David Gilman - Ice Claw

The men pushed open the doors and stepped into the swirling snow. Sayid heard the other vans pull up: tires scrunched; doors opened and slammed. The shiver that ran through him had nothing to do with the high mountain air. He knew that if the van had finally given up, then they would put him in one of Sharkface’s vans-and he’d be separated from the magic square.

Sayid squirmed towards the cab, reaching for one of the bottles of water the men had shoved between the seats. There was no time now. He had to take the risk. He could still hear their voices, but because Bobby’s van had no windows in the back he couldn’t see where they were. More voices, a couple of them raised. Someone moaned. “I’m not towing it! We’ll never get up the pass. Leave it!”

Sayid spilled the water across his boot and rubbed the accumulated mud and caked slush away. The numbers Max had given him from the crystal revealed themselves. When Sayid took each of those numbers, found it on the magic square, he would then see the corresponding letter. He was a dozen letters away from discovering Zabala’s secret message. The pendant’s first number was 7-Sayid saw that that was the letter C on the square; the next, 24, was the letter U …

Sayid’s eyes darted across the magic square. The voices were getting closer-he wrote quickly. If they ever searched him when they got to wherever they were going, he had to make sure they would not find the deciphered code. And if he was going to find a way of telling Max the secret … Concentrate! Number, letter, number …

He had to do something! If they ever found this van they had to know he was still alive. Sayid tugged the misbaha from his pocket and hooked it over the tail fin of a surfboard.

One of the men wrenched the back door open. The glaring snow meant he couldn’t see clearly in the gloom of the van. Sayid slipped the pen into his sleeve.

“Get out, kid!” the man shouted. “Come on, hurry it up.”

As one of the men leaned in to drag him out, Sayid lashed out with his plaster cast as if struggling to comply with their brutal commands. He kicked the surfboard from its bracket and it fell flat onto the floor of the van. Whatever happened next, at least none of these men would see his scribbling on the board’s surface.

They made no concessions for the slow-moving boy. One of them pushed him and he stumbled, but within half a dozen strides of being hauled and kicked across the snow he was flung into the back of one of the vans. It smelled of oil and grease. Motorbikes. The grooved channels on the floor reminded Sayid that each van carried three bikes and they and their riders were back in Geneva. Waiting for Sophie.

The doors slammed closed.

Sayid wrote down the last two letters.

The message made no sense.

Max had left the Tears of the Angels in an old pickup driven by Abdullah. Now the dusty road reached beyond the horizon.

The old pickup didn’t have the luxury of Abdullah’s Land Cruiser, and the rutted road shook Max’s spine. For a long time Abdullah remained silent, but then he turned and spoke to Max.

“Those men who attacked us, they were Tuareg.”

“Yes, Laurent told me,” Max answered.

Abdullah nodded. “It is the men who wear the veil. They believe evil spirits can enter their bodies through their nose and mouth. The women do not wear the veil. Tuareg women are different from other Arab women. They can fight. They are taught from when they are young to wrestle. They are strong. The women are special and they are permitted to choose the men. You understand me? They choose. The men, they accept what the women choose.”

Abdullah stopped talking for a moment and waited, as if expecting Max to grasp the reason why he was telling him all of this.

“I see,” Max said, because he didn’t have a clue why Abdullah was giving him lessons in tribal culture.

Abdullah shrugged. He would have to explain further.

“Sophie’s mother was Tuareg.”

Now Abdullah had Max’s attention. The image of Sophie wrestling the man to the ground in Marrakech began to make some sense.

Another shrug from the big man. Now did the boy understand?

“The attack last night was about Sophie’s mother?” Max asked uncertainly.

“No! Nothing to do with it! You are not listening to me.”

Max sighed. He thought he’d been most attentive. “Sorry, Abdullah, what exactly are you trying to tell me?”

The pickup hit a bone-jarring rut. Abdullah crashed the gears, found an easier route and steered them clear.

“She is Tuareg. She found herself a man who was not crippled.”

“That’s cruel,” Max said, feeling the uncaring act of desertion.

“It was her choice! No matter. Laurent is a Frenchman. His pride as well as his back was broken. And Sophie, no, she could not accept it either. Laurent tried to hold the girl with what love he has left, but she is different as well. His daughter has Tuareg blood. Yes?”

“I suppose she has, yes.”

“And now you understand?”

“Er … no, not really.” Max gave a helpless smile. It was beyond him.

Abdullah shook his head. This boy knew nothing. “Sophie will fight for you. She has chosen you.”

Laurent Fauvre thought of his daughter as he watched Max and Abdullah leave. Secrets were being exposed; frightening power might soon be unleashed. Did he believe in any of Zabala’s predictions? He was uncertain. But his daughter was a part of this madness. And Max Gordon? How much did he care about him?

He knew the telephone number he dialed by heart. The man answered.

“Oui?”

“Where are you?” Fauvre said.

“Marseilles.”

“Get to Geneva. My daughter will be there in a few hours, at the train station. Max Gordon is flying in.”

“We’ll leave now,” said Corentin.

The vans pulled into a vast underground area. It had an industrial chill. In the depth of the tunnels that led off from this massive cave torn out from the mountainside, Sayid could see machinery, lots of it-big earth-moving equipment, tunnel-boring machines, excavators; this was the workmen’s entrance.

The men pulled him towards a set of lift doors. An armed, uniformed guard without insignia watched them approach. He nodded to Sayid’s captors and pressed a button. Doors hissed open and Sayid was pushed into a crystal elevator. It felt as though he were inside a diamond: purposefully cut edges illuminated with soft-glow halogen lamps splashed colors about, like refracted light. They ascended rapidly. Light flickered, catching the bare rock face visible through the etched crystal, every scar on the rock’s surface throwing back the colors.

There was sufficient distraction for Sayid to stop being scared for a few moments. The lift slowed, its power source purring gently, bringing it to a halt. Only when the doors opened did he realize just how high up he was inside the mountain.

His captors pushed him out. In front of him was a massive window. Clouds drifted below. He must be thousands of meters high. The temperature was cool; the smooth, polished rock floor gleamed with reflection.

“I hope you are impressed,” a voice said from across the far end of the room.

The man moved closer and Sayid squinted against the mountain-top light, trying to make out the man’s features as he got closer. When he did, he shuddered.

“And scared, I see. Good. You should be,” Fedir Tishenko said.

Abdullah’s words bothered Max during the flight to Geneva. Just what did he mean? Sophie had chosen him? And would fight for him? But she had stolen the pendant. That was theft and betrayal. Who was she selling out to? No. It didn’t make sense. One thing did, though-the clock was ticking and it seemed to be moving faster than usual. Twenty-four hours and Zabala’s prediction was going to smash this area like a hammer on a walnut. Max gazed down at the banana-shaped Lake Geneva as the plane banked for landing. The city huddled along the western shoreline, nudging the border with France. Max looked across the runway. Barely a couple of kilometers from the airport, modern shedlike structures huddled together on the open plain. That was CERN. How or why they were involved in Zabala’s disaster Max did not know, but he could see that if anything catastrophic went wrong there, Geneva would be wiped off the face of the map.