"It's pretty narrow."

"We'll work it out."

She knew better than bring up the past again that night.

KLEINE SCHEIDEGG: JULY 8

He took a late supper in the hotel dining room at a table somewhat apart from the thin scattering of patrons.

He was not pleased with himself. He felt he had handled the Jemima business badly. They had risen early, taken a walk through the tilted meadows, watched the dew make the tips of their shoes glisten, taken coffee on the terrace of her cafe, chatted nonsense, made jokes at the expense of passersby.

Then they shook hands, and he left for his hotel. The whole thing was unclean. Particles of emotion clung to their relationship. She was a presence down there in the village, waiting, and he was annoyed with himself for not making a clean break. He knew now that he would not punish her for her perfidy, but he also knew that he would never forgive her for it. He could not remember ever having forgiven anyone.

Several of the guests had dressed for dinner—early-arrived Eiger Birds. Jonathan noticed that half of the terrace telescopes had been roped off for the private—and costly—use of people nominated by the hotel management.

He pushed food around his plate without appetite. There were too many unsettled things churning at the back of his mind. There was Jemima, and the sanction assignment, and the knowledge that Mellough might have alerted his target, and the despised Eiger Birds. Twice he had noticed himself being pointed out by men in tuxedos to their young/pretty/dumb companions. One middle-aged ogler had waved him a tentative semaphore of greeting with her napkin.

It was with relief that he heard a familiar voice booming through the dining room from the lobby beyond.

"Goddam my ass if this ain't something! What the hell you mean you ain't got a room for me?"

Jonathan abandoned his coffee and brandy and crossed the dining room to the desk. The hotel manager, a tight little Swiss with the nervous propriety of his class, was attempting to calm Big Ben down.

"My dear Herr Bowman—"

"Dear Herr's ass! Just stick your nose back in that book and come up with my reservations. Hey, ol' buddy! You're looking good!"

Jonathan gripped Ben's paw. "What's the trouble?"

"Oh, this rinky-dink's screwed up my reservations. Says he can't find my telegram. From the looks of him, he couldn't find his tallywhacker with a six-man scouting party."

Jonathan realized what was going on. "The Eiger Birds are starting to fly in," he explained.

"Oh, I see."

"And our friend here is doing everything he can to create vacancies he can sell to them at inflated prices." Jonathan turned to the listening manager. "Isn't that it?"

"I didn't know this person was a friend of yours, Dr. Hemlock."

"He's in charge of the climb."

"Oh?" the manager asked with extravagant innocence. "Is someone going to climb our mountain?"

"Stop it."

"Perhaps Herr Bowman could find a place in the village? There are cafes that—"

"He's going to stay here."

"I am afraid that is impossible, Herr Doctor." The manager's lips pursed tightly.

"All right." Jonathan drew out his wallet. "Make up my bill."

"But, if you leave..."

"There will be no climb. That's correct. And your incoming guests will be very angry."

The manager was the essence of agonized indecision.

"Do you know what I think?" Jonathan said. "I think I saw one of your clerks sorting a batch of telegrams in your inner office. It's possible that Mr. Bowman's was among them. Why don't you go back and look them over."

The manager grasped at the offer to save face and left them with a perfunctory bow.

"You met the others yet?" Ben asked, looking around the lobby with the undisguised distaste of a competitor.

"They haven't arrived."

"No shit? Well, they'll be in tomorrow then. Personally, I can use the rest. My hoof's been acting up the last couple of days. Gave it too much workout while you were at the place."

"How's George Hotfort?"

"Quiet."

"Is she grateful that I didn't turn her over to the authorities?"

"I guess. She ain't the kind to burn candles."

The manager returned and performed a masque of surprised delight. He had found Ben's telegram after all, and everything was in order.

"You want to go directly to your room?" Jonathan asked as the uniformed bellhops collected Ben's luggage.

"No. Guide me to the bar and buy me some beer." They talked late into the night, mostly about the technical problems of the Eigerwand. Twice Ben brought up the Mellough incident, but both times Jonathan turned him back, saying they could talk about it later, maybe after the climb. Since he had arrived in Switzerland, Jonathan had come more and more to believe that he would make the climb. For long periods of time, he forgot what his real mission was. But this fascination was too expensive a luxury, so before turning in for the night he asked to borrow again all the correspondence between Ben and the climbers who would arrive the next morning.

Jonathan sat up in his bed, the letters arranged in three stacks on the blankets, one for each man. His concentration circumscribed by the tight pool of his bedside lamp, sipping at a glass of Laphroaig, he tried to fashion personalities from the scant evidence of the correspondence.

Jean-Paul Bidet. Forty-two years old. A wealthy manufacturer who had by dint of unsparing work expanded his father's modest shop into France's foremost producer of aerosol containers. He had married rather late, and had discovered the sport of mountain climbing while on his honeymoon in the Alps. He had no climbing experience outside Europe, but his list of Alpine conquests was formidable. He had made most of his major climbs in the company of famous and expensive guides, and to a degree it was possible to accuse him of "buying" the peaks.

From the tone of his letters, written in a businessman's English, Bidet seemed congenial, energetic, and earthy. Jonathan was surprised to discover that he intended to bring his wife along to witness his attempt at the meanest mountain of them all.

Karl Freytag. Twenty-six years old. Sole heir to the Freytag industrial complex specializing in commercial chemicals, particularly insecticides and herbicides. He had begun climbing during college holidays, and before he was twenty he had formed an organization of German climbers over which he presided and which published a most respectable quarterly review of mountaineering. He was its editor-in-chief. There was a packet of offset reprints from the review that described his climbs (in the third person) and accented his capacities as a leader and route-finder.

His letters were written in a brittle, perfect English that did not admit of contractions. The underlying timbre suggested that Freytag was willing to cooperate with Herr Bowman and with the international committee that had sponsored the climb, but the reader was often reminded that he, Freytag, had conceived of the climb, and that it was his intention to lead the team on the face.

Anderl Meyer. Twenty-five years old. He had lacked the means to finish his medical studies in Vienna and had returned to earning his living as a carpenter with his father. During the climbing season he guided parties up his native Tyrolean Alps. This made him the only professional in the team. Immediately upon being forced to leave school, Meyer had become obsessed with climbing. By every means from scrimping to begging, he had managed to include himself in most of the major climbs of the last three years. Jonathan had read references to his activities in the Alps, New Zealand, the Himalayas, South America, and most recently in the Atlas Range. Every article had contained unreserved praise for his skill and strength (he was even referred to as a "young Hermann Buhl") but several writers had alluded to his tendency to be a loner and a poor team man, treating the less gifted members of his parties as anchors against his progress. He was what in gambling would be called a plunger. Turning back was, for him, the ultimate disgrace; and he would make moves on the face that would be suicide for men of more limited physical and psychic dispositions. Similar aspersions had been cast on Jonathan, during his years of active climbing.