Philip Kerr - Esau

‘I’ll go fetch it.’

Jack started to tape up his fingers, trying to make each finger’s tendon as rigid as possible without cutting off any circulation. He had rejected the idea of wearing gloves. It was cold enough, only he was worried about not getting sufficient grip on the fabric of the building. He just hoped he could get up quickly enough before his fingers started to get numb.

The concierge arrived back with a small bag of resin and handed it over.

Jack turned and jogged gently toward the hotel front door.

‘You ain’t gonna try the Monument, are you, sir?’

‘Not tonight,’ said Jack, and ran out into the night air.

Somewhere inside his head a still small voice of sense and reason tried to tell him that what he was planning to do was crazy. Even if he did make it up to the open window, what exactly was he hoping to find? And where would he look for it? But by now Jack’s late-night expedition had become more than just a bit of innocent cat burglary. The climb was now carrying the extra load of another chance at the rest of his mountaineering career.

As calmly as he could, he walked past the front door of the National Geographic offices. The last thing anyone would be expecting was someone entering the building through an open window on the top floor. Jack kept on walking. Climbing the Transamerica, he had chosen a route up the corner of the building. It was just good luck that the open window was on the corner of the National Geographic.

Jack looked around, and seeing M Street deserted, he jumped up and caught the first window ledge with one hand. It was about eight centimetres deep. The hardest bit was always pulling yourself up onto the pitch with one arm. Grunting so loudly he thought that someone would hear him, he got another handhold and then swung a foot up, scrambling at the ledge, sliding his face up against the cold pane of the window until he was standing about three metres above the ground. Breathing heavily from this first exertion, he inched his way to the corner.

The building was the standard glass box, clean lines and brutal simplicity, with a steel frame that left a suitable handhold all the way up on both sides of the corner. It was the rock-climbing equivalent of an even-width crack. A 5.9 layback, like the Crack of Doom on Yosemite’s Leaning Tower. Or Lightning Dream at Tahoe. Better. There was at least an inch of crack between the frame and the glass. And it was a crack unscarred by the jamcracks, pitons, nuts, and cams that had ruined many good routes in Yosemite all the way to the top. Just a matter of sliding two sets of fingers under each side of the frame and, with arms at full stretch, concentrating the weight there, pushing up with your toes.

The grip of the new compound rubber was astonishingly sure, and Jack made good progress up the corner of the building. The Brundle shoes really did let him climb like a fly. It was good, he thought, that his vision was not similarly enhanced. Seeing less left little room for his imagination to go to work.

Nearer the top it grew windier. Now he had a good view of Capitol Hill and the Washington Monument: Two airplane warning lights blinking on either side of the obelisk made it look like some kind of fiery-eyed dinosaur. He was going to make it. The window was now just a metre or so above his head.

Jack lifted his foot, reached for the next toehold, slid his fingers up the crack, and touched something alive that was suddenly leaping in his face. His heart seemed to take off into the night sky, flapping madly, like the wings of the pigeon he had disturbed. He moved instinctively backward to avoid its emergency flight path — just a little too far — and missed the toehold he had been going for, as well as the one he had been resting on. For a long, vertiginous moment, he hung there by only his fingertips, his feet thrashing around like those of a hanged man, desperately trying to find another toehold. Seconds passed and his toes seemed foreign to him as they refused to do his mind’s bidding. Finally, they connected with the building again and he clung there, like a koala, perspiring freely although it was cold enough for snow.

He took a deep breath, steadied himself, felt the alcohol in his blood, and climbed on, reaching the corner window in a matter of a few seconds, and stepping into the empty office with the sense of having conquered more than just an averagely tall glass monolith. He felt a new raw life force. Perhaps he really had overcome his fear.

He could see why the window had been left open. The room was being decorated and smelled strongly of paint. He opened the door and peered into the dimly lit corridor. No one about. He crept along the corridor and down the stairs to the floor below where the offices of the Research and Exploration Committee were situated. The lights were still on, but it looked as if everyone had gone home.

Brad Schaffer’s office was easy to find. It even had his nameplate on the door. It was not locked and Jack opened it and went inside, closing the door behind him and turning the T-lock just in case anyone from security came along. Jack glanced at Brad’s desktop PC and wondered if he was being a fool to think that he might be able to work out how to use the operating system. He switched it on anyway and while the machine was warming up, noisily initializing and testing its own memory and reading its own operating files. Jack turned his attention to the polished wooden filing cabinets ranged along one wall. He searched among the drawer fronts and their title panels and almost immediately located the one labelled ‘GRANT PROPOSALS.’ A few seconds later he was sitting in Schaffer’s own desk chair and reading the notes that had been attached to the research proposal Swift had carefully prepared with duplicitous understatement of the real aims of their expedition. Alongside the grant proposal were the reports of the members of the peer review committee, generally favourable, and a note from the accounts committee to the effect that money was too tight for the awarding of any new grants before the end of the next calendar year. The next page in the file was a letter formally confirming that the grant proposal had been accepted.

Jack groaned quietly and turned his attention to Schaffer’s computer screen. It was a standard Microsoft Windows setup, the same as the one he had on his PC back home in Danville. But trying to access Schaffer’s files from the File Manager, he discovered that they were all protected by a code word. He stared hard at the Program Manager and its many coloured icons resembling objects in a doll’s house, hoping that one of them might provoke an idea about what to do next. One of them did. The CompuServe icon. Jack wondered if Schaffer had bothered to protect his e-mail files. If Brad was anything like himself, the messages just piled up until he could be bothered to delete them.

He clicked on the CompuServe icon and checked the In Box for recent messages. Right away he realized that one of these was exactly what he had been looking for. The message was from someone named Bryan Perrins, and there was even an e-mail address for any reply. Jack made a note of it for later investigation.

‘Dear Brad, Thanks again for your cooperation in this matter. Dunham has told me how helpful you have been. Under the circumstances, the least I can do is put you completely in the picture. Since this situation developed, the Nepalese have been trying to hang on to their neutrality. So this represents our best chance of dealing with our little problem. This really is a very low-risk assignment. About the only real compensation of any fail situation is that if our man doesn’t succeed, then the chances are very slim that anyone else can pull this off. The man we’re sending has already established an excellent threshold of accomplishment in this kind of situation. Given the nature of the expedition, it will be Dr. Swift who chooses who goes along. I’m pretty sure that when she speaks to him, she’ll want to have our man on her team. He is well qualified in his particular scientific field and a natural choice for an expedition of this kind. Despite recent political developments, however, there is in our perception still a need for urgency. Thus the insistence on their going to the area ASAP. Finally, let me reassure you that beyond the obvious hazards of where they’re headed, they’ve got nothing to fear from our man, and I doubt they’ll even be aware of what he’s up to.’