“No,” said Jean-Claude, pulling his goggles back in place. “I saw the little flange for advancing the film and advanced it before taking your group portrait. Fascinating that the mechanism hasn’t frozen.” He looked at the Deacon steadily. “If this is Mallory’s camera, why did Monsieur Irvine have it in his bag? Or did each man carry a Kodak Vest Pocket camera?”
“According to Norton and John Noel,” said the Deacon, “only George Mallory had a Vest Pocket Kodak. Irvine was supposed to have taken a couple of cameras with him from Camp Four those last two days, including one of Noel’s miniature cine cameras, but he doesn’t have any others in his pockets or messenger bag.”
The Deacon shook his head gloomily—the presence of Sandy Irvine’s body seemed to have oppressed him deeply, even though he’d never met the man—but then he brightened and looked up, moving his goggled gaze from one of us to the next. “Remember what Pasang said way below? When one wants his portrait taken with a Kodak, what does one do?” He seemed happy, almost giddy.
“Hand it to someone else to take the photo!” Reggie answered quickly. (More quickly, I noticed, than my mind was working, even fortified as it was now by English air.)
“If they reached the summit,” piped up J.C., “then Mallory would almost certainly have snapped a photo of Irvine, then handed the little camera to Irvine to take a snap of him. Irvine might have then put it in his own carryall. It makes sense.”
“We have to keep this camera,” said the Deacon.
“If we keep the camera,” said Reggie, “then we must take this final note from Sandy Irvine as well, send it to his mother and family.”
“We shall,” said the Deacon. “But only if we don’t find Cousin Percival and Meyer and their…whatever it is…and have to keep this expedition secret for a while. But you take the notebook, Lady Bromley-Montfort. If we survive the next few days and are allowed to talk about this expedition when it’s over, then I—hell, everyone—will want to know if Mallory and Irvine reached the summit of Everest last year.”
“Here, Jake,” said the Deacon. “I’ll keep Irvine’s notebook. You carry the camera. I would bet anything that in it are the exposed negatives that will answer all our questions about whether Mallory and Irvine summited last year.”
“Why me?” I said. For some reason the thought of carrying Mallory’s camera around bothered me, as if it were a great weight.
“Because you have the smallest load and because I think you just may survive this climb,” said the Deacon.
16.
In truth, I never thought we’d make it to the North East Ridge of Everest at 28,000 feet, but when I’d fantasized stepping onto it anyway, I’d always imagined the three of us shaking hands solemnly or slapping each other on the back fraternally or perhaps just staring out at the view of the world from one of the highest places in the world.
As it turned out, we were all too exhausted to move when we actually reached the ridge, and when we did finally move, it was for Jean-Claude to stagger to a nearby rock, tug down his oxygen mask, and tidily vomit. Pasang just stared out to the south as if something awaited him there. When we’d rested and inhaled more English air set at the high 2.2-liter flow, the Deacon, Reggie, and I used our binoculars to scan the lower slopes, looking for the Germans who were working so hard to catch us and kill us.
“There they are,” I said finally, pointing. “All five of them. Just climbing toward the exit cracks above the Yellow Band about three hundred feet northwest of our Camp Six. They’ll be up on our ridge in another thirty minutes.
“See them?” I asked.
“Oui.”
I could actually make out that the climber in the lead—the strongest climber of the five by the looks of his progress and the brevity of his stops—was carrying a rifle slung over his chest. “Do you think that’s Bruno Sigl?” I asked the Deacon.
“How should I know, Jake?” snapped the Deacon. “They all have white winter-combat anoraks with hoods on and are wearing some sort of white scarf or face mask below the goggles. How could I identify Sigl from this distance?”
“But do you think it is?” I said.
“Yes,” said the Deacon and lowered his glasses until they dangled from the thick leather strap. “He’s their leader. He’s their best climber. He’s most intent on finding and killing us. And he climbs with a certain strange aggressiveness. Yes, I think it’s him.”
“I still do not understand something, Ree-shard, Madame Reggie,” said Jean-Claude. He’d taken a little water from his bottle, rinsed his mouth out, and spit in the snow. “What could this Kurt Meyer—or your cousin Percival for that matter, Reggie—have taken from the German government that would make them so insane about retrieving it? After all, England and France are at peace with Germany…for now.”
Reggie sighed. “It’s not the current German government that Percy was assigned to…learn about,” she said. “The Weimar Republic is weak and indecisive. It’s that far-right-wing group of nationalist extremists that the Deacon’s and my…mutual friend…asked Percival to get some damning information on.”
“Deutschland is filled with far-left and far-right-wing nationalist groups,” said J.C.
“Yes,” said Reggie, “but only the Nazis, the group Bruno Sigl and his friends are part of, represent a great danger to Great Britain…and France…in the years and decades to come. At least according to our friend who writes so many cheques and who prefers gold.”
“I’m sick and tired of you two always talking in this cute code,” I said between terrible coughs. I was angry. “Spies—even those on our side—are supposed to work for governments, ministries, secret services, not for individuals who like gold. Just tell us who the hell you’re talking about and how one man can send spies to Germany. We’re risking our lives up here. We have a right to know who this British master of spies is.”
“He sent British spies to Austria in this case,” corrected Reggie. “And you may well meet this man someday yourself, Jake. Until then, we have to decide what to do. Those bast—those Germans—will be on the North East Ridge in another forty minutes or so, and unless we decide what to do quickly, we’ll be in rifle range soon.”
There was silence except for the wind howling. As calm as it had been down on the face and in the gullies, the wind was wild up here on the thin line of the North East Ridge. A moderate spume of spindrift was being flung our way from the summit less than 1,000 feet above us. Now we had to shout to be heard, and it made my aching, constricted, blocked throat hurt all the more for doing so. I decided to shut up and let the others sort things out. In truth, I didn’t give a shit who this British spy boss was. The fact was, he’d gotten Bromley and Kurt Meyer killed, and now it looked likely that he’d finish us off as well.
A hundred or so feet below the ridgeline, Jean-Claude had patted me on the shoulder and said, “Jake, you’re still carrying Mr. Irvine’s ice axe.”
I was. We’d decided it was best to leave Sandy Irvine’s corpse where it lay, since certainly another British Everest expedition would be coming this way in a year, two years at most. If we buried him—and if our expedition had to remain a secret for whatever arcane reason—they’d never find him.
This was the Deacon’s reasoning. But I’d absentmindedly carried Sandy Irvine’s ice axe with the identifying three notches in the shaft almost to the ridgeline here on the east side of the First Step, and when J.C. reminded me, I set it carefully on a boulder, its metal tip pointing downhill to where the body lay out of sight in the gully, laid it where British climbers could find it next year or the year after.