Philip Kerr - Esau

Swift waited for a moment before playing her next card. There was something almost comic, something absurd about all the old names that were the stuff of myth, legend, and cheap B-movies. And she thought that in Esau she had another way of saving it.

‘Jack, I want us to go to the Himalayas and find one of Esau’s living relatives. Not a fossil-hunting expedition at all. But a zoological one. I want us to go back there with the purpose of capturing a new kind of animal.’

Jack frowned as he thought about what she had said. About what he thought she was saying. And then realized what she was driving at.

He leaned back in his chair, ran both hands through his hair, and let out a loud guffaw.

‘Oh, wait a minute. Esau nothin’.’ He smiled bitterly, wagging an accusative finger at her. ‘You’re very clever, I’ll give you that, Swift. You’re clever. All that bullshit about a living fossil. You must think I’m stupid. I know what you’re talking about and it’s — frankly, it’s ridiculous.’

‘You didn’t always think so,’ she said pointedly.

He stood up and turned away.

‘Let me tell you, it’s as ridiculous as the Loch Ness monster,’ he insisted.

‘That’s not what you said ten years ago, when you saw it yourself, on Mount Everest,’ she said, accessing the pages from Jack’s book she had scanned onto the compact disc in her Toshiba. ‘Want me to remind you of what you wrote in your book Mountain Mantras?’

‘Not particularly.’

He stood by the window and lit a cigarette. For a couple of minutes neither of them spoke. Then, quietly at first. Swift began to read.

‘By May 20th we had established camp on the North Col at seven thousand metres, with all the creature comforts. This was just as well because the very next day a terrific hurricane set in, driving the thermometer down well below zero. Inquiring of Karma Paul why the weather seemed to get worse the nearer summer came, he told me that it had all to do with certain religious festivals that were taking place at Thyangboche Monastery. The mountain demons were, he explained, attempting to stop the ceremonies by screaming very loudly, and as soon as these religious services were ended the storms would be too.’

‘I know what I wrote,’ he murmured.

‘We spent three successive nights in the shelter of the North Col while the westerly gale did its worst. But on the fourth day, the weather cleared and I made a small expedition to the Lhakpa La where I obtained a fine view of the northern face of Everest as well as a more disconcerting one of the approaching monsoon that made me nervous about completing the ascent in time, and I resolved to make my attempt without oxygen the very next day. As I was about to make my return to Camp 3, a small bird — I think it must have been Wollaston’s Lammergeyer, for no other bird seems to fly as high — flew across my path as if it had been startled by something approaching from the opposite direction, and it was then that I saw what looked like a giant ape, standing no more than fifty metres away. At about the same time the creature saw me, and for a moment it stopped in its very clear tracks and we just stood there looking dumbly at each other. It is impossible to say more beyond the simple fact that the creature was tall and covered in thick hair, for the sun was at its back and in my eyes, and as soon as I reached for my spotting scope, the creature moved away at a remarkable speed, wading through the deep snow in a manner that would have exhausted me within seconds. By the time I had the creature in the Nikon scope, it was no more than a speck on the horizon...’

‘I know what I wrote,’ he repeated loudly. ‘I don’t need to be reminded of it. Maybe it’s you who needs reminding of what happened when the book was published. Some of the reviewers suggested I’d made up the sighting in order to sensationalize what they considered was an otherwise dull book. Cryptozoology, they called it. Then some arsehole wrote a story in Scientific American about how, like many other climbers before me, I’d suffered a delusion born of high-altitude sickness.’ He shook his head grimly. ‘Jesus, I even reached the twin status of becoming a joke on the Carson Show and the subject of a sketch on Saturday Night Live .’

‘And what about you? Is that all you think it was? Just high-altitude sickness?’

‘Yes,’ he said, without much conviction.

‘And what about all those other climbers who’ve seen it too?’

‘What about them?’

She turned her attention back to the Toshiba and started to scroll down through a long list she had compiled on CD of other sightings.

‘Five years ago, Hidetaka Atoda reportedly saw a large unidentified creature on the slopes of Machhapuchhare, within the Annapurna Sanctuary. He even took a picture. Machhapuchhare is a holy mountain. No permits are issued to climb it.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Jack laughed scornfully.

‘Apparently he was unable to track the creature for fear of losing his license to climb in the area.’

‘Instead of which he lost his life,’ said Jack. ‘The Toad was a good friend of mine. He was killed climbing the southwest face of Annapurna only three weeks later. Just like Didier. Avalanche got him and his camera.’ Jack grinned at her aggressively. ‘So that famous photograph was never seen. And here’s another thing. As a mountaineer the Toad was notoriously in a hurry. Never knew him to get himself fully acclimatized. Always rushing ahead. Probably what got him killed.’

‘Okay,’ Swift said patiently. ‘Well, what about Chris Bonington?’

‘What about Chris Bonington?’

‘He saw it too, on an expedition to climb Annapurna back in 1970. According to his account, he wasn’t much higher than the entrance to the Sanctuary itself, near the Hinko Cave, at about three thousand six hundred metres. That’s quite close to Machhapuchhare, isn’t it?’

‘Maybe,’ allowed Jack.

‘What’s more, he was fully acclimatized.’

‘He’s a good climber,’ Jack allowed. ‘The best.’

‘In his book Annapurna South Face, he describes seeing an ape or apelike creature running quickly across the snow toward the shelter of some cliffs. It was, he says, a reasonably powerful animal that left obvious tracks but which his Sherpas later pretended not to see. Bonington was convinced that he had seen the yeti.’

She smiled, almost apologetically.

‘There now, I’ve said it, haven’t I? Yeti.’

‘Congratulations. You win a furry toy.’

‘In 1982 Greg Topham saw the creature while climbing Annapurna HI.’

‘Topham.’ Jack snorted with derision. ‘That hippy dopehead arsehole.’

‘He reported seeing a bearlike animal moving south along the ridge, toward Machhapuchhare.’

‘Probably what it was. A bear. Look, what’s this thing with Machhapuchhare, anyway?’

‘Just that it’s three sightings in and around the one mountain. And what’s more, a mountain forbidden to climbers and tourists.’

‘There’s nothing magical about Machhapuchhare, if that’s what you’re implying,’ Jack said uncomfortably.

‘I didn’t say there was. And you’re right, there have been yeti sightings all over the Himalayas.’ She glanced back at the laptop.

‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘Before Bonington, in 1955, Tony Streather, on an expedition to climb Kangchenjunga, reported hearing a loud whistling noise. The same sound that had been heard two years earlier by Wilfred Noyce on Sir John Hunt’s expedition to climb Everest. His Sherpas said the whistle was the sound of a yeti.’ Swift looked up from the screen. ‘Do you remember how last winter I helped out Byron Cody with his book on gorillas?’