Patrick Woodhead - The Cloud Maker (2010)

Jack lifted an eyebrow.

‘Sure. If you change bandwidths, you can cut through any weather you like. The military do it all the time. But who the hell is going to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds for something like that in the middle of the Himalayas? The Geology Department can barely afford to get me out of this damn’ office once a year, let alone source mat-erial like that.’

He paused before adding, ‘And even if we had the money, the Chinese and Indian Governments get very touchy about satellite imagery along their borders. We wouldn’t even get a response if we tried to go through official channels.’

‘What about other maps? Is there anything else we could try?’

‘That’s everything we’ve got. Look, you’ve got to understand that this is an area the size of Spain and vast sections of it remain almost completely unmapped. This is one of the last untouched regions on the entire planet. You, more than most, know what it’s like out there. There’s nothing as far as you can see: no people, no animals, just snow and rock. And it’s only us tired old geologists who get excited about that. Everyone else just sticks to the glamorous peaks, like Everest and K2 – and, of course, Makalu.’

Luca acknowledged the dig. Jack was right. Few but geologists cared about the smaller, less well-known mountains. He looked across the last map, at the vast tracts of peaks it depicted and marvelled at how much of the Himalayas remained totally unexplored. Like the human brain, the majority was uncharted territory.

Jack stood up and gingerly lowered himself back into his armchair.

‘So, Prodigal Son. Dare I ask if you’ve called your father since you’ve been back?’

Luca frowned. ‘I just got in a few hours ago, Jack, give me a break. I’ll go and see him some time in the next few days.’

His uncle started to say something but Luca broke in.

‘You are going to spare me the lecture, aren’t you, Jack?’ he said with a slight edge to his voice. ‘If I’d wanted that, I would have gone straight home.’

Jack shrugged and drank some more coffee.

‘Well, I’m hardly one to give advice on family matters. Especially with your father. I blew that a long time ago.’

‘Come on, Jack, I’m here to talk about this mountain,’ said Luca. ‘If the pyramid is as perfect as I remember it, it could be one of the most exciting things anyone’s discovered for years. Surely there’s some way of tracking down more information about the area?’

Jack nodded. Leaning forward in his chair, he scrawled a couple of names on the back of a used envelope.

‘There are a couple of ways I can think of, but both are long shots so I wouldn’t get your hopes up. There’s a Department of Asian Studies somewhere around the back of the Fitzwilliam Museum. There should be someone there who can point us in the right direction . . . and help us find someone who specialises in Tibetan geography or something similar. But your best bet will be the University Library. You should see if any of the early British explorers went near that region. Their accounts are usually pretty detailed.’

He paused, then after a moment’s thought, added, ‘Try around the eighteen hundreds, during the time of the “Great Game”. That’s when the British were paranoid about the Russians invading India and sent lots of spies up into the border regions. They mapped it all covertly, measuring distances by counting their own steps.’

He leaned over and took a swig from the dregs of his coffee, considering the idea of walking the breadth of the Himalayas while counting every single step.

When his gaze swung back up, it seemed to include Luca.

‘Crazy bastards,’ he said softly.

Chapter 7

Behind the vast, grey-brick façade of Cambridge’s University Library lies centuries’ worth of learning. Over seven million books, manuscripts and maps are contained in this giant edifice, the most precious being stored in the great tower which sticks up above the main structure like a factory chimney. Casting a long shadow over all who enter, it is a solemn reminder of the sheer weight of knowledge stacked inside.

Luca halted in front of the imposing entrance, fishing out Jack’s pass from the back pocket of his jeans. It was here, if anywhere, that he would find a reference to the pyramid mountain.

Following a group of students through the main lobby, he walked up echoing stone steps that smelled of floor wax into the index room. Row after row of worn, faded drawers lined the room, each containing ranks of neatly numbered and annotated cards.

Luca pulled out a few at random, not having a clue where to start. There were no signs or explanations as to how it all worked, just thousands of seemingly identical cards. What was it about highbrow institutions that made them still persist with such archaic systems? What was wrong with using a damn’ computer? Was it some sort of initiation test, to keep the unworthy philistines at bay? Here he was, in one of the greatest libraries in the world, and he couldn’t find a single book.

A couple of girls stood a few feet away from him, hugging books to their chests. One of them had hazel eyes in a round, pretty face. He caught her eye.

‘I don’t suppose you could give me a hand?’ he asked. ‘I’m completely lost.’

‘Sure,’ she answered, moving round and looking down at the drawer he’d pulled out. ‘What are you looking for?’

‘Well, that’s the problem, really,’ he said, smiling apologetically. ‘It’s not exactly specific . . .’

Fifteen minutes later they had drawn a blank, and it was obvious from the strained smile on the girl’s face that she was regretting having agreed to help in the first place.

‘Look, I really think you’d better talk to a librarian,’ she said, flicking back her hair impatiently. ‘They take a while to pin down but, like I said, they really know their stuff. Sorry, but I have to run to a supervision . . .’

Twenty minutes later, Luca was leaning over the issue desk with a distinctly less attractive woman. She wore bracelets that jangled each time she flicked through the long line of reference cards, and an overpowering perfume that hung in the air between them like a cloud. But despite it all, she obviously knew her stuff.

‘OK, so that’s seven books that cover the region,’ she said briskly. ‘Five of them we have here, the other two you’ll have to call up from the basement.’ She gave Luca a disparaging glance, taking in his suntan and faded sweatshirt. ‘Would it be simpler if I ordered them for you myself? I’ll get you a photocopying card while I’m at it.’

Finding a spare desk, Luca was soon hunched over a pile of books in the hushed, cavernous reading room. The librarian had cross-referenced nearby villages and landmarks, pulling out any books by or about explorers who had ventured anywhere near the region in the last hundred years.

For the next few hours he worked steadily through them, occasionally making notes in the small Moleskine pad that he and Bill always took with them on expeditions.

It proved to be frustrating work. None of the explorers had got much farther than the Indian border and Luca had skimmed through three of the books, his pen poised, before one scruffy-looking volume began to show more promise.

In his introduction, the author, Frederick Bailey, a British officer serving in India at the beginning of the twentieth century, described how he had decided to enter Tibet illegally, heading north over the Himalayas in search of a ‘mighty river gorge’. On first inspection of the hand-drawn map at the front of the book, Luca immediately realised that Bailey’s seemingly random route put him about fifty kilometres east of Makalu.

The prose was typically Edwardian, slightly pompous and emotionally stilted, but within a few pages Luca had been sucked into Bailey’s account. In 1913 he and another officer called Morshead had worked their way up and across the Indo-Tibetan border to reach a fabled waterfall in the heart of a river gorge. The journey sounded difficult as well as clandestine. There were jungles with trees a hundred feet high, mountain passes and murderous Abor tribesmen to negotiate. Luca was amused at the classic British stoicism and how they kept stiffening their upper lip to ‘muddle their way through’.