David Gilman - Ice Claw

Max needed this man on his side, because he had to get out of the Tears of the Angels and back to Europe.

“She’s caught up in something that she doesn’t understand,” Max said. He had pulled Peaches’s photograph from the wall in Sophie’s room. “Do you know this girl?”

Fauvre shook his head. “She is someone Sophie knows?”

“She’s the girl who killed Zabala,” Max said quietly.

The man’s shock was genuine. The flush of anger drained from his face. His shoulders slumped and he suddenly looked old and beaten. He held the photograph in a trembling hand. “What has my girl done? Why is she with these people? May God forgive me for not loving her enough.”

He poured a drink and gulped it down like medicine, wincing at the whisky’s sharpness. He sat shaking his head. After a moment Max saw a resolve creep back into his body. His broken spine straightened; his voice became more convincing.

“She is in danger. I must help her.”

“Then you need to help me,” Max told him. “Do you see that pattern on the girl’s race suit? I’ve seen it a couple of times, and each time violence has been attached to it. Look at the other competitors. Some of them have sponsorship logos. Do you think that design could mean anything? If it did and Sophie has gone to this girl, it might help us find where she is.”

Fauvre nodded. Now there was something he could do, something positive. He banged on the window. Abdullah was outside, making sure enough water was being poured on the burning embers of the feed store so no sparks got caught on the wind and started another blaze.

The riad owner came inside; rivulets of sweat scarred his soot- and dirt-caked face. Fauvre handed the photograph to the big man.

“Abdullah, take this to the computer room, scan it in and see if that design means anything.”

Abdullah nodded, asked no questions and turned away towards the next building.

“We have a good scanning system here. We use it to compare animals’ faces with those photographed in the wild. It’s a recognition package. Abdullah can do these things much quicker than I can.”

“I have a friend who’s the same,” Max said grimly, thinking of Sayid, who was who-knew-where.

“And that is all we can do? Hope to find an obscure link?”

Max knew he had to play his final card. “No, we can do more than that. We can see what your friend Zabala hid on the pendant’s stone.”

Max reached for the short-bladed knife that served as a letter opener. Sitting quickly, he pulled off one of his trainers, dug the knife into the heel and gouged out the cushioning gel.

He held the stone between his fingers.

“Sooner or later someone would have snatched that pendant. I replaced Zabala’s stone when I was in Abdullah’s riad.”

“Then Sophie-?”

“Has a piece of stone cut from a coaster. She has nothing,” Max said.

Angelo Farentino had enjoyed the first half of his cigar. Max Gordon’s father really had no idea at all who he was, and the hulking bodyguard-cum-nurse was out of earshot, so none of this conversation would be remembered by anyone. Except Farentino. But what Tom Gordon had told him dried the moisture in his mouth. The cigar had gone out, and the cloying, stale tobacco coated his tongue with a bitterness that had more to do with the bile of fear than the life-threatening habit of smoking.

Tom Gordon had made a casual remark, a meandering explanation of how he and other explorer-scientists had gone to Switzerland many years ago. Farentino immediately became more attentive. Gordon’s memory was like a jigsaw puzzle, and not all the pieces fitted, but the scraps and recollections began to form a complete picture for Farentino.

Environmental groups had investigated the huge nuclear particle accelerator establishment in Switzerland and had been invited to see for themselves the safety measures in place. Farentino remembered those days, could almost recall the article someone had written, and that he had published, about the melting glaciers in the Alps and the danger of causing any electromagnetic energy that could contribute towards climate change in that area. Quietly, so as not to cause alarm, safeguards were initiated for the underground research work-like a firewall on a computer. A barrier. But no one knew if it was sufficient should a major catastrophe strike the area.

The lying, deceitful Angelo Farentino had now inadvertently been given information that Fedir Tishenko must be told. Even Tishenko could not have predicted the destruction that he would bring if he went ahead with his plans to harness nature’s energy. Could he?

If Farentino went to the authorities they would arrest him, whether they believed him or not about this long-forgotten theory. Nor could he hide. If this information was correct, everything Farentino owned, every scrap of wealth would be destroyed. Stock markets would tumble, banks would close, property would become worthless. Meltdown. Massive destruction.

If he tried to run, to shift money around the world, to go and live in Brazil or on a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Fedir Tishenko had the resources to find and kill him. If he did not run, everything was finished anyway. It was a no-win situation. It wasn’t that vast numbers of people would die or the environment would be irreversibly contaminated that bothered him-his wealth was going to be destroyed. That was why he had betrayed everyone in the first place. Vast wealth. This was so unfair. Why did he have to learn about this? Why hadn’t fate put someone else in the hot seat?

Angelo Farentino was no hero, but he had to use every charming, persuasive skill he possessed to convince Tishenko that what he was planning could create hell on Earth.

The vans stopped to refuel, but Sharkface kept Bobby’s van out of sight on the slip road to the garage and restaurant complex. They filled containers with diesel and refueled it in the darkness of the trees.

Sayid turned his body around and braced his back against the paneled sides, making sure his plaster cast hid the scribbling on the bottom of Bobby’s surfboard. The door slid back-Sayid flinched. Peaches climbed in. She looked at him and he averted his eyes. Don’t make eye contact with anything dangerous , Max had once told him.

The girl gave him something that looked like soggy cheese in a flaccid roll filled with bits of stir-fried vegetables. It tasted like a sweaty sock full of garden cuttings, but he was starving, and he was desperate for the cup of hot chocolate she held.

Outside he could hear Sharkface telling the others what route they would take. Snatches of place names, including the city of Geneva-he couldn’t catch the rest; his chewing was making too much noise in his ears. He gobbled the food, scared that the cold-faced Peaches might take it away from him. She sat on her haunches, watching him. Her eyes studied every bit of the inside of the van, searching for anything that might allow Sayid to make an escape, or cause problems on the road.

Sayid made sure his foot did not move away from the surfboard. Dare he risk provoking her by asking questions?

Be nice. Be grateful. “Thanks, Peaches. I needed that.”

She nodded and gave him the hot chocolate.

Ask her. Be careful! “I don’t understand why you’re with these creeps,” Sayid said quietly. “I mean, Bobby was such a nice bloke.”

She snatched the hot drink away from his bound hands, splashes scalding him. She threw the contents out onto the ground. “You’re not here to ask questions, Sayid. You can’t talk and drink at the same time-so you’ve just made your choice.”

“I don’t know anything about what’s going on!” he said angrily, desperately wishing he could have had the warmth from the drink.