Pasha nodded doubtfully. Saskia glanced at him. Though she felt uncomfortable with his romantic attitude, Pasha had managed to hide it since leaving the hotel. No doubt he also grieved for his father and Mr Jenner. But he had committed himself to her service and, with the fresh professionalism of a man newly committed to the military, he was soldiering through. But what would happen when their missions diverged? How fast would she become an enemy to him?

  They threaded the Interlaken pass. The rain had stopped and dawn was a whitening strip against the snowcaps. An arc of spindrift reached into the sky above the four thousand metre peak of the Eiger, reddening with the last of night.

  ‘Stop here,’ she said, when they approached a lay-by halfway between Alpiglen and Kleine Scheidegg, the high pass at the foot of the Eiger where the uncompleted Jungfrau Railway began its ascent into the very mountain. ‘There is a chance that I might be recognised by the people staying in the hotels.’

  ‘Shall I go on alone?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll stay in the car. I must remain mobile.’ Saskia looked at the north wall of the Eiger. Even with the night upon it, the higher snowfields glowed. ‘I need you to find out the extent of the hollows within that mountain.’

  ‘You mean the Jungfrau Railway?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Saskia. ‘Things like the number of service tunnels, how many workers we might expect, and the likelihood of finding explosives on the site.’

  ‘What will be our plan?’

  ‘It’s still early. There should be time for us to hike up the tunnel itself. We will find the money.’

  ‘How will we carry it?’

  ‘We will improvise.’

  ‘There are sure to be workers, or at least a guard. They will see our lantern.’

  Saskia put her hand on his. ‘Do you remember your dream? You saw a man conducting monologues above a million solitudes.’

  Pasha looked at the mountain. Its face, and the sky beyond, was becoming brighter by degrees.

  ‘There was a red star above him.’

  ‘The star will fall today,’ Saskia said. ‘If you help me.’ She reached into her bosom and withdrew the amber spectacles. ‘For us, even inside the mountain, it will never be dark.’ She slid them onto Pasha’s face.

  Make the spectacles work for him.

  ‘That is not permitted.’

  Do it, Toaster.

  Pasha’s eyes widened. He laughed.

  ‘Is it a kaleidoscope?’

  ‘No,’ Saskia said. ‘Just as a telescope allows you to see far away things as though they were closer, these spectacles show you things in darkness as though they were lit.’

  ‘This is German in design, is it not?’

  ‘You have to ask? Now, Pasha, go to the next hotel. Tell them that you are a tourist and your car has broken down. Keep to English. Don’t tell them that you are Russian, or that you are travelling with a woman. Tell them that you intend to take the Jungfrau Railway later today. The railway is not complete but it does take paying passengers part of the way. Ask about it. They’re sure to have some pamphlets, perhaps a map.’

  Pasha stepped down and gave her a serious nod before walking away in the direction of Kleine Scheidegg, the pass that connected Grindelwald with Lauterbrunnen. Saskia watched him through the dirty glass of the windscreen. He was minuscule against the immensity of the landscape. Saskia had not loved him. She hoped Lacuna had.

  With that thought, a certain coldness settled upon her, gradual as falling snow. She could feel her fitness decaying along with her tissues. Her vision, too, was failing at the edges. Dark motes flickered. She pulled off her gloves and looked at her ashy fingers. They seemed out of scale, as though they were faraway monuments foreshortened by a lens.

  She looked at the Eiger. The sky above it had cleared.

  How much longer do I have?

  ‘Hours. Again, I suggest you sleep.’

  She took the Bébé’s driving manual from a compartment beneath her seat and found a thick, blunt pencil in the dashboard. In the gloom, she tried to sketch out the scene of the photograph that she–that is, Saskia Lacuna–had lost. Toaster, she mused. Why did the other Saskia take possession of my brain chip? Was she on a mission?

  The Ego unit told her the story of Saskia Lacuna’s world-line. For her, Soso would adopt the name Man of Steel and come to rule Russia and part of Europe. The symbol of his power was a red star. Saskia could imagine it behind his platform, growing in size and deepening in colour, as he spoke across the countless solitudes.

  ‘Saskia Lacuna told me that, in the future of her world-line, Soso would be responsible for the deaths of millions,’ continued Ego. ‘When she became aware that this world-line was not her own, and that its future was unknown to her, she resolved to make a difference here. She resolved to remove him from the world-line.’

  Saskia let her imagination unfurl. Those millions had their heads bowed in boredom and desolation. Their heads remained down, even when the Man of Steel called them to their deaths. Great swathes of people vanished as though never born. Emptied. Ablated.

  Each a lacuna, she thought.

  Within her, the image of the star conflated with that of the red chrysanthemums that had accompanied her resurrection in the mortuary. The star grew and shrank like a slow heart, fat with blood. Her eyelids seemed to soften. She slept.

  The four gendarmes came from the direction of Kleine Scheidegg. They were cloaked and hatted and all business. One of them carried a lantern, but the reddish indirect light had strengthened. It was dawn.

  They did not speak as they approached the automobile. When they were close enough to touch it, they nodded to one another and formed a surrounding box. Their pistols were drawn.

  The gendarme with the lantern reached for the door. He opened it and shone his light inside.

  The Bébé was empty.

  From her crouch behind a pine tree uphill of the lay-by, Saskia watched them. The men made no small talk.

  Five minutes passed before a police automobile approached from Kleine Scheidegg. It stopped some metres from the Bébé. An elegant gentleman stepped out. He had a lit, drooping pipe. He motioned for a second man to follow him from the vehicle.

  This man was taller than the first. His hands were cuffed behind his back. Pavel Eduardovitch Nakhimov flexed his shoulders.

  The lantern-carrying gendarme turned to his pipe-smoking colleague and shook his head. The pipe-smoker seemed to be dissatisfied. He turned to Pasha and gestured towards the Bébé. His meaning was clear. He wanted Pasha to explain its presence.

  Pasha looked at the Bébé as though he had never seen it before.

  Saskia smiled.

  The pipe-smoker remonstrated with him. He argued that Pasha must recognise the automobile. Pasha pretended not to understand. He shrugged and looked at man as though he were an idiot. Saskia nodded. At some point in their conversation, Pasha fussed at his cuffs. He made as though he found it difficult to breathe.

  Only Saskia saw, or cared to see, the pamphlet that dropped from the rear of his jacket.

  Eventually, the pipe-smoker became tired of the situation and ordered Pasha back into the police automobile. He climbed in after him. The gendarmes watched as the vehicle trundled out of sight. They did not break their square.

  Saskia wondered what the police had on Pasha. For such elaborate treatment of him and the Bébé, she guessed that they had connected him to the stolen money by way of the telegram.

  The gendarme with the lantern suddenly crouched to look beneath the vehicle. Seeing nothing, he turned wearily to his colleagues and motioned for them to search the area.

  Saskia did not move. The terrain was rocky, uneven and thick with trees. She was not surprised to see them make little effort to find her. When they had covered the ground around the Bébé in a cursory fashion, they returned to the vehicle and drove it away, following the first automobile towards Kleine Scheidegg.

  Saskia shook the facts again and again, seeing how they fell and mixed. Pasha’s arrival at the hotel in Kleine Scheidegg had been anticipated. While his enquiries might have raised suspicions on their own, Saskia was sure the authorities had been waiting for him; Kleine Scheidegg was an important crossroads in the Bernese Oberland, but it could not have four gendarmes and an officer of the Sûreté standing by to arrest a suspicious foreigner. This overwhelming force suggested that the Bolshevik machinery was turning.

  She broke from cover and retrieved the pamphlet that Pasha had dropped. It was an investor’s summary of progress on the Jungfraujoch Railway. It showed the line running south out of Kleine Scheidegg before an eastern swing into the foot of the Eiger. That tunnel would have been Saskia’s best route to Soso. But with Pasha discovered and the Bolsheviks alerted, Saskia could not risk using it.

  There were several places within the network where side-tunnels had been cut through the north face. One of them, Station Rostock, had been a temporary staging post, closed after the turn of the century. All that remained of the station was a wooden door opening onto the face. Saskia was more interested in a second station, the so-called Eigerwand, which had a long, open terrace at a height of around three thousand metres.

  She looked at the Eiger. The terrace of the Eigerwand Station would be one third of the way up the face, well before it became vertical.

  A healthy and fully augmented Saskia might have free-climbed the route. The Saskia who had been reduced by death, however, was a weaker one by far. She would be more affected by ice-climbing, the falling rocks, and disorientation. Her climb would begin at Apliglen. She would need equipment and a local guide.

  Ego, how long will it take me to walk to Alpiglen?

  ‘Half an hour.’

  Very well. Enhance my hearing, please. When there is any evidence of vehicles, or walkers, tell me to take cover. In the meantime, prime and entrain the rock-climbing representations in my pre-frontal motor cortex.

  ‘You no longer have a functioning motor cortex.’

  Saskia looked at her hands. They were gloved, but she could imagine the black fingers within.

  Read me something as I walk. Emily Dickinson, perhaps.

  With Ego’s companionable whisper among her thoughts, she walked the road. On the outskirts of Alpiglen, she hid in the drainage channel as a group of servant girls hurried past carrying bread from Kleine Scheidegg. Saskia felt foolish in the ditch. She continued along the road and openly greeted a young farmer, who touched his cap in return. He was accompanied by a loping mountain dog. The dog gave her a wide berth.

  Saskia went straight past the chalets of the settlement to the higher ground at the south, where it started to ramp up to the Eiger. The lush greens greyed out and the groves thinned. Where the path became steep, bright with the first spill of sunshine, Saskia stopped on the edge of a meadow creaming with daffodils.

  As he defeated–dying–

  On whose forbidden ear

  The distant strains of triumph

  Burst agonized and clear.

  That will do, she thought. Thank you.

  There was a bicycle leaning against a tree. It had bulging panniers. Nearby, a familiar man was looking up at the Eiger. He had not seen her. He held something to his mouth. A moment later, Saskia’s sensitised ears heard the crunch of an apple.

  Ego, return my hearing to human-band.

  ‘Very good.’

  Saskia slipped off her rucksack and withdrew the gun that Gaus had found on Mr Jenner. She approached the man. He wore a tweed jacket but the bowler hat was the same. From five metres away, Saskia cleared her throat. The man turned.

  ‘Good morning, Gausewitz, whom everyone calls Gaus.’

  At that moment, an east wind fell upon the meadow, drawing out her cape like a great, black wing. Gaus seemed intimidated, even scared, at her sudden appearance. She watched him master himself.

  ‘Ms Tucholsky,’ he said. Though his smile was forced, Saskia felt that he was pleased to see her. ‘My luck is in.’

  ‘Gaus, you have always been eager to help me, and I thank you for it.’ Saskia kept her eyes steady. Her gun was angled towards his feet. ‘But I ordered you to return.’

  Gaus swallowed his mouthful of apple, then slung the core into the daffodils. With a juvenile pout, he said, ‘You think it’s easy for Agents Intemporal? All this waiting? I was selected because I need money, I suppose. That’s my fault for chumming along with the Alpine Club. But I want the adventure, too.’

  Saskia did not let her expression betray the intensity of her thoughts. Her mind moved through scenario after scenario, reconfiguring the facts in arrangements consistent with a positive opinion of Gaus. They were implausible.

  ‘What you need to do, my adventurous friend, is to explain how you came to meet me here.’

  ‘Thinking,’ he said, as though this was sufficient. When she raised her eyebrows, he smiled, and continued, ‘Plus luck. I’ve always been lucky.’ He pushed up the brim of his bowler hat. ‘When you dismissed me, I really did intend to return to Geneva. But I remembered your desire to find the photograph that had been in your possession before the events of your “lacuna”.’ He shrugged and looked at the gun. ‘I wanted to find it for you. It would be a parting gift in return for the adventure you’ve given me.’

  Though she did not believe a word of this, Saskia gave him an indulgent smile. ‘That was kind, but foolish.’

  Gaus relaxed. With greater energy, he said, ‘I have a friend, Luc, who works for the police in Geneva. I placed a telephone call to him. He checked the records and told me that no photograph of yours had been confiscated. He did, however, tell me that a body had been discovered in Yverdon-les-Bains and that the suspect was a Russian gentleman who had been seen entering the Hotel Moderne with the victim. He was thought to be travelling to Kleine Scheidegg. A bulletin had been put out for his arrest.’

  That might explain Pasha’s reception, she thought.

  ‘How did the police know he was heading for Kleine Scheidegg?’

  Gaus said, ‘Apparently, the Eiger was mentioned in a telegram to the Russian Embassy in Berne, which the authorities intercepted.’

  Saskia nodded. ‘They are rather more competent than I had hoped.’ To expedite his story, she prompted him: ‘So, having heard of the arrest warrant for Pasha, you decided I needed your help?’

  ‘I knew that the police would arrest Pasha, but that they weren’t looking for you. It is obvious to me that whatever you wish to find within the Eiger tunnels, it will be guarded, and the police activity in Grindelwald will have warned them. Simply walking up the track before the first train would no longer do; you must either enter the tunnel from the final station at the Jungfraujoch, which is impossible, or climb to the Eigerwand Station. From where would a climber do that?’ He gestured around the meadow. ‘Alpiglen. And could you succeed alone? Surely not.’

  ‘Saskia, this man is not telling the whole truth.’

  Indeed.

  ‘Very well,’ said Saskia. She put the gun away. ‘I thank you for your diligence. It will not go unnoticed by Meta. But now, we must move.’

  Gaus opened the panniers on the bicycle and showed Saskia their contents. In one there were underclothes, tweed waistcoat and jacket, woollen shirt, plus-fours, hobnail boots, leather gloves, snow goggles, and fingerless gloves. The other pannier was stuffed with rope. This being 1908, there were neither karabiners to pass ropes through nor pitons to anchor them to rock. At least the rope looked like good, Italian hemp. There were no alpenstocks–staffs with an iron pin at the base–but there were four short Eckenstein axes with curved blades and wrist straps.

  ‘Where did you get all this?’ she asked, removing her clothes, hat and boots. She kept the corset for back support. The rest she dropped in a pile. She made sure that her hair was in a tight bun resecured with the lancet.

  Gaus turned to the Eiger.

  ‘I’ve climbed the northern face of the Jungfrau twice,’ he said. ‘Once as a boy with a chamois hunter, and once guiding some friends from the Alpine Club. The landlord of a tavern in Sengg keeps gear for us over the winter.’ He cleared his throat. ‘The climb to the Eigerwand terrace is not an easy one. However, I made it last summer with friends from Grindelwald and Zermatt, plus an Englishman. It took us two and a half hours, though conditions were good.’

  ‘How would you describe them today?’

  ‘Any attempt will be a roulette of stone and ice. But the recent cold works in our favour. The ice will be more stable, and hold back the rock.’ He looked her up and down. ‘How do you climb?’

  Saskia was dressed. She buttoned her tweed jacket and swung her rucksack onto her back. Her feet were going to bleed in her boots, she knew it.

  ‘I’m no Gertrude Bell,’ she said, feigning an English accent in reference to the famous alpinist, ‘but I’ll have a bloody good go.’

  They set off south at a strong pace. Saskia did not sweat or breathe heavily. The chemistry of respiration no longer worked in the same way for her. After twenty minutes, with the gradient increasing along with the wind, Gaus passed her a felt Alpine Hat. She took it gratefully and jammed it over her head, hair bun and all.

  ‘So tell me about Meta,’ he said.

  Saskia remembered asking him whether he knew the word ‘zombie’.

  ‘I could tell you everything, but then I’d have to eat your brains.’

  Gaus gave her a puzzled look. He was standing on an outcrop, and he reached down to help her up.

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  A shower of snow and ice hissed down the mountain. They squeezed into a narrow gully. Saskia looked down. They had climbed more than a hundred metres. The chalets of Alpiglen were dots in a blaze of green.

  ‘Goggles on, I think,’ said Gaus. ‘Do you need a woollen head-warmer? I have one in my rucksack.’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Here, let me show you how to use the axes.’

  For the next hour, they pitted themselves against the increasingly steep face. Gaus led. On occasion, he slowed to cut steps in the ice, but otherwise the curved blades of their axes made secure holds. They raised their rucksacks above their heads when sharp stones clattered down about them. One struck Saskia’s rucksack with enough force to test her footing. At that point, Gaus suggested they stop and eat something.

 

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