The man shouted, his words nearly lost in the strong wind.
“Come any closer and I’ll kill her!”
This time when Pieter raised his gun he kept it pointed straight at the man’s head, his aim steady. He gave the tiniest shake of his head.
“It’s over pal. This ends here. There’s nowhere else to run. Just let her go.”
“Fuck you!” the man bellowed back.
“Do you really want to be remembered as a child killer?”
“I – said – fuck – you! Idiot, you don’t get it, do you? I’d do anything for that woman, she’s my blood, my kin. Damn you all,” he finished through gritted teeth, “and damn the kid.”
His finger flexed and pulled the trigger.
Handcuffed to the guardrail up on the roadway, Lotte closed her eyes and slipped easily into her meditative state. She reached out with her mind, brushing through the dark folds of consciousness separating her from the three souls out on the headland, searching for them with the eye of the raven, gliding above the sea.
She sensed the emotion in her uncle and she homed in on his psyche, drawn downwards as though through a narrow tunnel.
Her lips moved, whispering silently.
No.
The voice popped into his head, the whispered command staying his hand just as he was squeezing the trigger, and his finger relaxed. Johan snapped his head around, wondering who had spoken into his ear in their hushed tones, panic and fear making his whole body shiver, as if a woman’s soft fingers were caressing his spine.
Push her.
The words came again, more insistently, and this time he recognized the voice. But he hesitated, unsure.
Push her, now.
Blinking away his confusion, knowing he had no choice but to obey the command, Johan swung the rifle around and grasped the barrel, and then struck the girl in her midriff with the rifle butt, sending her rolling down the pebble embankment towards the frozen water below. He watched as she landed at the bottom and slithered out across the ice, the momentum carrying her away from the shore, out towards where the ice was thin and weak, and her weight slowly crumpled and cracked the frozen water, the tiny fissures spreading quickly like a spider’s frosty web, and in slow motion Nina Bakker disappeared through the surface.
Pieter watched in horror as Nina slipped beneath the ice. He raced over to the edge, no longer concerned with the gunman, who raced away through the construction site.
“No!” he shouted, and sprinted down the incline, falling in his haste and tumbling the rest of the way.
He rolled over and struck the hard surface of the frozen water with his back, the impact cracking it wide open, and he plunged beneath the glacial surface, the shocking cold making him gasp. Water filled his mouth and he came up coughing and choking, his heart aching in his chest. He felt the sandy bottom beneath his feet and steadied himself for a few seconds in the waist-high water, and then he started to wade further out, his arms sweeping away the floating pieces of ice, pushing himself through the water towards the spot where Nina had disappeared.
The frozen surface broke open before him like crazy paving, and then he plunged his arms and upper body back below the surface, searching for Nina’s small body at the bottom.
He couldn’t find her. Had she floated further away? Was she trapped, unable to get back to the surface because of the ice above her?
Pieter came back up for air. Somewhere behind him, he heard the roar of an engine and he turned in the hope that help had finally arrived. Then he saw one of the white pick-up trucks from the construction site racing back along the spit of land towards the dam and realized that the gunman was getting away. He watched as the vehicle went over the connecting dirt track and smashed straight through the guardrail, and then spun to the right and raced away down the roadway along the top of the dam.
Pieter had no time to think about their quarry breaking free. He went back down into the water, grasping and moving his arms left and right until finally they bumped into something soft, and he grabbed a firm hold and lifted it clear.
Nina came up in his arms. She was unconscious, and a quick look at her face revealed a deathly-white countenance and blue lips. Her head lolled backwards. Was he too late? Was the poor girl dead?
Pieter staggered back towards the pebble incline and clambered out of the water, and as he did so, she gave a tiny cough and a wheeze, and then she jerked herself awake, and she began to cry pitifully, clinging to him.
He sank down onto the ground and held the crying girl tightly to his body.
He heard car doors slam and when he glanced up he saw a line of police vehicles and trucks above lined up at the side of the dam road, their lights flashing brightly in the late-afternoon gloom. More were squeezing past the burning wreckage of the helicopter. Then figures were coming down the concrete incline, calling out and waving as they hurried towards them.
Chapter 27
Safe Haven
Once he’d seen Nina safely into the back of an ambulance, with the paramedics fussing over her, treating her for hyperthermia and wrapping an emergency foil blanket around her quivering shoulders, Pieter instructed an armed guard to keep watch and never to let her out of his sight.
Stepping down from the vehicle he saw Dyatlov come bounding over.
“I thought I told you to keep out of trouble, Van Dijk,” he barked gruffly, but the big smile that appeared on his slavic face suggested that he was mightily glad to see Pieter still alive and in one piece. His big hand reached out and slapped him on the shoulder, and then he shrugged off his heavy coat and offered it to him, and Pieter slipped it on, grateful for
