Ice Claw

23

Fedir Tishenko massaged aloe vera cream into his scaly skin. Climbers used moisturizer because altitude and wind would parch their faces, but for Tishenko it had been a daily ritual since the lightning god had struck him. Small pieces of dead skin would peel away under his fingertips, and his hairless body was like that of a reptile.

Was it the cruel hand of nature that created monsters, or were they born? He did not care. Society had rejected most of those who worked for him. Either out of gratitude or out of fear, they did his bidding. Loyalty was bought one way or another. The core group of scientists, though, were his fellow outcasts. Some had a physical disability; others had experienced uncaring, almost cruel treatment because of their mental state. Each one driven into his own hell of desperate loneliness, all had wanted a better, fairer life, and they had found their champion in Fedir Tishenko. Only he among them had the driving ambition and desire for immortality, and the money to achieve it. He had offered them the chance to strike back at an uncaring world. Tishenko would harness the awesome power of the universe in a shattering moment of light and fire, the intensity of which had not been seen since the moment of creation.

Tishenko was going to create a new life form, so it was only to be expected that many others would have to die in order for his ambition to be achieved. He was no raving lunatic twisted with hatred, planning to commit wanton acts of genocide-he was chosen.

As far as anyone outside his group of scientists was concerned, Fedir Tishenko was investing everything he owned to research and create an alternative energy source, much needed by a wounded world. So Angelo Farentino, in all his ignorance, standing in the room and telling him of the enormous disaster that might befall vast tracts of Europe if he went ahead with his project, had no bearing on his plan.

“So the connection between Max Gordon and Zabala is purely coincidental?” Tishenko asked as he peeled another layer of skin from his cheekbone.

“Yes!” Did this madman not understand his real discovery-the disaster about to befall them at Tishenko’s own hand? This fool was going to kill them all.

Tishenko nodded. Neither the boy’s father nor his scientific friends at the environment agencies were involved. Good. The boy’s presence was a fluke-but he had information that Tishenko needed. Fate had put Max Gordon in the path of a cosmic train, and he would die. Yet he had proved impossible to stop so far. He had survived an avalanche, escaped Tishenko’s hunters, avoided capture by the police and another attack at d’Abbadie’s chateau. He had fled with Zabala’s secret and survived the backstreets of Marrakech. Of the attack on the animal sanctuary there had been no word. Failure, once again, had to be the outcome of that operation. Perhaps Max Gordon was charmed, protected by a supernatural force.

It did not matter-only Tishenko himself was the Chosen One.

“When I was a teenager,” Tishenko said as he poured a tall glass of mountain water, “I was traveling through Kraminsk, a small town that has two bridges over its river. I and the men, my vucari, traveled across the second bridge, which was virtually deserted. Then, Angelo, I heard cries and screams. A small child had fallen into the river from the bridge upstream. It was cold, violent water, so the girl was helpless, a rag doll at the mercy of the current. I am not afraid of anything, so I jumped in and saved the child.”

Farentino stayed silent.

“I pull the child out. She is alive. I get back to the bridge and the people cheer in their happiness and excitement at this heroic act. I wanted no credit. I asked for no applause. I desired only to save an innocent child. But then I get closer to the crowd, they see me and how I look. Smiles turn to revulsion, then hatred and fear. The hero had become a monster. It is a cruel world, Angelo, do you not agree?”

Farentino nodded. Tishenko’s question did not demand an answer.

“So I threw the child from the bridge back into those terrifying waters and she died.”

“What?” Farentino whispered.

“Prejudice killed that child. Not me.”

“You haven’t heard what I’ve been telling you! This isn’t about one child dying, this is about a massive rupture in the Earth’s surface that will kill thousands. It will kill us.”

Tishenko pressed his remote handset and the screen flared with a three-dimensional view of the mountain ranges surrounding them. Crisscrossing lines divided the picture, and three distinct grid patterns ran out from his base, like torn edges of paper, through glaciers, towns, Lake Geneva and the heart of Europe.

The slash that was Tishenko’s mouth widened into a travesty of a smile.

“Not thousands, it will kill hundreds of thousands. And in twenty-four hours the devastation will begin and a new world will be created.”

A wave of nausea surged from Farentino’s stomach. No one could stop this madman.

Tishenko nodded to someone behind Farentino. Before Farentino could turn, two of Tishenko’s security men grab bed him so tightly the pain shot through his arms into his shoulders.

“You will not be a part of our new creation, Angelo. You have nothing to contribute. Your gene pool is as empty as my glass,” Tishenko said, turning his glass upside down.

“Someone will know what you’re doing! There’s someone out there who will find out!” Farentino screamed, moments before the strong-arm men threw him down a flight of stairs. He landed hard, his face battered by the impact, his ribs seared by pain. He did not hear Tishenko’s final words to him.

“It will make no difference. No one can touch us now. It has almost begun.”

Abdullah’s man pumped diesel into an old pickup. Fauvre had got Abdullah to use his contacts and arrange a flight out of Morocco and into Switzerland for Max; French airports might have him posted on their wanted list.

Abdullah’s Land Cruiser had been found abandoned near the coast. Sophie had caught the hydrofoil ferry to mainland Spain, and from there a fast train through Europe. She had a twelve-hour start, but Max could get there before her. And do what? Fauvre had pushed an envelope stuffed with cash into his hands.

“You tell her if it’s money she wants, then she can have it. Tell her the pendant is worthless. Tell her everything. Yes?”

Max nodded. He didn’t think Sophie’s problem was only about money, but maybe it would buy her off and convince her to stay away from Peaches and the company she kept.

“I’m not responsible for what she does,” Max said. “She’s the one who’s caught up in this whole thing. I’ve got to try and find a way of stopping this Tishenko bloke.”

“There are people at CERN I can talk to. I will try and convince them that they should stop all experiments and research for at least forty-eight hours. In this day and age, if I warn them of a possible terrorist attack, they will close down the whole of Switzerland. Max, I do not want my daughter to spend the rest of her life in prison. If she is caught by the authorities I will not be able to save her.”

“And what about me?” Max said.

“You can’t stop any of this. You cannot. Accept it. Give the money to Sophie and then turn yourself in to the authorities. I will speak on your behalf. Then, perhaps, they will believe you and conduct a thorough search of the area. Leave it to the professionals, Max. There is no time left.”

Max was packed and changed. He was going from the desert to the snow. Once he got off that plane he’d be back into winter. He was ready.

Now all he had to do was say good-bye.

Max stood in front of Aladfar. The caged tiger lay asleep next to the bars. His tufted ear twitched; his tail thumped on the ground.

Aladfar woke up and lazily turned his gaze on Max. Why did the boy’s eyes look into his own? The tiger edged away cautiously. Human beings were unpredictable, but he recognized this one, knew of the strange sensory vibration that passed between them. The boy showed no fear. The tiger remembered the previous night. It had been good to be free again. But he had let this boy command him. Those instincts confused him.

Aladfar lunged, teeth bared, his mighty head ringed with a striped ruff that flared during attack. A snarling roar to challenge the boy who gripped the bars with both hands, who stood his ground. Aladfar’s head dropped, his amber eyes watching.

The boy reached through the bars, first one arm and then the other. He whispered low sounds, soothing, his eyes slowly blinking. The tiger heard a word he understood: “Aladfar, Aladfar.”

The huge cat padded closer, sniffed the hands that opened before him and allowed the boy’s fingers to close on the thickness of his neck.

“Aladfar, you are magnificent. The most beautiful creature I have ever seen,” Max said gently-the awesome moment nearly overwhelmed him. He could smell the tiger’s heat, feel the deep layer of fur covering the thick muscle below it. “I’ll come back and see you again one day. I will never forget you. Ever.”

It was hot. Aladfar panted. The tiger sniffed and licked the boy’s hand as it stroked his face.

Max walked away. Fauvre and Abdullah waited for him at the pickup. He shook Fauvre’s hand-no more need be said between them-and climbed into the stiflingly hot cab.

As the pickup turned, Max looked back towards the tiger.

Aladfar was standing, full square, his body casting a giant shadow. His eyes followed Max, watching the boy take his freedom. And then Aladfar gave a roar that echoed around the walls of the Angels’ Tears.

A tremor of fear fluttered through Sayid. The old van was struggling. The last thing he wanted now was for it to be abandoned. The numbers on the surfboard had been scribbled and crossed out a dozen times as he tried to find the phrase or key word needed to decipher the magic square’s numbers.

The one thing the journey had given him so far was time-time enough to remember Max’s spy game. Once you had the key word it was easy. Lay the letters out in the same box as the numbers, don’t repeat any letter, use the numbers Max found on the crystal to translate and it was done.

Easy.

If only he had the key word letters to lay out! He had tried every word associated with his dilemma: Sharkface, chateau, Biarritz, Atlantic, surfing, Ethiopia, Zabala, endangered species, Morocco-that last word made him think of Max, and he wished his friend were right there in the van with him. No, not that. He wanted Max and himself to be free, to be back home. But the more he thought about that, the more his courage seeped away.

The van stopped. The driver lowered the window. Peaches and Sharkface appeared. They both looked past the men in front to Sayid. He turned his face away, pretending to sleep.

“Carry on,” Sharkface said in his spittle-lipped way. “Peaches stays, the vans follow. We wait here with the bikes. The girl’s coming. Take the kid up there.”

A gust of cold air blew snowflakes into the van. The window went back up, Sharkface thumped a signal to go on and the van started again.

The girl? That meant Sophie. Was she bringing Max with her? How could Sayid warn him he was walking into a trap? He couldn’t. Not yet. But perhaps when he got “up there”- which was where? A building? A mountain? Wherever it was, Sayid realized, that might be the only place he could reach a phone. This was way beyond Max’s being wanted for murder; Sayid needed the police to find Max before murder was committed.

This was like playing tag with the devil. He hooks you and you’re it.

Dead.

And that was the answer he’d been searching for. Take your mind off the problem, give it something else to think about and, like smoke under a door, the devil whispers in your ear.

Lucifer.

Another two hours. Low gear, winding uphill. The squeak of rubber against windshield as the blades struggled against the snowstorm. The men smoked and cursed, and Sayid felt sick from the cigarette fumes and lack of air. Thankfully, the windshield began to mist up and the men were forced to open the windows slightly. The fresh air cleared Sayid’s head. He had the magic square rewritten. Max’s story of the code breakers was clear in his mind now. He had to lay out each letter of the key word alongside each number of the square, but he must not use any of the key word’s letters more than once.

Once those letters had been used, you then had to carry on with the alphabet. So once the word Lucifer had been written next to the numbers, he had to continue with S, T, U, V and so on. Trouble was there were twenty-six letters in the alphabet and he had a square of twenty-five numbers. That meant two of the letters had to share and, if Max’s story was correct, the Second World War code makers used I and J. Sayid carefully wrote out the key word, L-U-C–I-F-E-R, beneath the numbers.

No, the U was wrong. Couldn’t repeat a letter if it’d been used. He crossed it out and started the line again.

The driver changed down a gear. The engine lurched. One of the men swore and hit the dashboard. “Come on! We’re almost there! Heap of junk!”

The men pushed open the doors and stepped into the swirling snow. Sayid heard the other vans pull up: tires scrunched; doors opened and slammed. The shiver that ran through him had nothing to do with the high mountain air. He knew that if the van had finally given up, then they would put him in one of Sharkface’s vans-and he’d be separated from the magic square.

Sayid squirmed towards the cab, reaching for one of the bottles of water the men had shoved between the seats. There was no time now. He had to take the risk. He could still hear their voices, but because Bobby’s van had no windows in the back he couldn’t see where they were. More voices, a couple of them raised. Someone moaned. “I’m not towing it! We’ll never get up the pass. Leave it!”

Sayid spilled the water across his boot and rubbed the accumulated mud and caked slush away. The numbers Max had given him from the crystal revealed themselves. When Sayid took each of those numbers, found it on the magic square, he would then see the corresponding letter. He was a dozen letters away from discovering Zabala’s secret message. The pendant’s first number was 7-Sayid saw that that was the letter C on the square; the next, 24, was the letter U …

Sayid’s eyes darted across the magic square. The voices were getting closer-he wrote quickly. If they ever searched him when they got to wherever they were going, he had to make sure they would not find the deciphered code. And if he was going to find a way of telling Max the secret … Concentrate! Number, letter, number …

He had to do something! If they ever found this van they had to know he was still alive. Sayid tugged the misbaha from his pocket and hooked it over the tail fin of a surfboard.

One of the men wrenched the back door open. The glaring snow meant he couldn’t see clearly in the gloom of the van. Sayid slipped the pen into his sleeve.

“Get out, kid!” the man shouted. “Come on, hurry it up.”

As one of the men leaned in to drag him out, Sayid lashed out with his plaster cast as if struggling to comply with their brutal commands. He kicked the surfboard from its bracket and it fell flat onto the floor of the van. Whatever happened next, at least none of these men would see his scribbling on the board’s surface.

They made no concessions for the slow-moving boy. One of them pushed him and he stumbled, but within half a dozen strides of being hauled and kicked across the snow he was flung into the back of one of the vans. It smelled of oil and grease. Motorbikes. The grooved channels on the floor reminded Sayid that each van carried three bikes and they and their riders were back in Geneva. Waiting for Sophie.

The doors slammed closed.

Sayid wrote down the last two letters.

The message made no sense.

Max had left the Tears of the Angels in an old pickup driven by Abdullah. Now the dusty road reached beyond the horizon.

The old pickup didn’t have the luxury of Abdullah’s Land Cruiser, and the rutted road shook Max’s spine. For a long time Abdullah remained silent, but then he turned and spoke to Max.

“Those men who attacked us, they were Tuareg.”

“Yes, Laurent told me,” Max answered.

Abdullah nodded. “It is the men who wear the veil. They believe evil spirits can enter their bodies through their nose and mouth. The women do not wear the veil. Tuareg women are different from other Arab women. They can fight. They are taught from when they are young to wrestle. They are strong. The women are special and they are permitted to choose the men. You understand me? They choose. The men, they accept what the women choose.”

Abdullah stopped talking for a moment and waited, as if expecting Max to grasp the reason why he was telling him all of this.

“I see,” Max said, because he didn’t have a clue why Abdullah was giving him lessons in tribal culture.

Abdullah shrugged. He would have to explain further.

“Sophie’s mother was Tuareg.”

Now Abdullah had Max’s attention. The image of Sophie wrestling the man to the ground in Marrakech began to make some sense.

Another shrug from the big man. Now did the boy understand?

“The attack last night was about Sophie’s mother?” Max asked uncertainly.

“No! Nothing to do with it! You are not listening to me.”

Max sighed. He thought he’d been most attentive. “Sorry, Abdullah, what exactly are you trying to tell me?”

The pickup hit a bone-jarring rut. Abdullah crashed the gears, found an easier route and steered them clear.

“She is Tuareg. She found herself a man who was not crippled.”

“That’s cruel,” Max said, feeling the uncaring act of desertion.

“It was her choice! No matter. Laurent is a Frenchman. His pride as well as his back was broken. And Sophie, no, she could not accept it either. Laurent tried to hold the girl with what love he has left, but she is different as well. His daughter has Tuareg blood. Yes?”

“I suppose she has, yes.”

“And now you understand?”

“Er … no, not really.” Max gave a helpless smile. It was beyond him.

Abdullah shook his head. This boy knew nothing. “Sophie will fight for you. She has chosen you.”

Laurent Fauvre thought of his daughter as he watched Max and Abdullah leave. Secrets were being exposed; frightening power might soon be unleashed. Did he believe in any of Zabala’s predictions? He was uncertain. But his daughter was a part of this madness. And Max Gordon? How much did he care about him?

He knew the telephone number he dialed by heart. The man answered.

“Oui?”

“Where are you?” Fauvre said.

“Marseilles.”

“Get to Geneva. My daughter will be there in a few hours, at the train station. Max Gordon is flying in.”

“We’ll leave now,” said Corentin.