Snow Rush

by James Easton

  Julian looked at her. “OK, so in this version of reality, what are we doing here? You and me, in Morzine.”

  “Brainstorming amid a week off. Work spouses. The hotel is full, hence sharing a room. Which is true.” About the only part of this that was true, she thought. “It’s a profoundly compelling story, Julian.”

  He looked at her, smiling. “It’s a profoundly dishonest approach, but, yes, you may well be right about the story.”

  She held her glass out and they clinked.

  He seemed to think for a few seconds. “They won’t take you away from Morzine?”

  She took an oyster, spooned chive and citrus beurre blanc across it. “They told me to buy cold weather clothing. We’re staying here.”

  Julian, whose large media income was supplemented by a large trust fund, ordered a bottle of Puligny Montrachet at seven hundred Euros. The wine arrived quickly, with their main courses. Blue fillet steak for Robin, Mountain trout with almond sauce for Julian. He poured the wine himself. He was so different when he was talking about work. Robin smiled at him. “This is nice. It’s work, of course. But it’s nice.” She tried the wine.

  Julian pointed at the glass. “Butter, but good minerality too.”

  “You drink it like plonk.” She meant to tease him. He refilled his glass. Defiant. A shadow fell. He pushed trout into his mouth. “What do I get out of this?”

  Robin stopped chewing. “What do you mean?”

  Julian shrugged. “What’s in this for me? Why do I help you?”

  “You’ll be part of the story. You were with me when it happened.”

  “So, I’ll be the dick who didn’t help you when you were kidnapped by the subject of a massive manhunt?”

  “No. You’ll be the friend and colleague who didn’t know I’d been kidnapped.”

  “Still an idiot. Great.”

  “Maybe you find me and Jean lets me go when he sees you. Let’s keep our options open for now.” She should have thought about this. “And you’ll still be my boss.”

  “If this works, you’ll be hired away from NewSpan. An American network will poach you.”

  “So you can come too. Like my manager, and I’ll cut you in on the money for this, and for the future. You’ll handle the business side.”

  “Second fiddle to you.”

  She was younger, on the way up. He wasn’t in decline, but at some point, she would catch up. Then it would only be a matter of time before she pulled ahead.

  “Business partner. And I’ll support you in your own work. I won’t always lead. Would that be so bad? We could make fortunes.”

  “I’ve got money. I like the ego thing, the scoop. Making this piece work on different levels, even if it does involve this stunt you’ve devised. Is it enough for me, though? That’s what I’m asking myself.”

  “That’s what’s on offer, Julian.” She said it firmly and braced herself. “I wouldn’t do this with anyone else. I’ll do it on my own if it isn’t enough for you.”

  That worked. He wouldn’t leave her. He cared about her at some human level, underneath all the lust. He held his hand out and they shook.

  He sniffed. “Answer me something.”

  This again. “What?”

  “Have you got a nightdress in that carrier bag in the room?”

  She closed her eyes. What she had in the carrier bag was a silk shirt that she’d seen in Paris and happened to like. He’d been poking around.

  “Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “Black silk?”

  She bobbed her eyebrows up and down, chewing some steak and looking around the restaurant.

  “I thought your bum cream joke was funny. That’s what I miss about you. You’re fun.”

  She could tell him that it was only a shirt but that would validate his snooping. She had nothing to make excuses for.

  “Why do you have to do this, Julian?”

  “You’re putting that on for Jean? It’s like the one you used to wear for me.”

  She’d only had the one night with Jean, but he wasn’t the sort of man you put things on for. He was the sort of man you tore things off for. Julian had asked for it.

  “It’s different.”

  He dropped his voice. Getting off on this. “Really? How so?”

  “He didn’t ask me to buy it.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Carolina taped sound receivers to the skirting boards in the bedroom corridor, then fixed tiny lenses on the door frames around Berg’s home. They fed to surveillance apps on her laptop and phone. Only his family, Carolina and Berg knew where Miguel was, but this was part of the job. She had to be able to see anywhere in the house on her phone.

  Miguel was reading in the sitting room. Berg was out on his bike.

  There was a basketball match on. Avenida versus Gernika Bizkaia, but Carolina felt she couldn’t afford the time. She was from Salamanca, so missing Avenida felt significant even if she could watch the replay. She tried to ignore the feeling and took her English books to the study and sat at the desk. Maybe it would help concentration. This time she went for the romance story.

  Page one kicked off with a very direct passage about Simon’s boyish smile and Charlotte’s breathless response. She snapped it shut.

  She couldn’t handle such energy right now. Romance, or more accurately its end, was one of the reasons she was in the soup with her English. She was only recently single. Breaking up with her boyfriend Moi had fried her brain. She’d needed a fortnight at her grandparents’ place during which time she’d barely been able to think. She had, temporarily at least, ruined a man’s life. And she’d started feeling all the things that had died away. A kind of emotional boomerang, the price of freedom. The worst thing imaginable. English study had been impossible.

  Carolina switched from the romance story to her proficiency exercises. She could do them. They were like little equations. Making words fit according to a system. She wasn’t sure if this addressed the problem. Over dinner, Anders and Miguel had been joking in English and she’d felt like she’d missed a lot of it. Or, perhaps, not a lot, but crucial moments. It only took one or two words to disappear and there was a hole in her understanding. Like trying to put toothpaste back in the tube. A couple of times she’d laughed at a punchline having lost the thread. She hated pretending like that.

  She struggled with the book until ten, telling herself it would get easier. If she kept at it she’d surely improve enough to at least survive. Maybe the agency would give her Spanish families. There were lots of wealthy Spanish speakers in London. It would make sense.

  The book was closed. She hadn’t been aware of closing it. Her right hand was on the book, and her left hand was on her right. She pushed her sleeve up. The scars were like pale, sketchy starfish. Sort yourself out, Carrasco. You survived Dora district, Iraq. A few big fish in London can’t hurt you.

  Iraq, 2003: Carolina, an eighteen-year-old driver in the Spanish Brigade, Coalition Forces. Taken by a Baghdad militia unit. Twelve hours of mindless terror. A Polish special forces GROM team, at zero-two-hundred, tearing through palm groves and mud streets to find her. She got away from the men guarding her when they tried to draw the rescuers in, called out a warning, and was shot for it. Two AK47 rounds clipped her arm in the instant the GROM operators killed the men who had taken her.

  When one of the Polish guys, Jan Burzynski, visited her in hospital, she had told him that her actions had been pure instinct, nothing heroic like people were saying. He told her such instinct amounted to high functionality in extreme stress situations, and she was special whether she liked it or not. And passed her one of the beers he’d smuggled in.

  She could get shot and survive at eighteen years old. At twenty-five she was worried about working in London. Until recently, her life had at least looked organised. Police pay wasn’t great, but she got extras for her skill level and the risks of being in tactical operations. She’d been able to put a little aside every month. She’d though
t she would serve in field roles until she was in her early thirties and then move into a training role or even a command centre job. Maybe have kids then if she found someone.

  That security was gone and she had to make her choice work. Though it wasn’t a choice, not really. It was duty. The army and the police, which people thought were all about duty, had been her choices. Both were paths to a solid job for someone like her. The tectonic shift of London was duty because it was for her family. She’d landed the job all on her own, and she’d acted pleased about it, like she wanted it for herself. She could never tell her parents she’d done it for them. She was on her own, the ground was moving under her feet, and this step was going to change her in ways she could not foresee.

  She heard Berg’s motorbike come back, heard it roll into the garage, the door go down, him checking his vodka, moving around the distillery equipment. She watched him come in on the app on her phone, testing the view she had of the corridor from the garage. Not bad. He took his helmet off in the corridor, pulled his leathers off. He smiled at her in the study and went through to the bedrooms.

  Carolina returned to her books. Berg came back two minutes later, in track pants and a T-shirt. His perfect shoulders made him vaguely irritating, with her not being able to settle anyway.

  “Miguel’s asleep,” he said. “You look busy. Sauna for me. I use my own towels, but there’s always clean ones in there, just in the changing area, if you want.” He went back toward the garage.

  Surely that wasn’t an invitation.

  She spent some time getting stuck on the same place in the book. Then she heard a shower go on, saw that Berg had enjoyed fifteen minutes of heat. She looked at the app covering the corridor. He came out of the shower room wearing a towel, went back into the sauna. It was a little unprofessional to be using her surveillance kit to admire someone’s abs, but tired as she was, what chance did she have of resisting instinct?

  She went into the lounge and put the TV on. The stove really warmed the room. The sofa was nice against her bare legs. She flicked through the channels. Avenida had won, as usual. She watched European Basketball Roundup with Jorge Weiss discussing the European Club league. His German accent wasn’t very strong. She reckoned she got two thirds. Maybe a little more.

  Berg came in, carrying a couple of beers. He held one out to her with an opener. She took it. He sat on the sofa, one ankle across the other.

  “You’re studying English? Your books in there.” He nodded at the study.

  “Yeah. I have a job starting in a couple of weeks.”

  “Ignacio said. London?”

  She nodded. “Security agency. I’ll be posted with families and executives, so I need to be competent…” Damn. She’d nearly said competente. And the word was proficient. She had to be proficient. More than competent.

  “You’ll be fine.” He was smiling to be kind. It irritated her. How did he know if she’d be OK? He leant over and switched on the reading lamp on the table at the end of the sofa. He took the makings of a joint out of the wooden little box on the table.

  “Do you mind?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want one?”

  She shook her head.

  “Are you happy with the security of this place?”

  He didn’t look at what he was doing with his hands. Berg rolled a lot.

  She nodded. “I secured the window into Miguel’s room. We have lenses on the corridors.”

  “Ignacio said you were police? Army before that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Bodyguard? In the police.”

  “Tactical operations.”

  “What’s that?” said Berg.

  “So, if the surveillance guys plant bugs on criminals, they need armed cover. That was one of the things I did.”

  “So I’m putting a bug, where? In his car. Where are you?”

  “I’m talking to my girlfriend a few metres away, and we’re both armed.”

  He looked at her. “I think I’d fall for that. I mean, I wouldn’t guess you were an armed cop if you were in civilian clothes. Funny that, isn’t it? Why not?”

  She shrugged. “Because I’m a young woman.”

  He blew smoke at the ceiling. Probably imagining her with a handgun.

  “I’ve got sports weapons here if you want one. Biathlon rifle and a target pistol. Pardini.”

  He got up, came back with a backpack, and opened it. He handed over a long, elegant-looking pistol with a thick, balanced wooden handle.

  “Rapid-fire, five-round magazine,” Berg said.

  “It’s nice. .22?” Carolina took it. “What did you do in the army?”

  “Yeah, it’s a .22. Infantry. Sniper. You?”

  “Driver. Mainly security vehicles.”

  He nodded. Didn’t seem too interested. The good thing about ex-soldiers was they didn’t talk about the army with you.

  She found her way around the Pardini. It was a nice, sleek weapon. Different from a combat piece. Berg switched over to a football game. It looked like semi-pro, at best.

  “Hey.”

  “My TV,” said Berg. “And it’s a live game.”

  Carolina went back to the Pardini, acting slightly unimpressed. “Not sure that’s enough.”

  “And my team, Frigg Oslo, need support.”

  “What league is it?”

  “Norwegian third division.”

  She smiled. “This is a strange obsession you have.”

  “You don’t support underdogs?”

  “In life, maybe. In sport, I need winners. In basketball, that’s Avenida.”

  “Underdogs in life…” He said, sounding tired, reflective. “I got another cancellation today. My business is struggling. I’ve got clients in the two weeks after this, then nothing for two, and then only part booked the next month.”

  “Doesn’t sound too bad. Some people are coming.”

  He looked over at her. “Yeah, but the mortgages on the chalets need paying every month. Someone offered me a ski instruction job. Beginners. As much as I like. I don’t want it, but dead time is no good in the season.”

  “Do this, Anders.”

  “Yes, señorita.”

  “You only say señorita to little girls. I’m serious. This work is better than nothing until your business is better. It’s all your own?” She looked around.

  “Yeah. I got some money from my dad when he passed away. I was seeing a French woman at the time. Made sense to try this, here,” he laughed. “At the time.”

  “She’s no longer around?”

  He shook his head. “You?”

  “Is my French woman still around?”

  “Yeah. What was her name? I think you told me.”

  Carolina smiled. “No, she isn’t. I’ve been very lonely.”

  “You’ll have to tell me about the good times,” said Berg, a little gleam in his eyes.

  Time for reality. “My Spanish boyfriend is not around also. From two weeks.” She levelled her tone out to let him now it was real.

  He’d glanced at the game and came back to her for longer this time. “You alright?” he asked. He seemed concerned. She was touched that he showed this empathy so soon after revealing his own worries.

  “Yes. Two weeks on grandma’s farm. Eating roast chicken and wearing a dress. It helped until she told me I am running out of time to find a husband.”

  He really laughed. “Want some?” he nodded at the joint. Trying it on her again.

  “I’m working.”

  “He’s asleep.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “What’s the limit when you’re working?”

  It may have been a good thing Berg wasn’t on the same sofa right then. They could explore limits.

  “I cheated on my English test.”

  Just like that. Her current deepest secret.

  His eyes flicked to the study, where her books were. “And now you’re trying to catch up? What sort of test was it?”

  “
Remote centre in Madrid, multiple choice and conversation. They don’t check your ID. A friend did it for me.” She shook her head. “Spanish people lie about their English all the time, to get work. But I really need the job. I’m nervous.”

  “You left the police for it?”

  She nodded. “Yeah.” He seemed to expect her to say something further. “I shouldn’t say too much.”

  “Sure,” said Berg.

  Moi would have wanted more and kept asking. Not just accepted that. Even at the start of their relationship, she sometimes had sex with him to shut him up about something. Not a hardship back then, but not the best reason either.

  “My parents lost their home in this economic crisis. It was not their fault.” She looked at him until he nodded, so she knew he understood that. “In London, the money is so good. I can stay with my uncle. Help my family. It will be OK.”

  Berg was looking at her again. Searching her. “Hell, of a thing to do.”

  He looked like he wished someone would step in for him like that.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  At six the next morning, Jean Haim was by the window of the lounge on the first floor of the safehouse. He heard the car draw up and moved the curtain back, saw who the driver was as he got out and walked toward the garage door. His size and shape gave him away if you knew him. It was too dark to see his face.

  He turned to Raymond, “So, my friend is here. I wish you good luck. I washed up the plates, so just relax.”

  He went downstairs and opened the door.

  Max Rokos walked in. They embraced, Jean feeling a handgun through Max’s jacket as he slapped him on the back. Max laughed. “Good to see you out, my friend. So, just this problem? Everything else is OK?”