Ice Claw (26 page)

He wished he had gone to the airport with Sayid. Being separated from his best friend made him feel even more edgy.

By the time daylight came he had overcome his need for
sleep. Alertness was the key now, to make sure they had not been followed, that no ambushes awaited them.

The seats were uncomfortable, but that kept his mind focused. He had put himself into this dangerous situation. He could have gone home right after the avalanche. He need not have helped Sophie that night at Mont la Croix and earned Sharkface’s enmity, or tried to save the wounded monk. But he had, and he would face the consequences. Cause and effect. Max knew that whatever happened, whether he solved the puzzle or not, Sharkface would keep on hunting, like the predator he was.

He felt a deep-seated sensation inside him. Curled, like a fist.

It was not fear.

Max was ready to fight.

Noise and smells. Voices gabbling. Hands pecked at Max’s clothes like hens at food. Colors dazzled; smoke and incense stung his eyes.

Marrakech, Morocco.

The souk, the market backstreets of the ancient city, teemed with people. Merchants vied for attention, fingers tugged at Max’s sleeve, men jumped in front of him and tried to shove all kinds of goods in his face—silk and spices, jewelry, clothing, copper pots, beads and smoldering incense sticks.

“Anji! Anji!
—Here! Here!” the shop owners and their touts shouted.

Pungent smells layered the confined alleys. Arguments broke out; men spat words at each other. Scooters and bikes, overladen donkeys and people—more people than Max had
ever seen in such small alleys—jostled to get through the cramped passageways.

Sophie was ten paces ahead, sometimes hidden by the surging crowds, but she often turned back to look for him and, satisfied that he was still following, went back to pushing through the wall of bodies.

Max lost sight of her. Flies and sweat irritated his eyes, and the smells were beginning to overwhelm him. His concentration had wavered for a moment and the hungry sea of faces had swallowed her. He felt the urge to shout her name, but it would have been swept away in the noise of the alleys. Then someone grabbed his shoulder. Sophie. She stood in a darkened passage.

“This way,” she said, and turned into the cool gloom, where a scrawny kitten danced ahead of her.

Moments later she put her shoulder against a heavy wooden door and he followed her into an oasis of calm. An inner courtyard, blessed with diffused light, where mosaic tiles reflected differing hues of blue. A fountain gently splashed water across the center of the stone yard.

And it was quiet. As if someone had closed a door to the cacophony of braying humanity.

Sophie unslung her backpack. “We stay here for the night,” she told him, then called, “Abdullah!”

“What is this place? Is it your home?” Max said.

“It’s a
riad
, a traditional house,” she said.

“I know what a
riad
is,” he said.

She hesitated. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to patronize you.”

She walked away towards the entrance and called the
man’s name again. Max felt a twinge of remorse. He needn’t have sounded so damned arrogant, but he wanted to score a point to give himself at least some sense of being in control of the situation.

He gazed around at the first-floor balcony that ran around the building, with its delicate handcrafted ironwork, spiraled and shaped into an elaborate pattern. Across the courtyard where he now stood, an archway led to another enclosed area, where a swimming pool, edged with slabs of smooth stone, waited undisturbed for someone to leap and shatter its still water.

This was a small corner of paradise.

“It’s a private hotel. Eight bedrooms, two suites and very expensive,” Sophie told him.

“You’re gonna pay for this?” Max asked her as he pulled off his boots and socks and let his feet cool on the stone floor. It felt great. He let the fountain’s fine spray settle on his face like a cooling massage.

Before Sophie could answer, a man appeared. He was huge, with a barrel chest. His brown face bristled with stubble and his hair was cropped short to his scalp, like a shaved coconut. He wore traditional Berber dress, a djellaba cloak with broad sleeves and leather sandals. He grinned, spread his arms and embraced Sophie.

“Sophie! Good, good. It is my honor to have you in my home again,” the man said. “My staff received your instructions and they have prepared two rooms, as you requested.”

Sophie had bought a phone at the airport and Max had seen her use it. So this was the call she’d made, he realized. Could she have phoned anyone else at the same time? He had to make a decision about her. Trust her or not?

“Max, this is Abdullah Boulkoumit. This is his place. Abdullah, this is Max Gordon. He’s a friend of mine,” Sophie said, bringing the man towards Max.

Abdullah’s gaze had not wavered from Max’s face the moment he had turned away from Sophie. It was as if he searched out every event in the boy’s life that had brought him to his home in the heart of the ancient city. For a moment Max felt awkward. He was barefooted, boots in hand, in the middle of a luxury hotel. He was grimy, unkempt. He realized one of his socks was floating away across the courtyard in the water from the fountain.

“You are welcome in my home, Master Gordon, and I see you are already familiar with our custom of removing one’s shoes before entering. It honors me,” Abdullah said gently, delicately brushing aside his guest’s embarrassment.

Abdullah shook his hand and then, as custom dictated, kissed the tips of his own fingers.

Two staff members waited inside the cool interior; one now eased Max’s backpack from his hands and led the way down the corridor. Sophie walked with him.

“We’ll go to my father’s tomorrow. Abdullah will arrange transport. Freshen up and I’ll see you in a couple of hours,” she said.

“I only take a few minutes to shower,” he told her as they stopped outside an iron-studded door which, once opened, revealed a luxurious room. He could get used to this, Max decided.

“Well, I need longer. So, for once in your life, Max Gordon, slow down and be patient.”

She followed the other staff member and turned out of sight down another corridor.

Max stepped into the room. Beyond the huge double bed, steam rose from a sunken marble bath. Rose petals floated on the water’s surface and a tangy smell of sandalwood filtered through the steam.

“Is that for me?” Max asked.

The man nodded.

“I’ll smell like a girl if I get in there,” Max said, not letting on that the sandalwood actually smelled quite good. And the bath was like a football club’s locker-room plunge pool. Wasn’t half bad, come to think of it. He might even practice deep-sea diving in there.

“Please,” the porter said as he gestured to the bathroom, and placed Max’s backpack on a suitcase stand.

Max stepped forward. It was like something out of an
Arabian Nights
story. Beyond the bath, lattice screens offered privacy but also allowed him to see across the rooftops of the old city. Staggering snow-capped peaks rose up beyond the city skyline, tinged with the last rays of the setting sun. The Atlas Mountains. How far away? A few hours’ drive? Somewhere beyond them was where Sophie’s father lived, and that was where he felt sure Zabala’s clue meant for him to go.

The clues from the château, the link between her father and Zabala with the wild animals. There
had
to be a connection. Max knew nothing about Morocco. He remembered stories from when he was a kid:
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Aladdin, A Thousand and One Nights
. But other than that, he was in a part of the world that had sights and sounds—and smells—that were so exotic it felt as though they could sweep you along like an …

He stopped his thoughts right there, because the word that came to mind was
avalanche
. And that thought sucked the warmth out of the room. The man was turning back the bed. Taking a bottle of chilled water from the minibar, he unscrewed it, poured half the water into a glass and settled it on a coaster—bead-sized stones delicately wired together by local craftsmen. He pointed to the lights, clapped gently and smiled as the lights came on.

That was cool. Max liked that big-time.

The man, pleased to have amused his guest, bowed and left. Max checked the room. The bed was great: you could have a midnight feast on that with half a dozen of your mates. There was a CD player with a selection of music—international and local—as well as a bowl of fruit, a phone, computer connections, a minibar fridge stacked with fizzy drinks and fruit juices. Max reckoned he could survive a week in here.

He picked up the phone on the bedside table, got an outside line and dialed Sayid’s cell, but the standard recorded answering message was all he heard. He left a brief message but stopped himself from telling his friend where he was. Sayid might have been picked up by the police. He hung up. Sayid should have been home by now and his phone back in use. But Max was realistic enough to know there was nothing he could do about it. He knew Sayid wouldn’t tell the authorities any more than he had to.

There was one more thing Max had to do before he could relax completely. He fished in his backpack and pulled out a small tube of superglue, one of the best repair kits for quick fixes. After fifteen minutes of concentrated work on his
scuffed and torn trainers, using the blade from the minibar’s corkscrew, he completed the task—managing the small miracle of not gluing his fingers together in the process.

Max let his clothes fall where he stood and slid in a CD. He popped a can, grabbed a mango and a packet of crisps and went through to the humongous bath. Rose petals or not, he’d have a long soak. He suddenly felt very tired.

He stepped over the broad edge of the bath, balanced everything he needed and slid into the velvet warmth of the deep water. He peeled back the skin of the mango and sank his teeth into the yellow flesh. It tasted of sunshine. And made a hell of a mess—juice everywhere—but he was in the perfect place to eat it. The packet of crisps followed, swigged down with the cola. Someone in his mind was telling him he deserved to pig out for a while.

He clapped.

The lights faded.

He clapped again.

The music got louder.

He clapped again.

Just for himself.

No matter how much money Fedir Tishenko possessed he could not control the Atlantic sea fog that blanketed the southern part of France and northern Spain, shutting down all air traffic.

Sharkface waited on a private jet at Biarritz. His destination was an abandoned military airfield south of Marrakech, where he would take control of the hunt for Max. But the
plane sat on the runway, immobilized by nature’s cloak. Others would now be needed for that job. Morocco was no farther away than a phone call—Tishenko’s promises scattered like gold coins into the dusty streets of the ancient city. Other killers would entrap Max.

Sharkface’s vehicles, along with Bobby’s van, drove slowly across France towards the Swiss border, hundreds of kilometers away. Sayid and Bobby still lay trussed up. Sayid’s tears had dried and Bobby nodded at him, trying to offer some comfort, a gesture of understanding. Sayid had not cried because of the terror these killers had inflicted on him, though the shock at hearing of the countess’s death was like a body blow. No, he had wept because he had told them that Max was in Morocco. That gut-wrenching sickness of giving up your best friend embedded itself in his stomach like a blunt sword.

How much danger did that pose to Max? Sayid had very little information about his plans, but his friend had shared enough with him for his enemies now to have a clearer idea of what had been discovered.

Max had been given a crystal pendant by Zabala and had then found something in d’Abbadie’s château, where the Germans and Sharkface’s gang had attacked them. But Sayid didn’t know anything else. Only that Max had gone to Morocco.

Sharkface had held the angle grinder across Sayid’s plaster cast, lowering it slowly and deliberately, letting the white powder shower across Sayid. Just another couple of millimeters and …

Sayid had yelled at Sharkface. Screamed the information. Gave it out so willingly. Anything to stop the horror.

Now, as he lay in the van, he thought of how many times he had fantasized about being a hero. About how, like Max, he could save people, and that no matter how frightening the situation he would get through.

But so far the reality of his life had betrayed him.

Before Max’s dad had saved Sayid’s family in the Middle East, his own father had worked to help bring peace to the region. The terrorists came in the night and killed him. Sayid could still feel the air shattering from the gunfire, smell the cordite and hear his mother’s screams. And his own. Moments later the darkness and smoke had been punctured with torchlight as British troops stormed their house. Gunfire flashed and echoed. More men died—the assassins. And then soldiers carried Sayid and his mother to a waiting helicopter. An Englishman, someone who spoke Arabic, comforted him and his mother. He was their friend. The man their father had called a brother. Sayid recognized him as the man who had shared food at their table. His name was Tom Gordon and he promised them he would care for them, in honor of Sayid’s father—a brave and great man.