cooperation, a government spokesperson said. The truth was that Tishenko’s scientists were held in undisclosed secure centers, where their psychiatric health would be examined over a number of years.
Climate change and a phenomenal weather pattern were blamed for everything.
“Wake up, boy,” Corentin said roughly.
He shook Max, brushing frost and snow from his body, slapping him gently until Max awoke.
“OK, I’m OK … Corentin … what happened?” Max said.
The big man hauled him to his feet.
“The cavalry came, late as usual, but they’ll take all the glory,” Thierry said. “They always do.”
Max remembered Tishenko’s death. “Where’s Sharkface?”
“Who?” Corentin asked.
“There was a boy here. He killed Tishenko.”
“Give the kid a medal,” Thierry said. “There was no one here except you and the wolves.”
“A pack of wolves?” Max asked.
“That’s right. A polar bear was on the loose. He was very interested in having you for breakfast,” Corentin told him.
“I don’t understand,” Max said.
“The wolves, they were in a circle around you, one big wolf-”
“One big bad wolf,” Thierry laughed, interrupting his partner as they helped Max to the Audi.
“He would not let anyone near you-and the pack, well, it was not something I have seen before, but they kept that polar bear away from you.”
“You didn’t kill the wolves?” Max asked, suddenly alarmed.
“A few shots in the air. The alpha male, he stood his ground to the end, but Corentin here talked to him like he was a poodle, and he left you alone.”
Corentin opened the Audi’s front door and eased Max into the passenger seat.
And as Corentin wheeled the car away from the devastation, the studded tires crimping the snow, Max fell into a deep sleep. He woke up sixteen hours later in a Swiss private clinic.
The beauty of Switzerland is in not only its magnificent country side but also its secrecy laws. Everything was hushed up. Anyone connected with Max’s ordeal was taken into safety, nursed, cared for and debriefed by government agencies and scientists.
Scientists explained that the slab of mountainside Max had exploded crashed down into the fissures and crevasses beneath the valley floor and stopped whatever shock wave there was from cleaving Lake Geneva, devastating the CERN research facility and destroying the environment and countless lives. How had he known to do that? they wanted to know.
“Zabala. He did it,” Max told them.
“The discredited scientist?” they scoffed.
There was no proof Max could offer. The pendant stone had disintegrated with Tishenko. Perhaps it was enough that Max knew the truth. What Max did know was that it was good to be alive and breathe this high mountain air without fear lurking behind every rock.
Sharkface had escaped that night. There was no sign of Tishenko’s wolf mask that Max had worn. The killer must have thought Max dead and taken it before the wolves arrived. Who knew? Maybe it was enough for the outcast boy to have killed Tishenko and taken the mantle of the
“What happened to the huge crystal in the mountain?” Max asked Corentin.
The rough-looking man shrugged. He was just an ex-Legionnaire being paid to save a couple of kids. Not that Max had needed their help.
It was a great compliment from the fighting man, but Max knew his DNA had been mixed with a predator’s and stored in that crystal. Where was it? The doctors and scientists he had questioned denied any knowledge of it.
It was a closed matter. None of it had ever happened-officially. It didn’t matter; that was what governments did. Max just felt lucky everything had worked out the way it had. Did he believe in luck? Or was that just superstition? He didn’t care-luck was essential.
Three other figures lay on wooden loungers in the late-winter sun, their injured legs propped up. Sophie Fauvre had had the best orthopedic surgeon in Switzerland work on her damaged knee. She had beamed when Max arrived, but she saw his weariness. Battle fatigue, Corentin told her. Max had been through something huge. Probably something he wouldn’t be able to talk about for a long time.
Sophie understood. She would go back to her father and help with the endangered species. She hoped Max would return home and find a way of talking to his dad.
She had hugged Max. “Hey?”
“Yeah. It’s cool,” he had said, smiling.
Bobby Morrell had been brought to the clinic from a French hospital. His broken arm, leg and ribs would heal in time, but the pain he felt over his grandmother’s death would take much longer.
But as far as Max was concerned luck had been the most generous to Sayid. Not since a Japanese man had recovered from being frozen on a mountaintop some years earlier had anyone survived such intense cold. The doctors agreed-Sayid had fallen into a hypothermic state similar to hibernation. His brain and organ functions had been locked away as if in a cyberspace retrieval system, and had been protected without being damaged. He’d made a complete recovery.
They all sat wrapped in blankets, gazing out across the clinic’s gardens towards the snow-capped mountains.
“I don’t know how you found me,” Sayid said to Max, knowing Max would tell him the whole story one day.
“I heard you snoring,” Max replied.
The others laughed, but Max soon fell silent, letting them talk and shout each other down as they excitedly told how each had survived their own experience.
Farentino had disappeared in the confusion of the rescue operation by the Swiss and French forces, but his words were as sharp and hurtful as when they were first spoken. What had really happened to Max’s mother? Did his dad know about Farentino’s love for her? An uncertain future faced Max. He had to find the truth behind his mother’s death.
And discover whether his father had lied to him.
Max heard the distant, echoing roar of a bear, and the answering howl of a big wolf. It made him shiver. It was as if they called out to him.
“Did you hear that?” he asked the others.
“Hear what?” they said.
Max shook his head and gazed back into the mountains.
“Nothing.” Max smiled. “It must be my imagination.”
