Avalanche

by James Patterson

  Chapter 17

  “Housecleaning,” a woman in a black-and-white outfit says as she stands in the open doorway. “Sorry,” she adds when she spots Robert on the floor.

  “I was just getting up. What time is it?”

  She smiles blankly at Robert. It occurs to him that housecleaning and sorry may be the only two words she knows in English.

  She motions toward the bed. It’s just the turndown service, Robert realizes—it’s only been a couple of hours.

  Returning to the lobby, Robert searches among the crowd of elite guests. For a second he thinks he hears someone speaking Italian, and follows the sound to find two old dandies wearing ascots and matching silk Chinese slippers. They look him up and down.

  At the front desk Robert asks, “May I speak to someone in security, please?”

  “Yes, of course,” the receptionist says, and lifts a phone to his ear.

  In just a few seconds a man with a broad, hairless head extends his hand to Robert. “I am Claude, chief of security. How may I help you?”

  “Hello, Claude, I’m Robert Monroe. My wife has gone missing, and I’d like to file a missing person’s report.”

  “Oh. This is terrible. When did you last see her?”

  “This morning. I mean last night.”

  “And did you receive any communiqué from her?”

  “Yes. She let me know that she was skiing with a friend.”

  “Do you have this friend’s name?”

  “Eugenio something. Young. Italian guy. Rich. He gave me the keys to his Porsche.”

  “And you gave him your wife?”

  “No. It’s not like that.”

  “Now the two of them are…unaccounted for?”

  “Yes. Exactly. We must find them.”

  “Sir…” Claude chooses his words carefully. “Sir, discretion is a part of my job. You do not want me to advertise to the world that your wife and an Italian playboy have gone missing together. Do you?”

  “I don’t give a damn about discretion. I want my wife back.”

  Claude takes out a pen and a business card. He writes on the card. “Tell Hervé that you are a guest here and I sent you.”

  Robert gets into a taxi and asks to be taken the police station. It’s on a back street, a short distance from the idyllic promenade and Olden Hotel, but worlds apart. For Robert, it has the feel of backstage or the other side of an amusement park. This is the utilitarian side of paradise that nobody wants to see, especially when they are on vacation.

  “Hello, is Hervé here? I was sent by Claude at Gstaad Palace.”

  A young man rises from his desk. “Follow me.”

  Hervé is a small, compact man with curly black hair and a thin, low mustache. After these last few days in Gstaad, Robert is not even surprised to see that he is nursing a golden highball.

  “Pour toi, Hervé,” the young man says.

  “Vous!” Hervé replies sharply and puts his drink in his desk drawer. He hops to his feet, sizing up Robert, and says, “Bonsoir.” His suit is the first cheap thing that Robert has seen since he arrived in Gstaad.

  “Hello, do you speak English?” asks Robert.

  “French. German. English. What can I do for you?”

  “My wife, she has gone missing.”

  “I am so sorry…”

  “Yes, well. I think she is with an Italian man.”

  Hervé grimaces and sits back down. His hand twitches toward the drink in the drawer. “Have you ever been to Saint Tropez? Mr.…?”

  “Monroe. No, I haven’t been to St. Tropez. How is that relevant?” Robert asks, wary of Hervé’s now-relaxed demeanor.

  “Is your wife beautiful?”

  “Yes.”

  “Young?”

  “Hervé, what is your point?”

  “In St. Tropez, somebody’s always got a bigger boat. Sometimes the women get on the bigger boat. It is unfortunate, but off to sea they sail…au revoir.”

  Robert experiences a sudden wave of rage and, before he can think better of it, lunges across the table to grab the little man by the lapels. “SHE IS MY WIFE!”

  “HHHHHHHELP!” Hervé shouts. “HILFE! HILFE!”

  Three young officers in blue sweaters run into the room and pull Robert off Hervé, who straightens his lapel and says indignantly, “Sperren ihn. Fucking American cowboy.”

  Chapter 18

  In the corner of the spotless white jail cell, Robert slowly bangs his head against the chicken-wire window. A loud buzzer sounds and a door clicks. He turns to find Hervé standing there, rolling his stubby fingers on his forearms. “You think because I’m little and French that I do not know my job?”

  “Sir, I am sorry,” says Robert. “I just have a terrible feeling about all of this.”

  “I know people. This is my job. I know vice.”

  “It was not like me to get physical.”

  “I can see that. But perhaps your wife has come into some misfortune. Go back to the Gstaad Palace. Lie in bed. If she comes in drunk and bowlegged in the middle of the night, consider it the lesser of two evils.”

  Robert squeezes his fist but contains his rage.

  “Good,” says Hervé, missing nothing. “Your frontal lobe is back in control. Keep it that way.” Hervé bangs on the door and yells, “Lassen sie ihn!”

  Back out in the snow, Robert collects himself. He has no idea what time it is. His phone tells him that it’s one a.m., and still no text from Ali. Nothing. He follows the sound of people and finds himself standing in front of the Olden Hotel again. Maybe they’re in here, he thinks. Maybe Ali knew I would come looking for her.

  The bar is packed with the usual crowd. Robert searches for Ali and Eugenio, but doesn’t see anyone familiar—except for the bartender, the same one from the night before. Robert pushes to the bar and gets his attention. “Hello,” he says. “Have you seen Eugenio?”

  “You’re the second person to come in here looking for him tonight. What are you drinking?” he asks, clearly busy.

  “Who was the other person?”

  “Huh?”

  “Who was looking for Eugenio?” asks Robert.

  “She was.” The bartender points to a young woman sitting in a booth staring at her phone, looking wildly out of place. To Robert she resembles the anime characters that his son is obsessed with. She has her hair in pigtails and wears Moon Boots under a short skirt with sparkly metallic tights.

  Robert sits in the booth next to her. “So I hear you’re looking for Eugenio, too?”

  She squints her eyes, points at her ears, and says, “No sprechen sie English.”

  “I need to find him. It’s very important.”

  She scoots away from him in the booth and gets up to leave. Robert grabs her by the arm.

  “I said, I don’t speak English, asshole!” she says.

  Robert squeezes her arm tighter. “Please!”

  She kicks Robert in the shin. “Fuck off, you goon!”

  He buckles over for a second as she runs out the door.

  Robert pursues her through the lobby and into the street. “He’s got my wife! You’ve got to help me!”

  She sprints down the snow-covered street. Robert gives chase, and when he gets close, reaches for her swinging pigtail. It’s almost in his grasp—but then she turns quickly to the right down a suddenly appearing staircase. Robert follows, skipping steps, three at a time, until his heel hits a piece of wet ice and he’s upside down, flying forward. His head lands first with a decisive crack on the last step.

  Chapter 19

  Robert awakens with a metallic taste in his mouth, the taste of fear gone stale. The moon hangs crooked in the night sky. His head throbs and something terrible grows in his stomach. He gets to his knees and vomits a plume of clear liquid into a pile of ice. Exhausted, he rolls onto his back. Hot, humid, putrid air blows in his face. He opens his eyes to find the big, jolly face of a St. Bernard. The dog has a little wooden cask hanging from its collar.

 
; “You are staying at the Gstaad Palace, no?” It’s a bellman out walking a guest’s dog. He holds the leash.

  Robert groans and looks up. He misses the face but finds the funny little hat. He speaks to it. “Yes.”

  “The drinks are very powerful in Olden Hotel. Do not be ashamed.” The bellman talks into a walkie-talkie earpiece. “Betrunken Gast. Sendewagen.”

  “My. Wife,” are the only words Robert can pull together.

  “We are very discreet.”

  Robert’s mind is in fragments. His subconscious sews broken pieces together into what is at first a comforting narrative: Ali’s tender touch, a reclining nude. The two become the same, Robert the painter. Marcus laughs. Then Ali’s hands are around Eugenio’s neck. Robert is angry, even violent. Ali is hurt. Everything becomes gray and bright with unwanted light seeping in. Robert opens his eyes, reaches to his left, and she is not there. Reality. His head pounds. His heart aches.

  He stands in the shower for ages waiting for the water to wash away his confusion. Something catches his eye. He turns to the mirror. The fog has revealed cursive writing done with nothing but a fingertip. The middle, where the note about skiing was written in lipstick, is wiped clean, but following perfect lines across the entire mirror is written:

  I want a divorce. I want a divorce. I want a divorce…

  Over and over.

  Robert turns off the water and steps out of the shower, dripping before the scroll.

  Did she write this while I was downstairs buying the new jacket? Did she write this as she left in the arms of Eugenio? We bicker, yes, every couple bickers; but when did she stop loving me? Are Claude and Hervé right?

  In the lobby he throws down a quadruple espresso and a croissant, and he starts to feel a little bit like a human being again. He shows a photo of Ali on his phone to four bellmen, three valets, two waitresses, and three busboys. Nobody has seen her.

  Robert walks into the bar. He holds out the photo of Ali to the bartender.

  “She was with you?” the bartender asks.

  “She’s my wife.”

  The bartender shakes his head and says, “Sorry.”

  An image catches Robert’s eye on the television behind the bar. It couldn’t be. They flash it again—a photo of a young man, an Italian, Eugenio. “Turn that up,” Robert says to the bartender.

  The announcer speaks in German over images of the young Italian man, a helicopter, a rescue scene, and an ambulance.

  “What are they saying?” Robert asks the bartender, almost frantic.

  “There was an accident. This person was skiing off piste and there was an avalanche. They found his body this morning.”

  Robert’s eyes fill with tears. “Did they find anyone else?” he screams.

  “They do not say…”

  Robert’s voice cracks. “My wife. She was with that man.”

  The bartender is saddened. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Give me your phone.”

  “Of course.”

  Robert takes out the business card that Claude had given him. He hands it to the bartender. “Call this number.”

  The bartender punches the keys.

  “Detective Hervé Dupuis, please. Tell him it’s Robert Monroe. Tell him it’s an emergency,” Robert says into the receiver. He taps his fingers, waiting.

  “What is this about?” Hervé asks when he gets on the line.

  “The Italian. The dead one. From the avalanche. That’s the guy who was with my wife.”

  “Oh…I’m very sorry. Perhaps your wife is safe, but somewhere off piste. Perhaps lost.”

  “We need to find her!”

  “Yes, we do. I will pick you up outside the hotel in ten minutes.”

  Chapter 20

  When Robert and Hervé hop out of the red-and-white helicopter, where it landed between the trees on an expansive piece of ice, a Swiss rescue team is waiting. The men look like ski racers, wearing matching red-and-white sweaters with padding on the shoulders and elbows.

  “This is Rega, the best alpine search team in the world. If your wife is out here, they will find her,” says Hervé.

  Robert nods stoically.

  “Gunter! Show me where the body was found,” Hervé says to a tall, well-built man, already leading them.

  “Over here.” Gunter points. Robert looks up the mountain, which is absurdly steep. “They skied down this?”

  “Perhaps came from the other direction,” says Gunter, pointing to the north.

  “How did they get over here?” Robert asks. “Helicopter?”

  “Have they checked the helicopter vendors?” Hervé asks.

  “Ja,” says Gunter. “They were not booked on any helicopter service. But you could possibly get here with a very long traverse from the lift. Maybe.”

  “Did the dead man have any hiking gear?” asks Hervé.

  “No. But the snow and ice ripped through his jacket. It could’ve ripped off his backpack,” says Gunter. “If he had one.”

  “Ali didn’t bring any hiking gear,” says Robert.

  The deep bark of a Saint Bernard echoes through the canyon, and snowmobiles crisscross the wide-open terrain. Robert wants to run in every direction at the same time.

  “How deep was he buried?” Hervé asks Gunter.

  “Not deep. Two meters. It was the violence. He tried to outrun it.”

  “If they were skiing together,” Robert adds, “the one that caused the avalanche would have a better chance of surviving.”

  “How so?” asks Hervé.

  “If you’re at the top of the avalanche you steer to the side and grab for something. A tree. Anything. Ali knows that.”

  “So she lives and Eugenio dies? The avalanche could’ve pushed him a long way.”

  “God.” Robert fights back his tears. “It’s our only hope. She would be up there. Maybe injured. I’m going up.”

  “With the heavy snows of the last few days—and now that it is warm—the mountain is not stable. We have seen nothing from the helicopters,” says Gunter. “We cannot risk your life or the lives of our team.”

  Before anyone can stop him, Robert strides over to a snowmobile, starts it, and speeds up the hill. He’s about four hundred feet up the side when the terrain becomes too steep and fragile for a snowmobile. He turns it sideways and sets its uphill edge with his weight on the running board.

  He climbs in the ice and snow without crampons, digging with his bare hands to the top of a granite ledge. Fingers beginning to bleed, he looks over the side into an abyss. Where is she?

  Robert hikes the ridgeline for hours, until his bone-deep chill subsides and he starts to feel sleepy. He knows this is hypothermia. Soon he’ll just sit down in a little mountain crook and fall peacefully asleep, forever.

  But his thoughts turn to Marcus. He can’t do this to him. He slaps himself in the face with a fistful of snow, makes his way clumsily to the snowmobile, and descends at dusk to where the others are slowly packing up the search.

  Chapter 21

  The helicopter rises above the tundra, and Robert stares intently into the gloaming, willing something to move, something to wave at him. Feeling empty and ill, Robert wonders if he has been both cuckolded and widowed in just three days.

  Hervé puts an unlit cigarette in his mouth, but one of the Rega crew shakes his head sternly and wags his finger. Hervé shrugs his shoulders in exasperation.

  At the police station Robert is taken to a small room and put behind a desk. He notices a stainless-steel rail screwed onto the surface. “You bring me into an interrogation room? What is this all about?” he asks Hervé.

  “We are short on space; I apologize. This is the form. Please fill it out.” Hervé puts a pen and paper on the table and walks out of the room.

  Robert nods aimlessly and taps the pen on the Formica surface.

  A tall blond woman comes in and sits down opposite Robert, her brow knitted in concern. “Hello, I’m Greta. I work for Interpol. Came up from Geneva to
talk to you.”

  “Okay,” says Robert.

  Greta extends her hand to shake. “I’m so sorry but I need to ask some questions.”

  “Sure.”

  “Have you ever seen this man?” Greta slides a photo of Ken onto the table.

  “Yes, I have met him.”

  “Did he give you anything?”

  “No.”

  “Are you certain of that?”

  “Yes.”

  “We have surveillance video of the two of you in the Geneva airport walking into the bathroom. And in the lobby in the Gstaad Palace.”

  In his mind Robert replays the scene in the airport restroom. Ken’s finger on his cheek. Ken’s hand slipping down the tweed jacket and into his pocket.

  “Jesus,” Robert says. “How could I miss that? Yes! He did give me something.”

  “Ken works for us,” says Greta. “We have reason to believe he is in grave danger.”

  “Is he CIA?”

  “All I can tell you is he’s on our side.”

  “God. Everyone falls in love with my wife,” Robert says, shaking his head.

  “What does this have to do with Ken?”

  “That Italian, Eugenio, he drugged me. He must have come back to my hotel room. I thought he wanted my wife, but really he wanted whatever it was that Ken gave me.”

  “How did the Italian know you had it?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Ken radioed us, before he disappeared.”

  “The Italian must have a mole inside your operation.”

  “You catch on fast,” says Greta.

  “And now he’s dead?” asks Robert. “A bit too much of a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”