Ice Claw (23 page)

“And isn’t it all obvious to you now?” Sophie could barely keep the irritation out of her voice. “It’s the animal smugglers. They’re the ones responsible. You should have told me. You should have trusted me.”

Max knew it was far more than animal smugglers. The German had waited at d’Abbadie’s château until Max had discovered the drawing on the pendant. It was only then that they attacked.

“I’m sorry, Sophie. The less you knew, the better. I didn’t
know how dangerous it was going to be.” He still didn’t want to tell her anything more.

“Is there any other reason you think Zabala died? Other than being murdered by animal smugglers?” Sophie asked, staring straight into Max’s eyes.

Sayid looked worried. Was Max going to tell her everything? He didn’t trust Sophie. (A) She was a girl who was good at just about all the things Sayid couldn’t do. (B) She had crept into his friendship with Max—so he was a bit jealous. (C) She was making a play for Max, and that was so obvious that even the old clock on the wall could have noticed. (D) She seemed to be in the exact place where Max was, when it mattered, like at Zabala’s hut, and just before the avalanche, when he saved her from the bikers. (E) Well, Sayid could probably come up with a whole alphabet of reasons why he didn’t trust Sophie Fauvre.

“I don’t know why he was killed,” Max told her. “But there might be another reason other than animal smugglers. Though I’m not sure what it is yet.” Max chucked one of Sayid’s T-shirts at him. “C’mon, Sayid. There isn’t much time.”

“Wait a minute,” Sophie said. “Where are you going?” “Where I think Zabala’s clues want me to go.” She waited, but Max said nothing more. He was waiting for her response. She looked concerned. All Max was certain about was that in a short while he had to get clear across France without being spotted. And that was going to be pretty near impossible. He had deliberately said very little to Sophie. The triangle etched on the pendant pinpointed Sophie’s country of birth. With her involvement in the endangered-species trade and her mysterious appearance on the mountain, he was convinced she was caught up in this whole thing far
more than she had told him. What Max had told no one was that he had to get to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco. He needed her to open the way for him.

“You should come home with me,” she said.

“Why would I do that?” Max said, barely able to conceal his relief—this was exactly what he had wanted her to say.

“Because you would be safe. For a while, at least. And then you can decide what you want to do. My family owes you. My father would be honored to help you.”

“Thanks. Give me a minute to think about it. I need a word with Sayid.”

She left the room and Max closed the door. Sayid shook his head.

“You’re crazy, Max. Y’know, things about her don’t feel right.”

“It’s what I have to do, Sayid.”

“What? Walk deliberately into a trap?”

“Keep your voice down. We don’t know exactly how she’s involved. Not yet.”

“I think a boulder must have hit you on the head in that avalanche. You’re getting deeper and deeper into trouble. Real big-time-very-messy-desperate-to-get-out-of trouble.”

“I know it’s dodgy, but we’ll sort it out when we get there. It’s vital, Sayid. It’s exactly where Zabala wanted his clues to lead us.”

“I can’t go,” Sayid said.

“Course you can. I need your help. You know some of the info we found at the château was all about sacred geometry, and you’re good at working out stuff like that. You’ll be fine. And I need someone to speak Arabic for me.”

“Max, my leg is hurting like hell. And I would slow you down. Besides, they speak Darija in Morocco … it’s a dialect,” he quickly explained. “I wouldn’t understand a word.”

Max felt there was more to it than not speaking the language. “I promised your mum I’d look after you on this trip, and I haven’t done very well so far,” he said.

“Max, it’s been a scary time for me, and in a twisted kind of way it’s been fun, but I can’t keep up with you. Not with this leg. I’d better go home.”

Max hid his genuine disappointment. Sayid had been there when he needed him. Was his injured leg an excuse because he was too scared to go on? Max mentally chastised himself. It didn’t matter if Sayid needed a way out. He had already endured more than most boys his age. Max had already put him too much in harm’s way.

“Yeah, I suppose. OK. Look, I’ll get you to the airport.”

Sayid interrupted him. “You’ve got to get away. You can’t come to the airport. The authorities will be watching. Keep it simple. The comtesse can get me a taxi. We go our separate ways. We have to.”

Max pulled the drawstring tight on his backpack and stuck out his hand for Sayid. His friend took it. The boys embraced each other.

“Try and see my dad. Tell him I’ll be OK. When you get back leave a message on your voice mail. Something about—I dunno—flying lessons; then I’ll know you made it. If they pick you up in England because of me, just tell them everything except the bit about Morocco. I reckon that’s going to be my route into France when I have to come back.”

“You’re coming back to France? Why? Are you crazy?”

Max smiled and put his arm around his mate. Once he’d established whether Morocco really was where Zabala had intended the clue to take him, then he would explore the third side of the triangle, which pointed across the French Alps to Switzerland. “That’s one bit of info I don’t want to tell you. You already know more than anyone else. Let’s get out of here.”

The comtesse had filled baguettes with cheese and pâté for them, packed fruit and bottled water, and tried unsuccessfully to thrust crumpled euro notes, which she had squirreled away in an empty jar, into their hands.

The taxi arrived. The comtesse went to the gate to see off her “exchange student” and to instruct the driver to deliver him safely at the departure terminal at Biarritz airport. She put the folded money directly into the driver’s hands. “He is just a boy, you look after him. I have paid you well.”

Sayid turned in the seat just as the taxi went round the corner. He waved at the comtesse but his eyes looked up towards the window where Max stood. He was saying good-bye to his friend, not sure when he would see him again. Imagined fears of Max being hunted, of his best mate fighting for his life, stabbed at his conscience. Max’s stubborn determination was scary at times. Whatever it was that drove him to take such huge risks was something Sayid didn’t fully understand. But had he agreed to go to Morocco, his injury would have put Max’s life in even greater danger.

Sayid would go home, he’d speak to Max’s dad, explain everything—Tom Gordon would know what to do.

Then Sayid would wait for his friend to call.

“I’ve left Bobby’s cell phone in his room, Comtesse. I can’t use it because the battery’s dead. I’m sure he’ll come back, and I don’t want him to feel he’s let me down. Tell him there’s no problem between us. I’d like us to still be friends,” Max said.

“I will tell him, and I will insist he finds you. He will phone me, he always does.”

“And my dad. You’ll remember to phone my dad for me?” Max repeated it like an instruction. These were the final moments before he went on the run.

The comtesse gave him a reassuring smile and her voice calmed his uncertainty. “Of course, once you are well away from here.”

“My dad, he’s … well, sometimes he doesn’t understand things too well and he can’t always take calls. If you have to leave a message with someone else, don’t say too much, because then they might feel obliged to tell the cops in England.”

“I will be brief, but I will be explicit in my discretion. He will be told what is essential, but nothing more. You must not worry—only about yourself. Be careful. And remember what I said.”

Her eyes glanced at Sophie as she bent her head to brush his cheeks with her lips. She quickly whispered, “About trust.”

Tishenko’s plan would flush Max Gordon out of his hiding place, he was certain of that. The killer knew exactly where the monk had fallen to his death, and that information had been passed to the authorities. Once Max Gordon was arrested, it would be the simplest of matters to have him
snatched from police custody and brought to the unforgiving wasteland from where there was no escape.

Tishenko’s assassin had failed to kill Zabala in his hut; then the second attempt on the mountain had been complicated by this boy. Fedir Tishenko should, by his own standards, have punished such a failure, but when he spoke to his ambassador of death, the killer was calm and confident and expressed no regrets. The job had been done, and if this boy had been involved with Zabala before the killing, then that could not be laid at her door. Tishenko liked girls who killed. They were somehow more cold-blooded about the whole business. Like glaciers, as if their feminine emotions were buried beneath a mountain of cold intellect. He found that very attractive. But the greatest attraction of all was that no one ever suspected a girl could be an assassin.

In England a telephone rang, echoing through the silent corridors of the specialized nursing home. Across the quadrangle, attached to one wing of the old estate, a huge brick and glass greenhouse brimming with natural fragrances from exotic countries created an ideal refuge for men who had spent their lives traveling the world, knew the jungle and needed the tactile comfort of stem and flower. Men who were now confined by ill health to St. Christopher’s.

The telephone did not stop ringing. It waited for the orderly in charge of that section to answer. Ex-Royal Marine Marty Kiernan, all 1.83 meters of him, and 112 kilos, took a few paces across the beautifully crafted Victorian tiled floor and lifted the receiver. He listened, pressed a button on the phone’s
base, replaced the receiver and walked towards the mini-jungle that lay beneath the glass framework. His soft-soled shoes barely made a sound. Despite his size, he walked lightly. Old habits. Marty was a veteran of jungle and desert fighting. He had carried wounded men out of harm’s way in different war zones, had knelt—as the trained medic he was—under fire, to save others’ lives. And he had paid the price. In Afghanistan two bullets had torn into his big frame and rendered him helpless. It took six men to carry him to the medevac chopper. Marty suffered psychological as well as physical injuries, but he had been lucky and ended up in the only military hospital available in the UK. The people who cared for him gave him new hope, turning the black octopus of depression that gripped his mind into a positive, can-do attitude. Just the way he was before the bullets took his right arm.

You had to turn the emotionally draining negativity into action, he would quietly tell the injured men who were brought to St. Christopher’s. He didn’t ask them any questions about why they could barely speak, why some of them just started crying for no reason at all, why others just gazed at a picture on the wall for hours on end. Sooner or later these damaged men would find a way out of the tunnel they were trapped in. And then they’d nod, or smile, and maybe even begin to talk. Until then Marty, and others like him who knew what damage combat can do to men, would care for them. No one else would.

One of his charges was unique. A long time ago this man had worked in Special Forces, became a well-known mountaineer, then used his education, his courage and his skills to rove the world searching out potential, or inevitable, ecological disasters. Working for a privately funded organization had
made him a lot of enemies, everyone from governments to powerful corporations, but Tom Gordon’s actions had averted many environmental catastrophes before they happened, long before climate change became such a hot topic. Marty smiled. Hot topic. He liked that. He’d try that on as a joke, even though it was a lame one.

Marty and the other staff knew what had happened to Tom Gordon out in Africa, how a corrupt doctor had tortured him, screwing up his mind with toxic chemicals, trying to get vital information from him. Well, he hadn’t, and Gordon’s son, Max, had defied incredible odds and led the rescue of his father. Like father, like son, maybe.

It was humid in the vast greenhouse, and if some of the overhead vents hadn’t been slightly open, it would have been hotter than the jungles of Borneo. He approached the man bent over the waist-high flower bed, digging around a brightly colored plant. Marty stopped. It was never a good idea to approach men such as Tom Gordon from behind, particularly when they had something like a trowel in their hand. It could suddenly, and unexpectedly, become a deadly weapon for someone caught unawares and whose instincts were still frighteningly fast. He coughed. The man turned. A moment of doubt clouded Gordon’s eyes. He knew this man. He saw him every day. What was his name? What was …?

He remembered. “Marty. Hello.”

“Hi, Tom. Switchboard says there’s a telephone call from France. I think it’s Max.”

There were days Tom Gordon could not remember his son. He knew the boy phoned regularly, because Marty told him, but there were days when nothing made any sense.

“Max?”

“Yeah. Y’know …”

“Don’t worry, Marty. Today’s a good day.” Tom Gordon smiled. He looked at the big man’s face. “He’s in trouble, isn’t he?”