Ice Claw

21

The sandstorm’s ferocity was not as violent at this time of year, so it did not scour the soul of anyone caught unaware. The dust swirled, bending heads, covering eyes, a shield behind which enemies could hide. And Max Gordon’s enemies were close.

Dark-eyed, blue-skinned men who lived in the wilderness, whose ancestors fought vicious and brutal battles and who still lived by these skills, crept closer to the town’s walls. There were still places a 4?4 could not go as easily as a horse, and as the sand buffeted the town’s walls, half a dozen of these desert warriors threw covers across their horses’ eyes and muzzles. Their own turbans, several meters of blue gauze wound across their faces, not only kept the sand from penetrating their mouth and nostrils but also, according to their beliefs, kept evil spirits from entering their body.

Their grappling hooks snared the walls. While two men held the horses’ reins, four of the blue-skinned warriors began to climb.

Fauvre’s concern lay not only with the fever-stricken boy but also with Aladfar, who had been forgotten in the turmoil and was still caged. As he turned his wheelchair onto the ramp that would take him down to the tiger’s pit, he saw the dust clouds take the edge off the stars as the first wave of sand spilled over the town walls.

Out of the blurred night, ropes dropped down; the wind caught the intruders’ billowing robes. Fauvre knew these assassins would have struggled to scale the height of the walls, and their intense determination meant they were here to kill.

The big cat was already on its feet as Fauvre hurriedly unlocked Aladfar’s pen. He took the length of chain hanging on a hook and whispered a soothing murmur to the tiger. Clipping the snap-hook to Aladfar’s collar, he turned the wheelchair and urged the beast on.

The tiger’s sharpened senses picked up on his old master’s urgency. It was as Fauvre hoped-the loping tiger could easily pull him along faster than he could move under his own power.

“On, Aladfar, on. You can save us all. Tres bien, mon ami. Well done. That’s it, faster.”

The distant figures separated, quartering the town-searching. Fauvre saw they were armed, some with rifles, others with AK-47s. They stopped, knelt down in the sand and each pulled something that looked like a short pole from its place on his back. A moment later small flames licked the end of these sticks-tar-soaked rags, which then burned fiercely. These flames would offer some protection against Fauvre’s wild animals.

By now Fauvre and Aladfar had reached the wall of the building where he had treated Max. His fingers scrambled for the wall switch’s cover, but Aladfar’s strength tipped him from his wheelchair. The tiger was pulling him away from the alarm button.

He let the chain’s leather handle go, saw Aladfar lope into the night and crawled towards the wall. Arms outstretched, he managed to reach the windowsill, his back and arm muscles powering his lower body upwards, and in a desperate lunge reached for the switch.

The side of his fist hit the knurled red button, and a slow moaning wail began to fill the night air. Within seconds the old air-raid alarm siren howled at full volume.

Max sat bolt upright. Released from the deepest of sleeps, he felt as if he’d been given an intravenous drip from a bottomless well of nature’s energy.

Canvas flapped, a gritty scuttering of dirt rasped across the roof, and somewhere in the night a tiger roared. Max instinctively raised his hands to his throat. The pendant was missing. Max saw the frayed rope on his wrists-he had been tied, but someone had cut him free and sliced through the pendant’s cord.

As the siren wailed Max was already out of the tent. A veil of sand swept away from the starlit sky, the swirling dust shifting as quickly as it had arrived. Fire singed the darkness-he counted three, no, four men with burning torches. Men with blue turbans wrapped around their faces. An orange blur, the perfect camouflage, streaked across the shadows. Aladfar! Was that why the siren’s cacophony deafened him, because the tiger was loose? No! Those Arabs were armed. This was an attack.

Max ran hard across the compound towards Fauvre’s quarters. The intruders searched buildings quickly and thoroughly, one of them headed for the tents. Straight towards Max. The man’s strength was apparent, and Max would be hard-pressed to fight on the warrior’s terms. He sidestepped, ran across the edge of a parapet, the pack of Ethiopian wolves swirling below in the pit’s shadows like piranhas in a dark river. The man followed him, matching his sure-footedness pace for pace. He tossed the flaming torch into the wolves’ enclosure, scaring them into a frenzy, perhaps hoping to unnerve the boy a few meters ahead of him, who now kicked dust, leapt onto a two-meter-high concrete drainage pipe, ran to its end and jumped onto a steel girder that lay across old rusted cars.

Max heard the powerful man pounding across the dirt behind him. He had deliberately slowed, as if faltering, wanting the man’s thundering energy to help defeat him. The warrior couldn’t help but let out a cry of victory as he lunged right behind Max, the sword making a lethal whisper through the air. Max spun, leapt for one of the rusting girders, felt the coarse metal under his grip and swung his body to one side. The man’s downward slash tipped him off balance and, as he fell forward, the sword smashed into the old car. As steel met steel, the warrior’s blade snapped. His shoulder took the brunt of the impact as he fell, and for a moment he lay stunned.

Max wasted no time. Using the girder as a back brace, he kicked a nearby oil drum onto the man. He heard a grunt, saw the man slump but then get quickly to his knees.

And all Max could see were his eyes, wild with hatred and anger. The slap of flesh against metal was audible as the warrior pulled the AK-47 into his hands. Max dived, full length, away from the man, into the dirt on the other side of the wrecked car, as a roar of gunfire shattered through the sound of the siren. Clanging ricochets screeched as bullets slammed into the steel beam where Max had been seconds earlier.

As Max hit the ground, he took the impact on the palms of his hands, curled his body, tucked in his neck and rolled into the dirt, twisting and squirming as fast as he could towards another wrecked car that stood on blocks. He caught a glimpse of the warrior holding the gun above his head and firing wildly over the top of the car that momentarily stopped him from chasing Max. But then he saw the man clamber across the hood.

Max was boxed in. With no other option, he dived headfirst into the car, knowing the man would spray it with gunfire. Mind blurred, ears ringing from the gunfire and siren, he felt himself fall into the carcass. There was no escape now.

A chattering thunder shattered metal, punching holes into the old car, the bullets’ mushrooming impact scattering lethal shards as the bodywork punctured. The man kept on coming, kept on firing, a stalking assault to murder the boy.

The metallic screams stopped when he ceased firing and stood, weapon still at the ready, gazing through the gunfire’s smoke that clung to him. He peered forward, looking for the bloody remains of his victim. But the wreck was empty. There was nothing inside. No floor pan, no steering wheel, just a hulk.

He didn’t hear the scuff of dirt behind him, but he felt the sudden agony as a scaffolding pole was slammed against his back, and then, as he fell to his knees, the realization flashed into his mind that the boy had rolled clear beneath the wreck and got behind him. Max hit him again-a baseball-bat swing that clipped the man’s turban and floored him. At last the man went down and stayed down.

Max ran back towards the buildings. Fauvre lay in the dirt, pushing with all his strength to right the overturned wheelchair. Max had never felt fitter or stronger. Righting the battery-powered wheelchair, he grabbed the man under his arms and dragged him into the seat.

“Aladfar is loose!” Fauvre gasped.

“I saw him. But these men …”

“Tuareg!”

Max had heard of them. Horsemen warriors, old enemies of the French colonial powers and the Foreign Legion, they had a fearsome reputation. They were known as the Blue People-their skin stained by the indigo dye used to color their gandouras, traditional robes worn over white kaftans-their faces and heads were covered by black or blue turbans. The blue dye soaked into the skin, giving them protection against the desert heat, locking in the body’s moisture. And gave the warriors a wild-eyed ferocity that could chill the bravest of men.

“Behind you!” Fauvre yelled.

One of the Tuareg had run around the edge of the building, the flaming torch alerting Fauvre before the man stepped into view. There was no time to think. Max grabbed the nearest weapon he could find-a pitchfork. The warrior slashed the flaming torch across him with one hand while reaching for the AK-47 slung on his back. Within seconds his free hand had brought it to bear. Max had escaped one assault-rifle attack, but there was no protection where he stood now. And Fauvre was helpless.

No time to be squeamish-Max lunged, aiming for the man’s arm. The attacker jigged to the left, but one of the pitchfork’s tines jammed itself into the end of the gun’s barrel. He couldn’t shoot now, not without it blowing up in his hands. Max twisted and pushed, felt the gun yank free, but now the pitchfork was useless. The man grunted in disbelief and rage and reached for the curved knife sheathed on his waist, slashing left and right. Max gave ground, desperately trying to stay away from the cold metal that burned bloodred from the reflection of the flaming torch.

Max stumbled and fell-at least, that must have been how it looked to his attacker. Max knew it was difficult to assault a victim who is rolling round on the ground. Denied a slashing attack, the man would have to commit himself to reaching down to try and stab Max. Which he did. Max swung his right arm in a powerful curving arc and let loose the rock he had snatched up. The blow stunned his attacker, throwing him back on his heels. Losing balance, he thudded into the ground. The burning torch arced away, the knife dropped into the dirt. As Max sprang to his feet, Fauvre had already maneuvered the wheelchair and caught the groggy man from behind, his muscled arms encircling his throat, choking the air from his lungs. The warrior slumped.

“I’ll tie him, Max. You must get away. You must hide. I saw another three men. They have come for you!”

Fauvre was already binding the man’s arm, using the length of turban, but no sooner had he warned Max than a whoosh of flames sucked air into the storeroom and spewed out a fireball of burning straw.

Max got between Fauvre and the fire, pushing him to safety as another tongue of flame licked out into the night. They beat burning embers from their hair and clothes. Soot streaked Max’s face-he looked like a commando on a night raid.

“I can’t hide, Laurent. We can beat them! They won’t be expecting a fight. Abdullah and his man are here somewhere. We outnumber them.”

Fauvre looked past his shoulder and shouted-a guttural mixture of French and Arabic. Max spun round. Aladfar snarled, his body crouched in fear by the roaring grain store. The mayhem of the night’s terrifying sounds of gunfire and the scent that only men give off when they hunt had confused the big cat and he had run back to the one man who had ever commanded him.

Fauvre’s extended hand and his words held Aladfar’s gaze. Like a domesticated dog, the tiger slunk to the shelter of the stone wall.

“Where’s Sophie? Have they taken her?” Max shouted above the roar of the fire.

“I don’t know. She could have outrun them.” A father’s anguish caught hold. “Find her, Max!”

Max moved, but not before Fauvre’s iron grip caught his arm. Once again the man spoke rapidly to Aladfar. Urged him, caressed him with a language that soothed the animal’s fear.

Gunshots and screams, yells of confusion and threats, echoed across the Tears of Angels. Hunting dogs yapped, big cats roared and monkeys screamed as the ear-bashing siren continued to throw its noise across the desert. Aladfar was on his feet, eyes searching the night, jaws open, panting with excitement. Fauvre reached down and picked up the chain.

“Take him and find my daughter,” he said to Max, pushing the leather grip into his hand.

Max grasped it, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to have a three-hundred-kilogram tiger on the end of a chain in the middle of a night attack by ferocious Tuareg.

The store was an inferno; sparks leapt upwards to join the stars. Max and Fauvre coughed from the acrid air. Before Max could answer, Fauvre turned his wheelchair, leaned down and grabbed the warrior’s knife.

“I’ll get help!” Then he was gone.

Five meters of lightweight chain joined them. Max ran and the chain tightened as Aladfar kept pace with a boy who ran like an animal-a loping gait, nowhere near full stretch, but ready to respond to unexpected danger.

In the flitting shadows Max saw Abdullah fighting one of the Tuareg. The big man grappled with the attacker, grabbed his clothing, lifted and half turned him, then slammed him into the ground-a powerful wrestler’s throw that knocked the man unconscious.

Three down-one to go.

He was wrong. The sounds of fighting had reached the remaining two horsemen on the other side of the wall, and as any warrior wants nothing more than to join the conflict, one of them scaled the wall into the compound.

Max and Aladfar ran across a stone causeway, a small bridge that separated different animal pens. A nightmare figure ran screaming at them from the darkness-a shrouded warrior hurling himself forward, a curved sword in one hand, a flaming torch in the other.

Abdullah heard the man’s battle cry, turned in alarm and saw the determined attack on Max. His bellowed warning was swallowed by the siren. He had seen another warrior drop down from the wall and cut in from Max’s flank, running silently, sword held above his head, ready to slash down and kill.

Max heard a heart-stopping roar. Aladfar attacked, leaping meters towards the first charging warrior. The force of the tiger’s lunge pulled Max off balance just as the second man came at him from his blind side.

Thrown onto the ground, Max was twisted around by the tiger’s power as he gripped the chain. The sword, a shimmering blur, swung with enough force to sever an arm or leg, smashed into the stony ground. A moment of slow motion saw Aladfar trying to smother and rip the first attacker, but the man had miraculously rolled clear, his clothes shredded, blood running from Aladfar’s claws. With a fearful scream he threw himself across the nearest parapet to escape the final killing bite. Max knew the attacker had been lucky more than once. He’d escaped Aladfar and dropped down into the safety of the monkey pit. These images flashed through Max’s mind just as the chain went slack. Aladfar had turned.

Another roar.

Fear struck the attacker’s eyes. He had time to slash backwards and kill the boy-it was a practiced skill-but instead he felt the veil drop from his face, knew that his belief could kill him, because evil would strike into his heart through his exposed mouth and nose. That roar had come from this boy, from this changeling shadow that loomed up before him like a massive creature. Was it the raging fire that distorted everything?

Aladfar scuffed and jigged, wanting to strike for the kill, but the man was being beaten by this other creature that held the chain that bound him. Finally, it was no punch but a sweep of Max’s arm that felled the man and threw him to the mercy of Aladfar.

The tiger sprang.

Max made a noise, a sound he didn’t understand. He had sucked in the night’s inferno and turned it into something that resonated with authority and command.

The sixth sense Aladfar had experienced earlier with this boy returned. He backed off, felt the chain tighten-another bond that held him to this creature of the wild.

Max’s mouth was as dry as sand. He looked up, taking in the scene around him. He was on his knees, pressing into the unconscious warrior’s back, while his hands bound the attacker with the cord that held the man’s clothing.

The siren slowed, reluctantly giving way to silence. Max saw Abdullah in the distance, the big man lumbering towards him, dirt and blood streaking his once-spotless djellaba.

Fauvre called out to him as he emerged from the smoke and Abdullah pushed the battery-driven wheelchair towards Max.

“Her room is locked from the outside. She’s not here,” Fauvre said.

Max lifted his head and stared into the amber eyes of the massive cat, which sat less than two meters away-watching. Slowly, deliberately, it blinked its eyes. A cat’s expression of contentment-that all is well.

It was over.

Max, Fauvre and Abdullah, and the other men, felt the aftermath of the fight. Muscles cramped and ached, cuts and scratches irritated. Hot, sweet tea helped ease them into the new day as dawn lit the night sky, the moon giving way to her brother the sun. Minor wounds were treated and the animals calmed, fed and watered, as their routine demanded. Max had washed quickly in a water trough; he needed to talk to Fauvre and look at Sophie’s room for any clue as to how involved she might have been in this attack. But first he needed other information-once Fauvre got off the phone.

The police could not reach the town until later that day. The dust storm had blown between it and the city, they were undermanned, and it was not the first time the crazy Frenchman had had intruders into his animal sanctuary. They would get there when they could. In the meantime, Fauvre would keep the prisoners under lock and key.

None would speak of why they attacked, but it was obvious to Abdullah, after those others’ efforts in Marrakech, that they had been paid to find Max.

And now Sophie was missing.

Not kidnapped, but gone off into the night. Gates for a loading ramp at the far end of the town, once used for bringing in trucks carrying the animals, had been opened-and closed again-and that was where Sophie had driven Abdullah’s Land Cruiser. Fauvre had cursed, furious at his daughter’s behavior. The mood swing from being desperately concerned about her during the attack to this condemnation made Max realize just how fickle grown-ups could be. What he didn’t tell Fauvre was that she had taken Zabala’s pendant. He needed more information first. Fauvre phoned half a dozen people. Contacts at the airports, the banks, anyone who might know where she had run to. He canceled the credit cards he’d given her and closed her bank account. She would soon turn for home.

Max needed to interrupt Fauvre’s anger. “I’ve brought this trouble on you, Laurent. I’m sorry for that, but this is connected to Zabala and now to Sophie. What did he send you?”

Fauvre took him down a ramp into what were once the town’s dungeons. Fetid air caged the memory of lost souls, and dull lightbulbs gave a murky glow to what was little more than a tunnel dug from the soft sandstone.

“I always knew that if Zabala was not a crazy man, then what he had sent might be of importance. No one would come down here to search for it,” Fauvre said as he unlocked and pulled open a walk-in safe’s door.

The bulky documents, mostly handwritten, were almost illegible to Max’s eye. But when they returned to the brighter light of Fauvre’s office and spread the sheets out, it was obvious that the documents were in precise, chronological order-from his earliest investigations, suspicions and theories. They still made little sense, but the photograph and drawings did. And so did Fauvre’s explanation.

“I have known Zabala and this man”-he pointed to the photograph that Max had seen before, the gaunt man who stood with Zabala in front of the Chateau d’Antoine d’Abbadie-“for nearly thirty years. The man with Zabala was one of his few friends. He betrayed Zabala, who was going to go public with his information. He was determined the world would listen to him this time, but this so-called friend tried to steal the information from him. I don’t know what happened to him. He just disappeared.”

Fauvre turned more pages. “Zabala knew his friend had betrayed him to someone powerful, but did not know who.”

He opened a folded letter and passed it to Max. The scratchy writing was almost frantic in its untidiness. “He was convinced they would send someone far more lethal after his secret. And before he could get the information to me, the killer struck.”

He shuffled through the documents and laid out the same drawings that Max had found at d’Abbadie’s chateau. The circle, the angles drawn within and the numbers.

“That’s a birth chart,” Max said.

“Yes, correct. Do you see this French name on the chart, right here?” Fauvre said.

Max squinted at Zabala’s tiny writing. “Beetle something … beetlejuice?”

Fauvre smiled. “Betelgeuse. It is an enormous red star. Massive. Five hundred times bigger than our sun. History suggests it represents a catalyst for a terrifying event.”

He saw the look of uncertainty-or was it disbelief? — on Max’s face.

“It’s true, Max. Astronomers believe that in the next thousand years this supergiant will explode and destroy everything, but astrologers have recorded its influence over the centuries. It was there on 9/11, the tsunami in Indonesia, even as far back as the Great Fire of London. If Betelgeuse is in a certain position in the heavens, it always indicates catastrophe.”

Max felt overwhelmed. Star charts, predictions and heavenly conjunctions of planets. It might be more ooby-gooby stuff. Messages and influences from the stars weren’t something he could see as solid, no-nonsense facts. One thing was certain, though. Enough people believed in this stuff to have Zabala murdered and send attackers after Max. Those were facts. That was something he could believe in.

“And someone has killed him to retrieve the information, and has sent people after you because you now hold his secret.”

“Maybe this is what they’re looking for. I have a birth chart exactly the same,” Max said, pulling out the drawing he’d found at d’Abbadie’s chateau.

Max put the two pieces of paper side by side. The sketches seemed identical and made by the same hand. Although he knew nothing about astrology, he realized that with a bit of practice he’d get the hang of it. Maps, sea charts, star maps, they all had a logical system to them.

Max traced the symbols he didn’t understand.

“There’s a difference,” he said. “On Zabala’s original drawing I’ve got there’s an extra triangle drawn inside the circle of the birth chart. On yours, it’s missing. They’re not the same.”

“So that’s why he sent me this chart. You must have something else, something that shows the difference between these two predictions. The first was incorrect, but the second …”

Fauvre glared at Max. He realized Zabala’s pendant was missing.

“Where is the stone? Did you lose it during the attack?”

“No, Sophie took it. That’s why she ran. And I need to see her room.”

The stone-walled room was once part of a cluster of single-story houses. Ruins on each side blocked any means of entry other than the one door. Like other teenagers, Sophie Fauvre kept her room locked. It was her sanctuary. One of Fauvre’s men brought bolt cutters and squeezed the blades over the padlock’s thick shackle.

Two of the walls inside were plastered with an ochre-colored clay screed. Small windows, covered by muslin curtains, allowed a faint light to penetrate the darkness. Max tried the light switch; nothing happened. In the cool, shadowy room he could see a single bed covered with a brightly embroidered cloth. Books filled shelves on one wall, and CDs another. Candles, trapped in their own spilled wax, were dotted around the room, many of them barely puddles of color from being burned so low. A faint scent clung to the airless room. Max realized it was Sophie’s fragrance.

A makeshift desk was used mostly as a dressing table, its top cluttered with makeup, a glass pot full of an assortment of combs and brushes, while a mixture of dust and body powder showed where essential oil bottles-lavender, marjoram, thyme-had left sticky ring marks.

Fauvre had edged his wheelchair into the room. He gazed as mesmerized as Max at the unfolding world of his daughter. Photographs, posters, the girl’s drawings and sketches-slashes of color on squares of canvas, muted pages of charcoal anger scribbled by a furious hand-a world of pain and despair.

Max looked at family pictures from when Sophie was obviously a child. The strongly muscled Fauvre before his accident, the beautiful, dark-haired woman without a face. Every picture showing parents and child, right up to what were obviously recent years, had the mother’s face burned out or scratched away.

But Max’s attention was fixed on the wall above Sophie’s bed. Clustered together were pictures taken far from Morocco’s sun-baked harshness. They were of startling white landscapes, prickly green fir trees dusted with snow and brightly dressed skiers in competition. But this was no downhill racing; these skiers stretched their limbs across differing terrain. Some of them knelt in a firing position, a rifle to their shoulder, others stood and aimed at targets, while in the same picture skiers pushed away into the background.

“This is a cross-country skiing competition,” Max muttered to himself.

“That’s right,” Fauvre said. “A biathlon. Last year in Norway. Sophie was a junior competitor in the fifteen-kilometer ski and shoot. She didn’t get placed. She had the stamina, but her target shooting was not good.”

Max looked closer. A figure had been captured in one of the photographic sequences. Flurried snow indicated the skier had had to stop and shoot at a target. It was a standing pose, rifle to shoulder. Max’s stomach fluttered. It was almost a mirror image of when the killer shot Zabala.

His eyes followed the sequence of pictures of the shooter’s progress downhill to the marksman range, until finally the same competitor, cheek nestled against the target rifle’s stock, was in close-up.

This skier’s Lycra race suit was the same scattered white-on-black design as the murderer’s, but the face was clearly in focus.

Max’s breath was trapped in his chest; his heart tried to hammer it free.

He knew the clear-eyed girl with her finger on the trigger.

The killer whose name he couldn’t pronounce-Potyncza Jozsa.

Peaches.