooting.’
Jutta heard a ripping sound inside the clamshell behind her and knew that the sirdar must be nearly outside. She stepped out of the doorway and onto the snow. Looking down the glacier she saw the tracks in the snow. But the sun reflecting off the snow was too strong and Boyd was already invisible to her.
‘Then either you must get my bag, or I will fetch it myself.’
Tsering backed away, levelling his gun at Jutta’s head. Only now did he think to work the slide that pushed a bullet into the breach of the automatic.
Jutta smiled, realizing that his familiarity with the gun was probably limited to television programs.
‘What about the safety catch?’ she said.
Tsering glanced at the side of his weapon and then checked himself angrily.
‘Don’t patronize me,’ he said and fired into the snow in front of Jutta’s feet. ‘You see? You see? I know what I’m doing and I will shoot. Believe me, memsahib. If you take one more step I will have no choice but to shoot you in the leg. And who will help the doctor? Answer me that, please?’
‘You’ll have to kill me to stop me helping Jameson sahib,’ she said.
‘Why do you want to get yourself killed?’ pleaded Tsering. ‘You have been very kind to me. I do not wish it. Now please go back inside.’
Out of the corner of her eye, Jutta saw the sirdar stealthily approaching Tsering’s back. She caught sight of the murderous expression on Hurké’s face and the razor-sharp blade of the khukuri glittering in his hand like a bolt of lightning, and stopped her cry with her own hand.
Mistaking her gesture for fear, Tsering advanced toward her, still pointing his gun.
‘Yes, you would do well to be afraid. I will do it, make no mistake. I care not if Miles Jameson sahib lives or dies. He is just another bideshi to me. Do you hear? Let him die. He should never have come in the first place. None of you should have come. You are all thieves. All of you.’
Tsering was shouting at her now, as if trying to convince himself that he could use the gun and shoot her if he had to.
‘Now go back inside, you stupid woman,’ he told her angrily. ‘Or I will shoot you. Do you hear?’
The hand pointing the gun at her was shaking. Jutta retreated, thinking he might pull the trigger accidentally.
By now the sirdar was only about a metre behind Tsering, the khukuri held at shoulder level.
Jutta gasped. Surely he wouldn’t actually use the knife.
A split second later Hurké Gurung raised the deadly knife high in the air, and catching the sun like a heliograph, it began its lethal arcing descent.
Involuntarily Jutta cried out and held up her hands to stop the sirdar.
Tsering thought she was pleading with him and sneered with contempt. She had taught him some German, that was all. So what did that matter? He did not even like the language. Only Boyd had actually offered him some money and an American passport. To live in America, that would really be something.
It was the last thought that passed through his head before the hatchet knife interrupted his thoughts.
Jutta’s scream mixed with Tsering’s own and then the sound of the gunshot as his forefinger pulled the trigger reflexively before his severed hand hit the bloodied snow.
Tsering fell back, his good hand holding the bloodied stump of his arm in front of his face as if hardly comprehending the fate of his missing hand.
‘Mero paakhuraa dukhyo,’ he groaned pitifully. ‘Aspataallaai jachaaunua parchha.’
‘You can count yourself lucky it wasn’t your head,’ said the sirdar, and spat into the snow in front of Tsering. ‘Hajur?’
‘Mero haat,’ whimpered Tsering. ‘Mero haat.’
Jutta brushed past the rest of the team now emerging from the clamshell doorway, to fetch her medical bag. There was probably no chance she could save the man’s hand. Not with the radio out of action, and so far away from a hospital in Pokhara. But she could at least stop him from bleeding to death.
Ignoring Ang Tsering, the sirdar had limped a short way out of camp after the tracks left by Rebecca and then Boyd, and his keen eyes, slitted against the sun, were already searching for them on the upper part of the glacier. Of the yeti Rebecca there was no sign. But he was sure he could just make out a tiny figure on the edge of the ice field in front of Machhapuchhare. Looking around, he found Jack standing beside him, holding a pair of binoculars, and he pointed silently.
Jack nodded and found Boyd in his lenses. He was ahead of them by almost a full hour.
The sirdar’s eyes followed several other sets of tracks leading from the camp in the same direction, south and out of the Sanctuary.
‘The other Sherpas ran away,’ he said.
Jack saw the tracks and nodded. Swift was kneeling by the assistant sirdar’s severed hand, separating the gun from the pale fingers.
‘Can’t say I blame them,’ growled Jack, going over to her.
The gun was still cocked and ready to fire. She applied the safety catch and then, holding the hammer with two fingers, she pulled the trigger and eased the hammer carefully forward against the shielded firing pin. When the gun was safe, she looked up at Jack and said, ‘I’m going after him.’
‘Not on your own you’re not. Take Hurké.’
Jack looked around for the sirdar and found him kneeling down in the snow, inspecting a bloody hole in the heel of his climbing boot. Tsering’s loose shot.
‘Forgive me, please. Jack sahib. But I think I have been shot with a bullet.’
They helped him limp inside the clamshell, where Jutta was already applying a tourniquet to Tsering’s injured arm. Hurké sat down and allowed Jack to unlace his boot, grimacing with pain when the boot and then his sock were slipped off. There was plenty of blood, and although it was clear to Jutta that the bullet had done no more than crease the fleshy part of the sirdar’s heel, it was clear also that he would not be walking any great distance for several days.