David Gilman - Ice Claw

“Sit down,” she told him.

Max dragged a rattan chair over and sat. She beckoned him closer. He scuffed forward a few more centimeters.

“Give me your hand.”

He did as she asked and she held it tenderly in both hands. Max felt her calloused fingertips trace the whorls and lines on his skin. She half closed his fingers, studied the deepening creases in his palm, then turned his hand again, stroking the back of his fingers. She hesitated. There were sadness and loss in his hand.

“Your mother.” She shook her head gently. “You were so young when she died.”

Max said nothing, remembering his dad holding him, and his tear-filled eyes. He’d never seen his father cry before-or since.

The comtesse waited, sensing the boy’s subtle energy of strength and determination. No evil. But a darker power lurking, accessible.

“Your father’s energy flows in you. You grieve for him-but he’s not dead.”

“No,” Max replied, his dad clearly in his mind. She whispered a truth Max had not dared tell anyone.

“You blame yourself. Something happened in the past. And you feel guilty.”

Max swallowed, his throat dry. Memories of the race to save his father when he was captured in Africa still tore him with regret. If his rescue mission had reached his dad sooner, then perhaps Max could have saved him from being tortured. And his dad’s mind wouldn’t now be fractured like a cracked mirror.

The comtesse decided. The boy’s search was for genuine reasons.

“It is not an abbey you seek, Max. It was built by a scientist-explorer in the nineteenth century. It is named after him. The Chateau d’Antoine d’Abbadie.” She smiled. “Actually, it’s a tourist attraction.”

“What?”

“Not very well promoted, and I doubt many know of it.”

“Where?”

“Hendaye, on the Spanish border. An hour or so from here.”

He had misunderstood Zabala’s frantic, desperate cries in his dying moments. What he had heard as “abbaye” was the name Abbadie.

“Can you keep this to yourself?” Max asked her.

“A tourist attraction? No,” she teased.

“That you’ve told me. Please. Don’t mention it to Sophie.

I need to see something for myself first.”

“All right. I have been a confidante of kings and queens.”

Max’s eyebrows raised. Royalty?

“Not in this life,” she said quietly and without any trace of a smile to show that she might be kidding him. “You have my word.”

Max turned away. He needed Bobby’s van and Sayid’s brain.

When he left the room, the comtesse relaid the cards. They were tarot, believed by some to show the journey from birth and the confrontation with universal forces. Fire, Air, Water and Earth were concealed in the pack. She turned over four cards-and felt a sudden pang of fear.

A high priestess-the power of the unconscious. Mystery.

The Skeleton-destruction and renewal. Mortality.

A tower struck by lightning-a stroke of fate.

Catastrophe. The final card showed a young man, a staff on his shoulder, a boy on a journey-a quest. A leap into the unknown.

Max Gordon was in mortal danger.

Bobby Morrell’s two friends straddled their boards, a hundred meters from the shore, waiting for a swell that promised a curling wave. Peaches, farther out, saw the dark rising wave and beat them to it, riding it as far as she could before cutting the board back over its crest.

Bobby shook his wet hair, reached behind him and unzipped his wet suit. It was a way of buying time. Max had just asked him for the loan of his van. Sayid had just told him that Max could drive anything, but his head was telling him that he couldn’t let an underage kid without a license loose on a French autoroute. He toweled his hair, then looked at them.

“Guys, I’m sorry. No can do.”

“Bobby, if Max says it’s urgent, I mean, I can vouch for that. He doesn’t just say things for the sake of it,” Sayid urged.

Max held up a hand to stop his friend going on. “He’s right, Sayid. It’d only take one cop pulling me over and they’d have us home on a plane and Bobby here would be dragged into it. Sorry I asked,” he said to Bobby.

“No hard feelings, Max?”

“Course not.”

Bobby looked down the coastline, glanced out at his friends. “Weather’s gonna change. Those dudes are cutting out tomorrow. Hendaye’s not great for surf, but there’s a good break out near the rocks. I wouldn’t mind going down to see how it’s doing. Me and Peaches could catch a few waves. I could drop you guys off.”

He was trying to help, and still wasn’t asking questions. Max nodded. “That’s perfect, Bobby, thanks.”

“This place mightn’t be open, y’know. It’s seasonal round here. You want me to phone and check?”

“Thanks,” Max said again, watching as Bobby reached for his cell.

Sayid caught the look in Max’s eyes. Calculating, looking through the other person, figuring out if there was another motive for helping.

“What?” he said quietly.

Max shook his head. “Nothing.”

Bobby had stepped away, one hand covering his ear against the noise of the crashing surf.

Sayid couldn’t believe it. “You don’t trust Bobby?” he said quietly.

“I don’t trust anybody, Sayid. I’m sorry. I can’t.”

“And what about me?”

“You have to ask?”

“Maybe I should. You get some pretty dark thoughts, y’know. This sort of stuff can do your head in. You’re not alone, Max. You’ve got friends.”

Sayid was right. But Max knew at the end of the day his instinct was always to go his own way. He didn’t like depending on too many people. Why? he often wondered. The answer was always simple. Because not everyone realized the importance of being reliable.

Bobby walked back to them. “I only got the caretaker, but they’re open.”

Max smiled his thanks.

Sayid hauled himself out of the wheelchair. “I’d better get rid of this thing if we’re going museum bashing.”

“No. We’re going to need it,” Max told him.

Sophie Fauvre eased the rental car into the bustling Biarritz street. Small farmers’ trucks, laden with produce, jostled to reach the unloading bays of the indoor market. Outside, other stallholders set up their tables. The cobbled street was blocked. A van pulled out and Sophie pushed the car’s nose into the space, edging backwards and forwards until it was parked. She was within sight of Simone’s Autos.

The crowd jostled her along until the archway let her sideslip the stream of people. Simone’s front office was little more than a hole in the wall. As Sophie moved round someone blocking her way, a vegetable cart jockeyed for position near the market’s main doors and a shiver of light from a car’s windshield caught her eye-a black Audi. The big man leaned against the hood, casual, hands in pockets, just watching the market crowds.

Turning her face quickly, she stepped into the shaded archway. They’d found her. How? Only Max and the people at the comtesse’s chateau knew where she was. But she’d phoned her father. Maybe someone was monitoring her calls. She stripped her cell phone of its SIM card and threw them separately into rubbish bins. She’d have to live without a phone for a while.

In a few strides she was in the office of Simone’s Autos.

“Ah, mam’selle. Ca va? ” Simone Lavassor beamed at her, tugging bangles over her wrist. “A good holiday?”

Sophie nodded but glanced quickly over her shoulder, making sure that the men hadn’t spotted her and were at this minute making their way towards her.

“Something wrong?” the woman gently pressed her.

Sophie shook her head, placing the car keys on the counter. “The road’s jammed. I’ve left the car opposite the market stalls.”