Philip Kerr - Esau

‘We’re clear down here. Temperature’s dropping like a stone. But the pressure looks not too bad. Set to continue fine, I’d say.’

‘Good. Well that’s all from us, I guess. Say hello to everyone.’

‘For sure.’

‘Over and out.’

Jack tossed the radio on to the groundsheet.

‘Chinese army, eh?’ he said. ‘What do you make of that?’

‘I’d say Tsering was probably right,’ said Jameson.

‘I wonder,’ said Jack.

Jameson finished his drink and then lit another cigarette. He studied the smoking end for a moment and then said:

‘What do you make of this, then, chaps? I’ve noticed that the physical process of smoking seems to make breathing easier up here. My theory is that the general lack of oxygen makes you think about breathing, which normally is an involuntary process, and that the thinking about it consequently engenders a slight feeling of suffocation. Back down at sea level, breathing seems to be effortless because carbon dioxide stimulates the nerve centres that only make it seem that way. Okay? But as well as the lack of oxygen at altitude, there is also a lack of carbon dioxide. This is the clever part: Somehow the cigarette smoke is able to substitute for carbon dioxide normally present in the human body and therefore stimulate involuntary breathing in the normal way. I have noticed that the effect of one cigarette can last as long as a couple of hours.’

Mac laughed with obvious delight.

‘That would also explain why nearly all of the Sherpas smoke like bloody chimneys,’ said the Scotsman.

‘Precisely, Mac.’

‘Who knows? Maybe the bloody yetis smoke too,’ said Mac. ‘It might explain why they’re so quick up these bloody hillsides.’ He cackled loudly. ‘When you’re next looking for a sponsor to bring us all back here, you’ll just have to ask the lads at Philip Morris. What do you think of that, eh. Swift?’

But Swift was already fast asleep.

In the moonlight, CASTORP stood looking through a pair of night-vision binoculars at the Chinese encampment. It all looked innocent enough: a huddle of heavy canvas storm tents, a pile of stores (respectably civilian) and the satellite dish. Soldiers hunting deserters hardly needed to bring along a satellite dish. Snow began to give way beneath him, obliging him to shift his stance. It felt uncertain underfoot. Dangerous even. He had an idea.

CASTORP returned the binoculars to his rucksack and, unfolding an entrenching tool, started to dig a pit as deep as the surface layer of snow with a vertical back wall. He straightened for a moment, catching his breath. It had been quite a hike down from ABC in the dark. Then he cut away a chimney about thirty centimetres deep on one side of the wall before adding a V-shaped slot on the other side, exposing an isolated block of snow about thirty centimetres wide. Lastly he thrust his shovel down the back of the block and pulled gently outward, using only a small amount of leverage. The block suddenly sheared away along the contact face, and immediately he stopped pulling. The shearing block of snow indicated that the slope was in a very unstable condition. He wondered if the Chinese soldiers had even bothered to make the same rudimentary field test as he had done, and decided they couldn’t have. They would hardly have pitched their camp there if they had. On the other hand, maybe they’d been there for a while. It was a smaller valley than at ABC, and there had been quite a bit of snow of late. Still, he thought, there was no point in leaving it to chance. And it wasn’t as if HUSTLER had expressly forbidden him to take any action.

Wiping his brow he allowed himself a small smile of contempt for the people back in Washington. What did they know about the people in the camp below? He was the man on the ground. He should have never told HUSTLER in the first place. He should just have gone ahead and told HUSTLER afterwards. This was his call. He was best placed to read the situation. When you perceived a threat, you didn’t wait for it to develop. You took action.

From his rucksack he removed a couple of small explosive charges and placed them carefully and at regular intervals along the ridge above the Chinese camp. He found himself singing:

CASTORP trudged back down the valley onto some safe ground and, hardly hesitating, detonated the charges with a small remote control. Snow muffled the sound of the little explosions, each of them sounding no louder than a hand clap. At first the snow hardly moved, and he wondered if he might have miscalculated. But gradually the whole slope, one enormous slab of snow and ice, began to move, like soup pouring out of a pot. Quickly it increased in speed and volume until it was a deafening tidal wave, a mushrooming tonnage of cloud and cold debris, like a tall building from which the foundation had been blown away.

When the avalanche was over and the airborne powder had cleared, the moonlit valley looked as peaceful as a Christmas card scene, and it was as if the Chinese camp had never existed. The man turned away and heading back toward ABC he sang again:

‘Brightly shone the moon that night,

Though the frost was cruel,

When a poor man came in sight,

Gathering winter fuel.’

Bitterly cold. Swift awoke to find Jack’s gloved hand held over her mouth. It was still dark and she could hardly see his face, only felt his hot breath, still smelling of whisky, as he whispered:

‘We’ve got company.’

She sat up abruptly, almost bumping heads with Mac or Jameson — she wasn’t sure which — and, with breath held, listened carefully.

It had stopped snowing. Even the wind had dropped. Outside the tent, the snow had frozen solid under the Himalayan night’s hard frost. She could hear the snow crunching underfoot as whatever it was moved around Camp One.

‘Is it someone from ABC?’ she whispered hopefully.

‘Too far and too dangerous,’ said Jack. ‘It would be suicide to try to come up here in the dark.’

‘What about those Chinese?’

‘Ditto. They’re just as far away. No, this is something else.’

Jameson had found his pistol and was trying to load it with a syringe dart. The footsteps were coming closer to the tent.

‘This isn’t so easy in the dark,’ he whispered.

‘Take the gun,’ said Jack. ‘It’s still loaded.’

‘Too powerful. Can you and Mac handle the flashlights? I’ll only have a chance for one shot and I want to make it—’

Jameson stopped to listen to a loud sniffing noise as the creature outside the tent inhaled the cold night air.

‘The stew,’ Swift whispered. ‘It smells the beef stew.’

‘Connoisseur, eh?’ said Jameson. ‘Good for him.’ He slid the syringe into the barrel of the pistol and closed the breech. ‘Ready.’

Something batted the wall of the tent, which then bulged as a large body pressed up against it. Swift felt her heart miss a beat as she detected a pungent animal smell.

Now the creature struck the wall again, only this time the sound was accompanied by the rattle of some mess tins. It had found what it was looking for: the remains of the beef stew.

Swift would hardly have thought it possible to feel a chill of fear on top of the cold she already felt, but her hair was rising on her scalp as if her skin had recognized first what her ears and her brain were slower to register. There really was a big animal out there.

‘I’d better go first,’ said Mac, swallowing loudly. But he did not move. He was held back by a loud ripping sound. Claws. The creature was tearing open the back of the tent next to Swift’s head with claws that were as sharp as razors. Swift thought back to the sirdar’s description of the yetis. She could not remember him saying anything about them having sharp claws. Was it possible that these higher anthropoids might have long and sharp fingernails? By Hurké Gurung’s account, they seemed to lack nothing else in aggression.