Christopher Reich - Rules of Deception

Slinging off his daypack, he fell to his knees and cleared the snow from her mouth and nose. Placing a hand on her back, he felt her chest rise and fall. Her pulse was strong and steady. Inside his pack was a nylon mesh bag holding a spare cap, mittens, goggles, and a Capilene shirt. He folded the shirt and placed it under her cheek.

Just then, Emma stirred. “Oh, shit,” she murmured.

“Stay still,” he commanded in his emergency room voice. He ran a hand along her pants, starting at the thigh and working down. Suddenly, her face contorted in agony. “No…stop!” she cried.

Jonathan pulled his hands away. A few inches above the knee, something pressed sharply against the fabric of her pants. He stared at the grotesque bulge. There was only one thing that looked like that.

“It’s broken, isn’t it?” Emma’s eyes were wide, blinking rapidly. “I can’t wiggle my toes. It feels like a bunch of loose wires down there. It hurts, Jonathan. I mean the real thing.”

“Keep calm, and let me take a look.”

Using his Swiss Army knife, he cut a slit in her ski pants and gingerly separated the fabric. Splintered bone protruded from her thermal underwear. The material around it was wet with blood. She’d suffered a compound fracture of the femur.

“How bad is it, really?” Emma asked.

“Bad enough,” he said, as if it were only a hairline fracture. He shook out five Advil and helped her take a sip of water. Then, using adhesive tape from the first aid kit, he secured the tear in her ski pants. “We need to get you on your back and facing downhill. Okay?”

Emma nodded.

“First, I’m going to splint your leg. I don’t want that bone moving anywhere. For now, just stay still.”

“Christ, Jonathan, does it look like I’m going to walk anywhere?”

Jonathan walked up the slope to retrieve her skis and ski poles. Placing one pole on either side of the leg, he cut a length of climbing rope, tied off one end, and wrapped it round and round the thigh and calf. Kneeling by her side, he handed her his leather wallet. “Here.”

Emma clamped it between her teeth.

Jonathan slowly tightened the rope until the poles embraced the broken limb. Emma sucked in a breath. He tied off the other end of the rope, then turned her on her back and rotated her body so her head lay above her feet. After that, he spent a minute fashioning a hill behind her back so she could sit up. “Better?” he asked.

Emma grimaced as a tear sped down her cheek.

He touched her shoulder. “Alright, let’s get some help up here.” He took the two-way radio from his jacket. “Davos Rescue,” he said, turning out of the wind. “I need to report an emergency. Skier injured on the south side of the Furga at the base of Roman’s. Over.”

Silence greeted his call.

“Davos Rescue,” he repeated. “I have an emergency requiring immediate assistance. Come back.”

A blizzard of white noise answered. He tried again. Again, there was no response.

“It’s the weather,” said Emma. “Go to another channel.”

Jonathan flipped to the next channel. Years ago, he’d worked as an instructor and ski patrolman in the Alps, and he’d programmed the radio with the frequencies of every emergency rescue service in the area-Davos, Arosa, and Lenzerheide-as well as the Kantonspolizei, the Swiss Alpine Club, and Rega, the helicopter rescue outfit known to skiers and climbers as the meat wagon.

“Arosa Rescue. Skier injured on the south side of the Furga. Immediate assistance required.”

Again, there was no response. He brought the radio closer. The power light flickered weakly. He banged the radio against his leg. The light blinked and went dark. “It’s dead.”

“Dead? The radio? How’s that? I saw you try it last night.”

“It was fine then.” Jonathan clicked the instrument on and off several times, but it refused to come to life.

“Is it the batteries?”

“I don’t see how. I put in a fresh set yesterday.” Removing his mittens, he examined the inside of the set. “Not the batteries,” he said. “The wiring. The power unit’s not attached to the transmitter.”

“Attach it.”

“I can’t. Not here. I’m not sure I could even if I had the tools.” He tossed the two-way radio into his bag.

“What about the phone?” Emma asked.

“What about it? It’s a big-time dead zone up here.”

“Try it,” she commanded.

The signal icon on Jonathan’s cell phone showed a parabolic antenna cut through with a solid line. He dialed the number for Rega anyway. The call failed. “Nothing. It’s a black hole.”

Emma stared at him a moment and he could see that she was working hard to keep it together. “But we’ve got to talk to someone.”

“There’s no one to talk to.”

“Try the radio again.”

“What for? I told you, it’s broken.”

“Just do it!”

Jonathan kneeled beside her. “Look, everything’s going to be okay,” he said in as calm a voice as he could muster. “I’m going to ski down and bring back help. As long as you have your avalanche transmitter, I won’t have any problem finding you.”

“You can’t leave me here. You’ll never find your way back, even with the beacon. You can’t see twenty feet in any direction. I’ll freeze. We can’t… I can’t …” Her words trailed off. She dropped her head onto the snow and turned her face so he wouldn’t see that she was crying. “I almost had it, you know…that last turn…I just was a little late…”

“Listen to me. You’re going to be fine.”

Emma looked up at him. “Am I?”

Jonathan brushed the tears from her cheek. “I promise,” he said.

Reaching into his rucksack, he found a thermos and poured his wife a cup of hot tea. While she drank, he gathered her skis and placed them in the snow behind her, forming an X so he could spot them from a distance. He removed his patrolman’s parka and laid it over her chest. He took off his cap and placed it over Emma’s, pulling it down so that it covered her neck. Finally, he fished the space blanket from the rucksack and gingerly slid it beneath her back and around her chest. The word “HELP” was spelled across it in large fluorescent orange letters, meant to aid in cases of air evacuation. But there would be no helicopter flying in today.

“Pour yourself some tea every fifteen minutes,” he said, taking her hand. “Keep eating and above all, don’t fall asleep.”

Emma nodded, her hand gripping his like a vise.

“Remember the tea,” he went on. “Every fifteen-”

“Shut up and get out of here,” she said. She gave his hand a last squeeze and released it. “Leave before you scare me to death.”

“I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”

Emma held his eyes. “And, Jonathan…don’t look so unsure of yourself. You’ve never broken a promise yet.”

Three hundred kilometers to the west of Davos, at Bern-Belp airport outside the nation’s capital, snow had been falling since morning. Menacing Arctic CAT snowplows rumbled up and down the runways, making mountains out of the gathered snow, ugly parodies of the Alps, and depositing them at the head of the taxiway.

At the west end of runway one-four, a cluster of men stood huddled together, eyes trained to the sky. They were policemen waiting for a plane to land. They had come to make an arrest.

One man stood slightly apart from the others. Marcus von Daniken was fifty, a short, hawkish man with black hair shorn to a grenadier’s stubble and a grim, downturned mouth. For the past six years, he’d headed up the Service for Analysis and Prevention, better known as SAP. It was SAP’s job to safeguard the country’s domestic security against extremists, terrorists, and spies. The same role was performed in the United States by the FBI and in the United Kingdom by MI5. At that moment, von Daniken was shivering. He hoped the plane would land soon.