Philip Kerr - Esau

Finally Jack himself spoke, answering the insistent clamour of voices in his helmet.

‘Didier,’ he sighed.

Sitting in the storm tent in the ice corridor up on top of the glacier, Byron Cody shrugged.

‘Who’s Didier?’ he asked.

‘Didier Lauren,’ said Swift. ‘He was killed in an avalanche the last time he and Jack came up here. The same avalanche that shovelled Jack into the cave where he found Esau must also have dropped Didier into that crevasse.’

‘Jesus,’ said Jameson. ‘What a terribly lonely way to go.’

‘You knew him too, didn’t you, Mac?’ said Swift.

Mac grunted his assent and lit a cigarette with a bitter lack of enjoyment.

‘He wouldn’t be the first of my friends to die in these mountains. And he probably won’t be the last.’

‘But to be here all that time,’ said Cody. ‘In the snow.’

‘I also knew Didier,’ said Jutta. ‘He was a fine mountaineer. Poor Jack, to find him again like that.’

‘Jack?’ said Swift. ‘Are you okay?’

‘You’re not going to believe this,’ Jack said angrily. ‘His wristwatch and ring are gone.’

‘Maybe he lost them during the avalanche,’ she suggested.

‘It was his sponsorship watch. A Rolex Oyster Explorer. We both went to London to get them before coming out here. The watch is virtually unbreakable. And that ring always looked tight on his finger. Besides, he was wearing gloves.’

Byron Cody thought for a moment, remembering the deep curiosity exhibited by mountain gorillas concerning foreign objects. He picked up his radio and said, ‘Jack, this is Byron. It’s just a thought, but quite often a gorilla I was working with would steal my car keys or my glasses. Or any shiny object. It could be that one of the yetis took Didier’s watch.’

‘So now it will know when it’s time to come and scare the shit out of me, huh?’

‘Jack, this is Miles. Look, forget the watch for a moment. That was your only hypodermic dart. I want you to remove it from your friend’s body and take a look at it.’

‘Okay, but what’s the point?’

‘The point is this: When the syringe strikes the target, pressure against the hub of the syringe pushes a tiny weight in the back of the charge against a small spring. The sharp tip of the weight penetrates a seal, setting off the charge and driving the plunger forward to discharge the drug. It’s quite possible that because Didier’s body is probably frozen solid, none of the above happened. And that the Ketamine is still in the syringe. Do you see?’

Jack tugged the Cap-Chur syringe out of his friend’s shoulder and scrutinized it carefully in the yellow carbide light. Wearing gloves and a helmet, there was little he could tell about the condition of the dart except that it looked much the same as before. He reported as much on the radio to Miles Jameson.

‘Reload the pistol with it anyway,’ said Jameson. ‘It might be better than nothing.’

‘Perhaps you ought to come back now,’ said Swift.

Jack checked the readings displayed on the SCE suit’s control unit. He had been inside the crevasse for about an hour. There was still plenty of power, at least ten hours’ worth remaining in his backpack.

‘Negative. I’m going on for a while longer. There’s plenty of juice left in the suit, and I’m feeling fine. Besides, the point of this space walk is not to capture a yeti but to try and track them to whatever it is you call a great ape’s lair.’

‘It’s called a nest,’ said Cody.

Jack picked up his ice axe and started to walk again, silently promising Didier that whatever happened, he would not leave him there.

‘Tell the boys to put that stretcher together. On my way back, I’m going to carry him out.’

HUSTLER. THE CHINESE ISSUE IS NOW ACADEMIC, I’M AFRAID. THIS MORNING I WENT TO CHECK ON THEM AND FOUND THAT AN AVALANCHE HAD WIPED OUT THEIR CAMP. OOPS. THERE WERE NO SURVIVORS. STILL, It’s PROBABLY JUST AS WELL. DESPITE WHAT YOU SAID, I HAD A BAD FEELING ABOUT THOSE SLOPES. MEANWHILE I HAVE WALKED FROM ONE END OF THIS SANCTUARY TO THE OTHER, BUT STILL NO LUCK. CASTORP.

Eager to be doing something. Miles Jameson and Jutta Henze went outside the tent and assembled the Bell split rescue stretcher themselves. Constructed from square section reinforced steel and fitted with a head guard, leg and chest restraints, and plastic ski-runners, it had been intended that the Bell could be used to transport a chemically restrained yeti back to ABC with the help of a helicopter from Pokhara.

‘I had hoped we’d be needing this for a yeti,’ remarked Jutta. ‘Not another body.’

‘We’ll catch one yet,’ said Jameson.

‘You’re an optimist, I think.’

‘Hunting wild animals, my dear Jutta, you have to be. But I would have thought the same was true of people like you. Mountaineers.’ Nodding at Annapurna’s implacable south face, he explained, ‘I mean, you’d have to be an optimist to think you stood a chance of climbing that.’

Jutta shook her head.

‘No, I am a pessimist. In a place like this, optimism can easily get you killed. My husband was an optimist, as you say. He pushed himself too hard. But there is nothing you can do to change this kind of person. Jack is the same. He knows he is lucky to be alive after the last time, but he cannot be different. He would not want to be different.’

Sensing that she was in danger of becoming morbid, Jutta smiled brightly.

‘I hope you are right. Miles. To find this animal would be really something, wouldn’t it?’

‘Yes. It would be like discovering a live dinosaur somewhere.’

‘More interesting than that, surely. None of us is related to a cold-blooded animal. At least, not closely.’ She grinned mischievously. ‘Except Jon Boyd perhaps. He is not optimistic about our chances.’

‘Yes, I’d really like to catch a yeti, if only to see the look on Boyd’s face when we pulled it out of the net.’

‘Or better still, when we put him in the net with a yeti.’

Jameson’s eyes narrowed. ‘I wonder,’ he murmured.

‘He could hardly deny it.’

But Jameson’s mind was already on something else.

He left the stretcher and climbed the ladder to the top of the ice wall.

‘Where are you going?’

‘To take another look at that crevasse. I might just have an idea. Are the men bringing the rest of the gear this afternoon?’

‘Yes. What kind of an idea?’

‘Let’s just call it my Magic Johnson.’

The crevasse was completely dark now. Picking his way carefully along the shelf, with only the light atop his helmet to illuminate the way ahead, the roof above Jack’s head became solid ice, a vaulted roof of tiny cones, like the sound baffles in a studio or concert hall, or like crystals of salt or sugar magnified many hundreds of times. Jack decided that a yeti’s sight must be better than a human’s — an observation he put to Byron Cody over the radio.

‘That’s interesting. Jack,’ said the primatologist. ‘The rest of the great apes, without exception, are diurnal creatures. So a yeti would be quite unusual if it was nocturnal. On the other hand, with no large predators to threaten him at night, a yeti may have evolved to take advantage of that fact. Perhaps even to become something of a predator himself.’

‘Well, that’s a comforting thought to a man walking in darkness,’ said Jack. ‘But it might also explain why so few yetis are seen by men.’

‘There’s another possibility,’ said Swift. ‘Yeti may have become nocturnal specifically to avoid contact with man. If some of those Sherpa stories are true, man may indeed have been the yeti’s principal enemy.’

Hearing Swift’s theory reminded Jack of a grisly trophy he had once seen on his expedition to climb Everest.