Ice Claw

3

The ski patrol found Max less than an hour later, straddled across a jagged rock that, in turn, stuck out in space across a massive precipice. He was hypothermic and unconscious. The four-man team, wary of the gaping void, roped themselves together and brought Max up on a rescue stretcher. Within ten minutes they had eased him a safe distance down the slopes and called in the Mountain Air Rescue helicopter, which flew him straight to the main hospital at Pau, less than half an hour by air to the south.

Max stayed in the darkness of his mind, at times plummeting through the blackness as if that terrible vortex that had sucked out the bottom of the world was still trying to claim him. The helicopter’s mechanical shuddering snatched at his consciousness. Once, through half-open eyes, he saw the blurred whirring of blades against a gray sky and felt the exhaust vapor sting his nostrils. He tried to get up but he was strapped down and the winch man placed a gloved, comforting hand against his chest. The man smiled. Everything was OK. He was safe.

Max was still unconscious when the helicopter landed. His neck was braced in a medical collar, his arms and legs secured. The French medical team was excellent. Being this close to the mountains and the main highway, they all had extensive experience in shattered bones and hypothermic victims.

Inside the building the team listened to the airborne medics’ concise assessment of their patient. The doctor quickly realized that the young man the trauma team was helping onto the gurney was fit and strong. His muscle tone was good, his heartbeat steady and there was no sign of internal bleeding.

The doctor ordered an MRI scan. The nurse had already cut away his damaged jacket and was about to cut off Max’s cargo pants and fleece when he opened his eyes.

“Don’t cut my clothes,” he said. “They’re all I’ve got.” He slipped back into unconsciousness.

The doctor hesitated. There was something in the boy’s desperate plea that he recognized. Max could not know that Dr. Marcel Riveux was a volunteer in the mountains during his off-duty hours; that he was someone who understood the lure of the high valleys and felt an affinity with others who knew the thrill of the slopes.

He shook his head at the nurse. And instead of cutting Max’s clothes away, he helped ease them from his body.

The hospital was well equipped with the latest technology. The highly specialized teams of doctors meant that each patient received the most up-to-date treatment.

Max lay in the doughnut-shaped Magnetic Resonance Imaging scanner, eased slowly beneath the machine’s all-seeing eye. This tomb swathed him in technology. Illuminated only by the equipment’s beam, the darkened cocoon scanned his brain and spine. The machine made deep, resonant sounds. One like a car alarm running out of power, another like a badly tuned guitar amplifier, both giving way to hissing like a steam train’s. This sighing breath mimicked a breeze catching tree branches. Max saw dabs of light, speckled like snow on high boughs, as the sound soothed him into darkness and sleep.

The consultant was fascinated by his young patient. Everything seemed normal; there was no brain damage, no skull fracture. But the deep-brain activity indicated that Max had gone into an unusual neurological condition. Images scanned of Max’s brain were like satellite shots of Earth taken from space, colored details of shape and form, but different areas of his brain were hot spots of activity. A twisted knot of color, the neocortex, which is responsible for thought processes, and the limbic system, which takes care of emotions and dreams-both showed heightened activity. But it was the area called the reptilian brain-responsible for instinct, survival, breathing and heartbeat-that made the consultant conduct another test.

A PET scan has nothing to do with taking a sick animal to a vet-PET stands for positron emission tomography and it uses a highly specialized piece of equipment that investigates the biochemical composition of the brain. This boy had almost animal instincts. The scan showed virtually no sign of trauma for someone who had experienced extreme danger. For one moment during the scan the consultant thought Max had died-his brain had gone into an almost deathlike state. But then the man realized that this animal instinct, or whatever it was, had sent Max into a kind of deep sleep-like hibernation. No different from a bear in winter. The consultant’s logic grappled with the rare glimpses of the extraordinary activity within Max’s brain. There were secrets within the boy. Whatever they were, he needed more time to analyze them, but one thing was certain-he knew the boy was special.

Max finally awoke, stiff and sore, in a hospital room with the muted sounds of two nurses talking. The younger of the two had her dark hair tied back, and her slender fingers traced information on a chart at the foot of his bed. The other woman was older, more like the age his mum would be if she were still alive.

He lay still, his instincts keeping him from moving-like a wounded animal. His mind absorbed information and tried to fill in the blanks. He had no idea how he had got here, or which hospital he was in. And then he remembered. Jumbled words from a dying man hammered inside his skull. The memory triggered a gasp of breath and the two women looked at him.

“Ez … fida-eheke …”

The older woman moved closer and touched his brow. “What did you say?” she asked in her accented English.

“I don’t know …,” Max muttered. The foreign words wouldn’t form on his tongue. He saw the monk’s wild face again. Watched as his mouth made the sounds. Listened again.

“Ez ihure … ere fida-eheke … hari … ere.” Max stumbled over the words.

The nurses looked at each other, and then the younger one spoke gently. “Do you know what you have just said, young man?”

Max shook his head. The women looked concerned. The same nurse said, “I am French Basque. That’s my language. Do you speak it?”

“No,” Max said. “What does it mean?”

The two women spoke to each other in rapid French. Max couldn’t catch it. The young one eventually shrugged.

“It means: Trust no one-they will kill you.”

The hospital team was thorough. Max had been X-rayed, scanned, checked, cleaned up and pronounced uninjured except for bruised ribs and the aftereffects of the cold. He was lucky to be alive, but they insisted he be kept overnight. It had been Bobby Morrell who raised the alarm. When Max had told him he was going back into the mountains, Bobby immediately warned the ski patrols when they heard the avalanche.

The doctors’ usual questions had to be answered. Where were his parents? Was he on school holidays? How long was he staying in the Pyrenees? Where was he staying? How much money did he have?

Max explained everything, and someone said something about contacting his father; then they left him in peace. Max lay quietly for an hour or more, watching the image in his mind play over and over again.

He had been sucked into two startling events: Sophie and the monk. In both cases he had been involved in different, violent attacks by men using the same black-and-white camouflage. He really should tell the police. What would his dad do? He’d think it through and make his own decision about what course of action to take-and then do it. There are times you’re put in a situation that only you are meant to sort out, Max.

“Where are my things?” Max asked the young nurse when she returned to check his temperature.

She opened the small wardrobe in which Max’s clothes were hung. From a drawer she pulled out a sealed brown envelope. Inside were his blue nylon Velcro wallet and his green silica Moldavite wristband. His father’s watch was missing, the scratches on Max’s wrist confirming that the terrifying events hadn’t been a dream. A dull ache, a sense of loss about the watch, momentarily distracted his feelings from the nightmare scenario he had recently escaped. He said a silent, Sorry, Dad.

In addition to Sayid’s misbaha, there were the two items the monk had ripped from his neck and thrown at Max seconds before he died. The first was a rosary and crucifix, its necklace broken, most of the beads now missing, and the second was a leather cord looped and tied through a brass disk, slightly bigger than a ten-pence piece. Four equidistant spokes inside the circumference of this ring secured what looked like a small rounded crystal, floating in the center of the circle.

Max fingered the disk and curled it into his palm. He suddenly felt very possessive about the dying man’s urgency in giving it to him. Max might have lost his own treasured possession, his father’s watch, but this pendant was so vital to the dying monk, so important, that he had entrusted it to the boy who’d tried to save his life. Trust, that was a huge responsibility, his father had always told him.

If only his dad were here now. Making the right decision about what to do would be so much easier. Maybe he should phone him and tell him about the last desperate moments of the monk’s life. But his father was in London, recovering from the torture he had suffered in Africa, and still struggling to remember things. The doctors believed he was making slow but definite progress, and because his dad worked for an international agency that sometimes helped the government uncover massive environmental threats, he was being well cared for in a private nursing home. Max couldn’t burden him with any of this. He knew that when the authorities finally got through to the nursing home in England to explain Max’s accident, someone else would take the call. Which bought him time.

“What is that pendant?” the nurse asked, interrupting his thoughts.

“It’s nothing,” Max told her.

But he knew that the burning secret he clenched in his fist was probably the answer to the events on the mountain. And the words spoken forged a powerful warning.

“ … allez … abbaye! … le crocodile et le serpent!” Go to the abbey. The crocodile and the snake.

Trust no one-they will kill you.

Lucifer.

They will kill you.

Lucifer.

A monk pursued by a man in black. Shot and wounded. An avalanche. A desperate fight for life. And a message.

A secret message.

Max stood at his room’s window, looking out across the low rooftops of Pau. It was a small city on a bluff above the Gave de Pau, the river that flows beneath the cliffs at the city’s southern edge. The panoramic view of the Pyrenees meant that on clear days the saw-toothed mountains seemed endless. Less than twenty kilometers away, their snow-capped peaks in the background of the Chateau de Pau made the view every tourist’s perfect holiday snap. But tonight was something different. Tonight the mountains held a tight grip on a mighty power that threatened and taunted him. Max slid the window open and felt the rush of wind.

A storm, like a massive battle, had struck the mountains. Thunder and lightning clashed, their percussion slamming across the city. The firelit sky smashed open the darkness and created a whirling exhibition of unparalleled energy. The world shook and trembled. Red- and blue-light lightning unleashed from the cloud-to-ground strikes crinkled the darkness. The light illuminated clouds and mountains, ricocheting around the peaks like a circle of fire. It was more stunning than anything Max had ever seen in any fireworks display.

An almighty crash and flash of light cut across Max’s face. He recoiled, but quickly turned back to face the storm’s anger. He gripped the sill, squinting against the biting wind. The mountains had failed to kill Max, but this enormous power seemed to be telling him that it could still reach out and destroy him.

The Pyrenees reverberated with pounding thunder as nature’s design created an electric lace-wing of shredded light that descended from the clouds. Exactly the same as the camouflage used by Sharkface and the monk’s killer.

Max had been given the responsibility of guarding the pendant, of finding answers in an abbey. He decided not to tell the police. Not yet anyway. But there were two people in his life he could trust. One was his dad; the second was Sayid.

“I can’t believe you were rescued by a helicopter,” Sayid moaned. “It took me two and a half hours in the back of an ambulance to get here.” He was in another room, the lower part of his leg in a cast. “I mean, how cool is that? A rescue chopper!”

Max smiled at him. “Stop moaning or I’ll hide your crutches. Listen, they’re gonna chuck us out of here in the morning and we have to make a plan.”

“Plan is we go home, isn’t it?”

Max nodded. “The flight’s booked for the end of the week, but I reckon they’ll try and pull strings to get us back earlier. But I want to stay.”

“The competition’s over; you can’t do anything about that,” Sayid said. He didn’t need to add how sorry he was that Max had lost the final.

Sayid fingered the misbaha. Max had risked his life to get it and nearly died in the process.

Max second-guessed his thoughts. “Sayid, I was meant to be there. Some things you can’t explain, but if I hadn’t lost the final I would never have been up in the mountains.” He held up the broken crucifix and the brass ring pendant with its opaque stone.

Sayid squinted at the stone. “Where did you get these?”

Max told him everything.

A shudder went through Sayid as he listened. He liked his adventure in small doses: like the time he and Max outran the farmer’s dog in a local orchard as they pinched apples; that had been exciting enough, thanks very much. His friend was proving to be a magnet for bigger trouble.

Max’s story rattled him. He and Max had decided to make the winter holidays a fun thing, so while Max worked to save money for the trip and competition by doing odd jobs, Sayid sorted out local people’s computer problems. What Sayid secretly longed for was the chance to be like Max, even to try and match his attitude. His best friend seemed able to determine a plan of action and act on it. Sayid would do anything to help him, that was chiseled in stone, but he knew in his heart he did not possess the instinct-yes, that was what it was-an animal instinct for survival. Only Max had that.

The avalanche his friend had saved him from clearly wasn’t as huge as the one that had swept Max away. The thought of a massive snowfield and mountainside crashing down filled Sayid with horror. To be buried alive; crushed. What a way to die. Max was right: he owed his life to the single-minded determination of the monk.

“I want to find out more about this monk,” Max said.

“You don’t think we should just hand this problem over to the cops? Blimey, Max, someone tried to murder him.”

“He saved me.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re responsible for him dying,” Sayid said.

“He could have left me buried, Sayid, he could have got himself down the mountain and reached a doctor. I owe him. He was desperate. He was begging me.”

“He was warning you!”

“And that was important as well.”

Sayid knew it was useless trying to dissuade Max once he’d made up his mind. “I’m not going back to England on my own, Max. You’ve got to promise not to let that happen, yeah?”

“I’ll come back and get you. I promise.”

“So you need to buy some time. How long?”

“Another day at least. How are your acting skills?”

“You mean this terrible pain that has suddenly shot up my leg into my back and the terrible headaches I’m getting?”

Max smiled. “Don’t overdo the headaches bit. They might do a brain scan and discover there’s nothing there.”

Bobby Morrell had left messages with the hospital staff when he’d phoned to see how Max was getting along. Max dialed the number of the hostel where he and the other competitors were staying in Mont la Croix. Bobby was on the slopes-where else? Max knew he’d be back once the light faded. He was going to need his help. Making sure the hostel manager repeated everything carefully, he left instructions for Bobby.

Max shed the hospital pajamas and dressing gown, and felt better the moment he pulled on his cargo pants, fleece and boots. He ran his fingers under the tap and mussed his hair. He slipped the brass pendant over his head, tucking it out of sight beneath his sweat rag, but he wasn’t sure what to do with the broken rosary.

The young Basque nurse walked in with a tray of food, fully expecting to see Max in bed. “What are you doing?”

Max thought quickly. “I have to go and sort out my friend’s equipment. Clothes and stuff. We’ll be going back to England. The doctor said it was OK.”

“But only tomorrow, I think. No?”

She put down the tray of food, shook her head impatiently and placed her hand on his forehead, then held two fingers to his wrist.

The nurse seemed satisfied with his pulse, but she was hesitant about something.

“Is everything OK?” Max asked her. “No snow or ice inside me that needs defrosting?” he quipped, but she didn’t understand.

“It is OK.” She nodded. Her fingers touched the crucifix in his hand. “I have seen this before.” She hesitated. “Did you steal it?” she asked very carefully.

“No! Course I didn’t.” He was more shocked that the crucifix had been recognized than at being thought a thief.

“Will you tell me where you got it?” she asked him, gazing directly into his eyes. Max knew that if you lied, the dead giveaway was in your eyes. So, do what? Turn away, think of an answer, cover your hesitation by doing something else? No. Look her straight in the eye, don’t blink-and don’t tell her the truth.

“I found it on the ski slopes.”

He held her gaze. After a moment’s consideration, she nodded. “It is possible. I have heard he skis on the high mountains.”

She knew the monk? Max’s heart beat faster. Just as well she wasn’t taking his pulse now. He stayed as nonchalant as he could. “Who?”

She slipped the rosary from his hands, traced a finger down to the bottom of its crucifix. There was a piece broken from the bottom corner. “Once in a while he would come down from the mountains to celebrate Mass in our own language. I have kissed this cross and I have always seen this small piece missing. He is a Basque monk.”

“So, Basque is something different from being French?”

“Of course. We have our own language, our own culture. The Spanish Basques are more aggressive for their independence, some are terrorists, but on this side of the Pyrenees, we love French culture as much as our own. There is no conflict for us.”

“Are you certain it belongs to him?” Max said.

“What is it you are doing? You know something, but you are frightened to say.” She spoke softly, and then, carefully, repeated the warning he had muttered when he recovered consciousness. “Ez ihure ere fida-eheke hari ere. Why would you say that?”

Was she suspicious or did her uneven English accent suggest someone who was worried for his safety? Concern or suspicion was all in a person’s voice inflection, and Max wasn’t sure how to read her intentions. He decided to ignore the question. She might well be a big-sister-type caring nurse, but he should trust no one.

Max eased the rosary from her fingers. “I’ll take it back to him,” he said.

“But he is a recluse. He lives somewhere in the mountains. There is a place, Citeaux… You understand?”

Max shook his head.

“It is a place where no one lives except wild animals. He has a sanctuary, a hut, in the Montagne Noire,” she said.

“The Black Mountain? Are you sure?” Max hid his shock. He had been there barely a couple of weeks ago. As part of his altitude and fitness training, Max had hiked for three days, on and off trails of the Montagne Noire, before the competitions started. It was a wild place, subject to sudden snowstorms, but because of its orientation, the effect of Atlantic mists and rain caused snow to settle for no more than a week or two. That meant there was vegetation that supported wild mountain goats, which in turn fed birds of prey. Max had been warned that if he went too high, wolves and bears could still be found. Climate change meant bears were not hibernating as they used to. It was not the place to get injured, for then the chances of survival would be almost nonexistent. Max wasn’t that keen to go back up there.

“Do you know his name?” he asked.

“Brother Zabala. He is a big man with a beard and long hair.”

There was no doubt in Max’s mind that it was the same monk who had saved his life in the avalanche and then fallen so horribly to his death.

Max clutched the rosary even tighter. A warning voice deep inside told him that he was about to plunge into the darkness of a dead man’s secret.