He was jostled again, which snapped him out of his reverie. He stepped aside to let a party of skiers pass, then turned to the restaurant which was directly behind the cable car station. She was sitting by the window drinking coffee. Was it a trap? He had been toying with the idea ever since he began tailing her from the hotel. It was possible.
Not that it bothered him, as long as he got her first. He entered the restaurant and bought a cup of coffee from the self-service counter, then sat down at a table within sight of the entrance. He was sure she hadn’t recognized him. He looked like any other skier. He took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. There was only one cigarette left in it.
The condemned man’s last smoke. He found the analogy amusing. He lit the cigarette, then sat back in the chair to wait.
He was right. She hadn’t noticed him. Not that she was paying much attention to her fellow patrons. She was watching the beginners struggling to keep their balance on the novice slopes. Her introduction to the slopes had been at the age of four when her parents had taken her to Innsbruck on holiday. By the time she was fifteen she was already skiing the black runs, areas for expert skiers only. She loved the sport. It gave her a sense of freedom. And the more dangerous the black run, the more exhilarating it was for her. Whitlock was a good skier. And so was Kolchinsky, which had surprised her. He didn’t seem the type. Graham was exceptionally good, which was remarkable considering that he hadn’t started skiing until he joined Delta in his mid-twenties. He skied as if he had been doing it all his life. The thought of him brought her back guiltily to the present. She was supposed to be keeping an eye out for him. She saw him straight away.
He was the only person there wearing a baseball cap. He was standing outside the restaurant rubbing his gloved hands together. She pushed the cup away from her, collected her skis, and walked to the door.
Francia slipped his hand into his pocket and his fingers curled around the P220. He had the perfect shot as she put on her skis. He held back. It would be too easy. He wanted her to know she was going to die, just as Carlo had known when he fell to his death. He took his hand off the gun as she skied away from the restaurant, heading for one of the off-piste black runs. He waited to see if she would be followed by any of her colleagues. Nobody went after her. Not that it surprised him. They were too professional to make that kind of mistake. They would wait for him to make the first move, if, in fact, it was a trap.
He stubbed out his cigarette, took his skis from the rack against the wall, and moved to the door. He snapped on the skis then propelled himself out on to the snow. He swerved sharply around the beginners group and headed towards the nearest of the black runs. The ski pole dug into the gash in his palm but he ignored the pain, it was irrelevant. By the time he reached the edge of the black run, demarcated with black poles, he could feel the blood trickling down the inside of his glove. He looked behind him. There was nobody in sight.
Perhaps it wasn’t a trap after all. He followed the lone trail in the snow. It had to be her. He came across a cluster of trees and ducked into them, slewing to a stop out of sight of the slope. If she had any babysitters, he would be ready for them. He tried to flex his hand and a sharp pain shot up his arm. He inhaled sharply. At least it wasn’t his gun hand. He unzipped his ski jacket and removed the Mini-Uzi. Then he saw a movement further up the slope. He had been right. It was a trap. He curled his finger around the trigger. A thought suddenly crossed his mind. The gunfire could not only alert her, it could also bring the police. He took his finger off the trigger. He would have to kill her colleague silently. He moved to the edge of the trees, the Mini-Uzi clenched in his hand like a club.
Graham only noticed the deviation in the tracks at the last moment. He was still slewing to a halt when Francia launched himself at him, catching him on the back of the head with the barrel of the Mini-Uzi.
Graham fell back into the snow. Francia picked up the Beretta, ejected the magazine and threw them both into the trees. He crouched beside Graham and pressed the ski pole against his throat.
‘Drop it!’
The voice startled him. He looked up slowly. Sabrina stood thirty yards in front of him, a Beretta held at arm’s length. His eyes flickered towards the trees beside her. She had been in there waiting for him.
‘I said drop it!’
Francia’s fingers tightened on the Mini-Uzi in the snow beside him. He brought the gun up in one quick movement and she flung herself sideways as he fired. The bullets ripped into the trees. She searched frantically for her Beretta which had slipped from her grasp when she had hit the ground. It was lying in the clearing. She couldn’t reach it without being hit. She scrambled to her feet and took off, zigzagging through the trees in a desperate bid to outrun him. A volley of bullets tore into the trees to her left. She couldn’t look behind her, she had to concentrate on carving between the trees. Then she reached a clearing which ended abruptly fifty yards further on with a vertical drop of twenty feet to the next slope. She dug her ski poles into the snow and launched herself down the fall line, her knees bent, her torso flexed, her pelvis thrust forward. She looked behind her.
Francia had reached the edge of the clearing. He fired. The bullets peppered the snow behind her. She tensed herself to jump. He fired again, forcing her to swerve in the second before she launched herself through the air. She landed awkwardly, overbalanced, and tumbled headlong into the snow. Francia reached the edge of the ridge before she could get up. He aimed the Mini-Uzi at her. She opened her mouth to speak. Her throat was dry. She knew she was going to die.
Francia smiled faintly and trained the Mini-Uzi on her legs. He was going to make her suffer. And he was going to enjoy it. His finger tightened on the trigger. He saw a movement out of the corner of his eye and was still turning when Graham hit him with his shoulder.
Graham’s momentum sent them both over the edge of the ridge.
Francia fired blindly as he fell. He hit the snow first. Graham landed within a few feet of him. They both lay face down in the snow. Neither of them moved. Sabrina grabbed the fallen Mini-Uzi and turned Francia over. She recoiled in horror. He had been impaled on one of his own ski poles. It jutted grotesquely from his stomach, the blood soaking the front of his jacket. She turned to Graham and turned him over on to his back. There was no blood. The bullets had missed him.
‘Mike?’ she said, shaking his shoulder. ‘Mike, are you okay?’
He opened one eye, then the other.
‘I feel like I’ve been sacked by “The Refrigerator”.’
She smiled with relief.
‘Can’t you talk about anything but football?’
‘How about baseball?’ He eased himself into a sitting position and looked across at Francia. He screwed up his face.
‘Rather him than me.’
‘Thanks, Mike,’ she said softly.
‘Yeah, sure,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders.
They heard the sound of the engine seconds before the police helicopter came into view. Graham sighed deeply, then picked up one of his red ski poles and began to wave it above his head to catch the pilot’s attention.
New York was swathed in sunlight. Temperatures were exceptionally high for March. Not that it bothered Whitlock. He was used to the heat, having spent part of his childhood in the sultry Rift Valley region of Kenya. He stood on the balcony of his sixth-floor Manhattan apartment looking out across a packed Central Park. He was deep in thought. He had arrived back at the apartment at midnight, still disorientated by the six-hour time difference between Zürich and New York. Carmen had been there. She had returned the previous evening. She had been evasive when he questioned her on where she had been for the last five days. All she would say was that she had been staying at a hotel in the city. She had needed time alone to think about the future of their marriage. But she wouldn’t be drawn on her conclusions. This had infuriated him and he had chosen to sleep in the spare room. They had hardly spoken to each other at breakfast and she had spent most of the morning in the kitchen baking for a local charity fete. He had spent the morning on the balcony, brooding. He was at his wits’ end. How was he supposed to communicate with her when she refused to open up to him?