High overhead was a spy satellite launched by the Russians. Its mission was to monitor southwest China. Within its zone of observation was Everest. Under orders relayed covertly from Moscow, the high-resolution camera turned its attention to the slopes of Everest and began quartering the snow-covered terrain. Since Turcotte had been the only one to come off the mountain alive, no one knew exactly who had fallen where.
It took over four hours, but a complete image of the mountain had been accomplished. The data was digitized, then transmitted to Moscow military headquarters, where it was forwarded — with a healthy kickback of cash going the opposite direction — until it ended up in the hands of the one who had requested it.
Adrik sat behind his desk and stared at the file marker on his computer screen. It had cost him one phone call and over 1.6 million US dollars to get this imagery. He didn’t even bother to open the file and look at what his money had bought. Instead, he had it electronically transferred to Hong Kong. Then he sent the file to a second destination.
It was the largest object in Earth orbit, far eclipsing the collection of pods that made up the International Space Station. The mothership was over a mile long and a quarter mile wide at the center, coming evenly to points at both ends. In the forward portion there was a huge gash in the black metal where Mike Turcotte had set off a nuclear charge supplemented by an Airlia fuel pod inside a cargo bay. Floating inside the bay were also mangled Talon spacecraft — Aspasia’s fleet from Mars, which had come to recover the mothership. In one fell swoop Turcotte had managed to destroy most of one side of the millennia-old Atlantean Civil War.
Now the mothership floated dead, a symbol of mankind’s victory over alien forces. Inside the Talons were dozens of Airlia bodies, preserved in the cold vacuum of space. And inside their frozen veins were the scant remnants of the virus that Nosferatu and his comrades sought.
Nima Namche wasn’t used to the ill-fitting suit he was wearing or the low altitude. Even though the anteroom he was waiting in was on the forty-fourth and top floor of a skyscraper in the center of Hong Kong, it was still at least three miles lower than where he lived, in the Khumbu Region of the Himalayas. He was a Sherpa, one of the mountain people, and his motivation for coming to Hong Kong was a simple and ancient one: money.
A Sherpa, Tenzig Norgay, had been at Sir Edmund Hillary’s side when he became the first to summit Everest and they had been part of every expedition ever since, or at least the ones that were known about. Namche knew that others had climbed Everest for reasons other than summiting, but among the Sherpas those climbs were not spoken about openly.
He’d been approached by a well-known Sherpa whose job it was to coordinate guides for expeditions — except this proposal had been very different. Namche was given one hundred thousand US dollars simply to fly to Hong Kong, an unheard of sum, with the promise of another nine hundred thousand US upon acceptance of the climb. Who he was to guide and when he was to do it were two questions he hoped to have answered soon.
So far, answers had been in short supply. He’d been met in the airport by two very pale men wearing expensive suits and sporting dark sunglasses who had simply taken his one, rather decrepit piece of luggage and escorted him to a waiting limousine. He’d sat in the back with the two men, who had not offered a single word of greeting or even acknowledged his presence, their attention focused on the exterior as if they were concerned about being attacked.
They’d led him into the lobby of the building, past the security guards, and to a private elevator. When the door had opened, one of the two had indicated he should exit and upon his doing so, the door had shut, leaving Namche alone in this room.
There was a large stainless-steel door directly ahead that Namche had approached, but decided against knocking on. He doubted any sound would carry. So he sat and waited, something that did not overly bother him considering the strange reception.
He started at a slight hiss. He was amazed as the steel door slid to the right without making another noise. Namche got to his feet and tentatively approached the doorway.
“Come in.” The voice was Chinese, the words English.
The interior of the room from which the voice had come was dark, and Namche paused in the entryway, trying to get his eyes to adjust. All he could see at the moment was a wooden chair with a single beam of light oriented on it.
“Sit there,” the voice ordered.
Namche walked to the chair and sat down on the edge, trying to peer ahead to see who owned the voice. His seat in the beam of light, however, defeated any possibility of his eyes adjusting to the darkness or penetrating the room’s interior beyond the cone of light he was in.
“You have summited Everest six times.”
Namche did not think it was a question but he nodded anyway. “Yes, sir.” “Each time you guided another to the top.”
“Yes.”
“I do not need you to summit. But I do need you to climb within forty-eight hours and take someone with you.”
Namche immediately began shaking his head. “It is the off-season. The weather will not allow climbing for at least another month, and that is only to base camp. And then—”
“Silence.”
Namche fidgeted on the edge of the chair, fearing he was in the presence of a rich madman. He’d seen some of those who hired Sherpas to help them get to the top — men and women who had money to spare but could barely climb off their cots, never mind up the great mountain. They expected literally to be carried up there. And Namche had friends who had died trying to do just that. No amount of money was worth that. He had always picked carefully those he’d guided.
“The party consists of only one person. You must get him to these spots.” Namche turned in surprise to his right as a three-dimensional image of Mount Everest suddenly appeared, hovering in the air. There were three red dots flashing. Namche immediately recognized the locations. The first was along the northeast ridge approach, a most difficult route. The other two were close together on the Kanshung Face, a place where no one went because it was not on either of the two approaches to the summit. It was hard to tell because of the flickering image, but Namche had to wonder what the dots represented, as he knew the Face was almost sheer for over a vertical mile. Among Sherpas, the top of the Kanshung Face was a place of legend where none he knew dared approach.
“Forty-eight hours is impossible,” Namche said, still marveling over the holographic image. He had been to the summit and lived in the shadow of the mountain all his life, but he’d never seen it presented like this. “Acclimatization takes at the very minimum two weeks at base camp or else—”
“There is no need for acclimatization,” the voice said. “My man is ready to climb. And you will get as high as you can using the most advanced helicopter in the world. This helicopter will drop you off at 17,000 feet right here.” A dot glowed on the image. “My man just needs you to lead him the last bit to these places.”
“Why?” Namche hadn’t meant for it to be so blunt, but it was all coming so quickly and the situation was so strange. He had no idea who he was speaking with.
“Because we are paying you one million dollars to do so.”
Namche wasn’t sure what to say to that. It was more than he could ever hope to make in a lifetime. And he knew he didn’t have many more climbs left. He had already cheated the fates too many times. He glanced at the image. The legends said there had been strangers who’d climbed Everest in the distant past and put something on the mountain at the top of the Kanshung Face. Something special. Namche’s curiosity was warring with his fear.