Ice Claw (36 page)

Fauvre held up the numbers he’d scribbled on a pad, taken from the crystal:

7 24 8—10 4 9 12 25—7 11 9 17

“But this is one part of Zabala’s secret I cannot understand. What do you think these numbers mean? I do not believe they have any bearing on the astrological horoscopes. There is no relationship between them and the drawings.”

“It’s a code of some description,” Max said, and as he did so, his stomach plummeted. Sayid! His face intruded into Max’s thoughts. There was nothing he could do about his friend. Not right now.

Fauvre saw the look of anguish on his face. “There is something you haven’t told me?”

Max nodded. “There was a sheet of paper with a square of numbers, twenty-five numbers. It made no sense except they all added up to sixty-five no matter which way you added them.”

“Then that square holds a message. Zabala was passing on vital information, perhaps even telling us how the catastrophe might be averted.”

Max racked his brains. There was no way he could remember the magic square numbers. “To encrypt anything you need a word or a phrase. The people writing the code and those deciphering it have to know it. It’s like a combination for a vault.” Max was sunk even if he had the magic square. He did not have the key words.

“We only found the numbers in the square and those on the crystal,” he said. “We never found the key words to help us decipher it.”

“But don’t you see, Max? Somewhere Zabala
has
given you those key words to unlock his message. You’ve seen them, or been given them, or been told them. Where is the piece of paper?” Fauvre asked.

“My mate’s got it.”

“And where is he?”

“He should be home, but I haven’t been able to get hold of him. Maybe the cops have him back in England. It doesn’t matter right now.”

Max moved to a wall map. “The triangle brought me here from Biarritz. The other two sides join up …” Max’s finger traced a line. “Here.”

“Geneva,” Fauvre said, alarmed.

Fear twisted Max’s stomach. “The particle accelerator at CERN.”

“You know about it?” Fauvre said.

Europe’s organization for nuclear research. Max was supposed to have gone on a school trip there a couple of years ago but was in a cross-country competition instead. Sayid had gone and said it was stunning. A hundred meters underground, a huge circle of accelerator tubes, eight and a half kilometers across, twenty-seven kilometers in circumference. It was the size of London Underground’s Circle Line. Massive. Biggest, most complex piece of machinery in history!

Sayid tended to get excited about science.

This was every physicist’s dream. The big bang theory. They were going to accelerate beams of protons at very nearly the speed of light. The beams would smash particles together, creating an unbelievable burst of energy. “Bang! Bang! Bang!
Bang!”
Sayid had shouted, stamping his feet like a madman, nearly falling over himself with exhilaration. In fact, he’d rabbited on for days about it. Drove Max crazy. Now Max wished he’d listened more attentively.

Fauvre tapped the map. “Those scientists are attempting to find out how this universe came about. They want to determine when the known forces of nature were born—one trillionth of a second after the moment of creation,” Fauvre told him. “It makes sense. Zabala once spent months in those mountains.”

Max’s gaze stayed locked on Lake Geneva. Suppose, just suppose, every single thing he had discovered was true? A
disaster striking that area would cause death and destruction on a vast scale.

“The particle accelerator. Sophie must be taking the pendant to someone there,” Max said. “But when she delivers it and they discover it’s worthless …”

He didn’t say anything more. Fauvre’s stricken face reflected his own. Sophie would die.

Zabala had given them the date and time of the catastrophe, and now Max knew where it was supposed to happen: the French-Swiss border at 11:34 a.m. on March 8.

Their stunned silence was broken by Abdullah barging into the room, gesturing with Peaches’s photo. “That pattern on her ski suit, it can be many things.” And then he smiled. “But two things for sure it is!” He put a couple of printouts on the desk. “This is a photograph of chain lightning. See, it is like a piece of coral in the night sky. And this”—he shifted the other sheet into view—“this is the corporate logo of Perun Industries.”

“Lightning,” Max said, realization stabbing him, “brings light… 
Lux Ferre …
”

“What? Zabala used those words in one of his letters …,” Fauvre said, scrabbling among Zabala’s documents. “Here!” He held up a crumpled sheet of torn paper.
“Lux Ferre
. This is what he feared! He says so. It made no sense to me.”

“They were clues,” Max said. “What sort of company is it?”

“Oil and gas. The exploration and commercial rights were sold years ago, but the man who owned Perun kept the name. There are no shareholders. It is a private company worth billions. It would appear the man became a recluse. His
name is Fedir Tishenko, a Ukrainian. And he lives somewhere in Switzerland.”

Max knew he had found his enemy.

And Fauvre was correct—Zabala
had
given him the key word. He’d shouted it moments before he died.

Lucifer.

Sayid. Where are you?

L-U-C-I-F-E-R.

The key.

Fedir Tishenko massaged aloe vera cream into his scaly skin. Climbers used moisturizer because altitude and wind would parch their faces, but for Tishenko it had been a daily ritual since the lightning god had struck him. Small pieces of dead skin would peel away under his fingertips, and his hairless body was like that of a reptile.

Was it the cruel hand of nature that created monsters, or were they born? He did not care. Society had rejected most of those who worked for him. Either out of gratitude or out of fear, they did his bidding. Loyalty was bought one way or another. The core group of scientists, though, were his fellow outcasts. Some had a physical disability; others had experienced uncaring, almost cruel treatment because of their mental state. Each one driven into his own hell of desperate loneliness, all had wanted a better, fairer life, and they had found their champion in Fedir Tishenko. Only he among
them had the driving ambition and desire for immortality, and the money to achieve it. He had offered them the chance to strike back at an uncaring world. Tishenko would harness the awesome power of the universe in a shattering moment of light and fire, the intensity of which had not been seen since the moment of creation.

Tishenko was going to create a new life form, so it was only to be expected that many others would have to die in order for his ambition to be achieved. He was no raving lunatic twisted with hatred, planning to commit wanton acts of genocide—he was chosen.

As far as anyone outside his group of scientists was concerned, Fedir Tishenko was investing everything he owned to research and create an alternative energy source, much needed by a wounded world. So Angelo Farentino, in all his ignorance, standing in the room and telling him of the enormous disaster that might befall vast tracts of Europe if he went ahead with his project, had no bearing on his plan.

“So the connection between Max Gordon and Zabala is purely coincidental?” Tishenko asked as he peeled another layer of skin from his cheekbone.

“Yes!” Did this madman not understand his real discovery—the disaster about to befall them at Tishenko’s own hand? This fool was going to kill them all.

Tishenko nodded. Neither the boy’s father nor his scientific friends at the environment agencies were involved. Good. The boy’s presence was a fluke—but he had information that Tishenko needed. Fate had put Max Gordon in the path of a cosmic train, and he would die. Yet he had proved impossible to stop so far. He had survived an
avalanche, escaped Tishenko’s hunters, avoided capture by the police and another attack at d’Abbadie’s château. He had fled with Zabala’s secret and survived the backstreets of Marrakech. Of the attack on the animal sanctuary there had been no word. Failure, once again, had to be the outcome of that operation. Perhaps Max Gordon was charmed, protected by a supernatural force.

It did not matter—only Tishenko himself was the Chosen One.

“When I was a teenager,” Tishenko said as he poured a tall glass of mountain water, “I was traveling through Kraminsk, a small town that has two bridges over its river. I and the men, my
vucari
, traveled across the second bridge, which was virtually deserted. Then, Angelo, I heard cries and screams. A small child had fallen into the river from the bridge upstream. It was cold, violent water, so the girl was helpless, a rag doll at the mercy of the current. I am not afraid of anything, so I jumped in and saved the child.”

Farentino stayed silent.

“I pull the child out. She is alive. I get back to the bridge and the people cheer in their happiness and excitement at this heroic act. I wanted no credit. I asked for no applause. I desired only to save an innocent child. But then I get closer to the crowd, they see me and how I look. Smiles turn to revulsion, then hatred and fear. The hero had become a monster. It is a cruel world, Angelo, do you not agree?”

Farentino nodded. Tishenko’s question did not demand an answer.

“So I threw the child from the bridge back into those terrifying waters and she died.”

“What?” Farentino whispered.

“Prejudice killed that child. Not me.”

“You haven’t heard what I’ve been telling you! This isn’t about one child dying, this is about a massive rupture in the Earth’s surface that will kill thousands. It will kill us.”

Tishenko pressed his remote handset and the screen flared with a three-dimensional view of the mountain ranges surrounding them. Crisscrossing lines divided the picture, and three distinct grid patterns ran out from his base, like torn edges of paper, through glaciers, towns, Lake Geneva and the heart of Europe.

The slash that was Tishenko’s mouth widened into a travesty of a smile.

“Not thousands, it will kill hundreds of thousands. And in twenty-four hours the devastation will begin and a new world will be created.”

A wave of nausea surged from Farentino’s stomach. No one could stop this madman.

Tishenko nodded to someone behind Farentino. Before Farentino could turn, two of Tishenko’s security men grab bed him so tightly the pain shot through his arms into his shoulders.

“You will not be a part of our new creation, Angelo. You have nothing to contribute. Your gene pool is as empty as my glass,” Tishenko said, turning his glass upside down.

“Someone will know what you’re doing! There’s someone out there who will find out!” Farentino screamed, moments before the strong-arm men threw him down a flight of stairs. He landed hard, his face battered by the impact, his ribs seared by pain. He did not hear Tishenko’s final words to him.

“It will make no difference. No one can touch us now. It has almost begun.”

Abdullah’s man pumped diesel into an old pickup. Fauvre had got Abdullah to use his contacts and arrange a flight out of Morocco and into Switzerland for Max; French airports might have him posted on their wanted list.

Abdullah’s Land Cruiser had been found abandoned near the coast. Sophie had caught the hydrofoil ferry to mainland Spain, and from there a fast train through Europe. She had a twelve-hour start, but Max could get there before her. And do what? Fauvre had pushed an envelope stuffed with cash into his hands.

“You tell her if it’s money she wants, then she can have it. Tell her the pendant is worthless. Tell her everything. Yes?”

Max nodded. He didn’t think Sophie’s problem was only about money, but maybe it would buy her off and convince her to stay away from Peaches and the company she kept.

“I’m not responsible for what she does,” Max said. “She’s the one who’s caught up in this whole thing. I’ve got to try and find a way of stopping this Tishenko bloke.”

“There are people at CERN I can talk to. I will try and convince them that they should stop all experiments and research for at least forty-eight hours. In this day and age, if I warn them of a possible terrorist attack, they will close down the whole of Switzerland. Max, I do not want my daughter to spend the rest of her life in prison. If she is caught by the authorities I will not be able to save her.”

“And what about me?” Max said.

“You can’t stop any of this. You cannot. Accept it. Give the money to Sophie and then turn yourself in to the authorities. I will speak on your behalf. Then, perhaps, they will believe you and conduct a thorough search of the area. Leave it to the professionals, Max. There is no time left.”

Max was packed and changed. He was going from the desert to the snow. Once he got off that plane he’d be back into winter. He was ready.

Now all he had to do was say good-bye.

Max stood in front of Aladfar. The caged tiger lay asleep next to the bars. His tufted ear twitched; his tail thumped on the ground.

Aladfar woke up and lazily turned his gaze on Max. Why did the boy’s eyes look into his own? The tiger edged away cautiously. Human beings were unpredictable, but he recognized this one, knew of the strange sensory vibration that passed between them. The boy showed no fear. The tiger remembered the previous night. It had been good to be free again. But he had let this boy command him. Those instincts confused him.