02 Avalanche Pass (8 page)

“And another thing—” he began, then both men froze as the bells rang through the tiled kitchen, reflecting and echoing off the hard surfaces of tile and stainless steel. They both looked at each other.

“A test?” said George uncertainly. Then, as the sound repeated, they both dropped what they were doing and headed for the door. The can of tomatoes teetered for a moment on the edge of the kitchen bench. Then it toppled and fell. Red tomato juice leaked from the half-slit rim, spreading in an ever-widening pool across the floor.

H
enry Bolkowski was deep in the bowels of the massive building, inspecting the oil-fired boiler that provided heat for the heating system, when he heard the alarm bells. Henry was sixty-three years old and he’d heard those bells once before. He was one of those people who actually remembered the event Maria Velasquez feared. He’d heard the crash and rumble of the avalanche, felt the entire building, massive as it was, tremble as the thousands of tons of snow and rock slammed into it.

He limped quickly for the service elevator. If it was happening again, he didn’t want to be down here.

And so it went all over the hotel. Staff going about their routine duties stopped in mid-task, hesitated, refusing to believe the evidence of their ears the first time. Then, having their fears confirmed, they headed for hallways, staircases and elevators to make their way to the reception lobby.

T
here were already between twenty and thirty people assembled in the lobby when Markus and Kormann emerged from the office.

An urgent buzz of conversation filled the large room as more and more staff members streamed in. Unlike Henry Bolkowski, the majority had never heard the alarm bells rung in earnest. Now, as they gathered, they wondered to each other what the problem might be. A young room-service waiter, standing close to the reception desk, caught sight of Markus as he emerged from the office with Kormann close beside him. The younger man noticed the adhesive bandage on Markus’s eye and the dark bruise on his cheek and wondered if they had anything to do with the current emergency. The manager definitely looked a little rattled, he thought.

“Say, Mr. Markus,” he called. “What’s going on?”

Instantly, another half-dozen employees echoed his question. A chorus of voices rose and the gathering crowd began to press closer around the reception desk. Markus looked uncertainly at Kormann. The other man stepped forward and held up both hands for silence. Gradually, most of the questioning voices dropped away as people pressed in closer to hear what he was going to say.

“Please, people, please be patient until everybody’s here.”

“But what’s going on?” called a voice from the middle of the crowd. Kormann smiled reassuringly in the direction the voice had come from.

“There’s no danger. Let me repeat: there is no danger. We will explain what’s happening when all staff are present.”

The muttering began again. The crowd was nervous and unconvinced. The young waiter turned to the people around him.

“Who is this guy, anyway? How come someone from Snowdrift Transport is giving the orders around here?”

His neighbors nodded agreement. The young waiter stepped closer, encouraged by their support.

“Mr. Markus, you’re the manager. What’s going on?”

Kormann turned to face Markus, putting his back to the crowd. He leaned forward, speaking quietly but forcefully so that only the manager could make out what he was saying. He made sure that the reassuring smile remained on his face as he spoke.

“Now you calm them down. Just repeat what I said: they’ll find out what’s going on soon enough.” His hand gripped Markus’s forearm like a vice as he continued. “And if you don’t settle them down, we’re going to have a little more bloodshed here. But this time we won’t stop at pistol-whipping. Understand?”

His eyes moved around the lobby and, following their direction, Markus became aware of the other men who had arrived in the minivans with Kormann. There must have been twenty of them, spaced around the walls, standing back from the central area where the crowd was still gathering.

There was a sameness to the look of them. A hard look. And each of them carried a shoulder bag. Markus had no doubt what would be in those bags. As his gaze passed over them, he caught sight of Tina Bowden entering the lobby. She saw him and started to thread her way through the crowd. But he made eye contact with her and gave a brief shake of his head. She stopped, frowning, then seemed to understand. Tina was listed on the staff roster as a relief receptionist. Her role as security officer was kept secret. There was no sense in letting these people know she was anything but a junior employee. He felt the pressure of Kormann’s hand on his arm moving him forward. He obeyed the implicit order and moved to face the crowd.

“Please,” he began, then repeated the word a little louder so that it carried over their voices. “Please! Just bear with us. Mr. Kormann here is helping us with the situation. As he told you, there is no danger and we’ll just wait until everyone’s assembled. Just be patient and stay calm, all right?”

“Is the mountain coming down?” It was a nervous female voice from near the back of the crowd. Markus forced himself to smile, trying to look reassuring. He was sure the effect must be ghastly.

“No. The mountain is not coming down,” he replied, forcing his voice to be calm. “I’ll say it again. There is no danger. We do have a situation here and we’re asking for your cooperation. That’s all.”

The buzz of conversation subsided a little. They weren’t convinced, he realized, but they knew this was all they were going to get for the moment. Markus noticed that Kormann was sweeping his gaze over the crowd, his lips moving fractionally as he counted heads. Seeming to be satisfied, he nodded to the men standing around the walls of the lobby. Without drawing any attention to themselves, half of the men moved away from the walls and headed down the corridor. Markus watched them going. There was nothing in that direction but the main room of the conference center.

Kormann waited another minute, then nodded to the young manager.

“Okay, I think we’re about all here. Let’s move them to the conference hall, Ben.”

Markus frowned at him, uncomprehending. “The conference hall—” he began, then stopped as he saw the cold anger flash in the other man’s eyes. He hesitated, then tried again.

“But there’s nothing there. We’re not set up for a conference,” he said. Again, Kormann leaned forward and said in that same forceful undertone: “Just get them in there, Ben.”

Their gazes locked for a few seconds. Then the manager dropped his eyes, defeated. He moved a pace away from the other man, as if the physical separation could somehow lessen the threat he felt.

“Okay, people!” he called, and again the buzz of conversation died away. “Let’s move out of here. Could you all please move to the conference center, main room.”

They complained among themselves, as crowds do. They muttered. They questioned the direction. But they obeyed. Once the first few people drifted from the back of the crowd in the direction of the conference center, the trend was set. The movement became more definite, less haphazard, as those at the front of the room, realizing
they were now at a disadvantage, tried to push through to secure better positions in the new location.

“Let’s go with ’em, Ben,” Kormann said with mock politeness, drawing aside and gesturing for Markus to precede him.

They followed the milling crowd through the double doors that led to the conference center. As Markus had already pointed out, the large room was virtually unfurnished. There was a podium on a raised speaker’s stage at the end farthest from the doors, and a large glass watercooler in one corner. Stackable hard chairs were ranged round the walls, stacked four deep in neat rows. The central area, some thirty feet by sixty, was empty floor space.

The conference room was at the back of the hotel, on the western side. The western wall of the room was mainly window area, allowing a view of the small expanse of snow-covered flat land behind the hotel, and the massive cliff face that towered barely forty yards away. Light mesh curtains were drawn across the big windows to cut the glare of the reflected light from the snow outside. For the same reason, the glass was tinted. The diffused light filled the room, obviating the need for internal lighting on a clear day. The other three walls were gray concrete, lined with whiteboards and cork display boards. At the moment, they were bare, except for one whiteboard that still bore a trace of the notes left from a conference the previous week. The words “SALESMANSHIP PLUS!” stared out at Markus. He wondered what the phrase actually meant.

Kormann’s elbow nudged his ribs and he headed to the front of the room. He noticed that the ten men who had left the lobby were now ranged around the walls of the conference area. The remaining ten were nowhere to be seen. Now that he studied them more closely, there was an alarming sameness about Kormann’s companions. All of them were expensively dressed in casual clothes, as befitted guests at Canyon Lodge. And their same brand name shoulder bags slung over their right shoulders—all with the top zips open and their right hands inside the bags.

It was almost as if they wore uniforms, he thought. And as the thought occurred, he realized that this was probably the reason why they were dressed in such similar fashion. Seen individually, there
was nothing to excite comment about any of them. As a group, however, they were easy to distinguish from the staff members who were their unknowing prisoners.

Kormann and Markus had reached the speaker’s podium now. The members of the crowd watched them expectantly, knowing that finally they would find out what the hell was going on. One girl near the front of the group raised her hand tentatively and addressed Markus.

“Mr. Markus, are we going to be here long? I’ve left the switchboard unattended and you know that’s against normal procedure.”

Kormann smiled reassuringly at her. “The switchboard is being looked after,” he said easily and she frowned, not liking what she heard.

“But how? There’s nobody left to—”

“One of my men is attending to it.” Kormann rode over her protest, then glanced at his watch. “In any event, the line between here and Salt Lake City is down and it won’t be restored for another ten minutes.”

“How do you know that?” asked a middle-aged woman standing next to the switchboard operator. Several others echoed the question. People were getting just a little tired of this self-important Snowdrift Transport courier, who seemed to have taken control of their hotel. Kormann raised his hands once more, requesting silence and smiling at them all. They ignored the gesture and pressed a little closer, becoming more vocal in their protests. The smile faded from his lips and he raised his glance, nodding at one of the men standing by the wall.

The racketing burst of a machine gun was deafening in the enclosed, concrete-walled room.

Kormann’s man had chosen the glass tank of the water cooler as his target. The heavy bullets slammed into it, shattering the glass and sending the entire unit spinning and staggering in a welter of glass shards and spraying water.

Several women in the room screamed and everyone dropped into an instinctive, protective crouch. As their eyes swung to the direction of the gunfire, Markus realized that every member of Kormann’s
team was now holding a small, stubby machine gun. Kormann himself had drawn a pistol from a shoulder holster inside his parka.

“Okay, now let’s all shut the fuck up!” he roared and the people dragged their eyes away from the threat of the gunsmoke drifting in the air and turned back to face him—disbelief mingled with confusion on their faces. Kormann waited, his eyes roaming the crowd, looking for the potential leaders, the potential fools, the potential troublemakers. So far, so good, he thought as none of them would meet his gaze. They were all cowed by the sudden turn of events.

“Very well,” he began crisply. “My name is Kormann and I’m taking control of this hotel and its guests.” He felt Markus stir beside him, felt the other man’s eyes on him, widening in disbelief.

“You’re mad,” the manager breathed. “You’ll never get away with it.”

“Shut up,” Kormann told him quietly. Then he raised his voice again so that the rest of the room could hear him. “If you look around, you’ll see that you are surrounded by armed men.”

Instinctively, most of the heads in the crowd turned, even though they had already seen that what he said was true. He continued.

“None of them will hesitate to shoot if you cause the slightest trouble,” he said. “On the other hand, if you obey orders, if you do precisely what you’re told when you are told to do it, you will be completely safe.” He paused to let that sink in, then repeated it. “Completely safe. We have no wish to harm any of you and we’ll do our best not to. It’s up to you entirely. Is that clear?”

He paused again, his eyes sweeping over them. There was a reluctant murmur of assent and agreement. They wanted to cling to the promise of safety. A few of them nodded fearfully. They were now subdued. It was time to give them hope for survival. He spoke deliberately, seeing that hope come alive in every face before him.

“As I said, we have no wish to harm you. Our quarrel is not with you. Our aim is to hold the guests of the hotel as hostages for ransom. We’re not terrorists. We’re not political. We’re businessmen. And we know it’s good business to keep people alive.

“Accordingly, we’ll be releasing most of the hotel staff and allowing
you to leave. We’ll keep only the managerial staff and a few others to attend to cooking and serving food. We don’t need any more of you and we’ll begin selecting those who can go in a few minutes.”

He could sense the overwhelming tide of relief that surged through them. Muted conversation sprang up again and this time, he allowed it to continue unchecked. People who thought they were about to be released would be less likely to cause trouble, he knew. He smiled briefly, turning to Markus.