David Gilman - Ice Claw

This ragged-toothed man ripped the tape off Bobby’s mouth, then Sayid’s. Pushing his face next to Bobby’s, he made the young American jerk back in fear, or maybe he had rotten breath with teeth like that, Sayid thought.

“Where’s Max Gordon?” Sharkface said.

Bobby shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Sharkface nodded to a couple of the henchmen, who slammed their fists into Bobby. He was tough and fit, but Sayid could hear the sickening thuds and watched as the boy went down.

“Where is he?” Sharkface asked again.

Bobby gasped for breath. Shook his head. “Don’t know.”

“You tell us where Max Gordon is hiding and we won’t hurt the old lady at the chateau.”

Bobby and Sayid couldn’t hide their alarm. They knew about the countess!

“Don’t hurt her! She doesn’t know anything!” Bobby yelled at Sharkface.

“Where is-?”

“I don’t know! I left him at the place in Hendaye!”

Sharkface let his heartless eyes gaze at the boy and then nodded. “Know what? I believe you.”

“Then you won’t hurt her. Please!”

“She said you were due home. We told her otherwise,” Sharkface sneered.

“What?”

“If you knew anything you’d have told us. To save her. Wouldn’t you?”

“If you’ve hurt her I’ll kill you!” Bobby shouted.

Sharkface grinned, which made him look as though he was going to tear apart a piece of meat. “Too late, Bobby.”

Bobby yelled and threw himself at Sharkface, but the men holding him kicked his legs away and pinioned him to the floor.

There were tears in the American’s eyes and his voice sounded as broken as his heart. “You shouldn’t have hurt her! She was an old lady … she was my gran!”

Sayid felt a wave of pity for Bobby. He knew what it meant for a loved one to die.

“I didn’t touch her. She fell off a balcony,” Sharkface said dismissively.

He turned and looked at Sayid-who shuddered. A brief glimpse in his mind of the comtesse falling off the derelict balcony flitted across the image of Sharkface staring at him.

“But you know where he’s gone, don’t you?” Sharkface said, wiping saliva from his leaking mouth.

Sayid shook his head vigorously. A spasm of vomit squeezed into his throat. He gagged, swallowed the acid taste and tried to think of what he could do. There was nothing. He was helpless. At their mercy.

The face came closer, like a shark coming out of the depth of the ocean towards a helpless diver. Closer, until the overhead light picked the button eyes out of the frightening face.

“How’s the ankle?” Sharkface whispered in Sayid’s ear.

“Listen, I don’t know where he’s gone. He does things his own way. I dunno. Honest. Just let us go. We won’t say anything about any of this. We won’t-I promise.”

As the words tumbled out of his mouth Sayid knew they were pathetic. Pathetic and desperate. There was no clearheaded thought for such a frightening moment. He didn’t want to get hurt, but neither did he want to betray Max. How long could he hold out?

Sharkface nodded at the bikers behind Sayid and they hoisted him onto the workbench, pinning him down. Sayid gasped for breath. He didn’t want to cry, he didn’t want to show these thugs how scared he was, but he could feel the tears sting his eyes. Heard the voice in his head shouting, Please don’t hurt me, please … don’t . But the words wouldn’t come out of his mouth, not while he was gasping for each frightened breath. Strangely, for a moment, he felt more scared for his mother should anything happen to him. Sharkface looked down at him.

“That plaster cast must drive you crazy, yeah? Make your foot itch, does it?”

Sayid nodded.

“Why don’t we take it off for you?” Sharkface said.

He grinned again. “And I’m not talking about the cast.”

Sayid heard the terrifying screech of the angle grinder being started.

Money meant power, and Fedir Tishenko had both. He moved those who worked for him around like a man playing a computer game, and this particular game was proving interesting. The boy, Max Gordon, had slipped away, and the old woman had died without giving his men any information.

Tishenko stood before the wall of glass that filled the huge rectangle cut into the rock face. The mountain lair was an incredible feat of engineering. Over the years tunnel-boring machines had scoured out vast caverns, bigger than road tunnels, large enough to house equipment, long enough to allow kilometers of cable to snake through the lower labyrinth. Here in his personal quarters he could gaze down onto jagged valleys and the mighty glacier that edged lazily along the valley floor. Small aircraft would fly a couple of thousand meters below his eyrie, but no one could know that Tishenko gazed down upon them like a mountain god.

Inside his mountain, vertical fissures, scars from the ice age, had been reamed out and made into airtight shafts. Lifts dropped and rose, cushioned on air, a perfect vacuum-glass pods, steel supports and space-age technology-something that even the grandest, most innovative corporations around the world could not install. They were the fastest lifts in the world and, other than jumping from the small plateau of black, glistening rock outside his quarters, there was no quicker way to descend into his underworld of ice and stone.

Ascending in one of those lifts was the man Tishenko had summoned. Angelo Farentino was nervous, but he hid it well. He lived in his own fortress, a fortress of lies and deceit. Layers of misinformation surrounded him, protecting and hiding him from those who would love to have him arrested, tried and convicted for the massive betrayal he had inflicted on environmental groups around the world. But Tishenko knew where he lived.

Farentino had once been Tom Gordon’s best friend. He was the man who published reports of ecological danger zones from scientists, adventurers and explorers such as Max’s father. But over the years Farentino had played a game of deceit. He had turned his face and his bank account towards those who controlled vast sums of money and who wished to embark on massive projects that needed their environmental damage to be hidden.

The lift door opened and Farentino, casually but expensively dressed, stepped into the room. He had been summoned; not to have come to this grotesque man’s lair would have proved bad for his health. He neither smiled nor greeted Tishenko. It was obedience not politeness that was required.

“Good timing, Angelo.”

Tishenko pressed a button on a console and a white surface the size of a small cinema screen appeared. It showed a recording, sent by Sayid’s kidnappers. Max Gordon’s friend had been snatched at the airport and the fear his men instilled in the boy gave them everything he needed.

Angelo Farentino felt his stomach lurch as if he had fallen down the lift shaft. Delicately, he dabbed the moisture from his upper lip with his handkerchief as he heard the angle grinder ripping the air above the screams of the boy held down on the workbench.

Screams of terror.

And the betrayal of Max Gordon.

Tucked up in the plane, Max allowed himself time to sleep. Who knew what awaited him in Morocco? It was important to snatch brief moments whenever he could. Even a twenty-minute catnap could invigorate him, and he knew soldiers slept at every opportunity, even if it was for only a few minutes. Have to keep going. Take what rest you can when you can. Stay a player in a dangerous game . Why was he putting himself through this? Someone had died a horrible death and had trusted him to solve a mystery and find the killer-that was why. Giving up had never been an option. There were times he didn’t want to go on, but something mingled with his blood as it pumped through his body. Intangible, undetectable by chemical analysis, invisible to any probing scans science could offer-it went beyond his DNA-it was who he was. Besides, Max hated analyzing things. Start thinking too much about yourself and you end up tangled in a mental net that won’t let you go. Take it as it comes. Deal with whatever you have to; there’ll be plenty of time to think about it later.