Farentino’s words captured Max. He’d left his escape too late. The platform eased down and four men came into view, each leveling a machine pistol. There was nowhere to run, but Angelo had stunned him and momentarily taken the fight out of him. Max’s mother had died in the Central American rain forest during a research trip when he was eleven. Maybe Farentino was playing games, saying anything to get Max’s help and escape.
Tishenko’s guards kept a firm grip on him as the hoist climbed upwards. Max stayed alert, searching for anything that might come to his aid when he escaped, because escape he would-he needed to be certain Angelo Farentino wasn’t lying.
Max figured the hoist was a crude lift mechanism used only for these lower levels. Tunnels hewn from the rock face went off in different directions on each floor they passed. Generators, power plants and general storage would be down here.
The hoist stopped and the men pushed him off the platform, across a more cared-for area and into a sleek, modern lift. Moments later Fedir Tishenko turned to face him when the express lift’s doors opened. Max’s stomach lurched. A stocky man with skin like a lizard’s looked at him. Half his face was covered in hair as dense as fur. It was fur, Max realized, trimmed close to the puckered skin. Max kept his reaction under control.
An armed guard stood over Sharkface. Max hadn’t seen the sky in hours, but now he looked through the massive window cut in the rock face. This must be three thousand meters high. A blue velvet sky shimmered with stars. You could almost reach out and take a handful, but what held Max’s attention was the cloud base a thousand or more meters below. The black carpet would cut out the night if he were on the ground, but from up here it swirled, in a conflicting tide, and small lightning flashes ricocheted through the dense cover.
Tishenko saw Max’s fascination. “That is a damp firework display compared to the apocalyptic event that will take place in only a few hours. My name is Fedir Tishenko. Where is Zabala’s stone?” He tossed the useless pendant at Max.
So, Max realized, Sharkface had landed himself in it.
“Where is my friend?” Max said, daring to bluff confidently.
“He is dead.”
No way. Max wasn’t going to accept that Sayid was dead until he saw his body. This monster was trying to scare him. Max didn’t show his emotions. “That’s a pity. He had the stone.”
“Oh, brave try, young Mr. Gordon. You have dogged my ambitions for some time now. We searched the boy, he had nothing. You, however, are the kind of threat I could make no allowances for in my plans. You have it. You must. Why else are you here, other than to make a futile attempt at stopping me.”
“I’m here for my friend.”
“But you did not know he was here until a few hours ago. Who told you?”
“No one,” Max lied. He looked at Sharkface. “I saw your thug here kill Peaches.”
“Why am I not surprised to hear that? Ruthless ambition can do strange things to a person. And then?”
“I followed him here.”
“Liar! No one followed me! I swear it!” Sharkface yelled, desperate for his life.
Max smiled. “You’re rubbish, mate. I could have followed you with my eyes closed in the middle of the night. You led me right here. I found Bobby Morrell’s van, and my friend left a clue there for me.”
Max was looking around, taking in as much as he could. There were big screens dotted around the room. Satellite pictures from space. Gathering storms across the Atlantic. Cold-weather, low-pressure fronts projected across Europe and a swirling, snakelike coil of clouds twisting towards the Alps. That was the expected monster of a storm. Hours away.
Max tightened his stomach muscles and faced the disfigured man. “Your people have been so careless it’s downright sloppy. If you think you’re going to rule the world or whatever insane scheme you’ve got planned, you should hire better staff.”
There was a stunned silence. And then Fedir Tishenko did something he could not remember ever doing before-he laughed.
“All right, you have courage. And you did not cringe when you saw my face. I like that. I am going to show you something.” He curled his finger, beckoning Max to him.
Max stepped farther into the room, which angled away. A CGI map of Europe filled the wall. It was easy for Max to see exactly where he was. Red veins crisscrossed the map.
“You know what this is? What those lines are?” Tishenko said.
Max didn’t, but it wasn’t difficult to guess. “Telluric currents.”
“Very good,” Tishenko acknowledged. “Watch.”
Tishenko pressed a button, and an electronic clock appeared in one corner and the hours and minutes spun fast-forward. The projected path of the storm centered over Lake Geneva, and at the Citadel mountain a huge graphic flash appeared-a rod of golden light shafted into the three-dimensional mountain, and a shock wave of energy rippled downwards and out along the veins. Surrounding mountains crumpled, the lake burst like a water-filled balloon and every red line on the map glowed. It was as if the sun had exploded belowground. A black swathe of destruction collapsed a path across Europe.
It was, Max realized, the complete and utter devastation of a huge area. That was a shock he could not disguise.
“Now I see you understand. Zabala knew of the geophysical danger here. Switzerland is fragile, and his original prediction almost came true twenty-odd years ago. But they reinforced the tunnels at the nuclear research center-then they thought they were safe. And Zabala was ridiculed. I offered them billions of dollars to include my regeneration proposal, but the governments involved did not dare accept my challenge.”
“So all of this is about revenge and death on a big scale?” Max said.
“No. This is about revenge and life on a gargantuan scale. Do you understand metamorphosis? The changing of man into beast?”
Max could only nod, his own dark world of shapeshifting still a mystery to him.
Tishenko pointed a remote control at the far wall. It was merely a screen. Shuttered steel slid to one side. He gestured with pride and stepped onto a narrow gangway. Max had never before seen anything like the huge shimmering light that lay a hundred meters or more below them. It was a spiked crystal. It must have measured twenty meters across and thirty high. Its jagged arms were like miniature missiles pointing outwards at every angle.
“Geothermal water in the mountain created this. I discovered it when I first started tunneling. Within the crystal is life.”
Max looked down. Copper-colored conduits, each ten meters thick, locked the crystal into steel girders twice its size, securing it to the rock face. Behind that, hundreds of meters beyond the vast cathedral-sized tunnel, was what appeared to be a gigantic fan. It was so enormous that it filled the height of the room. Max thought it looked like a huge generator whose blades would feed power into, and light up, the crystal.
“Many years ago the Japanese perfected a technique of storing DNA in a crystal, using liquid nitrogen. They froze every cell into deep hibernation. And then the experiment was stopped. They were afraid of what life form they might create. But I am not.”
Tishenko stepped closer. Max curled his toes in his trainers, imagining he was gripping the floor to stop himself from backing away.
“Regeneration. I found people like me, scorned and rejected by our so-called civilized society. I found the emotionally wounded, and those who struggled to keep the demons in their minds at bay, and those whose bodies were malformed, whose twisted limbs caused fear in others but whose minds were scalpel sharp. I offered these people everything. I bought their intelligence, I secured their loyalty and I offered them a new life in the future. Just as I have decided to offer you a new life,” Tishenko said quietly, in awe of his own power.
Before Max could say anything, two of the armed men grabbed him and sat him in a chair. A white-coated man, whom Max hadn’t noticed before, stepped forward. He carried a small kidney-shaped dish and a hypodermic. Max struggled, heaved and pushed, but one man held his head in a viselike grip and two others held his arms and legs down in the chair. The needle slipped into the vein in the crook of Max’s arm and the white-coated man drew a vial of blood. A small Band-Aid was carefully placed over the puncture wound.
Tishenko nodded and the men stepped away. Max kicked the chair across the room, wanting to back into a corner to defend himself.
“Death is only a bridge between two worlds. Look what I offer you,” Tishenko said.
He slid back a frosted-glass door. Inside was a cabinet with a couple dozen vials of amber liquid.
“Your blood will be mixed with that of one of the animals whose DNA we have stored-and then placed deep inside that crystal. The scientists at CERN believe their particle accelerator can find that moment, that fraction of a second after this world was created. At dawn tomorrow my lightning charge will blast through my own particle accelerator, and its design is more powerful. I will re-create creation. Not a microsecond afterwards, but the exact moment. And life will, years from now, grow from that crystal. Charged with power, it will evolve man and beast. Intelligence and strength that will determine a new world species. Symbiogenesis: it is the creation of a new form of life through the merging of different species.” Tishenko smiled. “I have built the new Noah’s Ark.”
“I’ve seen supermarket carts with a wheel missing that are more stable than you,” Max said, unable to hide his disbelief. “You’re certifiable.”
Tishenko’s insanity was all the more frightening because of the power he wielded and the resources at his command. It would make no difference if a warning had reached CERN. Once Tishenko triggered that power, it would rupture and tear apart the nuclear research facility and everything that lay beyond it.
Tishenko looked with pity at the boy who had backed into a corner, crouching, as if ready to fight for his life.
“You will die, Max, before I unleash the storm. You will be dead by then. I promise you.”
Sayid had to be found. And Angelo Farentino had given him another reason to survive-to discover the truth about his mother’s death.
Max knew he had no chance unless there was more time. Never give up.
“You’ve got the wrong time for your big bang theory,” he said.
“And why do you say that?” Tishenko asked carefully.
“Because I have seen Zabala’s stone and the alignment of the planets-that’s what you’re looking for, isn’t it? Well, that’s all supposed to happen at twenty-six minutes to twelve tomorrow morning.”
“And you think I am going to believe you?”
“You have to. I have the stone.”
Max knew he had to hand over that last vital piece of Zabala’s prediction, because without the extra few hours’ grace he had no time to make a plan.
Tishenko shuddered. An involuntary ripple of expectation. At last; the exact moment for his ambitions to be realized.
He held out his crinkled hand.
From where Corentin and Thierry sat, the distant mountains looked more formidable than they had ever seen them. The lightning flashes were fairly constant now, and the thunder reverberated across the valleys. Sophie had begged them at the hospital to help Max. If they didn’t there’d be destruction on a massive scale. And Max was trying to save his friend. Corentin and Thierry would do that for each other, wouldn’t they?
Corentin had phoned an old friend, a former Legionnaire who now worked in the French DGSE, the Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure, their secret service. Corentin’s urgency ripped through the usual formalities. Governments were frightened now. Pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fit more neatly. Intelligence communities and the French police were liaising, scientists were forced to look at a possible disaster scenario, and while no one could actually agree and put a plan together, Corentin and Thierry had made their own.
A flurry of sleet danced around the car. Corentin opened the trunk and hauled out two huge holdalls. Each man pulled out the equipment he needed: ropes, climbing gear, two Heckler amp; Koch machine pistols with laser sights, extra clips of ammunition, grenades, flares, two-way radios, bulletproof vests and night-vision goggles. Thierry led the way. They couldn’t destroy the obstacles in their path-that would warn Tishenko’s people-so, like Max, they had to find another way in. Corentin’s contact had told him about the vucari. Private armies were one thing, but blokes who thought they were so special they called themselves wolf men needed a lesson in reality. It would take time, but Corentin and Thierry would climb round, find a way inside the mountain and engage the enemy. That had a nice ring to it.
That felt good.
Max had cut the stone out of his trainer’s heel, and within minutes it was confirmed that this was indeed the vital, final part of Zabala’s secret.
“And those numbers etched into the crystal?” Tishenko had demanded.
Max could only shake his head. “I’ve no idea. Part of some code. But I don’t know what.”
The truth of Max’s ignorance convinced Tishenko. Numbers meant nothing now-the time was what mattered.
He gestured to his men and Sharkface was pulled to his feet. “I shall give one of you the opportunity to die quickly-the other will be torn apart by wolves.”
A gaping hole led out onto a snowfield. Churning clouds muscled each other aside as they rolled across crevasses and peaks. The cold air bit into Max’s face, but it wasn’t the chill wind that made him shudder.
Max and Sharkface stood on a steel grid. A pack of about twenty wolves yelped and snarled five meters below their feet. These animals had been deliberately starved.
“You two seem destined to fight each other,” Tishenko said.
He gestured to his men, who grabbed Max and Sharkface. They attached a stainless-steel clamp to Max’s left wrist and another to Sharkface’s right. Two meters of chain joined them. Max had been chained to Aladfar, but this boy was a far more dangerous beast.
“You have ten minutes to run before my wolves and I give chase. Two kilometers away, on the edge of this escarpment, you will find two ice axes. If you live that long, I expect one of you to kill the other, and then I, or my wolves, will kill the survivor.” Tishenko checked his watch. “I suggest you start running.”
Max leapt forward, Sharkface half a second behind him.
They ran through hardened snow covered by a few centimeters of powder. The two boys were dependent on each other at least until they found those ice axes-after that, Max didn’t even want to think about.
Despite the darkness there was enough light to see the sweeping valley and the mountain’s jagged claws of bare rock reaching down into the ghostly white. Max took a handful of the swaying chain, tightening it, making it easier to run. After a moment Sharkface did the same. Max glanced at him. Spittle flecked away from the boy’s jagged mouth. Was Sharkface fit and strong enough to keep this pace going for a couple of kilometers?
It was almost as though Sharkface had heard Max’s thoughts.
“I’ll kill you, Max. I’m not ending up as wolf bait. You’d better keep up.”
“You worry about yourself!” Max said, breathing hard, the sweat already clammy under his clothes.
“He’ll come out of the sky. It’s how he hunts. We have to keep watch,” Sharkface grunted.
Max looked over his shoulder. Clouds obscured just about everything except the lower thousand meters or so of the Citadel. A dull light flickered from the cavelike hole they had left, but a couple of hundred meters higher a broad tongue of shiny dark rock stuck out, from where another light glowed within the mountain. Max saw a giant bat flutter, drop momentarily, then rise and level out. It was a black-winged paraglider.
Max stumbled and fell. Sharkface went down with him. The snow felt like sandpaper as he piled in. Sharkface was on his feet in an instant, grabbing Max by the front of his jacket, shaking him angrily as he hauled him to his feet.
“Get up, you fool! Every second counts!”
Max shoved his opponent’s arm away. “Keep your hands to yourself!”
They glared at each other, tightened the chain again and ran on-desperation powering them forwards. A lone wolf cry called the pack to the hunt-then others took up the call, their voices changing as they answered. They were loose.
The sickening realization that the wolves could soon be on them gave added strength to their legs, but now Max also knew that Sharkface was strong. He had lifted Max out of the snow with little effort. How could he beat such a strong opponent?
Their labored breathing was steady; their footfalls crunched the snow almost in unison. Tears from the cold air blurred the distant ground, yet Max’s instincts were operating at maximum. Blood pounded in his ears, but he was attuned to any shift in the wind, any unseen rocky outcrop illuminated by the lightning breaking free of the clouds.
He heard the flutter of wind against fabric and dared another glance over his shoulder. Max barely believed what he saw. The winged hunter was less than fifty meters behind and above them. Tishenko wore a wolf-skin mask. A lightning flash threw a harsh glow across him and glinted off the arrow shaft that he now held full back into his shoulder.
Max dug his heels in, yanked the chain with both hands and twisted Sharkface down into the snow. The boy grunted, surprised and shocked, a savage look on his face ready to curse Max.
The arrow thudded into the ground with a terrifying thwack at exactly the place Sharkface would have been in another two strides. Max knew every hunter aimed ahead of a moving target and his instinct had saved Sharkface’s life.
Sharkface knew it too. He nodded. Both boys were back on their feet, running full tilt-zigzagging, making themselves a difficult target. Tishenko would need to steady the paraglider, get himself into position before loosing another shaft. But the longer the boys weaved and dodged, the more ground they had to cover. And the closer the silently hunting wolves would get.
Max concentrated on their running pattern, but he could hear the ruffle of air entering the wing’s vents each time Tishenko changed course. The paraglider fluttered dully in the night air, the canopy resisting the wind. Tishenko was giving away his location. They were on a level stretch of snow, and lightning shattered the low clouds, showing them the broken landscape about half a kilometer away. Pockmarked globules of snow and ice, cracks and jagged shapes-the edge of the glacier-dangerous, unstable ground. Two hundred meters to the right of that a marker flag fluttered. The ice axes had to be there.
The mountain raked down, obscuring the valley to the left, where there was a lot of lightning activity. It danced and shuddered in a confined area, and Max could see the tops of what looked to be two towers, which attracted the creased lightning. But there was no time to consider what they might be, as Tishenko had altered course dramatically, curving the paraglider, finding a position to steady himself for the next attack.
There was no flash of lightning this time, and Max strained to hear anything that might alert him to the arrival of the next arrow. There was no warning. It came out of the darkness, a rushing, lethal whisper that lanced downwards across his face. A couple of centimeters less and it would have pierced Max through the neck and into his chest.
Sharkface’s terror was as vividly evident as Max’s. The arrow had embedded itself between them. All very well that Max had nearly died, but had he gone down, the fast-approaching wolves would have had Sharkface at their mercy. To hell with Max Gordon getting killed by Tishenko; he didn’t want to be torn apart chained to bloodied dead bait.
The ice axes were fifty meters away. If Tishenko got another shot off, it was likely to be third time lucky. For him.
Max and Sharkface saw the ice axes at the same time. Their curved, serrated picks wedged into compacted snow, the adze-the flat rear blade-protruded, catching slivers of light from the diffused lightning in the clouds. The axes were the same length, each long enough to stand from ankle to thigh, with a pointed end at the base of the rubber grip. Max and Sharkface yanked them free.
The wolves were eighty meters away, splitting into smaller packs. These highly intelligent and courageous hunters would not be frightened by two teenage boys carrying ice axes.
“Go left!” Max yelled, tugging the chain so that they veered sharply towards the rising ground.
Tishenko needed a headwind to keep his momentum going. There were no thermals to catch; this was a cold night in turbulent conditions. No sane man would be up there in the sky now, but Tishenko must have extremely good equipment to manage it, perhaps even specially designed military gear. Whatever it was, Max thought he knew how to stop him.
The thunderstorm buffeted the far mountains, but the wind was fairly constant in this valley-that was how Tishenko could fly so accurately-but where the ridge’s gnarled rock formations obscured the distance, the air would be turbulent, and this wind shear was something all pilots dreaded. A rolling vortex of wind can create high-speed surges. Even Tishenko could not control his paraglider in those conditions.
It was the uneven ground and crevasses that slowed the wolves, and as Max and Sharkface leapt in unison across one of the narrower gaps Max felt the wind shift. Snow powder gusted and swirled.
“Keep going! Jump the gaps!” Max shouted, seeing that a pack of several wolves had found its way across the face of the slope and was coming at them from a different direction.
Where was the winged hunter?
“Check out Tishenko!” Max yelled as he took in as much of the ground as he could.
Sharkface looked back. Max tightened the chain, keeping it as taut as possible, controlling their run, while the other boy took his eyes off the way forward.
Tishenko watched the two boys-saw the ragged teeth in their usual snarl as the boy looked up towards him. Max Gordon was cleverer than he had thought. He had obviously sensed the place of danger for the paraglider. With the growling clouds several hundred meters above his head and the funneled wind across that rock face, Tishenko could not control the big wing in any effective manner. Turbulent air like that would collapse the paraglider now buffeting above his head. And then he would be the one lying injured on the glacier, waiting for the wolves. This was only sport, he told himself. More serious considerations needed his attention. Tishenko would return to the mountain and prepare himself to harness this threatening storm and bring the greatest power in the heavens down to earth.
Max Gordon had survived this far. He felt a grudging admiration for the teenager. But the wolves would finish the job, and he doubted Max could beat the stronger Sharkface.
Tishenko did not care who died first. In a few hours it would all be over anyway. He trimmed the wing and turned away from the doomed boys.
“He’s gone!” Sharkface said.
They were still running, but now they were being cut off by two different packs of wolves and, with the storm’s dancing shadows, the light played tricks on their eyes. Max was uncertain whether the shapes he saw across the icefield were wolves or not.
“Hold it!” he said.
Desperation could finish them off if they didn’t think their way out of the encircling wolf packs. There was a low whimpering, as if the predators were communicating with each other. Max loved wolves and had always admired them; he knew they seldom attacked humans, but this was the cold reality of being face to face with a starving pack kept by a madman who had found ways of controlling them.
Max tried to identify the alpha male and female. The alpha pair would control and direct the wolves’ behavior. The attack would come-but which wolf would be the one to trigger it?
The ground they were on was like a spit of land. They were boxed in on three sides by wolves. Beyond them was another crevasse. Max tugged at the chain, edging them closer to the void.
It was about the size of the battered old sofa in the common room at Dartmoor High. It was nothing. But with this gaping drop into blackness it was as wide as the Grand Canyon. And the ground was icy underfoot. They would have to jump that space together. If either lost his footing …
“We have to jump this and we have to get it right.”
“Too far!” Sharkface said, eyeing the gap.
“You think there’s a choice? We need a run at it,” Max said, turning to face the wolves, which had crept closer.
Max and Sharkface needed several meters to gather momentum, and the wolves were twenty meters away and closing. How many could they kill if they were rushed? Max doubted they would manage even one or two. Wolves pull their prey down; they go for the throat, and no sooner are their victims on the ground than they start to eat. And these wolves were hungry.
There was a sudden snarling fury. One of the subordinate males had made a run for them and a big male had lunged, bitten and barged the impertinent youngster. Its yelps and body language showed immediate submission. There it was, Max realized-the alpha male. Its ears were up, its tail was held high and its eyes gazed fearlessly at the two boys.
The pack merged into a semicircle, knowing it had run its prey to ground. Now it was only a matter of who went in for the kill first. Max locked eyes with the big wolf, raised his ice axe like a trophy and howled as loudly as he could. He’d made his profile bigger and his presence known in no uncertain terms. The wolves faltered. Even Sharkface felt his blood chill at the sound of Max’s howl.
“Now!” Max said.
They turned and sprinted for the crevasse. The wolves surged forward. Max’s foot hit the rim first, Sharkface, heavier and slightly slower, right behind him. Max bicycled his legs, like doing a long-jump on sports day. As his feet hit the far side, he threw himself down and slammed the ice axe into the ground. No sooner had he secured a firm grip than the chain yanked his arm backwards. He twisted, crying out in pain as his shoulder wrenched. Sharkface screamed. He hadn’t made the gap and had only managed to snag his ice axe on the edge.
“Help me! Help me! Hurry!”
Max dug his heels against a lump of ice, twisted his body and pulled his left arm towards his chest, taking the strain of most of Sharkface’s weight. The wolves snuffled and growled on the far edge, desperate to reach their prey, but they were helpless as they faced the gap.
Sharkface could be seen just below the rim, his chained right hand clawing at the snow, the other through the axe’s wrist loop. Max shifted the strain of holding him to his legs, feeling the muscles in his thighs tighten. He held Sharkface, but now he was facing the wolves. He could smell their breath, and it seemed as though their snarling jaws could still reach him.
Were it not for the backbreaking strain, he’d have taunted them, laughing in their faces, but if he didn’t get Sharkface off that rim the ice could give way and there’d never be the sound of laughter again.
Max found firmer footing and brought his own ice axe free of the ground. Sharkface had managed to drag himself a little higher, but Max could see the sweat running off his face. This was ridiculous. He was trying to save the life of a boy who, the moment he was rescued, would try and kill him. Why didn’t he just slam the ice axe down onto the chain and sever it? He raised his arm and a shiver of lightning caught the blade.
Sharkface wasn’t going to get a free ride.
“Where’s my friend? What did Tishenko do with him?”
“Go to hell!” Sharkface grimaced.
“After you!” Max yelled, and dipped his shoulder as if to strike.
“No! Wait! All right! The tunnel above the cages. He’s got him there. I swear it!”
Max realized he must have been close to Sayid when Angelo Farentino had spoken those barbed words about his mum.
“All right. You listen to me. I don’t know if these wolves are hungry enough to risk that jump, but if we keep our heads and we work together, we can get back to the mountain and stop Tishenko. You understand? You don’t owe him any favors.”
Sharkface nodded. How much longer could Max bear his weight?
Max pushed his ice axe down towards Sharkface, who grabbed it with his chained hand. Now they had an even purchase, and Max backed away, muscles straining as he pulled the floundering boy from the brink. Sharkface was clear.
The exertion took its toll. Both slumped to the ice. The wolves ran backwards and forwards, trying to find a way of reaching them, but the big male stood still amid the scurrying. Max was on all fours and gazed past Sharkface to the wolf. A silent understanding, which Max could not have explained, bridged the void. The alpha male turned and loped away. Momentarily confused, the wolves seemed uncertain what to do, but then they too followed him. After fifty meters the pack’s leader turned his head, looked back at Max, raised his head and howled. The other wolves took up the cry. For a second it reminded Max of the siren at les Larmes des Anges.
A warning.
Sharkface attacked.