Gray and listless mists concealed the upper third of the North Face. He recalled the ghoulish pun German sports writers resurrected each time a team attempted the Eiger. Instead of Nordwand, North Wall, they called it the Mordwand, Murder Wall. The days were past when German and Austrian youths threw their lives against the Eigerwand with reckless Wagnerian Todeslieb; great names had mastered the face: Hermann Buhl, Lionel Terray, Gaston Rebuffat; and dozens of lesser men had climbed it, each eroding, with his success, a fragment of the glory accruing to the task; but nonetheless, as he stood in the half-shelter sipping his coffee and looking across the meadow, Jonathan experienced an expanding desire to try again the face that had twice driven him back.
On his way up to Ben's room, he passed Anderl in the corridor, and they exchanged nods of greeting. He had taken an instant liking to this short, sinewy lad with his mop of dark hair so obviously unused to the comb, and his long strong fingers designed by nature for finding and clinging to the smallest indentations in the rock. It would be too bad if Anderl turned out to be the sanction target.
His knock at Ben's door was answered by a booming, "Fuck off!"
Jonathan opened the door and peeked in.
"Oh, it's you, ol' buddy. Come on in. And lock the door behind you."
Jonathan moved a coil of nylon line off the spare bed and stretched out. "Why the fierce greeting?"
Ben had been packing the haversacks, evenly distributing the weight, but making sure each pair of kits contained every necessity for a good bivouac, should the team break into two climbing ropes. "Oh, I thought you were one of those reporters." He grumbled something to himself as he snatched tight a strap. Then, "Goddam my eyes if they ain't been pecking at my door every five minutes. There's even a newsreel team here. Did you know that?"
"No. But I'm not surprised. The Eiger Birds are here in force now. The hotel's filled up and they're spilling over into Alpiglen and Grindelwald."
"Fucking ghouls."
"But the fattest cats of all are right here in the hotel."
Ben tied off one of the haversacks with a grunt, "Like who?"
Jonathan mentioned the names of a Greek merchant and his recently-acquired American society wife. The management of the hotel had erected a large rectangular oriental tent that gave onto one of the telescopes on the terrace. The tent was hung in silk and equipped with heaters and a small refrigerator, and the telescope had been reserved for their personal use, after being scrubbed down carefully with disinfectant. Every social precaution had been taken to insulate them from the company of the lesser Eiger Birds, but the Greek's penchant for lavish waste and gross practical jokes had instantly attracted the attention of the press.
Jonathan noticed a powerful brass telescope in the corner of the room. "You bring that with you?"
"Sure. You figure I'm going to line up with a pocketful of coins to watch you on the face?"
"I'm afraid you're going to have to make your peace with the newsmen."
"Why?"
"It would be best if you kept them informed, once" we're on the hill. Just basic statistics: how high we are, the weather, our route—things like that."
"Tell 'em nothing, that's my motto. Fuck 'em."
"No. I think you should cooperate a little. If you don't, they'll make copy out of their imaginations."
Ben tied off the last of the kits and opened a bottle of beer from his supply on the dresser. "Whew! I've been busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. But I got you people ready to move out at a minute's notice. There's a report of a cone of high pressure moving in, and you know that bitch-kitty of a hill ain't going to give you more than two or three days of weather." He tossed a ring of ice pitons off his bed and stretched out.
Jonathan asked for his evaluation of the climbers, and Ben screwed up his face. "I don't know. Too much of a mixed bag for my taste. That German kid's too cocky-assed."
"I have a feeling he's a good climber, though."
"Could be. But he ain't many grins in a bivouac. He's got all the makings of a first-class snot. Doesn't seem to realize that we were making major climbs when he was still shitting yellow. Now that Austrian boy—"
"Anderl."
"Yeah, Anderl. Now, he's a climber. He's got the right look. Kinda looks like you did." Ben leaned up on one elbow and added pointedly. "Thirteen years ago."
"All right. All right."
"Hey, ol' buddy? Toss your poor crippled friend another can of beer?"
Jonathan grunted up and did so, noticing for the first time that Ben was drinking American beer, an extravagance in Switzerland. But like most big American beer drinkers, Ben had no taste for the relatively thick German product. Jonathan leaned against the window and watched the rain. He saw Anderl out on the meadow, his arm around a girl who had his jacket over her head. They were returning to the hotel. "What do you think about Jean-Paul, Ben?"
"Not so good. The way I peg it, you are just a gnat's ass inside the age limit for this kind of go. And he's on the other side of the line."
Jonathan did not agree. "He looks to me like he has a lot of staying power. There's generations of peasant endurance in the man."
"If you say so, ol' buddy." Ben swung his legs down and sat up, his tone changing suddenly, like a man who is finally getting to the point. "Back at my place you said that maybe you wouldn't be making this climb after all. Is that still the way it is?"
Jonathan sat on the windowsill. "I don't know. There's a job I have to do here. The climbing's really only side action."
"Pretty big league, for side action."
"True."
"What kind of job?"
Jonathan looked into Ben's laugh-lined face. There was no way to tell him. Out beyond the window there were islets of snow on the meadow being grayed and decayed by the ram. "The skiers must be cursing this rain," he said for something to say.
"What kind of job?" Ben persisted. "Does it have something to do with that Mellough guy?"
"Only obliquely. Forget it, Ben."
"Kinda hard to forget. After you left, all hell broke loose at the lodge. There were government men all over the place, talking tough and generally making asses of themselves. They were scouting out in the desert and getting themselves lost and organizing patrols and cutting around with helicopters. They had the whole county in an uproar before they were through."
Jonathan smiled to himself at the image of a CII operation of this type: all the coordination of a joint Arab/Italian invasion. "They call it undercover work, Ben."
"Is that what they call it? What happened out there anyway? When you brought back the shotgun, it had been fired. And no one ever saw Mellough and his boyfriend again."
"I don't want to talk about it. I have to do what I do, Ben. Without it, I would lose my house and things I have spent years collecting."
"So? You lose your house. You could still teach. You like teaching, don't you?"
Jonathan looked at Ben. He had never really thought about whether or not he liked teaching. "No, I don't think so. I like being around good heads that appreciate my mind and taste, but as for simple teaching—no. It's just a job."
Ben was silent for a time. He finished the beet and crushed the can in his hand. "Let's call off the climb," he said firmly. "We'll tell 'em you're sick or something. Trouble with hemorrhoids, maybe."
"My Achilles anus? No way, Ben. Forget it." Jonathan wiped the haze from the window with the back of his hand and peered out at the misted mountain. "You know what's weird, Ben?"
"You."
"No. What's really weird is that I want another shot at the hill. Even forgetting the thing I have to do here, it's something I really want to do. You understand the feeling?"