the trek using snowshoes. It wasn’t his fault, she’d told him, that it had snowed. Or that he didn’t know how to ski, or any of that. No, no, none of it was his fault, but she sure as hell acted like it was. All of it. All the way.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Jet now said, calmer, brushing wet snow from her eyes and stamping her feet. “You forgot something?”
“I wish I was kidding. I hate these damn shoes. How’s anybody supposed to walk around with tennis racquets strapped to his feet? It’s not natural.”
“All right, Stokely. What did you forget?”
“Oh, the damn guest register, that’s all.”
“The guest register! Shit! I can’t believe it!”
“I know, I know. Like leaving a signed confession at a murder scene. Really stupid.”
“Not you, me! How could I have forgotten that?”
“You don’t blame me?”
“Hell no. It’s on me. Serious lapse of professional concentration on my part. I was so worried about the storm closing in that—you’re right. We have to go back. Let’s get going. I apologize.”
“All right, then,” Stoke said. Smiling, he began following the fresh path she’d made in the snow, happier than hell to be out of the doghouse. Also, he had to admit her being the lead dog made the view much better and the going much easier. He was beginning to understand why Alex Hawke, despite his misgivings about the woman, had told Stoke to take good care of her.
After half an hour of picking their way carefully back down the mountain, they came through the pines to a rocky ridge. The site overlooked a bowl-shaped valley, dazzling white with snow. To the left lay a jewel of a lake, a deep, sparkling blue. Beyond the valley was the treeline where the serious trees grew. Great big towering conifers, draped in snow, soaring sixty or seventy feet into the sky. The blue sky and water, the green trees, the white snow. It was so pretty, like a fairy tale, Stoke could hardly stand it.
“Let’s hold up a sec, catch our breath,” Stoke said, looking around at the view. A minute ago, he thought he’d heard something. Like a faint buzz. He held his breath and listened. Now, it was gone.
“Good idea,” Jet said.
“Hey, what’s that?”
“What?”
“Back there behind us. Just coming over the mountains. Little black dot in the sky. See it?”
“No.”
“Well, I do. Let’s get across this valley as fast as we can. Once we reach the treeline we’ll be all right. C’mon. Hurry!”
Stoke took off, running as fast as he was able in the damn snowshoes. Stoke was fast—in another life he’d been professionally employed as a running back—but Jet kept up with him.
“What is it?” she said, crunching the snow right behind him.
“A helicopter,” Stoke said. “Maybe just a coincidence, but we can’t afford to take that chance.”
“Right.”
“Hey, am I holding you up?” He’d heard her coming up fast behind him.
“A little.”
“Go on ahead then, girl. I’ll catch up with you at the guest-house. If that’s who I think it is up there behind us, we can’t afford to have them find the bodies and our names in the guestbook. They’ll get on the chopper radio and we can forget about ever making it to Berlin. Go!”
She raced ahead. Stoke couldn’t stop looking over his shoulder at the little black dot that kept getting bigger and bigger in the sky. He could hear it clearly now, too. Kind of a high droning noise. He’d been trying to convince himself that maybe he was lucky. Maybe it was just a Bavarian Mountain Rescue helo, out for a spin. Looking for lost campers. But Stoke had a saying about these kinds of feelings: “Luck is for losers.”
He took the snowshoes off, Velcroed them to his backpack, and started plowing through the snow in just his boots. He thought it seemed a little faster. But he was still way behind Jet. She was already into the woods. Girl ran like a deer, even in snowshoes. Anyway, he could still make it to the treeline before the chopper got close enough to see him. Leastways, he thought he could. He ran even harder.
Out of breath, he dove headlong into the woods and lay panting on the ground. The buzz got louder. He got to his knees, remaining crouched between two evergreens in the scrub to watch the oncoming helicopter. It had clearly descended to a lower altitude. He kept hoping for a course change. That would make their lives a whole lot simpler. But it wasn’t happening. The chopper was on a direct heading for the gasthaus.
The damn thing flew on, dropping below the far rim of the big white bowl he’d just crossed, flying right down on the deck and headed straight for him. The thing was flying in out of the sun, juking this way and that, hotshot stuff. A pilot with attitude.
Suddenly the pilot banked hard left, swung around, and flew even lower. They were examining the fresh tracks in the snow. Satisfied, the pilot pivoted and got the big bird back on course. His heading would take him right over Stoke’s head to the helipad at Zum Wilden Hund.
Stoke looked up at the chopper as its skids barely cleared the trees, roaring over his head. It was black, all right, just like the one he’d seen in the South of France. Had the same letters, VDI, painted in bright scarlet red on the sleek flanks and the belly below the cockpit. Only now Stoke knew what those letters stood for. Von Draxis Industries. Stoke scrambled to his feet and started running through the dark woods as fast as he could. He wanted to get to Jet first.
He didn’t.
When he got to the gasthaus and the clearing in the woods, the chopper was on the pad, the sagging rotor still whirling listlessly. Nobody remained inside the helicopter that he could see from this distance. There were fresh tracks in the snow all around the bird. Stoke, guessing by the deep depressions in the snow, made it to be two crew, the pilot and one passenger. There were some other tracks around the skids, too, as if an animal had been there earlier. A fox maybe. Or, judging by the tracks, maybe a big wolf.
The house was quiet. There were long carrot-shaped icicles hanging down off the roof, dripping in the warm sunshine. Jet was nowhere in sight. Keeping the helicopter between him and the gasthaus, he moved quickly to the nearside of the chopper. Leaning against the fuselage, he spent one minute trying to get some more frigid air into his lungs. When this thing was over, he was going to go someplace warm and get his ass in serious shape. This heavy-breathing shit was for beginners. Yeah. He’d go to Miami, Key Biscayne, see his true love by the sea. The beautiful Fancha. Hell, yeah, he would.
His fingers were numb with cold. He banged his arms to his sides to get the blood flowing. He slipped out of the backpack, let it drop softly to the snow. He fumbled with the flap but finally got it open. No sounds coming from inside the house. He pulled Viktor’s Schmeisser out of the bag and slung it on his shoulder. He had the feeling that this was the gun the old boy had carried during the war. Back in the day when he was a handsome young Alpenkorps officer. And Irma was a semibeautiful Fraulein just busting out of her dirndl. Damn, he thought, looking at the Schmeisser machine pistol in his hand, should have given the gun to Jet.
Running for the house in a low crouch, he heard Jet cry out. A warning? No. Worse. Pain. Have to be some scary shit going on inside to make that girl cry out in pain. Been there, felt that.
He ran up the six steps leading to the front door, not worrying now about how much noise he was making busting icicles. The door was slightly ajar. He pushed it open with his left hand, stepped inside, entering the room sideways to present less of a target, and low, with the lethal-looking Schmeisser out in front of him. I’m home!
He swept the room left to right. Empty, except for poor old Viktor, who was still slumped over at his silent piano with his hands on the keyboard. Viktor, his head smashed sideways under the piano lid, had a little icicle of blood hanging from the tip of his nose. It was cold as an igloo inside.
He and Jet had shut the furnace down in the hope of preserving the proprietor and his daughter until somebody found them up here. Now he could see his breath as he moved quietly through the living room. The little red leather guestbook was on the reception counter right where he’d last seen it. Thinking that he was just crazy enough to forget it again, he picked it up and jammed it into one of the side pockets of his parka.
He heard noises coming from the very rear of the house. That would be the kitchen. That would account for why nobody had seen or heard him coming.
He moved as quietly as he could along the empty hallway leading to the rear of the gasthaus. At the end, sunshine poured into the hall. The kitchen door was open. Two male voices shouting angrily in German. And a low
