Sherpa, Sailor, Soldier, Spy

Cold War Years

Though they were the world’s two most populous democracies, which might have made them seem natural partners, relations between India and the United States during the formative years of the Cold War were anything but close. But the November 1960 presidential elections, won by John Kennedy in a tight race, a full re-appraisal of Indo-US ties was in the works.

The Central Intelligence Agency found a far more receptive Indian audience in November 1962. By the end of senior politician Averell Harriman’s visit to India, the CIA and the Intelligence Bureau (IB) had agreed to cooperate on several secret paramilitary programmes.

China Syndrome

Five months later, the desert sand of Xinjiang rippled as China detonated its first nuclear device on 16 October. Thirsty for detailed information about the blast, the US intelligence community went into overdrive. It was at this point that LeMay and Bishop met at that fateful cocktail party. Given the altitude, the Himalayas would offer far better line-of-sight coverage than Badaber (a satellite) did. And as a stationary device, a Himalayan sensor would offer more than the fleeting coverage possible from a satellite.

CIA-IB plans

There remained the issue of selling the idea to the Indians. Because the CIA had been handling joint covert programmes for the past two years, the project was turned over to the agency. And since ARC director Kao had been the primary point of contact for joint projects, it was with him that the CIA first broached the subject. The gravity of the plan caught him off guard. ‘‘I was not authorised to sanction such an important mission,’’ recalled Kao, ‘‘so I passed the message to B N Mullik.’’

By that time, Mullik had lost his primary patron in Nehru (the prime minister had passed away in spring) and had been replaced as director of the IB. Still, he retained control over covert paramilitary projects focused against China. A mission in the Himalayas fell under his purview, and after listening to the concept, he was agreeable in theory.

The Two Teams

Bishop’s first choice required little thought. At twenty-six years old, Luther ‘Lute’ Jerstad had been with Bishop on the 1963 Everest mission. James McCarthy, an excellent climber, suggested the next two names. The first was Tom Frost, a champion sail boast racer in his early twenties. McCarthy’s second call went to Harthon ‘Sandy’ Bill, the son of a senior official in the National Park Service. To round out the team, Bishop needed a medical doctor who could climb. Bishop eventually found 30-year old Robert Schaller, who was in surgical residency in Seattle.

Kohli did not have to look far for candidates. India’s best climbers had been with him during the Everest mission. Without hesitation, he mentally put four names on the short list. A quick pick was Harish Rawat, a mountaineer employed by the IB. He was a devout Hindu, and for him, mountaineering was an almost religious undertaking; he had placed an image of the Goddess Durga on Everest. Kohli’s second pick was Sonam Wangyal, a climbing protege in the employ of IB. At the tender age of twenty-three, Wangyal had been the baby of the 1965 Everest mission and the youngest to reach the summit to that date. Kohli’s third selection was Gurcharan Bhangu. Originally with the Punjab police, he had been assigned to the IB since 1961 for communications work. Kohli’s remaining pick was actually his top choice. Sonam Gyatso, forty-two, was a native of Sikkim and had grown up in the Himalayas.

Blessed Goddess

Nanda Devi was not an outright impossibility like Kanchenjunga, but promised to be no bargain. Loosely translated as ‘Blessed Goddess’, the peak is widely venerated in Hindu mythology. Standing 25,645 feet, it forms a formidable natural buffer between the frigid winds whipping down from Tibet and the fertile Gangetic plain. In that sense, it is nothing short of a saviour to the farmers of the lowlands.

The Four Camps

Both Bill McKniff, who was in charge of the American side of the operation, and Kohli concurred that they would lay siege to Nanda Devi much like any other expedition to a major peak. This involved teams of climbers and Sherpas leapfrogging up the side of the mountain, progressively establishing a series of four camps above Base Camp. Once the men were properly acclimated, the sensor would be fuelled and passed upward from Base Camp. Finally, it would be carried to a fifth camp, then placed at the summit and activated.

Back at the helipad, Tom Frost spent the day taking Jim on a modest acclimatisation run. This was very important because Jim alone knew the intricacies of nuclear power. Jim was not a mountaineer, and he was an elderly man to boot, so there was concern that he might fall ill from the altitude and need medical evacuation.

On 5 October, the porters brought the rest of the summit gear to Base Camp. Lute, Bill, Bhangu, and Kohli broke open the crates. Most of the sensor components were divided among reinforced cardboard boxes that fit on jerry-rigged backpacks. A more specialised pack with a small platform on the bottom had been made to carry the generator.

Unsealing N-rods

On 7 October, the skies showed no sign of clearing, but they pressed ahead. The most delicate part of their mission took place that morning. Sitting in front of a large olive-drab box with radiation warning labels on all sides, Jim broke the safety seals and peeled off the top. Inside, seven radioactive fuel rods were nestled in individual glass cradles. With great dexterity, he delicately pulled each one out in turn and inserted it into the generator.

Weather Worn

Everything hinged on the weather for 16 October. If it was reasonably clear, the mission was on track.

It was an anxious moment when Kohli peered from his tent that morning. Immediately, his heart sank. Fresh snow was piled near the tent flap and flakes were coming down at a steady pace.

All across Nanda Devi, the climbers suited up. Given the risks, they did not pause to police their trash or collect extra equipment, which included the sensor and generator. It had been hard enough hauling that load up to Camp Four, so it seemed foolish to repeat their efforts the next season.

Bhangu oversaw measures to safeguard the device on the slope. Finding a suitable cavity adjacent to the Camp Four tents, he and the six Sherpas wrapped the boxes with nylon rope and secured them to the rock using pitons and carbiners. Special care was taken with the generator, which was anchored by extra rope. Nearly a third of the load was sheltered inside the cavity. Once this task was complete, the seven vacated Camp Four and moved down to the third level. From there, Bhangu relayed word of the steps taken to secure the generator, which Kohli duly passed on to New Delhi over the radio.

Peak Redux

Both sides agreed to go back to Nanda Devi in 1966. Kohli indicated that the earliest they could try again was May.

By early 1966, however, there had been a crucial recalculation on the part of the CIA. For reasons known only to the scientists, they had decided that the sensor could, after all, be established on a shorter peak without hampering its collecting ability. The May 1966 mission, therefore, would be focused on recovering the gear left behind on Nanda Devi for subsequent replacement at an alternative site.

Encore Effort

The obvious question was which peak would be the new location. Because the CIA had now lowered its minimum required height, Kohli returned to one of his original proposals: 22,510-foot Nanda Kot.

Their encore expedition to Nanda Devi would be a far less glamourous outing than the first mission. As they neared Camp Four shortly before noon, snow started to pelt as they struggled onward. Bhangu was in the lead when, squinting through the blizzard, he saw trace of orange nylon fifty feet farther up. Crossing a last lip of rock, Bhangu stood atop the cramped platform that had held Camp Four.

Missing Sensor

He let his eyes run across a collapsed but intact tent. There was a butane canister nearby, as well as some utensils and dehydrated food rations strewn among rubble. He then looked to his left toward the shelf where he had secured the sensor eight months earlier. The rock shelf where he had left the boxes was completely gone, as if a massive knife had surgically severed that one corner of the slope.

News of the missing nuclear generator hit New Delhi like a bombshell. That same afternoon, an emergency session was held with Mullik, Kao, and CIA officials from the US embassy. To say that Mullik and Kao were in a panic would be an understatement. Though they had kept the Indian political leadership informed of the initial operation, they knew that their necks were on the line for approving the decision to leave the generator in Nanda Devi over the winter.

Kohli firmly believed that the device had reached the glacier and melted its way to the rocky bottom. The heat from the capsules would keep the ice at bay for at least six feet in all directions. As a result, there would be no pressure on the generator itself allowing it to remain unmolested in this icy cathedral for several hundred years until the nuclear pellets died down.

(By 1969, the Indians and the Americans had installed two nuclear devices trained at China, one at Leh, and the other in the Arunachal mountains. In 1970 and 1971, the Leh sensors picked up signals of Chinese medium-range ballistic missile tests, but the real triumph came in 1973, when the sensor plucked data of the Dong Feng 5 tests from the sky. Ironically, the feat coincided with vast improvements in satellite technology. The mountaintop devices had gone the way of the dinosaur.)