Polar Shift

by Clive Cussler

  He adjusted his goggles and pushed off with his poles, schussing straight down the North Bowl face to gain speed before initiating his first turn. He always started his day with the same trail, a fast bowl run that wound in between silent snow ghosts—strange, phantasmagoric creatures that formed when cold and fog coated trees with rime. He made the smooth, effortless turns he had learned as a child in Kitzbuhl, Austria.

  At the bottom of the bowl, he shot down Schmidt’s Chute and into a glade. Except for the most dedicated skiers and boarders, most people had hung up their skis to work on their boats and fishing gear. It seemed that he was the master of the mountain.

  But as Schroeder broke out of the trees into the open, two skiers emerged from a copse of fir trees.

  They skied a few hundred feet behind him, one on either side of the trail. He moved at the same steady pace, making short radius turns that would give the newcomers room. Instead of passing, they matched him turn for turn, until they were skiing three abreast. A long-dormant mental radar kicked on. Too late. The skiers closed on him like the jaws of a pair of pliers.

  The old man pulled over to the edge of the trail. His escorts skidded to hockey stops in sprays of snow, one above him and the other below. Their muscular physiques pushed tightly against the fabric of their identical, one-piece silver suits. Their faces were hidden by their mirrored goggles. Only their jaws were visible.

  The men stared at him without speaking. They were playing a game of silent intimidation.

  He showed his teeth in an alligator smile. “Mornin’,” he said cheerfully in the western accent he had cultivated through the years. “They don’t make days better than this.”

  The uphill skier said in a slow, Southern drawl, “You’re Karl Schroeder, if I’m not mistaken.”

  The name he had discarded decades before sounded shockingly alien to his ears, but he held his smile.

  “I’m afraid you are mistaken, friend. My name is Svensen. Arne Svensen.”

  Taking his time, the skier planted his ski poles into the snow, removed one glove, reached inside his suit and extracted a PPK Walther pistol. “Let’s not play games, Arne. We’ve authenticated your identity with fingerprints.”

  Impossible.

  “I’m afraid you’ve confused me with someone else.”

  The man chuckled. “Don’t you remember? We were standing behind you at the bar.”

  The old man combed his memory and recalled an incident at the Hell Roaring Saloon, the après-ski watering hole at the bottom of the mountain. He had been pounding down beers as only an Austrian can. He had come back to his stool from a restroom break and found his half-filled beer mug had vanished. The bar was busy, and he assumed another customer had mistakenly walked off with his drink.

  “The beer mug,” he said. “That was you.”

  The man nodded. “We watched you for an hour, but it was worth the wait. You left us a full set of fingerprints. We’ve been on your ass ever since.”

  The schuss-schuss of skis came from up-trail.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” said the man, glancing uphill. He covered the gun with his gloved hand.

  A moment later, a lone skier flew by in a blur and disappeared down the trail without slowing.

  Schroeder had known that his transformation from cold-blooded warrior to human being would leave him vulnerable. But he had come to believe that his new identity had successfully insulated him from his old life. The gun pointed at his heart was persuasive evidence to the contrary.

  “What do you want?” Schroeder said. He spoke with the world-weariness of a fugitive who had been run to ground.

  “I want you to shut up and do what I say. They tell me you’re an ex-soldier, so you know how to follow orders.”

  “Some soldier,” the other man said with undisguised scorn. “All I see from here is an over-the-hill guy crapping his pants.”

  They both laughed.

  Good.

  They knew he had been in the military, but he guessed they didn’t know that he had graduated from one of the world’s most notorious killing schools. He had kept his martial arts and marksmanship skills honed, and, although he was pushing eighty, constant physical exercise and strenuous outdoor pursuits had maintained a body many men half his age would have envied.

  He remained calm and confident. They would be on his turf, where he knew every tree and boulder.

  “I was a soldier a long time ago. Now I’m just an old man.” He lowered his head, hunching his shoulders to project an attitude of submission, and injected a tremor into his deep voice.

  “We know a lot more about you than you think,” said the man with a gun. “We know what you eat, where you sleep. We know where you and your mutt live.”

  They had been in his house.

  “Where the mutt used to live,” said the other man.

  He stared at the man. “You killed my dog? Why?”

  “Your little wiener wouldn’t stop yapping. We gave him a pill to shut him up.”

  The friendly little female dachshund he had named Schatsky was probably barking because she was glad to see the intruders.

  A coldness seemed to flow into his body. In his mind, he heard his classroom mentor, Professor Heinz. The cherubic psychopath with the kindly blue eyes had been rewarded with a teaching sinecure at the Wevelsburg monastery for his work designing the Nazi death machine.

  In skilled hands, nearly any ordinary object can be a lethal weapon, the professor was saying in his soft-spoken voice. The hard end of this newspaper rolled into a tight coil can be used to break a man’s nose and drive the bone splinters into his brain. This fountain pen can penetrate the eye and cause death. This metal wristwatch band worn across the knuckles is capable of breaking facial bones. This belt makes a wonderful garrote if you can’t quickly remove your boot laces…

  Schroeder’s grip tightened on the pole handles.

  “I’ll do whatever you say,” he said. “Maybe we can work this out.”

  “Sure,” the man said with the flicker of a smile. “First, I want you to ski slowly to the base of the mountain. Follow my dog-loving friend. He’s got a gun too. I’ll be right behind you. At the end of the run, take your skis off, stick them in the rack and walk to the east parking lot.”

  “May I ask where you’re taking me?”

  “We’re not taking you anywhere. We’re delivering you.”

  “Think of us like FedEx or UPS,” the other man said.

  His companion said, “Nothing personal. Just business. Move it. Nice and easy.” He gestured with the gun, then he tucked it back into his suit so he could ski unhindered.

  With the downhill man in the lead and Schroeder in the middle, they skied the trail single file at a moderate speed. Schroeder sized up the man ahead as an aggressive skier whose muscle partly made up for his lack of technical skill. He glanced back at the other man and guessed from his free-form technique that he was the less accomplished skier. Still, they were young and strong, and they were armed.

  A snowboarder flew by and disappeared down the trail.

  Gambling that his escort would reflexively glance at the moving object, Schroeder made his move. He made a wide turn, but instead of traversing he spun his body around 180 degrees so that he was facing uphill.

  His escort didn’t see the maneuver until it was too late. He tried to stop. Schroeder jammed his downhill ski into the snow. He grasped his right ski pole with both hands, letting the other pole hang by its strap, and drove the steel tip into the small fleshy part of the man’s neck above the turtleneck.

  The man was still moving when the tip punched a ragged hole in his throat below the Adam’s apple. He let out a wet gurgle, his legs went out from under him and he crashed to the snow where he writhed in terrible agony.

  Schroeder sidestepped the flailing body like a matador evading a stricken bull.

  The lead man glanced over his shoulder. Schroeder yanked back his improvised spear. He dug his poles in and swooped down the trai
l. He drove his right elbow into the man’s cheek and knocked him off balance. With knees bent and head low in a tuck, he schussed straight down the trail until he neared the bottom of the run, where the trail made a sharp turn to the right.

  The second skier must have been carrying a machine pistol under his jacket because the burp of automatic gunfire shattered the mountain stillness.

  The shots harmlessly shredded the overhead tree branches.

  A second later, Schroeder was safely out of the line of fire.

  He turned onto a narrow, double-black expert run that twisted down the side of the mountain like a corkscrew. The ski patrol had strung yellow tape and put up a sign, saying the trail was closed.

  Schroeder ducked under the tape. The trail dropped into an almost vertical run. The snow had a brownish tinge, showing that the cover was thin. The surface was broken by large patches of bare ground. Rocks that normally lay under the snow base were exposed.

  He heard gunfire behind him, and miniature fountains of mud erupted a few feet away. The shooter was at the top of the ridge, firing down.

  Schroeder slalomed between bare ground and rocks. His skis hit slush and almost ground to a stop, but there was just enough of a skim coat to allow the skis to keep sliding.

  Schroeder wove his way through a field of short moguls and got onto a steep pitch where the snow cover was adequate. He heard gunshots off to his right. His pursuer was skiing down a trail that was parallel to Schroeder’s, firing through the glade that separated them. Most of the shots hit trees. The gunman saw that he was missing his mark and went into the woods separating the two trails.

  The man’s form resembled a kangaroo on steroids, but he powered his way through the woods in leaps and bounds. Schroeder saw that the man would break out of the trees below him, where he could rake the trail with killing gunfire.

  The man fell once, and quickly got back on his skis. The delay would give Schroeder time to ski past the gunman before he broke back into the open. He’d still be an easy target. Instead, as the gunman broke from the woods on the side of the trail, Schroeder charged down on him.

  The man saw Schroeder hurtling at him and fumbled for his gun under his suit.

  Schroeder slashed with his ski pole at the man’s exposed face like a Cossack on a rampage. The blow went high and smashed the man’s goggles. He lost his balance, skiing first on one ski, then the other. The gun flew out of his hand. Weaving drunkenly, arms flailing, he pitched over the edge of the trail, where it dropped down steeply for about twenty feet into the woods.

  He ended up upside down in the snow depression around the trunk of a large fir tree. His skis were tangled in the lower branches. He struggled to get out of his bindings, but they were out of reach. He hung there helplessly. His breathing was labored.

  Schroeder sidestepped his way down the slope. He picked the Uzi out of the snow, where the man had dropped the weapon, and held it loosely in one hand.

  “Who are you working for?” Schroeder said.

  The man managed to push his smashed goggles onto his head. “Acme Security,” the man said, speaking with effort.

  “Acme?” Schroeder said with a smile.

  “They’re a big outfit down in Virginia.”

  “You knew who I was, you must have known why they wanted me.”

  The man shook his head.

  “What were you going to do with me?”

  “We were going to deliver you to people at the bottom of the mountain. There was supposed to be a car waiting.”

  “You’ve been watching me for days. You know more than you’re saying. Tell me what they said,” he said soothingly. “I give you my word I won’t kill you. See?” He flung the Uzi into the woods.

  A suspicious expression came to the man’s face, but he decided to take his chances. “There was something about a girl’s picture we found in your house. They think you know where she is.”

  “Why do they want her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Schroeder nodded. “One more thing. Who killed Schatsky?”

  “Who?” The man looked at Schroeder as if he were insane.

  “My little dachshund. The noisy wiener dog.”

  “My partner killed him.”

  “But you didn’t stop him.”

  “I like dogs.”

  “I believe you.” Schroeder backed off and began to herringbone up the slope.

  “You can’t leave me here,” the man shouted with panic in his voice.

  Schroeder stopped. “I only said I wouldn’t kill you. I never said I would pull you out. Don’t worry. I’m sure they’ll find you when the snow melts.”

  The temperature would drop down to zero that night. The human body’s vital organs were not meant to function upside down, and the man would probably die soon from suffocation.

  Schroeder skied to the base of the mountain to a spot that offered a view of the parking lot. He picked out the black Yukon SUV with the tinted windows. Three men stood beside it, looking up the mountain. He wondered who they were, but decided it didn’t matter. For now.

  He removed his skis, left them on a rack and went to the locker room. He grabbed his fanny pack, stuck the boots in the locker, quickly changed into his walking shoes and headed to the lot where he had parked his truck.

  Schroeder checked out the lot and saw nothing suspicious. He walked quickly to the truck and got in. As he drove out of the parking lot, he reached under the seat for a pistol and placed it in his lap.

  He contemplated his next move. It would be dangerous to go back to his house. He headed out of town toward Glacier National Park. Twenty minutes later, he pulled up in front of a small, ram-shackle building. The sign outside said: GLACIER PARK WILDERNESS TOURING COMPANY AND CAMPS. It was one of a number of businesses and real estate holdings Schroeder had invested in using straw companies. Behind the building were several camps he rented out in the warm season.

  He parked behind the building, went inside a cabin he reserved for his own use and removed a moth-eaten moose head from over the fireplace to reveal a wall safe. He opened the safe with a few twists of the combination lock. Inside was a strongbox stuffed with cash, which he jammed into his parka pockets along with fake driver’s licenses, passports and credit cards.

  Schroeder went into the bathroom and shaved off his mustache. He tinted his hair brown to match the picture in his ID, and from a closet he pulled a prepacked suitcase. The change of identity took less than thirty minutes. Haste was of the essence. Anyone who could find a way through the web of fake identities that he had woven had to have considerable resources. It was only a matter of time before they tracked down the wilderness camps.

  Someone might be watching the small airport in Kalispell. He decided to drive to Missoula and rent a car. Halfway to his destination, he stopped at a pay phone. Using a phone card, he called a long-distance number. As the phone rang, he held his breath, wondering if she would even remember him. It had been a long time. A man answered. They exchanged a few words and hung up. There was disappointment in his eyes.

  Montana has no speed limit. As Schroeder pushed the truck to its limits, he wondered how the genie had once again escaped from the bottle. He was much younger the first time it had been contained, and he wondered if, at his age, he was still up to it.

  He thought about the girl. Her portrait in his bedroom was taken by a commercial studio. They could trace it back. He thought his computer files were clean, but one could never tell. Then there were the phone records. He had grown careless in his old age. It was only a matter of time before they found her. He wondered what she looked like. The last time he had seen her was at her grandfather’s funeral. He let his mind drift back, recalling the events that linked him to the young woman.

  It was 1948. He was living in his log cabin in Montana. Although he had access through Swiss bank accounts to vast amounts of money, he eked out a living doing odd jobs and guiding tourists through Glacier National Park. One client, a businessman from De
troit, had left a magazine in his cabin. Schroeder did all the cleanup work himself, and he had glanced idly through its pages. That’s when he discovered what had happened to Lazlo Kovacs since the night the Wilhelm Gustloff went to the bottom.

  The magazine article described a company set up by Dr. Janos, an enterprising World War II Hungarian refugee. His corporation was bringing an innovative array of consumer products to the market, all based on electromagnetic properties, making him a millionaire in the process. Schroeder smiled. There was no photograph of the reclusive inventor, but the Kovacs genius came through on every item.

  It was the mud season in between skiing and trekking, so one day he packed a bag and took the train to Detroit. He found the Janos lab in an unmarked building. He had to ask several people in the neighborhood where the lab was.

  He watched the front door from a parked car. The patience he had learned when stalking human beings was eventually rewarded. A Cadillac limousine pulled up to the building. Instead of stopping in front, it went around to an alley in the back. It took off before he could see who got in the car. He followed the car to the exclusive Grosse Pointe section of Detroit, where many auto executives lived. He lost the limo when it went through the gate of a walled estate.

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, he was at the lab again. He parked where he had a clear view of the back alley. When the limo showed up, he got out of his car and walked over to the alley. The chauffeur, who was holding the door open, glanced at him but probably throught Schroeder was a bum to be ignored.

  A man emerged from the back door and walked to the limo. He glanced in Schroeder’s direction, started to get in the car, then he looked again. A wide grin came to his face. To the puzzlement of the limo driver, his wealthy employer went over and put his arms around the bum in a great hug.

  “After all these years. What in God’s name are you doing here?” Kovacs said.

  “I thought you might like to take a ride in the snow,” Schroeder said with a grin.

  Kovacs responded with a look of mock horror. “Not if you are at the wheel.”