“Not really. It’s pretty uniform all the way around. But there’s a little ledge near the top on that side. It was probably used to rest earthenware jars. We’ll need it to get you up.”

“If you can get me up, you mean,” she said.

“No. When I get you up.”

They smiled into each other’s eyes.

“Anything else I should know?” she asked.

“Yes. Stand away from that side. A falling human body can do a lot of damage if it lands on top of you.”

“You have such a delightful way of putting things.”

“It’s part of my charm,” he smiled.

They looked into each other’s eyes as if saying goodbye. The Scorpion gave her the wooden spear to hold. Then he moved boldly up to the rock wall.

For a moment he contemplated the rock, planning the sequence of moves. He tried to keep up his spirits, but the wall looked utterly formidable, as high up as he could see.

“One of the basic laws of the universe is that everything looks a hell of a lot easier than it really is,” Alex used to say back in Bangkok. And Allah knows the Pathet Lao had shown Alex the hard way to die, the Scorpion thought, trying to shake the memory. Negative thinking can defeat you before you ever start, he knew. Instead, he forced his mind to imagine himself successfully moving upward, one step at a time. That was what he wanted to keep in his mind. He took a deep breath to relax every muscle and clear his head. Then he began.

Using the flint chisel and one of the rocks as a mallet, he chipped pairs of indentations shoulder-width apart every two feet, starting at knee level and going upwards until he was stretching his arms as high as he could reach. The rock cut and split easily and large chips of sandstone flew by as he worked. Once he started climbing the rock face, he would be able to use only one hand to cut, but for the first eight feet or so he might as well make it easy on himself, he thought.

The Scorpion stepped away from the rock and wiped his sweaty face on his forearm, gritty with sand and dust. He now had four pairs of hand and footholds carved into the rock. He dropped the rock he had used for a mallet and carefully rewrapped the rags around his right hand. He wrapped the braided rope around his waist and tied the end. Then he clenched the chisel in his teeth.

The easy part was over.