Philip Kerr - Esau

‘During the spring, summer, and fall months,’ Swift continued, ‘the animal might just stay higher up, away from the tourists. Perhaps it’s only during the winter that the creature feels bold enough to venture lower down. When there are very few tourists. And of course now, with the tourist industry in Nepal dead on its feet because of the threatened war in the Punjab, it could be that the Himalayas are as quiet as they’ve been in over fifty years. Perhaps since people like us started coming, which might just be the best thing this expedition has going for it.’

‘It’s only a good thing so long as they don’t do it,’ said Warner. ‘So long as those assholes don’t start throwing nukes around.’ He shook his head nervously. ‘No telling what might happen then. Might not just be the yeti’s ass that’s hard to find. Might be ours too.’

‘Which makes it fortunate,’ she said patiently, ‘that they have a cooling-off period. Our window. Three months. Enough time to make a thorough search of the area and then get out and go home.’ She paused and glanced at Jack.

‘But there’s another factor that may give us an advantage. The Nepalese authorities think we have come here to search for fossils on Annapurna. But as some of you already know, we are in fact going to centre our search on a different mountain altogether. Machhapuchhare. Or Fish Tail Peak, as some climbers call it. Machhapuchhare and its surrounding area are forbidden to climbers, but since we’re not actually planning to go very far up the mountain, probably no higher than about four and a half to five thousand metres, we believe that we’re not so much breaking this injunction as bending it a little in the name of science. We’re going to be searching an area that we know no one has ever searched before but where there have been three separate sightings of the yeti during the last twenty-five years. And several others within the Sanctuary itself, not to mention the bones that Jack found on the slopes of Annapurna.

‘It may seem like an enormous piece of optimism to just turn up here and expect to find a yeti, especially when you think about how long the creature must have remained undiscovered. But when you add up all of the factors I’ve mentioned, I think we stand an excellent chance of success. Better than anyone before us. And don’t forget that by discovering the skull only two kilometres or so from where we are now. Jack has already come up with more evidence of the existence of this creature than was ever found before.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, if we don’t find it,’ Swift added finally, ‘then I don’t think anyone will find it.’

Jack and Swift were the last to leave the clamshell that first night. After the others had gone to bed, the two stayed up with no other purpose than to be alone. At Swift’s suggestion. Jack had agreed that they should bunk separately, accepting her argument that they needed to be completely focused on the expedition and that any intimacy between them could only be a distraction. So he was surprised when she put her arms around his waist and hugged him tightly.

‘I can’t believe we’re actually here,’ she told him. ‘Thanks, Jack. Without you it wouldn’t have been possible.’

‘I wish I could say it felt good to be back here,’ he confessed. ‘But the place makes me nervous. Like there’s something I’m not doing. Maybe it’s the fact that I know I’m not going to be doing any climbing. It’s weird, but I’d feel a little more relaxed if I knew I was going back up that southwest face tomorrow morning. I guess it’s like a racing driver going to a Grand Prix knowing he’s not going to be driving.’

He shook his head and smiled at what he had just said. He almost convinced himself.

‘That was a good speech you made. Swift.’

‘You think so? I felt I needed to say something after that arsehole Boyd started mouthing off about not believing in the yeti.’

‘He’s not so bad. You two just rub each other the wrong way.’

‘Maybe. You didn’t think I sounded a little too much like a candidate? Say anything to get elected, y’know?’

‘You believed what you were saying, didn’t you?’

‘Oh sure. But y’know... did they?’

Jack shrugged. ‘Sometimes when you’re leading an expedition like this, you have to say whatever you can to keep people on your side. Doesn’t matter if people believe what you say or not. They need to see that you believe it. That’s what leadership is about. That makes it the right thing to do.’

Swift nodded silently. Then she groaned and squeezed her temples.

‘Headache?’

‘Mmmm. I don’t know whether it’s the altitude or that bourbon.’

‘Probably the altitude. You should drink plenty of water before you go to bed.’

She yawned. ‘Maybe I’ll be acclimatized in the morning.’

Jack laughed.

‘I doubt it. Full acclimatization to a height takes seven weeks. If you don’t feel better in the morning, we’ll give you some Lasix.’

‘If you don’t mind my saying Doctor, that sounds a little hit and miss.’

‘Up here there are really no hard-and-fast rules,’ he explained. ‘Everyone will have to find out what works best for him- or herself. Right now, a good night’s sleep is probably just the ticket. If I were you, I’d take a couple of Seconal and go to bed.’

‘Okay,’ she smiled. ‘I’m convinced.’

They pulled on their storm-proof outer clothing and ventured into the freezing night and a wind so strong it almost bowled Swift off her feet. Eyes closed against the wind, she held on to Jack’s clothing for support. He shouted something at her, but whatever he said was borne quickly down the glacier in the general maelstrom of sound and air. After several laborious minutes’ walk along the rope handrail, they reached the open snow shaft that led straight down to the lodges. Jack motioned her to go first and then followed her down the ladder.

At the bottom of the shaft. Swift kissed him good-night before going into her cold, dark room. Having taken a Seconal with a large glass of water as Jack had instructed, she removed her outer layer once again and then climbed up onto her bunk and into her sleeping bag, feeling a little like a premature burial in a story by Edgar Allan Poe. Jutta Henze, lying on the bunk below, was already asleep, apparently untroubled by any of the feelings of claustrophobia that Swift found herself trying to overcome. As she waited for the sleeping pill to take effect, she listened to the wind and tried to distinguish the many different sounds she could hear in it: the roll of kettledrums; a large bath towel pegged securely to a clothesline; distant gunfire — El Alamein; a newspaper shaken and folded in half; a train rushing past an empty platform. The Himalayan wind, it seemed, was a living thing of air and could even become a voice — a crying child, a screaming peacock, or a soul in limbo — and sometimes, if she tried really hard, she could hear the howl of a mythical ape-man of the mountains.

The day dawned brightly after the stormy night, with a sky as blue as the Buddha’s eyes and the sun turning snow and rock to precious gold. But any feeling of warmth was purely aesthetic, for the wind still blew periodically in short, buffeting gusts that were cold enough to finish a sentence, close a watery eye, or turn a back and helped to keep the outside temperature down well below zero.