Ice Claw

17

Noise and smells. Voices gabbling. Hands pecked at Max’s clothes like hens at food. Colors dazzled; smoke and incense stung his eyes.

Marrakech, Morocco.

The souk, the market backstreets of the ancient city, teemed with people. Merchants vied for attention, fingers tugged at Max’s sleeve, men jumped in front of him and tried to shove all kinds of goods in his face-silk and spices, jewelry, clothing, copper pots, beads and smoldering incense sticks.

“Anji! Anji! — Here! Here!” the shop owners and their touts shouted.

Pungent smells layered the confined alleys. Arguments broke out; men spat words at each other. Scooters and bikes, overladen donkeys and people-more people than Max had ever seen in such small alleys-jostled to get through the cramped passageways.

Sophie was ten paces ahead, sometimes hidden by the surging crowds, but she often turned back to look for him and, satisfied that he was still following, went back to pushing through the wall of bodies.

Max lost sight of her. Flies and sweat irritated his eyes, and the smells were beginning to overwhelm him. His concentration had wavered for a moment and the hungry sea of faces had swallowed her. He felt the urge to shout her name, but it would have been swept away in the noise of the alleys. Then someone grabbed his shoulder. Sophie. She stood in a darkened passage.

“This way,” she said, and turned into the cool gloom, where a scrawny kitten danced ahead of her.

Moments later she put her shoulder against a heavy wooden door and he followed her into an oasis of calm. An inner courtyard, blessed with diffused light, where mosaic tiles reflected differing hues of blue. A fountain gently splashed water across the center of the stone yard.

And it was quiet. As if someone had closed a door to the cacophony of braying humanity.

Sophie unslung her backpack. “We stay here for the night,” she told him, then called, “Abdullah!”

“What is this place? Is it your home?” Max said.

“It’s a riad, a traditional house,” she said.

“I know what a riad is,” he said.

She hesitated. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to patronize you.”

She walked away towards the entrance and called the man’s name again. Max felt a twinge of remorse. He needn’t have sounded so damned arrogant, but he wanted to score a point to give himself at least some sense of being in control of the situation.

He gazed around at the first-floor balcony that ran around the building, with its delicate handcrafted ironwork, spiraled and shaped into an elaborate pattern. Across the courtyard where he now stood, an archway led to another enclosed area, where a swimming pool, edged with slabs of smooth stone, waited undisturbed for someone to leap and shatter its still water.

This was a small corner of paradise.

“It’s a private hotel. Eight bedrooms, two suites and very expensive,” Sophie told him.

“You’re gonna pay for this?” Max asked her as he pulled off his boots and socks and let his feet cool on the stone floor. It felt great. He let the fountain’s fine spray settle on his face like a cooling massage.

Before Sophie could answer, a man appeared. He was huge, with a barrel chest. His brown face bristled with stubble and his hair was cropped short to his scalp, like a shaved coconut. He wore traditional Berber dress, a djellaba cloak with broad sleeves and leather sandals. He grinned, spread his arms and embraced Sophie.

“Sophie! Good, good. It is my honor to have you in my home again,” the man said. “My staff received your instructions and they have prepared two rooms, as you requested.”

Sophie had bought a phone at the airport and Max had seen her use it. So this was the call she’d made, he realized. Could she have phoned anyone else at the same time? He had to make a decision about her. Trust her or not?

“Max, this is Abdullah Boulkoumit. This is his place. Abdullah, this is Max Gordon. He’s a friend of mine,” Sophie said, bringing the man towards Max.

Abdullah’s gaze had not wavered from Max’s face the moment he had turned away from Sophie. It was as if he searched out every event in the boy’s life that had brought him to his home in the heart of the ancient city. For a moment Max felt awkward. He was barefooted, boots in hand, in the middle of a luxury hotel. He was grimy, unkempt. He realized one of his socks was floating away across the courtyard in the water from the fountain.

“You are welcome in my home, Master Gordon, and I see you are already familiar with our custom of removing one’s shoes before entering. It honors me,” Abdullah said gently, delicately brushing aside his guest’s embarrassment.

Abdullah shook his hand and then, as custom dictated, kissed the tips of his own fingers.

Two staff members waited inside the cool interior; one now eased Max’s backpack from his hands and led the way down the corridor. Sophie walked with him.

“We’ll go to my father’s tomorrow. Abdullah will arrange transport. Freshen up and I’ll see you in a couple of hours,” she said.

“I only take a few minutes to shower,” he told her as they stopped outside an iron-studded door which, once opened, revealed a luxurious room. He could get used to this, Max decided.

“Well, I need longer. So, for once in your life, Max Gordon, slow down and be patient.”

She followed the other staff member and turned out of sight down another corridor.

Max stepped into the room. Beyond the huge double bed, steam rose from a sunken marble bath. Rose petals floated on the water’s surface and a tangy smell of sandalwood filtered through the steam.

“Is that for me?” Max asked.

The man nodded.

“I’ll smell like a girl if I get in there,” Max said, not letting on that the sandalwood actually smelled quite good. And the bath was like a football club’s locker-room plunge pool. Wasn’t half bad, come to think of it. He might even practice deep-sea diving in there.

“Please,” the porter said as he gestured to the bathroom, and placed Max’s backpack on a suitcase stand.

Max stepped forward. It was like something out of an Arabian Nights story. Beyond the bath, lattice screens offered privacy but also allowed him to see across the rooftops of the old city. Staggering snow-capped peaks rose up beyond the city skyline, tinged with the last rays of the setting sun. The Atlas Mountains. How far away? A few hours’ drive? Somewhere beyond them was where Sophie’s father lived, and that was where he felt sure Zabala’s clue meant for him to go.

The clues from the chateau, the link between her father and Zabala with the wild animals. There had to be a connection. Max knew nothing about Morocco. He remembered stories from when he was a kid: Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Aladdin, A Thousand and One Nights. But other than that, he was in a part of the world that had sights and sounds-and smells-that were so exotic it felt as though they could sweep you along like an …

He stopped his thoughts right there, because the word that came to mind was avalanche. And that thought sucked the warmth out of the room. The man was turning back the bed. Taking a bottle of chilled water from the minibar, he unscrewed it, poured half the water into a glass and settled it on a coaster-bead-sized stones delicately wired together by local craftsmen. He pointed to the lights, clapped gently and smiled as the lights came on.

That was cool. Max liked that big-time.

The man, pleased to have amused his guest, bowed and left. Max checked the room. The bed was great: you could have a midnight feast on that with half a dozen of your mates. There was a CD player with a selection of music-international and local-as well as a bowl of fruit, a phone, computer connections, a minibar fridge stacked with fizzy drinks and fruit juices. Max reckoned he could survive a week in here.

He picked up the phone on the bedside table, got an outside line and dialed Sayid’s cell, but the standard recorded answering message was all he heard. He left a brief message but stopped himself from telling his friend where he was. Sayid might have been picked up by the police. He hung up. Sayid should have been home by now and his phone back in use. But Max was realistic enough to know there was nothing he could do about it. He knew Sayid wouldn’t tell the authorities any more than he had to.

There was one more thing Max had to do before he could relax completely. He fished in his backpack and pulled out a small tube of superglue, one of the best repair kits for quick fixes. After fifteen minutes of concentrated work on his scuffed and torn trainers, using the blade from the minibar’s corkscrew, he completed the task-managing the small miracle of not gluing his fingers together in the process.

Max let his clothes fall where he stood and slid in a CD. He popped a can, grabbed a mango and a packet of crisps and went through to the humongous bath. Rose petals or not, he’d have a long soak. He suddenly felt very tired.

He stepped over the broad edge of the bath, balanced everything he needed and slid into the velvet warmth of the deep water. He peeled back the skin of the mango and sank his teeth into the yellow flesh. It tasted of sunshine. And made a hell of a mess-juice everywhere-but he was in the perfect place to eat it. The packet of crisps followed, swigged down with the cola. Someone in his mind was telling him he deserved to pig out for a while.

He clapped.

The lights faded.

He clapped again.

The music got louder.

He clapped again.

Just for himself.

No matter how much money Fedir Tishenko possessed he could not control the Atlantic sea fog that blanketed the southern part of France and northern Spain, shutting down all air traffic.

Sharkface waited on a private jet at Biarritz. His destination was an abandoned military airfield south of Marrakech, where he would take control of the hunt for Max. But the plane sat on the runway, immobilized by nature’s cloak. Others would now be needed for that job. Morocco was no farther away than a phone call-Tishenko’s promises scattered like gold coins into the dusty streets of the ancient city. Other killers would entrap Max.

Sharkface’s vehicles, along with Bobby’s van, drove slowly across France towards the Swiss border, hundreds of kilometers away. Sayid and Bobby still lay trussed up. Sayid’s tears had dried and Bobby nodded at him, trying to offer some comfort, a gesture of understanding. Sayid had not cried because of the terror these killers had inflicted on him, though the shock at hearing of the countess’s death was like a body blow. No, he had wept because he had told them that Max was in Morocco. That gut-wrenching sickness of giving up your best friend embedded itself in his stomach like a blunt sword.

How much danger did that pose to Max? Sayid had very little information about his plans, but his friend had shared enough with him for his enemies now to have a clearer idea of what had been discovered.

Max had been given a crystal pendant by Zabala and had then found something in d’Abbadie’s chateau, where the Germans and Sharkface’s gang had attacked them. But Sayid didn’t know anything else. Only that Max had gone to Morocco.

Sharkface had held the angle grinder across Sayid’s plaster cast, lowering it slowly and deliberately, letting the white powder shower across Sayid. Just another couple of millimeters and …

Sayid had yelled at Sharkface. Screamed the information. Gave it out so willingly. Anything to stop the horror.

Now, as he lay in the van, he thought of how many times he had fantasized about being a hero. About how, like Max, he could save people, and that no matter how frightening the situation he would get through.

But so far the reality of his life had betrayed him.

Before Max’s dad had saved Sayid’s family in the Middle East, his own father had worked to help bring peace to the region. The terrorists came in the night and killed him. Sayid could still feel the air shattering from the gunfire, smell the cordite and hear his mother’s screams. And his own. Moments later the darkness and smoke had been punctured with torchlight as British troops stormed their house. Gunfire flashed and echoed. More men died-the assassins. And then soldiers carried Sayid and his mother to a waiting helicopter. An Englishman, someone who spoke Arabic, comforted him and his mother. He was their friend. The man their father had called a brother. Sayid recognized him as the man who had shared food at their table. His name was Tom Gordon and he promised them he would care for them, in honor of Sayid’s father-a brave and great man.

That was how Sayid had ended up at Dartmoor High with Tom Gordon’s son. And now the avalanche, the fight at the chateau and his kidnapping all exposed Sayid’s fear. He had betrayed not only his best friend but also his own father’s memory.

The van jolted across a pothole. Sayid looked at the thugs up front. Yellow motorway lights flashed across the windshield. He looked at Bobby, whose eyes were closed.

One thing Sayid had not given his torturers was the information on the piece of paper. He saw the numbers in his head. Reaching forward, he scraped the dried mud from under the instep of his boot. They were part of the mystery and they were important.

Sayid comforted himself. There was still something he could do to help Max. Solve the code. Get the information to Max. How? He didn’t know. But somewhere deep inside he believed his friend would find him.

Abdullah put Max’s passport in his personal safe and asked if he wanted to keep the pendant there as well. Max declined. He caught the look in Abdullah’s eyes. A fleeting moment when he realized that Abdullah might know of its importance.

“A charm,” the riad owner said. “It is a good-luck thing for you, yes?”

“Yeah.”

“If it is valuable, you should put it in my safe. You are going to the main square?” Abdullah asked.

“Yes. Djemaa el-Fna,” Max answered.

“The Square of the Dead,” Abdullah said matter-of-factly.

Was he trying to frighten him? Max waited a moment and held the man’s gaze.

“I’ve heard it’s pretty lively,” he said.

Abdullah nodded. “But I am ashamed to say there are thieves in my city.”

Max thought about it for a moment and reached for the pendant as the man held out his hand. But Max simply took the slack in the leather thong, gave it a turn like knotting his school tie and tightened the cord until the loop sat closer to his throat.

“It’s not valuable, just something a friend gave me,” he said nonchalantly. “There.” He put a couple of fingers between the cord and his neck, a snug fit that didn’t constrict his throat. “No one can grab it now.”

“Not unless they cut your throat,” Abdullah said, unsmiling.

Djemaa el-Fna, the huge square in the center of Marrakech, blazed with dozens of cooking fires. Colored glass lanterns added to the fires’ shadows; the shuffling crowds’ movements fractured, as in a badly lit nightclub. Voices shouted. Food was cooked over the open flames. Traditionally dressed men with small, black-faced vervet monkeys on chains posed for tourists and let the tourists stand, more or less nervously, with the monkeys chattering on their arms.

A twinge of distress caught Max’s heart. The small monkeys somersaulted, then sat cowering, staring at the higher species of primate that tossed a few coins into the upturned hat. A tug of the chain, a guttural command and the monkey would perform again. “For the monkey! For the monkey!” the handler called, urging the bystanders to throw down more coins.

Max and Sophie edged deeper into the square. It was a closeup of faces, heads and shoulders as they angled and barged. Money changed hands, stained teeth grinned. Crumpled notes were pressed into grease-slicked fingers as locals and tourists alike bought the hot lamb kebabs and roasted vegetables. This is where the locals came to eat, streaming out of the narrow alleyways. Smoke hung across the square like a blanket of cotton wool. Max’s eyes stung, but they watched everything going on around him.

Groups of four or five men, playing flutes, tin whistles and cymbals, and beating drums with curved sticks, meandered through the throng. Ganga drums and haejuj bass lutes fought for dominance. Women sat having henna tattoos daubed delicately across their faces and arms. An old man, according to his small sign a doctor, surrounded by bottles of herbs, sat cross-legged, examining a woman’s swollen hand.

Max and Sophie visited half a dozen food stalls and ate as much as they wanted. Max loved eating with his fingers-no table manners to be concerned about. Almost as good as being out on a camping weekend, except here all the food was cooked for you.

On the fringe of the square, cafes served mint tea and fruit juices.

“Everyone comes to eat here. Every night. It goes on really late,” Sophie said.

“Like a street party!” Max shouted. Conversation was always going to be a shouting match against this noise level.

“You look good,” she said. “It suits you.”

Max tugged at the cotton djellaba he wore. There had been a moment of panic when he realized that the riad’s staff had taken his clothes to be washed and left the djellaba in their place. Thankfully they had left his trainers, and these were now peeping out from beneath the long flowing robe. It had felt a bit like wearing a dress at first, but within moments of slipping it over his head he saw the practicality of the loose-fitting cotton. It was cool to wear and made movement relatively easy.

Max eased his way through a knot of people, pulling Sophie behind him. She grasped his hand tightly, as if losing contact would set her adrift in the cross-currents of this human ocean.

Max was amazed that anyone got anywhere in these crowds. Stallholders had set up their wares. Piles of oranges, heaped in pyramids, were being cut and squeezed, dancing troupes joined the musicians, and fortune-tellers waved their hands, brushing aside people’s misery.

He stopped next to a snake-charmer sitting on a faded tribal rug as he mesmerized a cobra. Rising up, its coiled body swayed languidly to the old man’s flute-playing and the gentle teasing of his hand.

The snake’s hood flared; its black eyes reflected the scattered fragments of light. It gazed into Max’s soul. Held him with an illusion of calmness. The snake made a languid, hypnotic movement, a deceptive seduction that lowered a victim’s defenses.

Then the cobra struck. Its fangs bared, its hiss-like hatred.

The gathered strength of the unfurled body propelled it straight past the old man, directly towards Max and Sophie. Max jerked back, putting a protective arm in front of her, but the wrinkled old man, who looked half blind, simply swept his hand beneath the cobra’s hood, twisted his wrist and let the snake curl about his arm. Then he raised the cobra’s flicking tongue to his own lips and kissed the snake.

Murmurs of approval sighed from the crowd, a smattering of applause, coins tinkled into his upturned hat.

Max gave an embarrassed smile. Perhaps he’d been too quick to react. Could you be too quick when it came to a cobra strike? Sophie touched his shoulder. She knew how fast Max had moved-a brave and instinctive gesture. An attacking cobra was an old snake-charmer’s trick. But Max wasn’t to know that.

But those few seconds of reaction had sharpened his senses. There was another danger. His instincts bristled, the warning insistent, demanding his attention. But what was the threat? From where? Max searched the immediate crowd. Something wasn’t right. A man’s eyes held his own for the briefest of moments and then flitted away. There were two men’s faces he had seen earlier. He had been erratic in his choice of food stalls and entertainment, so it wasn’t likely that he would spot the same faces twice.

He pointed over the heads of the crowds. “Get to the edge!” he shouted.

She nodded. As fascinated as he was by the seething mass of people in the square, he realized he could be targeted more easily here than in the wilderness. In open space you can see your enemy; here they could be a breath away. But why would Sophie bring him here to entrap him when she could have arranged an attack at any time since they left Biarritz?

Paranoia. Fear. Get rid of it, he told himself-these feelings were just crowd fever. This place was like Wembley Stadium and twice as noisy.

The stifling mass now seemed impenetrable. Max pulled Sophie closer. He wanted her right there, at his shoulder, no more than a step away. A ripple of energy shuddered through the pressed bodies; hands reached out, clawing at him. Max felt the torsion on his skin as someone twisted his wrist. Sophie was at arm’s length. Two men were between them, the back of their heads momentarily obscuring her face. Sophie’s grip still held but he could feel it slipping. Images of Zabala falling from his grasp flashed across his mind. Sophie mouthed his name. Shouted it. One of the men turned. Same face as before. Dull eyes, uncaring, probably doped up on something. The man made a sudden grab at the pendant. Max blocked the move but the action forced him to lose his grip on Sophie.

Other hands scratched at his face. Screaming and chattering as they raked their fingers across his head. Someone had thrown a chained monkey onto his shoulder, its tiny nails scrabbling at his face and hair, and then Max felt it tug on the leather thong that held the pendant.

He swept his arm up, caught the monkey by its soft fur, but then yelped as it bit into his forearm. He threw the monkey away from him and lunged at its chain. He wanted the man at the end of it, but someone kicked his legs from beneath him and he went down hard onto the ground. Sandals and dirty feet, rubbish and bits of food swirled around his face. Max rolled, tumbled, struggled to get back on his feet. It was like another avalanche.

“Sophie!” he yelled, his elbows pushing against anyone trying to hold him.

Someone grunted; a man shouted in agony as Max’s blow caught his cheekbone. He was being wrenched from side to side, unable to defend himself. Half a dozen smaller boys, ten- or eleven-year-olds who looked like street urchins, were attacking him now, but they too were hampered by the weight of the crowd.

A crushing fear-was Sharkface here? Max looked around desperately, but there was no sign of the ragged-mouthed teenager.

Bodies scattered and fell. Max saw Sophie throw a man twice her weight to the ground. This was close-quarter fighting. Her eyes darted across the swirling mass, seeking out his. But before she could speak another arm went around her neck. She twisted and was obscured from view as Max yelled. He hadn’t noticed that a different energy now took control of the crowd. A surge went through it, like a shock wave. Voices were raised in protest, but then subsided. Max burrowed beneath the sea of legs, scrambling in Sophie’s direction. The boys snatched at him, but he was scurrying fast, as in a body-jumbling fight for a rugby ball.

Five meters farther on he pushed himself to the surface. People buffeted each other as a great battleship of a man bellied his way through the crowd. Abdullah. And behind him, like two escort destroyers in battle formation, came the two men from the riad. They made no sound, shouted no threats, just cleaved through the sweltering mass. Each of the two men carried lanterns, so Abdullah appeared to have two mighty wings of light behind him.

An angel of the night.

Max gaped for a moment.

“Abdullah!” Sophie cried, and the man’s bulk turned, angling directly towards her.

He had struck out with a sturdy-looking stick and one of the attackers went down. Abdullah and his light-carriers walked right over him. That was probably worth a couple of broken ribs, Max thought. The urchins scattered as the second assailant foolishly tried to raise a hand against the unstoppable momentum. One light-carrier dipped the lantern over Abdullah’s shoulder; the man shielded his eyes momentarily and Abdullah’s fist struck him across the head like a mallet blow. Down he went.

Max reached Sophie at almost the same time as Abdullah. The big man didn’t smile and spoke only to issue a command.

“We must go!” he said.

He turned. Sophie and Max fell in behind him, and the crowd opened like the Red Sea in front of Moses. They were safe for now.

But Max knew that the killers had found him.