Ice claw, p.21
Ice Claw, page 21
The Land Cruiser left a wisp of dust behind it as Abdullah accelerated towards the ancient town. Sophie fell silent, gazing straight ahead at the crumbling walls and the place where her father waited.
Once they were closer the size of the walled town became more apparent. The walls had to be thirty, forty meters high. Two huge, iron-studded doors began to swing open as the Land Cruiser approached. Max wondered what was waiting for him as they drove beneath the entrance arch into the town the French had named the Angels’ Tears.
There was in fact very little left of the town; it was mostly perimeter walls and a few other buildings that remained. The whole inside area was like a massive zoo. Huge, scooped-out troughs of earth, some filled with water, served as drinking holes for the animals. Others were natural enclosures for the assorted creatures. The thick walls stretched for as far as he could see, until they buttressed the mountain’s skeleton fingers that stretched down to touch the fortress town.
Towards one side of the wall Max could see cavelike openings, beneath which some craters dropped away. Twisting in his seat, he looked back as he caught a glimpse of deep orange and dark stripes. A tiger was climbing an old tree trunk conveniently laid against the face of the rock, allowing access to its lair. Fur and muscle glistened, rippling like oil on water as the huge cat, carrying a dead goat in its jaws, sprang and disappeared into the darkness of its lair. But more awesome was the tiger that watched it. A big male reclined on a rock ledge, indifferent to the female’s activities. The massive head turned its attention towards Max. Amber eyes, impassive but watchful, followed him.
“Did you see the tiger?” Max blurted out. “It was huge. What is this place? It’s like a safari park.”
Abdullah swung the Land Cruiser around the edge of another crater. Manmade obstacles, like an assault course, mixed with boulders and dead trees created a perfect haven for monkeys.
“That’s the best way to describe it, Master Gordon,” Abdullah said, easing the big 4×4 towards a more open area where a gantry of iron platforms broke the skyline. “Those big holes? They’re bomb craters. They’re perfect for a lot of the animals here. Don’t forget, many of these are protected and endangered species. By good fortune, war and destruction gave these animals the chance to survive. The town was flattened, but they could not breach the walls. Sophie’s father redirected the water from the mountains and created natural watering holes. The animals are as safe as they can be. Ah! There’s Laurent.”
It was already getting hot in the shelter of the walls as Max stepped out of the Land Cruiser. They had stopped in front of the gantry, which Max could now see was scaffolding built as a trapeze platform straddling another crater. The steel bars reached up twenty-five meters or more and Max’s eye was drawn to the figure swinging across space, gripping a trapeze bar.
Max shielded his eyes. He could see it was not a young man on the trapeze—his gray hair caught the sunlight; but despite the man’s age, Max could see his upper body was bulked with muscle stretching through the gymnast’s cutaway vest. An Arab boy, dressed in white cotton shorts and T-shirt, stood on the opposite gantry—and swung another trapeze bar into the void. Max saw the man’s biceps bulge with exertion as he hoisted himself into position, torsioned his body and let go in midair.
There was a moment, like a plane stalling, when he was motionless in the air. If he did not turn in time he would miss the approaching trapeze. He twisted, his hands slapping the approaching bar at just the right moment. With practiced ease he swung across to the boy, who caught the trapeze. Laurent Fauvre sat on the support platform, dusted his hands with talcum powder, gripped a rope and slid down to the base of the tower.
Abdullah nudged Max, flicking his head towards the base of the trapeze, a scooped-out crater like the others, but this hole was full of jagged rocks.
“No safety net,” Abdullah whispered. “He falls, he dies.”
Max followed Abdullah as he strode towards the scaffolding. Bad enough that Laurent Fauvre took his life into his hands every time he went up onto the trapeze, but now Max saw that he had lowered himself down the rope and placed himself into a wheelchair.
Fauvre dabbed his face and draped the towel around his neck. Abdullah bent down, kissed his friend’s cheeks, shook his hand and held it for a moment in the warmth of friendship.
“Allah the Merciful keeps you safe, my friend,” Abdullah said.
“You’ve obviously put in a good word for me.” The Frenchman grinned.
Laurent Fauvre looked towards Sophie. Max hung back. Fauvre had already cast a glance in his direction and seemed to dismiss him immediately.
“Sophie,” Fauvre said, the love for his daughter obvious. The etched lines in his face, like worn leather, creased into a smile. She kissed him.
“Papa.”
She smiled, but Max could see it was not genuine. And Fauvre knew it. A shadow of sadness clouded his face for a moment, but left as quickly as it arrived. He nodded.
“Thank God you’re safe,” he said gratefully. “You cause me more worry than these animals I care for.”
“Don’t start, Papa,” she said quietly.
Her father was going to say more but thought better of it. He looked at Max.
“And this is the boy who helped you?” He extended his hand to Max, who stepped forward and shook it. Fauvre’s grip was firm, but there was no attempt to crush Max’s hand in a macho show of strength.
“You are welcome.”
“Monsieur Fauvre, thank you. But I think I’m the one being helped now.”
Fauvre nodded, held Max’s eyes a moment longer, then pressed the buttons on his wheelchair. “We’ll have breakfast once you’re settled. Abdullah, let’s talk. Sophie, show young Mr. Gordon his room.”
The wheelchair purred away and for the first time Max noticed that wherever he looked an undulating track had been built around all of the animal pens. Laurent Fauvre could go anywhere he wished in his own walled town.
Max watched him leave. As Fauvre and Abdullah moved past an iron cage that enclosed a platform built above a cavernous gully, a male lion lunged at the bars. Teeth bared, its belly-growling roar caused monkeys to chatter in fear and Abdullah to jump back, hand on his heart. The surprise attack had no effect on Fauvre.
He shouted at the lion, “Don’t do that! You frightened Abdullah!” He reached through the bars, scratching the snarling jaw. The lion grunted and flopped down on his stomach, like a house cat content with the attention.
A car door slammed. Max turned. Sophie had grabbed their backpacks.
“Don’t ever try that. That lion is a killer. All the big cats here are, except my father doesn’t believe it. One day they’ll take him. Come on, I’ll show you your tent.”
Max took his backpack and followed her. Now he was going to sleep in a tent? Better hope Laurent Fauvre didn’t put the cats out at night.
He looked at the ancient fortifications. It would take a couple of hours to walk through this sanctuary. And anyone foolish enough to enter uninvited could end up as breakfast for at least a dozen wild animals. No point in having a BEWARE OF THE DOG sign on the gate; BEWARE OF THE CAT would be more appropriate.
Max would use the day to rest and then he would question Laurent Fauvre. Behind these vast walls, he felt a sense of safety for the first time in ages. The fragmented clues were coming together in his head. He realized that the friendship and association between Zabala and Laurent Fauvre were vital to everything. When Max had laid the drawing of the triangle on the atlas, it was as if its longest side were showing him the way to this desolate place. And Zabala would not have brought the inheritor of his secret out into the middle of nowhere without a reason. It had to be this middle of nowhere. Max hoped that Laurent Fauvre was the reason.
Behind a ruined section of the town, where gardens had been established over the years in the Moorish tradition of creating tranquillity with the gentle sound of moving water, three or four tents stood under shady clumps of date palms. Max took it all in. This was an oasis. Not your average backpacker’s tent, either. More like a Bedouin tent. Like a small circus tent, like a … well, it wasn’t exactly luxury, but the layers of material, the pitched roof, the carpets on the floor, all made it look a bit Lawrence of Arabia-ish. All that was needed now was a camel and a—
The braying gasp of a camel stopped the thought there and then. He turned. Not ten meters away behind a thorn tree, a camel stuck its spit-slicked tongue out at him. He was about to return the compliment when Sophie pulled back the tent’s flap.
“This is yours, Max.”
He stepped inside. The Berber tent was made of camel hair, goat’s wool and canvas, and, as in the others, hand-woven rugs, cotton pillows and cushions were scattered across the floor. The coolness was immediately apparent. Max dropped his backpack on the bed.
“It is basic, but I hope you will be comfortable. Your toilet and shower are through there. My father doesn’t have many staff, they’re here mostly to feed and care for the animals, so you will have to ask for your washing to be done.”
“This is luxury compared to the tents I usually sleep in,” he said.
She was fairly close to him and reached out a hand to brush the hair from his face. He instinctively pulled his head back. What was she doing?
She sighed. “For heaven’s sake, Max. Don’t be childish.” And she put the palm of her hand on his forehead. “You’re still running a temperature. I’ll tell Papa.”
“Don’t make a fuss. I’ll be OK.”
He turned away, feeling the heat creeping up his neck and the increase in his heartbeat. He really was feeling sick, but what he felt now had nothing to do with running a temperature. He unpacked his change of clothing. Everything had been pressed and cleaned by the riad’s staff. Wear one, wash one was Max’s policy. Time to get back into shorts and shirt. Time for small talk.
“Do you have a tent as well?” He regretted saying it the moment the words slipped past his lips. It sounded as though he was inviting himself.
She raised an eyebrow, then smiled. “I have a room in one of the old houses. I need a greater sense of permanence than a tent.”
Now she was closer again. He tried to put a serious look of concentration on his face. These shorts definitely needed to be laid out on the bed a certain way. She touched his shoulder.
Smile bravely, Max. Look cool. Don’t get flustered here. She’s just a girl.
“What is that?” she asked, touching the pendant.
Like a feral cat enticed out of danger by a plate of food from a kindly person, he was still on his guard. And if the wildcat ate, it did so with one eye on the person feeding it, alert to anyone making a sudden move to trap it. One false step and the cat would bolt.
Max felt the bristle of danger tickle the back of his neck.
“It’s something I picked up along the way. A friend gave it to me,” he said as casually as he could.
“But it’s unusual,” she said, her eyes studying the pendant.
She had tried to look at it when Max was asleep in the Land Cruiser, but the way his body had been lying meant the pendant itself was caught beneath his clothes and the fold of his shoulder.
“Oh, I don’t think it’s anything special,” Max bluffed.
“Can I see it?”
“Sure.” He fumbled with the cord, but sweat had tightened the leather thong. He couldn’t undo it and he couldn’t get it over his head. “Well, maybe not.”
“That’s OK. I was just being nosy.” She gave him a smile that could have charmed a monkey out of a tree. But not this monkey, Max thought. “See you outside when you’re ready. Papa will look at your arm and then we’ll eat,” she said.
The tent’s flap dropped back, and Max was alone. Flexing his arm, he felt the pain creep up into his shoulder. The nausea persisted, but he was sure he could shake it off. He had to. This place of safety suddenly felt like a cage.
“The wound must not be closed up. So no stitches for you,” Fauvre said as he swabbed the monkey bite on Max’s arm. The wound was looking bad, with veinlike tendrils creeping upwards beneath the skin.
Fauvre now wore a cool, loose-fitting white shirt, and his withered legs were covered by white trousers. Max thought the clothes made him look a bit like a doctor, but that didn’t offer much comfort.
“It hurts?” Fauvre asked as he eased the wound open.
“A little,” Max replied, wishing the probing fingers and stinging antiseptic would stop their pulling and squeezing.
“The infection is still there, and you have some blood poisoning. It might be advanced. I cannot say, but that’s what those red lines are going up your arm. When was the last time you had a tetanus shot?”
“Couple of years ago, I think.”
“Right. Tetanus and penicillin for you. I will also give you a multivitamin shot. Help boost your system. Those injections hurt more than the others; they feel like soup being injected. I hate them, but I give myself one once in a while.”
“Then I’d rather take a pill.”
They were in a small examination room, which Max reckoned Fauvre used for looking after animals. Fauvre turned the wheelchair and reached for a small fridge. Max noticed all the cupboards were at the same height, designed to allow the disabled man to live his life as easily as possible.
“Of course you would rather take a pill. That’s the easy option, and about as useful as sucking a sweet in these circumstances. Besides, handing out pills is not as much fun.” Fauvre smiled. “For me, that is.”
He took the small glass bottles of medicine from the fridge and drew the liquid into the hypodermics. “Animal bites and wounds can be hell,” he said as he unceremoniously jabbed the needles into Max’s arm.
Max winced. He hated injections, and this had been done with less finesse than a vet jabbing a cow.
Fauvre seemed to read his mind. “No nice nurses here, only me. And I don’t have much of a bedside manner.” He cleared the used bits and pieces away.
“That’s all right. You weren’t too bad. Thanks.”
Fauvre seemed amused. “You lie very well, Max. It hurt like hell, the injections felt like snakebites and I have as much compassion as a charging bull elephant.”
“You save endangered species. You can’t be that bad, Monsieur Fauvre.”
“That’s not what my daughter thinks. And call me Laurent. You’ve earned it. Can you drive?” Fauvre asked.
“Yes,” Max replied.
“Then you are my chauffeur this morning, young man,” Fauvre said as he held one more hypodermic.
“What’s that?” Max asked.
“You thought we were finished? No, no. This is the soup. And multivitamin shots go …”
He pointed at Max’s backside. “Drop your shorts and think of England.”
Max eased himself gently into the driver’s seat of the golf buggy. That last jab had felt as though Fauvre were using a screwdriver on him.
“We are feeding some of the animals. So let us go,” Fauvre said, pointing out the direction.
Obviously, Max realized, the “we” meant the staff were feeding the animals. Perhaps it was this autocratic manner of her father’s that Sophie disliked so much.
The golf buggy’s canopy shielded Max from what was fast becoming a very hot day. Fauvre indicated the direction and Max pressed the accelerator down. Nice and easy, take your time, look around, get your bearings. Was there anything obvious that told him why Zabala had led him here? As his eyes scanned the jumbled ruins, he knew he was looking for more than just clues—if things go bad here, how to escape?
The old town looked as though it held plenty of caves, cut deep into the walls. Most of the big cats would be sleeping, but there were obviously many smaller creatures that had both shelter and plenty of room to roam once they ventured out and went down into one of the huge pits that had been torn from the ground. At the far edge of the town, unnoticed at first because of the backdrop of the mountain, was a vast aviary, almost obscured by the irregular shape of the netting. It dipped and stretched, pulled this way and that by jutting support poles. The birds could fly almost as if they were free.
That could be one way of escape. Climb that netting, clamber onto the walls and down the other side. Max knew how to survive in the desert.
“You ask no questions,” Fauvre said.
“Just getting my bearings, I suppose.”
“Like one of my big cats looking for a way out of its pen.” Fauvre smiled. “You are safe here. You saved my daughter’s life. I am in your debt.”
“She’s helped me as well. There’s no debt as far as I’m concerned, sir. I mean, Laurent.”
Fauvre nodded. “Most teenagers I have known either sulk and mumble like a constipated camel or ask endless inane questions that an encyclopedia couldn’t answer. You do neither.”
Max did not like being patronized or having unwarranted praise put his way, but he was uncertain if that was what Fauvre was doing. It seemed to him that Sophie’s dad had very little experience with teenagers, despite having one as his daughter.
Change the subject. Find out more.
“How long have you been here?” Max asked, keeping his eyes on the curving route towards wherever it was Fauvre wanted him to go.
“I started looking for a place fifteen, twenty years ago. I ran the Cirque de Paris. I knew back then what was happening to animals in the wild. Already I was sickened.”
“And you were the trapeze artist?” Max said.
“And ringmaster with my big cats. I trained them.” Fauvre’s hesitation made Max glance at him. “I love them,” Fauvre muttered.
Max guided the golf buggy along the curved pathways. A broken wall gave way to what looked like an old arena. Nothing as grand as a Roman amphitheater, but the tumbled-down buildings around the space had created false tiers, like a small grandstand. Red, compacted dirt and sand made it look like a circus ring, except this space gave the appearance of an abandoned building site. Rusted steel girders lay at different angles, toppled against scaffolding; some lay smashed across old cars. Broken, low walls crisscrossed the space, while poles and ropes took a third of the area over on the western edge of the sand ring. It reminded Max of an army assault course set up for urban warfare. Fauvre indicated to Max to pull into the shade of a ruined building.
