Shaking with effort, he slid the harness loop high, bent his leg so it took his weight and slid the knot of the foot loop higher. The tension had to be off the knots to move them along the rope. Even then they were hard to dislodge. He had to push the loop against the knot each time to free them.
He rested a moment, exhausted. In this frigid hell, each movement hurt.
He stood in the stirrup loop again. His body weight twisted the rope until the loops twined around it like vines. After he worked the slack knot loose he had to turn it to untangle the loop and the gloves made it as easy as playing a piano with his feet. He hung in the chasm, revolving on the rope, fighting to make the loops work.
‘Zuiden,’ he bellowed. The sound was absorbed by the ice.
Above him, the loop knots were fraying but the lip was closer at least. Working the loops, he drew level with the sledge then dragged himself up until stopped by the loop secured to its end.
Without help there was no alternative. He’d have to cut the tie to the sledge.
‘Zuiden,’ he yelled again.
Nothing.
He waited to gain strength, worked the knife from its sheath on his harness strap and sawed at the loop. As the strands gave, the live rope straightened in a spray of ice. Wind moaned above. The weather was getting bad.
The fibreglass sledge hadn’t budged and seemed jammed enough to stand on. Now he was half on the rear of the sledge, his head two feet below the crevasse lip.
He slid the loop knots as high as he could to guard against falling back. Thank God for the foothold of the sledge. He rested, panting in the thin air, staring up.
The two feet might as well have been ten. The lifeline had cut into the lip. Zuiden should have put an ice axe handle crossways under the rope but hadn’t bothered. A rising gale swirled snow down the slot. How to climb out without help?
Gasping, yelling curses, his beard iced to his face mask, shivering like a wet dog, he pushed the harness loop as high as he could.
He dangled, looking up.
No Zuiden. Just snow blowing across the gap.
The only way to move up was to shorten the foot loop. He’d have to tie a knot in the bight.
With fingers that barely worked, he finally got it done, put his foot in the loop and clutched the rope. When he straightened his leg, his head moved higher than the lip. Snow pelted his face, turning his eyelashes to ice.
‘Zuiden, you arsehole.’
His bellow was stolen by the wind.
All his rage at his companion was suddenly in his arms. He clawed at the drift until he could see the rope taut against the ice then chipped a hole with the knife so that he could work a hand around the rope. With one grip secure, he reached far forward, used the blade as an ice spike and dragged himself out of the slot.
He lay prone, close to hypothermia, wind moaning around him, driven snow pounding his hood.
He’d survived the crevasse. Now the blizzard — they called it a blizz — was the threat. The rope was all he could see. Visibility was almost zero.
‘Zuiden, I’ll bloody kill you.’
He crawled along the rope, reached the anchor, a single snow stake. Zuiden should have anchored twice but obviously didn’t give a damn.
He couldn’t think properly, didn’t know what to do. He had no equipment, just the rope. Should he use it to search in widening circles around the spot? No. He’d slot himself again.
He needed shelter desperately. The wind was strong enough to blow him off his feet. If he’d had a bivvy bag or extra insulation, he could have dug himself into the snow. He realised with terror that he could no longer feel his left foot.
‘Jesus,’ he whimpered. So this was how you died.
Then, through blasting drift, he glimpsed a yellow smear. An illusion? He crawled ahead.
Yes, a yellow tinge.
The tent!
Relief flooding him, he crawled forward yelling, lurched into a guy-line and turned for the crosswind face. The entrance was meant to be there and Zuiden had done the job by the book — dug in the floor and heaped snow on the valance to stop wind getting underneath. A polar pyramid tent, properly pitched and secured, could withstand the highest winds.
At the end of his strength, Cain got himself inside.
Zuiden sat, legs in his sleeping bag, melting snow on the stove. He didn’t bother to look up.
Cain pulled the entrance drawstring tight, dislodging frosted condensation, lay on the cell-bed matting, too weak to move.
Above the snapping of the fabric, the thrumming of the guy-lines and the storm, Zuiden’s laconic voice. ‘What took you so long?’
‘You arsehole. You left me to die there.’
‘No point in two croaking. And you’d be stuffed now without the tent.’
‘If you’d bloody winched me out, you would’ve got the tent up faster.’
‘This is survival training. Why should I give a stuff?’
‘You don’t just look after number one, you incredible arsehole shitface…’
‘Edict fourteen. DEATH IS AN ASPECT OF LIFE.’
‘Don’t quote me the edicts,’ Cain roared. ‘I’ve probably lost my bloody foot.’
‘Edict six. LOYALTY TO PEOPLE IS WEAKNESS. Down here, your poncy degrees don’t cut any ice.’
Cain wanted to sob. With relief? For his foot? He didn’t know. But he was damned if he’d do it in front of this callous shit. He was alive at least and able to get warm. And, for once, kerosene fumes were the sweetest smell in the world.
He looked at his damaged left boot, frightened to take it off.
He said, ‘An eye for an eye. And a foot for a foot. You heard it here.’
Zuiden sneered and raised a middle finger.
2
SCREAMS AT MIDNIGHT
Kot Lakhpat Jail. Iron gates sweating and rusted with heat. Filthy cells the sun never found. Iron beds chained to the floor. Cockroaches crawling from the toilet hole. Flies. Stench. Endless merciless mosquitoes.
The man sat on the lice-infested mattress, his body covered with sores. He had lately vomited blood but hadn’t told his daughter. They’d let her see him yesterday. He’d trained her well. She hadn’t cried.
To guard against a coup, he’d chosen an obsequious buffoon. But the man was sly. Strange how you attracted what you feared.
It was starting again in the courtyard. They began it at midnight so that screams kept the prisoners awake. Each man was spreadeagled on the slanting rack — belly on a bolster, feet in stocks, hands tied above his head. Then they’d flog him with a lathi, running at him and striking sideways with full force. He could hear the long cane whistle as it slashed the victim’s bare arse, hear the scream, hear the army officer count off the stroke.
He slapped mosquitoes, remembering the meeting with Kissinger last year. The agreement with France on the nuclear reprocessing plant was meant to offset soaring oil prices. But the ‘free world’, the rumbling voice had explained, wouldn’t tolerate an Islamic bomb. Henry had actually threatened him, said he could become ‘a horrible example’.
The screams outside had stopped. The prisoner would have fainted. They’d wait for the doctor to check his pulse and revive him with smelling salts.
Kissinger, of course, had also attracted what he feared. America feared fundamentalists and now had one. Zia would play the Islamic card — bruise his head on his prayer mat and enforce the old barbaric laws.
They began flogging the clod again but he was pointlessly, desperately brave — still screamed ‘Jiye Bhutto’ with each stroke.
The man sweated in the cloud of insects, listening to the wretch repeat his name.
Long live Bhutto. Ironic. He was born to lead the rabble of course, but his life had hardly been guiltless.