"Gores, Joe - Kirinyaga" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gores Joe)

Kirinyaga

Something different from Joe Gores, and "clear and convincing"
proof of his writing versatility . . . an adventure-crime story
about mountain climbing in East Africa, with as authentic and
chilling a background as you have ever read... You won't
forget Kendrick's heroics for a long time . . .

The climber looked like a fly at this distance, Kendrick
thought. Because of the anorak he wore, like a bright red
fly. Clinging to a rack face of vertical slabs and deep horizontal
sections which together formed a massive staircase with
hundred-foot risers.
The fly had reached the top of a trough-like diedre in one of the
risers. Broken rock there. Brought up closer, the fly began work-
ing toward a niche in the edge of the step above. Not a bad show
for a man recovering from his annual bout of malaria, Kendrick
thought.
Closer yet. He could see the three-color zigzag design of the
knitted balaclava helmet. Hesitating at the foot of a bulging rock
face split by a shallow groove. Get on with it, Kendrick thought.
Right up through the bloody overhang to the stance above. You
know you have to do it.
Good show. Tight on the head and torso now. Fingers groping
above for purchase. It was coming now. Head turning so that sun-
light struck off smoked goggles. Unshaven, teeth clenched, sweat
rivuleting the cheek and line of jaw even in the subfreezing tem-
peratures of 17,000 feet. Now. Just here.
The climber slipped, swung free of the rock, only the fingers of
the right hand still holding their grip. A gasp went up. Kendrick
grinned. Yes. A good bit, that. Unexpected.
The image disappeared and the lights of the stuffy crowded
viewing room came up to the clearing of throats and muttered
comments. Kendrick paused in the hallway, sweat starting to dry
on his lean muscular body, made leaner by recent illness. A
couple of inches under six feet, with straight, prematurely white
hair and a deeply tanned mid-thirties face.'
Morna tucked a proprietary arm through his as the production
people and distributors' reps and studio flacks flowed around
them.
"Don't you think it's wonderful footage?" Her clear, very blue
eyes smiled up into his. Morna was his ex-wife. "Aren't you glad I
got you on as guide and Kenya technical adviser?"
"I can use the money," Kendrick agreed. He said, "You look
wonderful yourself, luv. London must agree with you."
He still had her note from two years before, when she had
packed it in. This bloody damn country . . . He had found it when
he'd returned from a fortnight on staff at the Outward Bound
Wilderness School on Kilimanjaro. Hadn't been strong enough to