puckering the sand. Max hadn’t taken his eyes from her. Her slight frame belied her skill and strength. Fauvre glanced at him.
“Young women today are so independent. Stay clear of them is my advice. They can be the cause of great pain.”
Was that a warning from the unsmiling Fauvre? Telling Max to stay away from his daughter? Max brushed the sweat from his face.
“You are all right?” Fauvre said.
Max nodded.
“Then drive. Over there.” An edge had crept into his voice.
Perhaps, Max thought, there was a darker side to this man’s personality.
Max spun the wheel, wishing he had been honest and told Fauvre that he felt too ill to go on a sightseeing tour. But then he would have missed the incredible display Sophie had just given.
They drove towards an enclosure. Fauvre pointed at different caves and pits, the subject of his daughter replaced by that of his passion for the animals.
“It is mostly the big cats the collectors and hunters seek out. We rescue many of them and reestablish them around the world. I’ve had servals, ocelots, tigers, cheetahs, jaguars, leopards … and bears as well. They’re a favorite for the scum who trap and trade them. I’ll tell you something not many people know: A European monarch, only a couple of years ago, paid a fortune to a Russian peasant so he could shoot the village bear. The bear liked to drink beer. It would sit in the square and sleep, like an old man. And one day this king, this high-and-mighty person, arrived and shot it point-blank. He needed a bear to add to his trophy collection.”
Fauvre closed his eyes for a moment, as if the pictures in his mind had hooks in his heart.
The image of the brown bear that attacked Max on the mountain leapt into his memory. The power and fury of the huge creature still awed him. More than that-it was an affinity-complete awareness of what that bear’s existence was about. Smell is a powerful association for recall, and he could almost taste the wet-fur odor at the back of his throat.
Fauvre sighed. “The Chinese torture bears, did you know that? They keep them in bamboo cages, in a space they cannot even turn around in. Barbaric. They use their gall bladders for medicine. And we call ourselves the highest of the species.”
Max glanced at the man’s face. It was twisted in disgust.
“So I found this place. It took ten years of my life to get it like this.”
Max didn’t know how intrusive he could be with his questions, but if he didn’t start being pushy with this strong-willed man, he wasn’t going to get any closer to Zabala’s secret.
“Have you always been in a wheelchair?”
That drew a sharp look from Fauvre. “No. A tiger did this to me. My favorite tiger. He is called Aladfar.”
“That sounds Arabic,” Max said.
Fauvre nodded. “It’s the name of a star. It means ‘claws.’ From Arabic astronomy. Do you know anything about astronomy?”
The question was like a hypodermic being pushed into his chest. A sharp pain that went straight to the root of the disease eating away at him-that determination to find the final pieces to Zabala’s secret. And his killer.
So, Fauvre was playing games.
“I’m learning as I go along,” Max said noncommittally. “How did the accident happen?”
Fauvre let Max sidestep his probing question. “He is the perfect tiger. Three meters long, three hundred kilos. One day he decided to show me just who was in charge. He played with me as a cat plays with a mouse. He tumbled me and clawed my back. He broke my spine.”
“Was he shot?”
“Aladfar? I would kill the man who laid a finger on him. He is magnificent-and now we understand each other.”
Max knew that Aladfar was the massive tiger he had seen when he first drove into the Angels’ Tears. And it seemed the beast’s pit was where Fauvre now guided him.
Where was the connection Max searched for? When did Fauvre first come into contact with Zabala?
“So was that when you brought your family here?” he asked.
“My animals are my family,” Fauvre said without emotion.
The blunt response silenced Max. Not much you can say to that. No wonder Sophie felt alienated.
Obeying Fauvre’s hand signals, Max pulled up next to a walled crater. Two men stood by a handcart and were unloading a basket of old vegetables and fruit.
Fauvre spoke to them in Arabic and they stopped. “Have a look,” he said to Max as he leaned across the low parapet.
The fever made Max’s legs tremble. He needed shade and water, but he wasn’t going to show Fauvre any sign of weakness if he could help it. He blinked away the sweat and carefully peered over. The crater’s walls were almost sheer. It looked like the other animal pens. The sort of place Max could imagine bears living in captivity. Plenty of space, natural water, a shelter, good daylight and keepers to supply food. But for a moment he saw nothing except the wall at the other end of the crater, where iron bars divided this pit from the next.
Max realized where he was. He’d come to the other side of the tiger’s pit. On one side of the bars the massive, hungry-looking tiger prowled backwards and forwards. It wanted whatever was in this crater below Max.
Then he saw movement along the dark side of the wall directly below him, where the sun had not yet reached. Two men stepped out and raised their hands-begging. They looked weak and unkempt. How long had they been trapped in this pit?
Max looked at Fauvre. The dispassionate expression scared him for a moment.
“Why are you doing this? Who are these men?”
“They came to steal. I have small animals worth a fortune. These creatures thought they could get away with it.”
“You’re going to feed them to the tiger?” Max said incredulously.
“That’s sadistic,” Max said.
“It would be sadistic if I took pleasure in it. Which I do not. I am virtually alone here. I fight my enemies as I see fit, by any means at my disposal. And fear is the greatest weapon I have.”
Fauvre nodded to his staff, who tipped the basket of rotting fruit. The men below scrambled for the scraps. Clearly they had not eaten for some time.
Despite his feelings, Max knew Laurent Fauvre was a vital link in helping uncover Zabala’s mystery. The information had to be dug out of this man, but he was afraid that it might prove more difficult than excavating one of these craters from the rock face. What Max needed was something explosive to tear Fauvre open.
“Did your wife die here?”
That got through, Max could see Fauvre’s jaw clench. His mouth pulled down as if he’d bitten into a sour lime.
“Is that what my daughter told you-that my wife died?”
Now it was Max’s turn to try and hide his shock. Fauvre was hitting back just as hard. Max nodded.
“My daughter lives in a fantasy world. Do not believe anything she tells you.”
“My wife went off with another man when my back was broken. I lay helpless and she ran off. It’s the law of the jungle, Max. Nature always wins in the end.”
“And your son? Did he continue to run the circus?” Max was grasping for any thread of truth that might help him-anything that stopped the gnawing doubt about Sophie.
“My daughter has a deep-seated anger because I trusted a wild animal and barely escaped with my life. She blames me for everything-even for her mother’s abandoning us. So she seeks danger and, along the way, someone she can love, like a brother, and who can protect her. Perhaps you are that person.”
Max winced.
