Ice Claw dz-2

by David Gilman

  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.

  Max faltered under her stare.

  “I apologize, young man, for last night,” she said as she moved towards the table. “I have nothing left to pay the debtors. They have stripped my home, taken my land. I thought you were one of them trying to sneak inside and threaten an old lady.”

  “I’m the one who should apologize,” Max finally managed to say, searching for an appropriate level of politeness. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  She smiled. A glimpse of what her beauty must have once been. “I think I was not the one who was frightened. Oui?”

  It was said in such a gentle way, by no means a taunt, that Max smiled back. “I was scared stiff,” he admitted.

  She cocked her head, looking for the mark under his chin where she had put the working end of the kitchen knife. “Did I hurt you?”

  “No. It stung a bit. Like a wasp sting. It’s OK now. It was nothing.”

  She studied him a moment. “From what my grandson tells me, you don’t scare easily. I like that in a boy. Robert,” she said, glancing at Bobby, his legs slung over the edge of the sofa, flopped like a rag doll, “is brave when he faces the sea and the mountain, but you have a different courage, I think.” She stopped smiling. Max felt embarrassed. “And a dark side. Am I right? I see it, you know. It’s in the eyes. It’s always in the eyes. Robert does not have it. But you …”

  Her smile returned, brushing aside the moment of perception. “Eat. We always have enough money to feed my grandson and his friends.” She laughed. “Why do you think I am so poor!”

  She floated away-that was how it seemed to Max-her feet gliding across floorboards and rugs. Bobby, unshaven and looking as though he hadn’t yet woken up properly, stretched over to the table for another roll. “The old girl’s all right this morning. She, er, sees things. Y’know, spooks and stuff.”

  “Ghosts?” Sayid said quietly.

  “Yeah. She wanders round at night making sure they’re all settled. Says they’re her dead friends, and Granddad.”

  “So, you think she’s psychic?” Max asked.

  “I think she drinks the wrong stuff,” Bobby said, filling his mouth with the roll. “Anyway-surf’s up.”

  The wave curled; the offshore breeze brushed a fine spray from its crest as Max gybed the windsurfer, caught the wind and ricocheted across the snapping white peaks. Borrowed from one of Bobby’s surfing buddies, the wet suit, a rich blue, with a curving yellow line across shoulders and hips, looked cool, but fitted badly. Max’s shoulder joints strained, his knees took the impact of a big lift, but he misjudged the gusting wind and crashed into the cold Atlantic.

  “He learned that in North Devon,” Sayid told Bobby as they sat on the edge of the half-moon beach.

  “Swimming underwater, y’mean? Idea is to stay on top.” Bobby laughed as he watched Max drag the windsurfer ashore.

  “That was rubbish,” Max gasped as he sank onto the beach’s grass verge.

  “This isn’t a great place f
or boardsailing. I’m gonna do a bit of surfing. See you guys later,” Bobby said as he ran to the breaking waves, surfboard under his arm. Peaches and the others were already cutting across the face of a curling wave.

  “We can’t hang about here all day,” Max said. “I didn’t want to just disappear again. Bobby’s cool about us hanging out, but I’ve got to find the abbey, Sayid, and I want to do it before Sophie gets back.”

  The girl had gone to Biarritz to return the hire car that morning. She’d been fairly noncommittal about everything but had said that she’d come back to the chateau if he wanted her to. She and Max were dancing around the same unspoken mistrust-both wanting to know more about each other’s involvement with Zabala. Mutual suspicion bound them together.

  “I looked in all the old guide books at the chateau, and the only abbey I could find is hundreds of Ks from here, way up north,” Sayid offered.

  Max toweled himself dry. The wind was dropping; the weather would worsen soon and then Bobby and his friends would be off to Switzerland for more snowboarding. He had to use Bobby’s local knowledge while he could. Trouble was, Bobby Morrell’s local knowledge extended mostly to surfing conditions and girls, which at any other time would be an asset, but not now. Max looked across the sand dunes to the chateau. The comtesse stood at a window. As Max gazed in her direction, she moved away. Max felt something more than a trickle of cold Atlantic water slither down his spine.

  Time to take another risk.

  The black Audi slipped through the early-morning streets like a feral cat searching for prey. Biarritz’s roads were deserted; cars were clumped on pavements-parking, as in all cities, was a nightmare. Within a couple of hours traffic would choke the narrow streets and then Corentin and Thierry would never find the small side street they were searching for.

  They had lost the girl, and the boy had slipped through their fingers back in Pau, but the girl had rented a car, and with any luck she’d be returning it today. The two killers had entered the northern side of the city, turned down Avenue de l’Imperatrice, past the Hotel de Palais, where the rich came for self-indulgent pleasures of five-star luxury. There must have been every top model parked in the hotel’s car park, Corentin thought as they glided past. Thierry was checking a street map, cursing under his breath as he tried to figure out the bottlenecking one-way-street system. Corentin had no envy for the rich or their lifestyle; his path had been chosen for him when he was a boy. And as a man he had made good, casting aside the mindless violence of his childhood. The Legion had channeled his aggression, taught him to think and behave. He adhered to a set of values that seemed right, and it was known that, if a contract touched some deep instinct within Corentin, he would do a job without payment. There were times when he saw killing someone really evil as an act of charity, a contribution to society.

  After a few minutes of avoiding the wrong-way street signs, the car eased into a narrow road. Shops were still shuttered and closed. Thierry pointed to a lane behind the marketplace. A small sign: SIMONE’S AUTOS. An archway led to an inner courtyard, where older cars were parked.

  Corentin and Thierry watched, and waited, for Sophie.

  Comtesse Villeneuve sat at a small baize-covered card table at the window, her back to the door. She slowly turned oversized cards while a cigarette smoldered. After a moment of watching her, Max raised his hand to tap on the door, but before his knuckles found the wood, she lifted the cigarette to her lips and, without turning, said in a low voice, “Don’t stand there all day, young man. I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Max, unnerved by her knowing he was there, walked closer. Through the window he could see Sayid still under the umbrella, more for protection from the sea mist than the weak sunlight. He was stretched out on the ground, using his wheelchair as a footrest. Bobby had caught a good wave: his angular body scuttled towards the front of the board, his sea-soaked hair twisted like seaweed-his speed and elegance on the surfboard demanded attention.

  “What do you mean, Comtesse?” Max said, turning to face her.

  “You’re not the same as these other boys. You’re not as carefree. You think. Your brain-it works. I don’t know what it thinks about, but you look at everything, you see things other boys do not. You are careful before you speak. You hold secrets. You are unsure of the girl. Well, maybe that is correct. Some girls, like Mademoiselle Fauvre, are … complicated. You watch her, you watch me. You have many questions that need answering. N’est-ce pas?”

  “I didn’t think it was that obvious.”

  “My dear Max, I am an old lady. Age is like standing on top of a mountain-you get wonderful views of everything-before you fall, of course.” She laughed at his serious expression. “Come along, Max. What is it?”

  Trust no one! But there was no choice. Max felt time was running out. “I’m looking for a Basque abbey and I’ve no idea where it is. At least, I think it’s Basque.” The helplessness of not knowing depressed him. He was stumbling along, caught up in a complex mess not of his own choosing.

  “The Basques? Ah, there’s a strange and unique people. These are their mountains that go down to the sea, and they are also shrouded in mystery. Their people are blessed with ancient blood. Did you know that thousands of years ago they migrated from Finland? That they traveled down across Europe, bringing with them their own beliefs and a determination to find a new land? There is very little written about them. It’s as if they are their own secret. And there are few remaining who can speak their language. No. Of course you did not know. Why should you?”

  She paused, gazing out across the sea, past the crumbling stonework. When she turned to look at him again, Max felt as though she knew his deepest secrets. Maybe she was some kind of witch after all.

  “My late husband was a soldier of France. Wherever we went he studied the people and the place, as if he was looking for an ambush. Just like you.” She laughed. “You are safe here, but you are correct to exercise caution.”

  “Even with you?” Max dared to ask.

  She thought for a moment. “Yes. You have given me information, now I share what it is you are seeking. Yes, caution. Always.” She went back to shuffling the cards, as if their conversation had ended.

  “It’s really important I find this place. It’s an abbey with something to do with a snake and a crocodile.”

  Her hands immediately stopped fingering the cards. Max’s heart thumped. She knew. She looked at him. He didn’t flinch. Challenging her to tell him. Her eyes never wavered from his face. Less intense than moments ago-more dreamy-looking. Why should this boy seek a place filled with exotic knowledge, created by a most extraordinary man? An Irishman, a Basque father and an Irish mother. Basques and Celts, rich in esoteric myth and legend. What was this boy doing? Why did she feel a sense of discomfort? A separate energy possessed this Max Gordon. A primeval element that could be evoked.

  “Sit down,” she told him.

  Max dragged a rattan chair over and sat. She beckoned him closer. He scuffed forward a few more centimeters.

  “Give me your hand.”

  He did as she asked and she held it tenderly in both hands. Max felt her calloused fingertips trace the whorls and lines on his skin. She half closed his fingers, studied the deepening creases in his palm, then turned his hand again, stroking the back of his fingers. She hesitated. There were sadness and loss in his hand.

  “Your mother.” She shook her head gently. “You were so young when she died.”

  Max said nothing, remembering his dad holding him, and his tear-filled eyes. He’d never seen his father cry before-or since.

  The comtesse waited, sensing the boy’s subtle energy of strength and determination. No evil. But a darker power lurking, accessible.

  “Your father’s energy flows in you. You grieve for him-but he’s not dead.”

  “No,” Max replied, his dad clearly in his mind. She whispered a truth Max had not dared tell anyone.

  “You blame yourself. Something happened in the p
ast. And you feel guilty.”

  Max swallowed, his throat dry. Memories of the race to save his father when he was captured in Africa still tore him with regret. If his rescue mission had reached his dad sooner, then perhaps Max could have saved him from being tortured. And his dad’s mind wouldn’t now be fractured like a cracked mirror.

  The comtesse decided. The boy’s search was for genuine reasons.

  “It is not an abbey you seek, Max. It was built by a scientist-explorer in the nineteenth century. It is named after him. The Chateau d’Antoine d’Abbadie.” She smiled. “Actually, it’s a tourist attraction.”

  “What?”

  “Not very well promoted, and I doubt many know of it.”

  “Where?”

  “Hendaye, on the Spanish border. An hour or so from here.”

  He had misunderstood Zabala’s frantic, desperate cries in his dying moments. What he had heard as “abbaye” was the name Abbadie.

  “Can you keep this to yourself?” Max asked her.

  “A tourist attraction? No,” she teased.

  “That you’ve told me. Please. Don’t mention it to Sophie.

  I need to see something for myself first.”

  “All right. I have been a confidante of kings and queens.”

  Max’s eyebrows raised. Royalty?

  “Not in this life,” she said quietly and without any trace of a smile to show that she might be kidding him. “You have my word.”

  Max turned away. He needed Bobby’s van and Sayid’s brain.

  When he left the room, the comtesse relaid the cards. They were tarot, believed by some to show the journey from birth and the confrontation with universal forces. Fire, Air, Water and Earth were concealed in the pack. She turned over four cards-and felt a sudden pang of fear.

  A high priestess-the power of the unconscious. Mystery.

  The Skeleton-destruction and renewal. Mortality.

  A tower struck by lightning-a stroke of fate.

  Catastrophe. The final card showed a young man, a staff on his shoulder, a boy on a journey-a quest. A leap into the unknown.