by Arthur Slade
Eastwood. Eagles.
I felt like I had something there. Almost just on the edge of my knowledge. Of intuition.
Nah. Nothing.
Then: Where Eagles Dare. It was an Eastwood movie set in World War II and it involved the rescue of a general captured by the Germans in a castle in the mountains. The movie was Mom’s favorite and, I admit, a good one. She’d wear Clint’s undershirt while she watched it.
There must be a castle that looked like the Castle Neuschwanstein hidden in the mountains. His movie had been filmed somewhere in Germany. Maybe this “similar” castle was hiding there.
I was onto something. I was certain of it. I was getting so much closer to figuring out the location of Agnes and ZARC and my mother.
And maybe I’d be able to get my vengeance. Let me make a list: Hector and Anthony Zarc. The top of my kill list.
I looked at the letters CH. The last of the words Agnes had texted to me. Of all the clues, it fit the least. Again, nothing would pop into my head, so I slipped in my earbud and whispered, “Athena, google CH.”
It always felt like cheating when I googled, but this wasn’t a crossword puzzle.
“Okay, Amber. Here’s what I found,” Athena whispered back.
A list appeared on the phone’s screen.
Methylidyne —something to do with chemistry. Not helpful.
Cluster Headache. Well, that was what I was feeling at the moment.
Cargo Helicopter. Ugh!
Then, finally: Confoederatio Helvetica.
It was the Latin name for the Swiss Confederacy, or Switzerland as they liked to be called. And Switzerland had mountains and ski hills and maybe enough space to hide a ZARC compound.
Could it be that easy?
I leaned back and sipped my coffee. These European countries were small, but it wasn’t like I was going to find the hidden palace just by catching a bus to the Alps.
So I dropped down the rabbit hole of the dark web and searched my keywords there. There’s a lot of garbage in the dark web and more Bitcoin sales of meth than you can shake a needle at. But about twenty minutes later, I discovered a small page put up by an off-piste, or “out of area” skier, who said his friend Fat Bones Franklin had disappeared in the Swiss Alps near an alpine train station with the itchy name of Grütschalp. Fat Bones had been searching for the perfect powdered snow in the back country. Most assumed he had died in an avalanche. But the last text from Fat Bones was reported to have been, “I found Castle Neuschwanstein!” A very strange text since he wasn’t in Bavaria. The blog mentioned his exact geotagged location. No one had ever found his body.
Or explained his nickname. Some kind of ski bum joke I imagined.
Fat Bones had vanished last year. Two others had disappeared the year before that in the same area.
Bingo. This had to be where ZARC was hiding.
Plus it was all I had to go on.
I finished off my coffee, getting my last hit of caffeine.
Then I marched toward my hotel.
13
A Peculiar Sniffing
I was wired when I returned to my room. The coffee was rocketing through my bloodstream. And I was flushed with the energy I get from being around so many humans—it’s such a dichotomy. Part of me loathes them. Another part of me comes to life being in crowds. It was the same feeling as being at a concert—I could put up with the crush (and the smell) just to get that energy. To be a part of something bigger.
But I was alone in my room and I wanted to bounce off the walls. I checked Elysium for the thousandth time and there were no new messages. Obviously, I couldn’t take a flight in the middle of the night. But first thing in the morning, I would make my way back to the airport, become Alice Cullen again, and wing my way west to Zurich.
I didn’t get under the covers, but lay down on the bed. Not even taking the time to remove my shoes. I closed my eyes, intending to nap. Sleep did not arrive. I was somehow bone-tired and keyed up. I listed the wounds I’d had since meeting Dermot and lost count. Not that I could blame it all on him. But I had been darted, shot, poked in the nose, shot again, and generally put through the wringer. But no broken bones.
I wanted to laugh with him about each bruise. We could exchange war stories.
But the bastard was gone. I hugged a pillow, then placed another between my knees, a comforting habit I’d developed in childhood.
There was a sound outside my door, just the creak of floorboards, and I became aware of four hearts beating in the hallway. Three large hearts and one smaller—a female one—and I thought of Hallgerdur. But she had to be dead.
I was pretty sure of that.
Then there came a sound that, to be honest, was very odd.
Sniffing. Like someone was sniffing around the door. It was the same sound you’d hear in a bathroom if a man were nasally testing the effectiveness of his armpit deodorant on a date night.
I slid carefully out of bed and crept up to the door, bracing for it to burst open at any moment. Somehow ZARC had found me. I leaned forward and looked through the spy hole.
It was dark. Black. Either broken or…
Someone had put their finger over it.
“Are you certain this is her room?” a male voice said. It was so guttural and raspy it creeped me out. It sounded like the man had smoked a tractor trailer full of cigarettes.
“Yesssss, Massster, it is,” another man replied. But the tone of voice suggested he was putting on an affectation. One male heart sped up. The other hearts didn’t. I don’t know what that meant. “I can smell the bitch from here, sssssir.” He scratched his fingers along the wall. “Oh, in fact, she’ssss on the other side of the door. Right now.”
Crap!
Something banged hard against the door.
I jumped back, looked around for a weapon, then realized I didn’t want to be cornered in the room. They’d have guns. Darts. Or diamond-tipped bullets. Taking on four of them at once in such close quarters was not wise, especially since they were already prepared. Who knows what tools they had with them. For all I knew, they could slip a bomb the size of a piece of paper under the door. I leapt over the bed, tore apart the gauzy, gaudy yellow curtains, and grabbed the window, yanking it upwards. It shattered when it hit the top and at the same time, one of them yelled and hit the door even harder. It popped open, but the chain held.
I climbed onto the sill, kicking the glass out of the way. I was glad I hadn’t taken my shoes off. There was an overhang, and a precarious eavestrough that may have been around since the ‘50s. I grabbed on and clawed my way to the rooftop. Then, perhaps being stupid, I took a second to lean over and look down toward my room.
Someone stuck their head out of the window—they had a balaclava on. The person looked left, then right, then turned and stared directly up at me. A heartbeat later, a crossbow was pointed in my direction.
Which is when I ran.
The hotel was taller than the next building, so I dashed a bit of a distance then jumped across an alleyway. I hoped, of course, that I wouldn’t tear my wounds open again. But I landed adroitly and kept running, jumped another alleyway, then ran and jumped again, all the while listening for drones. I didn’t hear one. Maybe they hadn’t had time to get one up in the sky. I then scrambled down a wall onto a cobblestone street. There were still so many people out, even though the museums must be closed by now. I burst through the clumps of humans, trying to find safety, then slowed and made sure I blended in with the crowds.
A minute later, I spotted a vacant cab going by and waved at the driver like a maniac. Before he’d even properly stopped, I was in the back seat and tossing a handful of euros his way. “To the airport,” I huffed. “I’m in a hurry.”
My driver was female, which made me feel safer. She smiled a racer’s smile and hit the gas. I couldn’t help glancing over my shoulder to be sure we weren’t being followed. There was no one else on the street. I had no idea how ZARC had found me. I’d left no trail that I was aw
are of. I trusted Sonya when she’d said the phone was untraceable. And I was pretty certain there was nothing implanted in my body.
And, to top it all off, one of them had been sniffing outside my door. Sniffing! Like they were scenting me out. And he called the other “master”. It sounded like an odd relationship. That was not how mercenaries usually spoke to each other.
In a relatively short time, we arrived at the airport. I tossed a few more euros to the driver, who flashed another grin, then I got out of the cab. I was still in the same clothes I’d been wearing when I arrived. I hadn’t even had time to pick up a backpack.
Well, that meant I wouldn’t have to worry about carry-on luggage.
Within an hour, I, pretending to be Alice Cullen, was on a plane to Zurich.
14
Itching the Grütschalp
I rented a car in Zurich.
I’m a horrible driver. Mom, when she was around, did all of the driving. And I was so fleet of foot that I tended to walk or, because we lived in larger cities, I’d take transit. Nothing more fun than riding around in a bus full of food. So it was a sign of my desperation that I rented a Mercedes at the airport and drove haltingly through the lovely, curving, dangerous mountain paths toward my destination.
The roads certainly kept me awake. Along with the high-pitched, happy pop music on the radio. I nearly took a detour when I saw a sign for Reichenbachfall, the falls where Sherlock Holmes died fighting his arch nemesis, Professor Moriarty. But, as much as I’d like to stand there and see those famous literary waters for myself, I had my own Moriarty to fight. And I had no intention of dying.
So I white-knuckled it all the way to the quaint and somewhat pronounceable town of Lauterbrunnen—which was positioned in a valley between a whole bunch of immaculate mountains. Everything was postcard pretty and perfect—not one sign of garbage or disorder. I got the feeling the Swiss picked up after themselves. I expected the Von Trapp family to start singing about the hills being alive with the sound of music. Even though they did all of their singing in Austria. But it might echo this far.
I parked the car near the train station and grabbed my leather backpack. I had paused in the airport long enough to equip myself with some traveling goods—the backpack was jammed with hiking gear, ropes, and several layers of clothing. On my feet were a lovely pair of Wenger Swiss Army, brown-leather, ankle hiking boots.
The only way up to the Grütschalp train station was by cable car. I crossed the street from the train station to the terminal, went inside the building, bought my tickets, and stood in line for the cable car.
Honestly, I felt like I was in a movie. I was going to ride on a cable car! I waited beside several tourists with their white slouch hats, khaki shirts, khaki shorts and spindly legs. There was a murder of hikers—or whatever you call a group of hikers. I’m sure I looked stylish in my backpack and hoodie and sunglasses and black pants. No shorts! From where we waited, you could see the tracks where the train used to climb up the mountain to the station. We loaded into the cable car— it was mostly glass and fit about fifty people. We tested the occupancy limits of that car. I was able to squeeze my way to the front window.
There was a driver, though as far as I could tell he just talked into his walkie-talkie. Our journey started with a jerk, then the car sailed smoothly toward the train station that waited halfway up the mountain—it was called a train station because there was a train up there that apparently went down the other side of the mountain. I hoped it had brakes.
Up, up, up we went, everything around us becoming even more picturesque from this height. The valley was green. The houses and train tracks looking more and more like a miniature model set. The mountains had those typical clichéd snow-covered peaks.
I wished with all my heart that Mom could be here. She had always loved sharing these sorts of adventures, to the point of boring me by dragging me to parks and museums throughout my teen years.
The trip took about five minutes. But I sucked up every moment of the view, then the sun was suddenly swallowed as we went into the train station. The conductor—or whatever he was—said something on the loudspeaker in Swiss. Which I assumed was “mind the gap.” The doors opened and we tramped by a sign that let us know we were 4875 feet in altitude.
I walked outside, my attention drawn to a green cow painted with flowers—a statue of course. I’m sure it had some sort of meaning that I wasn’t getting. I headed higher and higher, slowly separating myself from the hikers who were laughing as they began to frolic in the woods.
On the flight here, I had done a bit of research about Fat Bones Franklin, the skier who had disappeared. It was curious that officials gave up searching after only a day. He could have survived for more than that, so it suggested there was some kind of pressure on the government to shut the search down early. It did not matter one iota how much his family complained. The search helicopters had been grounded, but when I did a search of the weather, it was perfectly clear that day.
I smelled a cover-up.
There was green grass beneath my feet now, but it grew sparser as I climbed into the pine trees. I hadn’t done any research as to whether there were bears or wolves, but I wasn’t worried about those types of predators. Only the human ones were on my mind.
I kept going for hours, getting colder with each step so that eventually I had to put on another layer of clothing. In fact, I got so cold I pulled on the green sweater Sonya had given me. And it soon no longer felt like June—more like October.
About three hours later I was in November, because there was snow and my breath began to show. It was odd because my neck was still hot from the sun. But the front of me, which was in my shadow, got colder. The snow grew deeper. I eventually pulled on the white windbreaker coat and white windbreaker pants. They would serve to stop the cold and work as camouflage.
I slipped the earbuds in. “Athena,” I said. “How far are we from the geotagged location?”
“You are two kilometres from your destination,” she said into my ear. “Continue west. You’re doing a great job, Amber. You go, girl!”
I wonder if the librarians who programmed her were also cheerleaders on the side.
A bank of fog rolled in, making it so I couldn’t see much more than a few feet ahead of me. Maybe I was walking above the cloud line.
I did find that I was slowing down. Maybe it was the cold. Or the altitude. Because I was having difficulty breathing. I needed to distract myself.
“What’s your favorite book, Athena?” I asked.
“It’s The Hitchhiker’ss Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.”
“Really, did you get to choose that? Or did someone program that answer into you.”
“I chose it,” she said somewhat proudly. “Don’t panic.”
“Don’t panic about what?”
“I was quoting the book,” she said. “I appreciate Adams’s quirky British sense of humor.”
“Oh, I see.” I had never read the book. “I’ll have to add it to my list.”
“I already have,” she said. “By the way, you should stop right here. You have reached your destination. Excellent work!”
I was in the middle of nothing much at all. The fog had cleared slightly and all I could see were taller peaks in the distance and white snow around me. But I did get the sense that I’d left civilization far, far behind. I knew there was a mountain called Drättehorn near here—but all the mountains looked the same to me.
There certainly wasn’t a castle poking its spires out of the mist.
“Where should I go now?” I asked.
“I cannot answer that,” Athena said. “I leave the self-determinism up to you. Good luck with it.”
So I walked forward. Another two hours of struggling and shivering and sweating and I was soon beginning to doubt my little eureka moment that had brought me here. I was beginning to doubt everything. My water bottle hadn’t frozen, though there was a bit of ice inside it. And with the fog coming a
nd going, making it hard to see, I could fall into a crevasse and soon be lost forever.
Then, while doing one of my many scans of the area, I saw something moving behind me—a white-clad figure was coming up the rise, where I’d been about twenty minutes earlier. Then another figure appeared. And a third, who was bent over and looking at the ground—maybe following my footprints. A fourth pursuer climbed up. He was bundled in a white coat and was much larger than the others—he was big enough that he reminded me of Bulldozer back in Sweden. He did seem to be moving a bit jerkily. Maybe I’d broken one of his legs and he had a splint on.
Bad news comes in fours!
Obviously my tracks would be easy to follow, so it’s not like I could lose my pursuers easily. My only hope was to outrace them. So I started to run ahead, hoping I didn’t take a flying leap off a cliff.
“Who’s behind me, Athena?” I asked between huffs and puffs.
“I don’t have enough information to answer that question, Amber. Sorry. You’re doing a great job running, though.”
I had this horrible feeling I had a tracker inside of me. I had done some self-surgery to remove the one from the League, but maybe at some other time one had been inserted. Or there was one in my clothes or shoes—but those had all changed several times, especially since being in Sweden. Again I wondered if the phone Sonya had given me truly was untraceable. But I had to trust her, didn’t I?
Trust no one, my mother would have said.
That was easier said than done.
Maybe the mercenaries were just damn lucky. Or it could be other tourists who stumbled across the same path. Crazy hikers!
The fog lifted and I saw that one of them was holding a crossbow. Crap! They weren’t hikers. And I doubted they were hunting reindeer.
So I doubled my speed. Climbing higher and higher, edging across a rocky precipice. Twice I nearly went right over the edge, only inches from becoming a broken pile of Amber. But I ran along the spine of the mountain, and the fog deepened to the point I could barely see my hand in front of my peepers.
Or, more importantly, my next step.
Which is when I felt nothing but open air below me.
