David Gilman - Ice Claw

“Is that for me?” Max asked.

The man nodded.

“I’ll smell like a girl if I get in there,” Max said, not letting on that the sandalwood actually smelled quite good. And the bath was like a football club’s locker-room plunge pool. Wasn’t half bad, come to think of it. He might even practice deep-sea diving in there.

“Please,” the porter said as he gestured to the bathroom, and placed Max’s backpack on a suitcase stand.

Max stepped forward. It was like something out of an Arabian Nights story. Beyond the bath, lattice screens offered privacy but also allowed him to see across the rooftops of the old city. Staggering snow-capped peaks rose up beyond the city skyline, tinged with the last rays of the setting sun. The Atlas Mountains. How far away? A few hours’ drive? Somewhere beyond them was where Sophie’s father lived, and that was where he felt sure Zabala’s clue meant for him to go.

The clues from the chateau, the link between her father and Zabala with the wild animals. There had to be a connection. Max knew nothing about Morocco. He remembered stories from when he was a kid: Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Aladdin, A Thousand and One Nights . But other than that, he was in a part of the world that had sights and sounds-and smells-that were so exotic it felt as though they could sweep you along like an …

He stopped his thoughts right there, because the word that came to mind was avalanche . And that thought sucked the warmth out of the room. The man was turning back the bed. Taking a bottle of chilled water from the minibar, he unscrewed it, poured half the water into a glass and settled it on a coaster-bead-sized stones delicately wired together by local craftsmen. He pointed to the lights, clapped gently and smiled as the lights came on.

That was cool. Max liked that big-time.

The man, pleased to have amused his guest, bowed and left. Max checked the room. The bed was great: you could have a midnight feast on that with half a dozen of your mates. There was a CD player with a selection of music-international and local-as well as a bowl of fruit, a phone, computer connections, a minibar fridge stacked with fizzy drinks and fruit juices. Max reckoned he could survive a week in here.

He picked up the phone on the bedside table, got an outside line and dialed Sayid’s cell, but the standard recorded answering message was all he heard. He left a brief message but stopped himself from telling his friend where he was. Sayid might have been picked up by the police. He hung up. Sayid should have been home by now and his phone back in use. But Max was realistic enough to know there was nothing he could do about it. He knew Sayid wouldn’t tell the authorities any more than he had to.

There was one more thing Max had to do before he could relax completely. He fished in his backpack and pulled out a small tube of superglue, one of the best repair kits for quick fixes. After fifteen minutes of concentrated work on his scuffed and torn trainers, using the blade from the minibar’s corkscrew, he completed the task-managing the small miracle of not gluing his fingers together in the process.

Max let his clothes fall where he stood and slid in a CD. He popped a can, grabbed a mango and a packet of crisps and went through to the humongous bath. Rose petals or not, he’d have a long soak. He suddenly felt very tired.

He stepped over the broad edge of the bath, balanced everything he needed and slid into the velvet warmth of the deep water. He peeled back the skin of the mango and sank his teeth into the yellow flesh. It tasted of sunshine. And made a hell of a mess-juice everywhere-but he was in the perfect place to eat it. The packet of crisps followed, swigged down with the cola. Someone in his mind was telling him he deserved to pig out for a while.

He clapped.

The lights faded.

He clapped again.

The music got louder.

He clapped again.

Just for himself.

No matter how much money Fedir Tishenko possessed he could not control the Atlantic sea fog that blanketed the southern part of France and northern Spain, shutting down all air traffic.

Sharkface waited on a private jet at Biarritz. His destination was an abandoned military airfield south of Marrakech, where he would take control of the hunt for Max. But the plane sat on the runway, immobilized by nature’s cloak. Others would now be needed for that job. Morocco was no farther away than a phone call-Tishenko’s promises scattered like gold coins into the dusty streets of the ancient city. Other killers would entrap Max.

Sharkface’s vehicles, along with Bobby’s van, drove slowly across France towards the Swiss border, hundreds of kilometers away. Sayid and Bobby still lay trussed up. Sayid’s tears had dried and Bobby nodded at him, trying to offer some comfort, a gesture of understanding. Sayid had not cried because of the terror these killers had inflicted on him, though the shock at hearing of the countess’s death was like a body blow. No, he had wept because he had told them that Max was in Morocco. That gut-wrenching sickness of giving up your best friend embedded itself in his stomach like a blunt sword.

How much danger did that pose to Max? Sayid had very little information about his plans, but his friend had shared enough with him for his enemies now to have a clearer idea of what had been discovered.

Max had been given a crystal pendant by Zabala and had then found something in d’Abbadie’s chateau, where the Germans and Sharkface’s gang had attacked them. But Sayid didn’t know anything else. Only that Max had gone to Morocco.

Sharkface had held the angle grinder across Sayid’s plaster cast, lowering it slowly and deliberately, letting the white powder shower across Sayid. Just another couple of millimeters and …

Sayid had yelled at Sharkface. Screamed the information. Gave it out so willingly. Anything to stop the horror.

Now, as he lay in the van, he thought of how many times he had fantasized about being a hero. About how, like Max, he could save people, and that no matter how frightening the situation he would get through.

But so far the reality of his life had betrayed him.

Before Max’s dad had saved Sayid’s family in the Middle East, his own father had worked to help bring peace to the region. The terrorists came in the night and killed him. Sayid could still feel the air shattering from the gunfire, smell the cordite and hear his mother’s screams. And his own. Moments later the darkness and smoke had been punctured with torchlight as British troops stormed their house. Gunfire flashed and echoed. More men died-the assassins. And then soldiers carried Sayid and his mother to a waiting helicopter. An Englishman, someone who spoke Arabic, comforted him and his mother. He was their friend. The man their father had called a brother. Sayid recognized him as the man who had shared food at their table. His name was Tom Gordon and he promised them he would care for them, in honor of Sayid’s father-a brave and great man.

That was how Sayid had ended up at Dartmoor High with Tom Gordon’s son. And now the avalanche, the fight at the chateau and his kidnapping all exposed Sayid’s fear. He had betrayed not only his best friend but also his own father’s memory.

The van jolted across a pothole. Sayid looked at the thugs up front. Yellow motorway lights flashed across the windshield. He looked at Bobby, whose eyes were closed.

One thing Sayid had not given his torturers was the information on the piece of paper. He saw the numbers in his head. Reaching forward, he scraped the dried mud from under the instep of his boot. They were part of the mystery and they were important.

Sayid comforted himself. There was still something he could do to help Max. Solve the code. Get the information to Max. How? He didn’t know. But somewhere deep inside he believed his friend would find him.