Dan Simmons - The Abominable - A Novel

“Warum denn?” demanded Graf.

“Why?” whispered Pasang, and I realized that the semi-retarded bodyguard wasn’t questioning why Dr. Pasang and I should be shot, only why we should be shot in the head and not the body.

“Damit wir keine Fotos beschädigen, falls sie welche bei sich haben, du Trottel,” snapped Wolzenbrecht. “Sturmbannführer Sigl kommt sicher bald aus den Bergen zurück. Stell die Schmeisser auf einen Schuss ein.”

Since their boots were already crunching in our direction before Pasang whispered his translation, I already had the gist of what Wolzenbrecht was saying.

“So that we don’t damage the photographs if the pictures are hidden on their persons, shithead,” whispered Pasang. “ Sturmbannführer Sigl should be coming down from the mountain very soon, so set your Schmeisser to single-fire and let’s get it over with…”

Schmeisser! That goddamned submachine gun! These Nazi fuckers were going to shoot us in the head just to avoid punching holes in the obscene photos each of us was carrying—me in my carryall, Pasang in a large pocket in his wool jacket. They were content to search our corpses after shooting us in the next few seconds. Time was up.

Pasang and I rolled in opposite directions in the same instant and came to our knees with our pistols raised.

What happened next is still not clear to me. There had been two Germans striding toward us, now there were blurs of gray motion all around them. Massive figures. Glimpses of gray fur in the swirling snow. Hair everywhere.

I saw Ulrich Graf’s head flying through the air, suddenly removed from its body. I had time to see and hear Artur Wolzenbrecht scream shrilly as something looming very gray and very large in the snow flurries rose over him.

Then something hit me in the side of the head, I fired one shot from the Webley—hitting nothing, my aim knocked high—and only had time to see Pasang also falling forward from where he’d risen to his knees on the moraine rock, the Luger already dropped from his hand, his eyes closed again in that bloody face—before I went down face-first onto the stones and blackness again.

27.

I came to lying in a fresh-smelling silken tent, tied facedown onto many not-so-fresh-smelling silken pillows. My wrists were tied to stakes driven into the ground between an array of elaborate Persian rugs that covered most of the floor of the tent. My head hurt terribly. My upper back hurt quite specifically—I could feel where the German bullet had entered when Pasang and I were first shot. I moved my head to look in both directions—more rugs, tall tentpoles, more tent, more pillows, no Pasang. Maybe he was dead. Perhaps I was.

But I hurt too much to be dead. I noticed that I was shirtless in the cold—I’d accidentally dislodged blankets when I’d first stirred—but there was something bulky and sticky on my back. I wondered idly if the bullet was in my lung or spine or near my heart. My head hurt too much for me to work on that problem with the mental effort it deserved.

I heard something behind me and I swiveled my head quickly enough to send so much pain coursing through my skull that I almost fainted, but I did manage to see a very Asian-looking Tibetan, or perhaps Tibetan-looking Mongolian, step into the tent with a steaming bowl in his hands, see him notice that I was conscious, and then he beat a hasty retreat.

Bandits, I realized. I could only hope that it was the band that Lady Bromley-Montfort was friends with and had already bribed with pistols and chocolate. What was the name of that band’s leader…??

Jimmy Khan. How can one forget that?

The little Asian-looking man in furs and still carrying the steaming bowl came back through the tall tent entrance with Pasang and the bandit Jimmy Khan walking next to him. Pasang had obviously bandaged his own head and also washed the blood from his face. He did not look dead any longer. I could see the end of the bullet furrow as a white scar raised against the dark skin of Pasang’s left temple.

The bandit Jimmy Khan said something in Tibetan and Pasang translated. “Khan says, ‘Good, you are alive again.’”

From our first encounter the month before, I remembered that Jimmy Khan spoke and understood some English. “Why am I staked out here, Pasang? Am I a prisoner?”

“No,” said my tall Sherpa friend. “You were a bit delirious, Jake. I decided to remove the bullet from your back while you were unconscious, and the ropes were the only way to keep you from rolling over onto your dressings.” He produced the curved penknife from a pocket and cut the twine binding my hands.

“I had a bullet in my back but I’m alive?” I said, head fuzzy and hurting.

“Mr. Ulrich Graf—he had his identification on his body—appears to have shot both of us,” said Pasang. “The bullet that hit me just tore through scalp and left a groove in my skull. I was unconscious only a short while from that. The bullet that hit you high in the back passed—as far as I can tell—through both of your oxygen tanks, a steel fitting on your flow regulator, as well as through the Unna cooker and two of the cooking pots you were carrying in the gas mask bag slung over your back. Oh, and the slug also had to pass through the aluminum frame of the oxygen rig before it struck you. Most of its kinetic energy was spent by the time it reached your body, Jake. I removed it from beneath only about an inch of skin and a small layer of shoulder muscle.”

I blinked at this. My back hurt but not as much as my head. I’d been shot! “How do you know that Graf was the one who shot us both?”

“I found the mashed-flat slug that grazed me at the base of the boulder we were standing near,” said Pasang. “But it was the slug that I pulled from your back that settled the matter. Both were nine-millimeter Parabellum rounds…essentially you were struck by a pistol shot from long distance, otherwise you’d be dead.”

“Artur Wolzenbrecht also had a Luger in his hand when he was coming toward us in that last second or two,” I managed to say. What did it matter which one of those Nazis shot us? was what I was really thinking.

“He did,” said Pasang and held up a shortened bit of lead. “Evidently they paint the points of the Schmeisser nine-millimeter rounds black. Both of ours had black tips. Graf’s Luger carried that kind of ammunition.”

I sat up on the cushions and swayed a bit with dizziness. “So what happened to Graf and Wolzenbrecht?” I asked. I tried to remember through the throbbing blur, but all I could recall was starting to raise the Webley, blurs of gray and dark masses moving in the swirling snow, screaming.

“That’s a good question,” said Pasang. There was some warning tone in his voice, but I was too preoccupied with pain to sort it out.

“If you can stand, Jake,” said Pasang. “Let me help you outside so that you can see something before more vultures arrive.”

“You explain,” said Jimmy Khan to Pasang and patted me on the back right where the dressing covered my wound. I managed not to scream.

Over on the broad, flat boulder near where we’d been standing when we’d been shot from distant ambush—evidently the two Germans had been hidden behind a boulder only about twenty yards beyond the memorial pyramid of stones that had been raised last year for Mallory, Irvine, and the seven lost Sherpas in 1922—Ulrich Graf’s and Artur Wolzenbrecht’s decapitated heads were set on short stakes lined up very neatly next to one another. Their wide eyes—just beginning to glaze over thickly with the white caul of death—seemed to be staring at us in total surprise. Next to the heads were four severed arms complete with hands, two right arms to the left of Graf, two left arms to the right of Wolzenbrecht.