White Death: An Alex Hawke Novella Read online

  Hawke, now fully engaged in the conversation, leaned forward and stared at C.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “I know Blinky quite well, mostly from alpine climbing together. Do you think this fellow Hermann was involved with the hacking attacks on Her Majesty? Or that he was killed because he was getting close to unmasking the foreign culprits?”

  “I have no idea. You both understand that Great Britain itself keeps most of its vast gold reserves throughout Switzerland. But, frankly, Blinky Schultz is far more worried about Her Royal Highness’s business than yours, my dear boy. Your name and Hawke Industries just happened to pop up in the mix of attempted hacking.”

  “Rather surprising, sir; in the world’s largest money pond, I’m a very small fish.”

  “And so I assume this is where Hawke and I enter the picture?” Congreve said, leaning forward. You could almost hear the eager panting as Scotland Yard’s famous old dog gnawed at a rather large new bone clenched between his teeth.

  “Precisely, Chief Inspector.”

  “I’m hardly a cyberwarfare sleuth, with all due respect, sir,” Ambrose replied. “Don’t even know how to tweet.”

  “Tweet? What the hell is that?” C said.

  “Some kind of app or other. I have no idea, Sir David.”

  “An app? What on earth is this man talking about, Alex?”

  “Couldn’t really say, sir.”

  “You’re a fine criminalist, Ambrose, and no one expects you to tweet or climb anything. But you, Alex, are entirely another kettle of fish. You possess skills that may prove vital to the mission. Hitherto unused in the line of duty, I might add.”

  “Such as, sir?”

  “Mountain climbing, to be exact. I took a look round at all of the available resources in your section. All the CVs, you see. Looking at the various hobbies officers of my own C Section enjoy. No luck at all, until I thought of you. You’re simply the only man who meets professional grade qualifications. At any rate, that’s why I chose the two of you. The Brain and the Brawn, as it were.”

  Congreve put his fist to his mouth and coughed discreetly. “I wouldn’t mind a bit of climbing. A gentle hill or slope, perhaps.”

  “No, no, no. None of the brawny bits for you, Chief Inspector. It’s that galactic-sized brain of yours that wants exercise now. You’ll find these two tangled mysteries worthy of your talents, I assure you. Ever heard of a man called ‘the Sorcerer,’ either of you?”

  “Why no, I haven’t,” Ambrose said.

  “Bit of a mystery, as I say. Very few people have ever laid eyes on him in recent years. And if they did, most are all dead now. Old age or whatever. When he disappeared, he was the most powerful man in Swiss finance. He ruled the roost. And nothing happened or didn’t happen in the great Swiss financial institutions that did not have his blessing or his fingerprints on it. You’ll both hear a lot more about him from your friend Blinky. Yes, Alex?”

  “It’s not often I find myself looking into crimes that actually involve both the Queen and me personally. Or have anything to do with my own business bank accounts.”

  “I’ll get to all that in due time. Now. Do either of you know anything at all about the real Switzerland? By that I mean the inner workings of the country itself. Their military history, for example.”

  Hawke looked over at Ambrose and said, “No, not really.”

  “We’re all ears, Sir David,” Congreve said with all the eagerness of a new puppy. “Please, sally forth.”

  “I don’t want to bore you with a lecture.”

  “Oh, we’re never bored,” Hawke said brightly, like an overly excited honors student to his Cambridge don.

  The old man got his pipe lit and said, “Here you have a tiny nation that has not fought a war in over seven hundred years. And they are fiercely determined to know how to fight one so as not to have to.”

  “Jolly good!” Hawke smiled. Ambrose guffawed and added, “Marvelous!” which pleased the host no end.

  “Switzerland is two times the size of the state of New Jersey, which has, by far, the larger population. Yet there are nearly a million men in the Swiss Army. It’s a civilian army, a trained and practiced militia, ready to mobilize instantly. Each citizen serves for thirty years. But all of them, a million of them, mind, are ready to grab their rifles and be present at mobilization points and battle stations all over the country. Within twenty-four hours.”

  “You have got to be joking,” Hawke exclaimed, full of wonder.

  “Not even slightly. Most of these citizen troops specialize in combat operations that occur at twelve thousand feet and skyward and—”

  “I beg your pardon, Sir David, but is this to be a military operation as well?” Congreve asked.

  “Not yet, at any rate, but we must be prepared for the path to lead us in that direction. I cannot say more. But our man Blinky is going to introduce you to someone named Baron Wolfgang von Stuka—or ‘Wolfie,’ as he likes to be called. Comes from a very long line of aristocratic warriors. Now a highly respected divisionnaire in the Swiss Army. Captain, basically. Many call him ‘Switzerland’s Guardian Angel.’ He is the soul of bravery and honesty and a man revered by most of the population, especially the women.”

  “I look forward to meeting this saint in human form,” Hawke said, excitement palpable in his voice. “And finding your murderer for you, sir.”

  “I’ll second that, Sir David,” Ambrose said.

  “Good. Time to do one’s duty,” said Hawke, raising his eyes to the magnificent picture of his great hero, Admiral Lord Nelson, as he lay dying on the bloody deck of his flagship Victory. The last words he’d spoken were “I thank God that I have done my duty.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “All aboard!” shouted the squat little Eurostar porter at London’s busy St. Pancras station. Typical London weather, raining buckets and pea soup fog. Hawke and Congreve, each carrying their own luggage, made their way through the hubbub of the crowded platform toward the nearest first-class carriage.

  Hawke entered their car first. He dropped his leather carryall on the floor of the freezing vestibule, then turned around to unburden Congreve of his Louis Vuitton hard-sider. The chief inspector was coming up the steps, huffing and puffing as Hawke snatched his suitcase away. Congreve’s cheeks had turned bright apple red in the chilly air of the terminal.

  “You’re a godsend, Alex,” he croaked.

  “Did you really need to bring this bloody thing? The bag alone must weigh over forty pounds. Are you mad? Ever heard of backpacks?”

  Ambrose put one hand against the cold steel bulkhead and paused to catch his breath. Fishing for his handkerchief, he began to mop his brow and said, “Backpacks, you say? No, actually, I have not. What the devil are they?”

  “They’re what normal people carry things in.”

  “I did not pack this lovely antique Vuitton suitcase. My wife, who is a woman barely acquainted with normality, did.”

  Far be it from Hawke to reply to that one. Lady Mars was one of his closest friends, and she had long aided him in his futile quest to keep Congreve out of as much trouble as they could manage. Despite the famous detective’s somewhat sedentary lifestyle, he embraced Winston Churchill’s famous claim that “There is nothing so exhilarating as to be shot at without effect.”

  Safe to say Ambrose himself had dodged more than his fair share of bullets during his own legendary career at Scotland Yard. The number of bullets fired at him had decreased somewhat when he’d joined Lord Hawke and his notoriously dangerous lifestyle, but they were still quite numerous.

  It was much warmer in the cabin. The two men made their way up the hectic aisle and located their seats. Collapsing into them, they each pulled out a copy of the day’s Times.

  A few minutes later, the train chugged slowly out of St. Pancras Station, heading south out of London, bound for Par
is and the Gare du Nord. And thence to Zurich Hauptbahnhof, the central rail station near the beautiful Zürichsee, the banana-shaped blue lake that added so much life to the city.

  “Know much about Switzerland?” Ambrose said to Hawke as they crossed the Swiss border some hours later.

  Hawke grinned and nodded his head.

  Congreve often imitated Sir David’s brusque manner, his whisky-seasoned admiral’s bark. Hawke laughed.

  “Could you believe that?” Hawke said. “Old boy had clearly been hard at his Google all morning long. Just wanted to show off.”

  They both chuckled, then picked up the books they’d carried along for the train ride. Congreve’s was Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles, of course. He proudly announced he was reading it for the twentieth time. He rarely strayed from the tales of his life’s epic hero, the incandescent master detective Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

  Hawke was thumbing through The Deep Blue Good-by, another tale in a brilliant series about his beloved sunburned and sandblasted knight-errant, Travis McGee, Slip F-18, Bahia Mar marina, Fort Lauderdale. What a life! Living on a houseboat, a bachelor in paradise who had his pick of every bikini tan on the beach and— And Ambrose interrupted his reverie.

  “You said earlier that you’d climbed Der Nadel once before. ‘White Death,’ I believe you called it.”

  “Yes. Rather odd, isn’t it? The old man wants me to climb the one mountain in all of Switzerland that I’ve never conquered. I still have dreams about that wicked bitch all the time.”

  “I’ve never heard you speak much about that experience. Tell me more.”

  “I’m terrified of that hill, frankly. It’s just rock, snow, and ice like all the rest. But this bitch almost seems like she wants to kill you . . . like you’re not anywhere near good enough for her.”

  “It’s that bad?”

  “Much worse. There’s a reason so many climbers meet death up there. It’s insane to even try to cheat it. That’s why they come for it. A sheer vertical face called the Murder Wall, smooth as glass. Survive that, and you’ve got a shot at reaching the summit. Which is a bloody rock spike that forgives nothing. It’s like a giant needle scratching at the top of the world.”

  “Hence the name Der Nadel? The Needle.”

  “Yes. Vertical faces, treacherous ice fields, swept by appalling wind and ice storms. Barely anything to hold on to or even stick your ax into. Bloody hell thing that monster is, I’ll tell you that.”

  “So why did you do it?”

  “Reach the summit, do you mean? Oh, I didn’t. I very nearly fell to my death from the north face. Chaps had to come up and bring me down. One of them continued on, reaching the summit looking for another climber who’d gone missing.”

  “And you’re actually willing to have another go? After that nightmare? Isn’t that, as you said, ‘insanity’?”

  “More than willing, Ambrose. Determined.”

  “Ah. If at first you don’t succeed—why on earth would you even dare to—all because your—”

  “Because my grandfather’s up there.”

  There was a silence then between the two of them. Hawke abruptly picked up his old Travis McGee paperback again and pretended to read for a while. Then he put it down and stared out his window for a very long time as they began a long climb up into the sunstruck white-tipped Alps. He finally slept a bit, with his chin on his chest.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Zurich

  “You can wake up now, Alex, we’ve arrived in heaven.”

  “What?”

  “Switzerland. You heard me, time to go check into the hotel and have a dram of the Scottish elixir before I expire.”

  They found a cab and soon were headed up a wide boulevard that hugged the lakefront. Their hotel was a treasure called the Bauer au Lac. It occupied a prime bit of real estate directly overlooking Lake Zurich, with views of the snow-covered southern Alps that stretched away to Italy.

  Having both showered and changed into fresh shirts, slacks, and jackets, they met in the hotel bar a little before seven. Hawke arrived first and ordered his favorite Bermuda rum, Gosling’s Black Seal.

  “You’re right,” Ambrose said upon arrival, taking the stool adjacent to Hawke. He looked around the paneled room. “This is a rather spectacular old inn. Exquisite antique furnishings and art, even in my little room. Very Belle Epoque. But with a touch of the modern.”

  “Very what? Very belle . . . something or other.”

  “It’s French.”

  “I know what bloody language it is! What does it mean?”

  “Oh, never mind. Don’t get so cranky.”

  Hawke took another sip of his cocktail and said, “Feel like I’m stepping back in time a century or two every time I stay here. Glad you like it. What are you having?”

  Congreve summoned the barman and ordered a tumbler of The Macallan 18, his favorite single malt whisky.

  He said, “I was very distressed to hear about your experiences with that cursed mountain, Alex. The White Death. Gives me a shudder just to say it out loud.”

  “Well, let’s just say it’s been unkind to my family. But, as I said, if I can find a bit of time after we’ve tidied up all the loose ends here, I fully intend to give that bloody hill another run for its money.”

  Ambrose caught a glimpse of Alex’s expression and decided not to reply to that.

  “Tell me about this chap of yours here in Zurich,” Congreve said, glancing at his watch. “Herr Schultz should be arriving any moment. What’s the scoop on this fellow, Alex?”

  “Our Zurich station chief for the last decade or so, as you already know. Fritz Schultz is an interesting study. Born in Germany and moved to Zurich later in life. Promoted to captain in the German Navy at a very young age. Decorated more than once. C recruited him to join MI6 in the late nineties.

  “Blinky has proved himself invaluable in a town that is always chock-full of scoundrels and spies. I’ve dealt with him many times and found him to be scrupulously honest, brave as an oak, and built like a fireplug—here he comes now. “Hullo, Blinky, it’s Hawke, over here!”

  The new arrival lit up at the sight of his old friend and hurried toward Hawke with his arms spread wide. He had a very brisk manner and was wearing an old seaman’s cap upon his head.

  “Hawkeye, how grand to see you again!” Herr Schultz embraced Hawke, patting him warmly on the back, then took the newly vacated stool beside his friend.

  Congreve, with his ex-London copper’s knack for memorizing faces on sight, thought Herr Schultz looked somewhat as Hawke had described. But, upon closer inspection, Ambrose found the fellow’s face to be made up of points and angles and a prominent, bill-like nose, which gave him the look of a woodpecker in a captain’s hat. All of this combined with some neurological quirk that caused him to blink rapidly and incessantly. It was this tic, obviously, that had earned him his ship’s nickname of Blinky. He was a right wise and jolly old elf, with those busy blue eyes and a shock of white hair on his head, and he was built like a bank vault.

  “And you as well, Blinky,” Hawke was saying. “Please say hello to my partner in crime, former Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard, Ambrose Congreve.”

  “Pleasure,” Congreve said, extending his hand.

  “Pleasure’s all mine, sir,” Blinky replied.

  The three men exchanged more pleasantries and happy chitchat before settling down to the business at hand.

  Hawke said, “So, Blinky, let’s get down to cases. Could you please give us a quick update? Sir David only provided us with the bare bones of this astounding case.”

  The man smiled, withdrew a brier pipe from inside his jacket, and got it going before he replied.

  “Have either of you ever heard of a man living here in Zurich named Baron Wolfgang von Stuka? ‘Stooka,’ like the Nazi dive bomber. You will. He’s s
uddenly playing a significant role in this money mystery of ours. One of the most powerful and popular financial men in town. A highly respected Swiss Army officer, as well.”

  “I have a feeling we’re going to be hearing a lot more about him,” Congreve said.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Baron von Stuka,” Blinky said, puffing away on his pipe like a steam locomotive, his eyes rapidly fluttering, “is a divisionnaire in the Swiss Army. Friends call him ‘Wolfie.’ I do. A captain, basically, when he’s called to active duty in the mountain passes. He’s the one man who might help us get to the bottom of this. Not only help to unravel this financial sneak hack attack but to find those responsible for it, take them off the board. So far so good, right? And then a game changer happened.

  “He rang me up a week or so ago and said one of his grenadiers, a Lieutenant Hartz, had a very odd thing happen while on search-and-rescue duty that morning. He took a near fatal fall. And then found a decapitated head on the snowy ledge that had broken his fall. Saved his life.”

  “A what?” Congreve exclaimed.

  “A head. Hartz thought it was just a head, lying frozen on the snow. That’s what it looked like anyway. He took a squad of grenadiers back up to the site next morning. They dug away all the ice beneath the head for over an hour. And, voila, le corpse! Dressed quite oddly. Baron von Stuka has a strong feeling that, based on its appearance, that body is related to our mystery.”

  “How?” Hawke asked.

  “Wolfie intends to investigate it. There were certain things about the corpse that . . . never mind, I’ll let him tell you about it. He’s not saying anything for public consumption, but privately he thinks he may well have found the Bat Cave.”

  “Bat Cave?” Congreve said.

  “Hmm. Bat Cave, yes. I’m sure Sir David mentioned someone known as ‘the Sorcerer’? When he briefed you?”