Clive Cussler - Polar Shift

When World War II ended, Europe began to pull itself back together, but his mind was a jungle full of dark murmurings. No matter that he had lent his deadly skills to the cause of the Resistance. He was still a robotic killer. Worse, he had a fatal defect- humanity. Like any fine-tuned machine with a flawed mechanism, in time he would have flown apart.

He had left the war-ravaged continent for New York, and pushed west until he was thousands of miles from the smoldering European slaughterhouse. He had built a simple log house, cutting and hewing each log with hand tools. The backbreaking labor and the pure air cleansed the shadowed recesses of his memory. The violent nightmares became less frequent. He could sleep without a gun under his pillow and a knife strapped to his thigh.

With the passage of years, he had evolved from a remorseless, polished killing machine into an aging ski bum. The close-cropped blond hair of his youth had turned to a pewter gray that now grew over his ears. A shaggy mustache matched his wild eyebrows. His pale features had become as weathered as buckskin.

As he squinted against the sun-sparkled snow, a smile came to his long-jawed face. He was not a religious man. He could not muster enthusiasm for a Maker who would create something as absurd as Man. If he chose a religion, it would be Druidism, because it made as much sense to worship an oak tree as any deity. At the same time, he regarded each trip to the top of the mountain as a spiritual experience.

This would be the last run of the season. The snow had held late into the spring as it did at higher altitudes, but the light, fluffy champagne power of the winter had given way to wet, heavy corn. Patches of exposed brown earth showed through the thin cover, and the smell of damp earth hung in the air.

He adjusted his goggles and pushed off with his poles, schussing straight down the North Bowl face to gain speed before initiating his first turn. He always started his day with the same trail, a fast bowl run that wound in between silent snow ghosts-strange, phantasmagoric creatures that formed when cold and fog coated trees with rime. He made the smooth, effortless turns he had learned as a child in Kitzbuhl, Austria.

At the bottom of the bowl, he shot down Schmidt's Chute and into a glade. Except for the most dedicated skiers and boarders, most people had hung up their skis to work on their boats and fishing gear. It seemed that he was the master of the mountain.

But as Schroeder broke out of the trees into the open, two skiers emerged from a copse of fir trees.

They skied a few hundred feet behind him, one on either side of the trail. He moved at the same steady pace, making short radius turns that would give the newcomers room. Instead of passing, they matched him turn for turn, until they were skiing three abreast. A long-dormant mental radar kicked on. Too late. The skiers closed on him like the jaws of a pair of pliers.

The old man pulled over to the edge of the trail. His escorts skidded to hockey stops in sprays of snow, one above him and the other below. Their muscular physiques pushed tightly against the fabric of their identical, one-piece silver suits. Their faces were hidden by their mirrored goggles. Only their jaws were visible.

The men stared at him without speaking. They were playing a game of silent intimidation.

He showed his teeth in an alligator smile. "Mornin'," he said cheerfully in the western accent he had cultivated through the years. "They don't make days better than this."

The uphill skier said in a slow, Southern drawl, "You're Karl Schroeder, if I'm not mistaken."

The name he had discarded decades before sounded shockingly alien to his ears, but he held his smile.

"I'm afraid you are mistaken, friend. My name is Svensen. Arne Svensen."

Taking his time, the skier planted his ski poles into the snow, removed one glove, reached inside his suit and extracted a PPK Walther pistol. "Let's not play games, Arne. We've authenticated your identity with fingerprints."

Impossible.

"I'm afraid you've confused me with someone else."

The man chuckled. "Don't you remember? We were standing behind you at the bar."

The old man combed his memory and recalled an incident at the Hell Roaring Saloon, the apres-ski watering hole at the bottom of the mountain. He had been pounding down beers as only an Austrian can. He had come back to his stool from a restroom break and found his half-filled beer mug had vanished. The bar was busy, and he assumed another customer had mistakenly walked off with his drink.

"The beer mug," he said. "That was you."

The man nodded. "We watched you for an hour, but it was worth the wait. You left us a full set of fingerprints. We've been on your ass ever since."

The schuss-schuss of skis came from up-trail.

"Don't do anything stupid," said the man, glancing uphill. He covered the gun with his gloved hand.

A moment later, a lone skier flew by in a blur and disappeared down the trail without slowing.

Schroeder had known that his transformation from cold-blooded warrior to human being would leave him vulnerable. But he had come to believe that his new identity had successfully insulated him from his old life. The gun pointed at his heart was persuasive evidence to the contrary.

"What do you want?" Schroeder said. He spoke with the world-weariness of a fugitive who had been run to ground.

"I want you to shut up and do what I say. They tell me you're an ex-soldier, so you know how to follow orders."

"Some soldier," the other man said with undisguised scorn. "All I see from here is an over-the-hill guy crapping his pants."

They both laughed.

Good.

They knew he had been in the military, but he guessed they didn't know that he had graduated from one of the world's most notorious killing schools. He had kept his martial arts and marksmanship skills honed, and, although he was pushing eighty, constant physical exercise and strenuous outdoor pursuits had maintained a body many men half his age would have envied.

He remained calm and confident. They would be on his turf, where he knew every tree and boulder.

"I was a soldier a long time ago. Now I'm just an old man." He lowered his head, hunching his shoulders to project an attitude of submission, and injected a tremor into his deep voice.

"We know a lot more about you than you think," said the man with a gun. "We know what you eat, where you sleep. We know where you and your mutt live."

They had been in his house.

"Where the mutt used to live," said the other man.

He stared at the man. "You killed my dog? Why?"

"Your little wiener wouldn't stop yapping. We gave him a pill to shut him up."

The friendly little female dachshund he had named Schatsky was probably barking because she was glad to see the intruders.

A coldness seemed to flow into his body. In his mind, he heard his classroom mentor, Professor Heinz. The cherubic psychopath with the kindly blue eyes had been rewarded with a teaching sinecure at the Wevelsburg monastery for his work designing the Nazi death machine.

In skilled hands, nearly any ordinary object can be a lethal weapon, the professor was saying in his soft-spoken voice. The hard end of this newspaper rolled into a tight coil can be used to break a man's nose and drive the bone splinters into his brain. This fountain pen can penetrate the eye and cause death. This metal wrist-watch band worn across the knuckles is capable of breaking facial bones. This belt makes a wonderful garrote if you can't quickly remove your boot laces …

Schroeder's grip tightened on the pole handles.

"I'll do whatever you say," he said. "Maybe we can work this out."