The Best American Mystery Stories, Volume 17 (24 page)

I instructed the group to put their skins back on.

“What the fuck for?” George asked. “We're going downhill.”

“There are some rocky parts ahead of us. It's easier to control your speed with skins.”

“That's because you don't know how to ski,” George said.

“Look, George, are you here for the turns or to get across the border?”

He glared at me but didn't reply. I saw a quick smile flit across Thanh's usually impassive face.

With the skins on, we could no longer just swoop down the slopes. We had to zigzag to make the descent gradual, and this slowed our progress dramatically.

Despite this, there were a couple of places where we had to make a traverse on a narrow ledge with a steep slope below us. I generally stuck with Gord and coaxed him through these spots. I kept telling him to look ahead, but somehow he could not resist occasionally glancing down the steep drop beside him. Sometimes his legs would begin to tremble, and then I would tell him to stop, breathe deeply, and would not allow him to go on until his legs were steady.

We were now descending through a light mist, but it had stopped snowing, and visibility had improved to the point that on occasion I could actually see the glacier below. Unfortunately, at our pace we wouldn't be able to reach it before dark, but at least I could find a more sheltered spot, in case the wind picked up. I decided to keep moving as long as possible, despite the fact that even the stronger members of our party were starting to show signs of fatigue. I called for a quick stop to allow everyone to hydrate and gulp down some food, and then we pressed on.

Gord was starting to handle the difficult parts better. Given a couple of years in the backcountry, he would probably become a competent mountaineer.

We were crossing a part that was fairly steep. I had asked the others to wait while I went ahead and packed down a firm, if narrow, traverse into the side of the steep slope. There was a cliff band above us, so there was little danger of avalanche from that direction. By cutting the snowpack with my skis, I was testing to see whether the slope below us was likely to go. If it did go, I had little hope of getting rescued by my companions. The one quick transceiver exercise we had done indicated that it would take them far too long to find and dig me out.

The slope did not slide, and I went back and instructed the group to cross one at a time and wait for me at a protected spot ahead.

They navigated the traverse, and I could see them waiting ahead. Only Gord and I were left. I had to allow him to cross by himself, because the traverse was too narrow for two.

“Keep your weight on your downhill ski,” I said. He nodded, and started across. He was doing well until he came to the middle. At this spot the slope above was so steep that Gord could reach out with his left hand and almost touch the slope above him. I suppose the temptation to steady himself was too much, and he leaned in toward the mountain. Before I could warn him, his skis slid out from under him, and he started to rag-doll down the slope to his right, which was equally steep.

An experienced mountaineer would have been able to self-arrest, but Gord was anything but experienced. He kept going, flipping head over heels. While terrifying, the damage would not be severe, since the snow was soft. But as a sudden breeze blew apart the curtain of mist, I suddenly realized that there was another rock band far below us. The slope was relatively gentle there, but Gord was heading straight for it at high speed. The small figure hit the rocks and came to a stop. He did not move.

I quickly stripped off my skins and skied down at full speed. Kicking off my skis and dropping my pack, I ran out into the rocks.

Gord was unconscious, but there was no sign that he had hit his head. The pack had also protected his spine. However, his right pant leg was soaked with blood. I cut away his pants and nearly vomited. The broken end of a bone was protruding through the skin of his thigh.

I put a tourniquet on his thigh, because the blood was pulsing out of the wound. Then I used his poles, which had been clutched in his hands, to fashion a splint.

By this time the others had arrived. I don't know how they had come down the steep slope. In retrospect, I was amazed that we had not triggered an avalanche in the process.

 

We made camp on a flat spot nearby. While the rest retired to their individual snow caves, Yuri and George conferred in Russian about Gord. I noticed that Yuri referred to him as “professor,” and I finally understood why they'd bring along someone so inexperienced. They needed him to process the drugs they carried.

I was trying to make dinner from the sparse supplies we had left. Gord was laid out on the flat platform we had dug for the kitchen. Though he was unconscious, he moaned occasionally, and his breathing seemed shallow. We had to get him to a hospital soon, or he would lose his leg. Worse, he could die from shock and infection.

Yuri injected him, and Gord's breathing became more regular, and he seemed to go into a deep sleep. George told Yuri to give him another injection, setting off a rapid discussion that I couldn't follow. Yuri injected Gord again.

 

It took me a long time to melt the snow required to make our evening meal. We had food enough for one more day, and at best we still had two days of travel ahead of us, possibly three. The liquid would allow me to stretch the supplies.

As I went about making dinner, I tried not to think about the events of the day. I had fucked up in so many ways on this trip! If my examiners had witnessed this disaster, they would have immediately yanked my guide's ticket for incompetence. Fortunately for me, the illicit nature of the job ruled out making a report, but that didn't change the fact that, in my own heart, I knew.

Gord had been placed into Yuri's snow cave and appeared to be sleeping peacefully. The rest of the group gathered quietly in the kitchen to consume dinner, and eventually the big Russian joined them. When he walked past me, my nose indicated that happy hour had already started.

To my astonishment, Omar spoke to him in Russian, and then Thanh joined the conversation. I finally realized that this was a Russian mob operation after all. Probably George, Gord, Scarface, and Omar were Uzbeks or something. Where Thanh fit in was puzzling, but he spoke Russian, so he was definitely part of the organization.

While my mind was occupied with trying to sort this out, the bursts of Russian became an unintelligible background noise, and thus I was surprised when Yuri suddenly jumped on Omar, bringing him to the ground, and started to pummel his face with his big fist. After a moment of shocked hesitation, I tried to pull the big Russian off, but it wasn't until Thanh helped me that we were able to stop Yuri from totally demolishing Omar's face. Even the two of us had difficulty restraining the bastard—he kept trying to break loose to get at Omar again, all the while screaming what I recognized as curses that called into question the sexual practices of Omar's mother. It took George to finally resolve the conflict. He simply pulled the gun that I had seen once before, issued a terse command in a low, guttural voice, and Yuri slunk off to his cave. The remains of his dinner lay spilled in the snow, so I suspect he supplemented his meal from his flask.

Omar sat on the snow, blood dripping between his fingers as he held his face. Thanh and I convinced him to let us inspect the damage; his right eye was swollen shut, a front tooth had been knocked out, and blood was streaming from his nose and mouth. As far as I could tell, his nose wasn't broken. I fixed him up as best I could. By this time it was dark, and everyone drifted off to their caves to sleep, except for Thanh, who stayed behind to clean up and help with preparing food for the next day.

“Where did you learn Russian?” I asked him.

He looked at me, and for a moment I thought I had made a mistake. “University,” he finally said.

It seemed that getting information from Thanh was hopeless, and we finished our task in silence. I was about to go to my cave, but to my surprise, Thanh sat down on one of the seats we had carved out of the snow. He pulled something from his pocket. His headlamp revealed that it was five cigarettes inside a plastic bag. He carefully took one out, found a lighter, and lit it. There was evident pleasure in his features as he inhaled deeply.

“Why did you visit Vietnam?” he asked, looking at me through the tendrils of smoke drifting out of his nostrils.

“I was climbing in Asia, and I had always wanted to see the country. I heard about what the Americans did...”

His face turned hard, and he inhaled deeply. Then he turned off his headlamp, so I could no longer make out his features. His voice had a haunting quality, disembodied, as if a specter from the past had replaced the material presence that he had presented to my eyes a few moments before.

“You don't know what the Americans did. Nobody really understands.”

I was standing near him. I had switched off my headlamp earlier, and I waited in silence, not moving, not even breathing. The dark night congealed around us, except for the orange glow from the tip of Thanh's cigarette. Time stood still.

“I loved my sister. She was ten years older, like a second mother. The American soldiers came to my father's restaurant, and she served them food.”

There was a long silence. The cigarette glowed bright, faded, glowed bright again.

“I tried to pull him off her, but I was small, only four years old. He smelled like rotten milk. I didn't understand until I was much older what the soldier did. When my father found out, he went to the colonel. They offered him money, and my mother said to take it. Two weeks later my sister walked into the river.” The orange tip of the cigarette described an arc in the blackness and was extinguished. I heard his footsteps crunching in the snow as he headed for his cave.

I stood there, motionless, for a long time.

 

I woke the next morning and lay snuggled in my warm sleeping bag. I could hear that the wind had picked up during the night; the storm had regained some of its fury. I turned over on my stomach and saw the weak gray light of dawn filtered by swirling snow. I could barely make out Yuri's bulky form as he crawled out of his cave and lumbered toward the cave occupied by George.

The memory of the events of the previous day shot through me as if I had just grabbed a high-voltage cable. We had to get Gord to a hospital right away. At best we were two days from civilization, considering that we would have to carry him in some kind of toboggan. We were running out of food, and the storm would make travel almost impossible. My incompetence had created this crisis.

I shot out of my cave, and was just pulling on my jacket when I saw that Yuri and George were dragging Gord out of Yuri's cave. I rushed over and immediately saw that Gord was dead.

“Froze,” George said. Though Gord's face was as white as alabaster, I could still see traces of dried foam at the corners of his lips. Only once before in my life, during my druggie days in Berkeley, had I seen a face like that.

“I'll make a toboggan,” I said.

“What for?” George asked.

“How else are we going to carry him?”

George and Yuri exchanged glances, and suddenly I realized how naive I had been. What did I expect? That they would take Gord to the U.S. authorities for an autopsy?

The realization that I was party to murder hit me with the force of a ten-ton truck. I stood frozen, while George and Yuri dragged the body off into the swirling snow.

I'm ashamed to say that I went back to my snow cave, took off my jacket and boots, and crawled back into the warmth of my sleeping bag. I fell asleep immediately.

 

When I woke again, I felt like I had been drugged. My limbs were leaden, and I had lost the desire to ever move again. I lay there for what seemed like a long time, my head pulled into the cocoon of my sleeping bag, my eyes squeezed shut. I kept hoping it had all been a bad dream, but the howling of the wind outside pulled me back to the inescapable reality of total failure, of my culpability.

When I emerged, the full force of the storm hit me. I had to lean forward to move toward the kitchen, and I couldn't see more than a couple of meters as fat flakes were whipped into my face.

As I got closer, I saw that the whole group was gathered in the kitchen, with their packs in a circle. Were these people totally insane? There was no way we could move in such a storm. I trudged toward the group, and I could hear snatches of loud conversation above the wind but could not make out any words. I noticed that Gord's pack was in the middle of the circle, and they were dividing up the contents among the other packs. George was just removing something; it looked like a blue metal canister. I stopped. Why would they have the drugs in metal containers? George carried the small canister as if it were quite heavy, in fact as if it were solid metal.

They had their backs to me and, with the wind howling, did not notice my approach. I quickly retreated to my cave, crawled in, and lay there thinking for a long time. Being an incompetent guide was one thing; there's no excuse for being profoundly stupid.

 

I had drifted off to sleep again, and awoke to George yelling at me to wake up. He had stuck his head into my little cave and was shaking my shoulder with a grip that was unnecessarily rough.

When I emerged, the group was assembled in the kitchen, ready to move. It was snowing, but the wind had died down. There was a small pile of personal gear—sleeping bags and clothes—which George told me to put into my pack.

I tried to talk them out of moving with such poor visibility.

“What do you suggest,” George asked, “that we sit here and starve to death?”

We made slow progress for the remainder of the day. The packs were heavier, the terrain steep, and what had happened to Gord made everyone cautious. I noticed that even Scarface, who was clearly the most experienced in the mountains, was not as fluid in his motions.