The Frozen Dead (68 page)

They saw her unhook something from her belt. Servaz knew immediately what it was.

*   *   *

Otto saw a black object bounce like a tennis ball down the stairs and roll towards him along the floor. Tick-tick-tick … He understood too late. A stun grenade. When it exploded, a blinding flash literally paralysed his sight. This was followed by a deafening explosion which shook the room, and the wave went through his body, giving him the impression that the room was spinning. He lost his balance.

By the time he came round, two figures had appeared. He felt someone kick him in the jaw and he let go of his gun. Then he was turned over on the floor and felt the cold steel of handcuffs closing round his wrists. That was when he saw the flames. They had begun to devour the coffin. His boss had vanished. Otto did not struggle. As a young man in the 1960s he had served as a mercenary in Africa under Bob Denard and David Smiley. He was well acquainted with the atrocities of postcolonial warfare; he had tortured and been tortured. After that, he had followed the orders of Henri Lombard, a man who was as hard as he was; then he had served his son. It took a lot to impress Otto.

‘Go fuck yourselves,' he said simply.

*   *   *

The heat from the fire was scorching their faces. The flames filled the centre of the room, blackening the high ceiling. Soon it would be impossible to breathe.

‘Pujol, Simeoni,' shouted Ziegler, pointing to the stairway, ‘take him out to the van!'

She turned to Servaz, who was gazing at the burning platform. The fire was devouring the body inside the coffin, but they had had time to see the long blonde hair and youthful face.

‘Dear God!' sighed Ziegler.

‘I saw her tomb at the cemetery,' said Servaz.

‘I suppose it must be empty. How did they manage to preserve her for so long? Was she embalmed?'

‘No, that wouldn't be enough. But Lombard has the means. And there are techniques.'

Servaz stared at the angelic young face as it was transformed into a mass of charred flesh, bones and molten plastic. It seemed totally unreal.

‘Where is Lombard?' asked Ziegler.

Servaz emerged from his trance and nodded to an open door on the other side of the room. They went round the room, hugging the circular wall to keep clear of the flames, then through the door.

Another stairway leading upwards. Much narrower, not as well maintained as the other one. Grey, weeping stone, stained with black streaks.

They came out at the back of the chateau.

Wind. Snow. Storm. Darkness.

Ziegler stopped and listened. Silence. The full moon came and went behind the clouds. Servaz scanned the moving shadows of the forest.

‘There,' she said.

The triple tracks of a snowmobile in the moonlight. They followed a path that carved a gap through the trees. The clouds closed over and the tracks disappeared.

‘Too late. He got away,' said Servaz.

‘I know where the trail leads to: it goes first to a cirque two kilometres from here, then up into the mountain, over a col and back down. From there, the road to Spain.'

‘Pujol and Simeoni could follow.'

‘They would have to make a detour of fifty kilometres. Lombard will get there before them. He probably already has a car waiting on the other side.'

Ziegler walked over to a small building at the edge of the forest: the tracks of the snowmobile started there. She opened the door and turned a switch. Inside the hut were two more snowmobiles and, against the wall, a board full of keys, skis, boots, helmets and black jumpsuits, whose yellow reflective strips caught the light.

‘Good heavens!' exclaimed Ziegler. ‘I'd love to know what sort of dispensation he got!'

‘What do you mean?'

‘The use of these things is strictly regulated,' she said, taking one of the jumpsuits off its hook.

Servaz swallowed as he watched Irène get into it.

‘What are you doing?'

‘Put that on!'

She pointed to a jumpsuit and a pair of boots. Servaz hesitated. There must be some other way … Roadblocks, for example. But all their officers had been mobilised at the Institute. And Lombard must already have an escape plan. Irène rummaged among the keys, then started the vehicle and glided it outside. She turned on the lights and went back inside to grab two helmets and two pairs of gloves. Servaz was struggling with his jumpsuit: it was too big, and his flak jacket got in the way.

‘Come on,' she said above the sound of the four-stroke engine.

He put on the red and white helmet and immediately felt he was suffocating. He drew the hood of the jumpsuit over the helmet and went out. The boots made him walk like an astronaut – or a penguin.

Outside, the blizzard had abated somewhat. The wind had dropped and there were fewer snowflakes in the tunnel of light created by the snowmobile's headlight. He pressed the button on his walkie-talkie.

‘Vincent? How is Samira?'

‘She's OK. But the other guy is in a bad way. The ambulances will be here in five minutes. And you?'

‘No time to explain! Stay with her.'

He cut the contact, lowered the visor of his helmet and clumsily straddled the raised seat behind Ziegler. Then he settled against the back support. She took off at once. The snowflakes came at them like shooting stars. The vehicle slid easily over the packed trail, hissing softly against the snow. The clouds parted again and through his visor he saw the mountains, just above the trees in the moonlight.

*   *   *

‘I know what you're thinking, Diane.'

His deep, hoarse voice startled her. She had been lost in thought.

‘You have been wondering how I'm going to kill you. And you are looking desperately for a way out. You're waiting for me to make a mistake. I'm sorry to say I will make no mistakes. And so, yes, you will die tonight.'

On hearing his words, an immense chill came over her, spreading from her head down to her stomach and legs. For a moment she thought she was going to faint. She swallowed, but felt a painful catch in her throat.

‘Or maybe I won't. Maybe I'll let you live, after all. I don't like being manipulated. Élisabeth Ferney might regret having used me. She always likes to have the last word, so perhaps this time she'll be disappointed. Killing you would deprive me of that little victory:
that gives you a chance, Diane.
To be honest, I haven't really made up my mind.'

He was lying
 … He had made up his mind. All her experience as a psychologist told her so. This was just one of his twisted little games, one of his tricks: give the victim a gleam of hope, all the better to take it from her later on. All the better to destroy her. Yes, that was it: another one of his perverse pleasures. Terror, mad hope and then, at the last minute, disappointment and despair.

He fell silent, listening attentively to the messages coming from the radio. Diane tried to do the same, but her mind was a welter of confusion and she found it impossible to concentrate.

‘It seems our friends from the gendarmerie have their hands full up there,' he said.

Diane looked at the landscape rushing past the windows: the narrow road was white, but they were driving fast. The car must have snow tyres. Nothing disturbed the immaculate whiteness except for dark tree trunks and a few grey boulders here and there. In the distance the high mountains stood out against the night sky and straight ahead was a gap between the summits. Perhaps that was where the road was leading.

She looked at him again, at this man who was going to kill her. A thought flashed into her mind, as sharp as an icicle in the moonlight. He was lying when he said he would not make any mistakes. He just wanted her to believe it. He wanted her to give up and entrust herself to him, in the hope he would let her live.

He was wrong. She wouldn't do that.

*   *   *

They came out of the forest, speeding through two snowdrifts. Servaz saw the entrance to the cirque: a gorge of monstrous proportions. He thought back to the gigantic architecture he had seen on first arriving in this valley. Everything here was out of proportion – the landscape, the passions, the crimes. The blizzard grew stronger, the snow swarming around them. Ziegler clung to the handlebars, arched against the wind behind the flimsy Plexiglas windscreen. Servaz huddled down to make the most of the feeble protection his colleague could offer. His gloves and jumpsuit were not enough to keep him warm. Now and again the snowmobile bounced like a bobsleigh to the right or the left, and more than once he thought they would tip over.

Soon, in spite of the gusts, he saw they were approaching a huge amphitheatre streaked with scree and ice flows. Several waterfalls had frozen; from this distance the ice had transformed them into tall white candles dripping wax against the rock face. When the full moon came out from behind the clouds and lit up the landscape, its beauty took his breath away. There reigned a sense of expectation, of time suspended.

‘I see him!' he shouted.

The snowmobile was climbing the slope on the far side of the cirque. Servaz thought he could make out the vague line of a path heading towards a breach in the rocky wall. The vehicle was already halfway up. The moonlight flooded the cirque, carving out every detail in the rock and ice. Servaz looked up. The silhouette had just vanished into the shadow of the cliff; then it reappeared on the other side. He leaned forward and hung on as best he could, while their powerful vehicle gripped the slope with ease.

Once they had gone through the breach, they were among fir trees again. Lombard had disappeared. The track continued to climb, zigzagging through the forest; the wind was gusting, a blinding grey and white curtain. The beam from the headlight bounced back at them. Servaz felt as if a wrathful, roaring god were spitting his icy breath into their faces. He was trembling from the cold, but he also felt sweat trickling between his shoulder blades.

‘Where is he?' shouted Ziegler. ‘Shit! Where has he gone?'

He could sense her tension, every muscle straining to control the snowmobile. And her rage, too. Lombard had almost managed to have her sent to prison in his place. He had used them. Servaz wondered fleetingly whether Irène was altogether sane, whether she was leading both of them into a lethal trap.

Then the forest thinned. They went through a small pass and down the other side. The storm subsided and the mountains appeared all around them, like an army of giants waiting as reserves in a nocturnal duel. Suddenly they saw him, one hundred metres below. He had left the trail and abandoned his snowmobile. Bent double, he was reaching towards the ground.

‘He's got a snowboard!' shouted Ziegler. ‘The bastard! He's going to slip through our fingers!'

Lombard was standing at the top of a very steep slope scattered with huge boulders. Servaz recalled the articles boasting of the man's sporting feats. He wondered whether their snowmobile would be able to follow him, then decided that Lombard wouldn't have abandoned his own if that were the case. Ziegler was hurtling down the slope at breakneck speed now. She turned off to follow Lombard's tracks, and for a moment Servaz thought they were going to go flying. He saw their quarry abruptly turn his head towards them and raise his arm in their direction.

‘Watch out! He's got a gun!'

He would not have been able to say exactly what Ziegler did, but the snowmobile made an abrupt ninety-degree turn and Servaz somersaulted into the snow. There was a flash in front of them, followed by a loud bang. The sound reverberated against the mountain, was returned and amplified by the echo. A second detonation followed. Then a third. The gunshots and their echo made a deafening thunder. Then the shooting stopped. Servaz waited, buried in the powdery snow, his heart pounding. Ziegler was lying next to him; she had her gun, but for some reason she had decided not to use it. The last echo was still rippling in the air when a second sound seemed to emerge from the first, an enormous cracking sound.

Something unfamiliar. Servaz could not tell what it was.

Still lying in the snow, he felt the ground vibrating beneath him. For a moment he thought he was passing out. He had never felt anything like it.

The crack was followed by a hoarser noise, deeper, broader, more muted. And just as unfamiliar.

The deep, muffled grumbling grew louder, as if it were running on rails, a train coming nearer … No, not one train, but several together.

He sat up and saw Lombard looking towards the mountain, motionless.

Suddenly, he understood.

He followed Ziegler's terrified gaze towards the slope on their right. She grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet.

‘Quick! We've got to run!
Quick!
'

She led him towards the path, and he followed, heavy and awkward in his jumpsuit and boots. He stopped for a moment to look back at Lombard. He had stopped shooting and was struggling with the bindings on his snowboard. Servaz saw him give a worried glance towards the top of the slope. He did likewise and it was like a fist landing in his guts. Up there, in the moonlight, an entire chunk of glacier was moving, a sleeping giant suddenly awake. Servaz plunged ahead, hopping and waving his arms to go faster, never taking his eyes from the glacier.

A gigantic cloud was plummeting down the mountain through the fir trees.
It's all over,
he thought.
It's all over!
He stopped looking, tried to hurry. The enormous wave hit only seconds later. He was picked up from the ground, catapulted, tossed like a wisp of straw. He let out a faint cry, immediately stifled by the snow. He was tumbling inside the drum of a washing machine. He opened his mouth, coughed, hiccuped, waved his arms and legs. He was drowning. He met Irène's gaze; her head was down; she was staring behind him with an expression of absolute horror on her face. Then she disappeared. He was lifted, shaken, turned over.