Ice Claw (13 page)

The land Fedir ruled harbored deep treasures of energy beneath the surface—oil and natural gas deposits that gave him wealth and even greater power. By the time he was twenty-five years old he was one of the richest men in the world. He influenced stock markets and had politicians and governments at his beck and call. He sought no publicity, he bought no football teams, he became as mysterious as the legend surrounding him. And when he was thirty-one years and one day old, he sold everything to the powers that be.

And disappeared.

That was five years ago.

Now he hunted in the silence of the night. It was his
creed to calmly punish disloyalty and incompetence. Lessons had to be taught so that others would learn. This boy he hunted had made a grave error. In a town near where Zabala had lived, the boy had got drunk and spoken about the smuggled animals. Tishenko’s new private world, this mountain kingdom, could have been compromised. There was only one punishment.

The sounds of Tishenko’s hunting wolves were far behind the boy. His strength gave him confidence as he ran across the hard-packed snowfield. He would outrun them, he was certain of it. He knew the landscape, and where the glacier crept down the mountain pass, there was a way up the side of the ice. The wolves could never follow him.

Tishenko could see his victim’s plumed breath, watched as the boy kept looking over his shoulder, perhaps unable to believe his good luck that he was not being pursued, that the deadline for escape had been achieved, that he might live. Freedom beckoned. That was the most wonderful gift for a frightened mind—hope. But he had failed to look into the night sky behind him.

Tishenko eased the black-winged paraglider into position.

Moon glow sprinkled the snow. Tishenko’s muscles tightened, his breathing steady as he watched his fractured shadow steal up behind the boy, who had only seconds to live.

The specially made titanium hunting bow needed strength and skill to draw, hold the target and release the arrow to kill effectively. Tishenko did not wish to cause undue suffering. Fear was torment enough.

With barely a whisper through the air, his darkened wings made him a creature of the night, gliding between moon and
victim. A hurried sigh and the broadhead-tipped arrow flew in the night air and plunged into the running target.

The boy dropped instantly, prone, arms outstretched, without any conscious thought of what had struck him. A puddle of blood darkened in the cream-tinted snow. Death took only seconds. His last sensation was feeling the rough, wet crystals against his face and being drawn down into the cold, embracing ground.

The wolves would pick up the blood scent. The body would be devoured. Tishenko knew others would need watching before his plan to harness the most powerful force in nature could be completed. When that was done, a new order would be created out of the destruction.

As Tishenko turned the paraglider across the desolate but hauntingly beautiful snowfields for the place that was now his home, deep inside the Swiss Alps, a raven flew across the face of the moon. Ravens do not fly at night, nor should they cross such desolate areas.

It was an omen. Of something unexpected.

The boy, Max Gordon?

Time would tell.

Like a dark angel, Fedir Tishenko drifted beyond the killing ground.

Max’s room in the château was basic. An old iron bedstead, a worn mattress, a duvet, bare floors and hand-painted wooden shutters across drafty windows. A spindle-backed chair served as a clotheshorse. Almost like home, he thought. He had wrapped the duvet around him: this was his first opportunity
to have a proper look at the newspaper cuttings he had taken from Zabala’s scrapbook. With little help from the bare, forty-watt lightbulb, he scrutinized the French reports, getting his brain to think in the other language.

Twenty-three years ago Zabala had caused a furor by claiming that a catastrophic event was going to take place in southeastern Europe. He had, it seemed, little evidence that pointed to a disaster. Everyone scoffed. Zabala was ridiculed, accused of dabbling in astrology, the predictive, unproven art, instead of keeping within the discipline of astronomy.

So that was what he was—an astronomer.

Zabala’s riposte to his critics was that in ancient times Egyptian, Greek and Persian cultures had embraced celestial attributes and associated them with major events in history. Zabala refused to disclose his research and insisted that Lucifer—

Max gasped. Zabala was talking about Lucifer all those years ago! The last word he said before he died. That moment of terror on the mountain persisted with startling clarity in his mind.

Lucifer would return, bringing cataclysmic destruction, Zabala had insisted in the newspaper. The journalists’ articles derided Zabala rather than offering any facts. Perhaps there were none to report. They didn’t even mention where he worked, so Max decided that the man had become something of a figure to poke fun at. However, Zabala insisted throughout that he would provide definite proof, that his research was not yet finalized, but that all the signs were there.

Signs? The newspapers scorned him.

It was getting late. Max clambered onto the bed and
switched off the light. The old house creaked from the wind sneaking under its floorboards and rafters. Despair whispered through the run-down building. The shutters, edged in fuzzy half-light, pushed and pulled, moaning from the breeze.

Maybe this was all a wild-goose chase. An obsessed man, demented by a half-baked prediction, forcing himself from society into the mountains because of something that didn’t happen. He had turned his back on the world and become a reclusive monk. If Zabala had raised the alarm all those years ago, had been proved wrong because nothing happened, then from a rational point of view Max was getting caught up in an old man’s fantasy.

Max checked his thoughts. Someone had attacked, pursued and killed the elderly monk. That wasn’t a fantasy. Stark terror had strangled them both in the moment before Zabala’s death. But Max had hung on. Had done everything to save him, just as Zabala had done for him. Just as his dad would have done.

One of the articles made a final, sober statement. Zabala was nothing more than an unknown, publicity-seeking, third-rate scientist, possessed by the demon of failure. He had become a religious zealot who should carry a placard telling the world
The End Is Nigh
.

Max lay in the gloom. Someone padded barefoot along the corridor—candlelight seeped around the doorframe—paused, then moved on.

He slipped out of bed and put the chair under the door handle. A crazy woman with a knife had nearly cut his throat. He didn’t want her, or anyone else he was unaware of in this
crazy place, coming back to make sure he was all tucked up for the night.

Sleep tugged at Max’s mind. He fingered the stone pendant and dismissed the whispers of doubt that plagued him about Zabala’s sanity. The only way to find the killer was to have something he wanted badly enough. Zabala had found Lucifer’s secret and Lucifer had taken his revenge.

Max would find the secret.

And Lucifer would come for him.

The château was no less stark in daylight. Two huge balconies hung precariously from the art deco building. A turret that looked like a small bell tower peeked above the castellated roof terrace. The roof’s eaves were rotten and most of the big windows were boarded over. At the turn of the nineteenth century it had taken four hundred men twelve years to build an aristocrat’s dream. Its grim history of bad debt, misery and sadness had by now soaked into the neglected structure.

Max had slept badly: the mattress was lumpy, the room drafty and the ancient water pipes kept up a constant groaning. As he wandered through the corridors towards the voices and the smell of coffee and bacon, he noticed that there was barely any furniture anywhere. And when he finally reached the main living room, it looked more like a city squat than a French château. Bobby Morrell, his two surfing friends and Peaches sat with Sayid and Sophie. They lounged with plates
of food on their laps on big, overstuffed chairs that looked as though they came from the Second World War. A big dining table, once beautifully polished but now scratched and burned by innumerable pots of hot tea being placed on its surface over the years, teetered on thin legs, supporting fresh bread, jars of honey, jam and marmalade. There were bacon, eggs, coffee, fruit—just about anything anyone could want to eat.

Peaches’s laughter, as always, threw light into the room, and Bobby nearly choked as he laughed with her.

“Hey, Max,” Bobby called. “Good sleep? Help yourself, pal. Look who’s here!”

“Hiya, Max!” Peaches said, giving a girly wave. She sat knee-hugging on the old sofa next to Bobby and Sophie.

Max nodded and smiled. Everyone seemed more interested in Sophie and Peaches than in his arrival in the room, as their chatter, fractured with gestures and shrieks, amused Bobby and his friends.

He looked at his friend now, smiling through a messy fried-egg sandwich. Sayid hobbled forward and hugged Max.

“You should’ve given me a shout when you got in last night,” he said, being careful not to drip the egg yolk that ran through his fingers onto Max.

“I tried, but you were snoring like a train. What’s going on?”

Sayid limped to the table. “Isn’t this great? Loads of nosh, Max, and the sea”—he pointed across the vast balcony, whose doors, leading from the lounge, were closed—“is right there, only don’t try and go on the balcony, it’s condemned. Drop a bread roll on there and it’ll collapse. The whole place
is falling apart,” he said quietly, then more cheerfully, “Sea’s only a couple of hundred meters down that path. Great surfing. Peaches rocked up yesterday and she, Bobby and his mates were down there all day. They wheel me down as well to sit under a big umbrella. The Comtesse makes sure there’s plenty of grub whenever we want it. I read comics all day. Bobby’s got every superhero comic in his room, says he’s been coming here since he was a kid. I can’t believe his gran’s a French countess. She’s all right. Bit weird. But, well, y’know, they’re not like the rest of us, these aristocrats, are they? And you’ve gotta try these croissants and jam. It’s all homemade, almost as good as my mother’s
ataif,”
Sayid said, remembering the joy of the small pancakes stuffed with nuts or cheese and doused in syrup.

“Thanks for the potted history, Sayid. As long as you’re not going hungry or anything. Nice to know you weren’t too worried about me, yeah?”

“Listen, Max, if I spent half my time worrying about you, I’d be a nervous wreck. Sophie said she found you on top of a mountain.”

“Did she? I don’t know much about her,” Max said as he helped himself to the fresh fruit.

“She told us about Paris, and a circus and her dad. Then they did the girl-talk thing. Chatter mostly. Why they think anyone is actually interested in any of this stuff scrambles the brain. I mean, look at those two.”

They glanced at Sophie and Peaches.

“Boys and shopping. How boring can you get? So, what mountain were you on top of?” Sayid said as he reached for more food.

“How’s the foot?” Max asked, warily looking to see if anyone was paying attention and might hear what he wanted to tell Sayid.

“It’s all right. What mountain? Don’t hold out. Come on.”

“The old monk’s place.” Max spoke quietly. “Someone had trashed it. Looks as though there was a hell of a fight there, and I reckon it happened before the avalanche. I think they were searching for the you-know-what.”

Sayid looked blank.

Max stared at him.

“Oh yeah. Right. Of course. The … yeah. The thingy,” Sayid said, remembering the pendant. “Bloody hell, Max. This is getting dodgier, isn’t it?”

“By the minute. Maybe it’s time you went back to England.”

Max didn’t sound that convincing. He wanted Sayid to stay a while longer. His friend was good at figuring out complex problems, and if Max found more clues, he would be grateful for Sayid’s help.

Sayid hesitated. He also wanted to know more about the mystery that was unfolding, despite the nervous tingle of trepidation that fluttered in his breakfast-filled stomach.

“Well, let’s talk about that later, yeah?” Sayid said, delaying his own uncertainty.

“OK,” Max said, pleased Sayid was prepared to stick around for a while longer. “There’s a library down the corridor. When you get a chance, nose around, see if there’s anything about old abbeys in this area. I don’t want anyone seeing me do it and asking any awkward questions.”

Sayid nodded and smiled. Looking through books wasn’t dangerous at all. He could manage that.

Max nodded in Sophie’s direction. “What do you think of her?” he asked, before gulping down a glass of fresh orange juice.

“Sophie? Dunno. What was she doing all the way up there anyway?”

“I’m not sure. We’ll have to wait and see.”

Max’s doubts about Sophie persisted. He hoped he might be wrong in thinking she was more deeply involved in Zabala’s death than he suspected. He just hated coincidences—Max, the mountain and Sophie.

One thing he was wrong about was the witch who seemed intent on cutting his throat last night. Comtesse Isadora Villeneuve was a petite woman. The moonlight had been unkind to her, Max realized. Her finely etched features, distinctive cheekbones and emerald green eyes showed she must have been a beautiful woman when she was younger. Her sun-damaged, wrinkled skin now gave her a look of weather-beaten leather, as coarse as the thong holding the thatch of hair in place at the nape of her neck. She wore a different dress; still a cotton kaftan but shot through with iridescent color. Her bony fingers were, in fact, arthritic, swollen with painful inflammation. She smoked—that wouldn’t help her skin either, Max thought, as she approached the others. She took a plate from her grandson, Bobby, asked if Sophie had had enough to eat and then turned her gaze on Max.