by Rob Jones
She glanced outside the hotel room at the tourists as they sauntered hand-in-hand through the snow-dusted fairytale that was Chamonix. “From there to here in twenty-seven years, Chief,” she said to herself.
Why hadn’t she told Lucia any of this when the Spanish woman had told her about her own past in Seville on the flight to France? She didn’t know. She wasn’t ashamed of it, or the list of her criminal convictions as long as your arm, and yet something always stopped her from sharing her past with people… at least this part of it. Lucia’s childhood had seemed almost as bad as hers – a violent, drunken father and a life on the streets. Like Zoey, Lucia had been dealt a shitty hand, and cheated death on more than one occasion. Having such a thing in common would be the ultimate bond, and yet she had kept her lips sealed the whole time.
Maybe another time, Sister.
She cracked the mineral water and poured two glasses, turning on her heel in the plush pile and handing one of the drinks to Niko. He was busy watching the news on a plasma TV that was tucked away in the cabinet on the far wall. She returned to the window and put a hand in her pocket.
“Danke,” he said, taking a sip and sighing with relief. “I love a good mineral water.”
“That’s ’cause you’re a real rock star, Nikky.”
“Stop looking out the window,” he said, smirking. “He’ll be back when he’s done what he has to do.”
Zoey spun around and narrowed her eyes. “I’m not even thinking about him, never mind waiting for him.”
“Whom?”
“Harry Bane.”
“I never mentioned his name.”
“What are you, Columbo?”
“I’m nowhere near as cool as Columbo, but I think I could pull off Kojak.”
“I’m not sure he’d like that.”
“Huh?”
Zoey smirked and choked back a laugh before drinking more water.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing, just what you said kinda means two things in English.”
“What did I say?”
“Forget it, Nikky.”
She turned and looked out the window once again. Niko might not know every last piece of English slang, but he was no fool, and he had been right. Without even knowing it she had been worrying about the stupid Englishman. The tough street kid-turned-thief from the East Bronx was worrying about an arrogant burned-out English soldier and a failed spy. And worse than all of that he wore a suit with a god-damned silk pocket square in the jacket. James Bond he certainly was not, and yet there was something about him…
Jesus.
She shivered and opened the drinks cabinet. “I’m drinking that thought right back to where it came from.”
“What thought?” Niko asked. “Kojak?”
“No, but thanks for putting that image back in my mind.”
“What image!” he said, the frustration clear on his face.
“I said forget it, Nikky,” she said, pulling a miniature bottle of gin from the cabinet. “English gin… seems appropriate right now, somehow.”
“Appropriate? What are you talking about… oh – Heiliger Strohsack! You really do like Harry!”
“I do not!”
“You do so.”
“Well, maybe a little,” she said, cracking open the gin and knocking it back neat. She winced and coughed. “Gross. Tastes like perfume.”
“You never had gin before?”
“Hell, no. I’m a beer drinker.”
“I can’t believe you like Harry.”
“Better than what you want to do to Kojak,” she said under her breath. “Anyway, I do not like him. My brain just went AWOL, Chief, that’s all. My heart belongs to NYC and not some smarmy English toff.”
“If you say so.”
But now it played on her mind. “You think there’s a little something in the air between us?”
“Sorry,” Niko said. “I had an aloo gobi for lunch.”
“For fuck’s sake, Niko,” she said, sighing. “Can’t you take anything seriously? I meant between me and Harry.”
“Nein.” Niko shook his head and began flicking through the channels, but she couldn’t change the Harry Bane channel playing in her head anywhere near as easily. It was madness, she knew.
A few hours ago she was just minding her own business and breaking into the Saudi Embassy in Paris, but now she was on the run across Europe, hunted by two national police forces and her face was plastered all over the Interpol website.
She had watched Lucia Serrano snatched from the jaws of the Paris Catacombs by an Austrian psycho who made the Terminator look like Mrs Doubtfire, and for all she knew she was next, and all of this was thanks to Harry Bane. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Her head said cry, but her heart wanted to laugh and for a moment she nearly did, but stopped when she lifted her eyes to the mist-covered mountains looming above the hotel.
Somewhere in all that gloom was Harry Bane, and like it or not he was the only person who could get her out of this mess. She turned back into the room as Niko cheered loudly and relaxed back into the enormous bed.
“Why so happy?” she asked.
“I was just wondering if they had any Kojak episodes on – and look here… I found one!”
“Great,” she said. “I hope you’re very happy together.”
She sighed and looked back up at the mountain, not even knowing if Lucia and the professor were still alive.
Good luck, Harry, she whispered.
THIRTY-ONE
Harry looked up to see they were standing in front of a small stone train station with shuttered windows and a clock above the door. The building was behind the main station in Chamonix, and now they walked up a path with snow piled up on either side of it and headed toward the door.
He followed the Frenchman into the small building, glancing over his shoulder at the street behind him as he stepped out of the cold. This was the building that serviced a funicular train that went up the mountain toward the Vallée Blanche, Les grandes jorasses and Les drus.
Inside the old building Baupin had a friendly conversation with an older man who was standing behind the ticket kiosk. A moment later the man disappeared through a doorway and when he returned he was clutching various ski paraphernalia – carve skis, masks, goggles and poles.
Harry realized it was a set-up straight away and smiled. “Now I see what’s going on.”
Baupin shrugged and smiled. “Gilbert is an old friend of mine. The only place you can get a good look at Szabo’s place is from the mountain. He is a very private man and has excellent security, but not even he can block the view of the clinic from the slopes. We go up in the train, you see the property where your friend is being held, and then we ski back down to Chamonix the old-fashioned way.”
“That’s possible?”
“Yes, and quicker than the train. Heavy snow this year means we have enough snow to ski from the top of the mountains all the way down to the town. C’est possible, and more than that – we are meeting an associate of mine at the top. He staked out the property last night and this morning I had him go ahead and watch Szabo’s place from up here in case he flew away before we got there.”
Harry was nervous at the mention of another agent. “Who is this associate?”
“Michel Perec, an old friend of mine. He trained me when I joined the DRM.”
They stepped onto the train with their ski equipment and moments later it was pulling them along the valley and slowly ascending the northern slopes of the range leading up to the famous Vallée Blanche ski run and the Mer de Glace. Montenvers Railway had been taking tourists from the town all the way up the side of Aiguilles de Chamonix since 1908, and as it clattered its way up to six thousand feet above the town Baupin pointed to the window.
“There,” he said. “You see over the river to the north of the town.” He handed him a small pair of portable binoculars.
Harry followed where the Frenchman was pointing and raised the binocu
lars to his eyes. “Yes.”
“That area over there is Moussoux. Very expensive and highly desired by some of the richest in Europe. The Hotel Ciel is the large property not far from the Brévent cable car station. That is Szabo’s wellness clinic.”
“The place with the enormous glass window wall on the front and the steel roof?”
Baupin nodded once. “Oui. That is where your friends are being held.”
Harry now saw why Baupin had wanted to take the train. The hotel was modest but in sprawling grounds, and it would be impossible to see from any location other than an elevated position like this. A small forest of pine trees surrounded the building on all sides and the entire property was set well back from the surrounding neighbors. “What is that to the right?” he asked. “The garage block?”
“Yes.”
“Looks closest to the tree line.”
“Oui.”
“Probably the least risky way inside the building.”
“I think so.”
For a few moments the view mesmerized him, but then his mind turned to Lucia and he swore he would kill Szabo if anything had happened to her.
Baupin’s elbow nudged him back to reality. “There – the station on the ridge… this is our stop.”
They stepped out of the small station and were immediately confronted with the sun flashing on the glacier in the valley in front of them. The Mer de Glace, or sea of ice, is the largest glacier in France, around five miles long and six hundred feet deep, and seeing it with your own eyes never got old. Harry lowered his sunglasses and stared at it in silence for a few moments while Baupin scanned the crowd in the outside restaurant for his contact. “C’est beau, n’est-ce-pas?” he said absent-mindedly.
“Yes,” Harry said. “It really is.”
A line of tourists were making their way to the Ice Grotto – a small cave accessed by a cable car that descended from the train station.
“It’s manmade,” Baupin said casually. “Carved into the glacier by hand, and every summer they have to cut it back out again, but it brings in the tourist euros. A better view is this way.”
Harry followed Baupin as he walked along to the Restaurant le Panoramique, perched on the side of the western slope of the mountain. Closer now, he stepped up onto the open deck and could still hardly believe the views of the valley in front of him, and snaking its way along the bottom was another clearer view of the Mer de Glace itself. It had been so long since he had been here he had forgotten how breathtaking it truly was.
“The Sea of Ice,” Baupin said with pride.
Before Harry could register his amazement, a man with a round face and jolly, red cheeks approached them and then opened his arms. He and Baupin hugged and after a few solid pats on the back they turned to the Englishman.
“This is Michel,” Baupin said. “And Michel, this is Harry Bane.”
They shook hands and Michel gestured for them to sit at a small table beside the balcony rail where he ordered some coffees. Things soon turned to business when Michel opened a small, paper notebook and began reading from a page of scrawled pencil. “Your man Szabo has been busy,” he began. “He arrived yesterday from his main residence in Vienna, and since then many cars have come and gone from the compound. Then just before dawn a chopper landed at the Chamonix Heliport west of Argentière, and a number of gorillas got out with an older man in a tweed jacket and a young woman.”
“That’s our guys,” Harry said.
“They climbed into a black SUV and drove south along the valley until they reached Szabo’s hotel. They went through the gates and then they were out of sight. I’m sorry.”
“Do you have anything else?” Baupin asked. “Have you counted security, or weapons?”
“As a matter of...”
The thin laser beam swept up from nowhere and a second after the red dot arrived in the center of Michel’s face he was dead, blasted back over his chair with the force of the sniper’s rifle. With the back of his skull blown out, Michel Perec smashed into the wooden decking and triggered a hysterical reaction among those enjoying a quiet coffee beside the glacier.
“Down!” Harry yelled, but Baupin was already hitting the deck.
“They must be further up the mountain,” the Frenchman said, ignoring the death of his old friend and mentor as his mind raced to find the assassins. As he spoke two more shots were fired, fracturing the safety glass of the balcony beside them.
“Over there,” Harry said, jutting his chin toward the west. Beyond the restaurant’s viewing platform a man in black was skiing away from them at speed, weaving his way artfully through the tourists on the Mer de Glace.
“After him!” Harry said. “No bastard’s shooting at me and getting away with it.”
“Wait…” Baupin searched Michel’s jacket and pulled out a SIG Sauer. He checked the magazine was full and stuffed it into his belt. “You cannot hunt without a weapon.”
Normally skiing the Vallée Blanche without a guide was a bad idea, but Harry had no option, and he knew Baupin probably had more knowledge of the glacier than most of the guides working here anyway. He sat down and fitted his ski boots, opening the clips and centering the tongue between the plastic cuffs.
Baupin also fastened the clips and Velcro straps on his right boot and then the same for the left, making them tight to avoid the blisters that were so easy to get when skiing on the slopes. Then they stood up and moved over to the snow where they clipped on their skis.
“I’ve been skiing on these mountains since I was a child,” Baupin said. “No one knows them better.”
“Then let’s get after him,” Harry said, and they launched themselves onto the glacier.
THIRTY-TWO
Baupin was like a pro, and quickly raced after the fleeing man, but Harry was no expert on the slopes and was surprised by the effort required to maintain speed and keep up with the Frenchman.
And that wasn’t his only problem. Seconds into the chase the assassin spun around and raised his hunting rifle into the aim as he continued to race downhill backwards. Firing at his pursuers, Baupin dodged the round with ease, crouching and tipping and flying off to the west for a few seconds. A great arc of snow and shaved ice flew up in an impressive spray behind him as he stood back up and pulled the SIG from his belt to return fire.
His bullet missed, and the assassin fired back, this time aiming at Harry.
The Englishman pushed down on the top ski and felt his weight quickly come off the downhill ski and he turned rapidly to his right. This was called the ‘clutch-accelerator’ technique, because of the similarity it had with changing gears in a manual car, and as the bullet blew past his old trajectory and ripped into the snow, he was more grateful than ever that he’d learned to ski all those years ago.
The assassin spun back around and faced forward again. He shouldered the hunting rifle and crouched down for more speed before turning hard and racing at a sharp angle across the slope to the west. He was leading them into a series of lethal ice gorges connected by narrow ski runs.
With his skis now flat on the surface of the ice, Baupin slid down the slopes a few more yards before pushing the edges of the skis into the ice. He instantly stopped the slide and began to traverse straight across the slope and into the ice-maze in pursuit of the killer.
Harry followed suit as he zoomed down the slope and began to slide into the same steep turn. He made the same turn as Baupin, now less than a hundred yards ahead, and he leaned over and rolled onto the edges of his skis before flattening them out ready for the next turn.
Racing through the maze with towering walls of ice either side of him, the assassin glanced over his shoulder and made a turn into a sharp bend in another attempt to lose the two men on his tail.
Harry leaned to the right and took the same corner at speed, flicking up an arc of shredded snow and ice as his skis carved their way into the face of the glacier. In his chest, his heart pounded, and he felt his mouth go dry as the thrill of the chase
overtook him. It had been too long, and now the fear of not being up to it coursed through every vein in his body.
Now he saw why the man at the station had supplied them with carve skis, which were narrower in the middle than the nose and tail. This meant that when the ski turned onto the edge there was a gap between the deck and the slope. As the skier pushed down hard on the center of the ski and closed the gap, the entire ski flexed into a shallow arc and created the carve turn.
Baupin was at home with the carve skis and easily avoided skidding and the resistance this created when trying to turn at speed, but Harry was more than rusty, and his first turn was weak. As he rolled his knees and ankles into the slope the skis turned naturally but didn’t apply enough pressure and he began to skid.
Baupin looked over his shoulder and laughed, and that was all Harry needed to motivate himself and make sure he didn’t screw up the next turn in front of the Frenchman.
Ahead Baupin was racing down the slope once again, and continuing his series of zig-zag turns to avoid the assassins’ bullets. He pulled off another perfect carve turn, cutting into the glacier and sending up a fine spray of shaved ice in an arc behind him.
Not to be outdone, Harry concentrated on the turn, and starting on one set of the skis’ edges, he rolled his skis flat before the other set of edges engaged and before he knew it he had executed a perfect carve turn at high speed, creating the same wild spray of snow and ice flying out behind in his wake.
“He’s extending his lead!” Baupin yelled. He pulled the gun from his belt once again and fired a single shot. It cracked in the air, dry and sharp, but the round missed and ploughed into the ice in the assassin’s wake. “Merde!”
“And it gets worse,” Harry called out over his shoulder. “Look behind us.”