porters and yaks to be discussed, then George briefly described their six clients, mostly for the benefit of the two Sherpas who would act as second guides to Ken and Al. The two Britons had been on Everest the year before, but with a different company who they believed had let them down. Now they had come to George and his US-based Mountain People to make one more attempt. The two Americans were experienced mountaineers too; the Australian was a less well-known quantity but he had been recommended by previous clients.
The Canadian doctor, George explained, had climbed McKinley in a group led by Ed Vansittart. Everyone at the table nodded. Ed had written to him to say that Dr Buchanan was an excellent medic, who really understood the demands of high-altitude climbing. She was in a unique position in the group because she had a staff role, but she was also a client who hoped to reach the summit with the rest of them. Although not highly experienced herself, she was physically strong and as tough-minded as any mountaineer he had ever met. She was also good company, he had added.
‘I think we’re lucky to have her with us,’ George concluded. ‘Al agreed with me.’
‘Seems A-okay to me,’ Ken said.
Al listened impassively to all of this, with the edge of his thumbnail minutely chafing the corner of his mouth.
George was folding up his lists. ‘And Adam Vries is sick.’
Ken clicked his tongue.
‘What’s the problem?’ asked Al.
‘Just a gut thing. A day or two, the doc says. We leave the day after tomorrow, as planned.’
Once the last pieces of equipment and batches of food supplies had been assembled, there was nothing more for the expedition members to do in Kathmandu but enjoy what would almost certainly be their last hot baths and clean sheets for two months.
‘Another beer?’ George asked them all, by way of a conclusion.
Ken had glanced up. ‘Speak of the devil,’ he said in a warmer voice than he had used before. The rest of them looked in the same direction.
Finch was hesitating in the doorway. Filling most of the wall behind the little group of climbers was a huge colour photograph. Against a hyper-real blue sky stood the huge bracket ridge and summit of Nuptse. Everest stood to the left, farther back and seeming smaller than its neighbour, and in the foreground was the monstrous spillage of the icefall and the dirty grey rubble of the Khumbu glacier.
George beckoned cheerfully, his head bobbing up to obliterate the South Col. ‘Here’s our doc. Come and join us, Finch.’ She stood at the edge of the group. Ken levered himself out of his wicker chair and offered it, but she only smiled at him. ‘I’ve just been to see Adam again.’
‘And?’
‘It’s a bad bout. But he should be okay to leave as planned.’
‘Finch, this is Pemba, and Mingma.’ She shook hands with each of them. ‘And Alyn Hood.’
Al had risen to his feet. He was much taller than Finch but when their eyes met they seemed on a level.
‘Hello,’ Finch said quietly.
Al said nothing at all. He held on to her hand for one second, then carefully released it. In the confusion of introductions no one else noticed the way that their eyes briefly locked and the flash of acknowledgement that passed between them. No one could have guessed that they knew each other already, or deduced a single episode of their history from the way they moved quietly apart again.
The helicopter ride was nothing like flying the trim A-Star with Ralf across the serene silvery expanses of the Canadian mountains. The Asian Airlines flight from Kathmandu to Lukla was a pensioned-off ex-Russian machine that lifted off the runway abruptly, without pre-take-off formalities, and juddered over the grey haze of the valley towards the mountains.
Finch sat in her metal seat and tightened the webbing strap across her lap, trying not to think about crashing into the fields beneath them. Her knees were wedged against a mountain of expedition baggage secured under netting that filled the centre of the cabin. She had checked them on board already, but she searched out the barrels in which her medical supplies were packed and kept her eye on them as if they might jump up and roll away. Anything was better than looking out of the porthole behind her head, either at the view down to steep ridges striped with different coloured crops or upwards to the blanket of mist that blotted out the peaks. Bundled up beside her with his chin on his chest was Adam Vries. The noise of the engines made conversation difficult, but she nudged him and raised her eyebrows, you okay?
He nodded wearily. Two days of sickness had left him grey and listless.
The helicopter tilted sharply and changed direction, climbing steadily. Finch closed her eyes and swallowed hard to equalise the pressure in her ears. When she looked up she saw that Sam McGrath was grinning at her from his seat on the other side of the netting. She gave him what she intended as a glare in return. He had seen her abject fear on the bad flight up to Vancouver and she wasn’t pleased to have him watching this fresh ordeal.
She wasn’t quite sure yet how he had insinuated himself, but he was here for the ride and maybe a couple of days’ trekking with the expedition on the walk-in towards Base Camp at the foot of the Everest icefall. She hadn’t seen him for the whole of the last day in Kathmandu and had concluded that after all he had been easy enough to shake off. Her relief at this had, she was certain, been entirely untinged by regret. And then, in this morning’s bleary dawn at the airport, there he was again. Standing joking with Rix and Mark Mason at the check-in for Lukla, towering over the packs of Japanese tourists who were waiting to see if the weather would lift and allow them to embark on sightseeing flights around the Everest massif.
‘What’s he doing here?’ she had murmured to George.
‘They went out on the beer again and Rix and Sandy just asked me if he could come along for part of the walk. All the guys seem to have really taken to him.’ George shrugged. ‘Makes no difference to me, so long as he pays his way. Might even be helpful. He looks in good shape. You know him anyway, don’t you?’
‘No. I just met him once, on a flight into Vancouver.’
‘Coincidence.’
Finch noticed that Sam fitted easily into the group. He wore well-trodden hiking boots and similar clothes to the other men, and he looked just as fit and testosteronically confident. But of course, she remembered, he was an almost-Olympic marathon runner. He was probably stronger than any of them.
‘Good morning,’ he said cheerfully to her. And then, ‘You’re not happy about this, are you?’
‘Is my happiness or otherwise particularly relevant?’
‘Of course it is.’ He had mobile eyebrows and they flattened now in a straight, sincere line. There was a puppyishness about him that irritated her.
She made an effort to sound neutral. ‘It doesn’t make any difference to me if you walk in with the expedition. It’s just a few days’ hiking.’
He smiled at her. ‘I’m looking forward to it. Magnificent scenery, I believe.’
Thin
