stick, and coated her entire faceforehead, temples, cheeks, nose, lips
and chin. “With even a thin shield of this, the wind will need more
time to leech the warmth out of you. And it’ll keep your skin supple.
Loss of heat is two-thirds of the danger. But loss of moisture along
with loss of heat is what causes severe frostbite. The moisture in
bitterly cold air doesn’t get to your skin; in fact, subzero wind can
dry out your face almost as thoroughly as desert air.”
“I was right,” she said.
“Right about what?”
“There’s some Nick Charles in you.”
At eleven o’clock, Bollinger entered the elevator, swing Itched it on,
and pressed the button for the twentysecond floor.
The window frame was extremely sturdy, not coldpressed and not of
aluminurii as were most of the window frames in buildings erected during
the past thirty years. The grooved, steel center post was almost an
inch thick and appeared to be capable of supporting hundreds of pounds
without bending or breaking loose from the sash.
Harris hooked a carabiner to the post.
This piece of hardware was one of the most important that a climber
carried. Carabiners were made of steel or alloy and came in several
shape val D, offset D, and pear or keyhole-but the oval was used more
often than any of the others. It was approximately three and a half
inches by one and three-quarter inches, and it resembled nothing so much
as an oversized key ring or perhaps an elongated chain link. A spring-.
loaded gate opened on one side of the oval, making it possible for the
climber to connect the carabiner to the eye of a piton; he could also
slip a loop of rope onto the metal ring. A carabiner, which was
sometimes referred to as a “snap link,” could be employed to join two
ropes at any point along them, which was essential when the ends of
those lines were secured above and below. A vital-but not the
only-function of the highly polished snap links was to prevent ropes
from chaffing each other, to guard against their fraying through on the
rough, unpolished eye of a piton or on the sharp edge of a rock;
carabiners saved lives.
At Graham’s direction, Connie had stripped the manufacturer’s plastic
bands from an eighty-foot coil of red and blue hawser-laid nylon rope.
“It doesn’t look strong,” she said.
“It’s got a breaking strength of four thousand pounds.”
“So thin.”
“Seven-sixteenths of an inch.”
“I guess you know what you’re doing.”
Smiling reassuringly, he said, “Relax.”
He tied a knot in one end of the rope. That done, he grasped the double
loop that sprouted above the knot and slipped it through the gate of the
carabiner that was attached to the window post.
He was surprised at how quickly he was working, and by the ease with
which he had fashioned the complex knot. He seemed to be operating on
instinct more than on knowledge. in five years he had not forgotten
anything.
“This will be your safety line,” he told her.
The carabiner was one of those that came with a metal sleeve that fitted
over the gate to guard against an accidental opening. He screwed the
sleeve in place.
He picked up the rope and pulled it through his hands, quickly measuring
eleven yards of itHe took a folding knife from a pocket of his parka and
cut the rope, dropped one piece to the floor. He tied the cut end of
the shorter section to her harness, so that she was attached to the
window post by a thirty-foot umbilical. He took one end of the other
piece of rope and tied it around her waist, usirig a bowline knot.
Patting the windowsill, he said, “Sit up here.”
She sat facing him, her back to the wind and snow.
He pushed the thirty-foot rope out of the window; and the loop of slack,
from the post to Connie’s harness, swung in the wind. He arranged the
forty-five-foot length on the office floor, carefully coiled it to be
certain that it would pay out without tangling, and finally tied the
free end around his waist.