“Come on, let’s go.”
They left the tent and started to move up the slope toward the north ridge. As they passed an icewall, Chandra Gurung jumped from a perch and tackled Carl Glass. Glass dropped the AK-47, and it slid on the ice toward the edge of a cliff and into space.
Both men got to their feet. Chandra slugged Glass hard in the face with his good fist, knocking him into Marquis, who was in the process of drawing the Browning. He, too, lost his grip on the gun, and it sailed into the air and lodged in a snowdrift behind Chandra. The Gurkha backed off and stood between the two men and the drift.
They were dangerously close to the precipice.
“You are both under arrest,” Chandra said. “You must accompany me back to Camp Five.”
Marquis laughed. Glass, not sure how to react, laughed with him.
“Oh, really!” Marquis said. “You are going to arrest us! I tell you what. How about we pay you twenty rupees to porter our bags for us?”
“Give me the pacemaker,” Chandra said. “And I will let you both live.”
“Carl, throw this stinking Gurung off the mountain.”
Glass, a sizable and very strong man, rushed Chandra. The Gurkha, however, was far better trained and much faster.
“Ayo Gurkhali!” Chandra shouted as he drew the khukri from the sheath at his side.
With one swift movement Chandra swung the khukri evenly and neatly. All it took was one stroke. Carl Glass’s head separated from his shoulders, spun around in the air, and sailed off the edge of the cliff-
The body stood there a moment, trembling, blood gushing from the gruesome wound at the top.
This so unnerved Marquis that he turned to flee. Chandra knocked Glass’s body over the cliff and ran in pursuit.
A slick rock face stood in Marquis’s path, but that didn’t stop him. Using an ice ax in one hand, he began to ascend, finding footholds and handholds where he could. There was no time to use hardware— this was climbing using brute strength and skill.
Chandra stood at the bottom of the wall and looked up at the figure who was already thirty feet ahead of him. He didn’t know if he could do it. His left hand was useless. How could he climb with only one good hand? Should he let the traitor go?
The mantra reemerged in the Gurkha’s head: It is better to die than be a coward.
With determination Chandra swung his ice ax at the rock, lodged it in tightly, and pulled himself up. His boots found edges in the rock to hold his weight as he hugged the wall. He pulled out the ax, almost losing his balance in doing so, but swung it back into the rock just as quickly. It was slow going, but he managed to ascend a few feet with every try. Marquis, on the other hand, was rapidly approaching the top of the ridge.
Chandra had climbed twenty feet when the air in the respirator noticeably changed. The oxygen canister was empty! He winced, spat the respirator out of his mouth, took a lungful of cold, biting air, and kept going.
He looked up at his prey and saw that Marquis was sitting on the ridge, watching him. The man had something shiny and metallic in his hand. Marquis let it go, and the tool fell straight for Chandra. It was a carabiner, and it struck the Gurkha on the shoulder. The surprise almost caused Chandra to let go of the ice ax.
He had to get down. He couldn’t climb farther or he would surely die.
Marquis extracted an ice screw from his pack, held it in the air, and dropped it.
The object struck Chandra on the head. He clung to the handle of the ax, hugging the wall, praying that his feet wouldn’t slip. He was breathing in gasps, and never knew that pain could be so severe.
A few seconds later, another ice screw struck him on the forehead, successfully disorienting him enough for him to lose his balance.
One foot slipped. He struggled to hold on to the ax handle, but it was wet and slippery now. He reached with his dead left hand, but this proved to be the fatal handicap. The other boot lost its footing as his hand slipped away from the ax. He fell backward into thin air and bounced off the edge of the cliff.
Instead of screaming, the Gurkha was aware of the words running through his head as he plummeted to the vast lower depths.
It is better to die than be a coward . . . it is better to die than . . .
Roland Marquis cursed the fact that Carl Glass had been carrying half of the diamonds. He didn’t know how much he had in his own pack, but it wouldn’t be enough to buy his way out of England and into a foreign country where he could hide behind a false identity and live out the rest of his life in splendor. That had been the plan, such as it was.
If only the Union hadn’t interfered. Nevertheless, this was still his show, and he wasn’t going to let anyone wreck it—not them, not the Russians, not the damned Gurkha, and certainly not James Bond.
He could still find a buyer for Skin 17. Perhaps, he thought, perhaps he could sell it to the Union! They wanted it badly enough. Their incompetent minion, Schrenk, had been unsuccessful in getting it. Perhaps they would pay him a handsome fee. After all, they had employed him before to help steal it in the first place. It was only a matter of finding the right person to talk to. He hadn’t known who Steven Harding’s contact was. When Harding had approached him several months before with the Union’s pitifully low offer, he could see that the doctor was a greedy bastard and could be turned. He had talked Harding into going along with the Union’s orders, but instead of delivering the specification to them, Harding and he would “lose it, sell it to the Russian Mafia, and make even more money together. Harding had been afraid of the Union, but Marquis was able to ease his fears. They had worked together. They had stolen the formula and were successful in diverting it from the Union. Now he had it and could name his price.
Would the Union seek revenge on him? Would they refuse to deal with him? He thought not. They wanted it too badly. They were probably the most likely buyers. The Chinese would offer too little. He didn’t know who was behind the Belgian team, but he didn’t care. They were probably being funded by a European consortium of some kind.
The trick would be contacting the Union before they found him. He wasn’t sure how he would do it, but he had plenty of connections. He would go back to Camp Five, keep the pacemaker under wraps, and try to avoid Bond at all costs, if he was still alive.
He looked up at the sky. Dark clouds were beginning to form again. The storm was probably three or four hours away. He had to make it back to camp before then. It wasn’t very far. The trouble was, he was exhausted and had a splitting headache. Marquis checked his oxygen canister and saw that it was nearly empty. That must be the cause of the headache, he thought. He found his last canister and attached the respirator to it. The new air felt good. That was another reason to risk going back to Camp Five. He needed more oxygen. He took another five minutes to eat two granola bars and drink some water from his canteen, then he set off toward the camp. Now if he could only avoid running into 007.
James Bond and Hope Kendall had spent the morning looking around the camp for any signs of the missing people. The storm had completely covered any tracks, so they thought it best to stay put and see if anyone came back. They had decided that they would perform crevasse burials for the dead, stay put through the coming storm by sharing the bivouac sack again, and begin their descent the following day. Bond hated to give up, but there was nothing, else to do. Attempting to search the upper reaches of Kangchenjunga for people who might be lost or buried was foolhardy. To hell with Skin 17, he thought. If it had been created once, it could be created again. Britain had plenty of intelligent physicists. If Marquis had indeed stolen the specification and had found a way down the mountain, then so be it. If it fell into the wrong hands, it was beyond Bond’s control at this point.