A Mountaineer Who Wants To Kill - Part 2

Aaron watched his dinner companion drink the poison, but it brought him no joy. Six years of plotting and seething were over. He had succeeded. And it was over so quickly, so casually. Just another drink like so many passed around the tavern that night, raised to smiling lips, drunk with hungry forgetfulness. Just another dead old man like so many others. Just another day in the shadow of the Mother Goddess like millions before.

The tavern was little more than a windowed closet on the upper floor of a dusty brick rowhouse along a narrow street. On the floor below was an office of some sort where men wore ties clipped to short sleeved white shirts and did their best to appear "professional" and "developed" despite the frequent sound of fistacuffs from the market across the street. It didn't matter, Aaron thought, looking down at the street through stained windows, trying not to watch too eagerly for the oncoming visitation from death. No one in the "professional" or "developed" worlds was paying attention.

The poison had been easy to get. The Nepalese version of the DEA, if there was such a thing, was apparently unconcerned with a myriad of mood-altering drugs being sold openly in bodegas, in street markets, and on street corners by bleary-eyed teens carrying their inventory in plastic milk crates on the back of scooters propelled by black smoke. It didn't take many quesions to lead from dealer to supplier to producer who could provide a drug that would alter more than one's mood. It was risin, or some Himalayan version of it. The druggist, whose shop occupied a cinder-block hut which jutted into the alley behind a butcher shop, had said it was odorless and tasteless.

Aaron's dinner companion sipped his tea slowly at first, blowing and casting stern looks across its surface as if he wasn't sure of its quality. But as the tea cooled, his consumption sped until he was gulping and calling for a second cup.

"It is so good to see you, Mr. Aaron. I am so glad you are here in Nepal. So glad to sit and have tea with Mr. Mann again, eh?" He raised his cup. "To your father."

Aaron felt a twist in his gut at the mention of the man whose death he was avenging, but he raised his cup and smiled. "Yes, to my father."

Aaron's companion was Dawa Lob-sang, a sherpa of legendary longevity with twenty-five ascents of Chomolungma to his credit, if anyone asked, which no one ever did; summit ascents were counted and congratulated by white men. Dawa was toothy and thin. His balding head shot forward from his torso and his shoulders were slender, bony and hunched. They looked pressed together as if some invisible giant were constantly squeezing him in an unwelcome hug. His face was vacant and joyful, punctuated by China teeth and a permanently-raised brow that made him look as if he was constantly expecting a punch line.

"I miss him," Dawa Lob-sang said, wiping the poisoned tea from his lips. "Your father was a good man."

Aaron Mann seethed at the guile of his father's killer. The innocence of his manner only made his feigned allegiance more vile. Aaron wondered if Dawa had been this calm when he cut his father's rope, or when he raided the tent, or when he created the cover story about a micro-blast. "A good man," Aaron repeated studying Dawa for a tick or downward glance that would betray his guilt. None was there. He turned again to peer through the grime on the window. In the street, one of the office workers was leaving loudly, shouting at someone in the office below and holding high two middle fingers.