The sirdar, whose eyes had remained on his foot, which was almost healed now, looked up with an air of surprise that he of all people should have been asked his opinion first.
‘Me, sahib?’ He shook his head. ‘Not first. Not me.’
‘This is your country. You should be first. So what’s your decision?’
The sirdar wobbled his head, equivocating for a moment.
‘Then I agree, Jack sahib. What the memsahib has said is best. Perhaps some things should be kept from other men.’
‘Byron?’
‘I think I’d have suggested the same course of action if Swift hadn’t said it first. I vote yes.’
‘I agree,’ Jutta said simply, and looked at Mac.
Mac sighed loudly.
‘What do you say, Mac?’ asked Jack. ‘In a way you’ve got more to lose than anyone.’
‘We’ve all got something to lose,’ scowled the Scotsman. ‘And I don’t just mean the members of this expedition. Isn’t that the point?’
‘Yes, it is,’ said Swift.
‘I meant all those pictures.’
‘Oh them.’
Mac lit a cigarette and grinned.
‘Well, that’s an academic question.’ He looked around the room with innocent surprise. ‘Didn’t I tell you? None of the pictures came out. Not a one. No thirty-five mill. No Hi-8. The film stock was crap. Either that or I’m a bloody lousy photographer.’ He uttered a gleeful laugh. ‘That bastard Warner, I wish I could be there to see his face. He’ll be expecting us to publish, of course. He’s going to look bloody silly when he finds that there are no photographs to support his story.’
‘And when we contradict him,’ smiled Byron.
‘When we say none of it ever happened,’ added Mac.
‘We’ll tell the press he was suffering from the effects of high-altitude sickness.’
‘Do you think anyone will believe him?’ asked Jack.
‘Did anyone believe you?’ said Swift.
‘Good point.’
‘I almost feel sorry for him,’ said Jutta. ‘He’s going to look like such a fool.’
‘Don’t feel sorry for him,’ said Byron. ‘Stealing someone else’s discovery is—’
‘You’re forgetting something,’ said Swift. ‘We didn’t discover anything. Just a few inconclusive bones, that’s all. Which leaves only one thing still to do.’
Royal Nepal’s Allouette helicopter, piloted by Bishnu as before, took Jack, Swift, Hurké, and some Sherpas back up to ABC. There was no need to trek up from Pokhara this time, as they were still acclimatized to living at four thousand metres, despite the week they had spent in Khat. When the helicopter landed, they found that the approach of spring and the retreat of the snows had already changed the character of their base camp. The clamshell was beginning to sag as the snow on which it was pitched started to melt, and the roof of one of the lodges was clearly visible. But none of this had any effect on their present course of action. As soon as they had burned some incense, prayed to their gods, and drunk some cha, the Sherpas set about dismantling the clamshell. Meanwhile Jack and Hurké collected the Bell stretcher and one of Boyd’s rucksacks from his lodge and put them onto the helicopter.
They took off again and flew up to Machhapuchhare and Camp One, on the Rognon. The pilot offered to fly them on up to Camp Two, in the ice corridor close to the crevasse. Although there was nowhere for the chopper to land at Camp Two, it would have been easy enough for them to have jumped out — a matter of less than a metre. But Jack preferred that they land at Camp One and walk back up. There were the contents of Boyd’s rucksack to think about. It was not the kind of pack you just dropped on the ground. Besides, he thought it best that as few people as possible knew what they were going to do. The Nepalese authorities did not take kindly to people changing the physical geography of a national park.
Leaving Bishnu to smoke and enjoy the sunshine. Swift, Jack, and Hurké set off down the ice corridor.
In the absence of two serviceable SCE suits. Jack and Hurké entered the crevasse wearing stormproof clothing and Petzl headlamps. As well as the stretcher, they carried the axes with which they intended to cut Didier’s body free from the ice. Jack estimated that the recovery would take no more than two or three hours. While the two men were gone. Swift stayed at the tent, alone with her thoughts. Flying above the Sanctuary again, as vast as it was empty, it had seemed unlikely that such a cold and tranquil place — like a sea on the surface of the moon — could ever have yielded any of its secrets. But now, as then, she found herself looking for tracks, a figure — human or yeti — some sign that she had not imagined the whole thing. Above and beneath her lay nothing but pure white snow, undisturbed by anything but the wind. That any kind of large animal, let alone one so closely related to Man himself, could have inhabited such an inhospitable environment now seemed just as improbable as it always had.
Finally Jack and Hurké returned, hauling the body out of the crevasse on two ropes. Swift had never met Didier in life, and this was the first time she really looked at him. But for the missing arm, shot away by the paranoid Boyd, she could see that the body was extremely well preserved. There was only slight dehydration, and although it seemed a cliché, the dead man really did look as if he were only sleeping. Swift thought he had been a handsome man. Jack covered his dead friend with a groundsheet and, collecting Boyd’s rucksack, started to unpack the explosive materials.
The sirdar looked at them critically, handling the plastic and the detonators with the familiarity of one who had spent many years as a Gurkha army sergeant.
Jack glanced above him at the rock face, searching for a suitable spot to place the plastic. He nudged Hurké and then pointed to a spot about fifty or sixty metres higher up the mountain, below an enormous overhang of snow and ice.
‘If that lot came down, it would bury this whole area. What do you think?’
Hurké nodded.
‘If you show me how to do it, I can set the explosives and rappel back down,’ said Jack. ‘No point in us both going. Besides, your foot is still bandaged. You and Swift better get going with the stretcher, and I’ll see you back at the chopper, okay?’
Hurké knew better than to argue. He selected a piece of plastic about the size of a paperback novel and demonstrated how to tamp the explosive and how to insert a detonator.
‘After you have placed the detonator in the plastic, sahib, be careful not to use your radio, as it could accidentally set off the explosive.’
Jack nodded and shouldered a coil of rope and his rucksack, into which he carefully placed the explosive materials.
‘Better to detonate from the air, sahib,’ said Hurké. ‘Safer, anyway.’
‘Okay.’
‘Be careful, Jack,’ said Swift.
‘I’ll be back before you know it.’
They watched him go down the ice corridor toward the rock face, and only when he had disappeared from sight did the sirdar suggest that they start back to Camp One. Swift let out a nervous sigh and went over to the front of the stretcher bearing Didier’s body. Hurké stood at the rear, and when Swift was ready, at his command, they picked up the stretcher and began to walk.
Neither of them said anything, and carrying the stretcher in a straight line made it almost impossible to look back. By the time they reached the helicopter. Swift’s stomach was knotted with worry and she was almost certain that Hurké felt the same way.
Seeing Hurké and Swift, Bishnu jumped up and helped to slide the stretcher onto the floor of the helicopter. Then, almost as an afterthought, he glanced around and asked where Jack was.