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He simply wanted to get down the mountain and climb into a warm bed and sleep, to wait for the extraordinary pain, all too familiar but ever fresh and new, to subside.
Dying was another option, not without its attractions.
Franco roped him up deftly. ‘Come, old friend,’ the Italian said with a kindly jerk on the rope. Mitch lurched forward, clenching his fists by his sides to keep from pounding his head. ‘The ax,’ Tilde said, and Franco slipped Mitch’s ice ax out of his belt, where it tangled with his legs, and into his pack. ‘You are in bad shape,’ Franco said. Mitch clenched his eyes shut; the twilight was filled with lightning, and the thunder was pain, a silent crushing of his head with every step. Tilde took the lead and Franco followed close behind. ‘Different way,’ Tilde said. ‘It’s icing badly here and the bridge is rotten.’
Mitch opened his eyes. The arête was a rusty knife edge of carbon blackness against the purest ultramarine sky, fading to starry black. Each breath was colder and harder to take. He sweated profusely.
He plodded automatically, tried to descend a rock slope dotted with patches of crunchy snow, slipped and caught on the rope, dragging Franco a couple of yards down the slope. The Italian did not protest, instead rearranged the rope around Mitch and soothed him like a child. ‘Okay, old friend. This is better. This is better. Watch the step.’ ‘I can’t stand it much more, Franco,’ Mitch whispered. ‘I haven’t had a migraine for over two years. I didn’t even bring pills.’ ‘Never mind. Just watch your feet and do what I say.’ Franco shouted ahead to Tilde. Mitch felt her near and squinted up at her. Her face was framed with clouds and his own lights and sparks. ‘Snow coming,’ she said. ‘We have to hurry.’ They spoke in Italian and German and Mitch thought they were talking about leaving him here on the ice. ‘I can go,’ he said. ‘I can walk.’ So they began walking again on the glacier slope, accompanied by the sound of the ice fall as the slow ancient river flowed on, splitting and booming, rattling and cracking on its descent. Somewhere giant hands seemed to applaud. The wind picked up and Mitch turned away from it. Franco turned him around again and pushed less gently. ‘No time for stupidity, old friend. Walk.’ ‘I’m trying.’ ‘Just walk.’ The wind became a fist pressed against his skin. He leaned into it. Ice crystals stung his cheeks and he tried to pull up his hood and his fingers were like sausages in his gloves. ‘He can’t do this,’ Tilde said, and Mitch saw her walk around him, wrapped in swirling snow. The snow straightened suddenly and they all jerked as the wind grabbed them. Franco’s torch illuminated millions of flakes whipping past in horizontal streaks. They discussed building a snow cave, but the ice was too hard, it would take too long to dig out. ‘Go! Just head down!’ Franco shouted at Tilde, and she mutely complied. Mitch did not know where they were going, did not much care. Franco cursed steadily in Italian but the wind drowned him out and Mitch, as he dragged forward, pulling up and putting down his boots, digging in his crampons, trying to stay upright, Mitch knew that Franco was there only by his pressure on the ropes. ‘The gods are angry!’ Tilde yelled, and that was the last he heard from her, a cry half triumphant, half jesting, with a yelp of excitement and even exaltation. Franco must have fallen, because Mitch found himself being tugged hard from the rear. He had somehow come to be holding his ax and as he went over, he fell on his stomach and had the clarity of will to dig the ax into the ice and stop his descent. Franco seemed to dangle for a moment, a few yards down slope. Mitch looked in that direction. The lights were gone from his vision. Somehow he was freezing, really freezing, and that was allaying the pain of his migraine. Franco was not visible in the straight parallel bands of snow. The wind whistled and then shrieked and Mitch pulled his face close to the ice. His ax slipped from its hole and he slid two or three yards. With the pain fading, he wondered how he might get out of this alive. He dug his crampons into the ice and pulled himself back up the slope, by main force dragging Franco with him. Tilde helped Franco get to his feet. His nose was bloody and he seemed stunned. He must have hit his head on the ice. Tilde glanced at Mitch. She smiled and touched his shoulder. So friendly. Nobody said anything. Sharing the pain and the creeping evil warmth made them very close. Franco made a sobbings, sucking sound, licked at his bloody lip, pulled their ropes closer. They were so exposed. The fall cracked above the shrieking wind, boomed, snapped, made a sound like a tractor on a gravel road. Mitch felt the ice beneath him shudder. They were too close to the fall and it was really active, making a lot of noise. He pulled on the ropes to Tilde and they came back loose, cut. He pulled on the ropes behind him. Franco stumped out of the wind and snow, his face covered with blood, his eyes glaring behind his goggles. Franco knelt beside Mitch and then leaned over on his gloved hands, rolled to one side. Mitch grabbed his shoulder but Franco refused to budge. Mitch got up and faced down slope. The wind blew from up the slope and he keeled forward. He tried it again, leaning backward awkwardly, and fell. Crawling was the only option. He dragged Franco behind him, but that was impossible after a few feet. He crawled back to Franco and began to push him. The ice was rough, not slick, and did not help. Mitch did not know what to do. They had to get out of the wind, but he could not see well enough where they were to choose any particular direction. He was glad Tilde had abandoned them. She could get away now and maybe someone would make babies with her, neither of them of course; they were now out of the old evolutionary loop. All responsibility shed. He felt sorry that Franco was so banged up. ‘Hey, old friend,’ he shouted into the man’s ear. ‘Wake up and give me some help or we’re going to die.’ Franco did not respond. It was possible he was dead already but Mitch did not think a simple fall could kill someone. Franco was still breathing. Mitch found the torch around Franco’s wrist, removed it, switched it on, peered into Franco’s eyes as he tried to open them with his gloved fingers, not easy, but the pupils were small and uneven. Yup. He had pranged himself hard on the ice, causing concussion and flattening his nose. That was where all the new blood was coming from. The blood and snow made a red messy slush on Franco’s face. Mitch gave up talking to him. He thought about cutting himself loose, but couldn’t bring himself to do that. Franco had treated him well. Rivals united on the ice by death. Mitch doubted any woman would really feel a romantic pang, hearing about this. In his experience, women did not much care about such things. Dying, yes, but not the camaraderie of men. So confusing now and warming rapidly. His coat was very warm, and his snow pants. Topping it off was that he had to pee. Death with dignity was apparently out of the question. Franco groaned. No, it wasn’t Franco. The ice beneath them vibrated, then jumped, and they tumbled and slid to one side. Mitch caught sight of the torch beam illuminating a big block of ice rising, or they were falling. Yes indeed and he closed his eyes in anticipation. But he did not hit his head, though all the breath was slammed out of him. They landed in snow and the wind stopped. Clumped snow fell on them, and a couple of heavy chunks of ice pinned Mitch’s leg. It got quiet and still. Mitch tried to lift his leg but soft warmth resisted and the other leg was stiff. It was decided.
In no time at all, he opened his eyes wide to the sky-spanning glare of a blinding blue sun.
CHAPTER FOUR Gordi (#ulink_ca2eb1c6-b5f1-5f47-8114-b6fc39a3b9c9)
Lado, shaking his head in sad embarrassment, left Kaye in Beck’s care to return to Tbilisi. He could not be away from the Eliava Institute for long.
The UN took over the small Rustaveli Tiger in Gordi, renting all of the rooms. The Russians pitched more tents and were slept between the village and the graves.
Under the pained but smiling attention of the innkeeper, a stout black-haired woman named Lika, the UN peacekeepers ate a late supper of bread and tripe soup, served with big glasses of vodka. Everyone retired to bed shortly after, except for Kaye and Beck.
Beck pulled a chair up to the wooden table and placed a glass of white wine in front of her. She had not touched the vodka.
‘This is Manavi. Best they have here – for us, at any rate.’ Beck sat and directed a belch into his fist. ‘Excuse me. What do you know about Georgian history?’
‘Not a lot,’ Kaye said. ‘Recent politics. Science.’
Beck nodded and folded his arms. ‘Our dead mothers,’ he said, ‘could conceivably have been murdered during the troubles – the civil war. But I don’t know of any actions in or around Gordi.’ He made a dubious face. ‘They could be victims from the 1930s, the forties, or the 1950s. But you say no. Good point about the roots.’ He rubbed his nose and then scratched his chin. ‘For such a beautiful country, there’s a fair amount of grim history.’
Beck reminded Kaye of Saul. Most men his age somehow reminded Kaye of Saul, twelve years her senior, back on Long Island, far away in more than just distance. Saul the brilliant, Saul the weak, Saul whose mind creaked more every month. She sat up and stretched her arms, scraping the legs of her chair against the tile floor.
‘I’m more interested in her future,’ Kaye said. ‘Half the pharmaceutical and medical companies in the United States are making pilgrimages here. Georgia’s expertise could save millions.’
‘Helpful viruses.’
‘Right,’ Kaye said. ‘Phage.’
‘Attack only bacteria.’
Kaye nodded.
‘I read that Georgian troops carried little vials filled with phage during the troubles,’ Beck said. ‘They swallowed them if they were going into battle, or sprayed them on wounds or burns before they could get to hospital.’
Kaye nodded. ‘They’ve been using phage therapy since the twenties, when Felix d’Herelle came here to work with George Eliava. D’Herelle was sloppy; the results were mixed back then, and soon we had sulfa and then penicillin. We’ve pretty much ignored phage until now. So we end up with deadly bacteria resistant to all known antibiotics. But not to phage.’
Through the window of the small lobby, over the roofs of the low houses across the street, she could see the mountains gleaming in the moonlight. She wanted to go to sleep but she knew she would lie awake in the small hard bed for hours.
‘Here’s to the prettier future,’ Beck said. He lifted his glass and drained it. Kaye took a sip. The wine’s sweetness and acidity made a lovely balance, like tart apricots.
‘Dr Jakeli told me you were climbing Kazbeg,’ Beck said. ‘Taller than Montblanc. I’m from Kansas. No mountains at all. Hardly any rocks.’ He smiled down at the table, as if embarrassed to meet her gaze. ‘I love mountains. I apologize for dragging you away from your business … and your pleasure.’
‘I wasn’t climbing,’ she said. ‘Just hiking.’
‘I’ll try to have you out of here in a few days,’ Beck said. ‘Geneva has records of missing persons and possible massacres. If there’s a match and we can date it to the thirties, we’ll hand it over to the Georgians and the Russians.’ Beck wanted the graves to be old, and she could hardly blame him.
‘What if it’s recent?’ Kaye asked.
‘We’ll bring in a full investigation team from Vienna.’
Kaye gave him a clear, no-nonsense look. ‘It’s recent,’ she said.
Beck finished off his glass, stood, and clutched the back of his chair with his hands. ‘I agree,’ he said with a sigh. ‘What made you give up criminology? If I’m not intruding … ’
‘I learned too much about people,’ Kaye said. Cruel, rotten, dirty, desperately stupid people. She told Beck about the Brooklyn homicide lieutenant who had taught her class. He had been a devout Christian. Showing them pictures of a particularly horrendous crime scene, with two dead men, three dead women and a dead child, he had told the students, ‘The souls of these victims are no longer in their bodies. Don’t sympathize with them. Sympathize with the ones left behind. Get over it. Get to work. And remember: you work for God.’
‘His beliefs kept him sane,’ Kaye said.
Beck nodded, flexed his hands on the back of the chair. ‘No armor. Well, do your best. You’re all we’ve got for the time being.’ He said good night and walked to the narrow stairs, climbing with a fast, light tread.
Kaye sat at the table for several minutes, then stepped through the inn’s front door. She stood on the granite flagstone step beside the narrow cobbled street and inhaled the night air, with its faint odor of town sewage. Over the rooftop of the house opposite the inn she could see the snow-capped crest of a mountain, so clear she could almost reach out and touch it.
In the morning, she came awake wrapped in warm sheets and a blanket that hadn’t been laundered in some time. She stared at a few stray hairs, not her own, trapped in the thick gray wool near her face. The small wooden bed with carved and red-painted posts occupied a plaster-walled room about eight feet wide and ten feet long, with a single window behind the bed, a single wooden chair, and a plain oak table bearing a washstand. Tbilisi had modern hotels, but Gordi was away from the new tourist trails, too far off the Military Highway.
She slipped out of bed, splashed water on her face, and pulled on her denims and blouse and coat. She was reaching for the iron latch when she heard a heavy knock. Beck called her name. She opened the door and blinked at him owlishly.
‘They’re running us out of town,’ he said, his face hard. ‘They want all of us back in Tbilisi by tomorrow.’
‘Why?’
‘We’re not wanted. Regular army soldiers are here to escort us. I’ve told them you’re a civilian advisor and not a member of the team. They don’t care.’
‘Jesus,’ Kaye said. ‘Why the turnaround?’
Beck made a disgusted face. ‘The sakrebulo, the council, I presume. Nervous about their nice little community. Or maybe it comes from higher-up.’
‘Doesn’t sound like the new Georgia,’ Kaye said. She was concerned how this might affect her work with the institute.
‘I’m surprised, too,’ Beck said. ‘We’ve stepped on somebody’s toes. Please pack your case and join us downstairs.’
He turned to go but Kaye took his arm. ‘Are the phones working?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘You’re welcome to use one of our satellite phones.’
‘Thanks. And – Dr Jakeli is back in Tbilisi by now. I’d hate to make him drive out here again.’
‘We’ll take you to Tbilisi,’ Beck said. ‘If that’s where you want to go.’
Kaye said, ‘That’ll be fine.’
The white UN Cherokees gleamed in the bright sun outside the inn. Kaye peered at them through the window panes of the lobby and waited for the innkeeper to bring out an antiquated black dial phone and plug it into the jack by the front desk. She picked up the receiver, listened to it, then handed it to Kaye: dead. In a few more years, Georgia would catch up with the twenty-first century. For now, there were less than a hundred lines to the outside world, and with all calls routed through Tbilisi, service was sporadic.
The innkeeper smiled nervously. She had been nervous since they arrived.
Kaye carried her bag outside. The UN team had assembled, six men and three women. Kaye stood beside a Canadian woman named Doyle, while Hunter brought out the satellite phone.
First Kaye made a call to Tbilisi to speak with Tamara Mirianishvili, her main contact at the institute. After several tries, the call went through. Tamara sympathized and wondered what the fuss was about, then said Kaye was welcome to come back and stay a few more days. ‘It is shameful, to push your nose into this. We’ll have fun, make you cheerful again,’ Tamara said.
‘Have there been any calls from Saul?’ Kaye asked.
‘Twice he calls,’ Tamara said. ‘He says ask more about biofilms. How do phage work in biofilms, when the bacteria get all socialized.’
‘And are you going to tell us?’ Kaye asked in jest.
Tamara gave her a tinkling, sunny laugh. ‘Must we tell you all our secrets? We have no contracts yet, Kaye dear!’
‘Saul’s right. It could be a big issue,’ Kaye said. Even at the worst of times, Saul was on track with their science and their business.
‘Come back, and I’ll show you some of our biofilm research, special, just because you are nice,’ Tamara said.
‘Wonderful.’
Kaye thanked Tamara and handed the phone back to the corporal.
A Georgian staff car, an old black Volga, arrived with several army officers, who exited on the left. Major Chikurishivili of the Security Forces stepped out of the right side, his face stormier than ever. He looked like he might explode in a cloud of blood and spit.
A young army officer – Kaye had no idea what rank – approached Beck and spoke to him in broken Russian. When they were finished, Beck waved his hand and the UN team climbed into their jeeps. Kaye rode in the jeep with Beck.
As they drove west out of Gordi, a few of the townspeople gathered to watch them leave. A little girl stood beside a plastered stone wall and waved: brown-haired, tawny, gray-eyed, strong and lovely. A perfectly normal and delightful little girl.
There was little conversation as Hunter drove them south along the highway, leading the small caravan. Beck stared thoughtfully ahead. The stiff-sprung jeep bounced over bumps and dropped into ruts and swerved around potholes. Riding in the right rear seat, Kaye thought she might be getting carsick. The radio played pop tunes from North Ossetia and pretty good blues from Azerbaijan and then an incomprehensible talk show that Beck occasionally found amusing. He glanced back at Kaye and she tried to smile bravely.
After a few hours she dozed off and dreamed of bacterial buildups inside the bodies within the trench graves. Biofilms, what most people thought of as slime: little industrious bacterial cities reducing these corpses, these once-living giant evolutionary offspring, back to their native materials. Lovely polysaccharide architectures being laid down within the interior channels, the gut and lungs, the heart and arteries and eyes and brain, the bacteria giving up their wild ways and becoming citified, recycling all; great garbage dump cities of bacteria, cheerfully ignorant of philosophy and history and the character of the dead hulks they now colonized and reclaimed.
Bacteria made us. They take us back in the end. Welcome home.
She woke up in a sweat. The air was getting warmer as they descended into a long, deep valley. How nice it would be to know nothing about all the inner workings. Animal innocence; the unexamined life is the sweetest. But things go wrong and prompt introspection and examination. The root of all awareness.
‘Dreaming?’ Beck asked her as they pulled over near a small filling station and garage clapped together from sheets of corrugated metal.
‘Nightmares,’ Kaye said. ‘Too much into my work, I guess.’
CHAPTER FIVE Innsbruck, Austria (#ulink_4b8444a9-cb91-5b80-bcb5-8230c2e2e9c5)
Mitch saw the blue sun swing around and darken and he assumed it was night, but the air was dim green and not at all cold. He felt a prick of pain in his upper thigh, a general sense of unease in his stomach.
He wasn’t on the mountain. He tried to blink the gunk from his eyes and reached up to rub his face. A hand stopped him and a soft female voice told him in German to be a good boy. As she wiped his forehead with a cold damp cloth, the woman said, in English, that he was a little chapped and his nose and fingers were frostbitten and that he had a broken leg. A few minutes later he went to sleep again.
No time at all after that, he awoke and managed to sit up in a crisp, firm hospital bed. He was in a room with four other patients, two beside him and two across from him, all male, all less than forty years old. Two had broken legs in movie-comedy slings. The other two had broken arms. Mitch’s own leg was in a cast but not in a sling.
All the men were blue-eyed, wiry, handsome in an aquiline way, with thin necks and long jaws. They watched him attentively.
Mitch saw the room clearly now: Painted concrete walls, white enamel bed frames, a portable lamp on a chromed stand that he had mistaken for a blue sun, mottled brown tile floor, the dusty smell of steam heat and antiseptic, a general odor of peppermint.
On Mitch’s right, a heavily snow-burned young man, skin peeling from his baby-pink cheeks, leaned over to say, ‘You are the lucky American, are you not?’ The pulley and weights on his elevated leg creaked.
‘I’m American,’ Mitch croaked. ‘I must be lucky because I’m not dead.’
The men exchanged solemn glances. Mitch could see he had been a topic of conversation for some time.
‘We all agree, it is best for fellow mountaineers to inform you.’
Before Mitch could protest that he was not really a mountaineer, the snow-burned young man told him that his companions were dead. ‘The Italian you were found with, in the serac, he is broken-neck. And the woman is found much lower down, buried in ice.’ Then, his eyes sharply inquisitive – eyes the color of the wild-dog sky Mitch had first seen over the arête – the young man asked, ‘The newspapers say, the TV say. Where did she get the little corpse baby?’
Mitch coughed. He saw a pitcher of water on a tray by his bed and poured a glass. The mountaineers watched him like athletic elves trussed up in their beds.
Mitch returned their gazes. He tried to hide his dismay. It did him no good to judge Tilde now; no good at all.
The inspector from Innsbruck arrived at noon and sat beside his bed with an attending local police officer to ask questions. The officer spoke better English and translated for him. Their questions were routine, the inspector said, all part of the accident report. Mitch told them he did not know who the woman was, and the inspector responded, after a decent pause, that they had all been seen together in Salzburg. ‘You and Franco Maricelli and Mathilda Berger.’
‘That was Franco’s girlfriend,’ he said, feeling sick, trying not to show it. The inspector sighed and pursed his lips disapprovingly, as if this was all very trivial and only a little irritating.
‘She was carrying the mummy of an infant. Perhaps a very old mummy. You have no idea where she got it?’
He hoped the police had not gone through his effects and found the vials and recognized their contents. Perhaps he had lost the pack on the glacier. ‘It’s too bizarre for words,’ he said.
The inspector shrugged. ‘I am not an expert on bodies in the ice. Mitchell, I give you some fatherly advice. I am old enough?’
Mitch admitted the inspector might be old enough. The mountaineers did not even attempt to hide their interest in the proceedings.
‘We have spoken to your former employers, the Hayer Museum, in Seattle.’
Mitch blinked slowly.
‘They tell us you were involved in the theft of antiquities from the federal government, the skeletal remains of an Indian, called Pasco Man, very old. Ten thousand years, found on the banks of the Columbia River. You refused to hand over these remains to the Army Corpse of Engineers.’
‘Corps,’ Mitch said softly.
‘So they arrest you under an antiquities act, and the museum fires you because there is so much publicity.’
‘The Indians claimed the bones belonged to an ancestor,’ Mitch said, his face flushing with anger at the memory. ‘They wanted to bury them again.’
The inspector read from his notes. ‘You were denied access to your collections in the museum, and the bones were confiscated from your house. With many photographs and more publicity.’
‘It was legal bullshit! The Army Corps of Engineers had no right to those bones. They were scientifically invaluable –’
‘Like this mummified baby from the ice, perhaps?’ the inspector asked.
Mitch closed his eyes and looked away. He could see it all very clearly now. Stupid is not the word. This is fate, pure and simple.
‘You are going to throw up?’ the inspector asked, backing away.
