White Death: An Alex Hawke Novella (9 page)

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-
T
WO

“H
e’s clean, Chief Inspector.”

Congreve slid two pairs of plasticuffs toward her and said, “Cuff them both, please, Detective Kissl.”

“I found this under the mother’s shawl, sir,” she said, coming around the counter to hand Ambrose a very lightweight assault rifle, fitted with a silencer.

“Another interesting gun,” Ambrose said, smiling at Ding while checking the rifle’s magazine. “Take a look. Russian-made SR-3 Vikhr fitted with a SIG Sauer silencer. Extended stock, very light trigger pull. Your mother, too, has excellent taste.”

The woman spat twice on the floor.

“How charming your dear mother is. Take good care of this, Detective Sergeant Kissl. It’s loaded with twenty high-calibre rounds and set on semiautomatic fire. No safety. Just point and shoot. If you need to, of course.”

“Thank you, sir. I’ve got the mother, you take him.”

Sigrid had the assault weapon trained on the old woman now, so Congreve reached across the glass and grabbed the suspect by his skinny neck, yanking him forward so that he was stretched forward across the countertop until his feet left the ground. Ambrose pressed the muzzle of his pistol into the soft tissue between the man’s eyes. “What do you know about the death of Leo Hermann?”

“Nothing.”

“Try again.”

“I knew him, sure, but I didn’t actually kill him.”

“Well, Ding, I might not actually kill you.”

“No dice,” Ding said.

“What’s going on back there at the rear of the store? The detective sergeant and I want to have a quick look-see.”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? You seem like a smart enough fellow. Did you not know that high-ranking British diplomats and Metropolitan Police officers are exempt from prosecution for homicide?”

“Bullshit.”

“Listen to me, you little prick. No matter what happens from here out, you and your mother are going to prison for a long, long time. I know exactly who you are and what you have done. Detective Sergeant Kissl can positively identify you. So, here’s what I’m offering. Either you take me back there, get me inside your operations room, and give me the information I’m here for . . . or I have the
Stadtspolizei
arrest your mother and remove her to a location where I will make dead certain you’ll never see her alive again. How does that sound”

“Bullshit.”

“So, make a decision, Mr. Wong. Either say you’ll cooperate fully with my investigation from here on in and I’ll see what I can do for your lovely mum. Or say good-bye to your mother right this second and tell her you’ll see her in the hereafter. Pick one. That’s my final offer.”

Ding’s shoulders slumped and he looked over at the old woman.

“Sorry, Mother.”

“You weak! You loser!”

“I will show you.”

“We’ll be right back, dear,” Ambrose said, winking at the mother as he passed her by.

I
t was a sweatshop like you might find in the financial backwaters down near the docks of old Shanghai. Semi-dark and dreary. Twenty or thirty frantic Chinese moneyboys on their iPhones, moving massive sums of currency and gold certificates around the world and back, packed inside a fifty-by-sixty-foot freezing cold room packed to the gunwales with mainframe computers and workstations, with three or four attractive young women running around delivering coffee and collecting trade chits.

The second the steel door hissed open and Ding entered the room followed by fellow rotund Englishman with a gun in the middle of his back, the room went dead quiet.

“Tell them what you’re going to tell them, son. In Mandarin so I can be in on the joke. Do it now.”

“Attention everyone,” Ding said in Chinese, “The man with me is a British police detective. In exchange for our full cooperation, he is willing to protect us to the extent that he can. That’s in case there are any charges against me, or any one of you. Now he is going to ask you some questions. Each of you will answer truthfully, and in clear, loud English. Is that fully understood? Say nothing if you don’t understand, stay silent if you do.”

The room remained dead silent.

“You’re good, son,” Ambrose said, slightly amazed at the man’s sudden transformation into a serious, well-educated businessman.

“I am a man of my word.”

“So am I. First question. Ask them if they, or anyone they know, is aware of foreign nationals hacking into the protected private accounts of British citizens, or primary accounts held in trust for Her Majesty’s government or for Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, herself. Tell them to raise their hands if they are aware of these recent cyber-attacks on Swiss banking.”

Wong translated and said, “Answer by raising your right hand.”

Six hands shot up immediately.

Ambrose said, “You six men please rise and go stand along the far wall.”

They did so, and Ambrose continued, with Ding’s translation.

“Are any of you, or anyone that you may be aware of, working in collusion with foreign agents who may be hacking into protected Swiss bank accounts and property holdings, such as gold, silver, platinum, or other valuable commodities?” Wong translated.

Four hands went up.

“Please join your colleagues at the rear.” Wong told them the next translation. “There is a man residing in Switzerland with whom Scotland Yard detectives would like to have a word. He uses the code name Sorcerer. Are you, or is anyone you know, aware of this man?”

Two hands.

“You two remain standing and stay where you are. Thank you, your help will be recognized by the courts. Final question. Do you two gentlemen who admit to knowing the Sorcerer know the location where he can be found?”

No response. Ambrose looked at Ding. “Tell them again.”

“I’m going to repeat the question. Remember that if you do not respond truthfully, evidence will be brought against you that will result in prison sentences of not less than twenty years.”

Nothing.

“You’ve got thirty seconds to stay out of jail. Starting . . . now . . . twenty seconds . . . fifteen . . . ten . . .”

Ding Wong had started shaking, and sweat was pouring down his face. As Ambrose’s clock ticked down, Ding’s own hand began to slowly rise into the air. “I know who he is.”

Ambrose removed his pistol from the small of Ding’s back and holstered it. Then he gently asked the suspect to turn around and face him.

“Thank you. You are a much smarter man than I gave you credit for. I will need you to come with me and give your sworn testimony about any information about the man known as Sorcerer. Detective Sergeant Kissl has already contacted local police, and they are on their way. They will take these men into custody. Those who cooperated will all receive due process, just as I said. Do you have anything more to say?”

“And my mother?”

“I’ll make sure she’s well taken care of, son. One last thing before we go. You say you know the Sorcerer. You say you know his current location. Tell me where he is now and save yourself a whole lot of unpleasantness when we arrive at
Stadtspolizei
headquarters.”

Ding confessed all, tears running down his cheeks.

Later, in the interrogation room at police headquarters, Ding Wong and his employees told Ambrose and the police everything they wanted to know.

Case closed.

Almost.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-
T
HREE

E
verything was going according to plan. Alex, a fine natural athlete, was responding brilliantly to the practice climbs and extreme physical training. Luc Bresson had put many climbers through the rigors of a major ascent preparation in short order, and Hawke was performing at an even higher level than Luc had expected, given Hawke’s somewhat . . . hedonistic lifestyle. After a week, he told Luc that the air at Base Camp now seemed thick and rich and deliciously saturated with oxygen.

It was a good day on the mountain. Storms were expected later this evening, but for now it was almost pleasant up at Camp Bivouac. Hawke was on his cot, reading a worn paperback called
A Purple Shroud For Dying.
He was recovering that afternoon from intense physical exertion and a recurring battle against altitude sickness.

Luc Bresson stuck his head into Alex’s tent at five o’clock that afternoon and said, “Bonjours Monsieur! Ca va?”

Alex raised his head up and said, “Hey, Luc, what time is it? I must have fallen asleep. What’s up?”

“Are you available for comms? There’s someone on the camp radio who wants to talk to you. Is it okay?”

“Depends on who it is. Is it Sigrid?”

“I am sorry, no.”

Alex put his head back down on the pillow and closed his eyes.

“She’s the only one I want to talk to. Sorry.”

“It’s Chief Inspector Congreve calling. He is at the
Stadtspolizei
building. He says it’s most urgent.”

“Good. Something must be happening down there. Please tell him I’ll be there in two minutes.”

“A
lex?”

“Right here.”

“I’ve got some very good news. We finally caught a break. A banking friend of Sigrid’s Jon Levin, with Credit Suisse Security Systems came up with the name of a potential hacking suspect. Former bank employee, forensic accountant who’d left under a cloud.”

“Here we go.”

“Right. He was running a high-pressure, secret sweatshop in Chinatown. Sigrid and I went there and managed to apprehend him. We got him to agree to cooperate fully in the investigation. As well as his entire staff.”

“Wow. Good on you. Sigrid too?”

“You’d have been proud of her. Magnificent job. I’m thinking of taking her on as my personal assistant. At any rate, with the help of the police, we were able to extract the information we’ve been looking for. The exact location of Sorcerer.”

“Amazing. Where the hell is that old devil?”

“Roughly ten thousand feet above your head. Just look straight up”

“Jesus, Ambrose. The Bat Cave?”

“Hmm. There are two entrances to the complex inside the mountain. Built by Swiss engineers in the Nazi era. One of them is below the surface of Lake Zurich. A hundred yards offshore, and about fifty feet below the surface. The other is a secret door, camouflaged by faux granite boulders. It’s on the ledge where Lieutenant Christian Hartz landed after his fall. Where he discovered the corpse.”

“Just above the Murder Wall?”

“Precisely. You’re going to have to climb that bloody wall again, I’m afraid, Alex.”

“Luckily for us, I’m not afraid. Luc just told me he thinks I’m all systems go. At first light.”

“Very good, Commander Hawke. My assistant and I both wish you Godspeed.”

“How is Sigrid doing?”

“You won’t recognize her when you get back. She appears to be infused with some new spirit. Quite phenomenal, actually. It seems as if the notion of fear has flown from her vocabulary. Ready to tackle just about anything, actually.”

“Is it real?”

“Oh, I daresay it’s completely real, Alex. And I’m being very serious about this. A transformation of sorts. I think she hated her job at the bank. Completely unsatisfying for a woman of her intellect and aspirations.”

“Where is our heroine just now?”

“She just rang to see if I’d heard from you. She’s at home, preparing to go out. We’re meeting for dinner at Cafe Du Jours. Eight o’clock this evening. We shall drink to your very good health. Perhaps I’ll even spring for a bottle of Cristal 1953 and Beluga caviar.”

“So sorry to miss it.”

“We’ll do it all over again when you come home.”

“I’m going to call her now. Listen, Ambrose, I cannot thank you enough for what you’ve done. Taking such good care of her, I mean, and cracking the case.”

“Thank her. I couldn’t have done it without her.”

“Gotta run.”

“Quickly, Alex, what are they saying about the weather up there tomorrow?”

“Ideal.”

“Meaning crap.”

“I guess I’ll find out. If anything drastic should happen to me up there, I hope you’ll—”

“See you soon, Alex. Take good care of yourself.”

T
he day dawned red.

Hawke started up the first face at five.

He planned to attack the face in two stages. The first “pitch,” in the lexicon of ascent, would end five hundred feet up at a small hollow in the back of the ice flow. It was situated just beneath a large overhang on the wall he’d nicknamed “the Wowie Zowie” during his last climb. A gentle enough way to start, he told himself. Get loose. Start looking for the “zone,” the mental space he needed to occupy when it all got deadly serious.

Hawke was carrying a three-eighths-inch climbing rope, one hundred fifty feet long. In each hand he held an ice ax—a thin, six-inch pick attached to a sixteen-inch fiberglass handle—and strapped to the soles of his climbing boots were his crampons. These were sets of two-inch steel picks, twelve per boot. The front two pointed forward from the toe of each foot.

By planting the picks of his ice axes with a series of carefully directed swings, then balancing on the toe spikes of his crampons after kicking them half an inch into the ice, Hawke could haul himself up the sheer face of Wowie Zowie like some overgrown arachnid. It was a technique he’d used since his very beginnings in the Alps, universally known as front-pointing.

Instinctively prudent, he would safeguard his ascent as much as possible. Every thirty feet he would pause to twist in a threaded eight-inch titanium tube with an eye at one end, then clip an aluminum snap-link called a carabiner through the eye. After that it was just a simple matter of clipping the rope trailing from his waist harness through the carabiner, and up you go!

Five hundred feet off the ground, after many arm-withering hours of battling gravity and the brittle ice of Wowie Zowie, he reached the point where the rock overhung his position like a ragged, rotten awning. He scrunched up under the overhang as close as he could get and fired in another screw. Then he leaned out past the lip of the roof, got his axes planted on the underside, and went for it.

He swung out on his arms, cranked off a pull-up, and started front-pointing upward to the ledge. Once on top, he launched himself into the second stage. He was moving upward at a pretty good clip, and then he wasn’t. This higher face, he soon discovered, was an infirm concoction, honeycombed with air pockets. He studied the stuff, which, upon closer inspection, resembled Styrofoam more than ice. Not good.

He took a peek below and saw that climbing back down to the ledge would be well nigh impossible. He took a brief moment to consider his next moves. Weather was threatening. He needed to find a place to hunker down soon. So, hoping the ice would improve as he climbed higher, he pushed onward.

It got worse. As he swung his ice axes over and over with burning arms, trying in vain to chop through the deteriorating ice and find something solid to sink his picks into, he found it harder and harder to keep a grip on his tools.

All of a sudden every anchor point he’d placed sheared out, and he found himself “logging some air time,” as climbers called the act of falling. He hurtled upside down until the force of the fall plucked his uppermost screw out of the rotten ice like a toothpick out of a cocktail sausage. He fell past the ledge he’d just left and kept falling.

He felt at that moment that he might actually crater.

It was a verb he never used except when he was on solid ground, in some cheery alpine après-ski environment, sharing a laugh and a drink by the fire with a pretty girl. The phrase
crater
is reserved for those unhappy occasions when a climber suffers the misfortune of falling all the way to the ground.

Luck, as was its habit sometimes, was on his side, because the next screw held and he bounced to a stop on the stretchy nylon rope after falling a mere sixty feet, bruised and frightened but otherwise unharmed. He hung there for a while, spinning lazily in space while he thanked any number of his personal deities, including his lucky stars. When that was accomplished, he started hauling up that bloody rope.

Once atop the ledge, he went about the business of making it cozy. Darkness was falling, and it was futile to try and gain any more ground. If the weather held and he got an even earlier start in the morning, he felt he could reach his destination sometime in the late afternoon. If, of course, he had a bit less excitement than he’d had today.

He first checked all of his gear to make sure he’d not lost something vital to his health in the fall. Then he broke out his rations. He devoured them, heated some water with his stove, and had a lovely cup of tea. He stood up and shoveled snow for a while until he’d cleared enough flat space to pitch his tent. He fully intended to enjoy his evening. It had been a long, eventful day, but he’d had far worse. Far, far worse.

But not to dwell on them was the secret of sanity up here, where confidence and a positive outlook could keep you alive. He would sip his chamomile tea to settle himself, watch the red sky go to black and fill with cold, pinprick stars. And then he would read his book, and then he would sleep.

The average mountain tent has about as much elbow room as your average red phone booth in London, with less floor space than a queen-sized bed. Being tent-bound on a mountain isn’t wholly an ordeal. The first hour or two can pass in some dreamy euphoria as you’re lying peacefully in your sleeping bag, watching stars come out, or raindrops trickle down from the sky, or snowdrifts slowly climbing the walls around you.

Within the realm of your tiny tent, there is an atmosphere of guiltless relief. The night has blessed you with a sturdy alibi for not risking your life for a few hours. Your life is secure for a while, without anguish or pangs of conscience, or fear.

There is nothing to be done but drift back off to untroubled sleep.