The Everest Files (10 page)

Kami knew that something had changed but he wasn't sure what.

Two days of hard grafting followed. Days in which the expedition nudged closer to the five thousand metre level where the thin air would start to become a real challenge. Michael – the taciturn security guard who was supposed to be one of Brennan's bodyguards – succumbed to a case of altitude sickness. He battled on for twenty-four hours with constant nausea and a pounding headache, but it was hopeless. His body just couldn't adjust to the altitude and he was totally unable to sleep or function properly.

‘Michael's going back to the States,' Brennan told the team at Pheriche. ‘Kurt will handle the security from now on.'

‘One down,' Jamling said quietly as they watched him move away sadly down the trail. ‘Five to go!'

Other climbing teams were around them now, also with long lines of heavily laden pack animals. Sometimes they had to queue to cross the river, waiting patiently as up to a hundred yaks picked their way reluctantly across narrow bridges.

‘I never thought there'd be traffic jams up here,' Kami heard Brennan say to Tenzing.

‘Wait till you get into the icefall,' Tenzing replied. ‘Then it gets really bad.'

That night the team camped close to the snout of the Khumbu glacier, at a scrappy lodging place called Gorak Shep. This was the last human habitation before Base Camp and it had a real frontier feel to it.

Now it was Sasha's turn to get altitude sickness – not as seriously as Michael, but badly enough to leave her exhausted.

‘I'm going to stay here and rest for twenty-four hours,' She told the team. ‘I'll catch you up at Base Camp.'

The next day was a day of note – the first trip up to Base Camp and a fifteen-kilometre hike up the Khumbu glacier. It was the first time that Kami had walked on such a massive glacier and he enjoyed the sensation of being on the ice, sensing the huge power of the slowly-moving monster as it ground down the valley.

The surrounding scenery was the most spectacular he had ever seen. They were now in the heartland of the Himalaya and the walls that flanked the glacier were soaring ramparts of almost vertical rock and ice. Everest was hidden from view, locked away behind the savage wall of Nuptse.

He took his camera out to take a shot, then muttered a curse as he remembered Pemba still had his memory card.

Instead, he resolved to try and imprint it all in his mind. Apart from anything else, he wanted to be able to relive the whole journey for Shreeya when he returned home. He knew she would want him to tell her absolutely everything about the expedition, both good and bad.

They had a lunch break halfway up the glacier – the Westerners dining on cheese omelettes and Spam fritters, the Sherpas wolfing down rice and lentils.

Midway through the meal Alex Brennan got a call on his satphone. His amiable mood quickly vanished as he talked, and afterwards, with a face like thunder, he summoned Kurt to his side.

‘Looks like the boss got some bad news.' Tenzing commented nervously.

Kurt came over a short time later.

‘Alex and I are going ahead,' he told them in clipped tones. ‘There's going to be a meeting at Base Camp. Everyone has to be there.'

The unfriendly tone of the order took the Sherpas by surprise.

‘What's gone wrong?' Norgay wondered aloud.

The odd encounter unsettled the group and Kami couldn't help notice that Nima had gone very quiet.

‘You look like you've seen a ghost,' Kami observed.

‘Must be the altitude,' Nima muttered.

There was a lot of traffic during the last two hours. Long lines of yaks and porters were moving in both directions and it felt to Kami like the trek was going on forever. But finally they came around the last graceful curve of the glacier and Base Camp was before them.

‘What a place,' he remarked, struck by the forbidding vision in front of him. The stark reality of the location was very far from the romantic spot he had imagined.

Really there was nothing to distinguish it from the rest of the glacier. It just happened to be the last bit of flat-ish ground before the serious climbing began.

‘No time to rest,' Tenzing chided them. ‘We have to get the big tents up fast.'

The Sherpas wearily got to work, hauling the vast canvas tents out of their stuff sacks and assembling the metal frames. Alex and Kurt had vanished into a communications tent belonging to another team.

At 5 p.m. the team was ordered to assemble in the mess tent. The atmosphere was electric. Alex Brennan strode in ten minutes later clutching a handful of papers.

‘We've got a problem,' Brennan told them sharply, ‘and this is why.'

He handed out the sheets which Kami could see immediately were copies of newspapers and websites.

‘We've printed these out just now,' Brennan told them, ‘and I think you'll see straight away why I'm spitting mad.'

Kami stared at the print out in his hand. It was a gossip magazine article featuring a series of colour photos of Alex Brennan and Sasha. Dressed in just their bathing costumes, the snaps had caught Sasha and the boss swimming together, sunbathing side by side and even holding hands as they jumped off the boulder into the river. Straight away he realised the shots were taken on the afternoon at Pangboche and he flashed a look at Nima and Pemba who were standing nearby, both ashen-faced.

‘This is exactly the type of publicity that I don't need,' Brennan continued, his voice loaded with fury, ‘and I regard this as the most blatant type of betrayal.'

‘Someone from the team took these and emailed them back to a journalist in the US.' Kurt snapped, ‘and they've deliberately set out to take shots of Alex and Sasha together.'

Kurt was right, Kami realised. To look at the pictures you would think the boss and Sasha had been alone. Innocent fooling around had been twisted to look like something else.

The title of the piece in his hand was ‘High Passion'.

‘Alex's fiancée has had photographers camped out outside her flat since these pictures went public,' Kurt went on, ‘and now the shots are getting syndicated all over the world.'

Kami risked a glance at Nima. His friend looked like he was about to faint with terror. Pemba refused to meet his eye.

‘So the question is very simple,' Brennan continued. ‘Who took these photographs? We know it was someone from our team. There was nobody else down there that afternoon.'

Silence followed. A deep and unsettled silence in which Kami felt his stomach churning with fear.

‘Own up,' Kurt ordered.

‘I don't think it could be one of the Sherpas … ' Tenzing said. But his voice lacked conviction.

‘It most certainly was one of your team,' Brennan countered angrily, ‘and we're going to find out who if it takes us all night.'

The silence resumed. Kami stared again at Pemba but all he got back was a dirty look. The Sherpas shuffled their feet. Wind ruffled the canvas of the tent.

‘There's another simple way we can approach this.' Kurt said, ‘Who's got a camera?'

Kami felt like a noose was slowly tightening around his neck; he knew all too well that the shots had been taken on his camera. Norgay and Lopsang raised their hands. Kami also, his arm shaking.

‘Tenzing, will you go and fetch their packs please,' Kurt ordered.

The rucksacks were fetched and the cameras pulled out and placed on the mess tent table. The assembled Sherpas moved in tighter to the table, craning their necks to see.

‘Anyone mind if we check the memory cards?' Kurt asked.

Lopsang and Norgay grunted their assent but Kami blurted out; ‘There's no memory card in mine. It went missing … '

Kurt flipped open the little plastic catch on Kami's camera.

‘There is one,' he said. ‘You must be mistaken.'

Kami felt his face flush red with shock and confusion. Pemba or Nima must have replaced the card in secret, he quickly surmised. He felt the eyes of everyone present boring into him.

Kurt switched the camera on and started screening the shots.

‘Bingo,' he said.

He twisted the camera so that Kami could see the pictures – the same ones that had appeared in the magazine.

The others erupted in a buzz of excited chatter.

Kami felt like a great pit had just opened up beneath his feet. Bile rose in his throat.

‘This is your last chance, Kami,' Brennan told him emphatically, ‘if someone borrowed your camera that afternoon then you have to tell us the name.'

Kami felt tears pricking at the back of his eyes. It was all happening so quickly. And there was so much at stake. He felt the raw conflict of the moment. If it had just been Pemba he might have blurted out his name. But it wasn't; it was Nima as well, someone who – despite everything – he still regarded as a friend.

And if there was one thing that Kami could not do it was betray a friend.

Kami shook his head. Jamling and Tenzing let out an audible gasp of disappointment.

‘That's it,' Brennan said. ‘I had high hopes for you on this expedition, Kami, but you've really let me down. I want you to pack up your things and leave right away. You're off the team.'

Kami staggered out onto the glacier. He felt dizzy and disorientated. The sense of injustice burned like some exotic torture.

The gods had deserted him. Just when he needed them most. He had never felt more alone.

Shock quickly overwhelmed him. The dream that had sustained him through the long winter had been cut away and discarded like an amputated limb. What would he do now? How would he ever pluck up the courage to walk back into his village? To face those he loved and tell them of his disgrace?

How could he possibly face Shreeya, knowing that this blow would end all their dreams of a life together?

‘You can go in the morning if you like,' Lakhpa told him sympathetically, ‘It's too late to be wandering down the glacier now.'

‘No,' Kami countered. ‘I'll go now.'

‘But your money … ' Tenzing called, ‘I have to pay you what you're owed up to today.'

‘Give it to the monks at Tengboche,' Kami told him earnestly. ‘It's no good to me now.'

He picked up his things. He swung the pack onto his back and set off down the glacier, wanting nothing but to put the team and Base Camp far behind him. His mind was seething with a poisonous concoction of anger and self pity. How could this have happened to him? Why didn't Nima step forward to say what had really happened?

As for Pemba, well Kami felt nothing but contempt.

The day was darkening, the cold clamping down as the sun was banished. After a while he heard a voice calling out behind him. In the late afternoon gloom he could just make out it was Nima, some distance behind, following him down the glacier.

‘Kami!' Nima yelled, ‘Come back! I'm sorry!'

But Kami blocked his ears to the cries, putting on more pace. He was too distressed to talk, the pain was too raw. And in any case – he thought – what could Nima say that could possibly help?

He came to a split in the track and, on an impulse, took the right-hand trail which he knew would take him across to the other side of the glacier. Beyond that, the trail led to Kala Pattar – a trekking peak which was famous for its grandstand view of Everest's summit.

He reached the slope – and began to climb at frantic speed. Next time he looked back Nima was just a tiny dot far back on the glacier and as darkness fell he saw his pursuer turn back for Base Camp.

The night was clear and exceptionally cold. The moon rose over the nearby peak of Pumori, casting a silvery wash of light over the Khumbu valley and giving him just enough vision to climb by. Kami kept on, driven by a wave of conflicting emotions, not stopping until midnight when he reached the little cairn that marked the high point.

There, at almost six thousand metres, he wrapped his sleeping bag around him and turned his eyes to the stunning night vista. The top section of Everest was standing proud on the inky-black horizon, the snows of the high gullies glittering with dim blue light.

He gazed on that sacred summit and his mind began to churn.

Why had things gone so wrong?

Were the gods teaching him a lesson?

More than anything, Kami felt the keen edge of total humiliation. He had lost all face. Been exposed, utterly unfairly, as the guilty perpetrator of a sordid and shameful incident. In the process he had let so many people down, Jamling above all.

Kami was gutted to think about it. And he had the terrible feeling he would be thinking about it every day of the rest of his life.

He would be crawling home like a cockroach. Shamed and belittled as a liar and a cheat. There would be no money to pay off Laxmi's father. No possibility of making Shreeya his bride.

The very thought of it was enough to make him weep.

His frenzied thoughts slowed as the dead of night enveloped him. The hours stretched long and hard as forty degrees of frost wrapped Kami in an icy embrace. Swaddled in his sleeping bag he survived the night, although he did not sleep.

Instead he stared all night at the summit of Everest, fearing that this would be the nearest that he would ever get.

The very idea that he would be able to leave Shreeya's shrine bell on the top of the world now seemed little more than a cruel joke.

Nevertheless he held the bell close inside the sleeping bag, getting some consolation from the thought of Shreeya's love.

At 6 a.m Kami knew he had to get moving. His locked-up joints creaked and cracked as they flexed.

The frigid, motionless hours had frozen him to the marrow. He was walking on autopilot as he descended to the glacier, his mind drifting away in a haze of fatigue as his legs plodded on.

He regained the main track which would take him away from Everest and started to trek listlessly along it. Hunger was biting hard but he didn't care. Kami was in such a daze that he hardly noticed the two trekkers coming up the glacier.