by David Gilman
Max heard a heart-stopping roar. Aladfar attacked, leaping meters towards the first charging warrior. The force of the tiger’s lunge pulled Max off balance just as the second man came at him from his blind side.
Thrown onto the ground, Max was twisted around by the tiger’s power as he gripped the chain. The sword, a shimmering blur, swung with enough force to sever an arm or leg, smashed into the stony ground. A moment of slow motion saw Aladfar trying to smother and rip the first attacker, but the man had miraculously rolled clear, his clothes shredded, blood running from Aladfar’s claws. With a fearful scream he threw himself across the nearest parapet to escape the final killing bite. Max knew the attacker had been lucky more than once. He’d escaped Aladfar and dropped down into the safety of the monkey pit. These images flashed through Max’s mind just as the chain went slack. Aladfar had turned.
Another roar.
Fear struck the attacker’s eyes. He had time to slash backwards and kill the boy-it was a practiced skill-but instead he felt the veil drop from his face, knew that his belief could kill him, because evil would strike into his heart through his exposed mouth and nose. That roar had come from this boy, from this changeling shadow that loomed up before him like a massive creature. Was it the raging fire that distorted everything?
Aladfar scuffed and jigged, wanting to strike for the kill, but the man was being beaten by this other creature that held the chain that bound him. Finally, it was no punch but a sweep of Max’s arm that felled the man and threw him to the mercy of Aladfar.
The tiger sprang.
Max made a noise, a sound he didn’t understand. He had sucked in the night’s inferno and turned it into something that resonated with authority and command.
The sixth sense Aladfar had experienced earlier with this boy returned. He backed off, felt the chain tighten-another bond that held him to this creature of the wild.
Max’s mouth was as dry as sand. He looked up, taking in the scene around him. He was on his knees, pressing into the unconscious warrior’s back, while his hands bound the attacker with the cord that held the man’s clothing.
The siren slowed, reluctantly giving way to silence. Max saw Abdullah in the distance, the big man lumbering towards him, dirt and blood streaking his once-spotless djellaba.
Fauvre called out to him as he emerged from the smoke and Abdullah pushed the battery-driven wheelchair towards Max.
“Her room is locked from the outside. She’s not here,” Fauvre said.
Max lifted his head and stared into the amber eyes of the massive cat, which sat less than two meters away-watching. Slowly, deliberately, it blinked its eyes. A cat’s expression of contentment-that all is well.
It was over.
Max, Fauvre and Abdullah, and the other men, felt the aftermath of the fight. Muscles cramped and ached, cuts and scratches irritated. Hot, sweet tea helped ease them into the new day as dawn lit the night sky, the moon giving way to her brother the sun. Minor wounds were treated and the animals calmed, fed and watered, as their routine demanded. Max had washed quickly in a water trough; he needed to talk to Fauvre and look at Sophie’s room for any clue as to how involved she might have been in this attack. But first he needed other information-once Fauvre got off the phone.
The police could not reach the town until later that day. The dust storm had blown between it and the city, they were undermanned, and it was not the first time the crazy Frenchman had had intruders into his animal sanctuary. They would get there when they could. In the meantime, Fauvre would keep the prisoners under lock and key.
None would speak of why they attacked, but it was obvious to Abdullah, after those others’ efforts in Marrakech, that they had been paid to find Max.
And now Sophie was missing.
Not kidnapped, but gone off into the night. Gates for a loading ramp at the far end of the town, once used for bringing in trucks carrying the animals, had been opened-and closed again-and that was where Sophie had driven Abdullah’s Land Cruiser. Fauvre had cursed, furious at his daughter’s behavior. The mood swing from being desperately concerned about her during the attack to this condemnation made Max realize just how fickle grown-ups could be. What he didn’t tell Fauvre was that she had taken Zabala’s pendant. He needed more information first. Fauvre phoned half a dozen people. Contacts at the airports, the banks, anyone who might know where she had run to. He canceled the credit cards he’d given her and closed her bank account. She would soon turn for home.
Max needed to interrupt Fauvre’s anger. “I’ve brought this trouble on you, Laurent. I’m sorry for that, but this is connected to Zabala and now to Sophie. What did he send you?”
Fauvre took him down a ramp into what were once the town’s dungeons. Fetid air caged the memory of lost souls, and dull lightbulbs gave a murky glow to what was little more than a tunnel dug from the soft sandstone.
“I always knew that if Zabala was not a crazy man, then what he had sent might be of importance. No one would come down here to search for it,” Fauvre said as he unlocked and pulled open a walk-in safe’s door.
The bulky documents, mostly handwritten, were almost illegible to Max’s eye. But when they returned to the brighter light of Fauvre’s office and spread the sheets out, it was obvious that the documents were in precise, chronological order-from his earliest investigations, suspicions and theories. They still made little sense, but the photograph and drawings did. And so did Fauvre’s explanation.
“I have known Zabala and this man”-he pointed to the photograph that Max had seen before, the gaunt man who stood with Zabala in front of the Chateau d’Antoine d’Abbadie-“for nearly thirty years. The man with Zabala was one of his few friends. He betrayed Zabala, who was going to go public with his information. He was determined the world would listen to him this time, but this so-called friend tried to steal the information from him. I don’t know what happened to him. He just disappeared.”
Fauvre turned more pages. “Zabala knew his friend had betrayed him to someone powerful, but did not know who.”
He opened a folded letter and passed it to Max. The scratchy writing was almost frantic in its untidiness. “He was convinced they would send someone far more lethal after his secret. And before he could get the information to me, the killer struck.”
He shuffled through the documents and laid out the same drawings that Max had found at d’Abbadie’s chateau. The circle, the angles drawn within and the numbers.
“That’s a birth chart,” Max said.
“Yes, correct. Do you see this French name on the chart, right here?” Fauvre said.
Max squinted at Zabala’s tiny writing. “Beetle something … beetlejuice?”
Fauvre smiled. “Betelgeuse. It is an enormous red star. Massive. Five hundred times bigger than our sun. History suggests it represents a catalyst for a terrifying event.”
He saw the look of uncertainty-or was it disbelief? — on Max’s face.
“It’s true, Max. Astronomers believe that in the next thousand years this supergiant will explode and destroy everything, but astrologers have recorded its influence over the centuries. It was there on 9/11, the tsunami in Indonesia, even as far back as the Great Fire of London. If Betelgeuse is in a certain position in the heavens, it always indicates catastrophe.”
Max felt overwhelmed. Star charts, predictions and heavenly conjunctions of planets. It might be more ooby-gooby stuff. Messages and influences from the stars weren’t something he could see as solid, no-nonsense facts. One thing was certain, though. Enough people believed in this stuff to have Zabala murdered and send attackers after Max. Those were facts. That was something he could believe in.
“And someone has killed him to retrieve the information, and has sent people after you because you now hold his secret.”
“Maybe this is what they’re looking for. I have a birth chart exactly the same,” Max said, pulling out the drawing he’d found at d’Abbadie’s chateau.
Max put the two pieces of p
aper side by side. The sketches seemed identical and made by the same hand. Although he knew nothing about astrology, he realized that with a bit of practice he’d get the hang of it. Maps, sea charts, star maps, they all had a logical system to them.
Max traced the symbols he didn’t understand.
“There’s a difference,” he said. “On Zabala’s original drawing I’ve got there’s an extra triangle drawn inside the circle of the birth chart. On yours, it’s missing. They’re not the same.”
“So that’s why he sent me this chart. You must have something else, something that shows the difference between these two predictions. The first was incorrect, but the second …”
Fauvre glared at Max. He realized Zabala’s pendant was missing.
“Where is the stone? Did you lose it during the attack?”
“No, Sophie took it. That’s why she ran. And I need to see her room.”
The stone-walled room was once part of a cluster of single-story houses. Ruins on each side blocked any means of entry other than the one door. Like other teenagers, Sophie Fauvre kept her room locked. It was her sanctuary. One of Fauvre’s men brought bolt cutters and squeezed the blades over the padlock’s thick shackle.
Two of the walls inside were plastered with an ochre-colored clay screed. Small windows, covered by muslin curtains, allowed a faint light to penetrate the darkness. Max tried the light switch; nothing happened. In the cool, shadowy room he could see a single bed covered with a brightly embroidered cloth. Books filled shelves on one wall, and CDs another. Candles, trapped in their own spilled wax, were dotted around the room, many of them barely puddles of color from being burned so low. A faint scent clung to the airless room. Max realized it was Sophie’s fragrance.
A makeshift desk was used mostly as a dressing table, its top cluttered with makeup, a glass pot full of an assortment of combs and brushes, while a mixture of dust and body powder showed where essential oil bottles-lavender, marjoram, thyme-had left sticky ring marks.
Fauvre had edged his wheelchair into the room. He gazed as mesmerized as Max at the unfolding world of his daughter. Photographs, posters, the girl’s drawings and sketches-slashes of color on squares of canvas, muted pages of charcoal anger scribbled by a furious hand-a world of pain and despair.
Max looked at family pictures from when Sophie was obviously a child. The strongly muscled Fauvre before his accident, the beautiful, dark-haired woman without a face. Every picture showing parents and child, right up to what were obviously recent years, had the mother’s face burned out or scratched away.
But Max’s attention was fixed on the wall above Sophie’s bed. Clustered together were pictures taken far from Morocco’s sun-baked harshness. They were of startling white landscapes, prickly green fir trees dusted with snow and brightly dressed skiers in competition. But this was no downhill racing; these skiers stretched their limbs across differing terrain. Some of them knelt in a firing position, a rifle to their shoulder, others stood and aimed at targets, while in the same picture skiers pushed away into the background.
“This is a cross-country skiing competition,” Max muttered to himself.
“That’s right,” Fauvre said. “A biathlon. Last year in Norway. Sophie was a junior competitor in the fifteen-kilometer ski and shoot. She didn’t get placed. She had the stamina, but her target shooting was not good.”
Max looked closer. A figure had been captured in one of the photographic sequences. Flurried snow indicated the skier had had to stop and shoot at a target. It was a standing pose, rifle to shoulder. Max’s stomach fluttered. It was almost a mirror image of when the killer shot Zabala.
His eyes followed the sequence of pictures of the shooter’s progress downhill to the marksman range, until finally the same competitor, cheek nestled against the target rifle’s stock, was in close-up.
This skier’s Lycra race suit was the same scattered white-on-black design as the murderer’s, but the face was clearly in focus.
Max’s breath was trapped in his chest; his heart tried to hammer it free.
He knew the clear-eyed girl with her finger on the trigger.
The killer whose name he couldn’t pronounce-Potyncza Jozsa.
Peaches.
22
That was what was so wrong.
Peaches had run back to the van with Sharkface’s men. Sayid gulped. Something invisible gripped his throat and stabbed him in the heart with an icicle. The look she gave him didn’t need words.
The vans burned rubber, found the nearest exit from the motorway, took it easy along country roads for the next fifty kilometers and slipped back on to the silky-smooth blacktopped autoroute.
Sayid’s mind was in turmoil. Bobby was probably dead, another man injured, and Bobby’s girlfriend was part of this whole terrifying mess. Desperately alone, he began to shake with fear. The shock was going to shut him down and he couldn’t help but let out a gulping sob.
“Shut up, you sniveling brat!” one of the bikers yelled from the front seat.
The tone in the boy’s voice had an unusual effect on Sayid. In that brief moment of temper, he realized they were rattled. Things hadn’t gone to plan, had they? No, they hadn’t. These evil, violent people had been as shaken by events as had Sayid, but for a different reason-the fear of being caught in an unexpected situation far from home. There was still time for other things to go wrong. For someone to stumble on them.
He brought his scattered thoughts back under control. The magic square numbers burned even more brightly in his mind: perhaps they held essential information that might stop these killers.
Sayid concentrated-the heat-seeking missile was back on target.
Max had to fight the obvious: Sophie was in league with Peaches, involved in killing Zabala and a member of Sharkface’s gang. Bobby Morrell hadn’t abandoned him and Sayid at Hendaye, he had been betrayed, maybe even killed by Peaches. These thugs worked for someone so powerful his reach could stretch across the world to get what he wanted by any means possible. Zabala’s cry, Trust no one-they will kill you, had even more resonance now. Had the whole thing been a charade? Sharkface’s gang attacking Sophie, Max riding like an idiot to the rescue, drawn in and seduced by her vulnerability, only to be used as a means to an end-to find Zabala’s secret?
Obvious? So it seemed, and he wished it weren’t. Distrust eats away at you like a terrible disease.
“Why did she take it?” Fauvre demanded once they were back in his office, his hands sifting through the old monk’s papers. “She must have known its importance. There can be no denying that! Damn her! She’s selling it for money, isn’t she? She’s found a buyer for something invaluable. Selling a man’s life!”
The distraught man’s anger was at a destructive level.
Whatever Sophie had done, Max convinced himself she was not a killer. She could have cut his throat when she took the stone. That gave him some hope, a glimmer of understanding.
Max needed this man on his side, because he had to get out of the Tears of the Angels and back to Europe.
“She’s caught up in something that she doesn’t understand,” Max said. He had pulled Peaches’s photograph from the wall in Sophie’s room. “Do you know this girl?”
Fauvre shook his head. “She is someone Sophie knows?”
“She’s the girl who killed Zabala,” Max said quietly.
The man’s shock was genuine. The flush of anger drained from his face. His shoulders slumped and he suddenly looked old and beaten. He held the photograph in a trembling hand. “What has my girl done? Why is she with these people? May God forgive me for not loving her enough.”
He poured a drink and gulped it down like medicine, wincing at the whisky’s sharpness. He sat shaking his head. After a moment Max saw a resolve creep back into his body. His broken spine straightened; his voice became more convincing.
“She is in danger. I must help her.”
“Then you need to help me,” Max told him. “Do you see that pattern on
the girl’s race suit? I’ve seen it a couple of times, and each time violence has been attached to it. Look at the other competitors. Some of them have sponsorship logos. Do you think that design could mean anything? If it did and Sophie has gone to this girl, it might help us find where she is.”
Fauvre nodded. Now there was something he could do, something positive. He banged on the window. Abdullah was outside, making sure enough water was being poured on the burning embers of the feed store so no sparks got caught on the wind and started another blaze.
The riad owner came inside; rivulets of sweat scarred his soot- and dirt-caked face. Fauvre handed the photograph to the big man.
“Abdullah, take this to the computer room, scan it in and see if that design means anything.”
Abdullah nodded, asked no questions and turned away towards the next building.
“We have a good scanning system here. We use it to compare animals’ faces with those photographed in the wild. It’s a recognition package. Abdullah can do these things much quicker than I can.”
“I have a friend who’s the same,” Max said grimly, thinking of Sayid, who was who-knew-where.
“And that is all we can do? Hope to find an obscure link?”
Max knew he had to play his final card. “No, we can do more than that. We can see what your friend Zabala hid on the pendant’s stone.”
Max reached for the short-bladed knife that served as a letter opener. Sitting quickly, he pulled off one of his trainers, dug the knife into the heel and gouged out the cushioning gel.
He held the stone between his fingers.
“Sooner or later someone would have snatched that pendant. I replaced Zabala’s stone when I was in Abdullah’s riad.”
“Then Sophie-?”
“Has a piece of stone cut from a coaster. She has nothing,” Max said.
Angelo Farentino had enjoyed the first half of his cigar. Max Gordon’s father really had no idea at all who he was, and the hulking bodyguard-cum-nurse was out of earshot, so none of this conversation would be remembered by anyone. Except Farentino. But what Tom Gordon had told him dried the moisture in his mouth. The cigar had gone out, and the cloying, stale tobacco coated his tongue with a bitterness that had more to do with the bile of fear than the life-threatening habit of smoking.