The Ascent(89)

“Because I know what happened.”

I looked at him. I tried to read his face but found it an impossible task. It was like trying to sense emotion from a tombstone. “What do you mean?”

“The mountains are a dangerous place. Your friends suffered unfortunate fates. Accidents,” he said, his voice lowering, his eyes steady on me, “have a way of happening.”

I was about to say something—anything—but he continued before I could open my mouth.

“These lands are sacred lands,” said Shomas. “We do not need people coming here to investigate matters. We do not need people coming here to learn what happened. The Godesh Ridge does not need more foolish explorers marking the snow with traitorous footprints.”

Expelling a gust of breath, he turned and trudged up the side of the road. Where he went I could not tell; the sun had already set, covering the world in a blanket of darkness, and I lost him somewhere around the bend.

4



ONE WEEK LATER, WE DEPARTED FOR LONDON ON

the same flight. Petras slept, and I thumbed through various magazines as well as a newly purchased copy of the George Mallory book I hadn’t finished. Mallory and his climbing partner, Andrew Irvine, disappeared while climbing the northeast ridge of Everest in 1924. His body wasn’t discovered until 1999, and although the book skimped on description, I could only imagine what would have been left behind after being lost out there in the unforgiving wilds of Everest for seventy-five years.

In London, we boarded separate planes—John Petras to Wisconsin, me to Baltimore-Washington International. Petras’s plane left first. At his gate, we embraced, like brothers about to part.

“There’s one thing we haven’t discussed yet.”

I knew what it was. I nodded, rubbing my forehead with aching fingers. “I know. What do you think?”

“I think we can go back and tell the truth,” he said. “Call the police,

tell them what happened. Tell them everything about Andrew.”

“Then there’s the other option.”

Petras raked his fingers through his beard and down his neck. “It was all an accident, a horrible accident. Just like the Sherpas said.”

“I don’t have it in me to go through all that right now,” I said. “I may never have it in me.”

“Then it was an accident.”

“And Andrew?”

“Another accident, just like the others. Andrew Trumbauer went over the cliff. End of story.” One hand on my shoulder, he squeezed my aching muscles and smiled. Then he turned and shuffled through the doors and down the gangway to the airplane.

You only saw what the land let you see, I thought.

I remained at his gate until the plane taxied down the runway, my nose nearly pressed against the window, my eyes as vacant as twin chunks of ice.





PART FOUR





THE GHOSTS WE RETURN TO





Chapter 18


1



AS THE MOON PASSED BEHIND A DRIFT OF DARk

clouds, I turned away from the windows and encircled Marta in my arms. She sighed. Her warm legs intertwined with mine beneath the sheets; she hugged my arms. I peppered her neck with tiny kisses. “I need to get up,” I whispered in her ear. “Hmm.” Warmly.

Five minutes later, dressed in running shorts and Nikes, I took off along the waterfront. To my right, the bay glistened with moonlight, this distant shimmer of the Bay Bridge like something tangible materializing through the fog of a dream. I ran through Eastport and over the small drawbridge, flanked on both sides by the lull of sleeping sailboats. Into downtown, I ran up Main Street and downgraded to a slow jog around Church Circle. The conical spire of St. Anne’s looked like a stalagmite rising off the floor of a limestone cave. At this hour, the city was asleep. Only the occasional vehicle rolled past me on the narrow roadways. But other than that, all was silent.

It had been four months since I’d returned from Nepal. A strict regime of exercise and healthy eating had seen to it that I’d fully recovered from the events that occurred on the Godesh Ridge. Now,halfway around the world and a year in the future, it was almost possible to convince myself, particularly on nights such as these, that it had all been a nightmare.

Almost possible.

Of course, there were still the actual nightmares—waking up slick with sweat and with a scream caught in my throat from some half-remembered dream where I ran through feet of snow as some faceless, heartless creature pursued me down the face of a mountain. Often the chase would end when I turned a sharp corner and found myself at the edge of a cliff. Behind me, my pursuer slowed to a predatory crawl, hidden in the heavy shadows. My choices were simple: either jump off the cliff or face whatever followed me. For whatever reason, I usually woke up before having to make the decision.

Immediately following my return, I was obsessed with researching the background of the men who had died on the Godesh Ridge, including Andrew Trumbauer. And in most cases, I was able to derive some reason why Andrew would have wanted revenge on them …

Donald Shotsky was the easiest, as I already had some information to go by. He’d been a fisherman and a deckhand on various crab boats in the Bering Sea. Years ago, he’d been a crewman on a ship called the Kula Plate, along with Andrew.

Eventually I tracked down the captain—a grizzled veteran of the Korean War named Footie Teacar—who confirmed the story of how Shotsky had nearly gone over the side only to be saved by a greenhorn named Andy something-or-other. Of course, Teacar’s description of the greenhorn matched Andrew Trumbauer perfectly.