He looked behind him only to see the first man duck down in the same way, and then the other followed suit. They were both through and still on his tail, and by the way they had handled the branch obstructing the path it looked like they had spent considerably longer on the slopes than he had.
“What’s the fastest way down?”
“Follow me…”
Harry watched as Baupin made a sharp right turn and screeched across the ice toward what looked like another massive gorge in the side of the glacier. A moment later he saw something he could hardly believe — they were now racing toward a gaping black hole at the end of the ski run.
“What the hell?”
“A glacier tunnel!” Baupin called back.
They flew into the dark ice-blue void with the hope that their pursuers would give up but they both raced in after them, guns raised.
“Looks like this is our last chance,” Harry said. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“If you can keep up with me, you will find out.”
The young woman tied her hair back and sighed as she loaded the reblochon cheese casserole onto the serving trolley and wheeled it carefully out of the kitchens. Also on board was a bottle of Moët & Chandon Champagne in an ice bucket and two chilled Champagne flutes.
Not to mention a special surprise for the guests in Room 37.
She pushed the trolley into the elevator and after an awkward greeting with an elderly lady who was holding a dyed-pink Bichon Frise in her arms, she hit the button for the third floor and slowly the elevator began its journey upwards.
The bell pinged and she pushed the trolley out into the corridor. She didn’t have to look which way to go — she knew exactly where her destination was, and exactly what to do when she got there. She had done this more times than she cared to remember.
At least it was quiet, she considered. It was so much more stressful when there were people hanging around and blundering in and out of their rooms, dropping their keys and losing their way to the elevators.
She tapped on the door and waited for a reply.
“But we never ordered any of this,” the man said. His French was good, but he spoke with a Swiss-German accent. A few moments after his protests, a stunningly beautiful woman walked into view, casually holding a miniature bottle of gin in her hand. She had dark brown hair and she spoke with an American accent. She said, “What the hell’s going on, Nikky?”
“Apparently one of us ordered this cheese casserole.”
“Well, don’t look at me, Kiki,” she said. “If I ate that I’d put on about two hundred pounds.”
“Perhaps I made a mistake,” the young woman said. “Perhaps you ordered this instead?” As she spoke, she whipped out a matte black automatic pistol and aimed it in the center of the Swiss man’s face. “Hands up.”
“Holy Crap,” Zoey said.
THIRTY-THREE
The incredible ice tunnel swallowed Harry Bane and he was sucked down into a new dangerous world he had never imagined before. He thought that between his years in the Pathfinders and MI6 he had seen everything, but as he raced through the tunnel deep inside the glacier he realized he had been wrong. He had never seen anything like it before — it was beautiful, awesome and lethal all at the same time.
He had seen a short film once of people skiing through the Sölden Tunnel in Austria but that was purposely carved into the glacier, reinforced and lit with electric lights, whereas this was an enormous tunnel in the glacier ice, hewn by nature countless millennia ago.
Up ahead, Baupin leaped over a deep crevasse in the tunnel floor and a second later Harry followed him, glancing down to see the deep, black crack twisting down in the ice below him. It looked like it led to Hades itself.
Following Baupin, he prepared to take a sharp right bend deep inside the ancient ice. His skis scratched hard in the ice as he took the corner, going up against the ice wall on his left for a few seconds as the killers raced up behind them.
Without warning, Baupin spun around and fired over Harry’s head at the pursuers, striking one in the chest and killing him instantly. He dropped to the glacier tunnel floor and smashed into ice as hard as concrete. With the second man now dead, that left only one to go, but he was gaining fast, and as relentless as the devil in his pursuit of them.
“What next?” Harry called out, his voice echoing off the cold, blue walls of the glacier tunnel.
“The exit is just ahead of us,” Baupin yelled back. “When we get out there is a small area of woodland. We can try and lose him in the trees.”
Great, Harry thought — skiing at over a hundred miles per hour through an alpine forest, but before he had time to worry about if his skiing skills were enough to handle it, they burst out of the glacier tunnel.
He squinted hard as they raced from the subdued blues of the ice’s interior and out once again into the bright sun and snow of the slopes. The cold air stung his cheeks as he zoomed down the slope, speeding ever closer to the bottom of the valley.
He heard the crack of a gun, and turned to see that the final assassin had opened fire on him once again. Another bullet traced past his head and buried itself in the trunk of a pine tree less than a foot to his right. The impact sent an explosion of snow and wood chips bursting into the air in front of him.
He cursed as the shower of snow and splinters sprayed all over his face, but thankfully was kept out of his eyes by the ski goggles. It wasn’t so long ago that something like getting shot at on a ski slope was part of his daily life, but that was then and this was now. Now he wanted a quieter life. His idea of excitement these days was beating the house and settling down in a leather chair with a glass of whisky and a crackling fire.
Not this. This was exhausting, uncomfortable and worst of all dangerous. The armed man a few hundred yards behind him only had to get lucky once and he’d have a bullet hole in his head. He’d drop off the path like a downed caribou and come to rest in a snowy unmarked grave.
And he didn’t even know if he could trust any of these people. Who was Andrej Liška? Who were Alain Baupin, Niko Weber and Zoey Conway? All of them strangers — even Lucia.
And yet there was something about the thrill of the chase that he couldn’t resist. Something about the way the Spanish woman had looked at him when she’d asked for his help. Helping people in danger was part of his nature, and he knew no matter how many doubts he had, he could never turn his back on someone who needed his help.
Ahead of him, Baupin made another heroic turn in the run, and skiing backwards at high-speed, he raised the SIG into the aim, right at Harry’s head and screamed for him to duck.
Wide-eyed with surprise and still skiing at speed along the narrow forest path, the Englishman brought his ski poles up into his body and crouched down on his haunches, enabling Baupin to get a clear shot of the final assassin.
The gun cracked in the freezing, alpine air and echoed off a thousand pine trunks all dusted with fresh snow, and Baupin turned around without a word and continued down the narrow path.
Harry glanced over his shoulder to see the third assassin silently clutching his throat in terror. Baupin’s shot had been good again, and now the man lost control and skidded off the path before slamming into the trunk of a pine tree at high speed. There was a deep thudding noise and a cracking sound as his ribs shattered and then he spun wildly off into the gloom of the forest.
“Good job,” Harry yelled, but Baupin was too far ahead to hear.
He was getting tired now, and the hard work of skiing at speed was taking its toll. He tried to increase his speed one final time for the final run to the bottom of the valley when he heard a gunshot and saw Baupin spin around like a ragdoll and leave the path at high speed. For a second, Harry thought the Frenchman was going to share the same fate as the final assassin and slam into one of the trees, but instead he tumbled into a small clearing, coming to a stop at the far edge.