“I was asking about parachuting into that other monastery for a reason,” Kate said.
“Forget it, Kate. That was an island. Large target area, plenty of open ground. This is a mountain with nothing on top but an abandoned building half-buried in ice. Not to mention the wind up there. A jump would be suicide. So would trying to land a helicopter.”
“As opposed to what, Dad? Free-climbing the Matterhorn?”
“The Matterhorn’s over there,” Jake said, nodding toward the west. “But I get your point. It may be suicide either way.”
“We’re here,” Kate said as the gondola started to grind to a halt. “Let’s go see.”
* * *
They all walked through the Plan Maison station and grabbed a quick bite to eat at the restaurant. There was also a small hotel attached to the station, accessible only by the gondola. Quentin found a north-facing window and stood there staring at the forlorn, empty towers that had once held the car leading up to Furggen. The towers looked like long-lost artifacts from another age.
Jake came to stand next to him, then Kate and Nick, and finally Professor Lewis.
“It’s another thousand feet of elevation to reach the monastery,” Nick said. “This isn’t ladder ropes and grappling hooks anymore. This is the real thing.”
“We’re going to need equipment,” Kate said.
“This is my favorite part of every adventure,” Nick said. “Let’s go shopping.”
They reserved three rooms at the hotel connected to the station, figuring it would give them a head start the next morning, then took the gondola back down to Breuil-Cervinia and poked through the shops until they found one that carried serious climbing gear. The shop owner was about to close for the day, but Nick flashed an American Express black card and the man was suddenly a lot more agreeable to delaying his dinner.
The team outfitted themselves with full winter outfits, spiked mountaineering boots, harnesses, helmets, carabiners, pitons, ice screws, ice axes, and lots of climbing rope. Jake stood staring at a large topographical map mounted to the wall, showing the local mountain range in fine detail.
Nick came to stand next to him. “What do you see?” he asked Jake.
“I see two ways to go,” Jake said, glancing over at the shop owner to make sure he was occupied with something else. “From Plan Maison, it’s a straight shot up the old gondola line. We can use the old towers as waypoints.”
“This way,” Nick said, tracing the line up the map, from the hotel to Furggen.
“Exactly,” Jake said. “The alternate is to come at it from the Swiss side. Start in Zermatt, then climb up to the ridge. Once you’re up there, it’s a traverse across the ridge to Furggen.”
“Advantages?”
“It’s an easier climb from Zermatt,” Jake said, “especially once you’re on the ridge, but it would take a lot longer, unless you take a snowcat. Problem is, a snowcat could be suicide on the narrow ridge. Going up on the Italian side is much steeper, but also much shorter.”
Nick nodded his head, studying the map. “We’re already on this side of the mountain and I just spent a small fortune on climbing gear. I say we stick to the plan. How bad could it be?”
Jake didn’t have to think about it for long. “You have to ask?”
* * *
It was dark when they took their last ride of a very long day, back up to Plan Maison station. They met one more time in Professor Lewis’s room, where he showed them the map link and the “locator” rune next to the banner.
“I know we got our wires crossed on the last one,” he said. “I overthought it and sent you looking for a ‘gift’ when it was really just the X symbol itself. I’m sorry about that.”
“No apologies,” Nick said. “We couldn’t have come this far without you.”
“I think my grandfather is looking down on me right now and smiling,” Lewis said. “He’s the reason I became a Germanic literature scholar in the first place.”
“Was he a professor, too?” Nick asked.
“No, he played the piano. But he was born in Germany, and moved to London with my grandmother just before the war. He helped translate messages at Bletchley Park, after the Enigma code was broken. When my grandfather died, my father gave me all of his old favorite books that he had brought over from Germany, as many as he could fit in one suitcase. Wieland, Schiller, Goethe. That’s how it started for me, learning the language so I could understand why my grandfather loved those books so much, even though he hated the people who had taken over his home country.”
“That’s a great story,” Nick said.
“It’s been an honor to be a part of this,” Lewis said. “And the adventure of a lifetime. But promise me you won’t let me overthink things next time.”
“We’ll try to remember that,” Nick said, “but for now, where’s this next link?”
Lewis pointed to the rune on the map, which looked like a modern “less than” sign. “This rune is called Kenaz. You see what it looks like, but it also represents a torch, meaning either ‘fire’ or ‘light.’ ”
“So maybe a fireplace?” Nick asked.
“Good place to start,” Lewis said. “In an old monastery on the top of an alpine mountain, with no electricity, I’m sure there are many fireplaces.”
“It’ll be a piece of torta,” Nick said.
* * *
In the gray predawn hour, four figures left the hotel grounds, heading north. An observer would have been curious to see them outfitted with climbing gear and heading in that direction. There were a handful of climbers who would take the gondolas up to the glacier, but rarely would they start here, at Plan Maison. Because where would they possibly go?
The ground here at 7,500 feet was soft snow with patches of semi-thawed ground peeking through. It was uneven and unpredictable, with one step that could be solid followed by another that could break an ankle by dropping a climber right through the snow. By the time they ascended another 3,000 feet, it would be nothing but solid ice, treacherous in a very different way.
“What’s our risk of avalanche?” Quentin asked.
“Always a risk,” Jake said. “You get powder avalanches in the winter, ‘wet’ avalanches in the summer when the snow itself is heavier.”
Quentin looked back at Nick and Kate, trailing behind them.
“You have an amazing daughter,” Quentin said. “But you already know that.”
Jake nodded. “I do.”
“Nick’s mother has been gone for a while now, but I can’t help wondering what she’d think of all this.”
“Kate lost her mother, too. But I don’t have to wonder what she’d think.”
Quentin smiled. “Olivia would have loved seeing Nick with someone like Kate, that much I can tell you.”
“I don’t know how much they’re ‘with’ each other. I don’t know if they even know themselves.”
They reached the first empty tower, about two hundred yards north of the station. The slope wasn’t very steep yet. They kept walking to the next tower. The slope increased.