The Everest Files (20 page)

He brought out the shrine bell. Clutched it like a talisman to his breast as he chanted the words of a timeless prayer.

A plate of flowers was there. The petals shrivelled but perhaps the gods would not care. He scattered them around the image of Indra, while cries of ‘Kami' rang shrill across the snowfield.

Footsteps were approaching. Faster. Faster.

‘Gods will you forgive me?' Kami muttered.

He rang the bell, the sound clear and light against the thunderous roar of the storm. Shreeya was so far away but in this moment of delusion he imagined she might hear that noise and be heartened by it.

‘Kami!' Dark shapes were out there, picking a precarious way across to the shrine.

‘Leave me alone!' he yelled. But his scream was swallowed up with a further mighty clap of thunder and through the driving snow he could see a vast shape racing down from the threatening slope.

Avalanche. He stepped out of the shrine and stood there, watching in awe as the night became a solid, threatening force.

The roar of the airborne snow merged with the rolling thunder of the tempest until it was impossible to tell which part of the wall of sound was avalanche and which was storm. It sounded like the whole mountain had split in two.

‘Run! RUN!' Brennan's scream was raw.

Kami turned. He knew it was pointless to run further.

And suddenly he understood; he had asked the gods for forgiveness and this was their answer.

It was all so clear. And death was so close.

Kami raised his arms. If this was his fate then he wanted to face it without fear. Then a dark shape flew across the ice slope towards him, half running, half falling. It was Sasha and the last thing Kami remembered feeling was her body wrapping around him, protecting him, cradling his head and bracing herself for the impact as the mighty wall of snow tumbled down the slope towards them.

Then they were swept away, glissading, the night air filling with powdered ice as Kami felt the darkness engulf him.

The sun was low in the sky. The shutters of Kami's little bedroom were casting long shadows across the room. I looked at my watch. It was almost 5 p.m. Kami had talked through the whole day and he was now so wiped out he could barely keep his eyes open.

I was also exhausted but I felt no need of a rest; in fact I would have listened to Kami for days on end if he could have continued. The whole story had been shocking, not least because of the totally unflattering portrait it painted of Alex Brennan, a man I had admired on the occasions I had seen him interviewed on TV.

Above all, there was a vitality to Kami's telling of the tale, an urgency, a total lack of self pity that was quite amazing. ‘Don't cry,' he had told me several times during the story, ‘There is no time for crying.'

Dawa entered the room. ‘Better you let him sleep now,' he said. He had looked after us kindly during the long hours, bringing us lentils and rice and tea.

I gently unfolded my fingers from Kami's hand, and picked up the tray of empty dishes and tea cups. I took them to Dawa's little hut and washed them clean before walking out onto the patio. The afternoon had a mellow feel to it and I stretched my arms above my head to ease some stiffness.

Then I remembered the shadow I had seen at the bottom of the cliff, the half seen figure that had spooked me when I had first arrived. That sensation of being watched. The odd conviction that someone, or something was there – silent, ever vigilant.

I re-entered the bungalow, ‘Dawa!' I called to him urgently, ‘Kami never told me about the carer. Can you ... ?'

But Dawa shook his head firmly.

‘I have told you that I am not permitted to speak of this,' he said politely. And he closed the door.

I was uncertain about what to do. Should I try and kill my curiosity? I had seen Kami, after all, and heard his whole story. Wasn't that enough?

But
was it
the whole story? I still wasn't sure.

So I wandered to the forest edge and stared towards the cliff face which was hidden there. Through small gaps in the trees I could see the darker texture of rock. High above the trees I could see the upper reaches of the outcrop – two or three hundred metres high.

I noticed a track, not much more than a faint line of compressed earth. I followed it, a meandering trail of some thirty metres which stopped abruptly at the rock face.

Standing at the foot of the cliff I craned my neck backwards and gazed vertically up towards the high stony lip. Scudding gangs of clouds were streaming past and the cliff seemed to be tottering with them. It was seriously steep, I realised, and not something I would want to try and climb without a rope and a partner.

But then I saw the slick shine of bamboo. A series of rickety ladders had been built up the face, and I guessed they were probably the work of honey hunters. I counted six or seven leading up and the hint of some dark cavity set into the rock at the high point.

I crossed to the first of the ladders and gave it a shake. It felt rugged enough but the thought of committing my life to those flimsy things was seriously scary. I wasted a bit of time hunting around the base of the cliff for some easier trail upwards but there was none so I steeled myself for the climb.

I stepped onto the ladder. The rungs were brittle, fractured with age; with every nervous move upwards I felt my weight could shatter them to bits. A creeping fungus had attacked the bamboo; the wood was mottled with powdery black mould and my hands quickly became stained with the dark spores.

Two more ladders gained me another twenty metres or so of height and spat me out, panting hard, on a section of broken up ground where scrambling was possible.

I found a dry patch of rock where I could rest my legs and I was pleased to see how much height I had gained. Far below, the bungalow seemed no bigger than a doll's house. It looked like the slightest flash flood could sweep the whole place away in the blink of an eye.

I traversed across the face and came to the next steep section; it was back to the ladders.

These final sections of bamboo felt even more dodgy than the ones lower down. There were places where the whole thing seemed to be held in place by little more than tendrils of moss and caterpillar spit. It swayed and creaked and groaned under my weight, and I could easily imagine myself crashing down to the valley floor hundreds of feet below in a blizzard of ripped out rocks and bits of bamboo.

A bee came to investigate. It buzzed around my head for a few seconds and then landed on one of the rungs to check me out, its furry orange body pumping as it rested.

Then another arrived. I swatted it away, but my movement attracted several more of the insects and I got a sudden spasm of fear.

Suddenly across the cliff face, just a few metres away, I saw the hive, a massive honeycomb completely covered with tens of thousands of the bees.

As I watched in horrified fascination the bees somehow simultaneously changed their body positions, causing a shift of colour from indigo-black to a warning flash of orange-red and then back again. The thing looked like a vast evil eye and I knew that there was nowhere I could run to.

The buzzing of the hive seemed to rise a few notches, become angrier.

Suddenly a voice came from above. A rich American voice.

‘Don't worry about the bees. They won't touch you this late in the day. Come on up.'

I saw a long haired figure silhouetted against the juddering clouds. Then it retreated back into the rock.

As I reached the final rung of the ladder I realised I was looking into the dark interior of a cave. The final move up off the ladder was a tricky one and I made a clumsy job of it, but a strong hand shot out of the gloom and I clasped it gratefully as I lumbered up over the lip and found myself on a narrow rocky balcony.

I looked into the cave. And there, partly obscured in the shadows, was Alex Brennan.

‘Who were you expecting,' he asked with a smile, ‘Marlon Brando?'

He shifted his position and gestured for me to enter the cave. As my eyes adjusted to the low light I could see the shelter was the size of a small room. The floor was dry and covered with Indian-style rugs. A few meagre possessions were heaped in the corner, a sleeping bag, a metal box, some pots and pans.

Brennan was bare footed, dressed in a faded T-shirt and a tatty pair of jeans. He was not much changed from Kami's description of him, the blonde locks a little longer and more matted perhaps, the athletic tone of his body softened and not so sharp.

My mind was in catch up mode, in a kind of shock. I had figured that Kami's mysterious carer would be a local person, a holy man perhaps or maybe a member of his family. Not for a moment had I thought that it would be the great Alex Brennan himself …

‘Kami's a special person, don't you think?' he said.

I could only nod my agreement.

‘You want some tea?'

He brought out a brightly-coloured Thermos flask from beneath a blanket. I nodded my thanks and he poured the yellow fluid into a chipped china bowl.

‘Dawa makes it,' he said as he offered me the cup, ‘it's really not so bad when you get used to it.'

I sipped at the lukewarm tea.

‘You were watching me these last days,' I said.

‘Just checking you out. Plus I had to put you through a forty-eight hour quarantine to make sure you weren't carrying some bug.'

Stupidly, I hadn't thought of that. But it did make perfect sense. Kami was hardly in a position to fight off infection and even a dose of flu could kill him.

‘I guess he told you everything?' he continued.

‘As far as the avalanche.'

‘Ah. And did he tell you Sasha died?'

‘No.' I digested this news, feeling real sorrow. Kami had painted an affectionate picture of the American journalist even if their friendship hadn't always been straightforward.

‘I thought he probably wouldn't go that far,' Brennan went on carefully, ‘that's where the story gets real hard for him. She was trying to protect him. When we dug them out of the snow she was curled around his body, cradling his head, shielding him from the ice blocks.'

Brennan sipped his tea.

‘She gave her life for him,' he said simply, ‘that was an outstanding thing to do.'

Somewhere outside the cave I could hear birds – black ravens – play-fighting up and down the cliffs.

‘Did she post a final article before she died?' I asked.

‘Oh sure. I found a draft of it in her tent after the avalanche. Kami had told her everything and she'd already emailed it back to New York. That was her job after all.'

‘Did it get published? I don't remember seeing anything about it.'

‘No. It never made it into print. It didn't need to. Word had already got out all over Washington. I had my enemies, people who wanted to bring me down. Sometimes they prefer to sit on something like that to neutralise you. It's more powerful that way, once they had that ammunition I was finished as a politician.'

‘But why this?' I gestured to the Spartan interior of the cave, ‘are you a holy man now?'

Brennan kind of laughed.

‘Let's just say I had a bit of a re-think on my life,' he said, ‘Threw away all the things I didn't need and took a different path.'

‘A religious one.'

‘Some might think that,' he said. ‘I do a lot of meditation. A lot of thinking. But really I'm just here to do the right thing for Kami. For as long as I can.'

‘And the secrecy? Why did you come here of all places?'

Brennan shook his head. ‘That was Kami. He picked this place himself. I think he felt he had caused too much upset, too much grief to those he loved. He thought it was easier for everyone if he just disappeared.'

‘He's become something of a legend.'

‘He's earned that,' Brennan laughed. ‘That's the least he deserves.'

I drank more of the tea.

‘Do you ever go home? I mean back to the States?'

‘No. I sold everything. Cut away from all the people I cared for and who cared for me.'

‘That must have been tough.'

‘I'm not saying it's easy,' he agreed, ‘Being nobody is a whole lot harder than being somebody, believe me.'

Brennan manoeuvred himself to the mouth of the cave and beckoned me over to his side so we could look out over the valley.

‘I want to show you something … Look, over there.'

I followed his oustretched arm and I suddenly noticed something really quite amazing. The encroaching night had plunged the valley into near darkness and the far wall was a distant rampart of green-black rock.

But there was something else.

There, resting just a
fraction
higher than the barrier of deep shadow, I could see the tiny triangle of a single sunlit peak. It was far away – very far in fact, collecting the dying rays of the sun which was setting somewhere out of view. The impression was of a golden pinpoint of light, an illuminated pyramid resting magically on a dark wall. It was a stunning visual effect.

‘Now you know why I chose this place,' Brennan said softly, ‘I get to see my nemesis every evening.'

‘Your nemesis?'

Then I felt stupid. Of
course
it was Everest, what else could it possibly be? Only the ultimate summit could jut so far towards the heavens as to be visible from this distance.

I drank in the splendour of the scene, concentrating hard, wanting to lock the moment away in my memory for ever it was so mesmerising.

‘I did see a holy man for a while,' he said quietly. ‘Do you know what he told me?'

‘What?'

‘He said that the day I would be reborn, the day I would be free, would be the day I could look on that vision and not feel even the slightest degree of pain or regret.'

I could see the sunlight was dying on the summit.

‘Are you getting close?'

Brennan sighed. ‘I'm not there yet,' he said, ‘But one day … maybe.'

He stared off to the distance as the conversation petered out and seemed not to share the embarrassment I felt at the silence. It was disturbing to gaze at him in those moments; like looking at the calm surface of a reservoir when you know there is a sunken village drowned in its depths, or gazing at a vast field of innocent grass in some quiet rural place when you know there are musketballs and flintlocks buried deep in the mulch from some ancient bloody battle.

Then Brennan broke the spell, just at the same instant that the light on Everest's summit finally died away.

‘You really have to go,' he told me urgently, ‘you don't want to be doing those ladders in the dark.'

He was right. The prospect was terrifying. I had already stayed too long but one last question was pressing me;

‘How long do you think you will live here?' I asked him.

Brennan thought about it. ‘One day maybe one of those ladders will break,' he said with a wry smile, ‘that or the bees will get me. So long, my friend, go well.'