The Blood Lance Read online

  She left some slack in the rope as she took it in either fist. She thought he was off to her right, not directly under her, but she couldn't be sure. She couldn't risk starting to slide. If she missed him nothing would stop her. She needed to know his position, but to do that meant she must expose her own. 'Please,' she whispered, hardly recognising her own voice. 'Don't hurt me.'

  The assassin seemed to have been waiting for this and started up the pitch quickly. The moment he did, Kate had his position. With a hop she began her slide. The force of her impact let her sweep through his arms and come in hard against his legs. Once he had lost his footing, Kate looped her rope around his knees, and then rolled out from under him. She kept the rope taut and let her momentum send him into a slide. He shouted wildly, but Kate kept pulling, her own momentum failing as his built. When she finally let go of the rope his voice rose to a shriek.

  She heard his body hit the glacier three or maybe four seconds later. Then there was only the wind.

  Kate rose up on her hands and feet, calling out as she did, 'Robert!' She crawled down the ramp until she got to the ledge where she and her husband had been seated. 'ROBERT!'

  Silence answered. They hadn't killed him, she told herself. They had not come up the mountain for that! No! They had wanted to kidnap him! He was tied up, gagged. . . somewhere. He was here! He had to be here! 'ROBERT!'

  Kate slipped out along the dark ledge, but she found only two rucksacks and a pair of sleeping bags. She found a torch in one of the rucksacks and had a look about. Robert's gear was gone. She turned back, leaving the ledge and crossing the ramp. She turned the light here and there. She climbed farther, calling her husband's name again. Again, there was no answer. Kate told herself Robert was somewhere else, but even as she whispered the lie to help her endure the next few seconds, she knew there was no other place. If he were still alive he had to be here. And he was not here!

  She called his name once more, but her voice broke. Robert was gone. She dropped to her knees and covered her face.

  When she had finished with her tears Kate retrieved one of the sleeping bags and secured herself in it so she could sleep for an hour.

  She woke up with the moonrise and discovered that her body was racked with pain. It did not seem possible to move, but she knew she had better try. The moonlight brightened the area and Kate crossed back to the shelf without using her torch to search through the rucksacks for equipment. She found no crampons but there were ice axes and ropes, helmets with light, food, fire, water, and aspirin. She even found Alfredo's stove. She thought about climbing out, but she was more confident with the way down - she had taken it twice. If she got in trouble, she knew the places where she could settle and wait for rescue. She had the fire and food and clothing to survive a few days if she needed that much time.

  She made her bivouac in a patch of snow when the moon had finally set. At dawn she continued her descent, her body quivering with each movement. She found two climbers late that afternoon. 'What happened?' one of them asked, whilst they waited for a helicopter rescue.

  She shook her head, unwilling to say. The medics wanted to know as well, but Kate refused to talk. Too tired, too sore, too scared to relive it. They understood or at least thought they did.

  It was instinct that silenced her. Someone had sent those men after Robert, she was sure of it, and whoever had done it was still out there. If she lied about what had happened, he might imagine he was safe. He would certainly decide she was too timid to find him. But she would. She would have his life or die trying!

  When Kate had to speak and could no longer hide behind the fog of exhaustion, she was off the mountain and lying safely in hospital. She said she, her husband, and their guide had decided to join two men who were hoping to summit by the light of the full moon, five of them on two ropes. They had hardly started, she said, when the lead team lost an anchor and fell back into her party. The force of the collision had broken their anchor as well and all five climbers had slid back across the ramp, tangled in their ropes. She said that as she had started to roll she had managed to cut free, but the others had gone over.

  There were problems with her story - gear switched and missing. Why had she been carrying one of their rucksacks? How had she lost her crampons? What had happened to her rucksack? She said she didn't know. She found the equipment after she had lost her own. That didn't make sense, they said, and pressured her for details, but Roland made some phone calls and the following day the interrogation stopped. No more questions. The newspaper got the story, and Kate's version of what had transpired got written in stone.

  The Swiss made a helicopter search at first light the morning after Kate had finally had the strength to tell the authorities exactly where the fall had taken place. By then a spring snowstorm had come and covered the bodies and gear. Another search was made that summer, this too without success.

  The Ogre, they said, had claimed another four victims.

  Chapter Two

  Zürich, Switzerland

  Sunday February 24, 2008.

  Attendance at the inaugural party of the Roland Wheeler Foundation came by invitation only. The luminaries gracing the list included politicians, CEOs, and the directors of Zürich's most prestigious foundations and museums. Naturally the city's philanthropists attended in force. They never missed a chance to have a look at the goods others were offering. Lest people imagine the occasion was only about power and money, Wheeler's daughter, Kate Brand, extended half the invitations to musicians, painters, leading architects, authors, and scholars. The list was finished off with rock hounds - friends of Kate and her new husband, Ethan. Old, young, rich, accomplished, crazy or beautiful: everyone brought something to the occasion. It was the crowd Roland himself would have put together, if he had only lived to see this day.

  Perhaps the most curious guest on the list was Captain Marcus Steiner of the Zürich police. A veteran of some twenty- nine years, Marcus had made his way in the world somewhat quietly, one might even say covertly. In the past his participation in functions of this sort had always been limited to providing security, but on this occasion he was a genuine guest - and nearly as mystified by this as everyone else. Marcus of course had no trouble fitting in. Unlike most cops the world over, he actually enjoyed the company of the rich. He had found out early in his career that the rich paid handsomely for their favours once they trusted him and understood there wasn't much he wouldn't do if the price was right.

  Of course Marcus knew there were people at the party who imagined Kate Brand had invited him out of sheer bravado. Rumours had circulated for years that Roland Wheeler had made his fortune by stealing paintings in other countries and then selling them to Swiss collectors. As Wheeler had grown older, or so the gossip went, he passed the torch to his only daughter. No one could prove it, of course, but then again, no one much cared to try. Roland Wheeler had bought his way into Zürich society with lavish gifts to the city and with the confidences he kept for the sake of his Swiss clients. Besides, theft happening beyond the borders of Switzerland was not really a Swiss problem.

  Marcus didn't mind a few snide remarks at his expense. The occasion was too grand to miss, and it certainly didn't hurt a man's career to make acquaintance with the likes of this crowd. He didn't exactly hand out his business card, but he wasn't afraid to tell people where he worked. After all, someone might need his help some day. It only made sense to let them know where they could find him.

  As he made his way from room to room, Marcus took inordinate pleasure at reading the names on the various canvases. So much so he hardly considered the paintings themselves. But who cared? Rothko, de Kooning, Pollock, Kandinsky, Picasso: they threw paint at the canvas and it was worth more than he could earn from the city in a decade!

  It was staggering to imagine the value, and all the more so when one considered that Roland Wheeler had started life in the East End of London as a common burglar. Following a series of encounters with the police and a suspended sentence for possession of stolen goods, Wheeler had made his way to Germany. In Hamburg Wheeler's life had taken a turn for the better, including marriage to an English beauty, a job in an art gallery, and finally the birth of a baby girl. No one knew much else about Wheeler's early career but a few years later he had his own shop in Hamburg, another in Berlin and a third in

  Zürich. The rough edges of London's East End had all been knocked clean. Roland Wheeler had become respectable. Following the death of his wife in the early 1990s, Wheeler had left Germany and moved to Zürich. The move had apparently worked out well for him. Over the next several years he became extremely wealthy.

  'Close to a hundred million,' one guest estimated when Marcus asked the value of the collection Wheeler's daughter had donated to the city.

  'Francs?' Marcus asked with something akin to awe.

  The man, who was English, offered a stiff smile, 'Pound Sterling - on a good day, at least. I'd say Swiss Francs in a weak market.'

  Marcus, who had acquired a Monet from Wheeler in October of 2006, asked about the market at present. Was it a good time to buy or sell?

  The Englishman hedged. 'It depends entirely on what you are talking about, I suppose.' He glanced at the watch Marcus wore, his shoes, and the cut of the cloth of his smoking jacket. Marcus gave nothing away in the details of his costume. He might be a respectable civil servant or a man worth ten million francs. More than that amount, he knew, and everyone in the room would know about it. The Swiss were a very polite people, as a rule, but when it came to money they were terrible gossips.

  'A Monet, for instance,' Marcus answered.

  The eyebrow cocked dubiously. 'You own a Monet?' The Englishman's German was impressive: he had mastered a quite gentle sarcasm by sheer inflection. Of course the arched English eyebrow helped.

  Almost blushing, Marcus answered, 'A small one.' He made a gesture of slipping a small canvas under his jacket, and the man laughed.

  'Of course there's always a market for Monet... whatever the size.' The gentleman scanned the walls but to no avail. 'Roland had an exquisite Monet as I recall. I remember him showing it to me one time! Surprised he let it go. I know he was very fond of it!'

  'I can understand that,' Marcus smiled. 'I am certainly fond of mine!'

  Having learned something about the value of Wheeler's posthumous gift to Zürich, Marcus happened upon a Frau Goetz, the wife of the president of a small private bank in town where he did some of his business. 'An extraordinary gift on the part of Mr Wheeler, don't you think?' he asked after they were introduced by a mutual acquaintance - the mayor as it happened.

  Roland being gone well over a year, the mayor offered a slight bit of laughter, 'He couldn't very well take it with him, could he?'

  Marcus smiled at the joke and let one shoulder kick up good naturedly. 'I only meant his daughter might have got some pleasure out of it.'

  'As I understand it,' Frau Goetz answered, 'Kate, not Roland, is the one responsible for the gift.'

  'Really?' Marcus asked. He had not heard this rumour and immediately wondered about Kate's accounts - that she could afford such a gift.

  A brittle woman, Frau Goetz sniffed with indifference. 'Really. I guess I should know. My husband handled the estate.'

  'That was. . . quite generous of her. I hope she hasn't left herself destitute.'

  'As I understand the matter, she had some troubles in Zürich last year. I expect she felt obliged to make the gift to get back into the city's good graces.'

  'Two hundred and fifty million Swiss Francs can buy a lot of good will,' the mayor chuckled.

  'Besides,' Frau Goetz continued, 'Kate has her own money - and very proud of it, too, I might add.'

  'I was under the impression she has a trust from her mother's estate,' Marcus remarked.

  'She had one, but it came to her when she turned twenty-one and she invested it in a business venture with her first husband, Lord Kenyon. This was. . . oh, ten years ago. When the company became bankrupt following her husband's death the poor thing lost everything. Imagine it!' Frau Goetz continued with a shake of her head and a strange wobbling of skin under her chin, 'losing her husband on her honeymoon and her entire fortune a couple of months later!'

  The mayor gave a casual shrug of his shoulders. 'If this collection is any indication, Roland surely had a few million lying about to soften the blow.'

  'He did, but Kate wouldn't a take a rappen! Her trust was hers. She had lost it, and so she set about earning it back - with interest, according to my husband.

  Marcus's eyes twinkled mischievously. 'Any idea just how she managed it?'

  The lady gave him a coy look. 'Dealing in art in the same fashion as her father, as I understand it. You know, money is the least of what children inherit from their parents!'

  Marcus tipped his head and offered an expression of mild curiosity for Kate Brand. 'More than a pretty face then?'

  'Oh, my goodness yes. I believe she is the most extraordinary individual I've ever met! You know of course she is one of the best climbers in Switzerland?'

  'I think I saw something on TV about that a few years ago.'

  'I get vertigo on a stepladder!'

  The object of Frau Goetz's admiration stood radiantly in what had once been Roland Wheeler's library. At the moment she was laughing at something the director of the James Joyce Foundation was telling her. It was curious, Marcus thought, how she won people over so effortlessly. Kate Wheeler, the wealthy heiress, Lady Kenyon, the young widow of an English lord, or just plain Kate Brand, the wife of an American rock climber: whatever scandal they whispered seemed to slip away the moment one looked at that radiant smile.

  It hadn't taken a hundred million pounds to buy her way back into Zürich's fickle embrace. Kate's smile alone was sufficient for that. The gift to Zürich in her father's name was exactly what it seemed: a daughter's love for her father.

  Kate's husband, Ethan Brand, slipped away from the director of the opera and found the rock hounds in the garden at the side of the house: Reto, the madman, Renate, the dark-haired beauty, Karl, who could tell a story better than anyone, and Wolfe, the German who had nearly climbed Eiger with Kate before breaking both his legs at the Spider. They were drinking white wine and passing a joint. By the glassiness of their eyes Ethan was guessing the joint was probably not their first.

  At the sight of him Karl cried out in Swinglish, 'Ethan! What's the los, man?'

  'There's a cop inside,' he told them in English.

  Reto laughed and said to send him out, maybe he wanted to get high, too. Renate wondered aloud if he had brought his handcuffs. Wolfe ignored the matter entirely and offered Ethan a toke. He knew Ethan didn't smoke. He did it just so he could sneer once Ethan refused.

  It didn't seem that many years ago when Ethan would convince himself he needed a joint just to get through his high school classes. Of course after he was high he had always felt like he would explode if he went back inside and listened to his teachers, so, inevitably, he went looking for a house where no one was home. At first Ethan had broken into places to see if he could get away with it. He would usually smoke another joint or two, watch TV, and then just take a look about to see what the people had and how they lived. If he saw any cash, of course, he would take it, but in his first few break-ins he didn't touch anything else. It hadn't taken too many times before he was seeing the world differently. He got himself a watch, his mother a microwave. Eventually he brought home a TV, a stereo, jewellery, and CDs. After a while he got a partner because it seemed a lot safer to have a lookout, but his partner was a talker and the two of them ended up getting arrested.

  The next eighteen months had changed Ethan's life. He got straight for one thing - scared straight as they liked to say in those days - and he had met a Jesuit priest who spotted something his high school teachers had missed: Ethan had a near-photographic memory.

  When he was released Ethan spent nine months in a Catholic school completing two years of course work and learning the equivalent of four years of Latin from the priest. In his spare time, he learned to climb - also with the help of the priest. The following year he entered Notre Dame on an academic scholarship, intending to join the priesthood after graduation. He had liked the course work, especially the history of the Church, and he was top in his class in Latin, but the more he studied the faith, the more his own began to falter. Finally, he realised he could give up the notion of becoming a priest - and ultimately his faith in God - without sinking at once into moral ruin. At least that was the plan. As it happened moral ruin only wanted a bit of encouragement.

  He got accepted to law school at George Washington University following graduation with honours from Notre Dame. Before he went off to D. C., Ethan wanted to spend a summer travelling in Europe, the last month of which devoted to rock climbing. A week into the climbing phase of the trip Ethan was at a rock with a couple of friends. They were laying out the ropes when Kate walked up. She offered Ethan a pretty smile and then started up the rock in a free climb. Ethan left his friends and the ropes behind and followed her to the top. It was his first ascent without any sort of security, but worth the risk, as it had got Kate's attention. A couple of nights before Ethan's flight back to the U. S., he and Kate were walking together when Kate jumped a wall and went into an estate. Ethan knew what she meant to do, but just the thought of Kate in his arms in a stranger's bed stirred him, and he jumped the wall as well.

  He had followed Kate over walls for the next seven years, making a good living in the process. Roland had fenced the paintings they stole. An ex-boyfriend of Kate's in Italy, Luca Bartoli, took care of the rest of it. Sometimes they went into a house for a single painting, the buyer already waiting for his new property, sometimes they went in on speculation. Their luck had run out in the summer of 2006 with a job that had gone very bad very fast. In the aftermath they got out of the business and left the country. They weren't exactly fugitives, but they had made a mess of things and didn't care to stick around in case the police wanted to ask a lot of difficult questions.