Ice Claw (29 page)

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.

Abdullah sat in an overstuffed armchair, a canvas awning sheltering him from the heat as he sipped from a tall glass with sprigs of mint among the crushed ice. A cooler nestled at his side.

“Bravo! Bravo! Ma petite princesse! Encore!”
Abdullah cried as he clapped.

Max raised a hand to shield his eyes. A puff of dust alerted him as the shadow that had been absorbed by the side of a wall sprang into life. It was Sophie. Like a marathon runner, she wore well-fitted shorts, tank top and cross-trainers. Dirt and sand caked her sweaty back—she’d obviously been training for some time. She kicked against an oil drum, leapt onto the back of an old donkey cart, flipped in the air and ran with aggressive determination at a rust bucket of a car. Max heard her grunt with effort as she threw her body across the hood, seemed destined to smash into a pile of dangerous scaffolding, but instead twisted her body, caught the layers of pipework in two hands and, with a gymnast’s skill, swung the weight of her body, using the momentum of her speed, to curl upwards and grasp one of the steel girders. She clambered like a monkey, using toes and fingers to grip the edge of the girder.

Ten meters up, the steel beam ended in space. Without hesitation she somersaulted into the air. Only then did Max realize a small hill of dirt was beneath her. After five meters she landed on her feet, opened her stride and raced to the bottom.

Finally, hands on knees, she bent over and sucked her recuperating lungs full of air. Sweat ran from her face, 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.”