Avalanche
by
Jack Drummond

NOTHING CAN STOP IT Every year thousands flock to the exclusive ski resort of Hauts des Aigles to watch the Race du Diable - the most exciting and dangerous
downhill race in the world. This year six champions will compete for the prize - a rare diamond worth $12 million, donated by a mysterious Russian billionaire.
NO ONE CAN STAND IN ITS PATH But it is not only the six racers who will risk their lives in the coming days. Caught up in their own secret plots and passions,
visitors and townsfolk alike are oblivious to the silent killer waiting for them in the mountains. When the avalanche comes, only three things can save
them. Fate. Courage. And the will to live. WHO WILL SURVIVE?  


sphere
First published as a paperback original
in Great Britain in 2007 by Sphere
Reprinted 2008
Copyright © Jack Drummond 2007
The right of Jack Drummond to be identified as the author of this
work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious
and any resemblance to real persons,
living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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Part One

'It begins with a single flake of snow Auguste Garamonde
(1886-1958)
The snow came in the night. Silently, softly, like a thief
stealing the landscape. It began shortly before midnight
on the highest ridges of the Col des Aigles, the first few
flakes scurrying ahead of a light breeze. They were small
and light, these first flakes, and the breeze that followed
worried them like a great tornado, whipping them this
way and that, tumbling them along, never letting them
settle. If they found some purchase — in a rocky crevice,
on a spiky blade of grass - the breeze would seek them
out and send them spinning on their way.

Many miles behind the breeze, rolling in from the far
north-east, from a landlocked, freezing wilderness of birch
and tundra, came a wide bank of low black cloud. Under
cover of darkness it slipped over the peaks and plains of
Burgenland and Styria, then stole across the summit
slopes of the Engadine and Lepontine Alps, snuffing out
the stars as it passed and swallowing up a quarter moon.

By the time this mass of cloud finally reached the
Viallaise Alps and settled over the Col des Aigles, the earlier
breeze had raced on ahead and the snow the clouds carried
fell thick and straight and fat, a twirling ticker-tape of stars

streaming down from the night sky. In an hour the lofty
slopes and high summer pastures of the col were hidden
beneath a settling mantle of white that softened sight and
deadened sound. Metre by metre it covered the ground,
banking up in hollows and shifting through the upper
treelines like fine flour clouding through a sieve.

At a little after two in the morning the snow reached
the highest lift-station on the western flanks of Mont
Vialle, and dressed its pitched, chalet-style roof in a quilted
circumflex of white. Soon the cables and pylons and
stationary gondolas that reached up to it, marking the
slopes like a line of music, slid out of sight, wiped off
the page by the advancing shawl of snow.

In Les Hauts des Aigles the snow came in across the
brown sedge meadows of the nursery slopes, the Pas des
Enfants, where the children learned to ski, sweeping over
the lounger-stacked deck of the Auberge des Hauts Aigles,
and banking up against its terrace doors. In minutes every
balustrade in town, every dustbin lid, parked car, window
ledge and roof was layered in white, every streetlight a
golden halo of falling snow.

So much of it, but not a sound. Not a whisper.

So final. So complete.

At the Centre des Pompiers Municipal, on the southern
edge of town near the airstrip, the road crews had started
arriving at a little after ten before the first flakes settled
on the high passes. They came from their homes with
suppers still warm in their bellies, and they parked their
4x4s in the lee of the building to avoid any drifts that
might build up in the hours to come. One by one, kitted
out in bulging fleece-lined jackets over zip-up gaberdine
work-suits, their boots clomping across the apron of
cement, they came to the sliding hangar doors at the front

of the station. Pulling off gloves to warm hands at the
braziers, they exchanged greetings with the usual, gruff
familiarity, just as they'd done on nine separate occasions
in the last two weeks.

Forty minutes after the call went out, every crew
member had assembled at the fire station. Sprawled out
on the broken-spring sofas that lined the walls of the
crew's lounge, or standing round the braziers a couple
of steps outside the hangar doors if they fancied a
smoke, each of the men knew that tonight was the
night. They had lived in the mountains long enough
to smell it in the air, to taste its sweet metallic approach,
and not one of them had needed to hear the meteo that
evening to know that the snow — the real snow - was
on its way.

Other nights they'd turned up here at the fire station
because they had to, just in case . . .

Tonight, they all knew, was different.

The first big fall had come early in November and Les
Hauts had thrilled at the prospect of a long and profitable
winter season. But that first snow didn't last and an unseasonable
blue-sky spell of sun and higher-than-average
temperatures saw the snowfields melt back to the heights
like an ebb tide on a steep shore. By mid-December the
slopes were as bare as they'd been in October, and heads
were shaken in the bars and shops and hotels of Les Hauts.
And since then nothing but flurries, just a dusting of icy
grit that stung the eyes, reddened ears and bit at cheeks.
Nothing that settled, nothing that stayed more than an
hour or two.

It was Jules Dessin, the station chief, patrolling the
edges of the yard where the concrete turning circle
gave way to stiffened grass, who saw that first wave of

snow bear down on them, a distant, shifting bank of
white like the foaming wake of a mighty ship passing
unseen in the night. He looked up at it streaming out
of the night sky and felt the soft, fat flakes settle on his
face and catch in his eyelashes, making him blink and

smile.
Here at last, he thought. Far later than previous years
but, by the looks of it, a heavier fall than forecast.
'Elle arrive] he called out to the waiting men, twenty
metres behind him, huddled around the braziers, smoking
cigarettes, sipping coffee and stamping their feet. lElle
arrive maintenant!
By the time Dessin reached the hangar, word had
spread and crew members tumbled out of the lounge.
Zipping up jackets and pulling on caps, they climbed
into their cabs and throttled up the idling engines. By
the time they released their brakes the snow was hissing
into the braziers, already a half-metre deep in the forecourt,
and rising.
With a rolling screech of metal the panelled hangar
doors slid back into their recesses and the first tracked
snowplough clattered out into the night. Twenty minutes
later, yellow hazard lights flashing through the thickening
snowfall, a dozen units had fanned out through the
sleeping streets of Les Hauts des Aigles.
Winter had come at last.

Johnnie Peat woke to a fluttering, hissing sound and a
metronomic clink-clink of metal on metal outside his
tent. For a moment, in that cold, twilit place, he wondered
where he was.
Then, with a sudden jolt of fear, followed almost immediately
by a familiar burst of exhilaration, he recognised
the sounds - the flame on their portable gas stove and
a spoon stirring the morning coffee. And he remembered
where they were.
The previous evening, after a hard day's climb, they
had taken an hour to find this place, tracking across a
near-vertical slope less than a hundred metres below the
summit of Mont Vialle. They had hoped to make the
top that night but an evil, gusting breeze hampered their
ascent and a steeper slope than they'd anticipated slowed
them down.
It was Johnnie who spotted the ledge - as wide as a
hooter's butt, Nick and Billy-Ray agreed - no more than
four metres long and a rucksack wide, jutting out over a
seventy-metre drop. But with the slope they were climbing
already in shadow, the temperature falling and little hope

of finding anything more hospitable the three climbers
gratefully set up their bivouac tents, broke out their rations
and set to on ham and cheese, dried fruit and nougat.
The three of them had met in a climbers' bar in
Chamonix and spent the autumn ticking off some impressive
routes in the Mont Blanc, Ecrins andVanoise massifs.
Nick was the eldest, a twenty-six-year-old from
Brentwood, California, tall and willowy with a short shock
of spiky blond hair that looked as though it had never
seen a brush or comb, the kind of hair you got if you
wore a bobble hat for a week. He had pale blue, husky
eyes, which looked good with his tan, a wide California
smile and the girls just loved him.
Billy-Ray, just a few months younger and an inch or
two shorter than Nick, with a freckled face and cropped
red hair, had been his climbing buddy from their earliest
days, honing their nerve and learning their rope-craft on
the smooth, soaring faces of Yosemite. What he lacked
in looks, Billy-Ray made up for in charm, always a joke
or a song, and his old dime-store harmonica was always
to hand. He may not have had Nick's curling smile or
glacial blue eyes but when Billy-Ray played something
slow and sad, you could see the girls start to melt like
soft snow in a spring thaw.
This was Nick and Billy-Ray's first European trip and
the two of them were happy to make Johnnie's acquaintance.
The Englishman may have been younger than both
of them -- fresh out of college, with ten months to kill
before he started his first job -- but he'd been climbing
in the Alps since his early teens. He knew the routes,
knew the mountains and, after leading their threesome
to the summit of the Petit Dru in near record time
despite a drenching October storm that made the rock
as slippery as oiled grapes, Nick and Billy-Ray were
happy to have him along.
The Three Mountaineers, Nick joked. All for one, and
one for all.
The Snowboard Kids, added Billy-Ray, whenever they
found a good slope after a hard climb, the three of them as
skilled at snowboarding hard-to-get-to hazardous off
piste routes as they were clinging to the sides of mountains.
And with the snow coming so late the two things, they
agreed, went pretty much hand in hand. You couldn't do
one without the other -- unless, of course, you had the
cash to go heli-boarding. And none of them did.
It was Johnnie who had told them about Mont Vialle,
a final alpine summit to tick off their shopping list before
Nick and Billy-Ray headed home and Johnnie packed his
bags for London and a stockbroker's console in the City.
'Mont Vialle,' he'd said as they downed a fourth round
of Vodka Red Bulls at Cafe Corde in Cariol. 'Maybe
four metres shy of four thousand. If you climb on my
shoulders, and reach up your arms, you'll have it.'
There was also, he told them, some unbelievable snow
boarding on the far side.
'From the summit down to Dareggio there's a seven
kilometre forty-degree slope you just won't believe. Just
awesome. Thirty minutes in the bus from here, a day or
two's hike up to Les Hauts and we're there.'
Two days later, climbing packs and snowboards
strapped to their backs, they'd trudged into Les Hauts
and saw Vialle rising above the Juret ridge, which had
blocked their view of it the whole way up the Gorge
des Chouettes. Of all the mountains they had seen so
far this one, they agreed, was the most beautiful. Like a
slanting, snow-crowned spear-tip, the craggy stone flanks

ofVialle pierced through a carpet of sun-browned, wind
scorched meadows, and rose past bands of pine and loose
scree to a corniced summit stained blood-red in the
setting sun.
The three friends had started out for Vialle four days
later. They'd have stayed longer in Les Hauts if there'd
been any snow worth boarding on, but that second week
of January the lower slopes of the Hauts des Cols were
yet to see a proper cover of snow. According to the meteo the first snows had already reached as far asVialle's Italian
flanks but had come no further. Any day now, the locals
of Les Hauts des Aigles told them. Any day now. There
had never been a year like it, they complained. But still
the big fall held off, just the upper summit reaches of
Mont Vialle cloaked with snow.
Checking out of their lodgings that fourth morning,
after a riotous evening at Bar Mique on Place des Sommets,
they crossed the blue, frostbitten lawns of the Auberge des
Hauts Aigles and followed the babbling course of the
Valentina stream as far as Les Grands Pres. Here summer
pasture gave way to patched toothpick woodland and the
slope steepened.
That first morning the sky was comfortingly clear, blue
as washed denim, and by the end of the day, as evening
shadows rose past them, they'd free-climbed the Aigles
ridge and roped-up for the first of three pitches that would
take them to Garamonde's Step, their first bivouac about
halfway up the mountain. Over soup and bread that evening
they agreed that if the following morning looked good,
they would go for the summit as fast as they could, set up
camp on the other side, then board down to Dareggio in
time for lunch the day after. If it started snowing, they'd
head back down to Les Hauts and run the pistes they'd heard
about. As for climbing Vialle - another time, they agreed.
It wasn't going anywhere. As they secured the bivouac
tents and slid into their sleeping bags spirits were high. It
was a win-win situation, and no mistake.
The second day out everything looked perfect. Another
high blue sky, no wind, and cups of sweet black coffee to
see off the night's chill and their bodies' stiffness. By lunchtime,
pitching across a rocky traverse, a breeze started up
- nothing they couldn't handle but it tugged at their sleeves
and trouser legs, smacked at the boards strapped to their
rucksacks and slowed them down. By mid-afternoon the
wind had lightened but the slope had steepened. By six
o'clock that evening they breathed a sigh of relief when
Johnnie spotted the ledge. Maybe a hundred metres short,
moaned Nick, as they huddled on the ledge and chewed
at their rations. Another three hours and they would have
made it. Instead they had to spend a second night on the
Vialle face, watching the lights of Les Hauts twinkle far
below and the stars glitter high above.
Wriggling out of his sleeping bag and squirming out
of the tent that last morning the first thing Johnnie saw
was snow, a thick white pillowing quilt that softened the
stony ridges of neighbouring peaks and filled the valley
below for as far as the eye could see. The slopes above
them were sheeted with ice where they weren't loaded
with snow. Suddenly the summit of Mont Vialle looked a
far more daunting proposition than it had the day before.
'I say we go down,' said Johnnie. 'Overnight at the
Step and rappel the rest. And with snow in Les Hauts,
there's just as much boarding.'
'Up's quicker,' said Nick, who'd be leading that day,
pouring out the coffee brewing on the stove, oblivious
to the drop just inches from his left boot. He seemed
to have forgotten their agreement about returning to Les
Hauts if it snowed.
'Safer too, you ask me,' chipped in Billy-Ray, as he
handed round biscuits in the chill shadow of the summit.
And so, outvoted, Johnnie strapped on his crampons,
shouldered his rucksack and board and, against all his
instincts, followed Nick and Billy-Ray out across the first
traverse.
For two hours they climbed slowly, digging their toe
points through the mantle of snow into a thin sheet of
ice, axes ringing out in the chill morning air when the
tips pierced the ice and hit the rock beneath. By nine
o'clock they'd reached another tilting ledge just short of
the summit slope set between a slanting snowfield to the
left and the entrance to an echoing couloir on their
right, almost hidden beyond a bulging overhang. Resting
on that ledge, they surveyed the route ahead.
'We should go left,' advised Johnnie.
'Right's shorter and drier,' said Nick. 'Get past the
'hang there and it's "Going up. Ladies' lingerie, top floor."
We take your way, it'll be dinner in Dareggio not lunch.'
Johnnie turned to Billy-Ray with a questioning look.
'Lunch and lingerie for me, dude,' was all Billy-Ray
said, pulling out his harmonica and running off the first
few bars of the Bonanza theme tune.
'I don't like it,' Johnnie said, determined to make his
point. 'We can't see what's above the couloir, and if you
ask me the snow and ice look safer. It's a little longer but
it's not as steep.'
Nick gave the Englishman a patient look.'We're nearly
there, man,' said the Californian, meltwater eyes shining
with mischief. 'Straight up the tube and we're on the
summit. An hour, maybe two hours tops. And then that
seven-kay slide. Tell you what,' he said, pulling a spare
length of rope from his belt. 'Here, Billy-Ray, hand me
a peg and hammer, will ya?'
Billy-Ray did as instructed and Nick leaned forward
to bang in the piton an arm's length on to the overhang.
Then, securing one end of the rope to the peg,
he opened up his collar, looped the free end round his
neck and knotted it. Roped by the waist to the peg, a
slip would have meant a ten-metre fall before being
brought up short. With just a seven-metre length of rope
tied around his neck, any slip round the overhang would
have been his last.
'You're mad,' said Johnnie, shaking his head, nerves
making him break out into disbelieving laughter.
'Nope,' replied the Californian, reaching up for a fingerhold
and swaying out across the belly of stone, edging
his body round it. 'Just real confident, and real--'
They were the last words Nick spoke.
From somewhere above them came a clearly audible
crack and a long whuuuumpppppphhhh! as a section of
Vialle's summit cornice broke away under the weight of new snow. All three heard it and their heads snapped up
as, unseen, a massive wedge of snow started sliding down
the upper slope of the mountain, rolling and tumbling
slabs of snow that funnelled into the top of the couloir,
powered down the stone chimney and spewed out like
grain from a hopper.
Nick went first, sucked from beneath the cover of the
overhang by the rush of air that came ahead of the snow.
Then Billy-Ray.
Then Johnnie.
When the snow-dust cleared the rock face was bare,
and there were no climbers to be seen.





12
13

The moment Paul Garamonde opened his eyes he knew
that the snow had come at last. He could see its whiteness
reflected on the walls and ceiling of Nathalie's
bedroom, in the folds and creases of his pillow and on
the curve of his lover's shoulder peeping from beneath
the quilt that covered them. Quietly he slid from their
bed, went to the window and drew the curtains.
Paul Garamonde was big for a mountain man. Unlike
most Hautien men - slim and wiry -- Garamonde stood
well over six feet, and was broad in the shoulders and
chest, with a tumble of black curly hair that was more arabe than alpine, hair that he shovelled away from his
eyes with hands the size of snowshoes, hair that belonged
to a mischievous boy not a man. His father, Jean-Pierre,
had been* the same, his grandfather, Auguste, too. In the
lobby of the Auberge des Hauts Aigles, there was a sepia
photo of Gran'papa Auguste standing beside a haul of
marmots on the steps of Bar Mique. The old man was
dressed in a woollen cardigan that looked too small for
him, wore his beret at a rakish angle and held his rifle
back to front over a shoulder that looked like it could
bear the weight of a cannon. He was probably smiling
proudly at the size of his kill, but a full walrus moustache
concealed the lips beneath. All you could really
see were the old boy's eyes, light grey pinpricks of light
caught by the camera in a web of laugh lines, twinkling
with mischief behind the Garamonde fall of hair.
Garamondes had lived in Les Hauts for more generations
than most could count, and they'd always been
mountain men - hunting for marmots and chamoix in
the summer months, and acting as guides for travellers
crossing the high passes into Italy and Switzerland. It was
Auguste who'd been first to reach the summit of Mont
Vialle, making his climb in summer, but doing it without
rope or ice axe, those large hands and strong fingers
finding the tiniest cracks and fissures and knobs of rock
to haul himself up. It had taken three days to reach the
summit and when asked why he'd climbed it he'd replied
that it was in his way and he didn't like things standing
in his way.
His grandson Paul was no different. He didn't like
things getting in his way either. On the shadowy side of
his mid-forties he was as stubborn and determined as
he'd been in his teens and twenties, and though he sat
in an office to earn his keep, as director of Les Hauts'
Bureau des Pistes et Secours, his heart still lay in the
mountains which rose in a ring of peaks above the town.
Standing naked at the window, squinting in the glare,
Garamonde let his eyes wander over the huddled, snow
down rooftops of Les Hauts spread out below Nathalie
Bezard's chalet. The sky was as blue as it had been the
day before, but everything else had changed. Grey stone
roofs, hotel balconies, windowsills, parked cars -- everything
he could see was layered with a plump mantle of
snow, just the timbered facades of the buildings and the
granite-block flues of their chimneys and the black faces
of windows to break up a still, soft sea of white. A metre,
maybe more, he guessed.
Down in the centre of town,Dessin's road crews would
have cleared the streets, banking the snow into the pavements,
scooping it into the back-up trucks, but the lane
that led up to Nathalie's chalet remained a sloping white
river marked only by a single set of tyre tracks sliding
downhill. As he stood there, the streetlights along its
course flickered out one by one and the golden pools
they had spread across the snow faded to a bluish white.
When he and Nathalie had driven up that hill the
night before, the road surface was black in their headlights,
and when he'd taken Nathalie's Labrador, Coco,
out for a final walk, stars glittered in a clear night sky.
Yet sometime between walking the dog and opening the
bedroom curtains the snow had come, and come with a
soft and silent intent. It might have stopped for now, but
judging by the band of cloud gathering beyond the distant
ridges and peaks of Courcelle to the north, the loftier
Vialle to the south and the Murone Glacier slung between
them, it was just the beginning. By mid-afternoon,
Garamonde reckoned, that blue sky would be chased away
by low steely clouds, the mountains would disappear and
the snow would begin falling once more.
Behind him, he heard Nathalie stir and sigh. 'Come
back to bed. It's too early.'
He turned, touched the hand she'd reached out to him
from below the quilt, then bent and kissed each fingertip.
'It's time for work,' he whispered, kneeling beside the
bed and pushing back a tangle of black curls. He smiled
into her sleepy brown eyes, leaned down to plant a kiss
on the side of her parted lips. 'I have to go. There are
things to do.'
'And there are things to do here,' she replied, her voice
low and husky with promise, her bed-warm arm snaking
around his neck. 'Five minutes. Just five minutes . . .'
Garamonde smiled, wavered, just as he knew he would.
'Five minutes then,' he said, and let himself be drawn
back beneath the quilt.
But as he settled himself beside her, felt her shiver at
the cold touch of his searching hands, he thought of the
snow, the summit slopes ofVialle and the three climbers
he'd issued with permis just a few days before.

4

In another chalet, on the other side of town and overlooking
the terraced promenade Hautiens called the front
de neige, Nathalie's father, Hugo Bezard, owner and proprietor
of the Auberge des Hauts Aigles, felt his heart lift and a warm coddling delight spread through his plump little body.
Snow. At last. Just the perfect way to start the week.
From his bedroom window, through a line of snow
laden pine, he could see at least a metre on the lawns
in front of his hotel, glistening, sparkling drifts of it
banked up on the timber-decked terrace beneath the
Aigle d'Or restaurant, a thick white hyphen on every
window ledge and balcony rail, the roofs of the towered
corner penthouses deeply and comfortingly quilted. And
more to come according to last night's meteo.
Snow, snow, glorious, glorious snow, Hugo thought to
himself, feeling the chill between curtain and windowpane
seep into the collar of his cotton pyjamas.
At last, at last, at last.
Since late November and that sudden, unexpected
melt, Hugo had pulled open his bedroom curtains and
been greeted by the same depressing view -- brown frost
seared grass rising to sheets of tumbled scree and scrubby,
striated rock, endless blue skies and the occasional tantalising
cloud.
Day after day, after snowless day. Until Hugo groaned

with frustration.
Christmas had passed with just a sprinkling of gritty
flakes scurrying through the streets, sometimes banking
promisingly in the corners of Place des Sommets, but
soon dispersed. A week later, it was the same story. On
New Year's Eve a rolling bank of cloud had raced overhead,
boiling with promise, but only rain fell, spattering
against the hotel's windows and gushing from its copper
downpipes.The previous year, an hour before midnight,
skiers had snaked down from the Courcelle lift-station
in the traditional double helix, their flaming torches like
a golden stream winding down the snow-covered slopes
to the great bonfire on the front de neige beyond the
terrace and lawns of the Auberge. This New Year's Eve
the bonfire had been too wet to light and his guests
stayed indoors, the warm window glow of the shops and
bars on rue des Hauts and Place des Sommets sliced by
a steely rain that bit like bullets, beat against umbrellas
and strummed over awnings like icy fingers on a drum
skin. Whatever few patches of snow remained on the
higher slopes were effectively rinsed away in the downpour.
'Any
day,' Hugo would assure his guests when he
found them slumped in the hotel's foyer, or gathered at
the bar, or squinting down their cues on to the blue felt
of the Chevillotte billiards table in the Club Room.'Any
day, now. La neige arrivera. I can smell it. Any day now, c'est certain'
But after weeks of such desperate cheer his hotelier's
smile had started to stiffen in his cheeks, his lips ached
with the effort of false bonhomie, and his spirits began
to founder on a reef of despair.
When will the snow come?
When will the snow come?
Send it soon, Hugo Bezard prayed. Please send it soon.
Nor was his mood improved by an increasing anxiety
that if it didn't damn well snow very soon indeed, then
February's Diable could be seriously jeopardised. And
this year was the sixtieth anniversary of what had become
one of the most eagerly awaited downhill events in the
skiing calendar. Without any real snow how could they possibly race? Ce serait le desastre. Un vrai desastre.
Yet here it was. At last. Grace a Dieu. Today was the
day. Today the snow had come, and all the dismal mutterings
of global warming whispered round the hotel's bar
and lobby could take a hike, and every honest Hautien
could breathe a sigh of relief.
Pulling the thickly lined bedroom drapes back together
so the snow glare would not wake his wife, Hugo crossed
to the bathroom, closed the door behind him with the
softest click and set about his preparations for the day.
It was a morning routine as ingrained as it was thorough.
After a bracing cold shower, he swaddled himself
in one of the Auberge's extravagant towel dressing gowns,
cleaned his teeth, shaved, patted his shining cheeks with
the Issey Miyake eau de toilette his daughter Nathalie
had bought him at Christmas, then got down to the
serious business of selecting a suit, a shirt, tie, cufflinks
and shoes.
As owner and director of the Auberge des Hauts Aigles,
Hugo Bezard didn't need anyone to tell him that the
manner in which he faced the world -- and his guests was
of crucial importance. He had a certain position to
maintain, and the correct attire was as necessary to that
position as fresh creases on a soldier's parade-ground
uniform, or a row of polished silver stars on a general's
collar. It set an example to staff -- if he could dress
correctly, then so could they -- and sent a subtle message
to his guests. Here was a man they could rely on, here
was a man who knew how to steer a steady course, a
man they could trust to keep at bay the pressure and
stress of the outside world, confident in the knowledge
that their comfort and happiness was his premier and
overriding concern, a privacy and peace of mind that
would be strenuously protected. For which, of course,
they paid handsomely.
This morning Hugo Bezard chose a charcoal-grey
wool three-piece suit, a light-blue shirt, a pair of Tiffany
cufflinks in the shape of a melted heart, which his wife
had given him on his last birthday, a dark-blue knitted
tie and the black Oxfords with the studded soles to keep
him steady in the newly fallen snow. He was back in
the bedroom, maneuvering a silver heart through a reluctant
cuff, when the phone rang, a gentle bleep he still
rushed to intercept before it woke Jacqueline.
'Oui? Alio?'
'Hugo, it's Louis.'
Hugo took a deep breath. Louis Jillot was the senior
partner at Jillot et Fils in Geneva, the company that
handled the Auberge's legal affairs. Hugo had been
expecting his call.
'The final bid is confirmed?' he asked.
'Twenty minutes ago,' replied Jillot. 'It's the Russian,
Maxim Kalagin.'
'And how much?' asked Hugo lightly, as though the
final figure was of no consequence. The reply he received
made his heart jump in his chest and his jaw drop.
Without thinking, he plumped himself down on the side
of the bed and Jacqueline stirred.
'I think we can safely say', continued the lawyer,'that
this year's Diable is going to enjoy . . . how shall I put
it? Une certaine eminence?1
'It would certainly seem so, Louis. Vraiment!

'So tell me, how is the snow up there? We had our
first real fall last night.'
'Never been better,' replied Hugo. 'As deep ... as deep
as a Russian pocket.'
Five minutes later, his trembling fingers having finally
managed to secure his cufflink, Hugo looked himself
over in the bathroom mirror. Tightening the knot in his
tie, he smoothed down the horseshoe of steely grey hair
cropped round the tanned and freckled dome of his skull,
cleared his throat and smiled at himself.
Vraiment, une certaine eminence' he whispered.

It was the shivering that woke Johnnie Peat. A core- deep, uncontrollable trembling that jerked and spasmed
through his body.
A bone-crushing, numbing coldness.
And silence.
And darkness.
Everywhere. All around him.
And in that coldness and silence and darkness, from
nowhere, came a flash of memory. A light switched on
and off. That blast of frigid air hitting his upturned face
like an icy glove, slapping his cheeks, and the next instant
a deafening roar that seemed to explode in his head.
That's what came next, in Johnnie's dawning consciousness.
The sound of that deadly, pile-driving roar. Timeless.
Terrifying. Just the fury of it. Like standing beside a waterfall
-- the infinite, merciless, battering sound of it.
And now an image to accompany that opening orchestral
blast and roar - a great pummelling wall of dirty
snow and glittering blue ice shooting down in front of
them. A torrent. A cascade. So fast it was impossible to
focus beyond a blur.
Other flicks of the light switch.
Nick, sucked from the rock in front of him . . .
Billy-Ray, a rag doll, there one minute, gone the
next...
Then a massive tug from the rope round his own
waist, a jolt that crumpled his legs. And he was off the
mountain too. Falling. Tumbling. Nothing he could do.
The snow and ice overtaking him in great sheeting
curtains.
Straight down. Sheer.

. . . And from somewhere the sense of a mighty blow
to his left foot and a sudden wrenching of his left arm
that made him scream out. . .
And now silence again, save the occasional creak of
snow packing in around him. The kind of silence heard
on a high mountain ridge. A great silent emptiness.
Avalanche.
The word broke into his consciousness without
Johnnie needing to think. There'd been an avalanche. A
slide. That crack they'd heard high up on the summit.
Followed by that warm, pillowy whumph. It had caught
them at the bottom of the couloir and swept them away.
But he was alive.
Or he wouldn't be shivering.
You don't shiver when you're dead.
Slowly, slowly, Johnnie quietened the trembling in his
body, breathed it out through icy, chattering teeth, brought
it under control. It was like an echo of the avalanche,
he thought, streaming through his body - the roaring
and tumbling and pummelling. But, like an echo, it was
fading.
And as the bone-shake trembling subsided Johnnie
suddenly noticed the darkness, and wondered about it.
It was then that he realised his eyes were closed, and
he chuckled to think it. No wonder it was dark. He
stopped chuckling when he tried to open them. There
was no response. The coldness all around him seemed to
have frozen his eyelids, sealing them together. Carefully,
he worked the muscles in his face - brow, cheeks, lips.
The brows and cheeks creaked into life but his lips cracked
as though they too had been sealed tight. He tasted
blood, felt its warmth in his mouth. He would be more
careful with his eyelids, he decided.
Squeezing his eyes tight as though squinting against a glare, then releasing them, then squinting again, he felt
the stiffness start to give and ease like starch being worked
from cloth. And slowly, very slowly, Johnnie opened his
eyes, blinked carefully - once, twice, three times - and
the darkness changed from black to a soft grey-blue
haze.
But no further than that. No lighter.

Arriving at the Bureau des Pistes et Secours a hundred
or so metres beyond the front de neige and to the right
of the lower Courcelle lift-station, the first thing Paul
Garamonde did when he reached his third-floor office
was put a call through to his opposite number in
Dareggio.
As expected the news was not encouraging. It was
three days since the climbers had left Les Hauts to climb
Vialle and they had still not reported in on the Italian
side. Which meant they were either on their way down
to Dareggio, having made the summit before the snow
arrived, or they'd been caught in the storm on the
French side and were stranded somewhere high up on
the face.
Or there had been an accident.
Whichever it was, Garamonde knew that they probably
needed help, and it was his responsibility to initiate
and coordinate a search. And with maybe only a few
hours left before the snow returned, there wasn't much
time to spare.
'Grazie, Fredo. Molto grazie. Ciao. Ciao' said Garamonde
and put down the phone. Twisting round in his chair,
he looked up at the Juret ridge and Vialle's summit rising
behind it. Somewhere up there, three climbers were
possibly in trouble. Or would be very soon.
All three, Garamonde knew, were in their twenties, a
good age to climb, fit and able, and old enough to recognise
the dangers. They had come to his office to arrange
their permis, explaining what they intended doing, asking
for forecasts -- all the usual things. They looked bright and
tough and their hands, Garamonde had noticed, were suitably
rough and calloused. Real climbers, and well equipped,
they'd assured him, for any possible change in the weather,
telling him how they'd done the Petit Dru, the Grandes
Jorasses and various Aiguilles around Chamonix, and how
they wanted to notch up Vialle before heading home. Even
his eyes to the nameplate on Garamonde's desk and then
looked up with a quizzical smile.
'Any relation?' he'd asked.
'My grandfather,' Garamonde replied.
'He get to the top?' asked the American with an insolent
tilt to his head.
Garamonde shot him a look. He might have been a
good climber, but Garamonde didn't like the boy - cocky
and full of himself. It was climbers like him who made
mistakes. Garamonde felt an irresistible urge to put the
young man in his place and, before he could stop himself,
he'd given his answer: 'Unaccompanied - four times.' As
soon as the words were out of his mouth, Garamonde
wished them back.
But it made an impression.
The American nodded as if he'd expected as much.
'Wicked,' was all he said.

And now that same climber was in danger. Or dead.
On the same mountain. His companions too. For all its
accessibility,Vialle was still a killer. Even in good weather
it could take you by surprise.
Looking through his office window, Garamonde
watched the gondolas swing out of the lift-station and
head up to the start of the pistes. Even this early in the
morning the swaying cabins were packed with skiers and
snowboarders anxious to take advantage of the first real
fall of the season and the promise of fresh powder on
the upper reaches. It was what they had come here for,
what they'd all been waiting for, and he could almost
feel the excitement of the crowds queuing at the entrance
to the lift-station. How many of them, wondered
vjaramonde, had any idea of the dangers that lurked in
the mountains they skied down. If they worried about
27

Mill

with snow on the way, it was a reasonable request and
Garamonde had issued their permits.
Garamonde hadn't seen the two Americans before,
but he recognised the Englishman, the one who did most
of the talking, his French polished and confident. Two
years earlier, he told Garamonde, he'd done an ascent on
Bellepic with a university climbing team, and Garamonde
placed him. The weather had been kind and they'd made
a good ascent -- up and down in three days - reporting
back to Garamonde as soon as they returned to Les
Hauts.They could do with more of that kind of climber,
Garamonde reflected. If the Englishman had had anything
to do with it, they'd certainly have reported in to Fredo
if they made it down to Dareggio, or to him if they
came back here.
Rolling out a face plan of Vialle, the various routes
marked out in a red highlighter pen, Garamonde had
told them what he could, pointing out the various
features of the climb. At this time of year, he explained,
and with the first real snow forecast for later in the
week, they were best advised to start their climb a
hundred metres left of theValentina spring, head straight
up for another hundred metres, then, depending on the
wind, make a long traverse to the right - maybe five
pitches - until they reached a sloping ledge. If they
climbed quickly, it would make a good stop for a rest
and some food before climbing on. From there, it was
a	pure slog, fairly straightforward until the slope tipped
near vertical.
' If the going's slow, you could overnight at Garamonde's
Step,' he'd told them, pointing out the spot halfway up
the mountain.
The American with the dyed blond hair had dropped
anything it was chapped lips or sunburn, or losing their
gloves or their goggles, or finding a good table for lunch
at one of the Auberge's lodges, or, at the very worst, a
bad fall or a broken bone. If only they knew . . .
With a tsk-tsk of impatience Garamonde glanced at
his watch, picked up the phone and dialled the first of
four numbers. Beyond the lift-station, the bank of clouds
he'd seen from Nathalie's chalet had started to build and
bulge above the Courcelle ridge. There wasn't much
time.
When his call was finally answered, Garamonde's
message was short and precise.
'Benoit? It's Paul. Fuel up. I have a job for us.'

7

From the moment Johnnie Peat opened his eyes, his
brain seemed to speed up. And with a sharp, icy stab of
fear he suddenly understood the danger he was in.
It wasn't over.
Somehow he'd survived the fall - a hundred metres?
Two hundred? -- but he was buried. Buried by an
avalanche.
How deep, he wondered? How far from the surface?
Facing uphill or downhill? Or somewhere between?
It was impossible to tell.
Horizontal or perpendicular? On his feet or his head?
Also impossible to tell.
He took a breath -- cold enough to scorch the back
of his throat -- and tried to focus on the gloom, tried
to get a sense of where he was.
He moved his head to increase the view and was
relieved to note that there was enough space to do so.
Until a chin strap reminded him he was still wearing a
helmet and the helmet was clamped tight in a fist of
snow. He could only move his head as far as chin strap
and helmet allowed. Which wasn't much.
But it was enough.
As far as he could make out he was caught in an icy
cocoon which, thanks to a right arm flung up to protect
his face in the fall, afforded maybe twenty centimetres
of clearance in front of him. The bad news was that both
legs appeared to be tightly encased from just below the
waist, a wedge of snow and ice pressing against his thighs
and buttocks.
So. He was buried in snow. With restricted movement.
But how restricted? And had he been injured in
the fall? From his head to his toes, Johnnie checked
himself out, sending messages to distant muscle groups,
receiving in return two bright white flashes of pain when
he tried to move his left hand and his left foot caught
somewhere behind him. And he remembered the twin
blows he received in the fall - a rock outcrop? A block
of tumbling ice?
What else?
When the avalanche came he'd been carrying a
rucksack and snowboard. But as far as he could make
out, both were now gone, no shoulder straps visible probably
torn off him in the fall, and maybe the reason
his left arm was now behind him? The loss of the
snowboard was unimportant, the loss of the rucksack
potentially life-threatening. In one of its side pockets
was a flask of watered cognac and two bars of 70 per
cent cacao chocolate he'd bought at the Tabac in Les

Hauts.
In the other pocket was a knife. And his mobile phone.
Thinking about the knife reminded him that before
the fall he'd been roped up to Nick and Billy-Ray, ten
metres of cord between each of them. He thought of
Nick, looping that noose round his neck just seconds
before the fall, and knew for certain that he would be

dead.
But what of Billy-Ray? Had he survived? Was he
somewhere close by? Just ten metres away or less. And
maybe closer to the surface than him? Could Billy-Ray
break free and haul him out on the rope?
Or was Billy-Ray buried deeper?
Or dead?
A dead weight anchoring him to his fate.
A chill started to tighten in Johnnie's belly but he
snapped to. He was wasting time. And time, he knew,
was in short supply.
He had to do something. And fast.
Before he froze to death or ran out of air.

8

Normally Hugo Bezard walked to work, a ten-minute
stroll along a stepped pine-needle path that led down
from his chalet to the lawns of the Auberge, but this
morning he called for a car to pick him up. Wrapping
a scarf round his neck and pulling up the collar of his
Loden overcoat, Hugo stood in the covered porch of his
chalet to await its arrival, breathed in the chill, fresh
mountain air, and was pleased to note that Auberge
grounds staff had already cleared the path from his front
door to the lane, just as they had done to all the neighbouring
guest chalets, the snow banked up either side
of the gritted pathways. They had even cleared paths to
three of the chalets that were still empty.
Standards, Hugo thought as he spotted one of the
Auberge's Range Rovers heading through snow-laden
firs in his direction. Standards. There may not yet be
guests in residence in those three chalets, but that was
no reason to let standards slip.
Five minutes later, drawing up on Place des Sommets,
"ugo got out of the car, skipped lightly up the steps of the
main entrance and stepped into the warm, tartan-carpeted,
antlered lobby of the Auberge. As usual, it was a gauntlet
of bonjours and ca vas all the way to his office - to the
doorman Michel and his gang of baggagistes, to the
concierge Didier, Ellie at reception, and, in his leather
apron and rolled shirtsleeves, old Guillaume who brought
in the logs for the twin fires that blazed happily in their
stone-flanked hearths at either end of the lobby, filling
the ground-floor rooms of the Auberge with the
warming scent of seasoned woodsmoke.
'Monsieur, Madame, bonjour, bonjour' he repeated every
time he passed a guest, sometimes a handshake, a swift
bow, always a beaming smile.'Didn't I tell you,' he admonished
them, waving an arm to the front door and a
glaring snow-packed Place des Sommets. 'Didn't I tell
you that the snow was coming? Didn't I tell you? And
look. Here it is. Just as I said.'
Pushing through into his plank-walled office overlooking
the front de neige and the snowy slopes of Les
Hauts, Hugo pulled off his coat and hung it up in his
father's ornately scrolled armoire. Then he made himself
comfortable behind the carved negocianfs desk that his
grandfather had brought all the way from the trading quais of Bordeaux, swung round in his chair and looked
out at the slopes beyond the window. Was there ever a
more beautiful sight? he thought. Snow at last, and just
a couple of weeks to go before the world and his mother
descended on Les Hauts for the Devil's Downhill.
Turning back to the desk he started on the pile of mail
awaiting attention, one of the letters from the editor of
an American magazine suggesting a fashion special -- just
five rooms for race week for her models, photographer
and stylists. He was chuckling at the nerve of the woman
when his mobile started to bleat.
Hugo slipped out the phone, saw who was calling and
pushed back from the desk, another warm anticipatory
glow of pleasure spreading through his body.
A full house, deep snow, a staggering Diable bid
confirmed, and an early morning call from his mistress.
Could a day get any better? he wondered.

A flamenco dancer.
Johnnie Peat was a flamenco dancer caught in mid
spin. That's how he pictured himself. That was how his
body was arranged in this icy tomb. Head back and
turned slightly to the left; right arm high, almost shielding
his eyes; left arm low and tight to his back; and left heel
kicking up against the back of his right leg.
He knew he'd been lucky. If his arms had been broken
in the fall or if they'd been pinned by the snow to his
body, there'd have been no chance to dig himself out.
But they hadn't been. Or at least one of them hadn't.
His left arm might be caught behind him but his right
arm was directly in front, and if he could somehow
loosen it sufficiently he might just have a chance. He
knew that he had to start digging as soon as he could,
but to dig he needed something to dig with. The question
of where to dig, and in which direction, he would
leave for now.
Ten minutes later, scouring his elbow into the snow
packed behind it, flexing his gloved fist, and turning his
wrist against its icy manacle, he finally managed to squeeze
his right hand out of the trapped glove. He felt a great
pulse of confidence at this achievement and delighted in
the tiny freedom his efforts provided. He could now
move his hand towards his face, and reach to the zip on
his jacket. And as he experimented with this new range
of movement he felt another lift of confidence as the
ice packed round his elbow began to loosen. It took just
a few more tugs and jerks and suddenly the whole arm
was free, from shoulder to freezing fingertips, the crystals
of snow and ice that he dislodged dropping towards
his waist.
Which fired him with another great burst of confidence.
Gravity
at work. If he hadn't seen the crystals falling
it would have meant he was upside down.The very worst
position to be in.
But he had seen them. So he was standing upright.
Now he knew where the surface was, which way to
dig. And if he was facing downhill, he told himself, it
stood to reason he would be through to the surface of
the snow quicker than if he was facing uphill.
He prayed he was facing downhill and raising his arm
began to scrape away at the confines of his icy shroud.

10

As arranged, they were waiting for Paul Garamonde at
the airstrip, drinking coffee in white plastic mugs from
the Crespi-Aviation vending machine and wincing with
every sip, breath clouding in the chill.

Pulling his Jeep into the parking lot, Garamonde
switched off the engine and gave them a wave - Benoit
Crespi in a zippered orange jumpsuit, leather boots and
a fur-collared American bomber jacket; and Patric Bezard, Jean Lesage and Marc Monbalt all in the red one-piece
mountain rescue kit that Garamonde was also wearing.
Going round to the back of the 4x4 he reached for his
skis and walked over to them.
'So?' he asked, looking from one to another. 'We fit?'
'As we'll ever be,' replied Benoit, running a thumbnail
down the stubbled cleft of his chin. 'So what's the

plan?'
Briefly Garamonde explained about the climbers on
Vialle, then told Benoit what he wanted. 'I need you to run us back and forth a couple of times across the face,
from the summit down to the Step. Then take a pass along the north and south ridges in case they took shelter
there from the storm. After that, if the weather holds,
you can drop us on the southern edge of Murone and
we'll ski-search what we can.'
'Dessin said the snow didn't start till after midnight,'
said Monbalt. 'They wouldn't have been climbing then.'
Tall and lean and the youngest of the team, Marc was a
lowlander who'd come to the mountains for a ski holiday
and stayed. As well as mountain rescue, he worked with
Garamonde at the Bureau des Pistes and was a reserviste with the local gendarmerie.
'Snow, maybe,' replied Garamonde,'but there was wind
too, earlier in the day. And when you're hanging from
your glove tips with a few hundred metres of fresh air
below you and a wind tugging at your legs, it's tempting
to find somewhere sheltered.'
'Or come back down,' said Lesage, his face as browrn
and wizened as a nutmeg. A ski guide with thirty years'
experience in the Viallaise, Lesage knew what climbers
were like.
'It wouldn't be the first time we risked our skins while
they took a bellyful in Bar Mique,' added Patric, Hugo
Bezard's younger brother, pushing a hand through his
crop of curling blond hair only now starting to grey at
the temples, and all of it still in place.
Garamonde nodded. He'd considered the same himself,
knew how many times they'd searched for hours in
perilous conditions only to find the climbers they were
looking for huddled round a jug of beer celebrating their
close calls and conquests rather than reporting back that
they were safe, their climb ended or abandoned. Or, on
one occasion, in Les Hauts' gendarmerie, arrested for
drunk and disorderly behaviour.
'I wouldn't put it past the Yankees', said Garamonde.
'But the Englishman wouldn't have let us down. He's
climbed here before, a couple of years back. Good boy,
good climber. He'd have known to call from Dareggio
and not keep us waiting. So, if we're ready - let's get to
it. There'll be snow before dark and there's no telling
how long it'll last. If they're still up there we've got to
find them and get them down. If they're accessible we'll
take them off with a rope. If they're not we'll set something
up from the summit.'
Fifteen minutes later, skis stowed on the skids of the
Agusta, Benoit increased revs on the cyclic stick between
his knees and applied a gentle pressure to the collective
which controlled the chopper's lift and descent. As the
revs rose the scream of the rotors increased to an almost
unbearable pitch and then, with a shudder and a wobble,
they were airborne, tilting forward to sweep over the
snow-packed roofs of the airstrip maintenance hangars,
heading out across the main road into Les Hauts and
skimming the resort's southern edge towards the distant
Vialle, rising with the slope, fifty metres above the taut
cables of the Courcelle lift.
Sitting up front with Benoit, Garamonde watched the
mountain tower up above them, filling the windscreen with
its cliffs and buttresses and slanting ledges and granite fastness.
Like his father and grandfather before him, he'd climbed
this hill - though thankfully he hadn't told the American that. The first time he'd been seventeen, roped up to Jean and Patric now sitting in the back seat, with Jean's father
leading most of the pitches. The second time, he'd done it with his best friend, Alex Ryland, the only one in their group who'd left Les Hauts for the big wide world and never returned, making millions the last time they heard. Ahe two of them had climbed it in twenty-nine hours,

37

celebrating their daredevil sprint with the waitresses in
Dareggio. The last time, Garamonde had climbed Vialle
alone - mid-summer like his grandfather - with just a
length of rope and a harness packed with bolts and carabiniers.
It had taken him three days to the top and down
again.
Crackling over his headset, Garamonde heard Benoit's
voice.
'Why don't we start here and head north to Murone?'
he said, nodding towards the distant lip of the glacier
that hung like a shelf between Vialle and Courcelle.
Garamonde gave Benoit a thumbs-up and pulled out
some binoculars from the rucksack between his knees.
Leaning forward he fixed the glasses to his eye, feeling
the metal rims of the eyepieces jag at his brows as he
tried to focus on the wall of stone moving past.
'This thing go any slower?' he asked.
'Slow as you like,' said Benoit, easing the revs. 'Till it
drops out of the sky, if you really want.' Suddenly the
mountainside was clearer, moving past at a more manageable
speed.
In the back seat, Jean, Patric and Marc had pulled
open the sliding door and were also training binoculars
on the slopes.
Three times they traversed the west slope, rising two
hundred metres a time until they'd pretty much cleared
the whole face. But they saw nothing. No bivouac, no
equipment, no sign of the climbers.
As they broke over the final step and reached the
gentler slopes of the summit, a sudden squall of wind
buffeted the Agusta and tossed it about until Benoit
brought them round from the Dareggio side. Hovering
a metre or so above the summit ledge, Jean Lesage jumped
out to see if the climbers had signed their names in the
climbers' book kept in a metal case by the weather
recording instruments. Garamonde watched Lesage pull
out the book and hold down the fluttering pages, then turn and shake his head. There were no names, which
meant that the climbers hadn't reached the summit and
taken the easier south-easterly route down to Dareggio.
They were still on the mountain.
Lesage clambered back into his seat and as he reached
for his safety harness Benoit swung the craft round to
the north and dropped her over the Murone ridge. It
was a steep drop and the four mountain men felt their
stomachs rise and slide and twist, the Agusta's blades clattering
above their heads in the turbulent air. Benoit
appeared not to notice - either the drop or his passengers'
discomfort.
'You see the cornice back there?' said Benoit over the
headset. 'Looks like the wind took a chunk of it. Or
new snow piling up.'
'Straight down to the top of gully,' said Lesage in the
back seat, O'Neill ski goggles tethered round his neck,
his eyes powerfully blue against snow-darkened cheeks.
'If they were anywhere near that couloir . . .'
Sitting beside Benoit, Garamonde said nothing. He'd
seen snow skids in that gully on all three passes, which
could mean only one thing. A slide, and a big one. As
Lesage had said, if the climbers were anywhere near that
couloir when the cornice came down they wouldn't have
stood a chance. If it had been a degree or two colder they'd have been all right, the new snow would have held, cemented. But it hadn't. And when a good gust of wind hit that sneering lip of a cornice, that would have been it for them. Anywhere on the face below, in a
twenty-metre wide track, and they'd have had it. Unless
the team could find something soon, there was no doubt
in Garamonde's mind what had happened.
After just ten minutes his fears were confirmed. No
sign of them on the north face, nothing down by the
Murone ridge, and a crumpled slew of snow debris a
few hundred metres above the start of theValentina piste,
directly below the couloir.
'Can you drop us on the ridge?' asked Garamonde.
'Usual spot?' asked Benoit.
'Exacte,' said Garamonde, pushing his binoculars into
the top of his rucksack and pulling down his goggles.
Swinging to the right, tipping the bird over in a fifty
degree slide, Benoit brought the Agusta to the edge of
the ridge and settled her into a tornado of raging downdraft
snow.
'Got your lift passes, boys?'

11

Johnnie Peat had cleared the snow from the front, top
and right-hand side of his helmet and had just turned
his head and lowered his chin to his chest when a great
wave of panic rose up and washed over him. It came
without any warning, from the pit of his stomach, and
in an instant it had snatched away every shred of hope,
confidence, optimism.
One minute he was loosening the snow around his
helmet, the next his heart was thumping in his chest,
pulsing in his ears, every muscle clenched with desperate
fear and agonising recrimination . . .
If only he'd put his mobile phone in his pocket and
not his backpack . . .
If only he still had his ice axe . . .
If only they'd climbed the slope to the left and not
gone
for the couloir . . .
If only he hadn't said anything about Vialle . . .
If only he hadn't met Nick and Billy-Ray . . .
. . . And suddenly he was suffocating! He couldn't
breathe!
His lungs heaved for breath . . .
There was no way out. . .
There was no time . . .
He was going to die in here . . .
In this icy coffin . . .
But he wasn't going to die . . .
He wouldn't. . .
He would survive . . .
And gritting his teeth, squeezing his eyes shut, Johnnie
rode the fear and fought down the panic . . .
. . . Panic and you die, he screamed at himself. Panic
and you die.
Relax, and you might just live.
Relax. Relax. Fucking relax.
It seemed to take an age to slow the desperate
thumping in his chest, to control his breathing, but finally
he managed it.

And slowly his confidence ebbed back.
He was going to make it. He was going to make it.
Hang on to that thought.
And keep digging, keep clearing the snow.
It was then, as the thumping in his chest eased and
the blood pulsing in his ears faded, that he heard something.
A similar pounding sound, rising in volume as his
heartbeat quietened. Even with his ears encased in his
helmet he could make it out. Somewhere above him.
Coming from his right, passing overhead, and fading
away.
And then the sound returned. From the left this time,
passing overhead once more, and fading again.
A helicopter. It was a helicopter. Searching for him.
A rescue party. They were coming to find him. They
were coming to drag him out of there.
Desperately Johnnie started digging again -- around
his waist, above his head, one-handed, working shoulders
and elbow into his icy mantle, feeling jabs of pain
from his left arm and left foot as his body jerked and
wriggled in the snow.
He was going to survive.
He was going to live.
He was going to make it.

12

The four skiers - Garamonde, Lesage, Bezard and Monbalt
- crouched down over their skis as the Agusta's rotors
bit into the clear, chill morning air and with a roar
of its engine lifted off from the Murone ridge, tiny
chips of ice slicing through the air like shrapnel. In a
matter of seconds the ear-blasting barrage ended as
the helicopter tilted away from them, banked to the
left and then dropped out of sight below the lip of
the glacier.
When the sound of the helicopter's engine was just
a fading clatter, replaced by a whisper of icy breeze off
the cracked and fissured glacier not twenty metres from
their skis, Garamonde told them what he wanted.
'We'll start here and traverse across the upper slope.
I'll take the top line and go first. Jean, Patric, the two
of you in the middle, and Marc below that. You know
the drill. We'll stop every twenty metres and probe, then
on again. When we reach the far ridge we'll turn and
come back.' He looked at the faces of his three friends.
They knew the score. Better they find the climbers now,
under the snow, than get a call in a few months' time when
some party of walkers or other climbers came across the
bodies, released by the spring melt.
Pulling down his goggles, Garamonde poled off on
to the top run and turned back to see his companions
fan out below him, maybe a hundred metres below Vialle's
first steep pitch where the climbers would have had to
rope up and start climbing. In summer this was a sliding
slope of shale and scree where every footfall was an
effort, a shifting surface of stone chips where the foot
sank down and slid back - like walking on a quicksand
treadmill. Now, after the first heavy fall, there were maybe
four or five metres of snow beneath their skis, banked
up by the wind and possibly increased by falls from the
summit, the surface puckered with holes where loose
rocks and stones had hummed down, or properly
burrowed where unbroken slabs of ice had crashed down
through the soft top layers.
As instructed the four of them paused in a staggered
line every twenty or so metres, approximately twenty
metres of slope between them, and pulled extendable
probes from their backpacks. Thrusting the points into
the snow, they felt around their position in a regulation
pattern - once to the left of their skis, then between
their bindings and finally to the right, pushing down as
far as the probe would allow. In another month or two
the snow depth here would be close to fifteen metres,
each new snowfall packing down in layers, but right now
the points of the probes reached almost to the ground.
When they finished each search, they snapped closed the
probes, moved on another twenty metres and repeated
the exercise, each man starting to sweat as they moved
from the chill shadow cast by the mountain into sharp
sunlight.

13

Three times Johnnie heard the helicopter pass - right
to left, left to right, and back again. But now there was
silence. Not a whisper. Maybe they'd given up and flown
away. Or maybe the helicopter had dropped skiers to
continue the search at ground level. He could only wait
and pray.
And while he waited and prayed, he dug, upwards
and outwards with his fingers, scouring sideways with
his elbow until he'd hollowed out an arm's length of
space in front of him and the same above. The trouble
was that every spray of snow and ice he displaced was
building up around his waist. Reaching down he shovelled
it aside and started digging around his legs. If he
wanted to climb out of the snow, he would need to get
his legs free.
And then he had an idea. Reaching up, he scrabbled
at his chin strap, loosened the helmet and dragged it off.
He felt a piercing cold race over his scalp and shiver
through the roots of his hair, but suddenly he had a tool
in his hands, a rudimentary shovel, to spare his bleeding
fingertips.
It was then, trying to work out the best way to hold
the helmet, that a shadow passed above him, from left
to right, coming to a halt at the very edge of his vision,
no more than a metre above the reach of his hand. Two
grey lines with a larger shadow beyond. Skis. A skier.
Just as he had hoped and prayed, the people who were
looking for him had left the helicopter and were searching
the slope on skis. Maybe the man who'd issued their permis, or one of his team.
Right there.
Just a few metres away.
And then, to his right, just out of sight, he heard a
piercing shhhh sound. A probe. They were probing the
snow.
With all his strength, he screamed out as loudly as he
could.'Help! Help! I'm here.'Again and again and again,
banging his helmet against the wall of snow and ice that
held him.
Surely they'd hear him, just as he had heard the helicopter.
But
there was no response.
And then the shadow was gone
And silence settled around him once more.

14

It was tiring work, digging in the probe, pulling it up,
digging it down again, feeling for any resistance, anything
to suggest there might be something buried in the snow
beneath. But each man knew that lives depended on
their efforts. The longer it took to dig someone out of
the snow, the less chance there was of bringing them
out alive. Like all mountain people, for whom snow was
as familiar as a cup of coffee, they knew the figures: after
ten minutes buried less than a half-metre below the
surface, the chance of survival was around 75 per cent,
so long as no injuries had been sustained by debris carried
in the avalanche - trees, rocks, building materials.
Anything deeper than a metre, and the chances of making
it out of the snow alive dropped dramatically. Of course,
there were many stories of people surviving for days, but
that was usually when victims were trapped in buildings
where air was not at a premium and the cold was not
a killer.
After an hour, the four skiers reached the far side of
the slope and, one by one, they turned back for another run, crossing each other's tracks, repeating the probe
pattern a little lower down the slope, quartering the
search area as effectively as they could. If Garamonde
was right, somewhere beneath their skis, dead or alive,
were the three young climbers he'd talked to not five
days earlier in his office in Les Hauts.
They were on their fourth traverse - Garamonde
leading, followed by Jean and Patric - when Monbalt,
preparing to follow, spotted a slide of loose snow streaming
down the slope towards them, gathering speed and weight
with every second. Rather than shout a warning or waste
time searching for his walkie-talkie, he pulled off his
gloves, put his fingers over his tongue and whistled as
loudly as he dared, not wishing to increase the flow of
snow by starting an even bigger slip.
But his first whistle was too low and neither Patric
nor Jean -- both of them standing directly beneath the
slide -- heard it. He gave another blast, louder this time,
and Lesage, pulling the probe from between his bindings,
heard the whistle, turned and saw immediately the
snow coursing down towards him.There was just enough
time to dig the probe back in and cling to it as the slide
reached him, sluicing around his boots and bindings like
a breaking wave on a sandy beach. Twenty metres lower
down, Patric did the same, while Garamonde, higher up
the slope but further across it, had managed to ski out
of the slide's path before it reached him.
And then, as if nothing had happened, the moving
snow started to slow, banking up against the edge of the
Valentina ridge, just twenty metres further down.

One by one the skiers relaxed, straightened up, Lesage
and Patric up to their thighs in snow, Monbalt and
Garamonde unscathed at the edge of the run. Rocking
backwards and forwards, 'walking' their legs to loosen
skis and bring tips to the surface, the two men carefully
worked themselves clear of the snow and gave a thumbs
up, unwilling to shout in case another fall was released,
maybe bigger than the one that had swept gently past
them.
'Let's call it a day,' whispered Garamonde into his
walkie-talkie, tapping a ski on to the snow - listening
to the sound, feeling for texture - then glancing up at
the sky as a sheet of cloud slid into view and a few
stray flakes of snow began to fall. 'Marc, stay where you
are. Jean, Patric and I will get back to your side of the
slope. From there we'll head home on the Valentina
route and--'
But he stopped mid-sentence, catching a movement
in the corner of his eye. Something moving in the snow,
following in the path of the slide. It looked like a pair
of shoes coasting down the slope, picking up speed. As
it drew closer, Garamonde could see that the shoes were
attached to a short red board. Riderless, the snowboard
slid past him, reached the edge of the Valentina ridge
and flipped out of sight.
Snowboarders.
They weren't just climbers, thought Garamonde. They
were boarders too.
Looking for some off-piste thrills.
He shook his head in disbelief.

Merde alors.


It was dark and cold in his ice hole and Johnnie knew
he was tiring. The muscles in his arm were starting to
chill and stiffen, refusing to do what he wanted.
Since his rescuers had moved on - two, three hours
ago? - Johnnie had dug down past his knees and loosened
enough snow from around his right leg to pull it
up, bend the knee and rest the toe of his boot on a ledge
of snow. Something to push against, something to lift
himself a little higher even if, every time he pushed down
with his right foot, he felt a corresponding blast of red
hot agony scream from his left ankle and left wrist. Both
broken for sure. Nothing else could account for the pain.
But he could bear it. He had to bear it. Because for
every press down with the boot - and shaft of pain the
scooping rim of his helmet lifted the lid of his coffin
another inch.
Inch by inch, Johnnie dug upwards, snow and ice
showering away from the edge of his helmet-shovel. And
inch by searing inch he felt his left foot and left arm
shift and loosen, and shriek with pain. Twice he dropped
his helmet, his freezing fingers unable to grip it tightly
enough, but both times he found it and carried on. And
as he scraped away at the snow he tried to calculate the
distance still to go. How far away had those skis been,
that shadow on the surface of the snow? A metre? A
little more? And now? After all this shovelling? Surely
no more than two arm's-lengths away? Already his bent
right knee was beginning to straighten as he worked his
way upwards
So close. So near.
Another two hours and he'd be there. Surely? Hauling
himself out of the snow . . . seeing the lights of Les Hauts
below him . . . and making his way down in the moonlight.
A
hot drink. A warm bed.
Just a little bit longer, just a little bit further.
It was just a question of time.
Of determination. Of commitment.
He could do this. He could do it.
Except. ..
Except it was getting darker and colder with every
scraping minute, each swing of the helmet weaker now,
less effective as muscles cramped and the blood that had
pumped through his body, heated up with the exertion,
started to slow and cool.
He was tiring, that was all. He'd been scraping and
shovelling for hours and he realised it was time to take
a break. He needed to rest, needed to stop digging for a
moment, even if the delay and the increasing cold meant the wall of his tomb would become harder to work on.
So be it, he thought, lowering his arm and letting the
helmet fall from his fingers. So be it.
Five minutes. He'd rest for five minutes.
Five minutes only.
He'd count the seconds. So he'd know when to start
digging again.
But how many seconds was that?
Johnnie frowned. He was good at maths. It really
shouldn't have been a problem, and he was surprised that
it was.
Now let's see . . . that's five times sixty. Three hundred
and sixty. No, three . . . hundred.Three hundred seconds.
That's all he had to count.
Then he'd reach for his helmet and start digging again.
So . . . One, two, three, four . . .
He closed his eyes, shook away a shiver . . .
It was time for a rest. . .
. . . Time to rest.

16

The four men took their usual booth at the back of Bar
Mique, their red mountain rescue kit drawing curious
looks from visitors, familiar nods from regulars. They
made no order at the bar, but five minutes after pulling
off their gloves the bar boss, Ginette, brought a jug of pression to their table, ice cold from the cellar, along with
four demi glasses.
'No luck?' she asked, pouring out the beer.
As usual, thought Garamonde, news travelled fast in
Les Hauts. He shook his head.
'We'll try again tomorrow if the snow lets up,' said
Patric, 'but it doesn't look good.'
Ginette considered this. 'They were in here the night
before they set out. Neat guys,' she said. 'Is there any
chance you'll find them?'
Garamonde wiped a white moustache from his top
lip. 'You know how it is, Ginny. Maybe. Maybe not.'
Ginette nodded. She might only have been in her
twenties, but she was Hautienne. She knew the mountains.
She knew what happened.
Patric put down his beer and reached for his wallet.
'Hey,' she said. 'The beers are on Mique.' And with
that she spun on her heel and hurried back to the bar.
'Well, here's to Mique,' said Lesage and wearily they
chinked glasses.
In Les Hauts there was no shortage of bars that the
four friends could have gone to after coming down from
the slopes, but Bar Mique was always the first choice.
Apart from Marc Monbalt, the three older men had been
coming here since their teens, holing up in one of the
six booths at the back of the main room, and had never
seen a reason to go elsewhere. Other bars might have
been smarter and flashier but none compared with the
venerable Mique s.
Like the Auberge, which it faced across Place des
Sommets, Mique's was a treasured Les Hauts institution.
Its old zinc bar was long and pitted, the mirrored shelves
behind it crowded with what looked like every liquor
known to man, and its mixed soundtrack of Rat Pack
and Rolling Stones numbers, the Kaiser Chiefs and
Razorlight, ensured a good crowd - locals and visitors
alike. It served great scrambled eggs for breakfast, croquemonsieurs,
hamburgers and omelettes at lunch, and
devilled chicken-wings after the ski lifts closed for the
night. That was all there was on offer - all there'd ever
been on offer at Mique's - and if you didn't like the
choice you went hungry. Or somewhere else.
They were finishing off the last of their pression when
Benoit arrived with a second jug and any thoughts they
might have had of getting home early swiftly evaporated.
'They should call it Hotel California,' said Patric,
ordering up a dish of wings. 'Once settled, it's hard to
shift.'
That was the kind of place Mique's was.

17

It was the silence, when the twelve-litre engine on his
Leitwolf-435 was idling, that Georges Raclin loved most
about grooming the pistes.The silence of the slopes high
above Les Hauts save the soft comforting rumble of those
twelve litres, the dark emptiness of the night when he
killed the overhead xenon headlamps, and the depth of
the solitude when he climbed out of his cabin and moved
away from the rig. It was like stepping off the edge of
the world, Raclin often thought, and just looking back
from the void.
Raclin had reached the top of Valentina on the
Gante Piste, the Leitwolf's metre-wide tracks, scoops
and ploughs flattening and combing the latest fall of
snow into a corduroy strip of skiable slope for the
following morning. Gante was one of the most dramatic
of Les Hauts' pistes, and Valentina one of five separate
approaches from the Guiron and Costier stations that
channelled skiers into a rocky chute that dropped and
twisted for more than three hundred metres before
spitting them out on to the steep, final stretch back
to Les Hauts.
According to Jules Dessin's briefing at the Centre
Municipal, Raclin's next stop was Chassay where he'd
join up with old Bidolphe on the 'motorway' run that
locals mockingly referred to as the Devil's Level, its angle
of incline so slight that beginners often had to be pushed
by their instructor to get them moving. But right now
Raclin was on Valentina, the snow had eased off, and he
needed a pee.
When he'd first started work as a piste-groomer in
the old Renard III rust-bucket they used back then,
Raclin could hold two demi-pressions of cold Grimbergen
from a 9 p.m. start until his sign-off at 2 a.m. But at
fifty-nine, the five-hour shift was getting too much for
him. Once, sometimes twice a night, he'd have to stop
and relieve himself-- often signing a section of piste with
a golden 'GR'. He might be getting on, he thought, but
he still had a sense of humour. More than you could say
for that fat dwarf Bidolphe who looked like he'd lost a
snow shovel up his arse.
Finding a ridge of level ground to the right of
Valentina, Raclin set the Leitwolf's brakes, pushed open
the cabin door and clambered down on to the snow.
According to Dessin, there'd been a slide fromVialle that
morning and three climbers lost. Garamonde and the
boys had been up all day but found nothing. As he
trudged through the new snow cover, tuning out the
low grumbling of the Leitwolf's engine, Raclin glanced
up at the rock buttresses above him. Not a nice way to
go, he decided, swept off a mountain or buried in an
avalanche. But if you had to die somewhere, then right
here at the top ofValentina took some beating.
Ten metres clear of the Leitwolf Raclin found a suitable
spot and started to unbutton his fly, gazing down
at the lights of Les Hauts far below, a tiny puddling of
orange in a wilderness of shadowy snow and looming
moonlit peaks. Just a fabulous view, he decided, and
turning his attention to a low bank of snow in front of
him he squared up for a signing.
Raclin was adding a final flourish to the tail of the
'R' when the soft whispering as he peed into the snow
turned to a hard pattering. He peered down at his yellow
initials and there, glinting in the moonlight, he saw a
curve of black plastic washed clean from the snow.
Buttoning up, he reached out with his boot and tapped
it. Something caught in the snow, something . . .
He knelt down, brushed away some snow, and frowned.
It looked like the side of a helmet. A skier's helmet. He
dug a little deeper and was tucking his fingers under its
rim to lever it from the snow when he suddenly felt it
move.
He snatched away his hand and his heart raced. And
then he saw it move again, tilting to the left and then
the right, its rim scraping weakly at the crust of snow
in which it was held.
Suddenly Raclin knew what he'd found.

18

In the back booth at Bar Mique, Patric Bezard finally
decided it was time to call it a night, time to be getting
home. He'd tried to get away an hour earlier, but Mique's
had worked its magic and he'd stayed on for a fourth
jug of pression and another order of wings. When he
called his wife, Sophie, to say he was having supper with
the boys at Mique's, she'd been fine about it, told him
that she and her sister Mathilde had ordered in a pizza
and that she'd see him later. But he knew he couldn't
stretch it too far or he'd catch the sharp end of her
tongue. When she was happy Sophie purred like a cat,
but Patric knew that when the purring stopped the claws
came out.
With temperatures already plummeting they all knew that the odds of finding anyone alive the following morning
were close to zero. But that didn't mean they wouldn't try. Strange things happened in the mountains and they all knew the stories: the woman in Tignes, buried in the
snow for two days, who survived on a ham sandwich and
a flask of cold coffee; the snowboarder who went off-piste
in Val Thorens and used his board to dig a way out of a
ten-metre drift; and the dog over in Dareggio that was
caught in a slide and survived four days. But if they were
going to do a good job, Patric knew that the four of them
needed to hold back on the jugs and get some rest.
It was just then, as Patric gathered up his gloves and
woollen hat, that Garamonde's mobile started buzzing.
'I think it's time I was off,' began Patric, sliding out
of the booth as Garamonde reached for the phone, flipped
it open and put it to his ear. 'And if I were you,' Patric
continued, 'I'd think of doing the same. It'll be an early
start tomorrow and--'
'Forget tomorrow,' said Garamonde, shovelling the phone
into his pocket. 'That was Georges Raclin. He's found a
live one up on Valentina and he's bringing him down.'

19

Fifteen minutes later, powering down the final slope
towards the Bureau des Pistes et Secours,G~^R^
spotted a pair of ski sleds racing up ^^^ single headlamps dancing over the snow. Pulling up
Leitwolf, he opened the cab door and shouted down at
them.
'He's alive but only just. You'll have to help me.'
Inside the cabin, strapped into the spare seat and
wrapped in a protective foil sheet from the Leitwolf's
emergency box, the body that Raclin had found trembled
in jolting spasms. The foil that covered him glittered
and crackled in the dim cabin light. On the journey down
from Valentina the snow and ice crusted to his clothes
had quickly melted in the cabin's warmth, and he looked
for all the world like someone who'd been dragged from
the sea. Quickly, and as carefully as they could, Raclin
and Garamonde unstrapped the climber and manoeuvred
the dripping bundle out of the cabin and on to the tracks,
a length of climbing rope trailing like a tail from the
silvered wrap.
As the body was passed down to Jean and Marc, all
they could see was a tangle of wet brown hair plastered
across a gaunt, grey-blue face. And his hands. There were
no gloves and the tips of his left-hand fingers had started
to blacken. The right hand was nearly as bad: three of
his fingernails were torn away, and the claw-like bloodied
fingertips were showing the early stages of frostbite. His
eyes were closed, cheeks stubbled and his lips, a reddish
blue, were bunched up as though waiting for a kiss.
'Done some mouth to mouth when I dug him out,
but thought I better get him down here quick as I could,'
Raclin was saying.'A broken wrist and leg, I'd say.There's
a rucksack too, buried under him it was. Had some
brandy in one of the pockets so I gave him a slug of
that. Otherwise . . .'
'Thanks, Georges. Good job,' said Garamonde, and
jumping down from the Leitwolf he hurried over to the
first sled where the climber had been laid out on the
stretcher car and wrapped in heated blankets. Lesage was
already in the saddle, gunning the engine, and as soon
as the climber was secure, Garamonde swung up behind
Lesage and the two sleds sped off down the slope.

20

In the accident and emergency ward at Hopital des
Hauts, Doctor Francine Malland was reaching the end
of her shift. It was only the first day of real snow but
already casualty admissions were up. In the last eight
hours Francine had treated half a dozen snow-related
incidents, all of them the familiar litany of leg and arm
injuries, everything from badly twisted ankles and bruised
elbows to a compound fracture of the femur at the start
of her shift, the ragged point of the bone tenting the
bloodied yellow leg of an expensive Sno:Bro ski-suit.
The woman had been sedated in the ambulance. Which
was just as well, thought Francine, as she took a pair of
surgical scissors and cut up through the designer trouser
leg.
Now, with just another hour until her shift ended at
midnight, she was snapping on a pair of rubber gloves
as yet another 'snow-related' was wheeled into the
curtained treatment room.
The patient smiled apologetically as she examined the
shoulder he'd just dislocated. 'Just crossing Place des
Sommets I was, and my feet went out from under me,'
the man explained. 'Caught the elbow on the side of
the fountain and oooomph! That was it.' He spoke in
English, assuming she would understand.
'It happens,' Francine told him, just as she told them
all. lC'est les montagnes. C'est le ski! And with a philosophical
shrug she set about relocating the wayward end
of his shoulder.
In the old days, as Francine knew well, when her
father ran the surgery in Les Hauts, a slug of cognac
from the doctor's bag and a belt to chew on was all
the comfort afforded a patient before the offending
ball-and-socket was unceremoniously yanked back into
place. Nowadays it was easier, just a five-mil shot of
Phenolandrine dilute, usually administered through the
ski-suit.
Dropping the empty syringe on to her instrument
tray, Francine started counting while the painkiller got
to work on the patient. When she reached a slow sixty,
she took up position beside the gurney. Taking the
patient's hand, she drew his arm out as gently as she
could and stepped into his unwitting embrace. Placing
the arm carefully around her waist and transferring her
grip to his wrist and elbow, she took a breath, then
twisted her hips and tugged with all her might. A clunking
sound, like a butcher's cleaver separating a set of lamb
cutlets, was followed by a low, sucking 'phut' from the
joint and a surprised grunt from the patient. It was now,
as Francine well knew, that her patient would do one
of three things -- pass out, throw up, or smile. In her
experience, it was usually the women who smiled or
threw up. Only the men passed out.
'The nurse will arrange some ibuprofen, a sling and
bandaging,' Francine explained, nodding to her assistant
and settling the patient's arm on to his chest, 'but I am
afraid your skiing is over, Monsieur. No more Piste du
Diable for you.'
He nodded once, then his eyes rolled up into his head.
Down the corridor in reception, Francine heard a
phone ring and the breezy voice of the senior nurse. A
volley of 'owi's followed, and a 'Nous vous attendons.
Maintenant, oui! The phone clattered down in its cradle
and Francine heard the nurse come out from behind the
desk and hurry down the passage in her direction, plimsolls
squeaking on the polished lino. A moment later, the
treatment room curtain was whisked aside.
'AV,' said the nurse. 'Severe hypothermia. First and
second stage frostbite. Possible fractured left wrist and
left ankle.'
AV. Avalanche victim, thought Francine.
So they'd found one.

21

Body temperature 30° Celsius. Blood pressure 80 over
64. Pulse rate 43 per minute. Standing beside the bed,
Francine checked through the AV's vital signs. The wet
clothes had been stripped off him, thermal heating blankets
had been tucked around his body and electric hot
pads bandaged on to his hands. So far as she was able to
establish there appeared to be no serious internal injuries,
but according to X-rays her latest patient had sustained
a nasty fracture to his left wrist, and his left ankle was
badly broken in four separate places. If he survived, it
would be a long time before he went climbing again.
That he had survived at all was a miracle. Francine
knew the figures, knew the odds. As far as they could
estimate, the climber had been buried between one and
two metres below the surface for at least twelve hours.
Most victims would be dead in half the time.
According to Garamonde, who issued the climbers' permis and was now sitting with his team in the waiting
room, the AV's name was John Peat and he was English.
This had been confirmed when they brought in his rucksack
and found his passport. Full name, John Edward
Mattingley-Peat. British citizen. Twenty-two. Born in
Cheltenham. The passport photo showed a fresh, young
face that looked as though its owner was trying hard to
keep from breaking out into a grin.
There was no chance of any grinning now. Apparently
the shaking had stopped in the ambulance but the patient's
colour had hardly changed, just isolated red patches flowering
on his exposed cheeks and neck and then fading.
What worried Francine was his weight. He looked to
be over one-eighty centimetres in height but he was
painfully thin. She'd set up a warm dextrose feed but
she needed to stabilise and, hopefully, raise his core
temperature before proceeding any further.
She leaned down and increased the heat flow to the
blankets. A few more degrees and she could get to work.

Out in the waiting room Garamonde and his team sat
around the walls, red ski-suits unzipped, hair tousled and
eyes drooping with tiredness. Over in the corner, Monbalt
was already asleep, boots on the table and head flung
back. He gave out a snore and jerked awake.
'I think it's time you guys went home,' said Garamonde.
'I'll stay another hour or so, but if we're going up
tomorrow . . .' he looked at the clock on the wall,
I mean today, then we need to get some sleep. We'll meet
up at the airstrip at seven and--'
He got no further.
Standing in the doorway was Francine Malland.
She shook her head.
'I'm sorry. He's gone.'

22

High above the Val des Aigles, far above the twinkling
lights of Les Hauts, an eagle owl soared below the moonlit
summit slopes of Mont Vialle. The night air was sharp
and chill, ruffling through the raptor's plumage, its round,
feather-tufted head turning lazily, its wide orange eyes
raking across the snowy drifts and rocky outcrops beneath.
This was not the bird's usual hunting ground but pickings
had been slim lower down where it nested. When
the breeze picked up in the river gorge below Les Hauts,
it had gone with the current, felt the air's lift, circling
higher and higher until it found itself cruising along the
upper face of the Murone Glacier, a sheer sheet of ice
that sent out a blast of frigid air. For nearly an hour the
bird had patrolled these snowy wastes, from the edge of
the glacier to the steepling slopes of Courcelle and Vialle,
watching for movement, a moon shadow. Conditions
were perfect for hunting, but for all its concentration it
had seen nothing. Now was the moment to pull in its
wings and drop back down to the valley and the owl
toned away to do just that, the upper slopes of Vialle
topping beneath it, when it spotted something far below.
it craned its neck round and down, trying to keep
the movement in sight, wheeling back to the spot without
a flap of the wings to alert what might have been prey.
And prey it was, a small fur-bundled fox coming out
on spindle-thin legs from the shadows of a stony gully,
stepping cautiously across a steep and open slope of snow.
And stalking something. Clearly stalking. Head low,
whiskery snout pointing, a dainty stop-start progress. And
there, not twenty metres ahead of the fox, was another
movement, a smaller shadow this time. If it hadn't been
for the moon, there'd have been no shadow at all and
the white-coated hare would have been invisible against
its snowy backdrop. But there it was, hopping along,
back legs spread to stop it sinking into the new drifts,
pausing with each hop, sniffing, hopping on, clearly
unaware of the fox. Or the eagle owl diving down,
opening its talons as it closed on its target.
Both eagle owl and fox hit the hare at the same time
-- a screech from the bird, a squeal from the hare and a
high, surprised yelp from the fox, the three of them lost
in an explosion of moon-sparkling snow crystals.
And then, as the hare tried to escape in the confusion
and the fox leaped after it, and the owl flapped its
wings trying to get airborne again for another attack,
the field of snow they were standing on started to move,
the surface cracking and opening and tumbling over itself
like a wave.
The hare went first, simply sucked under, and the fox
followed. Its front legs were whipped away and the unfortunate
animal sank up to its chest in the snow. The
animal's snout rose up desperately for air as its hindquarters
scrabbled for a purchase, pushing back helplessly
against the treacherous, sliding surface. Seconds later, with
a plaintive, terrified whine, it too just dropped from sight
as though tugged down by some terrible beast beneath
the snow. Only the owl, frantically flapping its wings in
a spray of glittering silvery ice crystals, stayed upright,
finally pulling clear as a great dark shape rose up behind
it and came slamming down on to the river of snow.
For a few brief moments this hunched, twisted bundle
stayed on the surface, rolling over with the snow, dragging
a long cord behind it, until it was tugged to a halt
as though pulled back like a dog on a lead. As it sank
slowly out of sight in the torrent, a second shape loomed
out of the snow, its few seconds in the moonlight followed
by another swift and snowy smothering.




Part Two

'A good-sized avalanche will release three hundred thousand
cubic yards of snow . . . the equivalent of twenty football fields
filled ten feet deep with snow. But, given the right conditions,
avalanches can come a great deal bigger than that. . .'
National Snow and Ice Data Center

23

There were four speed cameras between Alex Ryland's
home in west London and the sloping approach road to
the M4 motorway. It was the last of these cameras, strategically
placed a hundred metres short of the motorway
where a fifty-mile-per-hour speed limit still applied, that
captured Alex's registration number as he slid his silver
grey Bentley Continental into the outside lane and put
his foot down.
If Alex noticed the flash of the camera in his rearview
mirror, he didn't show it. No trace of irritation. No tightening
of the lips, nor muttered expletive. His eyes were
fixed on the road ahead, barely registering the few cars
heading west with him that the Bentley effortlessly put
behind it.
Earlier that morning he had woken up alone in the
second-floor bedroom that he had once shared with his
wife, one floor below his daughter's bedroom. Neither
wife nor child was in the house. Tandie, his wife, had
been killed in a hunting accident seventeen months
earlier, and Thea, his fifteen-year-old daughter, was a
boarder at Wrokely Hall a few miles outside Henley. It
was in that first minute of consciousness, before pushing
the quilt aside and striding naked into the bathroom,
that Alex made a decision he believed would change his
life for ever.
An hour later the garage door beneath his home swung
open and he pulled out of the drive and into a slow
moving line of early morning traffic. By the time he
reached the M4 approach road heading west, he had
made three phone calls.
The first two were local.
'Jamie, it's Alex. I'm going to be out of reach for a
while. Tell the ZygmaZ boys I'll accept their latest offer
on the understanding that our staff are retained, or properly
compensated should they choose to leave.'
Before Jamie Draper, his group financial director, could
utter a word of protest, Alex had broken the connection
and dialled another number.
The second call was only a little less brief, but no less
determined.
'Miss Dangerfield, good morning. It's Alex Ryland
here. I'm on my way to Wrokely to pick up Thea. Please
have her pack her things. I'd appreciate it if she's ready
and waiting when I arrive.'
He listened for a moment.
'It may be most irregular, Miss Dangerfield, but that
is what I want and that is what is going to happen. I'll
be there in an hour. I expect to see Thea and a suitcase
on the front steps. Goodbye.'
His third call had been international, and a great deal
gentler in tone. There was no one to take it, so he left
a message, apologising for the short notice and explaining
that he would be arriving that afternoon with his
daughter. He spoke in French, surprised at how much
he had forgotten. Once he'd been fluent, now the words
came with difficulty.
How long had it been? he wondered, as he switched
off his mobile and tucked it away in the armrest. Twenty
years? Maybe more.
Whatever it was, it had been too long.

24

There were seventeen hotels in Les Hauts, but there was
only one Auberge des Hauts Aigles. It was the oldest in
Les Hauts, the most revered and, among locals and visitors
alike, the most loved.
For more than three hundred years the Auberge had
provided board and lodging for weary alpine travellers, a welcoming, thickly timbered staging post where packhorses
could be shod and stabled, guides could be hired for the climb over the high passes into Switzerland and Italy, and where the food and drink came in generous,
heart-warming portions.
In the old days the Auberge was the size of a large alpine farmhouse, its blackened timbers resting on a two
metre skirt of Vialle granite and rising in balconied floors to an overhanging roof. Back then the space behind the
skirt
of mortared boulders was used to house livestock,
with the three floors above it reserved for guests. But over
the years the Auberge grew both upwards and outwards,
with fresh Vialle boulders rolled into place to support the
six-floor, fifty-room hotel that now presided with appropriate
rustic grandeur over the stone-slabbed Place des
Sommets on one side, and the front de neige on the other.
Like most businesses in Les Hauts, the Auberge had been
owned by the same family since the first boulder was rolled
into place. But when Papa Lapalette's two sons failed to
return from the trenches of northern France, the old
widower sold the property to a wine negociant from Bordeaux
and left Les Hauts for good - where to, no one knew.
The negociant was called Claude Bezard and for three
generations la famille Bezard had run the Auberge des
Hauts Aigles, with each generation adding its own signature
and transforming the hotel into one of the world's
most celebrated alpine addresses. Gstaad had its Palace
and St Moritz its Suvretta House; Courchevel its Melezin
and Cervinia its Hermitage; but Les Hauts had L'Auberge
des Hauts Aigles et Ses Abris.
An abri is a small covered store or dwelling and for
generations the cramped little 'barns' that surrounded the
old Auberge had been used to house servants, stable animals
and sometimes accommodate guests when the main house
was full. After the newly-turned-innkeeper Claude died
and his son Jean-Claude took over, these same abris were
either incorporated as extensions to the main hotel or, in
the case of those too distant to be reached from the main
building, turned into guest chalets, the first to be renovated
now the home of Hugo and Jacqueline Bezard.
Of all the Bezards, it was Hugo's father Jean-Claude
who left the biggest mark. When he started expanding
the original Auberge, the old men of Les Hauts had
whispered that he would never fill the extra rooms, and
when he started renovating the old abris they seriously
believed that the altitude had finally compromised his
good sense. The lad was too young to have sole charge,
they argued; someone older should take control; the
family would surely ruin itself.
But the nay-sayers paused for thought when Jean
Claude Bezard took a gold medal in the downhill race
at the Winter Olympics in 1936. And they further revised
their opinions when he married Amelie Costier, only
child of the Hautien Costiers, probably the biggest
landowners in the Val des Aigles.
Winning gold and marrying well weren't the only things
that earned the locals' grudging approval. More than anyone
else it was Jean-Claude Bezard who saved Les Hauts Jean-Claude,
his gold medal and the mountains that soared
above the village like the points of a snowy crown. Twelve
years after his Olympic victory, Les Hauts had fallen on
hard times. Like many alpine resorts tourism had still to
recover from a devastating European war; alternative trade
routes - easier and safer than Les Hauts' high passes -- had
opened up, and local businesses were starting to suffer.
Faced with falling revenues and empty rooms, the medal
winning hotelier came up with a plan to breathe new life
into his ailing home town and secure its future.

With the help of the Garamonde and Lesage families,
who knew the mountains better than anyone else, the downhill racer Jean-Claude Bezard designed a downhill
piste like no other. It ran from the summit flanks
of Mont Courcelle, past the lip of the Murone Glacier and across the slopes of Vialle all the way down to the
steps of his own hotel -- a nine-kilometre course, with
a thirteen-hundred-metre drop and slope angles along
certain sections approaching sixty-eight degrees. He
called it the Piste du Diable and, using his name and
reputation as one of the world's great skiers to promote
it, Jean-Claude told the world that only the bravest and
the best, or the baddest and maddest, would dare to race
against him on such a devilishly treacherous course.
In the sixty years since that first race, which Jean
Claude duly won, the Devil's Downhill established itself
as an alpine classic and a highlight of the international
skiing calendar. Every February, on Valentine's Day, the
world's finest skiers gathered at Les Hauts to race for
glory and their name in the record book, and each year
thousands of visitors from around the world came to
watch them try their luck. For all of which, the inhabitants
of Les Hauts were supremely grateful.
None more so, now that the snow had finally arrived,
than Hugo Bezard who had run the business - Compagnie
Famille Bezard -- since Jean-Claude's death ten years
earlier. It wasn't because he was the eldest son that he'd
taken over the running of the Auberge, but because the
old man recognised that Hugo was the one who wanted
the job more than anything else in the world. He might
not have been the greatest skier, but he was a safe pair
of hands and he loved every single splinter in the place.
Not that his younger brother Patric was any less qualified
to take over, or was in any way disenfranchised by
their father's choice. He had an equal share in the business,
held a seat on the board, and with great efficiency
and style presided over the company's three ski lodges on
the slopes above Les Hauts.
Nor did the family's involvement end there. Patric's
wife Sophie managed the Auberge's ski-school and
ski-rental businesses, Hugo's wife Jacqueline was responsible
for all aspects of interior design and decoration,
while their twenty-seven-year-old daughter Nathalie had
recently started work as director of guest relations. As
for Patric and Sophie's children -- Philippe, the eldest,
and Bruno still at school - it was hoped that one day
they too would join the family firm, not a single share
allocated outside the Bezard clan.
With the exception of Nathalie, still to be made a
director, this same family clan - four in all -- gathered
in the Auberge boardroom that last Saturday in January
and took their seats for their monthly meeting.
At the head of the table, in a dark-blue pinstripe
double-breasted suit, Hugo Bezard watched them make
themselves comfortable, and felt a ripple of excitement
shiver down his spine.

25

An hour after leaving home Alex Ryland swung his
Bentley between the gates of Wrokely Hall and stirred
up a gravelly dust on the mile-long drive bordered left and right by acres of tutored parkland. Ahead, through
the bare branches of the ancient trees that lined the drive,
he caught sight of the school's cluster of chimneys and
crenellated roof, its honeyed brick facade and the great
bay windows. A thin wintry sunshine glinted unevenly
off their warped diamond-leaded panes.
As he pulled up in front of the lichened front steps,
Alex could see no sign of suitcase or daughter. He was
tempted to sound the horn, but thought better of it.
Instead he left the Bentley's engine running and driver's
door open, took the front steps two at a time and pushed
into the Great Hall.
Miss Dangerfield, the school's headmistress, was waiting
for him, simply but elegantly dressed in a belted black
frock with a pleated front and high white collar. Her
hands were clasped in front of her and her grey hair was
caught in a tight bun, a tortoiseshell comb placed exactly
so above each ear. Thea was nowhere to be seen.
'Ah, Mr Ryland,' she said, reaching forward to shake
his hand only because he had first extended his, as though
she had had no intention of doing so herself, her cold
bony claw swiftly retrieved. 'How nice to see you again;
it's been . . . such a long time. Thea will be down in a
moment.'
'Thank you, Miss Dangerfield,' Alex replied, surprised
by what he took to be a friendly welcome. If he'd seen
more of Miss Dangerfield in the four years that Thea
had been a pupil at Wrokely, he would have known
better, would have recognised the danger signs: the taut
little smile slicing into hollowed cheeks, the raised chin,
her cold black eyes sighting on him down the length of
a long pointed nose.
'I'm only sorry that I haven't had more time to . . to, er, come down more often,' he continued, looking
around the hall as though for the first time - its black
and white tiled floor, the great stone fireplace laid with
unlit logs, the walls panelled with rolls of honour, each
decade scrolled above columns of gold-lettered names
and dates.
'Quite so,' replied Miss Dangerfield, the words as brisk
and chill as a winter snap, the crispness of their delivery
now unmistakable. 'But as I said on the telephone,' she
continued, 'this is most irregular. And regrettable.'
Turning back to her, Alex wondered at the word 'telephone'.
It belonged to a different age. So, he decided,
did Miss Dangerfield.
'Indeed . . .' Miss Dangerfield paused, as though she
had something unpalatable to impart. 'I regret to say that
I have little alternative but to consult with our board of
governors. And it is they who must consider the school's
position on this, ah ... on the matter of your daughter's
unexpected withdrawal from school.'
Alex held Miss Dangerfield's cold look. 'Consult and
consider as much as you wish,' he replied, with the soft
smile he reserved for business associates who were pushing
their luck. 'I am taking my daughter away from Wrokely for the rest of the term, and that is all there is to it.'
It was then that footsteps sounded on a distant, unseen
staircase and Thea, his daughter, came into the Great Hall.
It was only a few weeks since Alex had last seen her -- three days over Christmas at the Plaza Athenee in Paris
while he worked through the ZygmaZ takeover proposals
- but she seemed somehow taller than he remembered, and slimmer, and, even in her regulation navy-blue duffel coat, Alex couldn't help but notice a certain swing in her hips as she crossed the empty hall towards them, long blonde hair caught in a dark-blue Alice band, sensible shoes tapping over the tiles, a backpack slung over her shoulder.
As she approached, Alex could also see that she looked
strangely ill at ease, her eyes cast down to the marble floor,
and he wondered if Miss Dangerfield had said something
to her, reprimanded her unfairly for her father's behaviour.
He sincerely hoped that that was not the case, but just the
suspicion was enough to make his jaw tighten.
'Thea,' he said warmly, and went over to kiss her,
putting an arm around her shoulder and steering her to
the front door. 'Miss Dangerfield,' he said, glancing at
Wrokely's disapproving headmistress. 'I shall be in touch.
And thank you for expressing your concerns.'
And with that Alex and his daughter were down the
steps, into the Bentley and heading back down the drive.
As they sped between Wrokely's gates, Thea turned
to her father.
'Where are you taking me?' she asked.
'A place called Les Hauts des Aigles,' Alex replied. 'In
the French Alps.'
Silence greeted this information.
'Where you grew up,' she said at last. It was a statement
not a question.
Alex glanced across at his daughter and smiled. 'We're
going skiing, my darling.'
The silence returned, as though Thea was giving this
added detail some serious consideration.
For a moment it felt to Alex as though Miss Dangerfield
was sitting there beside him, the same wintry distance,
the same frosty disapproval.
'But I can't ski,' said Thea. And then, in a tight, sharp
little voice: 'Didn't you know?'
And with that she turned in her seat and gazed through
the side window as the first houses of Wrokely village
came into view.


26

Hugo Bezard always liked to think he was good at
keeping secrets. Icy self-control and silken composure,
that was the key. But for the last five days, since the
lawyer Louis Jillot's early morning call, Hugo's resources
had been stretched to breaking point.
For five whole days he'd had to keep his secret to
himself, holding it inside, bursting to let it out. The
winning Diable bid. And all because of his brother Patric and those three damned climbers who'd gone missing
on Vialle. There should be a law against it, thought Hugo,
or some restriction that climbing was only allowed during
summer months. What on earth was the point, after all,
in climbing a mountain in winter? Were they mad? Did they want to die? And put other people's lives in danger?
How selfish. How . . .
It was Garamonde s fault, of course. It was his job to
issue the relevant permis, but it was also within his remit
to deny such permissions. And in midwinter, with snow
forecast, the big lumbering dolt should have used whatever
sense the gods had given him and refused the
climbers. But of course he hadn't. And now there was a
dead climber in the town's depot mortuaire, and two more
bodies out there on the mountain somewhere -- waiting
to surprise some summer hiker and ruin their holiday.
Bloody man, thought Hugo. Bloody climbers. Bloody
mountains.
All week, four times now, the monthly meeting of
Auberge board directors had been rescheduled to allow
for his younger brother's absences with the mountain
rescue team. But the previous afternoon - much to Hugo's
relief-- the search for the remaining climbers had finally
been abandoned and, with snow now falling in large fat
chunks beyond the Auberge's boardroom windows,
everyone knew it was unlikely to be resumed.
Which meant, at last, that they were all there, where
Hugo wanted them, seated around the boardroom table. La toute Famille Bezard: Sophie and Jacqueline Bezard at
the far end of the table, and Patric, in cord jacket and
jeans, looking tired and drawn.
Yet even now Hugo was forced to delay his announcement
as Jacqueline hijacked the meeting early on to
outline her plans for a proper spa at the Auberge. She
had brought up the subject at their last meeting and was
not prepared to let it go.
'Everyone has them, Hugo. Lodge Park and Les Fermes
de Marie in Megeve, the Hospiz Grime in Kitzbuhel,
the Salzburger Hof in Zell Am See. And look atTherme
Vals in Switzerland--'
'Which cost millions,' interrupted Hugo gently.'Millions, cherie. Millions, en effet, that we don't actually have . . .'
'And we do already have a health centre,' sighed Patric.
'Isn't one enough?'
'Pouff said Jacqueline. 'Four saunas and two plunge
pools in one of the abris do not a spa make! You men!

There was a knock on the boardroom door and one
of the Auberge staff wheeled in a trolley laden with
pastries and biscuits, and pots of coffee and jugs of hot
milk, plates, knives, napkins, cups and saucers, and coffee
spoons, which were then distributed among them with
a maddening slowness. Normally Hugo would have
glowed at the skill and grace of the service, but this
morning he felt like sweeping everything off the table.
And if it hadn't been for that icy self-control, he would
have done just that. Instead he just sat there at the head
of the table, watching the waiter pour the coffee and
listening distractedly as his wife insisted that work on
the spa should be scheduled sooner rather than later.
After what felt like an age, the service was finally
completed and the waiter retreated. The door had hardly
closed behind him when Hugo picked up his coffee
spoon and tapped it against a cup. 'Now I know that
Jacqueline feels strongly about spa facilities, and I believe
she has brought plans . . .'
Jacqueline reached for her attache case and passed out
folders around the table. 'As you will see,' she began, but
got no further.
'. . . So I suggest we take time to consider her proposals
between now and our next meeting,' continued Hugo,
raising his voice a fraction to indicate that Jacqueline
had had her say and that they were moving on. At last.
'Now then,' resumed Hugo. 'Where was I? Ah yes.'
'Don't tell me,' said Jacqueline, with a pout of annoyance.
'The Diable.'
The Diable indeed,' replied Hugo, placing the palms
of his hands on the table-top and leaning forward. With spa-talk postponed, coffee served and the waiter out of
the room, Hugo could hold himself back no longer.
Patric looked up. 'And? The bidding's closed?'
'Yes, it has,' replied Hugo.
As everyone at the table knew, the upcoming Diable
was restricted to just six skiers. Five of these were selected
from national teams ranked in the top five places in the
previous year's World Cup, but the sixth place was traditionally
reserved for an outsider - an outsider prepared
to pay for the privilege of competing in a world-famous
race against five world-class skiers, and to benefit from
all the attendant publicity such a wild-card presence
conferred. Each year, not surprisingly, there were many
applications for this last place in the Diable line-up, with
no shortage of individuals and organisations eager to take
part. For this reason, this last place was put to auction
by the organisers of the event - the directors of the
Auberge des Hauts Aigles currently seated around the
boardroom table -- and the highest offer received before
the deadline was deemed the winning bid. It was this
'entry fee' - whatever it ended up being - that constituted
the Diable Prize, much to the delight of resident
Hautiens who took a percentage for their municipal Tresor, yet contributed nothing to the event beyond the
course itself and expensive accommodation.
Hugo looked around the table at his fellow board
members and smiled. 'The final bid came in on Monday,
five minutes before the deadline. It has been confirmed
by Louis Jillot in Geneva. I would have announced this
earlier,' added Hugo, glancing at his younger brother, 'but
as we all know, Patric has been tied up with more pressing
concerns and I didn't want to--'
'Henderson - that oil guy?' interrupted Patric.
Hugo shook his head, holding back to taunt them all.
'Please don't tell me it's Maliandros?' Patric flung up
his arms in despair. Pepinides Maliandros was heir to a
Greek shipping dynasty, came to Les Hauts every year and
behaved as though no one knew how to ski but him. But
he splashed around so much money that nobody saw fit
to disabuse him of this conceit. In a funny sort of way
Patric almost hoped it would be the Greek. He was
certainly a fine skier, but the national squad boys would
teach him a useful lesson. Not only would the little braggart
be put in his place once and for all, but it might even
mean they'd never see him again -- even if, every time he
visited, he took two of the Auberge s most expensive suites
and had Jean Lesage on call for the duration of his stay,
whether he was needed or not. Just in case . . .
But Hugo was shaking his head, a happy little smile
starting to spread into crabshell cheeks.'Neither,' he replied.
'They both made offers, of course. But as I said, a last-minute
bidder trumped them. And his first appearance.'
'Out with it, Hugo,' said Sophie from the end of the
table.
'A man called Kalagin,' announced Hugo. 'Maxim
Kalagin.'
The room was suddenly galvanised.
'Kalagin the diamond man?' asked Jacqueline, snapping
out of her pique.
'. . . and pharmaceuticals and plastics and . . .'
'Can he ski?'This from Patric.
Hugo's smile had almost reached his ears. 'He doesn't
have to. As you know--'
'How much?' interrupted Jacqueline, thinking of her
spa. 'How much did he bid?'
'As you know,' continued Hugo, 'the rules clearly state
that winners can nominate their own contender . . .'
Before Jacqueline could repeat her question, Sophie
spoke up from the end of the table. 'For goodness sake,
Hugo, spill the beans.'
Hugo paused, looked at each of his fellow directors
one by one, then pulled at his cuffs and cleared his throat.
'Twelve million dollars.'
There was a hush round the table, open mouths.
'In the form of a hundred-carat violet diamond from
Monsieur Kalagin's mines in Siberia.'
'Yakutia,' whispered Jacqueline.
'To be displayed in the lobby of the Auberge for the
whole of race week. A cabinet will be installed in the
next few days. Once it's in place . . .'
Hugo spread his hands, only a little wider than his
satisfied smile.
At the end of the table, Jacqueline turned to Sophie.
'You better tell that son of yours to get his skis on.'

27

In Alex Ryland's world, a decision made was exactly that
- immediately implemented. Buy. Sell. Fire. Hire. Develop.
Discard.There were no half-measures, no delays, no heel
dragging. It's what Alex did best. Sometimes he listened
to advisers - the lawyers, the accountants, friends and
colleagues -- but usually he followed his own instinct. In
the twenty years it had taken to build his software
company into a worldwide brand, that faith in his own
judgement had always served him well. And on those
rare occasions when he did put a foot wrong, it was
usually because he'd listened to someone else.
On this occasion, however, he had no one to blame
but himself.
What had started off that morning in London with
the momentous decision to sell his firm and change his
life, had turned unexpectedly into a hostile, resentful
stand-off fuelled by the taut silences and brooding
belligerence of his daughter. On the drive from London
to Wrokely Alex had fondly imagined that Thea would
be thrilled at the prospect of being taken out of school
and flown off to the mountains. How romantic, he'd
thought, how envious her friends would be, how proud
she'd be of her dashing father.
But it hadn't worked out like that, not by a long
chalk. First had come that withering accusation ('But I
can't ski. Didn't you know?'), followed by a chill, stifling
sulk and a disinterested monotone response to all his
questions, every attempt at conversation brutally put
down.
Of course Alex had heard about behaviour like this
from business colleagues similarly cursed, but he'd never
actually experienced it at first-hand. And it hurt, and
surprised him, that the person behaving so badly was his
own daughter. Had she always been like this? Had her
mother Tandie ever had to put up with this kind of
thing? Or the nannies? Surely not. He couldn't believe
it.Yet here she was playing the role of spoilt superbrat
as though her life depended on it.
Forty minutes later, as they left the motorway and
took the Heathrow slip road, her mood had still not
improved, and Alex was forced to concede that despite
all his best intentions he had seriously underestimated
his daughter and her reaction to his plans. In business
his blood would have been soaking into the boardroom
carpet by now. He only hoped that the consequences of
this current misjudgement were not so swift or unforgiving
when it came to fathers and daughters.
By the time they strapped themselves into the company
jet, however, and taxied on to the runway at Heathrow,
Alex had finally given up trying to initiate any significant
dialogue. His daughter, chin in hand and stubbornly
plugged into her iPod, stared through the window. With
a sigh of his own, not a little put out that she hadn't
embraced such a glorious and spoiling treat, or, at the
very least, made some attempt to appear grateful - had
she any idea what he'd done, what he'd given up to
arrange all this? - he followed her example and gazed
out of his own window, trying to persuade himself as
the grass edge to the runway sped past and suddenly
dropped below them, that once they reached the mountains
her mood would improve.
Like a bothersome share price, he decided, time would
sort things out.

28

Sophie Bezard's younger sister, Mathilde Deslandes, sat
at the kitchen table in the Bezards' chalet above the
Salvettes slope and nursed her first coffee of the day. The
house was quiet. Patric and Sophie were at their monthly
meeting at the Auberge and their sixteen-year-old son
Bruno was still asleep in Patric's old room under the
rafters. If it hadn't been snowing so heavily -- why, she
could hardly see the end of the garden through the
kitchen window -- Mathilde knew that her nephew
would have been out of the house before the first lifts
opened, with a snowboard over his shoulder and that
old Discman plugged into his ears. And she wouldn't
have been far behind him.
Every year for the last six years Mathilde Deslandes had come to Les Hauts for the Diable and every year
she stayed with Sophie and Patric. Sophie was her only
sister and, after their parents' death, her only family. As
for Patric, well, he was just the nicest man she could
imagine. And one of the most beautiful. He was tall and lean, wise and witty, and gave old clothes a good name,
somehow managing to make stubble look rakish and
stylish. He smelt of wood fires and boiled sweets and
had a warm, embracing affection for his family. His
younger son Bruno might have been sixteen but that
didn't stop Patric reaching for him and hugging him
whenever he could (an attention which Bruno pretended
to fight off but clearly relished). He might look the classic
loner, Mathilde had long ago decided, but Patric was a
man who liked to be a part of something - family,
community, business.
What Mathilde particularly liked about her brotherin-law
was how much he cared for her sister, after all
this time still deeply and devotedly in love with her. And
who could blame him? Sophie's eyes were a merry,
sparkling blue, her skin was as darkly tanned as her voice,
and her hair was a shiny coil of black tied in a careless
knot. If that wasn't enough, she was almost as tall as
Patric and just as lean with a catwalk figure she seemed
unaware of, preferring like him to dress in a mishmash
of old worn woollens, sweats and cords.
And then there was their banter, which Mathilde never
tired of -- Sophie tut-tutting when Patric lit a Gauloise
after dinner, then reaching for it a moment later, taking
a puff or two and returning it.
'You've left lipstick on it,' he'd complain.
'Think of it as a kiss, cheri. And it's all you're getting
from me tonight until you shave off that stubble.'
If Sophie hadn't snapped him up then Mathilde, just
four years younger than her sister, would have made a
serious play for him.
But Mathilde didn't come to Les Hauts to flirt with
her brother-in-law or feel envious of her sister. As head
of marketing for CreditFrancePlus, Mathilde was also
there to organise and supervise corporate hospitality for

CFP clients during Diable race week, to ensure that they
had everything they needed to make the event memorable
for them, and lucrative for CreditFrancePlus.
Over the years it had become a cosy posting. Apart
from enjoying unparalleled access to the event's organisers
(the Bezards were almost family, after all), Mathilde
knew what she had to do, and knew who she had to
sweet-talk - even if it did mean getting closer to Maire Bruchet than she might like. And this year there was the
added bonus that Philippe Bezard, Bruno's elder brother,
might, just might, be selected to ski for France in the
Diable. According to Sophie, a decision would be taken
in the next week or so and everyone in Les Hauts was
praying that another Bezard would race in, and possibly
win, the Diable.
Unlike previous visits, Mathilde had arrived on her
own this year. The last two Diables she had come to Les
Hauts with Gilles, a penniless would-be author who was
always promising that his next book would be the one.
After paying his bills for longer than he deserved, Mathilde
had finally given him a deadline which he had failed to
meet. Now, two months later, she was back in Les Hauts
by herself and glorying in the freedom, even if she did
miss Gilles s expert early morning wake-up calls. Why,
she wondered, was it always the poor men who made
the best lovers?
As well as work and the time she spent with her sister,
Mathilde's three weeks in Les Hauts were also a great
opportunity to get in some serious skiing. In the five
days since her arrival she'd added Plesse, Gante and Les
Pres to her list of red runs and she'd decided that the
time had now come to try Mijoux. According to the
guide books it was probably the most testing and severe
of all the resort's red runs -- a black anywhere else but
Les Hauts -- and if it hadn't been snowing that morning
that's where she would have been. If she did all right on
that, she'd move up to the blacks - Pendu, Couloir,
Chamoix and Massin - and then, if she could summon
the nerve, she'd try her hand at the big one.
Le Diable.
Five years running Mathilde had chickened out at the
last moment, but this year she'd made up her mind that
she wasn't going back to her lonely apartment in Paris
until she'd chalked up Diable. This year, with no man to
distract her or weaken her resolve, she was going to do it no matter what. All she had to do was hold her nerve
and keep it to herself. If Sophie or Patric found out
what she was planning they'd insist on accompanying
her, and if there was one thing Sophie's younger sister
wanted, it was to do the Diable on her own terms and
without interference.
She was pouring more coffee when the door was
pushed open and Bruno slouched into the kitchen. He
was barefoot, and wore ripped jeans and a grubby T-shirt
that bore the legend Restez Zen. Despite the slouch and
uneven stubble, he was a good-looking boy with the same
curling smile as his father, his mother's wistful eyes, and
a longer version of his brother Philippe's blond wavy hair.
'Hey, sleepy-head. You want some coffee?'
'Yeah, sure, whatever,' Bruno replied, dropping into a
chair and yawning widely.
Mathilde returned to the table and handed him his
coffee. 'I thought since it's snowing, you could take me
out to lunch,' she said.
Bruno suddenly looked anxious. 'But I haven't got
any money, Matti.'
'That's why you have a fairy godmother,' she replied
with a smile. 'I was thinking Mique's.'
Bruno sat up at that. Bar Mique was strictly out of
bounds. 'Hey, yeah, sure. Cool.'

29

Fifteen kilometres south of Cariol, Alex indicated left
and branched off the A41 autoroute in the Porsche
Cayenne Turbo that he'd rented at Geneva airport. It was
late afternoon and a light, flickering snow swirled through
the headlamps and slithered up over the bonnet as he
thundered across a planked bridge, turned left again and
began the long climb to Les Hauts des Aigles following
the gushing torrent of the Valentina. It had been a tense,
gruelling day -- a nightmare journey thanks to his
daughter - and Alex was grateful that it was nearly over.
At the small crossroads settlement of Amionne a set
of temporary roadwork traffic lights brought the car to
a halt, its twin tailpipes rumbling out a thin blue exhaust
made visible in the cold. The Cayenne's heated windscreen
melted the gritty snowflakes before its wipers
could brush them aside and for what seemed an age the
two-colour lights remained stubbornly red. Finally they
switched to green and Alex started forward. But not
before a high-sided tourist coach with Voyages Alpins
Grenoble emblazoned across its flank pulled out twenty
metres ahead and turned right up towards Les Hauts.
Sitting at the wheel, Alex groaned. If he'd made the
lights before they turned red, or if the coach hadn't
jumped them, he'd have covered the final twenty-eight
kilometres to Les Hauts in a little over an hour. Now,
with no safe opportunity to overtake on the winding
road that led up through the Gorge des Chouettes, the
journey would take double that.
Beside him Thea stirred. There was the tinny rattle of music as an earphone was pulled out.
'Are we nearly there?' she asked, peering ahead through
the windscreen.
'Not quite,' replied Alex, taking up position ten metres
behind the coach.'Another hour. Maybe a little bit more.'
'Can't you overtake?'
Up ahead the coach turned into the first corner and
the Valentina stream dropped out of sight.'Not easily, or
safely,' said Alex, catching a glimpse of the curves higher
up and a glittering trail of headlights coming down
towards them. It was a Saturday after all. Change-over
day. New people arriving, others leaving. What Les
Hautiens called Le Twist.
Settling back in her seat Thea sighed loudly, and the
earphone was put back in place. Conversation over.
With nothing better to do than keep his distance
behind the coach and play the steering wheel through
his fingers, Alex blew out his cheeks and shook his head.
Teenage daughters, he thought. Who'd have them?

30

Francine Malland and Michelle Lesage were both late
for their early evening date, but they arrived at Bar Mique
at the same time. They spotted each other through the
swirling snow as they entered Place des Sommets from
different directions, waved, and met up with a hug, kisses
and the usual round oi'Qa va?' 'Qa va?'
'So how's the bump?' asked Francine as they found a
table in Mique's and settled themselves, parkas pulled off,
scarves unwound, the marble-top table wobbling dangerously.
'Heavy,'
replied Michelle, looping a fall of auburn hair
behind an ear. 'I want it out now. Please, doctor. Right
here. Right now.'
'Don't complain. It's got us a table,' said Francine, smiling
at the couple who'd surrendered it. When it snowed in
Les Hauts, bars always filled fast and tables were a rare
commodity until the snow stopped and the slopes reopened.
'I just want to be able to turn over in bed without
having to reposition a small elephant every time,'
continued Michelle, 'and I want to go more than thirty
minutes without this desperate urge to pee.'
'Another month and it will all be history,' said Francine,
noting the healthy glow in her friend's cheeks but registering
the tiredness in her eyes. At forty-one and expecting
her first child, Michelle Lesage had left it late getting
pregnant. For some reason the usual, and more satisfying
method of conception had failed her and her husband.
At first it hadn't been a problem, but then, ten years after
she and Jean Lesage had married in St Sulpice, and she
still hadn't got pregnant, she sought advice from Francine
who, after a series of tests, referred her to an IVF
consultant in Cariol. A year, and two attempts later, it
was Francine who confirmed that Michelle was indeed,
truly, at last, pregnant.
'How's school?' Francine asked lightly.'Not too much

work?'
Michelle gave her a look. 'The same old, same old.
But come half-term, that's it. I've got a replacement
coming in and then it's feet up and watch TV
'And Jean? Still getting in the way?'
'He's always the same when it snows. Hanging around
the house because there's no ski-guiding to do, or mountain
rescuing to be done. And the flat is just so small. . .'
Michelle spread her hands. 'Qu'est-ce qu'on peut dire?' 'Great view, though.'
'Not when you spend all day in the bathroom,' replied
Michelle, ordering a glass of wine and giving her friend
a guilty look. Francine waved it aside. 'And then there's
the business. Because of those climbers, and now the
snow, he's lost his first booking.They weren't best pleased,
but there's not a lot they can do.Trouble is they're staying
on for race week which means they're certain to
reschedule. And that means Jean'U work nine days straight
with no break.'
'At least he'll be out of the house.'
'Not before the snow stops. Until then . . . But, ditemoi,
how's your mamari? You've been to see her?'
'Just as you said about school. The same old, same old.
She used to love the snow, now she looks at it like it's
static on her TV. It's as if she can't quite figure it out.
Like most things, come to think about it.'
It was a throwaway line but Michelle recognised it
for what it was. She smiled sadly. 'I'm so sorry, Francie.'
'Look at it this way,' said Francine, putting on a brave
face. 'At least I get to drink and wear nail varnish and
come home late without having her tell me I'm a loose
woman. There's always a plus side.'
Their drinks arrived and they chinked glasses.
'Hey, Doc. How's the snowboarding?' The question
came in French but with a heavy Australian accent. It
was Django, who ran the board shop off Place des
Sommets. She held a jug of pression in one hand and
four glasses in another. Her hair was roped into a fall of
dark dreadlocks and bound with a neckerchief. The face
was strong and tanned, her lips buttered with zinc and
her eyes a deep warm honey colour. It was Django s
third season in Les Hauts and Francine had recently
written a reference for her extended visa application in
exchange for board lessons.They'd managed three sessions
so far and Francine had been rather relieved when the
snow set in and closed the slopes.
'I'd have been out this afternoon, but for this,' said
Francine, gesturing to the snow falling in the place.
Django gave her a doubtful look.
'You snowboard?' asked Michelle. 'You never told me.
We could have learned together.'
Francine and Django looked at her and then at each
other. They set their lips, trying to hold back a squall of
laughter.
'What? What?' asked Michelle, looking at each of them,
really not understanding.' What?'
'Hey, you teasing my wife? She's pregnant, you know.'
It was Michelle's husband,Jean. He had arrived at Mique's
a few minutes earlier, picked up a pastis glace seulement at the bar, and without them noticing he'd come over
to their table. He bent down and kissed his wife tenderly.
'You okay, cherieT he asked, smiling a greeting at Francine
and Django. 'These people aren't bothering you, are
they?'
'Well, as a matter of fact, yes they are,' replied Michelle,
still trying to work out what the joke was all about.
'Francine's been taking snowboard lessons and didn't tell
me. I said I could have done it with her. And all they
did was laugh at me.'
'Snowboarding?'Jean chuckled. 'You're joking.'
'No. I am not,' Michelle insisted. 'I'd love to learn.'
'Not until you get rid of this,' he said, pulling up a
chair and smoothing a large brown hand over her swollen
tummy.
Michelle looked down at the hand, and her stomach,
and frowned. 'So it's true,' she said at last. 'Pregnant
women really do lose brain cells.'
'Or their sense of humour,' said Francine, and they all

laughed.

31

Paul Garamonde was on the phone when Nathalie Bezard
poked her head round his office door.
He waved her over and mouthed 'Meted*. She nodded,
leaned down and gave him a kiss on his free ear, then
pulled off her coat and bobble hat. The snow she'd
collected on the walk to the Bureau across the Pas des
Enfants had quickly melted, and her hat and coat glistened
with diamond drops of moisture. Though deeply
tanned, the walk had also brought a warmth and colour
to her cheeks and her eyes sparkled with youth and
energy.
'It's difficult to estimate,' Garamonde was saying,
mimicking a drink and pointing to the cupboard where
he kept his beers.
Nathalie smiled and set to work. She was pleased.
When she saw him on the phone with that serious
expression on his face she feared the worst - another
late night. A weekend too. But she knew he wouldn't
be asking for a drink unless he was ready to call it a day.
'At least a metre down here,' continued Garamonde,
'but it's got to be much more higher up. I spoke to Fredo
in Dareggio and he's saying more than a metre in town
and probably double that on the lower slopes. He's got
the Leitwolfs out but he's keeping them under three
thousand metres. That western slope the other side of
Vialle looks like it's taking most of the load, but if that
easterly wind keeps up we'll be seeing a lot more of it
on our side. I know, I know. It's still early days. But we've
had some odd pitches in temperature and two melts now
if you count November.' Garamonde started nodding.
'Yes, I'll do that. First thing, bien sur. Oui, oui, et bonsoir
a vous! He put down the phone, and Nathalie handed
him the bottle.
'Tough day?'
'Tough week. But it's over for now,' he said, swinging
round in his chair and patting his lap.
Nathalie accepted the invitation and slung an arm
round his neck, gave him a proper kiss this time.
'Problems?'
'A lot of snow, some strong wind up on the ridges
and three of my charge sites went AWOL while we were
out looking for the climbers.' He gestured with the bottle
at the telephone. 'According to the meteo, the snow's
going to be here the next few days. Earliest possible clear
is Monday, more likely Tuesday'
'And you want to check your sites?'
'If they're not responding, then the snow's just building
up,' said Garamonde grimly. 'I told Bruchet when he
decided on SyPAC that there could be problems with
the weight nets.'
'But there's nothing you can do right now?'
'Why?' asked Garamonde, narrowing his eyes.
'Something on your mind?'
'Just needed a dog-sitter - c'est tout! She got up from
his lap and went for her coat. 'It's the Chamber of
Commerce do and I promised Papa I would be there.'
'That's not until eight.'
'Why so it is,' she replied archly, then glanced at the
clock on the office wall. 'And it's not even six. Now
what do you imagine we could possibly do to pass the
time until then?'

32

Hugo Bezard pulled back his cuff and looked at his
watch. It was a little after six and already dark outside,
a steady fall of snow still sinking past his office window.
It had been a long day: the meeting that morning to
announce Kalagin's bid; endless arrangements still to be
made for the Diable; and in a couple of hours he and
Jacqueline were hosting a buffet dinner for members of
the local Chamber of Commerce and their wives.
But until then . . .
Praying that he hadn't left it too late, persuading himself
that there was easily enough time, he picked up his mobile
and dialled the number he'd learned by heart rather than
add to his directory. The number connected, rang three
times and an answerphone cut in:
'Helas, je suis pas ici. Laissez votre nombre apres le beep
sonore, s'il vous plait, et je vous telephonerai!
The voice was low and smoky, warm and husky. Hugo
felt a twist of adolescent desire, followed by a flutter of
irritation that he hadn't called earlier.'C'est moil he began,
and then the phone was picked up and she was there,
whispering those sweet enticements in his ear.
They had met in a shop, her shop, SkiSawy, one of the
raft of designer ski outlets that seemed to occupy every
second property on Place des Sommets and rue des Hauts.
He'd gone there shortly before Christmas to buy a pair
of gloves for his wife, and he'd come out with a telephone
number.Three days later, he had acquired a mistress.
So swift, so unexpected.
So . . . exhilarating.
Denise Aumont was forty-two, divorced and did something
to Hugo that first time that he hadn't had done
to him in a long time. But it wasn't her age, or marital
status, or skills beneath the quilt that attracted him. Denise
Aumont was much, much more than the sum of her

parts.
Firstly Denise understood him, at a very basic, primal
level. As though she had known him for years. It was
just . . . extraordinaire, he often thought, how she seemed
to sense what he was thinking, how he felt. And, oh how
she listened, the two of them lying there in bed in her
tiny chalet on the Plesse slope, her reaching to hold his
hand, squeeze it encouragingly, giving him the space and
the time to talk.
Of course, he still loved Jacqueline. He may actually
have forgotten to buy the gloves that he'd gone in to
SkiSavvy to buy in the first place, but that didn't mean
he loved his wife any the less. It was just . . .
Denise made no demands.
That's what it was. No demands. No pressure. Denise
didn't corner him like Jacqueline, didn't tease him or
ambush him -- didn't expect anything. It was enough
that she had him, that twice, maybe three times a week
he could call her and know that she would be there for
him, unpinning that wild bunch of blonde curls even
before he asked.
Of course, she was very pretty. There was no denying
that. Smooth creamy skin, bright button-blue eyes, a pert,
maybe tweaked, nose and a mouth that ached to be
kissed. Which was exactly what he was going to do in
the next thirty minutes. After putting down the phone,
his heart still pattering with excitement and his stomach
tightening with anticipation, he pushed away from his
desk, took his overcoat from the armoire, and left the
office.
Hugo was pulling on his coat on the front steps of
the Auberge, exchanging a few words with the doorman,
when his eye was caught by a couple hurrying across
Place des Sommets.
There was no mistaking them. It was the dog, tugging
them along, that gave the game away. A lofty Garamonde
with his arm wrapped round Nathalie, the two of them
heading for home.
Hugo gritted his teeth. If she was late for the
Chamber of Commerce dinner by so much as a single
minute . . .

33

White. Everything was white as Alex Ryland finally drove
through the stone-faced cut at the top of the Gorge des
Chouettes and entered the high, narrow gutter of the
Val des Aigles. Up ahead, the coach he'd been following
since the roadworks at Amionne pulled to the right on
the wider, straighter stretch of road to make room for
the cars held up behind it. With a glance in his rearview
mirror, Alex indicated, swung out to the left and overtook
it with an exhilarating burst of speed, snow swirling
through the twin beams of the Cayenne's headlights like
white moths fluttering around a tropic flame.
And there, at last, was Les Hauts des Aigles, an unlikely
scatter of lights just a few kilometres ahead, yellow
diamonds in a nest of cotton wool. The place was well
named, Alex thought. The heights of the eagles, the place
where eagles soared, cut off from the rest of the world
by a jagged battlement of towering alpine peaks. When
conditions were favourable it was accessible by light
aircraft or helicopter, but if the weather closed in as it
had the day before there was just the winding, climbing
mountain road they'd just negotiated, scabbed with repair
work, slick with glistening ice and banked with walls of
snow, its more treacherous sections protected by snow
sheds where snow slides and rockfalls had proven problematic
in winters past.
It was nearly twenty-five years since he'd been back
to Les Hauts and for the first time that day Alex focused
on his memories of the town now closing on him through
the snow, the town where his mother brought him when
his father left a note saying he'd made a big mistake and
wanted out.
It suddenly seemed extraordinary to Alex that such a
vast length of time could have passed since his last visit.
Twenty-three years to be exact. Twenty-three years since
a slab of snow crashed down on to Les Hauts and buried
his mother. It took the rescue crews four days to dig her
out and a week later she was buried again in Les Hauts'
cemetery, along with the other thirty-five Hautiens who
perished in the disaster.
In the days following her burial, Alex boxed up everything
in the house and lugged it into the loft. For some
reason he couldn't now recall, he didn't sell the property.
Instead he asked their next-door neighbour, Madame
Laclere, to look after the place for him. He'd come back,
he told her. But he never did.
For two or three years the house remained empty.
Then, one winter, Alex lent it to a friend, a thank-you
present for a City tip-off that kick-started his business. And over the years others followed -- business acquaintances,
colleagues, friends of Tandie. But never him. Not until now.
Glancing at the digital clock on the dashboard, Alex saw the figures blink from 6:59 to 7:00 p.m. and, slowing for the town's first set of traffic lights on Route des

105


m
m

Passeurs, he swore to himself that this long-delayed return
would mark the start of a new chapter in his life, and
in the life of his daughter.
As they passed Place des Sommets and entered the
narrower precincts of the old town, Thea finally stirred
in the seat beside him, pulled out her earphones and
pocketed her iPod.
'Where did you say we were staying?' she asked,
hunkering down into her duffel coat as though the
Cayenne's heating was unable to keep off the chill.
'Right here,' said Alex, indicating to the left, pulling
off the snow-banked road and coming to an abrupt halt.
The entrance to the street where he had grown up
was too tight a passage to accommodate the bulk of the
Cayenne.
For the first time that day Alex Ryland laughed.

34

Jacqueline Bezard was one of those rare women who
dressed fast, made up faster and was ready a good thirty
minutes before they needed to be. It was a knack she
had learned early, ready in an instant to pack her bags
and go wherever the business beckoned, as swift as most
men to change from site overalls into evening wear, with
a gunslinger's speed when it came to lipstick, liner pencils
and blusher brushes.
It was business that first brought Jacqueline to Les
Hauts, summoned by the gold medal-winner himself,
Jean-Claude Bezard. Back then she'd just started her own
interior design company in Paris and caused a stir with
a radical overhaul of the Hostellerie Les Vagues on a
Brittany cliff-top. Her transformation of a faded, fin-de
siecle beachside hotel into a chic coastal hideaway featured
in a magazine and old man Bezard invited her to Les
Hauts to work the same kind of magic on the Auberge.
In those days the hotel had a tired fifties feel to it, an
old and venerable institution trading on its owner's name,
reputation and some of the best skiing in the Alps.
'All wood and no grain,' she told the old man after
he'd shown her around. He looked at her as if she was
speaking a different language. 'I mean, it's all here but it
doesn't have the right. . . accent! she explained. 'No sense
of style or class. It's just. . . it's just utilitaire.A hotel, you
know? And nowadays, Monsieur, that is not enough.'
It was a brave thing to say to Jean-Claude Bezard,
even if he was in seventies. He was immensely proud of
Auberge des Hauts Aigles and was surprised to learn that
not everyone shared his opinion. But he was big-hearted
enough to accept her comments and promptly asked for
suggestions. A month later Jacqueline came back with
her proposals - dark-red tartan carpeting to cover bare
wood floors, bold florals and stripes in place of fiddly
chintz and gingham, properly upholstered furniture to
replace the sagging armchairs and exhausted sofas that
filled the public rooms, and a radical rethink on layout
and facilities: a proper bar but smaller, more snug than
the Edwardian-style salon overlooking the slopes; a
billiards room and library; and, most important, en-suite
facilities for every room.
'But, Mademoiselle, there is no room for more bathrooms,'
Jean-Claude had explained, astonished that a
bathroom at either end of a corridor was no longer
considered adequate for his guests' comforts.
'There is, if you halve the number of rooms and give
your guests some breathing space,' replied Jacqueline
briskly. 'Your rooms may have been good enough in the
past, but they don't cut it today. Keeping a hotel is a
serious undertaking, and the competition is hotting up.
If you want to stay in this business you'd better get your
act together.' Just twenty-five; the nerve of her.
Jean-Claude gave her another wide-eyed look, then
told her the job was hers. She accepted the commission
and six months into the project she had fallen in love
with Les Hauts, the Auberge and her client's eldest son.
Thirty years on not much had changed, even if her
husband had put her spa plans on hold. But now, with
the Kalagin bid confirmed, she knew there would be
funds in the pot regardless of who won the Diable. The
spa might yet be within her reach.
With a final glance in her dressing-table mirror,
Jacqueline stood and smoothed her hands down the
cream Jil Sander suit she'd selected for the Chamber of
Commerce buffet, tugged at the hem of her jacket and
riffled her fingers through a short sharp bob of black
hair. Twelve months earlier it had reached past her shoulders,
a thick rich mane that she'd worn in the same
style since leaving school, tied back for the workplace,
let loose everywhere else. But suddenly it had all felt
wrong, somehow inappropriate. Just a few months shy
of fifty-five, a year away from her thirtieth wedding
anniversary and the mother of a grown-up daughter
Jacqueline had walked out of Christian's in Paris with
a whole new look, realist enough to know that age does
a woman no favours. She was lucky that she'd been
blessed with the kind of looks and figure that time
strokes rather than pinches, but that didn't mean she
could rest on her laurels or let herself go. Tipping her head from side to side in the imrror, she derided* that
fortune really did favour the brave
Downstairs in the salon, a log fire blazing behind its
mesh-steel curtain jacqueline poured a large whisky with
just a short squirt of soda and settled herself by the stone
hearth. She'd deliberately made the drink strong but
winced when she tasted it. For a moment she wondered
whether she should add more soda, but decided against
it and took another sip. Just right, given the cirfumnT'AU
restaurant, meeting and greeting the
commercially great and good of Les Hauts and making
her eyes shine with delight and interest. Here, Monsieur
Bellinger of Bellinger BMW Les Hauts boasting
about his new 4x4* just in at his dealership; there, Monsieur
DiableGallante, moaning about the hike
in interest rates; Madame Courtauld flaunting the latest
designs from Mode Les Hauts; and, weaving his oily way
through the crowd, that odious little Bruchet, m yo^of
Les Hauts, who'd kiss her hand and pretend not to peer
down her cleavage. At least buffet service ensured A
break from
his wandering eyes and dirty little mind
Tonight she was going to need her whisky-soda.
Outside the chalet Jacqueline heard a car approaching.
Headlights scanned across the ceiling, and a few moments
later the doorbell rang. Her driver.
Gathering herself up, she reached for her wrap and
stepped out into the chill night.
Showtime, as her husband liked to say.

35

Reversing out of the opening to the street where he
grew up, Alex was still chuckling to himself as he
rejoined the evening traffic, trying to remember the
layout of the old town. Turning next right, he took a
sharp left and, after a few close scrapes on streets only
marginally wider than the Cayenne, its wheels crunching
over the snow and cracking through puddles of ice, he
drove into a small square at the back of St Sulpice, Les
Hauts' parish church where his mother, grandmother
and great-great-grandfather had been married. There
was a car backing out of a space and Alex waited
patiently to take its place.
'We've got to walk?' asked Thea, clambering down
from her seat and lifting her feet from the snow as though
she'd trodden in something unpleasant. 'But it's miles.
'Kilometres,' said Alex, lugging their bags out of the
back of the car.
'Couldn't you have left me at the end of the street?'
Thea asked with an accusatory shiver. 'Told me which
house, given me the key?'
He could easily have done that, thought Alex, as they
stepped warily along a trampled path through the snow.
But he knew why he hadn't. He'd wanted them to do
it together, to push open the door of his grandparents'
house with his daughter beside him, the first time she
had ever visited. The first time she had ever seen it. His
childhood home. It was as simple as that.
When they finally turned into the street, three blocks
back from the front de neige where he'd learned to ski
on the Pas des Enfants, Alex realised suddenly that it
wasn't just the narrowness of the street he'd forgotten.
Standing in a line of high-porched village houses, with
roughly hewn stone walls and lauze-tiled roof, copper
guttering and shuttered, lace-trimmed windows, the
house was exactly as he remembered it: there, the thick
wooden lintel above a chevron-planked door chiselled
with the date, 1673; there, a stack of greying logs piled
tidily in a corner of the porch; and there, peeping above
the snow, the worn iron hoop for scraping boots.
Everything just as he remembered, except. . . except it
all seemed so much smaller now.
But if he'd got it wrong with the house and the street,
Alex did remember how to work the front door lock.
Sliding in the big old key he felt for the catch then
worked the locking mechanism towards the door jamb
rather than away from it. With a satisfying clunk the door
swung open.
As expected, the house was ready for them. Madame
Laclere had clearly received the answerphone message
he'd left her that morning as he drove out to Wrokely,
and she'd been in to do the place over. Bright, cheerful
and tidy.
The usual ski-holiday chalet rental.
Soulless. Chill as bone.
Beside him, Thea looked round. 'It's tiny,' she said,
almost in wonderment, as though she'd never seen such
a small house, though complaint wasn't far behind. 'And
cold.' She hunched her shoulders and shivered.
'Go upstairs and choose a room. Take whichever one
you want,' Alex instructed. 'I'll light a fire.'
Balling up some newspaper he found in the scuttle
by the hearth, Alex added some scraps of splintery chip
pings and set it alight. The flame curled and caught and
crackled through the dry kindling. A coil of smoke disappeared
up the chimney and then suddenly reappeared,
bellying out into the room, bringing with it a dead,
musty odour. Fetching a pile of logs from the porch, and
stacking them in the space beside the hearth, he wondered
when the chimney had last been swept.
With the fire comfortably established, and the chimney
behaving itself, Alex made his way around the ground
floor, exploring this familiar space - from the boot room
at the back of the house with its dry sisal matting and
empty pegs, to the small dining room with its round oak
table and rush chairs where his mother had supervised
his homework, and the kitchen beyond where she baked
bread every bit as good as Boulangerie Bernard.
Everywhere he looked he could see her, hear her voice,
and for the first time in more than twenty years he sensed
her presence all around him, here in this empty house.
Putting her out of his mind, Alex opened the fridge,
an original rounded Smeg that wheezed and grunted
but still seemed to work. Thanks to Madame Laclere, its
shelves were packed: butter and eggs and waxed paper
wraps of sliced meats from Boucherie Daille, milk and
orange juice in the door racks, bags of coffee, and the
drawer at the bottom was stuffed with fresh greens.There
was even a bottle of wine, an Apremont from Savoy,
light, white and, he remembered, just ever so slightly petillant.
Pulling the cork and pouring himself a glass Alex
wandered back into the salon, nothing bar some of the
furniture and the haunting sense of his mother to remind
him that this had once been home - all the photos, all
the family things, packed away in the loft. In the last
twenty years the house had become nothing more than
a rented home whose transient, seasonal occupants had
left their own marks -- a line of round grey stones
collected by a summer hiker from the foot of the glacier
and set out on the mantelpiece above the fire, an
amateurish set of watercolours of the Hauts des Cols
and Mont Vialle placed in clip-frames. And their books,
of course, the plump, well-thumbed holiday paperbacks
they'd brought here and left. Standing at the shelves,
sipping wine, Alex went through the battered, brown
paged collection -- Tom Clancy, Wilbur Smith and Clive
Cussler, a row of thin Agatha Christies, the Jacquot series
by Martin O'Brien, a line of John Grishams. All of them
English, he noted, trying to remember who had stayed here - who might have bought, brought and read these
books. The Edwards? The Withnells? The Van Gruisens? The Tufnells? The friends and business acquaintances to
whom the house had been lent or rented to over the intervening years.
Climbing the stairs, the wood creaking underfoot, Alex
turned on the landing and made his way down the
corridor, past the bathroom, the airing cupboard, his
mother's bedroom, the small spare room where he'd kept
his toys, knowing where he'd find his daughter, knowing
which room she would want. The last room at the back.
His old room.
And there she was sitting on the edge of the cabin
bed, the panelling that framed it painted forThea's great
grandmother by her great-great-grandfather.
'Is this the room you want?' he asked. Thea shrugged.'I suppose . . . There's not really much
else, is there?'
'Then it's yours,' he said, deciding not to mention that
once it had been his, when he was young. He stood
there a moment, a little awkwardly, not really knowing
what to say or do next, hoping that she might finally
take pity on him, leave the bed and come and give him
a kiss or a hug as a thank-you, as a make-up, now that
they had arrived.
But she didn't.
An hour later, bags carried up to bedrooms, the fire
throwing out a good heat into the wood-panelled salon,
the smoke going where it should, Alex went to the
kitchen to organise supper. A plate of ham, some cheese,
the bread. When Thea eventually appeared, she took a
glass from the shelf and reached for the wine.
This time Alex couldn't stop himself. 'Wine?'
She gave him a look. 'Mama always let me. And we're
on holiday, aren't we?'
He was about to say something when they heard a
knocking on the front door.
Leaving Thea in the kitchen, Alex went and opened
it. An old woman stood there. For a moment he couldn't
place her -- a round fat dumpling of a woman with a
mole on her chin and hips the width of the street. Grey
hair was pinned up under a wool hat and a rabbit-skin
collar framed weathered red cheeks.
'I saw the lights. Smelt the smoke,' the old lady added
with a chuckle, 'so I thought I'd come by, see if there's
anything you need. I'd have lit the fire but I'm not good
with logs. Too heavy. Got electric myself
And then Alex remembered. 'Madame Laclere. I didn't
recognise you.'When he heard her voice on the answerphone
that morning he'd imagined her as she was, the
last time he saw her, more than twenty years past. Without
thinking he said: 'You've changed.'
He realised as soon as he said the words that this was
probably not the best thing to say to a lady of a certain
age, to whom, it was clear, the years had not been kind.
But her smile didn't shift and she replied, with a
twinkle in her eye, 'Et vous aussi, Monsieur Alex.'
'Please, come in,' he said, and stood back, waited while
she scraped her boots on the hoop, then helped her off
with her coat. And as he turned to hang it up, he saw
Thea come into the salon from the kitchen.
Madame Laclere saw her too, and her old lips quivered,
compressed.
'Bon Dieul she said and, going to her, she reached up
and clasped the girl's face between her hands.
'Bon Dieul the old lady repeated, turning back to Alex,
her eyes glistening with tears. 'It's her grandmother. C'est voV maman. As I live and breathe. Extraordinaire!

36

Nathalie Bezard closed her eyes, stretched back and
gripped the wooden rail at the head of Paul Garamonde s
bed. Sometimes this was the part she longed for the
most, when their lovemaking was over and their breathing
eased, that moment when her lover pushed back the
quilt intent on gently continuing the pleasure when so
many men would have called it quits, rolled over and
gone to sleep.That gentleness, the wonderment she knew
he felt that she should be there in his bed, or he in hers,
was what Nathalie loved the most.
First she felt his hand on her leg, moving slowly from
knee to thigh, the palm hard and calloused. She raised
her leg and his hand slid to her belly, his fingertips finally
trailing to her breasts, caressing them with his knuckles.
She didn't need to open her eyes to know that he'd be
leaning on an elbow, his chin resting in the palm of his
hand, watching the way her skin shivered and puckered
at his touch.
She could have stayed there for ever, but time was
pressing. She couldn't be late. A duty call at the Auberge.
As director of guest relations, she was obliged to be there.
'I have to go,' she said at last, slipping away from his
fingers with a lurch of regret, rising from the bed and
going to the bathroom. Ten minutes later, wrapped in
his thin blue dressing gown, she stepped back into the
bedroom. They'd picked up her dress from the dry
cleaners off rue des Hauts on their way back from the
Bureau and now she slipped it over her head, zipped it
up and smoothed it over her hips.
On the bed Garamonde had fallen asleep, his body
stretched out across the sheet as hers had been. For a
moment she was tempted to lie by his side and play
the same game, wake him gently, make love to him
again, the man who had filled her life with such warmth,
the man who gave her so much pleasure, the man she
loved so much - whether her father liked it or not.
They had been together a year when her father finally
realised what was going on, spotted Garamonde kissing
her outside Bar Mique. Hugo had waited a week before
he said anything, suggesting that maybe she should look
for someone her own age.
'And class?' she'd retorted crossly. Isn't that what her
father had really meant? 'You think I'm too good for
him, don't you?'
'I know you're too good for him,' Hugo Bezard had
replied.
And that was it. A formal declaration of hostilities.
Leaning down, knowing she had to leave, Nathalie
brushed her lips across Garamonde s shoulder, pulled the
quilt over his chest and switched off the bedside light.
He'd been working too long and too hard at the Bureau,
and in the last few days he'd been out all hours with the
rescue team. It was always the same when the snow came,
and she knew he wouldn't move from that position until
he woke the following morning. Which was good. He
needed the rest.
Downstairs, Coco was waiting for her.
'Good girl, good girl,' Nathalie cooed, as she struggled
into her coat and hooked lead to collar amid a
flurry of nuzzling licks. So much for dog-sitters, she
thought. Pulling a notepad and pen from her bag, she
scribbled her lover a note, folded the paper and set it
tent-like in the centre of the kitchen table. Then she
filled the Moka with water and put it beside the range,
set out the sealed coffee jar and washed and dried his
favourite chipped mug. In the morning all he'd have to
do was light the gas, slide the Moka on to the ring and
wait for the coffee to percolate.
It was nothing, really. But she knew it would make
him think of her. And, as she drank her morning coffee,
how it would make her think of him.
Ten minutes later she dropped off Coco at her chalet,
picked up her car and drove on to the Auberge for the
dreaded Chamber of Commerce buffet.
And all the way there all Nathalie could think of was
the way her new name would sound.
Because that very evening, trudging through the snow,
Paul Garamonde had pulled her up a few steps past Bar
Mique, slipped off her glove, kissed the palm of her hand
and asked her to marry him. Just like that. Completely,
utterly unexpected.
And with the snow swirling round them, tears had
filled her eyes and she had whispered, 'Yes.'
Parking her Renault in a side street close to the
Auberge, she checked her make-up in the visor mirror,
and said the name for the hundredth time.
Nathalie Garamonde.
Madame Nathalie Garamonde.
It certainly had a ring to it.
And her father would be thrilled.

37

When the real snow came to Les Hauts, life in this small
alpine community suddenly changed. It was as though
someone had flicked a switch and everyone who lived there
was affected in one way or another. Michelle Lesage had
to leave home half an hour earlier to reach school ahead
of her class; Francine Malland treated more casualties at
Hopital des Hauts; and at the Auberge, busy with last
minute arrangements for the forthcoming Devil's Downhill,
Hugo Bezard was having the usual problem with shift
takeovers as staff came in later and later for work. And no
matter how well prepared they were - cars serviced and
central-heating boilers checked over in the summer -- machinery was always the single biggest cause of irritation.
It was widely accepted in Les Hauts that if something
was going to go wrong, it was going to go wrong in the
first week of snow. It was for this reason, a week after the
first real fall and after nearly four days of continuous whiteout,
that Jules Dessin felt a certain quiet complacency as
he arrived at his office at the Centre Municipal. After ten
years in charge of Les Hauts' Municipal Engineering
Department -- orchestrating everything from road clearing
to cable cars - Dessin knew he had beaten the odds for
a third season running and that, bar a single snapped caterpillar
tread on one of his snowploughs, everything appeared
to be running smoothly.
That Wednesday morning, however, with the sun still
to show in a sky that was suddenly wide, blue and cloudless,
his complacency didn't last long.
Dessin's office was small and cramped. A bank of filing
cabinets and chart drawers lined three full sides of the
room, bracketing the door and windows into alcoves, and
the remaining wall was given over to street plans of Les
Hauts. But if the office was cramped the view was expansive
-- the playing fields of the Lycee on one side, the
snowy stretch of the airstrip with its glazed ribbon of
runway and snow-banked aprons on the other, and beyond
it all the great summits of Les Hauts crowding the skyline
as effectively as the filing cabinets crowded his office.
Neatly placed on Dessin's desk was a department
switchboard and a mobile phone in a plastic cover. But
the call he took came in on the walkie-talkie sitting in
its charger on top of a filing cabinet. When it stuttered
with static and the green light wavered, Dessin swung
out of his chair and picked it up. He checked the channel
- Seven/Lifts - and switched on. It was Primaud, his lift
engineer. Eight years shy of retirement and one of the
best grease monkeys around, there was nothing that
Primaud didn't know about machinery, his particular
field of operations the great engines that worked the
cable cars and lifts. If it needed a lube,Yves Primaud was
the man who knew where to squirt the oil.
'Hey, Yves, ga va?'
'Looks like we may have a problem here, boss,' said
Primaud, getting straight to the point. 'Thought you
might want to take a look.'
'Where are you?' asked Dessin, hearing a great roar
of machinery behind the lift engineer's voice.
'Upper station on the Courcelle line.'
'Be there in the hour,' Dessin said, and switched off
the walkie-talkie. As he reached for his jacket, an image
of Primaud settled in his mind's eye - a craggy, lined
face pitted with childhood chicken-pox scars, hands big
enough to conceal his walkie-talkie in a clenched fist
and fingernails strong enough to use as screwdrivers, the
cuticles always, always rimmed with a line of black - a
true mechanic's hands. If Primaud was calling something in, rather than mentioning it the next time they met,
Dessin knew it was probably serious. His heart sank.

38

In bright early morning sunshine that had still to reach Les Hauts, Paul Garamonde and Jean Lesage approached the Plesse ridge, threw down their skis and snapped their boots into their bindings. After taking a chair-lift to the
top of the Plesse run, they'd climbed on for another forty
minutes, trudging up through the trees and across a slope
of virgin snow that rose towards the northern flanks of
Mont Courcelle. It had been a long climb, wading through
a soft powdery snow that sometimes reached as high as
their waists, and they were panting lightly by the time
they reached the ridge.
Both men would have seen the same view a thousand
times but it still made them pause a moment to
take it all in. The steep shadowed bowl of the Val des
Aigles enclosed by a line of snowclad peaks, the huddled
roofs of Les Hauts lost somewhere far below them, and
all around the crumpled white table-top of the Alps
stretching away to the far horizon. There, to the west
and south-west, Lyon and Grenoble; to the north
Chamonix and Geneva; and there ahead of them, beyond
the blue-shadow slopes of Vialle, Courcelle and the
Murone Glacier, Dareggio and the Italian Alps.
'Sometimes you just look and know there must be a
God,' said Lesage.
'Maybe that's who's been messing with my control
stations,' replied Garamonde, whose head was still ringing
with the words Nathalie had spoken through her tears
the night he asked her to marry him. Only if you promise to love me every single minute for the rest of your life. It was a promise he'd been happy to make, only just managing
to hold back his own tears, and from the moment he
made it he felt a great contentment settle upon him, a
sense that what he had finally nerved himself to do, stammering
out those never-spoken words, had been the right
thing to do. And something he would never regret.
Of course he wanted to tell everyone, to shout out
his good fortune across the rooftops of Les Hauts. So
everyone knew, so everyone could share in his brimming
delight. But he hadn't. Nathalie had advised caution;
they would announce it at the Diable Champions' Dinner,
she told him sternly, the night before the last race. Until
then, it would be their secret, theirs alone to savour.
For a moment, standing there, looking out over the
Val des Aigles, Garamonde felt an urgent need to tell
Lesage, to share his wonderful secret with one of his
oldest friends. But the moment was snatched away.
'You think it's the firing stations or the computer?'
asked Lesage, shrugging his rucksack into a more comfortable
position and reaching for his sticks.
'I wish I knew. All I can tell you is that for the last
four nights three of the stations have failed to kick in. Up
here on Plesse, and over on Gante and Calibere. If there's
heavier than usual snowfall -- which for the last few
nights there has been -- the weight nets should have triggered
the charges automatically; small ones, nothing big.
But they haven't. Marc and I have run through the software
and everything looks fine. So it can only be the nets,
or maybe some kind of static electricity from the storm
playing up with the system.'
'Or God.'
'Well, maybe it's time to find out,' said Garamonde,
and pushing off the ridge the two skiers were soon lost
in pluming clouds of powder.
The first station they checked was Plesse, built into
the neck of a gully about thirty metres below the ridge
line and another fifty metres above a wide bowl of snow
where cattle grazed in the summer. Over the years, a
number of slips had been recorded here, the snow building
up dramatically in even medium falls, often dumped there
When north-easterlies sprang up and scurried along the
far side of the ridge. The direction the wind had taken
over the last few days and nights was clearly indicated
by a two-metre-high frozen wave of snow breaking over
the ridge-line above them and slanting long shadows
across the slope.
Like all the other stations around the Val des Aigles, the
computer link, charge controls and supply canisters were
housed in a reinforced stone chamber set on a laddered
plinth that in summer towered above Garamonde. In
winter only the two orange igniter pipes that sprouted
from the roof of this chamber and delivered the propane
and oxygen charge showed above the snow. Slipping out
of their skis and planting them upright in the snow with
their sticks, Garamonde and Lesage pulled out shovels
from their backpacks and started digging. Within ten
minutes they had cleared enough snow to access the
chamber and check the controls. To Lesage it looked like
an incomprehensible tangle of wires and black boxes
connected to the supply canisters and pipes, but Garamonde
slipped off his gloves, tugged here and there and in less
than a minute declared himself satisfied that everything
appeared to be in working order.
'Now the weight net,' he said, and the two men started
digging again, down around the plinth on which the
chamber sat. The weight net was spread out from the foot
of the plinth in a ten-metre radius, a web of insulated
'intelligent' fibres that carried snow weight information
back to the computer in the chamber and thence to the
Bureau down in Les Hauts.Too much snow bearing down
on the net and a charge would be set off, either automatically
overnight or by the duty officer each morning.
There was only one point where a fault could have
occurred and that was in a junction box halfway down
the plinth where the main cabling connected with the
net. Their only problem was getting down to it. The snow
might have been light and powdery on the surface but
the deeper they went the harder it was to dig through
the old compacted snow. By the time they reached the
junction box the two men were sweating.
'So is it true about Diable? The winning bid,' asked
Lesage, slicing his shovel down the side of the pit and
noting the layers of snow and ice and hoar-frost revealed
by the cut. As far as he could tell there had been six or
seven major falls up here since the first snow back in
November.
'Twelve million dollars. Argent de poche for these
Russians,' replied Garamonde, opening the junction box,
removing his gloves and checking the connection. 'Just
pocket-money. And in this case, you really could carry
it in your pocket. A diamond, no less. Nathalie says they're
displaying it in the Auberge lobby right through race
week.' Closing the box, satisfied that everything appeared
to be in working order, he and Lesage climbed from the
pit they'd dug, and pulled themselves clear of the snow
hole.
'You going to blast?' asked Lesage, nodding at the
snow-quilted pastures beneath them.
'I came prepared,' said Garamonde. Unzipping a pocket
of his rucksack he reached into it and pulled out a standard
charge, quarter-kilo cast primer of TNT. Laying the
charge in the snow, he took a small galvanised rubber
case from another pocket and snapped it open. Inside,
bedded in a rectangle of grey foam rubber, were three
eight-centimetre number-ten blasting caps. They looked
like thin metal candles, one of which Garamonde eased out of its bed and slid into the cast primer.
'What's the time delay?' asked Lesage.
'Sixty seconds,' replied Garamonde, cradling the explosive
in his hand and examining the slope beneath them.
'And right about there should do it,' he said, pointing
to a soft hollow in the bed of snow maybe thirty metres
to their left where the gully opened up into the bowl.
Another twenty metres above it, a cornice had built up
into a promising overhang.
'You set?' asked Garamonde.
'Ready when you are,' replied Lesage.
Getting to his feet, Garamonde activated the timer,
reached back his arm and then flung the charge high
into the air. The two men watched it wheel up and then
plummet down, disappearing into the snow without a
sound, leaving a small burrow hole where it had entered.
The seconds ticked by - thirty . . . forty . . . fifty . . .
And then came a muffled cough from somewhere
below the snow. A spurt of snow dust shot from the
entry hole like exhaust from a car's tailpipe and the
surface of the slope around it seemed to shiver.
'Right on cue,' said Lesage.
'And right on target,' added Garamonde, as a long
crack slid open across the slope, reaching from one side
of the pasture to the other, maybe twenty metres below
them. In an instant other cracks appeared, spreading
out like a crazy-paving web in the snow. And then,
slowly, like a punctured airbed, a fifty-square-metre slab
of snow seemed to collapse in on itself and start to slide,
washing down the side of the ridge in a low white torrent
until it reached the barrier of woodland above the start
of the Plesse run, slithering to a halt somewhere among
the trees. What the overnight automatic charge had failed
to do, a quarter-kilo of TNT had done instead.

'And it's not over yet,' said Lesage, pointing to the
cornice that the wind had built up on the ridge above
the gully. Without the slope to support it, and shaken by
the blast, the frozen wave suddenly broke with a grating,
icy crack and in five-metre sections tumbled down on
to the new, tougher snow cover revealed by the slide,
exploding in a cloud of glittering icy shrapnel.
'Anybody would pay good money to see something
like that,' sighed Lesage. 'You never get tired of it.'
Garamonde looked at his friend and smiled. 'That's good to hear. So you won't mind doing another two
before we're finished.'

39

It took Dessin twenty minutes to negotiate the early
morning traffic on rue des Hauts and find a parking
space near the Courcelle lift. After four days of blustering
snow that had hidden the mountains and closed the lifts, the sky was blue, the sun was shining and Les
Hauts was back in business. Locking his Jeep, he trudged
across the nursery slopes and headed for the ramp that led to the lift-station.The lifts had opened fifteen minutes
earlier and already the entrance was crowded with skiers
and snowboarders waiting for a cable car to the Courcelle
pistes, eager to make up for lost time.
Seeing the crowd ahead of him, Dessin was tempted
to flash his 'Officier de la Municipality' pass and push
his way forward. But he thought better of it and decided
to wait in line. Jumping the queue was a perilous undertaking
in a crowd of skiers waiting in turn for a cable
car, and even an official pass did little to soften the mutters
and glares of resentment and, sometimes, outright confrontation
that attended such an action. Instead Dessin jostled
along with the rest of them, clambering aboard an empty
gondola that automatically opened its doors as it approached
the platform, swung round on its cable, closed
its doors, then burst out into the sunshine before accelerating
up the Courcelle face.
Dessin was not a tall man. A little over five-six and
squeezed into the car with what looked like twenty skiers
and their spiky forest of skis and sticks, he felt like a
sprat in a netful of mackerel. One of the last into the
car, every seat and strap had gone and Dessin was unable
even to reach for a pole. Instead he stood wedged between
a group of English skiers whose voices brayed over his
head, their ski boots giving even the shortest among
them a good ten centimetres over him. Every time the
car tilted through a pylon the wedge of bodies tilted
with it, someone's rucksack or elbow or shoulder or skis
pushing against his cheek or his shoulder or his head.
But never a word of apology, just an occasional glance
of casual curiosity, the only person in the car not holding
a pair of skis or dressed in a ski-suit.
And then, as the upper Courcelle station approached,
they all prepared for disembarking, jostling him even
more as the car slowed and swung backwards and forwards
with the braking, before docking against the station platform.
Bon
Dieu, he thought as he was propelled backwards
through the opening doors, almost carried along by the
crowd as they surged off, how I hate skiers. Next time he
took a cable car, he decided, pushing to the edge of the
crowd, he'd take out his pass, flash it for all to see and
take a car all by himself. Whether they liked it or not.
Yves Primaud was waiting for him by a row of open
stiles leading to the slopes. He was dressed in a quilted
blue work overall, with a woollen bobble hat clamped
on his head and a pair of ear-mufflers set round his neck
like a piece of extravagant jewellery. He was leaning against an open door, watching the crowds as they disembarked,
looking out for Dessin. When Primaud saw him
he waved him over and, shaking his hand and slapping
him on the back, he bundled Dessin through the door.
Closing it behind them, the clattering and clumping of
ski boots was replaced by a warm mechanical hum that
reached down to them from a closed metal door at the
top of a flight of stone steps.
'How's the boy doing?' asked Primaud over his
shoulder as he climbed the stairs. Alain, his son, had
recently started work with Dessin's snow-clearing crew.
'He'll do,' Dessin replied. 'But like his old father, he's
a bit slow.'
'Just you wait,' grunted Primaud. 'The years'U be
catching up with you soon enough. And when they do,
you can be sure I'll be there to enjoy the show.'
When they reached the landing, Primaud handed his
boss a pair of ear-protectors, put on his own, then opened
the metal door.
Even with protectors, the sound of the cable-car
wheel-house hit Dessin like a breaking wave, almost lifting
him off his feet. He'd worked these same inspection pits
and wheel-houses for years - until he applied for the
post of Depute and moved to admin - but he'd never
grown used to the grinding roar. Nor had he ever felt
comfortable with the suffocating, claustrophobic pressure
of the machinery itself. The might of it. As Primaud led
him along a grated catwalk between the great spinning
wheels that drove the cables, Dessin hunched his shoulders
and tipped his head, his ribcage humming like a
tuning fork from the raw power of moving metal - its
massive weight, its gigantic centrifugal force, its elemental
soul. Some nights he'd lie in bed and swear he could still
feel his body trembling, hours after his shift had ended.
Up ahead Primaud beckoned Dessin forward and,
leaning over the guard-rail, he pointed up at one of the
three capital wheels - each, as Dessin knew, some seven
metres in diameter and weighing in at a little over fourteen
tonnes.These three wheels were set horizontally rather
than angled or perpendicular, and worked side by side, in
a great spinning arc, their leading edges cut with wide
oil-smeared furrows that held the mighty cable in place.
Primaud nudged Dessin and leaned towards him.
Dessin tipped his protector far enough off his ear to hear
what Primaud was saying.
'You see? Middle wheel. Bottom rim.'
Dessin peered up into the roaring gloom, trying to
make out what it was that Primaud had spotted. He
turned to his colleague and frowned, shrugged, as if to
say: "I can't see anything.
'The oil crust,' shouted Primaud. 'There's no oil crust
on the lower edge.' He positioned Dessin in front of him
and pointed over his shoulder. 'There. See it?'
And now Dessin did. A gleam of metal where a crusty
rim of dirt and oil should have sat, squeezed out of the
furrow by the cable. He watched it for a few moments,
flick-flicking past as the wheel spun. He knew exactly
what it was. The cable wasn't properly bedded into the
middle wheel's furrow and was riding up the side,
breaking away the rim crust. It could have taken months
to get like this, and take months more for the cable to
rise any higher, or do any more serious damage. But
Primaud had been sharp-eyed to spot it and call it in.
Dessin looked at Primaud and nodded.
Then Primaud took Dessin's hands and curled them
tight round the guard-rail. He held up a finger. A second
finger. A third finger. And finally Dessin sensed the tiny
vibration as Primaud opened the fourth finger.The tiniest
of flutters in the spinning rhythm of the wheels transferred
to the guard-rail. Every fourth beat - a pinprick
pulse that shouldn't have been there. Now he knew why
Primaud had called him out.
Letting go of the guard-rail, Dessin pointed back to
the door and they crossed the catwalk towards it.
Closing the door behind them, both men pulled off
their ear-protectors.
'I saw it. I felt it,' said Dessin.
Primaud gave him a questioning look. 'And?'
'Gearings? Bearings?'
Primaud tossed his protectors from hand to hand, as
though carefully weighing his response. 'It's what I'll
check first. After we close down. Take a few hours.'
'What do you think?'
'Could be,' he said with a shrug. 'Maybe.'
'But you're not convinced?'
'I'd hear if it was a gearing problem,' he said at last.
'As for the bearings, they've only been in just a couple
of seasons. Good for another ten, at least.'
Dessin knew the answer, but he asked all the same.
'Which leaves?'
Primaud shrugged again. 'You know as well as me.
What I'm saying is it might be something down the line.
One of the pylons.'
Dessin shook his head, because he wanted not to
believe what Primaud was saying. A pylon problem was
bad news. They took time to fix and maintenance
contracts and servicing insurance rarely covered faults at
ground level, what was politely termed 'surface slippage'.
In other words, if the earth moved neither insurer nor
manufacturer were liable for its effect on pylons. It was,
in short, an act of God.
'It's been hot now three summers in a row,' continued
Primaud. 'Hotter than most. And more rain than we're
used to come autumn time. We all know it.'
Dessin knew that Primaud was right. In the last couple
of years seasonal temperatures had risen and fallen outside
the normal frame, rainfall had been higher and snow
heavier. And then there'd been that unexpected melt in
November, before a second freeze set in. If any pylon
foundation had moved more than the few centimetres
allowed for, they'd have to close the lift to correct the
'slip'. It was doable but time-consuming, and the line
would be out of commission until the faulty pylon was
found and work was completed -- two weeks easy. Costly
too. Not just the maintenance work, but the loss of
tourist revenue. Since the main Courcelle run was
connected to three other lift networks on theVialle and
Courcelle slopes, it wouldn't be just the one piste out
of action but more than half a dozen.
But if there had been a slip and nothing was done,
the cable would continue to deviate from its run-path,
applying uneven pressure to the bearings on the wheel,
until one day it would simply spring from the furrow
like a steel whip, displace the outer wheels, and all forty
cars on the cable would take a drop -- five metres, ten
metres, maybe as much as thirty metres on some stretches
of the ride, all of them plummeting down the slope. The
trouble was, it was impossible to say how long before
the cable rise became critical. Would it last another week?
Or could they safely leave it till the season was over?
It was Dessin's job to decide a course of action, and
make the necessary recommendations.
The season might be just starting, and the Diable only
a couple of weeks away, but Jules Dessin knew he had
a major problem on his hands.
Merde.

40

Thea Ryland sat up in bed, looked at her watch and
panicked. She hadn't heard the school bell. She'd overslept
again. And then, seeing the painted panelling and
the beamed ceiling and the prettily cinched gingham
curtains, she remembered where she was. With a shiver
and a groan, she pulled up the quilt and burrowed back
into its cloaking warmth.
The last few days had been horrible, just horrible, the
only person she'd had to talk to the one person she
didn't have anything to say to. Her father.
From the moment her senior house monitor at
Wrokely passed on the message that her father was
coming to the school and that she should get her things
ready, Thea didn't know what to think. And no one could
tell her anything -- what her father was up to, what had
happened. All she knew was that he had spoken to Miss
Dangerfield and that she should get herself packed. The
last time he called like that, out of the blue, he'd taken
her into Wrokely's old library and told her that her
mother had been killed in a riding accident. What now,
she'd wondered, uncertain what to take, what she'd need?
Of course she found out soon enough. Not a death
but a holiday, in the French Alps of all places, when he
knew she couldn't ski. Or maybe he didn't?
Not that it would bother her father. She might not
see him that often, but she knew him well enough to
know that if he wanted to do something he simply
assumed that everyone else would want to do the same
thing. And if they didn't, well, hey, tough, get with the
programme. It was just the way he was, the way he'd
always been, for as long as she could remember.
And not for a moment, she was certain, would it have
crossed his mind that she might have been worried or
anxious when she heard about his call, not knowing what
to expect.
Nor had he given any indication exactly how long
this 'holiday' was going to last. When she asked him their
first morning in Les Hants, all he said was 'Let's just wait
and see.' If she had anything to do with it, she had
promptly decided, she'd be back at Wrokely as soon as
she could manage it. It was her friend Tara's sixteenth
birthday party at half-term and everyone was going; there
was a lower sixth St Valentine's Day dance at Stowe; and
the week after that the finals of the house lacrosse tournament.
And she just happened to be captain of the
under-sixteens.
All of which contributed mightily to Thea's sense of
injustice. And her mood. Just who did he think he was,
breaking into her life like this? The last three school
holidays she'd hardly seen him, staying with her grandparents
or with schoolfriends. And when she'd joined
him in Paris over Christmas, she spent most of the time
with one of his army of assistants. It was so unfair, so
thoughtless.
For which she had made him pay royally, radiating
indignation all the way out to Les Hauts and sulking on
a major level. Particularly at Heathrow when he'd refused
to let her have her own passport ('It's easier if I keep
hold of it,' he'd told her). Of all the cheek. As if she
wasn't old enough to look after a bloody passport.
And her mood hadn't improved once they arrived.
Since he'd brought her to the fucking mountains and
given not a thought about her school uniform and
London clothes, then he could damn well fork out on
some suitable ski-wear. If he wanted to get her on to
skis then she'd make damn sure it cost him.
Thea had seen immediately that the prospect of shopping
together appealed to him, as though splashing out
money on clothes would somehow make everything all
right between them, some sort of bonding expedition.
He suddenly had this big smile on his face. 'Sure, of
course, why not? Good thinking,' he'd said.
It hadn't taken Thea long to wipe the smile off his
face - visiting every single ski shop along rue des Hauts
and on Place des Sommets, making him hang around
while she tried on one outfit after another. And the
haul was impressive: a ridiculously expensive Sno:Bro
ski-suit from a place called SkiSavvy, a pair of lace-up,
fur-trimmed Tod's boots, a neat little Duvillard hooded
parka, three pairs of Diesel jeans, Ralph Lauren shirts and
jumpers, a complete winter wardrobe down to knickers
and bras.
And then she really got into the swing of it. Just to
be difficult. The must-have ski accessories. Billabong
goggles, O'Neill sunglasses, Zemba gloves . . . When she
told him she wanted the Chanel lip salve she thought
for a moment she might have gone too far, but he gave
in and handed over his credit card without a whimper.
The only time he cheered up was when they got to the
ski shop to look at skis and bindings and boots.
But she wasn't about to let that last long.
'I want a board,' she told him.
'A snowboard? But you've got to learn to ski first,
darling. Start with skis. We'll see about boards another
time.'
The guy who was serving them looked like the lead
singer from the Kaiser Chiefs. Thea gave him a disappointed
look. He got the message.
'Boards are good, Monsieur. And you don't have to
ski first, you know? You fall a lot to start with, sure, but
very soon you pick it up. Two days, three days ... All
the young people are doing it. And there's a good board
school down the street, Mademoiselle. Here's their card,'
he said, handing it to Thea. 'Ask for Django and tell her
Jean-Paul sent you.'
And so she got the board too.
But four days on, her resolve was weakening. How
much longer could she keep this up? How much longer
would she have to? Buried under the duvet, Thea felt a
great wrench of despair followed by a quicksilver shaft
of guilt. The problem was she really didn't like what she
was doing. She didn't like the part she was playing, the
way she was behaving. She wanted to hurt him, of course
-- and he sure as anything deserved it -- but she hated
herself for doing it, hated seeing how her words or her
silences hurt, and the brave, wounded look on his face
that he tried to disguise. Whatever he'd done -- or not
done - he really didn't deserve much more of this. There
was surely a limit to the amount he could take - and
the amount she could give. Sooner or later something
had to snap.
Of course being snowed in since their arrival had
made everything a great deal more testing. There were
just so many magazines she could read (when she finished
with them, tossing them on to the floor for him to pick
up), just so many baths she could take, and just so much
TV she could watch. Her only real pleasure had come
from the few solitary walks she'd managed to take around
Les Hauts ('Need some stuff. Back in a minute').
Although she didn't admit it to her father, she loved the
little town. The snow on the roofs, an occasional tantalising
glimpse through the whiteout of the mountains
that rose around her, the holiday jolliness of the place,
and all the bars and clubs and cafes on rue des Hauts
and Place des Sommets looked so neat. It was all so . . .
different. And exciting. Like Christmas. And her father's
old home might be tiny, but it was snug and warm and
cosy and she just absolutely loved her bedroom with its
painted panelling . . .
It was just . . .
If only he'd stop giving in the whole time.
If only he'd say something.
If only he'd lose his temper, be a real dad and tell her
off.
Pushing back the duvet, Thea climbed out of bed and,
rubbing the sleep from her eyes, looked through her
bedroom window. It was only then she realised that the
sky was blue and for the first time she could see the
mountains properly, great snowy peaks rising up sharply
beyond the town, stabbing the blue sky with their sunlit
snowy summits. She felt a shiver of excitement. The
weather had broken, the snow had finally stopped.
Downstairs she heard the front door open and close
and her father's footsteps heading for the kitchen. He
called up to her three times but she didn't reply, just as
she'd done each morning, hoping he'd assume she was
still asleep. Instead she was zipping herself into her
Sno:Bro ski-suit, trying to work out the most flattering
way to wear her Ski-Fusion helmet and frantically
looking for the card that the man in the ski shop had
given her.
It was time to try out her new snowboard.

41

Just as he'd done every morning Alex Ryland had left
the house while his daughter still slept and the streetlights
still shone, and made his way to Boulangerie
Bernard on Place des Sommets where he ordered his blancs compagnes without having to think of the words,
and without anyone behind the counter recognising him.
After twenty years he supposed it wasn't altogether
surprising that his sudden reappearance should go unremarked,
even if he did recognise old Madame Bertrand
sitting on her stool beside the till.
For the first time since their arrival in Les Hauts the
sky was high, clear and blue -- just as he remembered it
--	and rather than return home to yet another frosty
exchange with his daughter, Alex crossed the place, slipped
down a side street beside the Auberge des Hauts Aigles
and stepped out on to the front de neige.
The house he'd grown up in might have seemed
smaller than Alex remembered, and the street certainly
narrower, but the mountains crowding round Les Hauts
des Aigles hadn't changed. The mountains of his youth
-	Juret and Bellepic, Couronne, Courcelle and Vialle,
with the Murone Glacier slung between these last two
like an icy shelf. All of them were just as lofty and
inspiring as he remembered.Thirty years ago he'd climbed
Vialle and looking at it now, its snowy slopes a chill
beckoning blue in the morning shadow, he marvelled
that he'd ever done such a thing, ever had the courage
or self-belief. In terms of achievement, he still rated that
climb with his friend Paul Garamonde more highly than
anything he'd done since. He might have built a multimillion-pound
software company but nothing, he realised
now, had ever come close to that sense of wonderment
and exhilaration when he hauled himself up on to Vialle's
summit slope.
'Faitfroid, n'est-ce pas?' came a voice from behind him
and Alex turned to see a tall figure dressed in black pole
past on skis, a woolly scarf wrapped around the dog collar
but the buttoned soutane and thin leather belt unmistakable.
' Oui, vous avez raison, Cure,'Alex replied, and he watched
the figure ski on a few metres then glide into the side
street that led down to St Sulpice. He didn't recognise
the man, but Alex was reminded of old Cure Verduzan
who'd been the parish priest in Les Hauts when he was
a boy and who used to do the same thing -- ski to church,
stashing his old Rossignols behind the pulpit.
Trudging after him, the sound of new snow compacting
with a squeak under his boots, Alex followed the cure's
ski tracks and, hands in pockets, bread clamped under an
arm, he headed home, thinking back over the past few
days and wondering again at his daughter's outrageous
behaviour. It had taken all his self-control not to snap at
her, or bring her up short, and how he managed to keep
his temper as she sashayed around town buying whatever
took her fancy he would never know. He just hoped it
didn't last much longer. If Thea was anything like her
mother a stand-up row was to be avoided at all costs. If
memory served, the best way to deal with Ryland women
was to let them simmer and cool before taking any action.
Back at the house Alex busied himself in the kitchen,
just as he'd done all those years before, carving up the
warm bread, collecting butter and conserves from the
Smeg and setting the coffee to percolate.When the dining
room table was laid, he went to the bottom of the stairs
and called up to Thea that breakfast was ready. He called
her again ten minutes later and ten minutes after that.
When she didn't appear, he scribbled a note, put a wedge
of euro notes into an envelope and left the house.
A little space, he decided, would do them both good.
Now that the snow had passed, it was time to get back to the mountains.

42

Django's Board Shop was in a side street off Place des
Sommets. With her snowboard under her arm and her
father's money in the pocket of her ski-suit, Thea pushed
open the door and stepped inside.
The interior was dark and the worn wood floorboards
smelled of snow-melt. Racks of snowboards and accessories
crowded the walls and from the work-room beyond
the counter came the hot candle scent of a waxing
machine and a blast of Razorlight. Propped on a stool
behind the counter a young woman was leafing through
a snowboarding magazine. She was in her late twenties,
tanned, slim and extremely pretty.
'Owi, Mademoiselle?' she asked, glancing up from her
magazine.
'I'm looking for Django,' said Thea, wondering at the
cascade of dreadlocks tumbling to her shoulders, 'Jean
Paul, at the ski shop, said I should come here. To arrange
some lessons.'
'C'est moil replied the woman. She gave Thea a look,
letting her eyes drift over the tight-fitting aquamarine
Sno:Bro suit.'You want to sign up for a class or go private?'
she continued, speaking English now, but with a pronounced
Australian accent.
'Which would be best?'
'Well, since all the classes are booked, you don't have
a lot of choice.'
'Private then. Er, how much would that be?'
'Thirty euros a session. Six sessions. In advance. And
no refunds if you don't like it.'
Thea nodded. 'When can I start?'
'As soon as you're organised.'
'Organised?'
'You got a pass?'
'Pass?'
'Ski pass.You'U need it for the lifts,' said Django, more
gently now, seeing that the girl was young, uncomfortable,
but trying.
Thea shook her head. 'Where do I ... ? How . . .'
'Across Sommets, back of the Hotel des Alpes. Get
the pass and then come back here. I'll take you out
myself. Oh, and you better find yourself some gear.'
'Gear?'
Django smiled, gave Thea a patient look. 'No one
boards in SnoiBro.'

43

Renee Pelletier stood at her open office window three
floors above the Mairie car park. She was smoking her
third cigarette of the morning and watching out for Mayor
Bruchet's arrival. It was like being back at school, she
thought, snatching a smoke behind the bike shed. She had
just taken a last drag and flicked the stub into the yard
below when Bruchet's red Mitsubishi 4x4 turned into
the car park and slid into its space.
Closing the window, Renee went to her desk, took
a can of air-freshener from a drawer and gave the room
a couple of squirts, fanning the air with her hand so that
the fresh piney scent was not so obvious. A moment later
she heard the lift doors open down the corridor and the
tap of his shoes approaching. When he opened the door,
unwinding his scarf and pulling off his parka, transferring
his briefcase from one hand to the other to effect
this disrobing, Renee was sitting at her desk and tapping
at the keyboard.
'Bonjour, Monsieur le Maire. Comment ca vaT she
trilled, leaving off typing to help Bruchet with his coat,
almost reeling from the strength of his aftershave. She
needn't have worried about the air-freshener.
It was a joke in the Maine that you could smell Bruchet
before you saw him. Which was sometimes just as well,
for Monsieur le Maire had a nasty habit of creeping up
on people, listening in to conversations, picking up
scuttlebutt, and always on the lookout for slackers.
Particularly if the slacking in question had anything to
do with smoking. As an evangelical non-smoker, it was
smokers for whom Bruchet reserved his special contempt.
Despite the air-freshener - or maybe because of it - this
Wednesday morning was no exception.
'You'll die young, Renee. Awfully young. Hacking
your lungs out by the time you're fifty, with hardly the
strength to keep the oxygen mask clasped to your face.
No need to deny it, I can smell tobacco on you. Since
it's against regulations to smoke in the office, I can only
assume that the smell comes from your clothes. I suggest
you have them dry-cleaned.'
Et bonjour to you too, Monsieur le Maire, thought Renee,
hanging up the parka and following him into his office.
As usual Bruchet was trimly turned out, no one in
the Mairie more concerned with their appearance. This
morning he was wearing a beautifully tailored English
tweed jacket, tightly creased grey flannel trousers, a crisply
ironed white shirt and flamboyant red silk tie. As he
settled himself behind the desk, arranging the sleeves of
his jacket, passing a slow, searching hand over his wave
of immaculately barbered (suspiciously brown) head of
hair, he looked down and noticed his shoes, a pair of
expensive Berluti loafers. With an irritated tsk-tsk, he
leaned forward to wipe away the melted snow from their
highly polished uppers.
Though none of his colleagues at the Mairie knew it,
and only his wife suspected it, Jacques Bruchet loathed
the snow. Oh it was beautiful, he supposed, the way it
cloaked the rising slopes and distant peaks, the way it softened hard edges and rounded off unsightly angles. And of
course he understood and appreciated its commercial value.
But that didn't mean he had to like the stuff. The season
Bruchet loved most was summer, when the Val des Aigles
was green and the meadows thick with grass. He liked
the fresh, zingy scent of the pine forests, which winter
seemed to dull; he liked to be able to walk without the
risk of a broken hip; and he preferred the kind of visitors
who came to Les Hauts in the summer - the walkers,
the hikers, the bird-watchers, the painters. Such leisurely
gentle pursuits, and how much more amenable they were
than skiers and snowboarders with their loud voices and
thumping boots.
Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, Bruchet dried
his fingers and shot Renee a snide little look. 'So, while
you're still alive and functioning . . .' He paused. 'Or at
least I assume you are?'
Renee delivered a suitably coquettish smile. 'Last time
I checked, Monsieur le Maire.'
'So,' continued Bruchet, letting his look stray to the
unbuttoned top of her cardigan, just as Renee had known
he would. 'Let's get going then.'
For the next ten minutes she went through his
appointments book - a planning session, last-minute
licence applications for the Diable to approve, and a
departmental audit committee meeting in Albertville that
afternoon. Closing the book when she finished, she
clasped it against her chest and watched for his hungry
little eyes to flick across the swell. When they did she
smiled inside. She did it deliberately, to tease him, to
unsettle him -- he was a looker not a toucher, so she
didn't worry -- and she relished the small sense of power
it gave her.
'Any mail yet?' asked Bruchet, swinging his chair
round, crossing his legs, straightening and loosening the
crease in his grey flannels.
'In my office, Monsieur le Maire. I was about to go
through it when you--'
'Bring it in here, please. I'll deal with it this morning.' 'Comme vous voulezl said Renee, and as she got up
from her chair she leaned forward to pick something off
the hem of her skirt, affording the mayor unprecedented
access down the front of her cardigan. Then she stood
to straighten her skirt, palmed her hands over her hips
and gave just the tiniest little shake of her body.
Bruchet watched her to the door, watched her cross
to her desk in the outside office, retrieve the pile of mail
and bring it back to him. She might smoke, he thought
to himself, but he'd give half his pension to run his hands
over that tight little body of hers. Twenty-five she was,
with a figure to feast on. Of course other men in his
position did a lot more than just look. One of the perks
of the job, he'd heard them argue among themselves.
But not Bruchet. For Bruchet, personal financial gain
had always been a far more potent priority than the
prospect of a quick fumble over the office photocopier.
For it was his belief that political office was little short
of a saintly sacrifice, a sacrifice made bearable only by
raking in as much cash as possible while in office. And
the latest inducement to profit from his position as Maire of Les Hauts was one of the juiciest little plums to come
Bruchet's way in a long time. Which was why he wanted
to go through the mail himself. The phone message he'd
received on his way to work that morning had suggested
it would be a good idea.
The moment Renee closed the door behind her, he
set to on the pile, riffling through the stack until he
found what he was looking for - a large A5 envelope
with German stamps and a Munich postmark. Pushing
aside the rest of the mail -- he'd give it back to Renee
later and tell her he hadn't had time to sort it - he tore
open the envelope, reached inside and pulled out an
expensively produced timeshare property brochure. A
small compliment slip was attached to the cover. It was
signed Willi, and wished him bonne chance et bonnes vacances.
Flicking through the magazine, Bruchet came to an
asterisked page featuring a luxury villa in the Residences
les Plus Privees, Elegantes et Somptueuses section of the
brochure. The villa -- Les Fragonards -- was set amid a
grove of casuarina on a hillside above Grande Anse beach
on Martinique. It had terraced reception rooms, four
double bedrooms, en-suite marble bathrooms, a tennis
court, swimming pool and two hectares of tropical garden.
There was also, he noted hungrily, maid and butler service,
limousine transfers to and from town, and complimentary
membership at the most exclusive golf club on the
island.
All he had to do was assign the choicest sites along
the Diable course to the German TV company whose
name was printed on the comp slip, and he and his family
would be spending the next five summers at Les
Fragonards, all expenses paid.
It was then that Renee buzzed through on the

intercom.
'Monsieur le Maire? It's Jules Dessin to see you.'

44

Jules Dessin had known the meeting wouldn't be easy.
Getting in to see the mayor had been difficult enough,
with three previous appointments rescheduled at the last
minute and not a word of explanation. If it hadn't been
for Renee Pelletier taking pity on him and squeezing
him into the mayor's schedule, he'd still be waiting. Now
he was here, sitting across from a plainly irritated Bruchet,
and wishing fervently he was somewhere else. But he'd
done what he knew he had to do - recognise the importance
of Primaud's findings at the upper Courcelle station
and report to the executive, explaining to the mayor as
simply and as concisely as possible what they'd found in
the wheelhouse and what would happen if the cable
slipped from its furrow.
'And?' said Jacques Bruchet, steepling his fingers and
inspecting his nails. 'What exactly do you expect me
to do?'
'In order to investigate further, we need to close the
Courcelle--'
'Close Courcelle?' Bruchet tipped back in his chair
and clapped his hands. 'You are joking, Dessin? A couple
of weeks before the Diable and you want me to close
off. . . what? . . . nearly one third of Les Hauts' runs? Do
I look like a madman?'
'If we don't do something now, we might--'
'Might? Might?' Bruchet leaped on the word like a
fast cat on a slow mouse. 'You mean there's a possibility
that nothing might happen?'
'Sooner or later, Monsieur le Maire, the cable will. . .'
'Well, which is it, man? Sooner, or later? Can it be
left till the end of the season? Say, another couple of
months. Or are forty cable cars filled with six hundred
skiers going to plummet from the skies in the next two
hours?'
Dessin shook his head. 'Not as soon as that. . .'
'Exactly,' said Bruchet, pushing out of his chair and
going across to the hat stand. He reached for his coat,
gripped the cuffs of his suit and plunged his arms into
the parka's sleeves.
Dessin turned in his chair, fearful to leave it and be
shown from the mayor's office before he'd had the
chance to explain properly and defend his recommendations.
'Monsieur
le Maire, this is potentially . . .' He knew
as soon as he said the word that he'd hammered the final
nail in the coffin.
So did Monsieur le Maire. 'Oh, it's "potentially" now,
is it?' Bruchet reached for the door and swung it open.

'Mademoiselle Pelletier? S'il vous plait, Monsieur Dessin
is leaving us now and--'
'Monsieur,' interrupted Dessin. His body trembled at
the prospect of having to stand his ground, here in the
mayor's own office. He'd have preferred to stop one of
the spinning lift wheels with his bare hands rather than
plead the case any further, in the face of Bruchet's icily
amused disbelief. 'We really must do something. Now.'
Bruchet paused, brought up short by Dessin's interruption.
When Renee appeared at his door he held up a finger.Then, speaking slowly and softly, he said,'I understand
your concerns, Dessin. Of course, I do. And I am
grateful that you have brought them to my attention. As
Mademoiselle Pelletier here will tell you, I have the
highest regard for your department. And for your own
. . . particular . . . skills.' Bruchet's words were honeyed,
his slow smile warm and wicked.'Make no mistake, your
recommendations will be acted upon without delay'
Rising from his chair, Dessin began to feel a stir of
hope.
'As of tomorrow,' continued Bruchet, 'the Courcelle
station will open half an hour later and close half an
hour earlier so that you and your team can begin an
initial examination of the cables and pylons. There will
be overtime involved, I have no doubt, but my office
will make the necessary budgetary arrangements and
underwrite the extra costs. So, Dessin, if that is all?'
Bruchet glanced at his watch. 'I have a planning session
to attend. And I'm late.'

45

Racking his skis and clomping up the steps of the Hotel
des Alpes's terrace, Alex found a table, ordered a beer
and lunch menus and raised his face to the sun. Such
warmth here, he thought to himself. Such beauty, such
peace. And he knew, with a sudden surge of conviction,
that he'd been right to come back. He'd been right to
finish with it all. Time to find another kind of life. And
if it hadn't been for Tandie, falling from that unfamiliar
mare, maybe he'd still be there, buying and selling, hiring
and firing, chasing the deals and carving out a few million
more. But he wasn't. He was here in Les Hauts, back
home after more than twenty years - two full honours
boards at Wrokely.
Eyes closed against the sun, Alex pulled off his ski hat
and felt the cool sweat in his hair as he slicked it back.
Life . . . was . . . good.
Life as it should be lived.
Here, in the mountains, where he'd grown up.
And skiing those mountains once again. Just three
days out on the slopes and already he'd ticked off some
big names. Four reds - Plesse, Les Doux, Calibere and
Mijoux - and just this morning his first black run, the
fearsome Massin with its drops and gullies and that rocky
little chasm halfway down. Nearly three hours on the
slopes, and he'd only fallen once, on a patch of shady,
treacherous ice that he hadn't spotted. If the weather
held, he'd try Pendu that afternoon and in the next few
days he'd take the lift to Diable. He hadn't skied it since
his last season in Les Hauts, but if his nerve held and
his body allowed, he was determined to add it to his
list.
Alex's beer arrived and the menus. He looked at his
watch. Fifteen minutes early for his lunch appointment
with Thea.
He caught himself immediately.
Lunch. Not lunch appointment, for God's sake.
Lunch with his daughter, on holiday, sitting in the
sunshine, in the French Alps. That kind of lunch.
Of course, it wasn't just the skiing that had raised
Alex's spirits. Since the snow had passed and Thea had
taken up snowboarding, his life had definitely become
easier. The last three mornings his daughter had been up
and out of the house while he was still in his dressing
gown, and she never came home before the lifts closed.
He didn't know if she was staying out all day and going to bed early just to avoid his company, or because she
was genuinely enjoying herself, and shattered after a day
on the slopes. She certainly looked as though she was
having fun. In just three days her face had tanned quickly
and though she tried to conceal it her eyes sparkled with
excitement. Conversation was still uneasy, of course; he
had yet to receive more than a peck on the cheek - at
his insistence - before she dashed out after breakfast or
scuttled up to bed the moment she got home; and for
the last three nights he'd sat by himself watching TV or
reading a book. But for all that, there had been a noticeable
and welcome thawing in the family home.
On their journey to Les Hauts, having discovered that
his daughter couldn't ski, Alex had assumed that he would
be the one to teach her; that it would somehow bring
them together, a way to get close to her and heal the
rift between them. They'd share lifts up to the pistes,
they'd fall over, they'd laugh . . . and they'd bond. The
snow, the mountains and Les Hauts would bring them
together. The truth, Alex now acknowledged, was that it
would probably have done quite the reverse. If Thea was
anything like her mother - a tantalising mix of high
temper and deep affection - she would take instruction
from a stranger, but never from him. What Thea had
needed was one of those instructors in the red ski-suits
with the mirrored sunglasses and frayed badges -- the
young ones who looked like rock stars and didn't shave.
Without any emotional baggage to weigh them down,
they'd teach her to ski -- or board, if that's what she
wanted - in a heartbeat. And whatever it was her
instructor was doing -- a woman called Django, by all
accounts - she was clearly pushing all the right buttons.
So much so that the previous night, before Thea scuttled
off to bed, he'd dared to suggest that they meet up
for lunch, here on the terrace of the Hotel des Alpes.
And she'd agreed.
Alex finished his beer, signalled to the waiter and
ordered a bottle of Apremont and a carafe of water. Then
he looked out on to the lower slopes to see if he could
spot her. If she was still wearing that blue SnoiBro suit
he might have been able to make her out. But the SnoiBro
had long gone, replaced by a pair of baggy, low-waisted
combat trousers. Of course, he'd made no comment
about the change in style and since she hadn't asked for
any more money he could only assume she'd arranged
a refund at SkiSavvy and gone shopping by herself.
When Thea hadn't shown up twenty minutes later,
however, Alex began to worry. He'd given her clear directions
for the Terrace des Alpes, so she couldn't possibly
have got lost. So where was she? What was she doing?
Was she all right? Had she had an accident? He suddenly
felt anxious, and was surprised to find - and ashamed
to admit - that it was an unfamiliar sensation.
Pulling out his mobile phone, he snapped it open and
. . . stopped, finger above the pad. He didn't have her
number. Come to think of it, he didn't even know if
she had a mobile phone. He hadn't thought to ask.
It was then, sitting there in the sun, unable to reach
his daughter, wondering where she could be, that it
dawned on him with an icy flash of clarity why Thea
had been so difficult since he'd taken her out of school.
The realisation stunned him, and like a thin blade of
guilt it stabbed viciously at his heart.
They didn't know each other. Simple as that.
They might have been father and daughter, but the
truth was they were little more than strangers. She didn't
know him and, if he was honest, he didn't really know
her. He might have thought he did, but clearly he didn't.
For as long as he could remember Thea had been
away at school, the last four years at Wrokely Hall, most
of her school holidays, half-terms and extra weekends
spent with her mother while he single-mindedly built
his company into a world brand. When he left for the
office in the morning his daughter was still asleep and
when, and if, he managed to get home she'd been put
to bed hours earlier. All he'd ever really seen was a head
on a pillow and closed eyes.
The more he thought about it, the more sense it
made.
And the guiltier it made him feel.
And since Tandie's death he'd probably seen even less
of her, farmed out in the holidays, his secretary arranging
times and dates and movements with grandparents and
cousins and school chums, while he chaired another
meeting in New York or Shanghai, or wherever there
were deals to be made.
For heaven's sake, he hadn't even realised she couldn't
ski, didn't even know if she had a mobile phone or not.
How could he not have known that?
And then, with another merciless, churning wave of
guilt, he realised that there wasn't much else he knew
about his daughter - the food she liked, the TV
programmes she watched, the music she listened to. He
didn't know the names of her best friends, or her teacher
at Wrokely, or what house she was in, what sport she
enjoyed. He didn't even know what her favourite subject
was -- Art? Maths? -- and tried to remember when he'd
actually read one of her school reports, reports thatTandie
always gave him and which he promised he'd read, but
never got round to.
What he did remember -- with a sudden and scorching
shame - was that he had never once seen her in a school
play and had missed three of her last four prize-givings,
excusing his absences on what he saw clearly now was
an appalling premise - that Thea was only in the chorus,
or hadn't won a prize, so what was the point in being
there?
God, he thought - how could he have been so
uncaring? So negligent? When had that become a part
of his character?
And then his mobile bleeped. A text message. From

Thea.
So she did have a phone. And she had his number.
Cldnt mk it, brdingy cul. T
His heart sank. So he had been stood up.
And Cul - see you later. Not even love.
But now, at last, he understood - her silences, her
brattish behaviour, her rudeness. She had simply been
making a point, and right to do so. He should have
expected her reaction, anticipated this coldness, and been
prepared for it.
At least she'd let him know she wouldn't be making
lunch. Which was good, he decided, encouraging almost,
though a call would have been nicer, the sound of her
voice rather than that irritating shorthand text. He dialled
the number that had come with the message, but there
was no answer. Either she didn't want to speak to him,
or she'd switched off her phone. Settling for the latter,
Alex signalled a waiter, ordered lunch for one and swore
to himself that from this moment on he would try to
be a real father, a kind, caring, loving father and, as far
as possible, make up for all his past shortcomings.
Things were going to change. And Les Hauts, he knew,
would make it happen.

46

Leaving Les Hauts for lunch with some friends down in
Cariol, Jacqueline Bezard slipped a James Taylor CD into
the stereo and started thinking about Hugo, trying to
decide how exactly she should proceed with regard to
his newly acquired mistress.
As far as she knew it was the first time in their marriage
that her husband had strayed. The signs were certainly
all there: the faraway look that sometimes stole across
his face, the little gifts he'd begun bringing home, the
unexpected hand beneath the quilt at night as he sought
her out and, more telling, an unfamiliar scent that she'd
noticed at the Chamber of Commerce buffet the previous
week. Hardly a signed affidavit, but taken together it was
all quite enough for Jacqueline Bezard.
Of course, Jacqueline knew that Hugo wasn't the only
man who had a mistress. She could think of at least a
dozen of her friends whose husbands played away from
home -- three of her lunch companions for starters. And
at one time or another she'd heard most of these friends
agree that a little cinq a sept was no bad thing in a
marriage. So long as that was all it was, they cautioned.
If it ever got out of hand, if their husbands were indiscreet
or foolish enough to do something about their
new-found loves, then they had better watch out. It
would cost them dear.
And Jacqueline had to admit that she could see the
advantages.
Since Hugo had strayed -- sometime around Christmas,
Jacqueline guessed -- he had certainly been a great deal
easier to live with. Less combative, less volatile. After the
family's disastrous Christmas dinner when Nathalie
arrived with Garamonde, Jacqueline had been unprepared
for the tempest of outrage from her husband.
'I just don't understand it,' Hugo ranted the morning
after. 'She could have anyone . . .'
'She has, didn't you know?'
'This is no joking matter, Jacqueline. It really isn't.'
'I suppose not, since the two of them are probably
going to end up married. I thought we could have the
reception here.'
Hugo's face drained of colour.'They're getting what?'
'It's just a guess, cheri. But it wouldn't surprise me.'
And Hugo gave her a look of astonishment, as though

he couldn't believe what she was saying, or comprehend
her apparent lack of concern. He simply picked up his
coat and scarf and left the chalet without another word.
And never a word since.
As she reached the end of Route des Passeurs and
started downhill through the Gorge des Chouettes,
Jacqueline decided it had to be the new mistress .Whatever
else she was doing, she certainly appeared to be a calming
influence. For which Jacqueline knew she should be
grateful, even if she still couldn't fathom Hugo's objections
to their daughter's choice of partner. Garamonde
might not have had a lot of money, and would be unlikely
to get any further than his current position, but for all
his limited prospects, he was a kind and gentle man, an
irresistible mix of tough and tame, confident in his professional
abilities but always unassuming and measured in
his behaviour. He was also, intriguingly, a man who didn't
seem to know the effect he had on women, how attractive
he was. Nathalie had made a good choice, that was
certain, and in a tiny part of her heart Jacqueline envied
her daughter.
Right from the start Jacqueline had known that this
particular liaison was serious. Nathalie had a strong independent
streak when it came to men that meant she
soon grew bored with her conquests. But Garamonde,
more than twenty years her senior, was different. After
two months, the usual length of time that Nathalie
devoted to her lovers, she and Garamonde were still an
item. And then it was three months. And four. And now,
nearly a year later, they were still together. There was a
bloom to her daughter's cheek, a spring in her step and
always a smile bursting across her face. Jacqueline was
only astonished that her husband had taken so long to
see it.
Dropping down through the gorge, swinging confidently
through the bends, Jacqueline's thoughts turned
once more to her husband, and the vexing question of
his mistress's identity. All weekend, since she'd noticed
that scent on his jacket, she had racked her brains for a
likely contender.Whoever it was,Jacqueline was convinced
that the woman had to be local, someone living in Les
Hauts. Any further afield would have meant Hugo travelling
at least thirty kilometres -- down to Amionne, the
closest settlement to Les Hauts, or Cariol even further
away - and Jacqueline had been aware of no such excursions
or absences in recent weeks. Of course, the woman
might well be prepared to make the effort to come to
Les Hauts, but where would they . . . well, do it? In the
hotel? In one of the unoccupied chalets? In some little
love-nest apartment that Hugo had set up in town? No,
no, it had to be someone local, with their own home.
But who?
A member of staff? Hardly.
A guest? Ridiculous.
The wife of a friend? Possibly, though Jacqueline could
think of no likely suspect within their group.
And then - was the interloper single? Or divorced?
And which of the two would be better? Safer?
The more Jacqueline thought about it, the more
annoyed she became, her hands starting to wring the
steering wheel as well as turn it. Not jealous, not heartbroken,
just. . . irritated, annoyed, exasperated. Beyond
measure.
How dare Hugo do such a thing? How dare he behave
like that? It just wouldn't do, she decided. Pas de tout! Unlike her friends she was simply not prepared to accept
this kind of behaviour from her husband. This mystery
woman might have calmed him, made life easier, but that
was no reason to condone the betrayal or turn a blind
eye. When all was said and done, she believed in love.
And marriage. And what it stood for. Thirty years on
she still loved every obstinate, narrow-minded, bigoted,
generous bone in Hugo's little body -- and she was
damned if she was going to share a single one of them
with some . . . some . . .
No, it wouldn't do. It just wouldn't--
With a start Jacqueline snapped to. The rear brake-lights
on the car ahead were a blazing red in the snow. Without
thinking, she touched her own brakes a little too heavily
and the car slithered across the icy tyre furrows stamped
into the surface of the road. Heart in her mouth, she took
her foot off the brake pedal, tweaked the steering wheel,
touched the accelerator then nudged the brakes with tiny
little jabs. Three seconds later she came to a halt no more
than ten centimetres behind the car in front of her.
Taking a few short breaths to calm herself, Jacqueline
then looked ahead to see what the hold-up was. A
hundred metres on, a stream of snow was cascading over
the lip of a slope and piling up in the road. It wasn't a
big slide, but it had broken through the trees and brought
several branches down with it, a sizeable length of spruce
now stretched across the road. As far as she could see
there were no cars involved, but there was sure to be a
long delay before the road was clear again. Up ahead
other drivers were thinking the same, and already starting
to back up and turn where space allowed. Checking
behind her, Jacqueline followed their example and called
her friend to say she wouldn't be making lunch. On her
way back to Les Hauts Jacqueline was so busy thinking
about Hugo and his mistress that she failed to register
that the snow slide had occurred on a section of road
not known for avalanche activity.



47

Alex had showered, been shopping and was sitting in
the salon when Thea finally returned home that evening,
red-faced and slump-shouldered.
'Good day?' he asked warily.
'Yeah, it was good,' replied Thea, dropping the snowboard
inside the door and pulling off her Duvillard parka,
the only item of ski-wear she had retained from their
shopping expedition. As she hung it up, he noticed that
a Django Board Shop sticker had been applied to an
expensive leather sleeve.
'So how are you getting on? With the snowboarding?'
Thea shrugged. 'Good, you know. I mean, you fall a
lot, but hey'
'And Django?'
'Yeah, she's great,' replied Thea, heading for the stairs.
She gripped the banister and looked up as though she
was contemplating the summit face of Everest.
'I picked up a pizza at Bernard's,' he said. 'I was just
going to heat it up.'
Thea turned and gave him a beseeching look. He
couldn't quite decide if it was pitying or not.
'Do you mind if I skip it?' she asked. 'I'm going to
shower -- so I don't fall asleep in the bath -- and then
I'm going straight to bed.'
And not a word about standing him up at lunch.
Alex wasn't about to let it go.'Thanks for the message,
by the way. About lunch.'
'Oh, yeah. Sorry about that. Next time, I promise.'
And with just the shortest of smiles she turned back to
the stairs and started the long climb to her bedroom.
A couple of hours later, having finished off half the
pizza, Alex went upstairs, knocked on Thea's door and
tiptoed in. A bare foot protruded from the bottom of the
quilt, an arm was flung across the pillow and a gentle snore
rumbled in the back of her throat. Out for the count.
Twenty minutes after that, with Madame Laclere
happily installed in the kitchen, Alex stepped out into
the snow and pulled up his collar. Tonight, for the first
time since arriving in Les Hauts, he was going to check
out an old haunt.

48

As soon as she heard her father leave the house Thea
pulled on jeans and T-shirt and went downstairs. The last
three nights he had stayed in and watched TV and she'd
kept to her room, pleading tiredness, and read in bed.
But tonight it looked like she had the place to herself,
and someone to talk to.
She found Madame Laclere in the kitchen, working
a plug of dough, sleeves rolled up over plump forearms.
The
old lady looked up and smiled. 'Your father said
you were asleep, Thea.'
'Yes, I was. I guess Dad going must have woken me
up. The sound of the front door, I mean . . .'
Madame Laclere held Thea's eye, then went back to
her kneading.
'So, what's cooking? What are you making?' asked
Thea, loitering in the doorway.
'We call it pela. It's like a tartiflette but with lardons
and onion and the rind kept on the cheese. It was always
a favourite of your father's when he was a boy. I thought
I would give him a surprise when he gets home. Do
him good,' she added, glancing at Thea who was now
picking grapes from the bunch in the fruitbowl.
'But he had pizza before he left.'
'Pizza, pouff. He'll need more than pizza if he meets
up with those old friends of his,' replied the old lady,
sprinkling flour on the work surface, flattening the dough
with the balls of her hands, then reaching for the roller.
'Friends?'
'The ones he grew up with. The old days. And about
time too, if you ask me. With you keeping to your room
all the time, the man will be in need of some company
. . .' Madame Laclere shot her a look. 'So, Mademoiselle,
if you've nothing better to do, you could always lend a
hand.'
'Sure, of course,' replied Thea, and she came round
the counter. Madame Laclere made room for her and
together they set to work, making pela the correct way,
the old lady told her -- the Les Hauts way. And as Thea
sliced and diced onions and pancetta and set them to
heat, and peeled the skin off some boiled potatoes, just
as Madame Laclere instructed, it wasn't long before she
felt a comforting warmth creep over her, a pleasure in
the leisurely pace of the preparation, its familiarity. It was
something she'd always enjoyed doing with her mother,
just the two of them messing around in the kitchen,
chatting about things - a film, a book, school. And
standing there in the kitchen with Madame Laclere, Thea
suddenly realised how much she'd missed it.The company,
having someone to talk to.
'So how long have you known my father?' asked Thea,
watching Madame's delicate shuffle-shuffle of the pan
over the flame, the onions and lardons sizzling.

Madame Laclere glanced at her. 'Your father? Why he
was a baby the first time. His mother, your grandmother,
brought him out here with your grandfather, to show
us all. Here, to this house. They used to come every
Christmas, the three of them; Easter too, some years. So
I watched him grow. Not that I really paid him much
attention, you understand. He was a baby, after all, and
I was young, and ... I had other things on my mind.'
Madame Laclere gave Thea a wink. 'But he had spirit,
I'll tell you that. As he grew older, after his father . . .'
The old lady paused. 'Tsk-tsk,' she went. 'The flames
are too high. There, that's better,' she said, making a big
performance of taking the pan off the heat, turning down
the gas, clearly concerned that she might have said too
much.
But the feint didn't work. Thea smiled. 'It's okay,
Madame,' she said. 'Mama told me a little. I know he
left them. That they came back here to live.'
The old lady returned to the worktop, lifted the sheet
of pastry she'd prepared and laid it into a baking dish,
pressing it down, slicing away the edges.'Well, that's what
he did, the brute. Just up and left. One Christmas it was,
just the two of them came out here. But instead of going
back she stayed. Brought him up here, she did. And took
her old name - Toussaint. There was gossip, of course.
But after a while . . . Eh voila] she said, turning for the
pan, giving it one last shuffle, then tipping the contents
into the dish.
'You said he had spirit,' asked Thea, noticing a stray
lardon on the counter and popping it into her mouth.

'Esprit!
Madame chuckled.'Like you, Mademoiselle Thea. Just
like you.' And she smiled, arranging the mix of potatoes,
onions and lardons in its pastry bed, showing Thea
how to place the cheese rind side up on top of the
dish. 'The last time I saw him, he was in his twenties.
He'd been at some university in England,' she continued,
opening the oven and sliding the pela inside. Peering
down her nose, she set the temperature and closed the
oven door.
'Oxford,' said Thea, surprised that she should be so
proud to say it.
'N'importe, n'importe out said Madame with a shrug,
as though it was of no great matter which university he
had been to. Hoisting herself on to a stool, she took a
small tin from her pocket, snapped it open and pulled
out the makings of a cigarette. 'It was the time your
grandmother was killed in the avalanche, back in 1983.
After the burial, your father left Les Hauts and never
came back -- until now.'
'Avalanche? I thought Grandma died in a car crash?'
The old lady gave a grunt, fingering a web of tobacco
on to a leaf of paper. Slipping the tin back in her pocket,
she rolled up the cigarette and licked it tight.'That's true,
in a way,' she said at last. 'She was in a car, and it did
crash. But it crashed because it was hit by an avalanche, cherie. She was driving down Passeurs, on her way to
Cariol - just below Salvettes, it was.'

'My dad was here when it happened?' asked Thea.
'Oh yes, he was here, all right,' she replied, lighting
up her scraggly looking cigarette.
Thea frowned, as though she didn't understand what
Madame Laclere was getting at.
The old lady caught the frown. 'So he hasn't told
you?' she asked. 'About the avalanche? You don't know
what happened?'
'Nothing about avalanches. He said it was this car
accident.'
For a moment Madame Laclere didn't reply, wondering
whether or not to continue. If the girl's father hadn't
said anything about it, then perhaps she shouldn't either.
But the tale-teller got the better of her.
'Monsieur Alex,' the old lady began, pausing to pick
a shred of tobacco from the tip of her tongue, inspect
it and then drop it into the ashtray. 'Monsieur Alex, your
father, was a hero, Thea.'
There, she'd said it. No going back now. And anyway,
she decided, the child should know the truth. She was old enough.
'Dad? A hero?'
'You sound as if that surprises you?'
Thea coloured a little. 'Well, yes ... I mean . . . He's
a businessman. He runs a company, that sort of thing.
Just a regular sort of dad. He works in an office ... So
how come he was a hero?'
Madame Laclere puffed on her cigarette and blew out
a stream of smoke. 'When the avalanche came down and
hit Les Hauts it was mid-morning, around ten-thirty,'
she began. 'Monsieur Alex was giving a slide-show in
the school here, of some place he had been, somewhere exotique, hem? For the children, you understand; their
teacher had asked him. Anyway, the snow came and the
school was buried, completement. Totalement. But he dug
a way out through ten metres of snow and, tout seul, he
saved the lives of all the children in that classroom,
bringing them out one by one, les pauvres petits. Alors, if
it hadn't been for your father, the rescuers would never
have got to them in time. So many little children, and
so little air.'
Thea's eyes were wide. 'I didn't know . . .'
'And when the last child was out safe,' Madame Laclere
continued quietly,'CureVerduzan came looking for him,
to tell him about his mother. Someone had seen her car
swept away'
Taking a last puff on her cigarette, Madame Laclere
pinched off the tip and put the stub in her tobacco tin.
'And do you know what he did then?'
Thea shook her head, the lump in her throat too big
to swallow or allow speech.
'Why, he went to the road where she had been hit
by the snow and started digging. He was working with
the rescuers when they found the car, four days later.
Like the little children, he brought her out too. But not
alive.'
Thea's eyes welled with tears. As did Madame Laclere s,
remembering the disaster and the friends lost. A silence
settled between them, but finally the old lady carried on
as she knew she must.
'Your father, young lady, is a brave, brave man. And you
are very fortunate to have such a man as a father. Whatever
you may think of him just now, he loves you very much,
and you are all that he has. Eh bien] she said, clearing her
throat, heaving herself off the stool.'But you have distracted
me. All this chitter-chatter. Just look at the time,' she
exclaimed. 'Our pela must surely be done by now.'
'Our pela? But I thought you said you were cooking
it for my father?'
'Did I? Well, it won't keep. It has to be eaten now.
While it's hot,' said Madame Laclere, busying herself at
the oven. 'Why don't you lay the table and we can have
supper together.'

49

It was just like old times, thought Alex, plunging hands
into his pockets and hunching down into his collar as
the snow stung and tickled his cheeks -- trying to get
out of the house without having to tell his mother where

he was going, and who he was seeing, and when he'd
be back; sloping off along this same street, down by St
Sulpice, across Place des Anes where the mule trains once
gathered, to meet up with his friends. More than twenty
years on he was following the same route, and headed
in the same direction. Place des Sommets and the Bar
Mique.
Since arriving in Les Hauts, Alex had deliberately kept
a low profile. When he'd phoned from London he asked
Madame Laclere not to mention his return to Les Hauts,
and he repeated that wish when she came round that
first night. He might have looked longingly at the
Auberge's crowded terrace, but he wasn't going to risk
a lunch there if it meant running into that windbag
Hugo Bezard, at least not before he'd found his snow
legs and touched base with the old gang, if they were
still around - Paul and Beni, Jean Lesage and Hugo's
brother Patric.
Returning to Les Hauts after so long, it hadn't taken
Alex long to realise that a great deal had changed since
the days when he'd lived there. He'd expected it, of
course; nothing ever stayed the same. Change was . . .
unchanging. It happened, like it or not. But coming back
was still a surprise. And it wasn't just the narrowness of
the streets or the size of the houses. The place had grown
more prosperous and well-to-do, with all the attendant
bustle of a leading winter ski resort. The season was in
full swing, the streets and slopes were crowded with
people, and so many of the old shops, he noticed sadly,
had been turned into designer stores and ski boutiques,
bars and restaurants.
In the old days, when he was a boy, lines of striped
deckchairs paraded politely along the front de neige, but
now the four or five hotels that stood there side by
side had their own decks and open-air restaurants. And the town was bigger too, reaching further into the
valley - sloping pastureland the last time he'd been
there, but now built up with chalets and smart apartment
blocks.
But despite all the changes, he'd been pleased to see
that Bar Mique had made no concessions, just the same
as ever, dark and disreputable in the bottom corner of
Place des Sommets, the same wet, splintered, sleeper
wood steps leading up to its art-deco doors.
Like the Auberge terrace, Alex had kept his distance.
This was the place they met up when they were young,
at a booth in the back, the place where he last saw them,
before leaving Les Hauts for good to find his way in the
world. And more than twenty years on, if they were still
around, this was probably where he'd find them now --
Jean Lesage, who liked to drink his pastis glace settlement; the tearaway Paul Garamonde, with his thirst for beers;
Beni, who'd gone off to join the Army and learned how
to fly helicopters; and Patric Bezard, the oldest and best
looking of the bunch but, thank God, the shyest. The
girls would come to any table he happened to be sitting
at, and the rest of them would be waiting to pounce.
Like Proust's madeleines and lime tea, the smell as
Alex stepped through Bar Mique's double doors brought
it all back - damp clothes and cigarette smoke, old beer
and cheap aftershave. Time travel without the science.
The same half-panelled walls and low wattage sconces,
the same straggling collection of signed black and white
photos of celebrated Diable skiers and famous patrons,
those old holiday posters of Les Hauts with girls in blue
cashmere cardigans and plaid ski-pants, and there, running
almost the length of one wall, the old comptoir with its
hammered zinc top which Monsieur Miquellier had plastered
with mortar and painted black when the Nazis
came looking for spare metal (you could still see leftover
spots of black paint in the dimples). Even the music
was the same - the tail end of 'Are You Lonesome
Tonight?' giving way to a livelier Chuck Berry number.
Pushing through the crowd at the bar Alex ordered
a pression, watched the head slide up the glass and tried
unsuccessfully to keep his eyes off the bar-keep's generous
cleavage. Way back when, old man Miquellier had
employed much the same tactic to lure in his custom the
model might have changed but the bodywork was
just the same. As he took his beer, paid his money and
went in search of a booth, Alex decided that only an
earthquake or an atom bomb would make a dent here.
Even the avalanche of eighty-three had left it one of the
few undamaged premises on the place.
As he slid into a free booth, taking the side that faced
the front door, Alex felt an unexpected wring of sadness,
a worming sense of loss. This was his past -- as close as
he could ever get to it now -- before money and work
and parenthood took over (not, he admitted, that he'd
had much to do with the latter bar initiating the process).
Long ago he'd sat here with a pocketful of loose change
and felt like a king. Twenty-five years on, with close to
half a billion pounds tucked away, he felt like a stranger.
Time played strange tricks, he decided, as he looked around
for a familiar face. Not a single one -- probably because
he was ten years older than the oldest person there.
He was getting to the end of his second beer and
thinking he might as well head back home when time
travel took another turn on stage as two familiar figures
pushed through Bar Mique s front door, pulled off coats
and gloves and made their way through the crowd,
commandeering a pair of stools and settling their elbows
on the bar.
Alex watched for a moment in disbelief. He was too
far away to hear their voices over the hubbub, but when
he saw the pastis come with ice but no water and a
pitcher of pression he knew for sure.
He took a gulp of his beer.
They looked exactly as they had done -- the same
barside slouch, the nods, the gestures. Back then they'd
have been boasting about girls, now they were probably
complaining about wives.
For just a moment more Alex held back, content to
watch, to remember. But then he was sliding out of the
booth, and pushing his way through the crowd until he
found himself standing beside them at the bar, Lesage
swirling the ice in his glass and Garamonde tipping back
his beer.
'Paul? Jean?'

Jean Lesage had been telling Garamonde that he and
Michelle had finally agreed to sell their cramped front de
neige apartment, when a man around the same age, his
greying hair cut fashionably close to the scalp, came up
beside them at the bar, like someone looking for a light
for a cigarette or change for the jukebox. Just a glance
told Lesage the stranger was an out-of-towner. He was
dressed in the kind of expensive winter clothes that still
had a gloss to them, wore a pair of glinting designer
spectacles, and looked like a professor about to introduce
himself to a class of postgrads - earnest and serious
but with a smile hovering around his lips.
A smile that, after just a few moments, began to look
remarkably familiar.
'Sans blagues! You are pulling my chain. It's not . . .'
began Lesage, first to register the stranger's smile.
'Merde dors] said Garamonde, peering at the man. 'Alex?
Alex Toussaint? C'est toi, non? and when he realised it was
he pushed past Lesage, picked Alex up in his arms and, after
a moment's close scrutiny, kissed him hard on both cheeks.
Hands were shaken, backs slapped, a jug and wings
wrere ordered, more exclamations of surprise and delight,
and then they were squeezing into the old booth and
Jean Lesage was pulling out his mobile to summon the
rest of the gang -- Beni and Patric -- neither of whom
had the time to say more than 'Alio? before Lesage was
out with the news.
'You gotta get here. Mique's. Right now. You won't
believe who just blew into town.'

50

The snow had started to fall as the lifts closed that afternoon,
the last skiers on Les Hauts' pistes taking the steeper
sections in slow, easy curves, visibility and slope definition
seriously reduced by the incoming weather.
By eight o'clock that night the snowflakes were bigger
and thicker, clumping together as they dropped in a
steady, goose-down fall. Only the headlight beams of the
Leitwolfs up on the slopes cut through the curtain of
white, their wide tracks and scoops and shovels beating
the new fall into shape.
Elsewhere, off-piste, the snow had the mountains to
itself and it settled, layer by soft, silent, dangerous layer,
new snow on old snow, filling hollows and weighing
down branches in the treelines until they finally dislodged
their load and sprang back into shape.
At a little after midnight, as Alex trudged home from
Bar Mique, the snow had been falling for seven hours
straight. But by the time he showed Madame Laclere to
the front door, thanked her and bid her 'bonsoiree!, it had
stopped and stars had started to glitter in an icy night
sky
It was then, high above the timber line, that a brisk
north-easterly wind started up, snatching at the surface
of the snow, making it dance and whirl and pirouette
across the upper slopes. Sometimes this wind was strong
enough to make it appear that the snowstorm had started
up again, raising the new snow from where it had fallen
earlier, shifting it metre by metre before dumping it down
somewhere else, the original lie of the snow now repositioned,
the surface of the slopes re-sculpted.
An hour before dawn the stars were still glimmering
but the wind had finally moved on. At a little over three
thousand metres it was so silent you could actually hear the new snow bearing down on the previous days' falls,
many metres beneath, its crystal-stemmed mass meshing
together like a vast field of white Velcro, and creaking
like old floorboards.
Two hundred metres above the start of the Mijoux
Piste the new snow had piled up in a high bank against
a belt of spruce. Planted years before, this strip of wood,
eighty metres deep and set on a fifty-two-degree gradient,
acted as a barrier between piste and upper slopes, slanting
off the horizontal to 'steer' any possible slide away from
Mijoux and the town below. It was here, as a still invisible
sun lit up the topmost cornices of Juret and Bellepic,
that something very strange happened. The outer trees
on the upper edge of the wood began to tremble, as
though shivering in the cold, and the snow on their
branches drifted down like clouds of caster sugar, settling
first on the wider branches below, but then dropping
again, the kind of fall a dawn breeze might initiate.
But this was different. There was no breeze, the air as
still as stone. This unseen slide of snow from the branches
was caused by an almost imperceptible tipping of the
trees themselves, along the topmost line, two maybe three
deep, as though they were being tilted over by some
mighty weight pushing down from above. In a little over an hour, more than twenty trees had moved off the
perpendicular, the extent of the movement highlighted
by other trees that remained upright, their uniform tips
pointing upwards.
For pine and spruce and larch, being anything but spear
straight is a death sentence in the mountains.With a greater
area exposed, the weight of snow on trunk and branches
increases dramatically until finally, after two or three
winters, the tree can no longer bear the strain. It will
either snap, or slowly splinter, or it will pull up its roots.
Whichever happens, the tree no longer serves any
useful purpose in terms of protection from avalanches.
Instead it becomes a part of the problem.

Part Three

'An avalanche has three main parts. The "starting zone" is
the most volatile area of a slope where unstable snow can
fracture and begin to slide. The avalanche "track" is the path
an avalanche follows, and the "run-out zone" is where the
snow and debris finally come to a stop
National Snow and Ice Data Center

51

It was a clear bright morning, the high blue sky softened
at the edges with slivers of corrugated cirrus and
striped with a few chalky jet contrails that no high
altitude wind had yet disturbed. Mathilde Deslandes
had started her journey from the nursery slopes of Les
Hauts to the top of the Piste du Diable in a gondola
that took her as far as the upper Courcelle station. From
there she connected with the Calibere chair-lift, sharing
the bench seat with three baggy-trousered snow
boarders. One foot clipped to their boards, the other
swinging free, all three boys were plugged into iPods,
gloved hands beating out various riffs on the tops of
their thighs. None had seen fit to lower the safety guard
so Mathilde did it for them, earning a mocking smile
from the lad closest to her.
At the end of the lift the four of them scooted off
their seat and, while her three companions latched themselves
to their boards and headed across to the start of
Calibere, Mathilde dug in her poles and made the short
connecting run to the third lift, a hundred metres to the
left in the bowl of a small depression. As she lined up
to take her place in the queue, she let her eyes follow
the cable upwards until it disappeared over the first ridge.
Somewhere above that ridge was the fourth and final
ride to the start of the Piste du Diable.
Mathilde had been nerving herself since arriving in
Les Hauts, and that morning, with the day to herself until
a meeting with the loathsome Maire Bruchet at four, she'd
decided the time had come to give it a go. After so many
visits to Les Hauts she knew all there was to know about
the celebrated, and infamous, Diable. A nine-kilometre
course, with more than a thousand-metre drop and some
of the slope angles topping sixty degrees. As Jean-Claude
Bezard had declared all those years ago, only the bravest
and the toughest, or the baddest and maddest, tried their
luck on Diable. For Mathilde, who'd acquitted herself
well on Les Hauts' red and black runs, it was time to give
it a go. Brave and tough, or mad and bad, she couldn't
tell. But it was time. She was ready.
On the third ride up the side ofVialle Mathilde shared
her seat with a grey-haired gentleman in his sixties, dressed
in a red jumpsuit and matching red-tinted reflecting
glasses. He was Italian, and tried to engage her in stilted
conversation, but Mathilde kept her responses to a
minimum, intent on taking in the scenery that opened
up around them as they followed the slope, the butterflies
already crowding into the pit of her stomach.
At the third station the Italian swung away from her
with a wave and a friendly ' Ciao' and plunged down the
slope. But for Mathilde there was still one more lift to
take, the narrow double seat swooping round the wheel,
bumping the backs of her thighs and lifting her off her
feet. As she was pulled away from the station Mathilde
was aware of other skiers looking in her direction.
Closing the safety bar across her lap she felt herself
hauled upwards, the chair-lift swinging, the steel cable
above her singing with the strain. Up ahead she could
see a dozen other chairs, all of them empty. One by one
they swung out of sight over a looming ridge.
And then it was her turn. With a stomach-churning
lurch the clamp that held her chair to the cable rocked
over the pylon gearing then tipped to the right, a scar
of sharp grey rock passing no more than three metres
from her dangling skis. She watched it pass beneath her
and then looked up. Her heart suddenly hammered and
she let out an involuntary gasp of wonder - a steep,
high-altitude slope of virgin unmarked snow rose upwards
to a crowning ring of jagged, corniced peaks snapping
hungrily at a sky that seemed a far deeper blue than the
one she'd seen down below. The scale, the size, the sheer
snowy wilderness of this high summit landscape spreading
out around her, rising to the very heavens, simply took
her breath away.
She could also now see three other skiers ahead of
her, riding one behind the other. Their presence gave
her a comforting sense of security If she'd come here
and found herself alone there was a strong probability
she would have stayed on the chair and come back
down, hoping that no one would be around to witness
her shame. Only cowards, she'd heard in the bars, came
down from the Piste du Diable by cable car. And in
Les Hauts there was even a cocktail named in their
honour: La Pissette du Diable. A measure of Chartreuse jaune, a measure of Kummel, a measure of Courvoisier
~ and a secret ingredient. Mathilde didn't need to be
told what the secret ingredient comprised and, as she
watched the final pylon draw towards her, she knew
she had no intention of having one of those presented

to her.
She would make the run, no matter what.
Shifting forward to the edge of her seat, Mathilde
lifted the bar, gripped her ski sticks and shot off the
chair, swerving to the left of the three skiers who were
even now preparing themselves for the run downhill.
She nodded a greeting and they nodded back, the breath
coming in clouds from their mouths. All three were stylishly
equipped with Ogier and Bogner skis, Pirie racing
sticks, and neat little Callaud backpacks, and Mathilde
suddenly felt scruffy in her waterproof leggings and baggy
anorak. But the other skiers didn't seem to notice. Maybe,
she thought, it was cool to look so shabbily outfitted in
the face of such a terrifying slope. Slipping her pole
straps over her wrists, then fussing with the catch on her
goggles, she watched as the three skiers -- two men and
a woman - moved cautiously to the edge of what
Mathilde could now see was an almost vertical drop.
Her heart skipped a beat. She'd have to start with a
jump. She hadn't expected that. From her seat on the
cable-lift, approaching the final station, the start of the
piste had looked just about manageable, within her capabilities.
But now that she could see, close-up, what lay
in store, she felt a watery tremor ripple through her legs.
A few metres away, over her right shoulder, an empty
chair dropped past her and she watched it head back
down with a certain wistfulness.
One by one, checking their bindings, securing their
goggles, the three skiers raised their poles to her, in a
kind of final salute, and the next moment they plunged
over the edge. In an instant they were gone and Mathilde
was alone. She skied forward gently, drawing to a halt a
metre from the edge and peered over the lip. Fifty metres
below her the three skiers were lost in a pluming wake
of snow, only the weaving tracks of their skis and a
glimpse of their ski sticks indicating the path they had
taken.
And then they were gone again, plummeting over yet
another lip that she hadn't seen on the way up. And
suddenly Mathilde felt very alone. And very frightened.
Why, oh why had she decided to do this? She could be
happily skiing Plesse or Mijoux or Les Doux, or working
her way through that pile of emails from head office.
Instead she was here, at the start of the Diable, and faced
with an unappealing choice.
Ski it, or drink from the Devil's Pisspot.
Another chair swung by, empty, and all the chairs that
followed it up the final slope of the run were the same
- chillingly empty. Please let someone come, she thought.
It would feel so much better to have someone at her
back.
But there was no one. She was alone on the top of
the mountain.
So she had to get serious, she decided. Stop going
soft. She edged closer to the lip and looked at the ski
tracks snaking down the slope. It was hard to tell if the
other skiers had taken the easy option -- if there was such
a thing on the Piste du Diable -- or a more demanding
route. The glare from the snow made it hard to identify
details, so she pulled down her goggles and looked again.
Better now. More definition, the snow turned a warm
caramel by the shaded lenses. She looked to the left where
a wide slice of blue showed up the edge of the piste a
cliff, a cornice, a crevasse? Who knew what was there?
~ and then she looked to the right.
From where she stood it appeared to Mathilde that
the three skiers had probably chosen the more demanding
route after all, for there, a hundred metres to her right,
was a slope of snow banked up against the edge of the
ridge that the chair-lift came over. It was a steep path
to get there, but it seemed to her that the ground rose
up a little and levelled out. She looked back at the route
the three skiers had taken, then the route she had identified,
and made up her mind. She'd go for the bank on
the right, somewhere to catch her breath and work out
her next move with more of the piste visible.
Shuffling backwards Mathilde straightened her skis
and then poled forward, her ski tips easing into space
when she reached the edge. She leaned between her
poles, looked down, then took a breath and pushed off
The panic was immediate. She was in the air and her
skis had still to make contact with the slope. She braced
herself for a thump and felt it the very next instant,
jolting through her ankles and knees as they bent to take
the compression, shuddering up into her thighs, then
into her chest where it hammered at her heart.
But no time to think of recovery . . .
Such a swift acceleration . . .
Digging in her heels, she angled her body to the right
but felt her skis remain in the direction they were pointed.
There was another chilling wave of panic and she thought
she was going to take a fall when, suddenly, the ski tips
sliced their way through the snow, then breasted the
surface and followed the weight and direction of her
body, picking up even more speed with the manoeuvre.
She could hear the wind whistling in her ears where
before there had been just a wintry, high-altitude whisper
of breeze and the furry crunch of snow.
Oh God, oh God, oh God . . . why did I do this?
And then the slope was flattening and rising and, thank God, slowing her progress as she ploughed to a
halt at the edge of the snow-bank she'd seen below the
stone buttress.
Just as she'd anticipated.
Panting wildly, she looked around her. She'd spent no
more than thirty, maybe forty seconds on the slope but
already her body was shaking, her legs trembling, her
breath coming in short sharp jabs of ice cold air that
scorched the back of her throat.
Retying her scarf over her nose and mouth, securing
it with the edges of her goggles, she looked back to her
start-off point, the lip she'd just left, maybe fifty metres
above her. Lord it was steep, she thought, grateful for
the chance to pause and take stock, and wondered
whether she could do this all the way down.
Stop, pause, start again.
Stop, pause, start again.
Like a kind of relay.
But then she looked across the slope beyond the bank
she was standing on and realised immediately, and with
sudden dismay, that the others skiers had been right.
Theirs had been the route to take.
She had gone for the softer option, but the Devil was
now going to make her pay the price for her timidity.
From where she stood there was no way she could
return to their track. A blue-sided crevasse now blocked
the way back, a treacherous slice cut deep into the surface
of the slope that she'd never seen from above. Unless
she could jump it at a sloping angle -- and she knew she
couldn't - there was no option but to steer on to the right,
a ridiculously steep incline that narrowed into a rocky
couloir. Halfway down, the slope simply dropped away
-- maybe fifty, sixty degrees -- with no indication what
was waiting on the other side.
Frantically Mathilde tried to remember the pattern of
the course on the piste map on sale in every store in
town. She wished she'd brought hers along, and checked
her pockets, knowing all the time she didn't have it but
anxious to do something to keep her mind off what lay

ahead.
But there was no putting it off.
Leaning on her poles, knees trembling, Mathilde
squinted down the stone-edged snowy chimney that lay
ahead of her. Bare rock, maybe a metre high each side,
hemmed in a narrow corridor of snow and ice that fifty
metres further on simply disappeared into thin air. But
there, halfway down on the right, maybe ten metres from
that awesome lip, she made out what looked like a break
in the rocks, a way out of the couloir. It would be tight
as hell, she estimated, the passage leading to it way too
narrow to allow any braking style of skiing. Once she'd
committed, she'd be going full tilt and have to turn on
a sou, somehow hold the corner and keep her nerve.
Falling here was not an option.
With a deep, deep breath that she hoped would ease
her beating heart, Mathilde turned her skis to the couloir
and let the slope take her, cautiously working her ski
poles for balance and direction, rather than acceleration.
In seconds, it seemed, she was swallowed up in the
gully, a line of jagged snow-dusted rock rising up either
side of her and racing past at a blurred, frightening lick.
But there, maybe twenty metres ahead, was the escape
route she'd spotted in the right-hand wall - the way out.
She marked the spot where she needed to turn and when
she reached it seconds later she jabbed in her right stick,
swung her weight on to her left ski, and crouched down
into a braking turn.
With a lightning jolt of horror Mathilde felt bare rock
and sharp ice scrape against the edges of her skis, but
then she was through, gliding to a halt on another
teetering slope in the chill shadow of the ridge.
For the first time that morning Mathilde felt a great
rush of exhilaration course through her limbs.
'I can do this, I can do this,' she told herself, suddenly
exultant, pumped up with a brimming confidence. 'If I
can ski that, I can ski anything.'
It was then, without warning, that the slope she was
standing on started to move, like a carpet sliding across
a polished floor. But not smoothly. And not horizontally.
There was a sharp cracking sound somewhere in the
snow below her skis, then a lurch to the left and a sudden
drop that sent her stomach bursting into her chest, as
though she were in a plane flying through turbulence.
And then nothing, no movement.
It was over so quickly that it seemed as though it had
never happened.
But she knew it had, knew there was no mistaking
it. A slide. Somewhere close by a small but potentially
lethal slab of snow had fractured, split away from a layer
of icy rock that held it.
Mathilde looked around, tried to get her bearings,
spotting immediately the wet tidemark of dark-grey stone
maybe four metres deep on the face of the ridge behind
her, its glistening newly revealed surface speckled with
tiny chips of snow.
That was the distance she'd dropped.
Four metres. In just a couple of seconds.
And then it came again, the cracking sound, and she
tensed once more, bending her knees as she started to
slide sideways down the slope.
But it wasn't Mathilde doing the slide, it wasn't her
skis. It was the patch of snow she stood on, as though
her weight had loosened something fragile and deadly
beneath her.
Jesus, she thought. It really was a slide.
An avalanche about to happen.
And she was in the middle of it.
And then the movement stopped a second time and
it took Mathilde the best part of a minute to get her
breathing under control and calm her beating heart. And
all that time she didn't move a single centimetre for fear
of starting it up again . . . just stood there, knees quaking,
casting around for a way out.
How should she do it? she thought anxiously.
Where should she go?
She knew she had to decide quickly; the next slide
could be the big one and it could come at any moment.
Should she go for a straight plunge to the side, away
from the run of the avalanche -- the classic escape route
- or just head downhill as fast as she could, try to outrun
it? That would be the ultimate test.With enough warning
a good skier could get clear of a slide. A bad skier couldn't.
Too late now she remembered the previous days' snowfall.
She should have known better than to risk Diable so
soon after that. But the other skiers had decided to come
here and try it; they hadn't been put off by the weather.
But they'd taken a different route -- probably the correct
one - and weren't standing on top of an avalanche.
How could she have been so stupid? she scolded herself
She should have known better.
But there was no time for such idle thoughts. She
had to do something, quickly
Then, before she could settle on a suitable course of
action, the slab she was standing on began to slide a third
time, splitting into two sections now. The split opening
up between her skis. One ski dropped, the other rose.
She was seconds from toppling headlong down the
slope and into oblivion when the movement stopped a
third time, bringing her sideways to the slope, her left
leg straight, her right knee tucked under her arm, the
wall of snow she clung to almost perpendicular.
What to do? What to do?
Hardly daring to move her head, she scanned the
surrounding snowfield. Without her noticing, cracks had
appeared all around her, lacing the snow with a delicate
but deadly tracery. She recognised the pattern immediately,
had seen a thousand photos. A single slab of snow had separated from a layer of hoar frost somewhere below
her skis, leaving her standing on a snow surfboard that
could set off at any second.
Plummeting down the side of the mountain.
Building in speed, power and bulk.
She knew in an instant that she was trapped in the
middle of what could easily turn from a manageable slide
into a massive avalanche.
She had to get out of there, and fast.
Holding her breath, she tipped her lower ski a fraction,
shifted her weight and slid forward a couple of
metres, both skis coming together, just a centimetre apart,
a centimetre one above the other.
And the slab of snow hadn't budged.
Mathilde waited a moment, then tried the movement
again.
It worked, a stream of slippery surface snow cascading
down the slope from the edge of her left ski. If she
carried on like this, she reasoned, traversing the slope at
about thirty degrees, it wouldn't be long before she
reached the furthest crack in the mantle of snow and,
hopefully, on the other side, a firmer, safer footing.
Again and again Mathilde wiggled the skis with only
the merest pressure from her toes. She had just decided
that she needed to angle further down, to pick up enough
speed to breast the gap and reach safety, when the slope
she was standing on finally, and simply, dropped away.
There was no time to think, no time to do anything
about it. Within seconds she was sucked under like a
surfer caught in a massive wave, and she felt herself swept
downhill, tumbling head over heels, losing first one ski
and then the other.
It was over, it was over . . . that single thought raced
through her head. She would never see Sophie again, or
Patric, or Bruno, or Philippe; she would never marry or
have children of her own, she would never . . .
But the next moment blind instinct took over from
sheer panic, and, free of her skis, remembering everything
she'd ever learned about avalanches, Mathilde
clamped her mouth shut and started to move her arms
and legs, trying to swim to the surface, wherever it was,
heading for where she remembered the crack in the
snow had been, the edge of the slide.
But it was no use. She seemed unable to make any
progress on her own, against the power of the tumbling,
suffocating snow.
She was in the grip of an avalanche with no way out,
a stifling, roaring slide, rolling and tumbling its murderous
way down the slope . . .
And then - below her, above her, she couldn't tell something
caught her right arm, jerked her sideways and
upwards, levering her from the current of the raging
snow . . .

52

The cemetery of Les Hauts des Aigles was laid out on
open ground on the outskirts of town, bounded on three
sides by a wrought-iron fence, and on the fourth by the
rising slope of Mont Bellepic. The French certainly liked
their monuments, thought Thea as she picked her way
between the crypts and statues and scrolled tombstones,
the chiselled names and dates hidden by a windswept
skin of snow and ice. Judging by the absence of tracks,
no one had been to the cemetery that morning. The path
between the graves was sometimes difficult to follow,
concealed beneath a plump white carpet that reached to
her knees.
Thea had decided to come here after her talk with
Madame Laclere. She wanted to find her grandmother's
grave, to find the woman her father had dug from the
snow all those years ago. His own mother. Swept off the
road and trapped in her car. And as she waded along,
brushing snow from the tombstones and looking for names,
it suddenly struck her that she and her father had more
in common than most fathers and daughters. It was the
first time she'd really made the connection, and it surprised
her that she hadn't thought of it before. That they had
both suffered the same great loss, of something precious
and irreplaceable. One mother buried in an avalanche, the
other tumbling from a saddle and breaking her neck.
It was then that Thea realised it wasn't just a mother
her father had lost, but a wife too, and for the first time
since he'd picked her up from Wrokely she suddenly
understood how desperate he might be not to lose a
daughter as well, just as Madame Laclere had said. It all
started to make sense and Thea resolved that maybe the
time had come to ease up on her father. Time to bury
the hatchet, she decided.
But in the meantime . . . where on earth was the grave
she had come to find? How many tombstones would
she have to wipe the snow from before she found the
right one?
It didn't take her long. At the end of the second path
she spotted a large block of stone, roughly chiselled, set
with a filigree wrought-iron cross and planted where the
land started to rise up the slope of the mountain. Snow had banked up against the boulder and covered its only
flat surface. Thea knew she'd find some kind of memorial
plate there and she brushed away the snow with her glove.
And there it was. Three lines on a greening brass
plaque.

Aux Morts des Hauts
Pris par les Montagues
13 Janvier 1983
And below the date a column of names in alphabetical
order.
Thea read through the list and there was a moment's
surprise that no Ryland showed. But then her eyes
dropped lower down the list - to the last name:Toussaint,
Honorine.
Toussaint, the family name. Honorine Toussaint. Her
father's mother. Her grandmother.
Thea pulled off a glove and touched her fingers to
the chill metal letters.
'Bonjour, Qranymaman] she whispered.

53

Alex Ryland knew the skier below him was finished.
As good as dead.
It was a long way down to the nursery slopes of Les
Hauts des Aigles, and God alone knew how many rocky
outcrops or frozen tree stumps there were along the way
to crack open her head or snap the limbs from her body
- if she didn't suffocate first.
The woman didn't stand a chance.
It was the third time that Alex had taken the last chair
lift to ski Diable and he was moderately pleased with
his performance. Two falls on his first attempt, none on
his second, but truly terrible times; on this third run he
was determined to do better. He was pulling on his
gloves and swinging over the final ridge when he first
spotted the skier shuffling to the edge of the piste a half
kilometre ahead of him. She had her back to him and
he watched as she paused on the lip, pushed her hair
into her woollen hat.
He knew immediately that she'd never done Diable
before. That moment's hesitation, the puppet-like involuntary
swinging of the arms, the gripping and regripping
of the fingers around the ski poles, the lifting of the head
from the collar of her ski-suit.
A first-timer, weighing the pros and cons.
To ski, or drink from the Devil's Pisspot.
And then she was gone, over the edge, just like that
. . . and Alex had nodded at her pluck.
Committing to that devilish piste, and doing it alone.
She was either mad, or a very competent skier.
A few minutes later he'd dropped from his chair and
poled over to the narrow starting ledge, wondering if
she was still in sight. He looked down but could see
nothing; she must have passed the second lip - the Devil's
Brow - and be powering down the Cheek, one of the
steepest sections of the course.
And then, far to the right, a movement caught Alex's
eye.
A lone figure in the shadow of the ridge, standing at
the top of the Courcelle Couloir, at least a hundred
metres off the recommended route.
What on earth was she doing there? he wondered.
She'd need to be a bloody fine skier to get herself out
of this mess and back on course. Ski straight down that
icy corridor and a sheer fifty-metre drop would be
waiting for her at the end of it. As far as he knew there
was just the one way to go, by turning to the right about
halfway down the corridor and powering out the other
side. He wondered what she planned doing, hoped she'd
seen the break on the right. And hoped too, that she
was a good enough skier to carry it off.
Otherwise . . .
For want of something better to do, Alex cupped his
gloves to his mouth and was about to shout out a warning
when he saw her launch herself down the couloir, picking
up speed with every metre.
Had she seen it? Had she seen the break to the right?
The way out?
Or was she headed for the long drop?
At that moment it looked to Alex as if she was heading
for the drop. But at the last second he saw her swing to
the right, crouch down a little uncertainly, then shoot
through the opening on to the far side of the couloir.
He let out his breath and saw her draw to a halt on
a platform of snow by the far side of the ridge. From
there, he knew, she could continue down and to the
right, to the very edge of Diable, swing back between
the couloir drop and the second stepped precipice a half
kilometre further on, and then easily find her way back
on to the piste.
It was the only route she could take. She was safe.
Pulling on his goggles, Alex was about to start his
own run when he spotted another movement. The skier
had suddenly started flagging her arms, as though
signalling for help.
But she wasn't signalling for help.
She was trying to keep her balance.
And Alex could see why. Ten metres behind her, the
platform of snow on which she was standing had peeled
away from the side of the ridge as though her weight
had been too much to bear.
A sudden four-metre drop. In the blink of an eye.
Alex didn't think twice. He leaped on to the piste
and swerved immediately to the right, following in the
woman's tracks. When he reached the opening to the
couloir, he shot straight into it without a moment's pause
and, seconds later, spun out in time to see the slope in
front of him start to slide down the mountain. He pulled
in and watched in horror as the woman went with it,
arms flailing for balance on the treacherous surface and
then swallowed up by it. Hurling himself forward, Alex
took off across the depression of glittering ice that the
slide had left in its wake, a screeching rasp rattling up
from the bottoms of his skis as he raced across the tail
end of the avalanche and up the other side, digging in
his ski sticks to swerve downhill. Picking up speed on
the far side of the snow slide he felt like a man running
for a bus, determined to catch up with it and jump
aboard.
It was madness.
If he'd stopped to think about it, he'd have left her
to it.
There was surely nothing he could do.
But there was. . . there was something he could do . . .
something he could, at least, try to do.
Up ahead he saw a ski fly into the air like a surfer's
board, and then another, landing beyond the flow and
sliding to a halt. If she had just lost those skis, she was
closer to the edge of the slide than he'd anticipated,
which meant she stood a chance, a slim chance of survival.
And then, up ahead, he caught sight of her, flailing to
the surface before being rolled under again. She was
swimming, he thought. At least she knew it was all about
swimming. Even if the urge to swim when sucked under
by an avalanche was an instinctive, involuntary act.
Crouching low, pushing the slope behind him, Alex
accelerated ahead, past the skis and the girl, and then
swerved to the edge of the river of snow, reaching out
to grab anything that might show above the surface an
arm or a hand or a leg. It was all he could do; the
only chance she had.
And there it was, a gloveless hand and forearm, just
seconds away from him and coming within reach.
If she didn't tumble . . .
If the hand stayed where it was . . .
And then he had her and was swinging his body away
from the slide, his weight and his power dragging her
clear of the rolling snow like a swimmer hauled from a
fast-flowing river.
Once clear of its edge, he let her go and spun to a
halt.
Robbed of its victim the snow slab powered on,
picking up speed before it hit the ridged precipice,
exploding into a shower of snow boulders that tumbled
away into space. In a moment the slope was silent again,
just the sun glinting off the icy track of the slide.
Lying at his feet, woollen hat and goggles and gloves
snatched away by the snow, the skier blinked open her
eyes, squinted in the glare, and promptly coughed up a
small ball of snow trapped in her throat.
'Bonjour, Mademoiselle!
Mathilde raised her head, a line of spittle oozing out
of the corner of her mouth, and looked around.
' Vous avez choisi la fausse piste, Mademoiselle. Mais vous
avez de la bonne chance, n'est-ce pas?'
Then Alex skied off a few metres to retrieve her skis.
Coming back to her, he stuck them into the snow, then
reached down and pulled her to her feet.
'Merci. Merci bien. Je vous remercie . . .' she stammered,
gasping for breath, wiping the snow from her face. She
swayed a moment, held on to him.
'So you want your skis?' he asked, brushing the snow
off her. 'Or maybe you'd prefer to take the lift and drink La Pissette du Diable?

54

Maxim Kalagin gazed out of the helicopter bringing him
up to Les Hauts from Geneva and knew he would never
be going home. Russia was over. The dacha outside St
Petersburg, the apartment and offices in Moscow, the
company jet and the money. All gone. All he had was a
smuggled diamond worth twelve million dollars, a small
suitcase of clothes and, if all went according to plan, a
formula for future success.
Beneath the clattering blades of the Bell JetRanger,
the Gorge des Chouettes that the pilot was following
had started to narrow, its rocky sides steepening, reaching
out towards the helicopter. Halfway up the left-hand
slope Kalagin could see a twisting ribbon of icy road
threading its way through the trees and the blinking
yellow light of a snowplough clearing a path through
snow that had only stopped falling a few hours earlier.
Behind it, crawling forward, was a line of cars and coaches.
A minute later the traffic jam was behind him and the
sides of the gorge pressed in around the helicopter.
'Another five minutes and we're there,' came the pilot's
voice over Kalagin's headset. 'There's usually a bit of a
blow as we come over the pass so don't be surprised if
we tip around a bit.'
'I understand,' replied Kalagin. 'Thank you for the
warning.'
Warnings, he mused, looking through the window at
the wood-stubbled slopes passing silently below. Very
useful things, warnings.
Here in the helicopter, and back home in Russia.
Especially in Russia.
As far as Max Kalagin was concerned the writing had
appeared on the wall when Mikhail Khodorkovsky and
his friend and business partner, Platon Lebedev, fell foul
of the State. Brought to trial on spurious charges of fraud
and tax evasion, the courthouse had been surrounded by
armed assault troops and leash-straining attack dogs, as
if two international terrorists were being tried rather
than a couple of middle-aged businessmen. It was a
gesture of intent from the State not lost on Max Kalagin.
After the twelve days it took the judges to read out
their findings and deliver the verdicts, Lebedev was on
his way to Krasnokamensk, a uranium-mining settlement
in eastern Siberia, and Khodorkovsky to Prison
Camp IZ-75/2 in Chita, one of Siberia's most inhospitable
regions, both men with nine-year one-way tickets
courtesy of the government.
Under Yeltsin it had all been so ridiculously easy,
thought Kalagin.The great deregulated gravy train. Under
Putin . . . well, that was another game altogether. And
most of Kalagin's contemporaries, it appeared, had failed
to consult the rulebook, thinking themselves too rich,
too influential, too powerful to be bothered by the rule
of law -- what was left of it. Month after month he
watched the State Prosecutor's Office and FSB (the old
KGB's successor) target those same contemporaries and
bring them to heel -- the 'Duke' Dukelsky at ChevskayaNet,
Nikolai Guryanov at Prospekt, Shepelov at RussCom.
Everything gone. Everything taken.
Run ... or rot in prison.
What hope now for such men, even if they managed
to survive their incarceration, even if they survived the
tuberculosis and Aids that scoured the gulags? Another
trumped-up charge delivered on the day of release?
Another ten-year spell in some permafrost hellhole? Or
maybe they'd be allowed their freedom, working in a kombinat somewhere, living in a five-room apartment
shared with three other families. In Russia life was grim
if you didn't know how to play the game -- and win.
Which was what Max Kalagin was planning on doing.
Winning. Against the odds.
Unlike his contemporaries Kalagin had read the rule
book. At fifty-seven he was old enough to know it off
by heart. He'd seen Yeltsin go and seen Putin arrive and
had known immediately that things were going to change.
Within a month of the new man settling into the Kremlin,
Kalagin had pledged a 40 per cent share in his mining
profits to the new administration, and buttonholed a
further 10 per cent to finance a number of the new
incumbent's favourite causes, including a retirement fund
for ex-KGB operatives. Of the remaining 50 per cent -- nearly a half of which he already paid in tax -- he was
left with just enough to operate his businesses efficiently,
ensure his workers were well cared for and keep himself
comfortable. And if, by Russian standards, he was reckoned
a wealthy man, on the international stage he was
still singing in the chorus while the big boys basked in
the dangerous limelight, or stole a march on the authorities
and fled the country with their ill-gotten gains.
And so Max Kalagin survived, watching from the sidelines
as younger, less experienced men went down one
by one, always keeping a weather eye out for any change
in the political climate. He knew his turn would come
sooner or later and, as the State set about reclaiming the
national resources that Yeltsin had sold off so cheaply, he,
Maxim Kalagin, had set about making his preparations.
The warning, when it came, couldn't have been clearer.
At first it was just a friendly letter from a department
head in the Ministry of Finance asking Kalagin for an
audit of accounts for his plastics reprocessing plant in
Omsk. These had been sent to Moscow the following
day, as hard copy and a bulky email attachment. A month
later the same Ministry informed Kalagin that since no
response to their earlier request had been received, they
were now sending a representative to examine all financial
records relating to the plant. It was hoped that every
effort would be made by Kalagin's company to facilitate
this investigation. Another letter - and email - was duly
sent by Kalagin's board to the department in question
confirming that anything their representative wanted or
needed would be made immediately available. No answer
was received.
Then, a week before the representative's arrival in
Omsk, the son of an overseer at the plant, studying metallurgy
at the Technical Institute, had been arrested by the
local police following the theft of a wallet in the institute's
student canteen. He'd been taken into custody
despite being nowhere near the canteen on the day of
the theft and since then nothing had been heard from
him.
Given the good relations that Kalagin enjoyed with
his workforce, news of the boy's predicament had reached
him in St Petersburg more rapidly than might normally
be expected.
Thirty-seven hours later Max Kalagin, a skier called
Zaitsev, his coach Razin, an assistant coach, Vlassov,
Kalagin's long-time bodyguard Dak, a crate of ski equipment,
and a diamond the size of a baby's fist had taken
off from Pulkovo-2 international airport outside St
Petersburg bound for Paris. From Paris they had flown
to Geneva where their helicopter transfer was waiting
for them.
Twenty hours. Twenty hours since he'd passed out
of Russian airspace for the first time in his life. That's
all it had taken to put one life behind him and start
another.
With a sudden, terrifying lurch the helicopter they
were travelling in tipped to the right, its rotors battering
for lift in a pocket of turbulence, dropping ten metres
in a stomach-heaving fairground swoop that took them
over the final stony pass into the Val des Aigles.
Max Kalagin reached for the armrests and looked at
his companions, Razin and Vlassov sitting opposite him,

Zaitsev and his bodyguard Dak hunched either side of
him.

'The devil awaits, my friends,' he said. 'A little handshake
to welcome us.'

55

The little red devils were everywhere. Les Hauts' very
own registered trademark, and a licence to make money.
For the last couple of weeks every shop and every market
stall in Les Hauts had been selling the lip-licking image.
On T-shirts, baseball caps and key-rings; on coffee mugs,
postcards and flags. The mischievous little fellow with
the red cape and red horns, wielding a pair of red pitchforks
for ski sticks, had even taken the place of all the
red hearts in J'V Les Hauts des Aigles, and on race day
would be sprayed in red below the finishing line of the
Piste du Diable.
In order to protect its merchandising rights the
commercial use of this little red devil had been copyrighted
by Jean-Claude Bezard and was restricted by
licence, fees made payable to Compagnie Famille Bezard
and licences granted by Les Hauts' very own Mairie. If
Jacques Bruchet hadn't had his hands plunged into his
parka pockets as he left his office and headed up to the
Auberge des Hauts Aigles (for lunch with a German TV
producer for whom he'd secured one of the best sites
on the piste), he'd have been rubbing them together in
glee. Most of the T-shirts he could see in the old town's
shop windows had been produced by a small licence
holder in Lyons. They cost almost nothing to make yet
sold at wholesale for five euros each, rising to eleven,
sometimes twelve euros, during race week. Over the
years the firm in Lyons had established itself as Les Hauts'
major supplier and tens of thousands of its T-shirts had
been ferried up to Les Hauts in the weeks before the
race. Go to the Devil, I Skied the Devil and Survived, The
Devil Lives in Hauts des Aigles, I Believe in Devil Worship and a hundred other such legends, attended by the caped
one, had been printed on this clothing. Go to the Devil was Bruchet's particular favourite - he'd come up with
it himself.
What no shopkeeper in Les Hauts realised was that
their mayor, Jacques Bruchet, was the Lyons firm's major
shareholder. But then Bruchet wasn't the only one to
profit from this annual event. With a week still to go,
Boulangerie Bernard had started producing their red
icing petits diables for the children, town-centre bars
concocted extravagant cocktails at equally extravagant
mark-ups, and specially prepared hot-chilli pizzas sold at
a premium. And for the two days of racing anyone in
possession of a Snocat set his own rates when it came
to offering lifts to incomers whose coaches arrived too
late to get anywhere closer to the course than the airstrip.
In the weeks leading up to the Diable neighbour
boasted to neighbour of the price they had secured for
a short-term rental, and each year many residents of Les
Hauts went to stay with relations or took a week's holiday.
For more than twenty years the rent for Alex Ryland's
home had quadrupled during race week and Madame
Laclere, like many other ladies in the town, was quite
happy for one week in the year to take in paying guests.
It was a practised routine and Hautiens knew every rivet
and bolt when it came to cashing in on the Diable.
Just as its founder, Jean-Claude Bezard, had intended.

56

The display cabinet for the Kalagin Diamond had been
put up in the lobby of the Auberge des Hauts Aigles and
for the last two days the ribboned gold medal that Hugo's
father won at the 1936 Olympics had rested on a spotlit
bed of black velvet. In the next few hours it would be
joined by the diamond itself.
As far as Hugo Bezard was concerned the whole thing
was a publicity stunt, pure and simple. But as stunts went
this one had to be the biggest.
Not that Hugo Bezard had any problem with stunts.
No problem at all. Not when one of the largest gemstones
in the world was being displayed in his lobby and the
man who owned it was going to be staying at his hotel.
He'd be checking in any time now, the rest of his crew
accommodated in one of the Auberge's luxury abris.
Since the winner of the sixth Diable place had been
announced and the form of the prize disclosed, the press
had gone wild, with pictures of the Auberge des Hauts
Aigles on the front page of what seemed like every newspaper
in the world. The New York Times even published
interior shots of the West Tower Penthouse where
Monsieur Kalagin would be staying, the penthouse Hugo
was even now on his way to approve, one last check
through before the man himself arrived. Stepping out of
the lift on the top floor, he made his way down the log
walled corridor, unlocked the end door and closed it
behind him.
The suite of rooms, furnished and decorated by
Jacqueline, was superb. Interlocking timbered walls, a
soft cream mortar between them; a heavily draped
seventeenth-century four-poster bed found in
Clermont-Ferrand of all places; a sumptuous marble
bathroom with sauna and Jacuzzi; and a corner salon
of six square metres balconied on two sides with probably
the finest views in Les Hauts of the Vialle and
Courcelle peaks and the blue-tipped lip of the Murone
Glacier. Stand on that balcony and it was as if you
could reach out and touch them.
All credit to Jacqueline, of course. His wife had a
seamless touch, knew instinctively how a room should
be; which fabric complemented another; which texture,
which look to highlight. And, most important, she knew
how to beat down suppliers. It was a brave or foolish
man who quoted too high a price to Madame Jacqueline
Bezard of Auberge des Hauts Aigles. Those icy blue eyes
of hers narrowing, glinting; the way her lips compressed;
that soft whispering tone of disbelief. For close on thirty
years not a stitch had been turned at the Auberge without
her approval - and it showed. God knows what she'd do
if she ever found out about Denise, thought Hugo, but
he shook that thought away as quickly as it had slipped
into his mind.
As with many of the Auberge's more illustrious guests,
a list of requirements had been sent ahead of Monsieur
Kalagin. Fresh flowers each day; Tchaikovsky and Mozart
CDs, but nothing else; a range of black and white classic
films to include The Third Man, Greta Garbo in Anna
Karenina and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca; still bottled
water, not fizzy; a samovar and supplies of Russian tea;
the fridge in the butler's pantry to be stocked with
Russian caviar; and the freezer cabinet to be filled with
a dozen bottles of Laingski Steppes vodka, a brand they'd
found impossible to source until Kalagin sent his own
consignment ahead of his arrival. Just the twelve cases
for ten days.
Hugo walked through the rooms, checking everything
from the satellite TV to the light dimmers, from the
Niermeyer hi-fi to the electric blinds. He pressed the
mattress on the bed, slid open each of the three glass
doors that led to the balcony, tried the taps in the bathroom
and breathed in the soft scent of mimosa.
Everything was perfect.
Just one small detail to be attended to: the impending
arrival of an American family who had reserved the same
suite six months earlier.
Oh, thought Hugo, the trials and tribulations - and
juggling skills - of a poor benighted hotelier.

57

In the high Tarentaise, two hours before the lifts officially
opened, eight men riding two abreast in four
consecutive chairs got off the third and final ski lift and
gathered below the summit of Mont Le Chal.They were
two thousand metres above the town of Bourg Le Chal,
at the top of the Palante black run, a two-hour drive
via Cariol from Les Hauts des Aigles. Four of the men
carried skis and sticks, another two carried small
aluminium cases, and the last two off the final chair kept
their hands in their pockets and their collars up.
Having three separate lifts open early to carry just
eight men to the top of a mountain and bring four of them back was not a frequent occurrence in the Alps.
Lifts opened on time, or a little late, but never early But
then the oldest man on the Palante ridge that morning,
the short stocky one with the tight grey curls and sharp
blue eyes, had considerable influence. He was sixty-two
and his name was Albert Perouse, three-time Olympic
downhill gold-medal winner and for the last ten years
head coach of the French ski squad. There wasn't a lift
manager in the French Alps who would think of making
life difficult for such a man. A phone call twenty-four
hours earlier was all it took.
Monsieur Perouse wants the Palante chair-lifts
opened early? At 6 a.m.? Mais pas de probleme. C}est un
plaisir.
At that time in the morning, at that time of year, with
the sun just breaking cover in shafts of dusty lemon to
the east and the sky still dark to the west, it was bitterly
cold on the top of Palante. It was for this reason that
Albert Perouse was keen not to linger. Within minutes
of their arrival all four of his boys had stripped off their
parkas, snapped on skis and were limbering up. They
gripped and regripped ski sticks and slid their skis back
and forth, stretching warmth and flexibility into their
Lycra-clad limbs, their nervous, hyperventilating breath
pluming out in clouds.
At the edge of the starting area Perouse's technical
boys were setting up the trip-timer. As each skier's boots
flipped through the gate the timer would start. Twelve
hundred metres below, set up by two more of Perouse's
team, a beam of light attached to a synchronised stopwatch
marked the end of the run and recorded each
skiers time.
'Ecoute] called Perouse, and the skiers slid into line in
front of him. 'In a moment you will go. Remember no
risks, no heroics. The Diable is a race. That's all. And
there're still a lot of races to ski before the end of the
season.' He looked at each of them in turn. 'Any of you
break anything, you're dead. I'll see to it personally. So,
like I say, no heroics. You have all skied Palante before,
so you know what you're in for. It's steep, it's fast and
this time of day it's going to be icy. You go according
to alphabet. Azine, you're up first,' he said, pointing at
the tallest of the skiers. 'Bezard second, Manon third,
Tomas last. The man with the fastest time goes to Les
Hauts and skis Diable. Simple as that. ComprisT
His walkie-talkie, clipped to the collar of his parka,
squawked. He listened to the voice, then looked back at
the squad.
' Tout est pret. Vous commencez maintenant. Azine . . .'
Twelve minutes later the last skier, Tomas, leaned
forward over the trip, dug in his sticks and waited for
the countdown. Within a few seconds his boots tripped
the timer and he disappeared down the icy Palante run.
In a little over a minute-twenty he would be at the

bottom.
'So, boss. Who's your money on?' asked the team
trainer, Badut, as the techies packed up their gear and
headed back to the chair-lift.
Perouse blew out his cheeks with a cloudy poujf. 'Such good skiers, all of them. And Le Diable? It is
the race to be in. The race to win, nonV He shook his
head. 'So hard to say My heart tells me that Bezard
should be the man . . .'
'Your what?' spluttered Badut.
'I know. I know,' Perouse chuckled. 'It may be difficult
for you to credit such a thing, but I do have one . . .
And it tells me that Bezard should win. He is strong,
he is tough and he is very good. And his grandfather
was one of the greatest skiers we have ever produced.
So, my heart says it would be wonderful to see another
Bezard race Diable, and even more wonderful to see
him win.'
They reached the chair-lift and the two men let one
of the double seats sweep them off their feet.
'But?' asked Badut, as they rose away from the ramp
of packed snow and dropped down the side of Mont Le
Chal.
'But my head says it will be Azine. Or possibly Manon.'
'And Bezard?'
'For Bezard, there is always next year.'

58

Helicopters, mused Benoit Crespi, were a little like
certain kinds of women. Fun to play with, but never a
cheap date. Sitting in the offices of Crespi-Aviation at
Les Hauts' airstrip, he gazed out at his three machines
sitting idly on the tarmac apron - an Agusta Koala that
he used for heli-ski parties and the smaller Bell fourseaters,
which he used for mountain sight-seeing tours.
The helicopters sat on skids between his office and the
hangar, their rotors still and limp, the mountains rising
up beyond them a line of golden peaks in the setting
sun.
In October a major service overhaul for the Agusta
had taken a large proportion of Benoit's profit for the
summer season, and the previous day, bringing up those
Russians from Geneva, he'd noticed that the older of the
Bells was starting to over-rev after just fifteen minutes'
flight-time. He'd have to take it up again and see if he
could work out what the problem was. Possibly the fuel
pump or flow activator motor was out of sync, which
he'd be able to correct by himself. If it was something
bigger . . . Benoit winced.
He was reaching for his cigarettes when there was a
knock on the door. It was his secretary, Monique.
'Bonsoir, Monsieur Crespi. I'm off now.'
'Ah, Monique, yes. Have a good evening. A demain,
omr
As he knew she would, Monique lingered. Before
knocking, she'd freshened up her make-up and been
working on her hair. She'd been his secretary for a couple
of months, but if she carried on like this he was going
to have to find himself a new one.
'You going to Pomme later?' she asked, running her
tongue across her top lip.
Benoit shook his head. 'Thanks, but no thanks,' he
replied, waving at the paperwork on his desk. 'Got a ton
to do.'
Monique gave him a moue of disappointment, then
her face brightened. 'Okay, then. Another time.'
Lighting up a cigarette, he heard the outside office
door close and her car start up. Back in the old days
he'd have jumped her the first week. Just like he used
to jump whoever came within reach. Italian blood, that's
what it was. And Les Hauts, of course. By its very nature
the resort attracted more than its fair share of single,
attractive women for him to flirt with and chase after
and sleep with, either in their hotel rooms or chalets, or
upstairs in the small apartment above his office which
he called home. The skiers and boarders in the winter,
the walkers and hikers come summer. They arrived and
they stayed and then they left, the constraints of their
budget and return flights conveniently dictating the
course of Benoit s various liaisons. Sometimes it was just
a few days, sometimes a month, and sometimes as long
as six months. Then it was all change, like the seasons. Le Twist. A new bunch of people. New prospects, new
opportunities. A few new tricks to learn, and a few to
pass on.
And for as long as Benoit could remember he had
been content with his lot, the company he'd found, the
regular, ever-changing supply. But not now. Not any
more. Lately something had changed, something chipping
away at his enthusiasm. He'd start up with some
girl over at Mique's or Pomme or at one of the half
dozen other clubs he favoured, but when the moment
came -- when he knew he was home and dry -- he'd
draw back. Here we go, he'd think. Encore, la mime chose. And he was out of there, wherever he was. Driving home
alone and, increasingly, wondering what Francine Malland
was doing, and maybe he should drive past her house,
see if there was a light on, or take a detour down to the
Hopital des Hauts?
And sometimes he did just that, cruising past her front
door or loitering around the Hopital. But whenever they
did bump into each other - on the street, in old Bernard's
boulangerie, at the local Spar with their tell-tale TV
dinners for one - he suddenly didn't know what to say
He just . . . knew her too well, for too many years, to
come out with the old lines. Knew she'd see through
him in a minute and he'd be lost. She'd give him a look
and he'd be . . . dismissed. No other word for it. Out of
the running.
Francine Malland had first appeared on his radar the
previous summer. He'd stumbled getting out of the Bell
and landed on knee and hand grazing flaps of skin off
both. In the office he'd tried some emergency DIY but
the blood kept coming. He'd driven to the hospital, been
shown to a cubicle for treatment . . . and there was
Francine.
'Benoit? What have you done to yourself?' She took
a look at the hand, gave several comforting oohs and
ahhs, then told him to take off his trousers and sit on
the bed.
With any other woman Benoit would have known
what to say, something fruity and suggestive. But with
Francine he did what he was told without a murmur
and sat on the edge of the bed while she sterilised and
dressed his wounds, thanking every god that he'd remembered
to put on clean underwear that morning.
And as she worked on him he'd watched her - the
fall of black hair from the sides of her Alice band, a frown
of concentration, the dancing touch of her fingers and,
when she looked up at him, those lovely green eyes, the
quick friendly smile. The only time he let slip something
without thinking was when she'd treated and bandaged
both hand and knee and told him she was going to give
him a tetanus jab, just in case. 'MerdeF
Her eyes had opened wide in surprise. 'Benoit, really
. . . Afraid of a little needle? A big brute like you?'
Benoit hadn't been able to get those words out of his
head. 'A big brute like you'. He didn't know whether
he should be pleased by it - or not. Increasingly he was
coming to favour the latter, and wasn't happy about it.
Leaning forward, he stubbed out his cigarette and shuffled
through the papers on his desk.
Tomorrow, he thought. He'd deal with it all
tomorrow.
He looked at his watch. In the meantime maybe he'd
take a pass by the hospital.

59

Madame Anneline Malland had always been a force to
be reckoned with, a difficult woman at the best of times, and always disapproving: Francine s first nail varnish, her
short skirts, an unexpected hair cut, and her first, second,
third and fourth boyfriends. If Madame Anneline Malland
had had the chance to meet them, she'd undoubtedly
have disapproved of the next four lovers that Francine
had taken. But by then Francine was studying in Paris
and Maman was not around to have her say.
And all these years later, Francine reflected, backing
out of her parking space at the Residence des Hauts,
nothing had really changed. Except that now her mother's
disapproving look was fixed to her face as permanently
as a scar, the muscles set in that expression by the stroke
that had finally brought the old lady down.
Madame Malland had been a patient at the Residence
for two years now, and four evenings a week, after her
shift at the hospital ended, and every Sunday morning
after church, Francine called in to visit the old lady.
Sometimes she wondered why she bothered. The scowl
that greeted her might have remained the same, but her
mother's cognitive processes had greatly diminished since
she'd been admitted to the hospice. Sometimes the old
woman recognised her daughter, sometimes - most times
recently -- she didn't. It was then that the scowl contorted
even more with a deeply perplexed, questioning look,
as though she couldn't for the life of her think who it
was sitting by her chair or reading the newspaper to
her.
And now there was hostility to add to the brew just
one more indication that her mother was starting
to fade. That evening the old lady had been particularly
difficult, glaring at Francine when she tried to
help with her jigsaw, refusing to have a napkin tucked
into her collar when the supper trolley was wheeled
into the dayroom, and deliberately tipping over her
bowl of soup. Francine recognised the signs -- the last
futile jabs at life, fighting back, refusing to play the
game. It wouldn't be long now, thought Francine as she
drove down rue des Sommets, beeping her horn and
waving when she spotted Nathalie Bezard with Coco.
Soon enough the visits would come to an end. Soon
now there'd be that early morning phone call to pass
on the sad news. Francine knew the ropes. That was
how it would happen.
But right now, she decided, turning into her street
and finding a space right outside her front door, duty
was done and it was time for a stiff drink and early night.
And there, hands deep in his pockets, trudging along
the pavement towards her, was Benoit Crespi. She saw
him look up, recognise the car and then falter, as though
he was unsure whether to come on towards her or turn
round and go back the way he had come, hoping he
hadn't been seen. Getting out of the car and locking it,
she turned in his direction. He hadn't moved.
'Hey, Benoit. Is that you?' she called out.
'Hey, ca va, Francine. How you doin'?' he replied, stepping
forward now.
They kissed the regulation three times, gripping each
other's arms as much out of friendliness and familiarity
as a desire for steadiness on an icy stretch of pavement,
a rather attractive mix of tobacco and aviation oil mixed
with a whisper of soap coming off him with each kiss.
'So what brings you up here?' she asked, dropping her
car keys into her bag.
'Oh, you know . . .' said Benoit. 'Just passing. Thought
I'd . . . drop by, see what was happening.'
Francine registered the offhand reply, and her heart
gave a little lurch. For a man whose reputation with the
ladies went before him, she was intrigued to see how ill
at ease he appeared, as stricken as a choirboy in a whorehouse.
Where, Francine wondered, was that slick tongue,
the snappy one-liners, the chat-up routines? Not that
they'd work with her. It would take a lot more than a
quick wit to hold her attention.
She'd noticed it before, of course, this reticence of
his when they met up. And she rather savoured it. Back
in the summer she'd treated him for some very nasty
cuts to his hand and knee. And he'd been just the same,
almost flinching at her touch as she cleaned and
prepared his wounds for dressing, hardly daring to
speak.
Francine smiled, leaving the running to him.
Benoit glanced at his watch. 'You just finish work
then?'
Hardly a gripping opener, she thought. It wouldn't
have taken him far at Mique's or Pomme.
'Residence des Hauts. I called by to see my mother.'
He nodded, then cast around the street as though he
was looking for someone, hoping she might fill the
silence, help him out. She did no such thing, simply
shovelled her hands into her pockets and looked at him
expectantly.
'So how is Madame Malland?' he asked at last.'I mean,
your mother.' His eyes, she could see, were now wild
with embarrassment, desperate with uncertainty - like
an actor who can't remember the script, waiting for his
co-star to feed him the line -- and she felt a great and
unexpected warmth flow through her.
He wanted her. She knew it now as surely as she
knew a broken ankle from a sprain. But all the same she
couldn't quite believe it. Benoit Crespi? The man she'd
always looked at with what she believed to be a kind of
unrequited longing. How long had it been, she thought.
How long since a man . . . ?
'You're asking about my mother?' she teased.
She watched her words hit home, unsettle him even
more, and felt sorry to have spoken so quickly, so thoughtlessly
'Well, she's okay, I suppose. About as far as she's
ever going to be okay'
Francine could see at once that the more considered
response comforted him. And then she relented. 'Hey,
it's cold.You want to come in for a drink? I've got some
Scotch somewhere.'
He frowned. 'You drink Scotch?'
'Why? Aren't I allowed to?'
'Hey. No. I mean . . . Sure . . .' He took a deep breath,
looked around the street again, trying to think what to
say next.
'So?' she prompted. If he wasn't going to take
control. . .
'Well, if you're not too busy . . . Sure. I'd like that.'

60

Patric was carrying in a stack of logs when Alex and his
daughter pulled up in the Bezards' snow-banked driveway.
In the last week, since meeting with the gang at Bar
Mique, Alex had had dinner with Paul and Nathalie at
an Italian restaurant that had once been a cobbler and key-cutting shop, shared a takeaway Chinese with Beni,
and been served a mouth-watering daube by Jean and
Michelle in an apartment that was starting to look too
small to contain the lump.
Now it was the Bezards' turn. And this time Thea had
come with him.
'Do you know if the boss is at home?'Alex called out
of the driver's window, dousing the lights and switching
off the engine.
Up on the porch, Patric turned as he pushed open
the front door with his knee. 'Do you know what a boot
up the arse feels like?' was his swift response.
'Thea Ryland, meet Patric Bezard,' said Alex, as he
and his daughter jumped down from the Cayenne.'Patric,
allow me to introduce my daughter.'
'Ooh la la,' exclaimed Patric. 'Je m'excuse, Mademoiselle. If I'd known your father was bringing such a beautiful
companion, I would have . . .'
'. . . had the decency to shave,' said Sophie, coming
to the door, wiping her hands on her apron, then standing
aside to let her husband stagger past with the logs. 'Thea,
it is a pleasure to meet you. And Alex . . .' She reached
forward to hug him, kiss his cheeks, then held him at
arm's length. 'I couldn't believe it when Patric said you
were back. And you've changed,' she said. 'Un peu plus
grave, n'est-ce pas? Not as mischievous as you used to
look.' And turning to Thea, she said: 'When your father
was young, Thea, he always looked like he was up to
something, toujours quelque chose mechant! And then she
shivered, clasped her arms. 'Mais, c'est glacial, non? . . .
Please, come in. Get warm.'
Although Patric and Sophie had made the house their
own -- her paintings, his books; her fabrics, his old family
furniture; with family photos in wood and silver frames
wherever there was room for them -- Alex remembered
this home when it wasn't theirs, when it had belonged
to Patric's mother and father, Jean-Claude and Amelie -- the family home where he'd spent so much time.Though
the trimmings and layout might have changed, he could
still remember tramping through these same grown-up
rooms as a teenager, heading for Patric's room where he
and Garamonde and Lesage and Beni argued the toss
between Johnny Halliday and the Rolling Stones, boasted
about their conquests -- mountain pitches and off-pistes,
as much as girls -- and where they'd smoked their first
joint together. Hugo's room had been next door, the
older brother who played Mahler and Beethoven and
liked to conduct - a kind of classical air-guitar the five
lads always teased him about.
'It's like coming home again,' said Alex, as Sophie led
them into the salon. Patric was stacking the logs and an
energetic fire blazed in the hearth, crackling with warmth
and welcome and scenting the room with woodsmoke.
Picking scabs of bark from his jumper, flicking them
into the flames, Patric got to his feet. 'Lived here all my
life,' he said. 'Saw off Hugo when he married Jacqueline,
and when our parents died I just. . . stayed on.' He let out
a chuckle of laughter, reaching for the wine and pouring
them both glasses. 'The little boy who never left home.'
'It's beautiful,' said Thea, gazing up at the lofty raftered
ceiling and the massive log walls mortared with clay -- a forest of dark, age-blackened tree trunks set around a
square of cosily cushioned sofas and armchairs, book
covered ottomans and soft, shaded lamps.
'Well, I am happy that you like it, Mademoiselle.'
'Thea, please,' she replied, and Alex registered an unexpected
bolt of pleasure and pride, his daughter suddenly
so grown-up, so confident. He smiled at her and, without
thinking, put an arm round her shoulders, drew her to
him. And was thrilled to note that she didn't resist, even
more thrilled when he felt her hand slide round his
waist.
It was then that Bruno appeared -- trainers, camouflage
combat trousers, a White Stuff sweatshirt emblazoned with
the legend Born to Board, and an Arab kaffiyeh wound
round his neck like a tasselled scarf. He was a year older
than Thea, lean like his parents, with Patric's curling flop
of hair and his mother's handsome features and, Alex noted,
superb manners. Unlike most sixteen-year-olds, he
bounded down the steps into the salon and came straight
up to him, shaking his hand -- 'Ah, Monsieur Alex. Papa
has told me a lot about you, sir. None of it good.'
There was a moment's silence before they all laughed,
and then Bruno turned to Thea, shook her hand too,
looked her up and down and said,'Neat dress, suits you.'
It was a dress that Alex had bought her at Mode Les
Hauts on that memorable shopping expedition, an
elegantly tailored cocktail dress that almost caused a
mutiny when Alex asked her to put it on for the dinner.
Alex glanced at his daughter to see how the compliment
had been received - he'd have paid good money
for someone to say exactly what Bruno had -- and he
saw a tide of blood rise up her neck and blush into her
cheeks. He also saw, with a sudden unexpected shock,
something else in his daughter. The way she smiled,
thanked Bruno, let him hold her hand a beat longer than
she needed to. Standing right there beside him was his
wife,Tandie -- exactly the way she looked, just a younger
version. The hesitant smile, the fall and colour of her
hair, the way she held herself, shoulders back, the willowy
straightness of her. Her voice.
And then another figure appeared in the salon doorway
paused and came down the stairs to join them.
'And here, at last, is my sister, Matti,' said Sophie by
way of introduction, drawing her into the semi-circle by
the fire, Patric passing her a glass of wine. 'So now,
Mathilde, meet Thea. And, Mathilde, this is Thea's father,
Alex. Alex Ryland. An old friend of the family'
The moment their eyes met, a second's uncertainty
on both their faces was replaced by a wave of recognition.
Alex felt a strange, unaccountable delight, and the same blush that had swept up over Thea's cheeks a
moment earlier now swept over Mathilde's.
'We've already met,' said Alex with a smile. 'A few
days ago. We skied Diable together.'
At which Mathilde blushed even more, clasping her
wine glass with both hands as Alex put a glossy spin on
her success on the run, followed by Patric and Sophie
expressing their concern that she'd taken such a risk
without consulting them. She should never have skied
it by herself. Why hadn't she asked? Either of them would
have been only too happy to go with her.
Not surprisingly skiing, and the season at Les Hauts,
dominated the conversation that followed, and continued
as they took their places at the kitchen table for Sophie's gigot. Pulling out a chair for Thea, Bruno asked, in English,
whether she was skis or board?
'Mais board. Bien surl she replied, and Bruno nodded
approvingly, asking which board she used, what pistes
she'd tried, and what she thought of Les Hauts as a
boarding resort.
Catching the drift of their conversation, Patric finished
carving the gigot and set about serving the meat. 'If it
wasn't for snowboarding,' he said, 'the ski industry would
be dead. Totalement. C'est vrai. Ask anyone here.'
'There are more skiers out there than boarders,' said
Sophie, with a clip of authority to her voice. It was Sophie,
after all, who ran the Auberge's ski-rental business.
'For now, peut-etrel replied Patric. 'But look at the age
spread. In ten, certainly twenty years' time the numbers
will reverse. And if you doubt it take a look at your
rentals, cherie. Say, the last five years. Soon, very soon,
you'll have more boards on the racks than skis. And more
competition from outfits like Django's.'
'It just looks so . . . neglige,' said Sophie. 'So slovenly,
don't you think?'
'Sans elegance', said Patric. 'Mais . . .'
'Have you tried?' asked Thea, surprising Alex that his
daughter had the nerve to speak up so boldly, and in
French too. As far as he could remember, it was the first
time he'd heard her speak the language beyond the obligatory
run of greetings - the mercis and bonjours and ca
vas.
Spoken to in French, Patric replied in the same
language - swift and colloquial -- helping himself to a
steaming mound of dauphinoise potatoes before passing
the dish along.
'A couple of times, you know? Bruno keeps on at
me, but so far I'm not convinced.'
Alex wondered if he should translate, in a discreet
way, in case Thea hadn't understood. But he needn't have
worried.
'Well, at least you've had a go,' Thea replied, clearly
understanding what Patric had said. She shot her father
a look, raised her eyebrows and gave him a knowing
smile. Whether the look was a reference to his own
refusal to try boarding, or the fact that she'd sensed he
was going to translate for her, Alex was unable to say
What he could say, with an absolute certainty, was that
once again, for the second time that evening, he could
see Tandie shining out of her, as though his wife was
actually sitting there at the table.
'I was so sorry to hear of your wife,' whispered Sophie,
leaning in towards Alex, a hand on his arm, in one of
those strange dinner-table synchronicities. 'Since your
daughter clearly has your brains rather than your looks,
I assume she is like her mother?'
'Funny you should say that. I was just thinking exactly
the same thing. And yes, she is.'
'Then you are, and were, a lucky man. Your daughter
is very beautiful.'
Alex wasn't sure what to say, except he felt suddenly
very proud. He was also surprised to find himself almost
unable to speak, even close to tears - for Tandie, for
Thea, for himself, he couldn't tell.
'I'm so sorry . . .' began Sophie, looking stricken.
'No, no, it's fine. I just. . . Sometimes, you know, it
catches you out. . . just when you think . . .'
Across the table, Mathilde caught his eye - a small
frown working across her brow.
'Do you mind talking about it?' asked Sophie.
'Not at all,' he replied, swallowing hard. 'Pas de tout. In fact, sometimes I think it helps.' And as if to prove it
he surrendered to Sophie's gentle probing, holding
nothing back, his eyes sometimes straying to Mathilde
who was now arguing the toss with Patric about snow
boarders carving up the pistes, now chatting with Thea
about school, now scolding Bruno for not finishing his salade.
Out on Diable, bundled up in scarf and parka, Alex
hadn't really registered anything about Mathilde beyond
her relief to be out of the slide, her delayed horror at
how close she had come to disaster. And then her determination
to continue the run, now that she had started
it. No Pissette for her. And as he'd followed her down
the piste, he noted that she was tall, graceful and skied
well - even without sticks. But that was all. At the bottom
of the run she'd seemed surprised to find him still there,
almost embarrassed, as though hoping she'd been able to
get away from the man who saved her from the Devil.
Very quickly, she'd skied over to him, thanked him again
and skied away. But now, in the Bezards' kitchen, he
could see how much like her sister she was - a fall of
straight black hair to her shoulders; a strong determined
chin nestled in her cream polo neck; intelligent, sharp
blue eyes; her face gently tanned and pleasingly free of
make-up.
It was over the cheese, a single wedge of Tomme, that
the phone rang, bleating in the kitchen by the back door,
ringing more stridently in Patric's study down the hall.
Both Alex andThea noticed how it seemed to galvanise
their hosts.
'You or me?' said Patric, looking at his wife. "Me,' said Sophie, pushing back from the table. Then,
dropping back into her seat,'No. You. You do it. I don't
think I could . . .'
At the head of the table Patric threw down his napkin,
excused himself and then left the kitchen to take the
call in his study A moment later the phone that had
been bleating in the kitchen suddenly fell silent.
'Is there a problem?'Thea asked Bruno. Alex had been
about to ask the same of Sophie.
'It's my brother, Philippe,' replied Bruno.'He said he'd
call. As soon as he knew.'
'Knew?'
'If he's been selected or not. For the Diable.The final
trial was this morning, on the Palante run at Bourg Le
Chal.'
A strange silence settled around the table, just Patric's
muffled voice drifting down the corridor.
At the end of the table Sophie took a deep breath,
wrung her hands, fiddled with her wedding ring, reached
forward to cut a piece of the cheese but dropped her
knife.
'How foolish,' she said. 'Every time the phone has
rung today I've stopped what I've been doing and run,
snatched it up. Now . . . This time, this late at night,
when it has to be Philippe, I cannot do it.' She gave a
little laugh and looked around the table. 'You must all
think I'm so silly . . .'
But before anyone could say anything they heard a
slow, measured footfall in the corridor as Patric came
back to the kitchen. Pushing open the door he took a
breath, as though he were about to speak, as though he
were about to announce something. The next moment
it was as if all resolve had deserted him, and his shoulders
slumped. Leaning against the doorframe, he looked
down at the floor, his face working itself into a determined
frown as though holding back tears that were
only moments away.
Sophie understood immediately. 'Oh no,' she sighed,
pushing back her chair, but not knowing what to do -- to remain seated or go to her husband. 'Oh no . . .'
Under the table Alex reached for Thea's hand and she
gave it to him without a thought. Across from Thea,
Bruno sank his face into his hands and shook his head.
Mathilde, sensing the worst, pushed away from the
table as though to distract herself, and started gathering
plates that weren't even finished with.
The silence seemed to stretch beyond bearing.
'That was Philippe,' said Patric at last, looking up, his
voice cracked and uncertain, those three simple words
loaded with a fragile resignation and sadness. He took a
deep breath as though to steady himself, and looked at
the faces around the table. 'He was calling from the camp
in Chamonix,' he continued.'He said the qualifying times
were announced a few minutes ago.'
Sophie tilted back her head and squared her shoulders,
as though the better to bear the bad news.
'Is he okay?' she asked in a tiny voice.
'He's fine,' replied Patric, nodding. 'He's fine. He's
dealing with it. He's tough, you know. A little the worse
for wear, of course.' Patric put on a brave smile. 'But he
asked me to tell you . . .'
'Oh I know, I know,' whispered Sophie, wiping at her
eyes, shaking her head as though the disappointment was
just too much to deal with.
'He said to tell you,' continued Patric,'. . .he said to
tell you all that when he skis for La France in the Diable
next week . . .'
There was a stunned silence at the kitchen table as
the words sank in and then everyone erupted.
Sophie ran to her husband and flung herself into his
arms, laughing, crying, beating his chest with her fists
and shouting 'Salaud, salaud, salaud' as he tipped back his
head and bellowed with delight.
Thea, who didn't even know Philippe, jumped to her
feet and cheered, while Bruno reached across the table
for his mother's glass of wine and tipped it back before
anyone could stop him. 'Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes,' he cried
and leaped from his chair to jig with Mathilde and Thea.
That night the Bezards and their guests got very drunk.

61

Like a great many pregnant women, Michelle Lesage's
body had deceived her. The last thing she did before
leaving the apartment was stop off in the bathroom and
take a pee. Now, not ten minutes later, she wanted to
go again, her bladder squeezed as much by the bulk of
her unborn child as the early morning cold, a flurry of
snow whisked along the pavements like tiny white wind
devils.
Trying to tighten her muscles, Michelle wondered if
she'd last the few hundred metres till she reached the school
gates, or whether she should stop at one of the shops Madame
Giscard's Tabac, the flower shop, the pharmacie; their owners would understand, they knew her. They were
women.
But she decided she could make it - in another few
minutes she'd be there. She could last till then. Surely?
Like many late mothers, Michelle gloried in her pregnancy:
the warmth of the child in her belly, the increasing
size of it, its inappropriate shifts and kicks when least
expected, sensing when the child was asleep or awake.
And without going for any test, she knew it was a boy.
Had to be. Even the discomforts and inconveniences of
pregnancy -- turning over in bed, getting in and out of
the bath (though she adored the weightlessness once she
was safely in), the tiredness, the swollen joints, the occasional
rawness of her gums - were also cause for wonder.
And through it all her husband Jean had been there
to help her and love her and care for her, always obliging with her fads and mood swings (cremes abricots from
Bernard's, and irrational tears). It was Jean too, who
suggested the school bring in a supply teacher to cover
for her. He wanted her to quit at Christmas, but she
persuaded him she'd stay on until half-term and then
stop. She'd be fine, she told him.
But this chill, wind-whipped February morning she
wasn't so sure. She felt tired before the day had even
begun. And the constant desire to have a pee was starting
to wear her down. How many times in the last few
weeks had she been caught short? At least a dozen times
every single day, it seemed.
But suddenly here she was, passing through the school
gates and crossing the playground, certain now she'd
make it.
Hurry, hurry, hurry, or she'd have an accident.
Which was why she moved faster up the flight of
steps to the school's front doors than she maybe should
have done, reaching for the door handle rather than
watching her step, her right foot sliding suddenly sideways
in front of her left foot, on a puddle of frozen ice
that the caretaker had missed.
She knew in an instant she was going to fall and in
those terrified milliseconds she tried to work out how
best to arrange herself so that the baby was protected.
Which meant she let her feet slide as far as they wanted
because it would mean she would hit the top step lengthways,
on her back.
But it didn't work like that. Her feet shot out from
under her far faster than she anticipated, her head cracked
down on the step before her body followed and, instead
of staying there, the momentum sent her bumping down
the steps until she lay in a broken heap, looking at the
drifting snow clouds above her and feeling a warmth
spread between her thighs.
Her first thought was pee. So she had left it too late.
Seconds later, sensing the thickness and stickiness of
it, she realised it was blood and with a wail of anguish
lost consciousness.

62

Jean Lesage had skied since he was three years old. Forty
four years and he'd never missed a season. Or grown
tired of it. With the exception of his wife Michelle, there
was nothing he loved more than the mountains -- climbing
them and skiing them. Which was just as well. Not only
was he a member of Les Hauts' mountain rescue corps,
he was also one of the resort's most sought-after ski
guides. If you wanted to ski off-piste, had the money
and the ability to do so, there was no one like Jean
Lesage to show you the best, the most exhilarating runs.
Tall and lean, his face tanned the colour of oiled teak,
his hair long and brown, and his eyes as blue as gentian,
Lesage worked for none of Les Hauts' ski schools. His
commissions came via email from regular clients and
their friends. His fees were high and he booked out for
just three days a week through the season, December to
May. In six months he made enough money to keep up
the mortgage on his front de neige apartment, cover his
interest in Benoit's heli-ski business and take Michelle
on some very lovely school holidays - diving in the
Maldives, safaris in Botswana; name it, Jean and Michelle
had been there and done that.
The four American skiers climbing into the back of
Benoit's Agusta had been introduced by one of Jean's
regular clients and had made their booking eighteen
months earlier. They had taken Lesage for the full three
days and this wTas their final outing. As they strapped
themselves into the seats, Lesage noted how their confidence,
exuberance and energy levels had plummeted since
they met up with him four days before at the Auberge.
They'd lost some weight too, their faces gaunt and
haggard. Over introductory drinks they'd told him how
they'd carved 'powder eights' in the Monashees and
Cariboos in British Columbia, done 'steep powder' in
Alaska's Chugach Mountains and how they wanted him
to show them the best that Les Hauts had to offer. They
had been told that Lesage-Les Hauts was the real test.
Throw anything at us, they challenged, we're up for it
- the harder, the more demanding, the better.
So, after an 'easy' start halfway up Diable to assess their
capabilities, Jean Lesage had done exactly what they
requested. He'd led them across the Dolon traverse, picked
the steepest path he knew through the CouloirValentina,
done the jumps across Rat-a-Tat, climbed to the Col du
Froid and skied them down the south face of Bellepic
to the Bassin Bleu on Mont Juret. In three days he estimated
that they had covered more than two hundred
kilometres and notched up enough vertical metres to
keep the most demanding client happy. And right now,
as Benoit lifted off from the airstrip and took a bead on
the Courcelle ridge, Lesage knew that all four men were
probably relieved that this was their last day. They were
going home. They'd survived three days and, if they never
came back to the Val des Aigles again, they would boast
for years to come of the time they skied with Jean Lesage
in Les Hauts.
Twenty minutes later, on his second approach, Benoit
judged the wind exactly and brought the Agusta down
on to one of the highest ridges in the Alps.Three minutes
after that, Jean and clients safely offloaded, he took the
chopper up and banked away for home.
This moment, for all four men, was a large part of
what they paid for. Sometimes it wasn't just about skiing,
Lesage knew, it was about that glorious silence when the
chopper had gone -- the exquisite icy isolation of it all.
And only three colours to see: white snow, blue sky and
an occasional outcrop of bare grey rock. It was what
Lesage loved too, and as the sound of the Agusta faded
and the whirlwind of snow sluff settled around them he
bent down and pretended to work on his bindings, leaving
his clients to themselves. As expected, not a single word
was spoken until he got to his feet and briefed them on
the run.

63

At Hopital des Hauts Francine Malland heard the ambulance
siren as she stepped from the lift and hurried down
the lino'ed corridor to Accident and Emergency. She knew
it wasn't a skiing accident, but she knew it was a fall. A
bad one on the ice. Sometimes those simple accidents
could be a hundred times worse than a piste wipe-out at
sixty kilometres an hour. And she knew this one was bad.
A parent at the school, the paramedic had radioed in. Fell
on the school steps - suspected broken ankle, broken pelvis
and possible skull fracture.
The woman was pregnant too, the paramedic reported,
and there was vaginal bleeding.
'Pregnant?' asked Francine, and a chill settled around
her heart.
'Heavily Last trimester. Maybe the last month,' replied
the paramedic.
And in that instant Francine knew it wasn't a parent
who'd fallen. Or rather, not a parent yet. It was the
school's headmistress, and her best friend, Michelle Lesage.
She was sure of it. And as she hurried to the reception
area she saw the back doors of the ambulance swing
open and a gurney lifted out. When the woman sailed
past her on the trolley, an oxygen mask clamped over
her face, her neck braced, Francine recognised her friend
immediately.
There is a system of treatment, an order of priorities,
when administering to a badly injured pregnant woman.
First, stabilise the patient - in a swish of an A&E curtain
she'd been transferred from gurney to bed, been wired
up to monitors to establish blood/oxygen, heartbeat and
breathing, and a nurse was starting to scissor the clothes
off her.
Next the foetus. Alive and kicking. Nothing to worry
about there, and no need for Francine to estimate length
of pregnancy and status. She knew the stats by heart and
had them on record if she needed them. So the baby
was fine. Which left the mother.
Going to the bottom of the bed, Francine uncovered the right ankle and inspected the damage -- even with
a high-tie mountain boot it was clear the bone was
broken. Moving up the body to the waist, Francine felt
gently for the pelvic bones and when she found them
she put some pressure through her fingers. She felt the
decreased resistance - there was no doubt the pelvis had
been badly damaged. As for a possible skull fracture they'd
have to wait for a scan to confirm it, but as far as Francine
could determine there seemed to be significant laceration
to the occipital bone, with a flow of blood that had
soaked into the emergency gauze pads placed there.
Her initial examination completed, Francine told her
staff what she wanted.
Twenty minutes later scans confirmed the injuries to
ankle, pelvis and skull. Michelle was still unconscious.
Her breathing was shallow and her blood pressure was
starting to drop. Before they could do anything for the
mother Francine knew that they would have to deal
with the baby. A little girl. Francine knew the sex. Jean
and Michelle did not.
An hour later Francine had briefed the obstetrician
Charles Laclere, Madame Laclere's nephew, and was
pulling on her theatre wraps to attend her colleague in
an emergency Caesarean section. Forty minutes after that,
as a flurry of snow whipped past the operating theatre's
windows, a screaming but healthy red and grey bundle
was pulled from Michelle's womb, weighed, wrapped in
swaddling and taken from the room.
It was then, and only then, that the battle to save her
mother began.

64

Benoit felt a lightness he hadn't felt for a long time. It
was love. Simple as that. Benoit Crespi knew that he was
in love. Patric had Sophie, Jean had Michelle, Paul had
Nathalie. And now, for the first time in a very long time,
there was someone special in his life. He knew it, just
knew it.
Two nights earlier, coming back from Mique's, he'd
decided to call by Francine's, see if her car was there, or
the house lights were on. Maybe knock on the door if
he could summon the nerve. And he'd walked right into
her. Caught on the hop he was. There on the street.
And she had been just . . . well, sharp of course . . .
so what's new? But friendly too, warm in a funny sort
of way. And then she asked him in for a drink, and he
said yes, and then, a couple of whiskies in, she suddenly
knocked up something to eat, and then it was midnight
and she asked him to stay. Just like that. Said if he wanted
to, why didn't he stay? And it had been just one of the
greatest nights in his life ... just .. .
He was playing it through in his mind when the
phone rang.
'Benoit?'
Talk of the devil.
'Francine, hey! I was just thinking--'
'Benoit, listen. I need to talk to Jean. Is he there?'

'No, he's not,' he replied, noting the urgency in
Francine's voice. 'I dropped him with a ski group up on
Courcelle. Couple of hours ago now. They should be
down', he glanced at his watch, 'maybe thirty, forty
minutes. Is there a problem? Anything I can do?'
'Does he have a radio? Can you call him up?'
'Sure, if he hears it.'
'Just say that Michelle's in hospital. She took a fall.
The baby's fine but Michelle is in a bad way. He should
get here as soon as he can.'
'Immediatementl said Benoit and broke the connection.
He picked up his mobile, went to the window and called
Jean. As he expected there was no reply. He looked up
at the mountains. Somewhere, beyond the Glissine tree
line, Jean would be bringing his clients back down.
Telling Monique to watch the office, Benoit ran
outside, jumped into his Jeep and roared off down the
track that led to Route des Passeurs.

65

Out on the mountain Lesage led the way across the
Glissine slope, a steep, deep-powder traverse that took
the group from shadow into sunlight. The surface of the
snow changed in that transition, from an ice-crusted top
layer that rasped beneath their skis into a soft powdery
sluff that suddenly sprayed up around their knees, then
their waists as they sank into the snow.
Behind him one of the party whooped with delight.
Jean couldn't tell which one it was but he glanced up
at the slope above them. Glissine was a fabulous run but
you had to be careful. Before they started out across it
he'd warned them about undue noise. Now one of them
was breaking the rules. Jean couldn't blame the man whichever
one it was - but it made him cross. He just
hoped that the sound did no damage on that otherwise
silent, treacherous slope.
It had been a gruelling but sublime couple of hours.
Fifty-degree chutes, tricky couloirs, and some fabulous
snow - light as air and fluffy as clouds. He'd kept the
best for last and he knew that the group's adrenalin would
be running high. He also knew they'd be glad to make
the treeline and drop down to the top of the Mijoux
piste, a less demanding run to finish their session.
Reaching the top edge of the treeline Jean swerved
to a halt and waited for his clients to join him.
'Shoot, that was fun,' said one of them, pulling off his
gloves and wiping the snow from his face.
'Radical,''said another. 'Like Valdez, only . . .'
'. . . only better,' laughed the third.
'So where to now?' asked the last of the party. 'We
got us some trees down there. How about it?'
'The trees it is,' confirmed Jean and pointed out the
route he wanted them to take. As he did so he noticed
something strange about them, a dozen or more trees
tilting off the perpendicular, somehow pushed out of
line. He tried to remember how long the trees had been
planted. Were they dying? Had the long hot summers
dried out their roots? And then he tried to remember
when he'd last been here, standing in this spot, and
whether they'd been like that then? It had been a week
or two since he'd last done the Glissine run, but for the
life of him he couldn't recall how the trees had stood.
But he noticed it now and it would be worth mentioning
to Paul. Maybe they should come up with Benoit and
check it out later in the day.
'And after the trees,' Jean continued, 'we come to the
top of the Mijoux run. It's ranked a red but it has some
good black stretches. This time of the morning the slope
should be pretty clear, but take care. There are some blind
corners halfway down and if some other skier has stopped
. . .'Jean looked at the group, one at a time.They nodded
their understanding. 'Also, it is a Lesage tradition on this
part of the Glissine that I give you a fifteen-second lead.'
'How so?'
'Because the last man down buys the drinks at Bar
Mique. And it is never me.'
Twelve minutes later Lesage swung through the last
curve on Mijoux and skidded to a halt, the second man
down. The last two followed neck and neck, impossible
to tell between them.
'Bravo,' he called out to them, pulling off his helmet
and goggles. 'So now it's two rounds at Mique, and I'm
not going to have to pay for either of them.'
It was then that Lesage saw Benoit's Jeep slip-sliding
towards them. The Jeep pulled to a stop and Benoit
climbed out.
Lesage poled over. 'Hey, Beni, there's some trees above
Mijoux--'
But he got no further.
'Jean,' said Beni, taking his arm. 'Michelle's had an
accident.'

66

Francine Malland was waiting in reception on the fourth
floor of Hopital des Hauts when Jean Lesage hurried out
of the lift. Benoit had called her from his Jeep, told her that
he'd just seen Lesage arriving at the bottom of the piste
and that he would drop him off in the next ten minutes.
'How is she? What's happened?' said Jean, his wet ski
socks leaving footprints across the floor. There had been
no time for shoes, just the struggle to unclasp his ski
boots on the drive to the hospital. 'Benoit said Michelle
has fallen?'
Taking his arm, Francine led him into her office and
sat him down.
She started with a smile, and good news.'Congratulations,
Jean. You and Michelle have a lovely baby daughter. Four
point two kilos.Three weeks premature but perfectly healthy,
and perfectly beautiful.'
A smile of delight raced across his features.'A daughter,'
he said with a kind of soft wonderment. And then the
smile vanished as swiftly as it had come. 'And Michelle? Sa mere?'The word brought another smile, much shorter,
more controlled than the first.
'Michelle has had a bad fall,' Francine began. 'She has
broken her right ankle, her pelvis and two fingers on
her left hand. She has also, more seriously, sustained a
fracture to the back of her skull. I'm afraid there is some
swelling--'
'But she'll be all right? Won't she?'
'As I said, we are concerned about the swelling. We
will need to operate.'
'You will do this operation yourself?'Jean said it with
a look of relief in his eyes. If Francine Malland was doing
the operation then Michelle was in safe hands.
But Francine shook her head. 'We have called
Monsieur Gerard Paume from Cariol. He is the nearest
and one of our best surgeons. He should be here some
time this afternoon and he will operate either later this
evening or tomorrow morning.'
'This operation is dangerous?'
'The operation itself is straightforward, it is what
Monsieur Paume will find when he--'
'But she's not going to die,' said Jean, more a statement
than a question, as though such a possibility was
quite ridiculous.
But the question was there and Francine knew he
needed an answer. An honest answer. She smiled at him
and said quietly, 'It is not possible to say for certain, not
until Monsieur Paume . . .'
'You mean she could?'
'Jean, with any procedure like this, and with the particular
injuries sustained, there is always the possibility . . .'
He took a deep breath, tried to hold himself in. 'Is
she conscious? Can I see her?'
Francine nodded, got to her feet. The worst was over.
He'd been told. Now he knew.
'Come with me, she's on the next floor. I'll take
you up.'
On the way there Francine prepared him for what he
would find. 'Her face is badly bruised and you'll find her
a little woozy She passes in and out of consciousness but
she knows where she is, what's happened. She will recognise
you, she may even speak.'
The blinds were drawn in Michelle's room. There was
just a dim border of snowy sunlight around the window;
The room was silent save a bleep-bleep from a monitor
beside her bed, three green lines flickering in the gloom.
As Jean reached her, Michelle's eyes opened and she saw
him. After a moment trying to focus, she recognised him.
Standing behind Jean, Francine saw her lips smile and
move but there was no sound.
'I'll be back in five minutes,' the doctor said in a
hushed voice. 'Leave you two together.' At the door she
stopped and turned. 'And Jean?'
'Yes?'
'Please don't sit on the bed.'
It seemed to Jean that not thirty seconds had passed
before he heard the door open and Francine return, and
a squeak of wheels across the lino floor. All he had
managed to do in that time was find Michelle's unbandaged
right hand and hold it and kiss it. And return her
smile. And keep the tears out of his eyes as he told her
that he loved her and that she'd be fine, everything was
okay, he was there.
He felt something nudge his arm and he turned. It
was Francine again, pushing what looked like a trolley,
a trolley covered by a high clear cube of perspex. And
through this cover Jean could see a small blanketed bed.
And movement - what appeared to be clenched fists
waving, and a tiny screwed-up face beneath a thick cap
of black hair, and a widening gummy mouth working
up to a good scream.	?
'I thought you would like to meet your daughter,
said Francine.

67

Jean Lesage had been waiting in his wife's hospital room
for a little over three hours. It was a few minutes past
midnight but a chill wrap of anxiety kept tiredness at bay.
How much longer would they be? Why didn't someone
tell him something? Had they forgotten he was there?
The anaesthetist had come first, at a little before nine
o'clock. He introduced himself, chattered away about the
operation and, as though refilling Michelle's water jug,
had reached up and unloaded a half-syringe of clear
liquid into the drip bag that fed into her arm. He told
Jean that someone would be down in a minute from
theatre and by the time the door swung closed behind
him, Michelle's eyelids were fluttering weakly. All Jean
had'a chance to say was that he'd be waiting for her
when she got back, that everything would be fine, but
her eyes closed before he'd finished speaking.
They came for her shortly after, just as the anaesthetist
had said, three of them, nurses he hadn't seen before, dressed
in surgical wraps, white sabots and green caps. Holding
them back to give his wife a goodbye kiss, Jean had finally
stepped aside and let them wheel her from the room.
It was strange without the bed there, and without
Michelle -just the chair he sat in, a pair of bedside cabinets,
and a small wardrobe. At about head height, behind
the door, a TV console was attached to the wall on an
extendable metal frame. But Lesage had no thought for
watching television. All he could think about was his
wife Michelle, one floor above, under the knife.
But he wasn't alone in the room. For the last two
hours he'd been cradling his baby daughter. She was
asleep in her cot when they took Michelle away, but an
hour later she started to stir, arms waving behind the
perspex cover, tiny mouth working away, eyes squeezed
tight. He pressed the call button for a nurse and a moment
later she bustled in with a bottle of formula as if she
knew what was needed.
She handed Jean the bottle and then turned to the
cot, removing the cover and lifting the swaddled child
into her arms. Then she looked at Lesage.
'Would you like to do the honours?'
'Sure. Of course. But what do I do?'
Five minutes later his daughter was in his arms sucking
at the teat and whimpering with a kind of urgent hunger.
When the bottle was empty she pushed the teat from
her mouth, yawned widely and then settled her features.
Curling into the crook of his elbow she went straight
back to sleep.
She hadn't moved for the last two hours.
And nor had he.
It took him a while to realise that he was actually
talking to his sleeping daughter. In the shadows, in the
silence, his comforting whispers were as soft as a thought,
a kind of unspoken communication. But he was speaking
to her, out loud, telling his baby girl about her mother.
About her father. Where they lived. What they would all
do when they were out of there. When the three of
them were home again.
He was thinking about getting to his feet, walking
around the room, getting some blood back into his
cramped, tingling arm when the door opened and
Francine came in with another doctor, head and shoulders
taller than her. There was an authority in the way
he entered the room, and a deference in the way Francine
held back, as though in the presence of a higher rank.
He looked rather plump and his eyes sat above fat little
cheeks, his rubbery lips framed by a goatee beard, a
surgical mask still tied round his neck. Standing a little
behind him, Jean saw tears glistening in Francine's eyes
and his heart froze.
Those tears told him all he needed to know.
Cradled in his arm, the baby also seemed to sense his
fear and her tiny eyes blinked open. She stretched, pushed
against him with her little legs and started to whimper.
'Shush-shush-shush,' he whispered to the baby, focusing
on her wrinkled face, clasping her tight and rocking her
to and fro, not daring to look up at the surgeon, or hear
what he had to say.
The doctor came over to his chair and put hand on
his shoulder.
'She's going to be fine, Monsieur. Your wife's going
to be just fine.'

68

Jules Dessin lay in bed and listened to the distant sound
of revellers stumbling out of Les Hauts' hot spots and
carousing their way back to hotel beds, apartments and
rental chalets. He was close enough to rue des Sommets,
albeit on the wrong side and a few blocks distant from
the old town, for the noise to reach him. His wife,
Mariette, seemed to have no such problems, asleep the
moment her head hit the pillow - it was the summer
she hated, when motorbikes buzzed up and down
Sommets like a swarm of angry bees. For Jules, it was
winter and the sounds of revelry echoing down otherwise
empty streets that kept him awake.
Another reason he found it hard to sleep was the
ongoing work being carried out on the Courcelle ski
lift. So far they had found nothing wrong with the thirteen
pylons that they had inspected. The trouble was that
there were eighteen of these pylons. Rising up the mountainside
to the upper Courcelle station, they ranged in
height from six to ten metres, each pylon set in a concrete
boot buried two metres into ground that could be relied
upon to freeze as solid as rock for six months of the year.
Thanks to Maire Bruchet it had not been an easy job,
just an hour extra per day to check wheel alignment,
motor gearing and cabling in the two stations, and the
guide runners at the top of each pylon. Once the lifts
were opened and operating the work had to be discontinued,
with maintenance crews sent in to examine the
pylons at ground level, testing each for stability and integrity
from the base to the tip. A bent or compromised cross
spar, a weakened joist, or a microscopic fracture in the
concrete footing - any of these could cause the kind of
problem that Yves Primaud had identified on the upper
Courcelle wheels.
Only five of the eighteen pylons were easily accessed
and could be reached by Snocats. The others involved
skis or a climb. It was the kind of inspection work more
usually carried out during the summer months when
the days were long, the weather reliable. In winter the
climbing and onsite work were much more perilous.
Progress was dangerously compromised by fewer daylight
hours, freezing conditions, poor visibility or a snowstorm
settling in, at which time the work had to be suspended.
With less than a week before the Diable and snow forecast
for three of those days, Dessin knew he'd never be
able to complete the work in time. When the Diable
skiers took the Courcelle lift at the start of their journey
to the top of the Diable piste, they would be doing so
on what he, Dessin, considered a dangerously compromised
system.
And then, lying there in his bed, a thought struck
him. So far they'd limited their inspection to the pylons
and motor components. But what about the stations
themselves? What about their structural integrity? Their
foundations? If there'd been movement there?
Dessin felt his heart skip a beat. Had they been looking
in the wrong place all the time? He reached for the
phone. He'd call Primaud and get things moving straight
away.
And then Dessin realised that the phone was on a
bedside table and not on his desk, that he was in bed
not his office and that, according to the digital alarm
clock, it was three-twenty-seven in the morning.
He lay back, pulled the quilt to his chin and settled
his head into the pillow.
First thing tomorrow morning, he promised himself.
He'd contact Primaud and have him check it out.
Five minutes later Jules Dessin was asleep.

69

Mathilde didn't know whether to wave, call his name or
try to slip away without him seeing her. But there was
no chance of that. The lodge terrace halfway down the
Plesse run was crowded with skiers taking time out for
lunch and a drink, every table full save the one she sat
at, in shadow beneath the lodge gables, beside the door
leading to the bar and cafeteria. Alex Ryland would have
to walk right by her if he wanted something to eat and
drink. She probably had enough time to hide herself
away in the lodge toilettes but that seemed somehow . . .
just a little silly.
She watched him step out of his skis, clasp them together
and place them in the wood rack among a forest of other
skis. It was just a few days since she'd seen him at Patric
and Sophie's chalet, celebrating Philippe's success in the
Diable trials. They had drunk more than they should
have done, they had stayed up later than they should have
done and, at some stage in the proceedings, she and Sophie
somehow managed to make up beds for Alex and his
daughter in one of the chalet's guest rooms. But by the
time she woke the following morning, both Alex and
Thea had gone. It had been a relief and, inexplicably, a
disappointment too.
She might not have recognised him that desperate
morning on Diable, but as soon as Sophie introduced
them Mathilde had placed him immediately. She'd read
enough profiles and seen enough magazine covers to know
exactly who he was -- Alex Ryland. Chief executive and
sole proprietor of RylandCorp. What she hadn't been
prepared for was the man himself. Maybe not traditionally
handsome, but far warmer than all those cover photos
suggested, with a wide smile and a long chuckling laugh
that made his eyes disappear in a web of wrinkles. But
there was sadness there too, underneath, hidden away, a
sense that life had dealt him some mean hands along with
the aces.
She hadn't found out exactly how mean until the
following evening when Sophie told her about Alex's
wife, and how his mother had been swept away in an
avalanche. Apparently he dug her out himself, then
boarded up the family home and left Les Hauts for good.
For the first time in a very long time, Mathilde was
forced to acknowledge that a man had made an impression
on her. A real impression.
And now here he was, pulling off his woollen ski hat
and letting his sunglasses drop on their cord, clomping
across the terrace, his ski boots giving him a slightly
unnatural, robotic style of walking. And heading in her
direction.
She decided to beat him to a greeting.
'Hello there, stranger,' she called, raising her hand to
attract his attention, then slipping off her sunglasses, and
waving them too.
And in an instant she regretted it.The way the greeting
sounded - far too familiar - and then the fact that she'd
said anything at all. She suddenly felt very embarrassed.
And very uncomfortable. She dropped her hands to her
lap, fiddled anxiously with her sunglasses and wondered
what on earth to do next . . .
. . . What he would do next, when he realised who it
was. God, he hadn't even recognised her, not until she'd
taken off her sunglasses.
In an instant all her confidence seemed to drain away.
Whatever had she been thinking, calling out to him like
that? And waving . . . waving ... to attract his attention.
As though they were friends, as though this whole thing
had been planned, that she was sitting there waiting for
him, had found a table for them, that he was coming to
find her.
What if he was meeting up with someone else?
Another woman perhaps? Maybe he had a date? She
hadn't thought of that. Maybe the last thing he wanted
to do was make small talk with a woman he hardly knew,
a woman who'd made a fool of herself on the Devil's
Piste and probably drunk too much at Patric and Sophie's
dinner.
How embarrassing.
What a fool she'd been.
Nerving herself, she glanced up, saw him coming
towards her, and she smiled a little uncertainly. And he
smiled back, and the smile turned into a grin that seemed
to stretch from ear to ear.
'And "hello stranger", yourself.'
'I mean ... I didn't,' she stuttered, suddenly self
conscious as he came straight up to her, towering over
the table.
'How are you? How nice to see you.' He reached out
a hand, and she took it, a brief shake. He nodded at the
empty bottle of Orangina.'Looks like you're off the hard
stuff, but maybe I can tempt you. I'm going to get myself
a salade chevre and a bottle of Apremont. Will you join
me? Or rather . . .' he added, casting around the crowded
terrace,'. . . can I join you?'
'Please. Of course.'
And with a smile and a 'Back in a minute', he disappeared
inside.
Please God, please God, she whispered. Please don't make
me make a fool of myself again. And please let him like me. And the moment she thought it, she felt an unexpected
rush of warmth sweep up into her cheeks.

Alex was waiting in line for his chevre and wine and
wondering whether he'd struck the right note between
friendliness and familiarity with Mathilde, when a woman
in a mauve ski-suit at the head of the queue dropped
her lunch tray with an almighty crash. White wine spilled
from a toppled carafe, three plates offrites scattered across
the floor and two bowls of soup splashed over the counter.
As staff hurried to clear up the mess, there was a kind
of collective groan of despair as everyone behind her
realised there'd now be an even longer wait for their
food. But Alex wasn't bothered, indeed he was grateful
for the chance it gave him to gather his wits.
He was rattled, that was for sure. When Mathilde had
called out to him, waved to him, he couldn't think who
she was - the long shiny black hair tied back in a ponytail?
The wraparound sunglasses? But then he recognised
the shabby anorak and leggings from the Piste du Diable,
and then she slipped off her sunglasses. And he knew in
an instant who she was.
Sophie's sister.
Mathilde . . .
Mathilde . . .
The very person he was thinking about as he planted
his skis in the rack and stepped up on to the lodge
terrace. Indeed the person he'd spent the last few days
thinking about. Not exactly deliberately, of course; she
just seemed to float into his mind when he was least
expecting it -- her name, or the sound of her voice, or
her smile. Just little flashbacks from their dinner together
that popped into his head and somehow seemed to linger:
the way she sat at the kitchen table, cradling her chin
on laced fingers; the way she looked away when he was
talking to Sophie and he'd caught her eye; the way she
laughed at something Thea had said; the way she collected
up the dishes, the press of a hip as she reached past him
for his plate. And then the desperate sadness on her face
when Patric pretended Philippe had failed in his bid for
the Diable. And then the way she'd flung up her arms
when Patric told them the truth - dancing that jig with
Bruno,
then dancing with him, the feel of her waist in
his hands, the fresh, soapy smell of her, the brush of her
hair on his cheek as he spun her round, the bright excited
light in her eyes.
And there she was, right now, outside on the terrace
-- he could see her reflection in the window panel of
the open door - waiting for him to join her. And, as far
as he could judge, she seemed pleased to see him, had
even waved him over, happy to have him share her table.
He watched her for a moment - looking up at the slopes,
the tilt of her head, a hand brushing away a strand of
hair -- and realised that he was equally pleased to see
her. Pleased, but also a little unnerved.
It was then, with something of a start, standing there
in the queue, that Alex remembered what she'd called
him. 'Stranger'. That was what she'd said: 'Hello there,
stranger.'
Now that was an odd sort of word to use. A word
with certain connotations. He'd heard it before, women
he'd dated once or twice and not bothered to call back.
'Hello, stranger,' they'd say, with a gentle reprimand.
Which usually translated as 'Where have you been? I've
been waiting for you to call me. Naughty boy'
Was that what she'd meant? Had she expected to see
him again after the dinner? Had she wanted to? Had he
missed something? Should he have called? Should he
have made some effort to?
He felt a tap on the shoulder. 'Monsieur?'
He turned, and the man behind him nodded forward.
Up ahead the mess had been cleared, the lady in mauve
had been given fresh frites and soups and wine, and the
queue had started forward without him.
Finally it was his turn at the serving counter.

'Une salade chevre', he told the waitress. 'Et une bouteille
d'Apremont, aussi.'
The salad arrived. The cork was pulled from the bottle.
And then he remembered.
'Et deux verres, s'il vous plait! Two glasses, please.

70

Thea woke early to a distant crump-crump-crump that
seemed to come from the mountains. She lay in her bed
and tried to place the sound. It reminded her of the
bird-scarers at Wrokely Hall, when the farmlands
surrounding the school were planted. At Wrokely they
came in sets of three with a thirty-second pause between
each burst. But the sound that had woken her this
morning was different - a more irregular interval between
each hollow crump, and more blasts than a Wrokely bird
scarer.
And then, snuggling beneath the quilt and hugging
her bolster,Thea remembered what Django had told her.
How every morning, and sometimes at night, they set
off controlled explosions in the mountains around Les
Hauts to make the slopes safe for skiers. With only a few
exceptions it had snowed pretty much every day they'd





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255
been there, usually starting in the late afternoon or
evening but over by the following morning. So there
had to be huge amounts of snow up there, Thea guessed,
snow that had to be brought down before it caused any
problems. And that's what they were doing -- that's what
she'd heard.
It was Django who told her about avalanches, after
her talk with Madame Laclere and her visit to the cemetery.
Those four simple words -- Pris par les Montagues. Taken by the mountains, not killed,just like littleValentina
whose statue stood in Place des Sommets. It was an
image Thea hadn't been able to shake, of the mountains
literally taking people, snatching them up, tossing them
away From that moment on, she'd looked at the mountains
round Les Hauts with a certain wariness. These,
after all, were the mountains that had taken her grandmother,
and thirty-five other residents. She'd counted
the names. And what Django told her during a rest stop
on the beginners' slope hadn't really helped. How there
were maybe thousands of slides each season, but that
most of them were never seen, never recorded. 'It's only
when a skier or snowboarder goes off-piste,' Django
warned, 'or a developer builds his resort complex in the
wrong place, that we get to hear about them. It's like
people going to the seaside. They might be able to swim
but that doesn't mean they understand the sea, or know
anything about the dangers -- rip currents, tides, rogue
waves, even sharks. It's the same with mountains.You go
off-piste, ignore local conditions, and you're putting yourself
at risk. Not to mention the guys who come looking
for you. So when you get the hang of that thing attached
to your foot, young lady, just make sure you play by the
rules.'

Suddenly Thea sat up in bed.
Snowboarding. Something to do with snowboarding.
Then she had it.
Bruno. Bruno Bezard, Patric and Sophie's son. In an
instant avalanches were forgotten. The day after dinner
at his parents' house, he'd called to suggest a snowboarding expedition, the two of them pairing up for a
few pistes.
'How's Saturday?' he asked, bright and easy - no
stammer or hesitation or uncertainty. 'Got school till
then,' he added with a hint of envy. 'But I could show
you some neat runs. Real snow.'
And today was . . . Saturday. Thea snatched at her watch
and looked at the time, tried to make sense of what the
figures and hands were telling her. That she only had
three hours to get herself ready (it took ages to get that
tousled, just-out-of-bed look), before meeting Bruno
outside the lower Courcelle lift-station.

'Enjoy yourself,' her dad said, catching her as she sped
out the door, stopping her long enough to wind the
scarf properly round her neck and plant a kiss on her
forehead. 'See you at Pomme at one. And bring Bruno
too, if you like. Or if you're having fun, just call me, let
me know.'
And all she could think -- as she rearranged the scarf
that had taken so long to get just right -- all she could
take on board was, God, "I'm so going to make a fool of
myself This is so going to be a disaster. Please God, help me
remember what Django taught me and, please God, get me
through this somehow.
And there he was, Bruno, leaning on his snowboard
by the ramp leading to the lift-station, the great red-spoked
wheels that powered the lift spinning in the window
behind him.
Dragging her board behind her, and adding a little
more slouch to her walk, Thea headed in his direction,
waved when he saw her, and was thrown into complete
confusion when he dropped his board, caught her by
the shoulders and planted two, then three kisses on her
cheeks, throwing in a soundtrack of 'Qa va? Qa va? Looking good. You ready?'
And the next minute he'd taken up his board, and
hers, and was leading the way into the lift-station, flicking
his ski pass at the barrier attendant and stepping aside
for her to go first through the stile.
It was then that Thea realised she was facing her first
real test of the morning, far sooner than expected and
with no time to prepare. How, exactly, to clamber aboard
a moving cable car. Since Django had kept their training
sessions lower down, Thea could just about master the
chair-lifts that swept you off your feet and the 'buttons'
that you slotted between your thighs. But so far she
hadn't caught a cable car. Not once, not even to go up
for the view. And since there were only a few other
people ahead of them, she had little opportunity to see
how it was done. Was it anything like the escalators on
the London Tube? she wondered. She hated stepping on
to those and always felt a pulse of anxiety whenever she
used them. And then it was their turn, next in line, the
car swinging in towards them at speed, then slowing to
sway along the platform.
'On y va. Here we go,' said Bruno and stepped aside
to let her go first.
Unlike the chair-lift that caught her behind the knees
and the button she had to grab and press between her
thighs, getting on to a cable car was, thankfully, a great
deal easier than she expected. With a jerk and a wobble
and a spurt of acceleration, the doors were closing and
they were out of the station and into the sunshine, their
car racing upward, its shadow flashing over a nearby
slope.
'You bring some music?' asked Bruno, unzipping his
ski jacket and pulling out a Sony Discman. It was hung
round his neck on a leather strap and looked as if it had
seen some duty. 'All I need is the one disc,' he continued.
'I burn my own. All my favourites. What about you?'
Thea felt a wave of panic. Like the cable car, she hadn't
been expecting this. How to admit to the 160-gigabyte
iPod her father had bought her for Christmas without it
looking like she was showing off. In the few weeks she'd
had it she'd already downloaded more than a thousand
tracks, with room for another forty thousand if she so
desired. With sinking heart, she pulled the slim machine
from her pocket and flashed it at him.
His eyes widened with pleasure. 'Hey. An iPod. Way
to go.'
'Here,' she said, offering him the player and the white
earplugs that went with it.'Why don't we swap. Just press
that button there and--'
Instantly the words were snatched from her mouth
and her heart hammered in her chest as a loud clank
shook down from the cable above them and rattled
through the car. The iPod slipped from her fingers but
Bruno caught it before it clattered on to the floor.
'What was that?' shrieked Thea, scared out of her wits
by the sudden jolt. The car had stopped moving and was
swinging on the cable, each sway accompanied by a series
of ominous creaks from the car's metal flanks. She looked
out of the windows, a near-vertical sheet of bluish-grey
rock dropping into a belt of snow-laden pines at least
ten metres below them. She hadn't realised how high
they'd climbed. Immediately she imagined the cable snapping
and their car tumbling down the rock face. Certain
death.
'C'est rien'began Bruno.'It's nothing. Maybe someone's
fallen out of a car getting on or off. It happens sometimes.
Or maybe--'
His assurances were interrupted by another dull, terrifying
clank that echoed down the cable and shook
through their car. In its wake they started to slide back
down towards Les Hauts, picking up speed, before finally
jerking to such an abrupt stop that their car started to
swing.
Thea looked at Bruno in alarm. He'd stopped speaking
and he was frowning. But he didn't appear to be scared.
Which was good, she thought. If he wasn't frightened,
then there was no need for her to be. But it didn't make
her feel any safer or less vulnerable. Suddenly she wanted
to be out of the cable car, with her feet on firm ground,
but she snapped off her scared look and tried to appear
suitably irritated by the delay. 'So how long do you
suppose we'll be stuck here?' she said, her voice surprisingly
steady.
Bruno, who was looking up the line of the cable as
if trying to see what was happening, turned to her and
shrugged. 'Shouldn't be more than a--'
And then the car slipped again and a whining sound
trembled down the cable, seemed to catch hold of the
cable car, shake it like a rag and then, the next moment,
they were on the move again, climbing up to the upper
Courcelle station as though nothing had happened.
Bruno let out a sheepish laugh. 'You see,' he assured
her. 'No problem.'
Thea noted the uncertainty in his laugh, but as the
lift-station came into view there were other things for
her to worry about: how to get out of their cable car
without incident, and not fall off her snowboard too
often.

71

Sitting in front of the salon fire, Alex Ryland went over
the words for the twentieth time, still not sure which
combination sounded the best.
'I wondered if. . .'
'I thought perhaps . . .'

'If you're not going already . . .'
Jesus, thought Alex. This was ridiculous. He was
forty-eight, the father of a fifteen-year-old daughter,
the ex-chairman and chief executive of a multinational,
multi-million-dollar software company with a workforce
around the globe in excess often thousand people
~ and he couldn't work out how to go about inviting
Mathilde Deslandes to the Diable Champions'
Dinner.
It was Patric who'd suggested it, over drinks at Mique's.
Patric who gave him the tickets.
'Two tickets?' Alex asked. 'You think Thea would like
to go?'
Patric shot him a surprised look. 'To be honest, I
wasn't thinking of Thea. I was thinking, you know, why
not take Mathilde? I'm sure she'd love to go. You want
I ask her for you?'
Of course Alex hadn't wanted that. He'd do it himself,
he said, pocketing the tickets. He'd give her a call.
'So do it quick before someone else snaps her up, eh?
She's quite a package, you know.'
'She's also a little young, Patric.'
'You have a problem with young? You want to take
Madame Laclere instead?'
'You know what I mean.'
'No, my friend, I do not know what you mean. So
she's young. Younger than you, at any rate. Who isn't?
But so what? She's a beautiful girl. And my wife's sister.
And she has been around, I can tell you that. She is
no blushing little primrose-daisy-flower like you think.
And, hey, if she doesn't want to go -- if she thinks
you're too old and too . . . how you say? . . .fuddy-duddy for her -- then I am sure she will know how to let
you down gently. And that will be that. But you tried, heinV
Patric sipped his beer, then looked at Alex with a
serious expression.
'Tell me, my friend, how many women have you . . .
you know . . . since Tandie died? If you don't mind my
asking?'
The unexpected mention of his wife's name, rather
than the nature of the question, brought Alex up short.
Patric spotted it immediately. 'Hey, I'm sorry.That was
wrong of me to ask.' He reached across and patted Alex's
arm. And then he frowned, and continued.'But you know
. . . sometimes you have to leave the past behind. There
is a moment when you have to move on, n'est-ce pas? Or you are lost. It is suddenly too late. And, hey, it's just
a little dinner, you know? With the family. Just an evening
out. And you're both on your own. I mean, you don't
have to sleep with her if you don't want to . . . Although,
you know . . .' Patric smiled, shook his hand on his wrist.
'You would be the only man in Les Hauts, in the whole departement, who wouldn't leap at the chance.' Tipping
back the last of his beer, he smacked his lips and called
for a refill. 'You English . . . How do you ever manage
it? It is a wonder there are any of you left.'
And that's how they'd left it. . .
Just an idea . . .
Think about it. . .
It'll be fun . . .
Leaning forward to poke some life into the fire, Alex
thought about their lunch together. After an awkward
fifteen minutes the Apremont had kicked in and by the
time Alex finished his salade they were laughing and
joking like old friends. And it hadn't stopped there. As
the terrace started to empty, Mathilde asked whether he
was finished skiing for the day or if he fancied one last
piste. Twenty minutes later the two of them had taken
the lift to the top of Mijoux and skied the whole way
down, stopping every now and again for a breather,
Mathilde only a ski's length behind him at the bottom.
But a chance meeting on the slopes, a shared bottle
of wine and an hour's friendly skiing wasn't quite the
same as having to ring up and ask someone out to dinner.
It was then that he heard a key in the front door
latch, the door open and slam shut.
Thea.
'Hey, Dad. What're you doing in the dark?'The lights
switched on and he blinked.
He turned to his daughter. 'Oh, nothing. Just, you
know, watching the fire. Miles away.'
She gave him an odd look.
'So how was your day?' he asked.
'Great. Just great. And sorry about Pomme.'
Alex nodded. 'Not a problem, don't worry. But you
had fun? With Bruno. He's a nice boy ... I mean, young

man.'
Thea came into the salon and slumped down in the
sofa. 'Yeah. He is. He's . . . really cool. I like him.'
Alex leaned across and patted her knee.'I'm glad you're
having a good time. It's nice to see.'
He reached for a log and wedged it into the embers.
A flame sprang up in an instant.
'So what have you been up to?' asked Thea, and he
couldn't help but notice a sly, though slightly self
conscious edge to the question, and a quick glance in
his direction.
"Me? Nothing much.'
'Mmm-hhhh.' She shot him another look. 'So what's
this I hear about you taking Mathilde to the Champions'
Dinner?'
'I'm what?'
'Well, that's what Bruno told me.'
Jesus, thought Alex. So much for a confidential chat
between friends. What on earth had Patric said? To
Bruno? To Sophie? And had he said anything to
Mathilde?
And, then, closer to home - whatever did his daughter
think about it all?
Oh dear bloody God.
'Well,' he began, suddenly struggling, not knowing
what to say or think. 'Patric suggested . . . He gave me
two tickets. I thought maybe, you know, you might want
to go?'
"Me? The Champions'Dinner? I don't think so, Dad.
I mean, I'm sure it'll be a great time, but it's not
quite . . .'
'Pizza and The Simpsons?'
'Well,' she smiled. 'You said it, not me.'
He nodded -- of course, of course, he understood.
'So have you asked her yet?'
'Asked who? Mathilde?'

She raised her eyes to the ceiling. 'Da-aaad. Get with
the programme. She's waiting for you to call.'
'She is? How do you know?'
'Well, if Bruno knows about it . . .'
And then she stopped.
'Dad?'
'Yes?'
She sat forward, reached for his hand and took it in
hers. 'It's not a big deal, you know. You don't have to
worry. About Mama, I mean. And going out with
Mathilde. I understand. I really do. And it's cool . . .
okay? I mean, she's really nice, Mathilde. I really liked
her.'
'You don't think maybe she's a bit young for me?'
'Da-aad. Come o-on. She's ancient.'
Well, okay, if you're sure.'
'But I really think you should call.'
'Okay, I will. I will.'
'Like right now, Dad.'
'Okay, okay,' he said, letting go her hand and reaching
for the poker.
'NOW!'

72

The snowstorm started at almost exactly the moment
that Thea put the phone in her father's hands and stood
there while he dialled the Bezards' number.
It began as a few stray flakes drifting in across the
decked terrace of the Auberge, floating down merrily
like limbless tutus, gathering in the corners of the Aigle
d'Or's windows, white spiders spinning white webs. But
within an hour it had moved up a couple of gears. Larger
lumps, flakes gathered and glued together, falling faster
and starting to spin and dance in a light wind.
An hour after that it was the wind's turn to gear up,
whipping in across the nursery slopes, a chill, evil blast oft
the mountains which meteorologists referred to as les hauts
vents des cols but resident Hautiens called les vents mauvais. Or simply les maux. Because it wasn't just one wind that
blew, it was several, sweeping down from all directions
into the high-altitude bowl that was the Val des Aigles.
Normally this strange meteorological phenomenon
struck in late April, and again in early October. It rarely
lasted more than three or four days, a kind of Alpine
mistral that bore down on the town and made life
miserable for visitors and residents alike. Walking was a
challenge in such conditions, with the wind on your
back in one street, then batting at your face as you turned
a corner, pushing you forward, backwards, sideways in
the space of just a few blocks. Shopkeepers rolled in their
awnings, women favoured sensible shoes and shutters
rattled like castanets.
Just like the mistral wind that buffeted and bullied its
way down the Rhone Valley, les maux had their own
particular characteristics. In October everyone knew the
winds were coming when summer's last, late sapphire
skies suddenly dulled and clouded, and rain, in curtainlike
sheets, tore through the streets, tumbling from gutters,
choking down drains and turning the normally brooklike
Valentina stream into a white-foamed swirling dervish
that broke its banks and flooded pastureland two seasons
out of three. When les maux d'automne blew you knew
that winter wasn't far away.
The only thing that could be said with any certainty
about les maux d'hiver was that the winds always came
unattended, never accompanied by a single flake of snow
save the surface sluff it spun into knee-high tornadoes
and banked into drifts. It was just a wind, a wicked,
wilful blow that dropped the temperature a few collar
tugging degrees and made a mockery of the blue skies
and low winter sun.
But this year les maux d'hiver came early, rolling down
the slopes of Juret and Bellepic, Couronne, Vialle and
Courcelle a good two months before they were due.
And this year, for more years than anyone could
remember, they brought snow.
By dawn on the storm's first day Dessin's snowploughs
and blowers were still hard at work clearing the streets
of Les Hauts, their yellow lights blinking weakly through
the swirling blizzard. At the Bureau des Pistes et Secours
every hazardous site received its fair share of propane
and oxygen and tonnes of snow slithered harmlessly down
the slopes. The mountains suddenly disappeared, ski lifts
closed, and skiers shopped or met for lunch or drank
too much vin chaud because there was nothing else to
do until the storm passed.
And everyone prayed.
Everyone prayed that the snow would stop for Le
Diable.

Part Four

'Avalanches kill in two ways. A victim will either endure
fatal trauma (collision with rocks or trees) during the
avalanche, or will suffocate after they are buried by snow . . .
National Snow and Ice Data Center

73

The Diable Downhill is exactly like any other downhill
contest. It is steep, it is fast and it is dangerously deceptive.
When
it comes to the Diable, however, there is one
crucial difference.
Every downhill is a timed event.The fastest time wins.
Every downhill, that is, except the Diable.
In the Diable timings are irrelevant. Speed and skill
and an icy nerve are, of course, prerequisites for skiing
the race. But the skier who wins Diable is the skier who
comes in first.
Because the Diable really is a race.
In fact, it is five races. And in each race contestants
ski side by side -- or rather they start off side by side --
on the original course laid down by Jean-Claude Bezard
in 1948.
The course begins on the upper summit flanks of
Mont Courcelle, on a natural platform of snow that is
just about wide enough to accommodate a small chair
lift turn-round station, a starting gate, preparation tent
and space for no more than a dozen skiers and officials
at any one time. From this high ledge, where Mathilde
had come to make her Diable attempt, the piste drops
abruptly away to the left, before coursing down towards
the edge of the Murone Glacier. Below Murone there
is an almost sheer icy traverse where a skier has to keep
his angle of descent no more than ten degrees off the
horizontal if he has any hope of making the first of
four steep gullies that open up on to the lower summit
slopes of Vialle. It is here, maybe a quarter of the way
through the run, that Diable skiers turn directly downhill,
making a swift crouched descent to the start of the
Couloir Valentina, a fifty-degree walled chute of windblown
powder that spits contestants out across the
Chamoix ridge and drops them down across the Glissine
slope to the first of the trees. Here the course joins up
with the topmost sections of the black Pendu and Massin
pistes. Crossing between these two pistes, contestants
must navigate a treacherous slope of thigh-burning
moguls called Rat-a-Tat, then pass on a sweeping velodrome
curve the highest lodge of theVal des Aigles, its
terraces always packed with spectators, one of the most
sought-after viewing stations on the run.
At this point Diable skiers with sufficient nerve will
be approaching speeds in excess of a hundred and twenty
kilometres per hour, on a slope that varies between thirty
two and forty-two degrees. But they have to brake hard
to make the turn on to the middle section of the Gante
piste, exiting at the bottom of Mijoux's rocky chasm for
the final twisting run to the finish line.
Only three rules apply in the Diable Downhill: the
number of skiers allowed to compete, a gentleman's
agreement that physical contact be avoided and, finally,
the form the race takes. On the first day of the Diable
it is racing pairs, three heats one after another with
the three winning skiers going through to the next
round that same afternoon. The first two across the
finish line then compete in the final race the following
day
Though timings are irrelevant, the Diable course record
stands at five minutes and fifty-seven seconds, a time set
by Prince Agostini Malparetta in 1987 on the first of his
two runs, crashing out spectacularly in the second round
when a binding failed.
Given the treacherous nature of the course, and the
speed with which it must be negotiated to secure a win,
accidents are a common occurrence with many more
bones broken than races skied. In the Diable's sixty-year
history there have also been fatalities. Not too many, but
enough. Out of the three hundred and thirty-five skiers
who have qualified and competed on the Diable, eleven
have died of their injuries - including Malparetta, heir
to a motoring fortune - either on the course itself or
in hospital afterwards. Maybe it is for this reason that
only nineteen skiers have taken part in more than one
Diable. And no one more than twice.
There is one further statistic to consider. Only seven
times in the Diable's history has an outsider, the sixth
man, won the race. The last to do so was a Norwegian
telecommunications billionaire who skied himself in the
millennial race in 2000. Thanks to a fortunate draw he
made it through to the second round in which the then
world champion lost his line crossing Rat-a-Tat. In a
nail-biting final race the two skiers were rarely more
than twenty metres apart for the whole of the course.
The Norwegian came in just a few seconds ahead of
his rival. After a week's celebration he returned to the
fjords with another half-million to add to his already
considerable fortune.
Despite these occasional and unexpected triumphs,
there are those who believe (and wager large sums of
money on that belief) that an amateur skier has almost
no chance of matching the skill of a national squad
member and snatching the prize - shared in varying
percentages between the winning skier, sponsor (be it
private backer or national squad), the holding company
of the Auberge des Hauts Aigles, and the municipal Tresor. But the Diable, by its very nature, has a devilish way
of levelling such odds, odds that this year's sixth man,
the 'outsider' Maxim Kalagin, fully intended to reduce
even further.

74

Maxim Kalagin, trudging through the snow on rue des
Hauts, was not a man who was easily charmed. But Les
Hauts des Aigles, he had decided, was as seductive as a
dropped glove - loaded with infinite possibility, and
unimaginable promise. With the lifts and pistes closed,
visibility restricted to no further than the Pas des Enfants,
and the town battened down against the white-out,

Kalagin had passed the time exploring his new surroundings,
his bodyguard Dak never less than a few steps behind
him. For someone who had never set foot outside Russia,
save a few hours' stop-over in Paris and an even shorter
connection in Geneva, Les Hauts was a dream made real.
What struck Kalagin immediately was that Les Hauts
appeared to be everything that he'd imagined the West
to be, the free market in high gear - the lights, the
shops, the bars, the restaurants. The buzz of the place
was astonishing. And all around him, stepping through
the spinning high-street snow, there were people
spending money - a great deal of it judging by the
prices in shop windows -- the same people who would
one day, he was certain, buy his skis and snowboards
and provide him with a fortune to replace the one he'd
been forced to leave behind. It gave him a warm feeling
inside.
Like many scientific breakthroughs, Kalagin's discovery
of the resin he named epoxythyaliamine had been accidental.
On an early visit to his recycling plant outside
Omsk, Kalagin had noticed that the furnace hall floor
was littered with glittering black chips. At first he assumed
they were lumps of coal until he bent down and picked
one up. It was shiny and smooth and felt strangely warm
when he rubbed it with his thumb.
'Plastic waste,' explained the foreman who was showing
Kalagin round. 'We use it for feeding the furnaces. Very
economical,' he added with a chuckle. 'Doesn't cost us
a thing.'
Kalagin was further intrigued when the foreman led
him across an icy yard where a dozen workers were
playing makeshift ice hockey during their lunch break.
'Makes a good hockey puck too,' said the man, pointing

to the game. Like a bar of black soap, but infinitely more
robust, the puck zipped across the ice, so fast it was almost
impossible to follow. The hairs on the back of Kalagin's
neck had suddenly bristled.
It didn't take long for him to find out all he needed
to know about the black chips. When grade-two plastics
-- industrial-waste plastics -- arrived at his plant for
recycling, they were tipped into vats of hydroxide acid.
Each week these vats were emptied in order to remove
what was left of the plastic, a viscous tar-like residue that
settled at the bottom. For every half-ton of plastic waste
treated in the Omsk vats, a black disc up to a metre
wide and two centimetres thick, weighing around six
kilos, remained. The problem of disposing of these last
traces was ingeniously solved when a worker at the plant
discovered that after two days' contact with air, the discs
dried, hardened and set. Put through the plant's industrial
grinder, the shattered remains were then fed to the
furnaces as highly flammable kindling.
Working alone in the company labs in Moscow it
took the chemist Kalagin three months to understand
the material that littered the furnace floor, a further six
months to isolate and synthesise its unique properties,
but no more than a few minutes to recognise its astonishing
commercial potential. Mixed with an easily
moulded polymer, just a few drops of the resin he created
produced a super smooth surface with just a 0.0032
friction impedence. Which explained the speed of the
Omsk hockey puck, like ice on ice. And ice -- and snow
- was where he decided to start. He might not have
been an expert skier, but he'd grown up on the banks
of the Irik River in the shadows of Elbrus, Donguzorun,
Ullukara and Kurmutau, all of them over four thousand

metres, and Maxim Kalagin knew his way down a mountain.

Rather
than announce his findings, Kalagin kept the
formula to himself. When everything else was taken from
him by the State, as he knew it would be, he realised
that if he played his cards correctly he would have something
to fall back on when the axe fell.
And now he was here to put his plan into action.
Turning into Place des Sommets, buffeted by an unexpected
swirl of dense snow, Kalagin stooped his shoulders
and turned his head to the shop windows. What he saw
there made him smile - rack upon rack of the latest skis
at prices that defied sense, enough to make an apparatchik
weep. By the time the Diable was over, every single one
of those brand names would be scrabbling to compete and
survive -- and it would be his skis and his snowboards
on display.
But skis and boards were just the first step, he thought
to himself, turning to dismiss Dak when he reached the
steps of the Auberge. After skis would come the yacht
manufacturers and the airlines and the big government
contracts, and maybe even NASA.
And every last rouble he had - in the form of a hundred
carat diamond - hung on the outcome of a downhill race.
In just four days' time, if Zaitsev was the skier his coach,
Razin, said he was, and if the moulded polymer resin
surface of his skis performed as expected, then Les Hauts
and the world would be at his feet.

Win the Diable and he was home free.



75

When Thea and Alex first arrived in Les Hauts the snowstorm
that welcomed them had kept them inside and
forced upon them an uncomfortable proximity. Two
HiS'ilv1	weeks later a snug jolliness had replaced that earlier chilly
detente and the old Toussaint house was a good place
to ride out les maux d'hiver.
With time on her hands and no access to the slopes,
Thea had stowed her snowboard in the boot room and
set to work on the house. A nest-builder by nature, she
had gone through every room, drawer and cupboard,
tested every electrical appliance and made a list of what
was needed. She had then taken her father, and his credit
card, on yet another shopping expedition. But this time
everything they bought, they bought for the house new
towels for the bathroom, new bed linen, new cushion
covers and throws for the salon, a new coffee percolator
and toaster, a new dishwasher and microwave oven, a
more modern sound system and a very smart widescreen
television - and for every purchase they sought out each
other's opinions and deferred to their various preferences.
After
just two days' work the Toussaint home had a
whole new look, and when the crockery and kitchen
equipment that they'd ordered was delivered that Tuesday
morning Thea had cleared out the kitchen cupboards
and drawers to make room for it all. Satisfied that everything
was as it should be, she had then prepared one of
Madame Laclere's pelas and, sliding it into the oven in
one of the traditional baking dishes that they had decided
not to replace, she was halfway through mixing a dressing
for the salad when her father came through from the
salon and sat at the kitchen table. He was carrying a Wall
Street Journal that he'd found the previous day in Madame
Giscard's Tabac and when she looked up from her
whisking, Thea recognised the faraway look in his eyes
and knew he was thinking about work. A slide of apprehension
tipped through her and she knew immediately
that the holiday was over. Something needed his attention
at RylandCorp. No more snowboarding, no more
Bruno, no more nest-building. And no more Les Hauts.
She was going back to Wrokely.
'Thea,' he began, rolling the newspaper into a tight
tube and trying to bend it. 'There's something I've
been meaning to tell you. I would have mentioned it
earlier--'
'You want to take up snowboarding?' she interrupted,
putting on a brave smile.
He chuckled. 'No, not quite yet, if you don't mind.'
Please, she thought, please don't tell me it's over. Please
don't say you're going away again. Not after all this, I couldn't
bear it.
'No, it's something a little more serious, I'm afraid.
And you should hear it from me before you hear it from
anyone else, or read it in the papers.' He waved the rolled
newspaper, then put it down on the table where it slowly
unravelled. 'You may or may not like what I am about
to say, but it's quite clear to me that you're old enough
to know what is going on. What I have done.'
Thea felt a shiver.
'On the day I picked you up at Wrokely, I made a
decision . . . and I acted on it.'
Oh no, thought Thea, what has he gone and done?
If only he hadn't seen that newspaper in the Tabac. If
only he hadn't picked it up . . .
Thea put down her whisk and gripped the edge of
the counter.
'That morning, on the way to Wrokely, I resigned as
chief executive of RylandCorp, and accepted an offer
on all my stock, shares and options. In short, my entire
interest in the business. I resigned. I walked away' He
smiled.'Since then ... I suppose you could say I've been
gainfully unemployed.'
'But what will you do?' asked a stunned Thea, not
quite sure how to respond to this astonishing piece of
news.
Her father shook his head, chuckled with a kind of
childish wonderment. 'I have no idea. None at all. I'm
sure something will crop up, sooner or later. But it won't
be work, I can tell you that. I have . . . retired.'
'But why?'
'Oh that's easy,' replied Alex, looking away, the smile
softening. 'I woke up that morning and simply realised
I didn't want to do it any more. It wasn't what I wanted.
It didn't . . . serve. And in the last couple of weeks I've
discovered that it was probably the best thing I've ever
done.' He paused, took a deep breath. 'In fact, I'm only
sorry that I didn't do it sooner. For your mother. For
you. So that, maybe, I could have been a better husband
and a better father. I just ... I guess I got waylaid, lost
track of what was really important . . . forgot what I had
at home.'
Standing at the counter, Thea felt her cheeks pucker
and her throat tighten. She came round the counter and
before Alex knew what was happening he was opening
his arms to her as she slid on to his lap and hugged him
tight. He felt the grown-up weight of her, the trembling
and shaking, and was surprised by it.
'And I'm sorry too,' came a muffled, choking voice.
'I really am. I'm so, so sorry. I didn't mean . . .'
'There, there,' he whispered into a tangle of blonde
hair. 'It's okay, it's okay, my darling,' and he started to
rock her, smoothing her hair.
Then he frowned, wrinkled his nose. 'Hey, is there
something burning?'

76

It was the cover of snow on the roofs of the hotels along the front de neige that alerted Garamonde that les maux
d'hiver really had come early. Standing fifty metres from the line of hotels that presided over the Pas des Enfants,
Garamonde looked back at the snow cover on each of
the roofs and could see clearly that les maux had indeed
played their dangerous little games. Of the six hotels
fronting the Pas des Enfants, each had uneven covers of
snow on either side of the roof pitch. On Hotel des
Alpes the snow was deeper on the left than the right,
while its close neighbour, the Hotel Les Sommets, had
a deeper cover on the right than the left. Both hotels
were a uniform height and size, their roofs pitched at
the same low angle, yet the snow had chosen to settle
in unequal amounts on their slanting, overhanging roofs.
In the centre of the front de neige, and taller than any of
its neighbours, however, the Auberge showed a different
pattern with snow cover divided equally on either side
of the pitch and, so far as Garamonde could see, of equal
depth on the two end tower roofs.
It wasn't just the snow cover on hotel roofs either. As
he'd crossed Place des Sommets, Garamonde noticed how
the snow had banked up equally on each side ofValentina's
statue and as he looked at the stand of larch and pine
on the rise of land where the Auberge kept its chalets,
he could now make out how the snow pattern varied
from tree to tree -- bare branches here, loaded branches
there, tree trunks plastered with white columns on either
north, east, south or west-facing sides as though the wind
had danced indiscriminately through the wood. And
whatever tricks les maux played with the snow down
here, Garamonde knew, would be mirrored a hundredfold
along the ridge-lines and peaks that encircled the
Val des Aigles.
But at least it wasn't snowing any more and beyond
the front de neige, over on his right, workmen were already
unloading scaffolding and timber from the backs of
lorries. With the snow delaying preparations and just two
more days until the first race, there was a great deal to
get done. Construction work had started at first light, and already a twenty-row horseshoe of bleachers was
taking shape around the finishing gate and winners'
enclosure, along with a dozen corporate entertainment
tents planted either side of the course for a hundred
metres up the slope. Behind the bleachers a children's
carousel and swing were also under construction, the
sound of hammers and the clang of scaffolding ringing
out urgently along the front de neige, making Garamonde
wince.
As expected he found Marc Monbalt huddled over
the SyPAC keyboard in the basement control room of
the Bureau des Pistes. Earlier that morning, coming
down the slope from Nathalie's chalet, Garamonde had
counted the blasts from the mountains - hollow, woollen
thumps like a pillow being beaten against a bolster fourteen
in all, out of the sixteen stations that surrounded
Les Hauts. It seemed a reasonable number given the
recent snowfall and it was only when he saw Marc's
face that he knew something was wrong.
'I heard fourteen.'
'Eleven, en effet. I had to blow three of them a second
time.'
'How come?' asked Garamonde, pulling up a chair
and dropping down beside his assistant.
'According to the read-outs, the propane-oxygen
mixes are off a couple of points. Not powerful enough
to shift what we needed to.'
'Did the second try finish the job?'
'Hard to say,' replied Marc, scrolling through a column
of figures. When he found what he was looking for,
he stopped and pointed to the screen. 'According to the
weight nets, we're still above recommended loads. Either
the nets are misreading the weights, or the charges aren't
strong enough. Do you want to try a third blow?'
Garamonde shook his head. 'We'll leave it for now,
see how the automatic charges work overnight and look
at it again tomorrow.'
Up in his office, Garamonde picked up the phone
and called Benoit.

77

Zipping up his parka, Kalagin slid open the glass panel
doors leading from the Salle du Matin to the Auberge's front de neige terrace and picked his way down its steps.
Waiting for him at the bottom was his bodyguard Dak,
a pair of skis over each shoulder.
'Here, let me take mine,' said Kalagin.
'You're sure, sir?'
'It would look a little strange having people see you
carry them for me, don't you think? It might attract
some attention. And you are supposed to be a bodyguard,
not a station porter.'
Dak's face, an unruly collection of sharp suspicious
angles, black stubble and wary brown eyes, registered the
sense of this. He surrendered the skis and took up position
a step behind Kalagin and to one side as they set
off across the terrace.
'A beautiful day, isn't it?' asked Kalagin over his
shoulder. 'The mountains seem so close. Such giants.'
'They are higher in the Caucasus,' came the abrupt
reply.
A waiter, preparing lunch tables, glanced up when he
heard the Russians speak.
Kalagin smiled. 'Of course they are. Of course they
are, but still.'
Dak had worked for him for a number of years but
Kalagin had never yet been able to take a conversation
further than the most basic level. It was almost as if Dak
deliberately brought every exchange to a halt as soon as
he could. Greetings. Instructions. That was it. Nothing
more. As Kalagin headed towards the Courcelle station,
he knew there was no point trying to push it any further
and he walked on as if Dak was no longer there. Just a
shadow. A silent, watchful shadow.
Crossing the Pas des Enfants, Kalagin breathed in the
chill mountain air, blowing it out in clouds, happy that
the storm had passed at last. He'd known it as soon as
he awoke. The low moaning and occasional sharp whistle
around his penthouse balconies that had seen him off to
sleep the last two nights and greeted him in the morning
were no longer there. Just a luxurious stillness. He'd
climbed out of bed, gone to the window and opened
the blinds. And there, beyond the wide penthouse terrace,
its tables and chairs layered in plump cushions of snow,
he could see the mountains stretching upwards into a sky
as blue as the domes of St Petersburg's Trinity Cathedral.
Dak was right, Kalagin was forced to concede, as he
showed his lift pass and joined the queues for a gondola.
Despite the name the mountains of the Val des Aigles
were neither as grand nor as high as Caucasian peaks.
But there was still something sharp and sly about them,
something wild and treacherous. They might seem to
pay you no heed but, Kalagin suspected, it would be a
foolish man who turned his back on them or took them
for granted.
Twenty minutes later Kalagin and Dak came out of
the upper Courcelle station and snapped on their skis.
With Dak skiing a short distance behind him and a little
to one side, Kalagin swooped down a short piste to the
Loge des Hauts where the trainer, Razin, was waiting
for them on the terrace. With an hour still to go before
lunch the lodge was already busy, customers sitting in
the sunshine with hot chocolates and coffees and pastries
and glasses of steaming vin chaud.
The two men shook hands and Razin reached for his
walkie-talkie. 'We're ready,' he said into the mouthpiece.
There was a blaze of static andVlassov's voice confirmed
that their boy was preparing to go.
'He's wearing a red suit,' said Razin, checking his
watch. 'You'll be able to follow him from that ridge to
the left, to the drop below the glacier. He'll disappear
for a few moments but then he'll come into view about
a hundred metres to the right, at the bottom of that
rocky couloir. He'll be skiing alone. You can't miss him.'
'Which skis?'
'It was a difficult decision,' replied Razin, pulling off
his fur-lined shapka and pushing a hand across his tonsured
scalp.
Of course it was, thought Kalagin. For people like
Razin, nothing was ever easy. Old school Russians always
liked to make a meal of anything that might be seen to reflect well on them.
'Conditions are good, but the snow here is strange,'
continued Razin, warming to his theme. 'I've skied only
this far but the change is dramatic. Very dry high up at
the start, but by the time I got down here it was noticeably
heavier, more compacted. It was a toss-up between
the seventeens and the twelves. I decided on the seven
teens.'
Kalagin didn't need any more information. The
numbers Razin used referred to the percentage solution
of resin to polymer. As well as offering the lowest impedence,
the seventeens also provided the best grip, the skis
just over two centimetres wider at the bindings than the
twelves, nines and sevens, all of which they'd been testing in the Caucasus for the last four months. As Kalagin
knew only too well, anything over 20 per cent lowered
impedence to such an extent that a skier would literally
be unable to keep up with his skis. Ice on ice, like that
hockey puck.
Pulling out a pair of Leica binoculars, Kalagin took
a bead on the ridge that Razin had pointed out. He
wasn't the only one looking in that direction. Along the
terrace a number of other people also had glasses out.
Finding it difficult to focus with his gloves on, Kalagin
pulled one of them off, and as he re-fixed the glasses to
his eyes a distant flash of red raced across his field of
vision. It was so swift that for a moment he doubted
he'd actually seen anything.
'Go right,' came Razin's voice. 'Six centimetres across,
two down.'
Kalagin did as instructed. All he could see was what
looked like a grey scar in the snow and above it a tilting
alleyway of rock.
Suddenly the flash of red reappeared, a distant red dot
spat out like a cherry pit between the rocks, the skier
crouching low as he took off over the Chamoix ridge.
Just don't fall, thought Kalagin anxiously as Zaitsev
turned from the straight on to the Glissine slope,
powering down with just a dab now and then from his

sticks.
'Jesus Kay-rist,' came an American voice beside them.
'Will you just look at that fella fly.'
Kalagin put away his glasses.
He'd seen -- and heard -- all he needed.


78

'You don't look happy,' said Benoit as he lifted off the
airstrip apron and headed east over the Route des
Passeurs. Beside him Garamonde adjusted his headset.
'I'm not,' he replied. 'In two days we're going to have
up to ten thousand people descending on Les Hauts for
the Diable. And the only thing standing between them
and millions of tonnes of snowpack is a few trees, some
wire netting and a control system that's not doing its job
properly'
'Les maux?'
'Well, they certainly haven't helped,' replied
Garamonde.'I called Fredo over in Dareggio and he told
me they had a slip this morning on the Sella gully. A
big slab.'
'Anyone caught?'
Garamonde shook his head. 'It's an off-piste route but
the lifts hadn't opened. Came down to within two kilometres
of the road to Santalola.'
'And SyPAC?' asked Benoit, bringing the Bell on to
a northerly heading, the summit flanks ofVialle coming
up ahead on the right.
'Either it's misreading the weights, or it's getting the
charges wrong. Marc had to blow three of the sites a
couple of times this morning and we still don't know if
its done the job.'
'Which is why you called me?'

'With the Diable so close, we haven't got the time
for a surface check. I need to know what's going on up
here,' he continued, leaning an arm round the back of
Benoit s seat and peering down at the slope. 'Don't worry,
I'll sign you a note for the gas.'
'That'll please the mayor.'
'Not half as much as me paying a call on him.'


79

Philippe Bezard waited for his father at the bottom of
the Couloir Valentina. They had started off side by side
on the top ledge of the Diable but Philippe was already
far enough ahead to stop, catch his breath and still not
see Patric. Up until the end of the first traverse they'd
been together, but at the entrance to the lead gully his
father misjudged his approach and swerved to a crouching
halt to avoid contact with an outcrop of grey rock on
one side and thin air on the other. And this was meant
to be an easy ski, thought Philippe - getting to know
the route again, familiarising himself with the course like
a racehorse sniffing the first fence. Instead father and son
had started to compete.
The Diable was like that.
Pulling off a glove, Philippe pushed his fingers through
a mop of thick blond curls, and looked back up the
couloir. Over a whisper of icy breeze, he made out the
first sh-sh-sh-shearing of skis turning on early morning
scabs of ice, and a second or two later his father swept
into view, pulling up beside him in a spray of glittering
snow.
'You were going too fast at the end of the traverse,'
was the first thing Patric said, pulling off his goggles,
eyes squinting in the snow-glare.
'It was you who went too fast. Otherwise . . .'
'I was watching out for you.'
'From in front of me?'
Patric frowned, then his face broke into a wide grin.
He reached out to slap his son's back. 'I shouldn't waste
my time, mon brave. You're a very fine skier, and no
mistake.'
'Trouble is,' replied Philippe, 'so are the others.'
It was Thursday morning, the day before the first race,
and the Diable teams had already gathered in Les Hauts
and set up camp round town: the Americans - ten of
them -- were in a condominium off Route des Passeurs;
the English contingent in a pension close to St Sulpice;
and the Austrian and Swiss parties in cramped suites at
the Hotel des Alpes. The Russians were staying in an
Auberge chalet, and the French -- coach Albert Perouse,
Philippe and three support crew - were billeted in an
Auberge staff annexe a block back from the front de neige.
Although this was Philippe's second day in town, it
was the first time he'd seen his father. The morning's
outing had been arranged over the phone and okayed
by Perouse. Since the topmost runs of the Diable were
closed off to the public in race week - so that competitors
could practise on the upper slopes undisturbed father
and son had the piste to themselves, their voices
catching in the vault of stone and ice they'd just skied
through.
'Uli Wilman looks strong,' said Patric, still panting out
clouds of breath.
'The Swiss always are.'
'And Lenterbrun?'
'Maybe he's getting a little too old for it,' suggested
Philippe.
'Too old? Twenty-six?' exclaimed Patric. 'I'm nearly
twice his age.'
'There you are, then,' teased Philippe. And then more
seriously, 'On a good day I can take them both, and the
Englishman too, but it has to be a very good day . . .'
'It will be, just you wait and see.'
'But I'm not so sure about the American.'
'White?'
'Tanner White -- from Montana. Get it? He's just. . . formidable. Like he was born on skis. And fearless. Sans
peur. nice guy too. Straight-talking, good manners. But
a killer on the slope. At Val Gardena he just breezed it.'
'But it was you who won in KitzbuheL'
'He wasn't racing, remember? Caught a bug.'
'So he's mortal, then?'
'Maybe.'
'And what about this Russian? Zaitsev?'
Philippe shook his head. 'I guess he's the wild card in
more ways than one. No one's seen him ski since before
the last Olympics. Perouse says he was very impressive
back then but he took too many chances. Apparently he
got dropped from the squad three weeks before the competition,
hasn't been seen or heard of since. Everyone seemed
to think he'd maybe pushed his luck a little too far, got
injured and retired. Whatever, I think he'll be a player.'
'With twelve million dollars at stake, I think you can
guarantee it,' replied Patric.
There was silence between them as they considered
the opposition, the two men hunched over their skis,
Patric's breathing now back to normal.
'I heard about Michelle,' said Philippe at last. 'Mama
told me. How's she doing? And Jean?'
'They're both fine,' said Patric. 'Francine told Benoit
that it wasn't as bad as they'd feared, the operation I
mean. But she'll be laid up another few weeks before
they let her out. Jean's been round a few times. Keeps
us up to date. Then he starts on about his daughter, and
you can't stop him. A tough man like Jean. You wouldn't
believe.'
Philippe glanced at his father. 'Yes, I would,' he said.
'So, tell me about tante Mathilde. Bruno says there's
someone after her.'
'You don't know him.'
'Someone local?'
'An Englishman.'
'So nothing's happening, then.'
'What do you mean?'
'Well, un Anglais?' Philippe grinned. 'I mean, has he
shaken her hand yet?'
Patric laughed. 'Possibly. But you're not to say a word
to her, okay? And just remember. You're here to ski
Diable. And win that diamond.'
'On a good day. On a very good day,' replied Philippe.
'I told you,' said Patric, straightening up, gently
stamping his skis and looking down towards the Chamoix
ridge and the first real jump on the course. 'It will be.
You'll see.'


80

Mathilde was very, very angry as she stumped across the front de neige, heading directly for the Mairie. For the last
five years CreditFrancePlus had enjoyed a prime position
on the edge of the winner's enclosure, their corporate
hospitality tent provided with one of the best views of
the last swooping two hundred metres of the Diable
course. But when Mathilde called by to check how work
on her marquee was going she was stunned to find that
CFP now appeared to be sharing the site with a German
TV company. Construction work had already begun on
a camera platform, and part of its scaffolding support was
almost directly in front of CFP's tent. As if that was not
bad enough, its mobile transmission van, satellite dish
and a snaking tangle of cables now accounted for a large
part of CFP's decked terrace, which in previous years
had extended a full three metres into the winners' enclosure.
For
five years CFP, under Mathilde's direction and with
her enviable influence, had negotiated a reasonable rate
for their site with Les Hauts' Mairie. This year, however,
despite her best efforts at schmoozing that loathsome
worm Maire Bruchet and despite his oily assurances that
everything would be just the same this year, it appeared
that someone had taken her spot - with just one more
day until the first race and her boss arriving that very
evening for the Diable draw.
Her mood was not improved when she arrived at the Mairie. After waiting an age in the mayor's suite of offices,
flicking through tourist brochures and magazine features
on Les Hauts with as much interest as a blind woman,
she looked up and saw Renee Pelletier coming down
the corridor towards her.
'Monsieur le Maire will see you now, Mademoiselle,'
said the mayor's secretary, leaning around the door to
the waiting room and giving Mathilde a sympathetic
smile. 'And I really am sorry that you've had to wait so
long.'
The moment she stepped into his office, Mathilde felt
Bruchet's hot little eyes glance up from his desk, sweep
over her and for a second she felt naked. It was a sensation
she was used to after three years negotiating with
the mayor, but it still chilled her. It might have been a hazard that went with the job, but there was something
unsettling about it. Bruchet's predecessor had been a
gentleman of the old school, un ancien.The current mayor,
by comparison, was a sleazeball.
'Monsieur Bruchet,' said Mathilde, extending her hand
over the desk and feeling his damp palm press against
hers. 'I'm sure you know why I am here.'
'I cannot think,' said Bruchet, eyebrows rising in
consternation. 'Is something wrong?'

Twenty minutes later Mathilde was coming down the
steps from the Mairie when she spotted a familiar figure
crossing the car park towards her. 'Paul. It's good to see
you. Tout va bien?
Garamonde came up short and a concentrated frown
was replaced by a wide, warm smile. 'Mademoiselle
Deslandes.You are back again. How nice to see you.'
After the usual round of pleasantries - she had only
just found out from Sophie that Paul and Nathalie Bezard
were an item - Mathilde cocked an eyebrow. 'So, you
have business with Monsieur le Maire?'
'I would say so, yes,' Garamonde replied, the worried
look resettling across his features.
'Well, bonne chance is all I can say,' replied Mathilde
grimly.

81

Jacqueline Bezard stepped out of SkiSawy and felt a
chill, steely fist squeeze her heart. Dalliance. Dalliance. Dalliance.
Dalliance . . . Toujours L'Esprit d'Amour. . .
That was the slogan. Or words to that effect.
And that had been the scent on her husband's jacket
at the Chamber of Commerce buffet dinner, the same
scent she smelled when she'd gone into SkiSawy.
Jacqueline had been shopping along rue des Hauts
and as she turned into Place des Sommets, her eye was
caught by a pair of fur-trimmed Zemba goggles in
SkiSawy's windows.
The moment she stepped through the door, Jacqueline
recognised the perfume and her senses snapped alert. As
far as she could see, there were four assistants working
three separate salons and just two customers - a husband
and wife by the look of them, the man in his sixties but
still fit-looking, his wife just a few years older than
Jacqueline. Strolling past the wife she caught the scent
of Arpege and in the next two minutes had identified
what the staff were wearing. Which left just the older
woman at the till. The manageress of SkiSawy. Pretty, in
a sharp sort of way, Jacqueline thought. Early forties,
perhaps, but with badly dyed hair and too much makeup.
She looked just a little second-hand, a little epuisee,
un peu usagee. Such a woman should also try to dress her
age, Jacqueline concluded. A tight, zip-front blue ski-suit
and a single string of pearls was not the way to go about
in public. Surely the woman knew that.
Of course, it wasn't just the scent that betrayed Denise
Aumont, her name printed clearly on the ID badge she
was wearing. As Jacqueline well knew any number of
women could have worn the same perfume. But what
absolutely confirmed her suspicions -- the clincher - was
Denise Aumont s reaction when she spotted Jacqueline
coming to the till with her Zemba goggles. The poor
woman's face froze -- such desperate eyes, and such a
stricken, guilty smile stitched across her lips. Jacqueline
almost felt sorry for her.
But by the time she climbed into her car Jacqueline's
mood had hardened and she had worked herself into
a boiling fury. And not just because her husband of
thirty years, Hugo Bezard, had taken a mistress, but
because he'd made such a ridiculously poor choice.
The woman was simply affreuse. What had he been
thinking?
Good God, Hugo, if you were looking for a mistress
you could surely have done better than that, she thought
to herself as she tried to fit the key into the ignition. It
was insulting. And talk about playing close to home the
shop was almost within sight of the Auberge.
As she turned the car out on to rue des Hauts and
headed back home Jacqueline realised that the time had
come to act. She might have decided on the drive down
to Cariol that she wasn't going to accept his behaviour, but as yet she'd done nothing about it. Now, by God,
she was going to.
Or rather, she would when the race was over. The
next two days would be the busiest and most important
in Hugo's year and Jacqueline was not the kind of woman
to take advantage.
Now was simply not the time to play her cards.
Afterwards . . . after the Diable. Next week, maybe.
As she turned into the lane leading to their chalet,
the perfume's advertising line came back into her head.
What was it? Toujours L'Esprit d'Amour? She'd damn well give him esprit d'amour.

82

The one person Hugo had not expected to see crossing
the lobby of the Auberge des Hauts Aigles was Paul
Garamonde. He was heading towards the reception desk,
but when he spotted Hugo he promptly changed direction.
'Hugo,
just the man I wanted to see,' said Garamonde,
towering a good head and shoulders above him. 'Could
you spare me a minute?'
'I am rather tied up at the moment, Paul. Perhaps. . .'
The next minute Hugo was sitting at his desk and
wondering how he'd got there. He was sure it hadn't
happened, of course, but it really did feel as though
Garamonde actually picked him up by the scruff of his
neck and frogmarched him back to his office.
'You're going to have to postpone the Diable,' said
Garamonde without any preamble. He'd chosen not to
take a seat. Instead he leaned a shoulder against the armoire doors.
"I'm sorry, Paul? Postpone the Diable? You surely have
to be joking?'
'At least you're more measured in your response than
Maire Bruchet. He asked me if I was crazy, if I'd gone
completely mad.'
'Well, if you're seriously planning on postponing the
Diable you can see his point.' Hugo shot a tight little
smile across his desk. How he loathed this man who
shared his daughter's bed. 'At this late stage what you're
suggesting is quite impossible.' Hugo glanced at his watch.
'At seven-thirty this evening it's the official draw, and
the first race is scheduled for eleven o'clock tomorrow
morning. I couldn't stop it now if I wanted to. And I
don't. And why, exactly, should I?'
'Because the slopes are not safe.'
Hugo shook his head wearily. 'You're saying there's a
possibility of a slide?'
Garamonde nodded. 'It's very likely. It's been snowing
heavily, SyPAC doesn't appear to be responding the way
it should and daylight temperatures are showing some
strange peaks.'
'Just like they did two years ago, the last time you
suggested calling off Diable?' Hugo couldn't help a little
grunt of a chuckle. What Garamonde was proposing was
as familiar as it was preposterous.
'I need one more day, Hugo. I went up yesterday with
Benoit and we have to lay charges. SyPAC's just not
shifting it.'
'If we closed the slopes every time it snowed, we
might as well pack up and leave. This is a ski resort, Paul.
People come here to ski. And with my nephew racing
for France in a little over . . .' Hugo consulted his watch
again,'. . . sixteen hours, it will be a brave man indeed
who tries to stop it now.'
"I know what I know,' Garamonde persisted, pushing
away from the armoire and now leaning over Hugo's
desk, knuckles on the tooled Moroccan hide that
covered it.'The slopes are not safe. There's been a sixty
centimetre deposit in the last three days down here and
a great deal more higher up. Also, les maux have come
early/
Just like Bruchet, Hugo held up his hands as if
Garamonde was pointing a gun at him. 'Les maux. Les
maux. Les maux.You we been listening to the old ladies
again.' Hugo shook his head. 'I'm sorry, Paul, it's just not
doable. Not at this late stage. And for what? The possibility
of a slide? You know as well as I that Dessin's boys
have been working that piste to within a centimetre of
its life.'
'And you know as well as I that they can't groom the
whole course. There could be hundreds of thousands of
tonnes of snow on Hauts des Cols alone just waiting to
release. Not to mention Plesse, Calibere and a dozen
other sites.'
There was silence for a moment as though Hugo was
giving this last piece of information serious consideration,
trying to think how he could possibly help
Garamonde out. 'I tell you what,' he said at last, a plump
little smile creasing his cheeks. 'Why not ask Patric? And
Sophie too. As directors and shareholders of Compagnie
Famille Bezard, the Diable is as much their race as it is
mine. If they think it's a good idea that we postpone or
cancel this year's Diable, well, you can certainly count
on my backing.'
Garamonde was about to reply when there was a knock on Hugo's door and Nathalie appeared. When she saw Garamonde her mouth opened wide with surprise.
'Sorry, am I interrupting something?'
'Nothing we can do anything about at the moment,
my dear,' replied Hugo, getting to his feet and going to
the armoire. 'As Paul here knows only too well. Now, if
you'll excuse me,' he said, pulling on his coat. 'I've got
to get ready for the Draw and time's pressing.'

83

Jacqueline heard the front door of their chalet open and
then slam shut.
'Hugo? Is that you?' she called from the salon.
'C'est mot. C'est moi. I'll be down in a minute,' he
called back, hurrying upstairs.
She glanced at her watch. He was running late for
the Draw.
Late. And cross. After thirty years' marriage Jacqueline
knew when her husband's temper was short. She
wondered what it was this time. Whatever, she'd find out
soon enough.
Twenty minutes later Hugo reappeared in a dinner
jacket, tugging at cuffs and bow tie.
'How do I look?' he asked, standing in the doorway
and raising his arms from his sides as though his tailor
was taking measurements.
'You really need a waistcoat with that dinner jacket?
He frowned, looked down at it, tugged that too.
'It's a little . . . superfluous, don't you think?' continued
Jacqueline.
'But I always wear it for the Draw.' He shook his head
as though worrying about a waistcoat was one worry
too many, and crossed to the drinks tray where he poured
himself a large whisky.
'You're running late.'
'Tell me about it. That bloody Garamonde.'
Jacqueline sighed.
'Just as I'm leaving the Auberge, in he lollops, blathering
on about the state of the pistes. Now, with just
hours to go until the start.'
'He's worried about them?'
'He's always worried about them, you know that. Last
year, the year before . . . Mention the Diable to Monsieur
Directeur des Pistes et Secours and the first thing he
wants to do is close the damned slopes . . .'
As Hugo plumped down on the sofa beside her,
Jacqueline got up to freshen her own drink. It was her third that evening and she had to admit she was feeling
a little light-headed. Just as well the Diable Draw was a
boy's thing. No girls allowed.
'Are you sure it's just his concern with the pistes, or--'
Jacqueline, please. Now is not the moment to discuss our daughter's . . . questionable taste in men.'
Instead of going back to the sofa, Jacqueline went to
the fire, made herself comfortable beside it, then sipped her drink. Her eyes twinkled with mischief.'Not so questionable, cheri!
Hugo's head snapped up at that. He recognised the tone, the look in her eye. 'What are you saying? That you approve of your daughter's choice?'
'It's not for me to approve or disapprove. Nathalie's a
grown woman. She's free to make her own decisions,
her own choices.' Jacqueline paused. 'But she is in love.'
'In love? Pouff. It's a fling, if it's anything. One of these
days Garamonde'll get his marching orders.'
'I shouldn't be so sure of that, if I were you.'
'Please, please, Jacqueline. Not now. Not with the Draw
. . .' He shot back a cuff, glanced at his watch. 'Dieu. I
must go.' He tossed back his drink and got to his feet.
Jacqueline put down her own glass and came over to
him. She tugged the bow tie into shape and picked some
lint off his shoulder.'You know, you really should prepare
yourself,' she said.'It's going to happen. They will marry'
She stepped back to admire her handiwork. 'There you
are. Waistcoat aside . . . Parfait!
'Jacqueline, Jacqueline,' said Hugo, working his neck
out of his collar and making his own slight adjustment
to the bow tie. He could feel his blood starting to
bubble with annoyance at this unexpected announcement,
when he had so many other things on his mind.
But he recognised the signs, took a deep breath as Denise
had counselled him so many times, and tried to calm
himself.
'Ecoute, cherie] he began in a voice close to pleading.
But Jacqueline was getting into her stride. 'Hugo,' she
interrupted briskly. 'Your daughter is in love. With
Garamonde. I just want you to understand that this is
no trifling . . . dalliance]
Before Hugo could say anything, Jacqueline breezed
out of the salon.
Despite his best efforts, Hugo felt another hot twist
of irritation. How could she do this to him? Tonight of
all nights. As if Garamonde wanting to halt Diable hadnt

been enough to spoil his day, he now had to confront
the prospect of having the man as a son-in-law.

It was then, following his wife into the hall where
she was holding out his overcoat, that Hugo felt a sudden
chill sweep over him. For a moment it seemed as if he
was about to faint.
What was it Jacqueline had said? About Nathalie and
Garamonde? That theirs was no . . . dalliance? Dalliance. Dalliance. The word hit him like a mallet in the guts.
She knew. Jacqueline knew. About Denise. The way
she'd said that word, so . . . meaningfully; she had to know.
Dalliance, dalliance, dalliance -- the very perfume Denise
wore.
As he slipped his arms into the overcoat and shrugged
it on, Hugo took a couple of deep breaths, tried to calm
himself, tried to convince himself that Jacqueline couldn't
possibly know. How could she? It was simply a coincidence
-- using that particular word. But somehow he
wasn't convinced. After thirty years of marriage he knew
what Jacqueline could be like. It was exactly the kind
of thing she would do. And in that moment it felt to
Hugo as if he was being eaten from the insides out.
Buttoning up his coat, he turned towards her. But before
he could say anything, she leaned forward, gave him a
kiss, and patted his cheek.
'Enjoy your evening, cherV, she said.
Her smile was golden.

84

According to Diable tradition the six qualifying skiers
and their trainers always met at the Auberge des Hauts
Aigles the night before the first race, in the home of
the man who created the course. It was here, in the
privacy of the Auberge's library, that the official Diable
Draw took place, the opening ceremony matching skier
to skier in the first three heats, finding out who skied
against whom.
Philippe Bezard had been to many Diable Draws as
a spectator, but this was his first as a competitor. Twenty
minutes earlier his mother had phoned his lodgings to
wish him luck. She and Papa were staying home; they'd
watch on the evening news, she told him. When he put
down the phone, Philippe felt a shiver of apprehension,
and for a moment he thought how nice it would be to
be in the kitchen at home, taking his place for a family
dinner, just as Bruno, Mathilde and his parents were
doing at that very moment. He wondered too, what his
father would be thinking. Some twenty years earlier, as
Philippe well knew, there had been hopes that Patric
would compete in the Diable, skiing for France, until a
twisted knee ligament in Val d'Isere put him out of
contention.
' Tout est pret?' It was Perouse, the coach.
' Tout pretl replied Philippe.
'So let's be going, then,' replied Perouse. 'Get it over
with.'
Philippe glanced at the older man tucking a scarf into
his coat collar and wondered if the pressure was getting
to him as well. This wasn't just another downhill race,
this was the Diable. It might not have been a recognised
World Championship event, but everyone knew that
winning it was every skier's - and coach's -- dream.
As soon as they reached Place des Sommets, Philippe
saw the crowds around the steps of the Auberge. He
knew they'd be there, but his legs still felt hollow as he
set out across the place. Passing the Valentina fountain,
Perouse held out a hand and caught Philippe's arm.
'Attends. Les Yankees'.
Up ahead the TV lights had come on and the crowd
pressed at the scarlet rope barrier that had been set up
outside the Auberge. It was just like a film premiere,
thought Philippe, as he watched a large black Lexus draw
to a halt and Tanner White step out with his coach, Leo
Mascov. Cameras flashed and a young woman in a belted
camel coat stepped forward with a microphone in her
hand and a cameraman at her shoulder. The local news.
What his parents would be watching later.
'Welcome to the draw, Monsieur White,' said the young
woman.
'It's a pleasure to be here, ma'am,' said the American,
switching on the smile that Philippe knew so well. 'And
a real privilege to ski in this celebrated race.' He turned
and smiled at the crowd.
'So
who do you think you'll be skiing against?'
'Whichever way it goes is fine by me, ma'am.'
'And what do you think of the prize?' she continued.
'Worth skiing for?'
'Like we say back home, ma'am, diamonds are this
boy's best friend.'
The crowds cheered the sentiment and the two
Americans went up the steps and pushed through into
the lobby where, Philippe knew, Hugo would be waiting
to greet them. Philippe wondered if his uncle would be
wearing that ridiculous waistcoat -- just as he'd done
every year for as long as Philippe could remember. It
was rapidly becoming a family joke, though no one
would dare let his uncle know.
'Okay, we go,' said Perouse, and they set off once more,
arriving at the Auberge to be greeted by a fresh round
of whistles, hoots and camera flashes, the TV lights
swinging on to Philippe, and the commentator reaching
for his arm to turn him to camera.
'So is family honour at stake here, tonight,' she asked,
taking Philippe by surprise. He'd been expecting something
a little easier to handle.
'No one's told me,' he replied lightly, wondering if
he'd said the right thing.
'But everyone wants the local boy to win, isn't that
so? And a Bezard as well. What do you think your grandfather
would say if he was here now?'
'He would say "Get to the library before the champagne's
finished".'
The young TV commentator frowned, smiled
politely, then noticed the Austrian and Swiss skiers
approaching.
'Well, I'm sure we all wish you the very best of luck.

and now, here are Hans Lenterbrun and Uli Wilman,
the Austrian and Swiss . . .'
Following the Americans up the steps, Philippe and
perouse pushed through the doors into the Auberge
lobby where, it seemed, there were even more cameras
and TV lights. There was also an enthusiastic round of
clapping from Auberge staff gathered at the reception
desk and Philippe smiled at them, and waved.
The next moment he was having his hand shaken by
Hugo and being drawn into the familiar hug, Hugo's
arms reaching round his waist, his little bald head pressed
against Philippe's chin. Stepping back, Hugo held his
nephew at arm's length.
'So proud, so proud,' said Hugo, the lobby lighting up
with a clicking, whirring glare amid shouts of'Look this
way, Messieurs', 'Over here, Messieurs', from the
press contingent.
Greetings done with, Hugo formally handed Philippe
and Perouse over to his concierge, Didier Lougin, whose
role it was to accompany contestants and their coaches
to the library.
'Congratulations, Monsieur Philippe,' whispered
Lougin as he escorted them across the lobby. 'So
wonderful to have another Bezard competing. Sixty years
ago, you know, I sat on my father's shoulders and watched
your grandfather, Monsieur Jean-Claude, come up those
very steps. He had just won the first Diable and been
carried shoulder-high around Place des Sommets. That
wild cheering, the excitement, I'll never forget it. May
I wish you a most sincere bonne chance?' he concluded,
pulling open the library doors and ushering them in.
Very soon all the remaining skiers and their coaches
had been shown to the library, taken their Kir Diables,
and were either sitting or standing in isolated groups
around the room, waiting for the Draw to begin. This
was the part of the ceremony that Philippe had never
witnessed - always private, restricted to competing
skiers, team coaches and their host, Hugo Bezard. And
before him, of course, the legendary Jean-Claude
Bezard.
It was immediately clear to Philippe that he wasn't
the only one feeling a little nervous. None of the others
had skied the Diable in competition before and, apart
from Hans Lenterbrun over by the fireplace, sipping a
Kir Diable and chatting with his coach, they all looked
a little unsettled at the prospect, and by the sense of
occasion, not sure what to do with themselves. And
nor, Philippe could see, were the team coaches exempt,
even if four of them had been there before. Perouse
and Mascov, and the Austrian and Swiss coaches,Visman
and Kreiter, might have known the ropes but they still
looked ill at ease. As for the English coach, Ernie Webster,
and his skier, Michael Cole, it wasn't just the pressure
of the event they had to deal with but the fact that
this was the first time in seventeen years that an
Englishman had taken part. Both men looked relieved
after the formality of the official welcome - the flashbulbs,
the TV cameras -- to have Didier escort them to
the library. The last to arrive was Maxim Kalagin,
Constantin Razin and their skier Rudi Zaitsev. It was
the first time that Philippe had seen Zaitsev and he
went over to shake his hand.
'Welcome to Les Hauts,' he said, and the Russian gave
a small bow before taking Philippe's hand. He was short
and wiry, with broad shoulders and a strong, dry handshake.
Philippe liked him immediately - the twinkling
blue eyes, the easy smile.There was something contented,
something settled about the man.
'I saw you on the mountain yesterday. You skied it
well,' said the Russian.
'I have an unfair advantage. I grew up with the Diable.'
'On the Diable, I think, there are no advantages to
be found.'
And then, suddenly, Hugo was there, and the concierge
was drawing the library doors closed behind them.
Calling for quiet, Hugo took up a glass and formally
toasted the assembled skiers, wishing them good fortune
and swift skis in the forthcoming races. Then he went
to the magazine table in the centre of the room and
picked up the silver panelled box that sat there.
'And now to business,' he said with a curving smile.
Lifting the lid of the box, he displayed its contents - six
miniature golden skis set in velvet slots. Rather like
shooting pegs, each of the six skis were numbered but
only their gold tips showed. Calling the skiers forward
Hugo offered the container and, one by one, the skis
were removed from their slots.
Half an hour later, after another round of Kir Diables and some whispered observations about the now
confirmed pairings, Didier Lougin slid open the double
doors for Hugo Bezard, the skiers and their coaches to
make their way back to the lobby. Standing beside
Kalagin's glass-boxed diamond wreathed in the ribbon
of his father's Olympic gold medal, Hugo thanked the
waiting crowd of press for their patience and then
announced the results of the Draw.
'In the first round of races,' Hugo intoned, pausing
dramatically, 'Switzerland versus the USA - Uli Wilman
against Tanner White.'
A burst of applause from the crowd and a lightning
blaze of flashes as the two skiers stepped forward and
shook hands.
'In the second heat, England versus France -- Michael
Cole against Philippe Bezard.'
An even greater swell of applause at the mention of
Philippe's name and a few boos for the Englishman.
'Which leaves Russia against Austria. Rudi Zaitsev
and Hans Lenterbrun.'
Standing beside his coach, Philippe watched Zaitsev
step forward and bow, then turn to the Austrian and
extend his hand. Lenterbrun looked at it for a moment,
flicked the Russian's fingertips with his own and turned
to confer with his coach. They looked, thought Philippe,
like two men about to take part in a duel.

85

From before dawn on the morning of the first race, cars
and coaches laboured up the Gorge des Chouettes,
bringing in visitors from Tignes, Courchevel, Dareggio,
Val d'Isere and a dozen other resorts, some of them as
much as a three-hour drive from Les Hauts. Given the
size of the resort, the first coaches parked the length of
rue des Sommets but by mid-morning late arrivals had
been directed to the Lycee playing fields and wherever
space allowed along Route des Passeurs. By ten-thirty, a
half-hour before the start of the first race, coaches on
the playing fields were ranked ten abreast and a half
dozen deep, with latecomers hurrying up rue des
Sommets towards the front de neige, anxious to find a
good spot for the first of the three races.
At the airstrip, traffic was not as heavy but aircraft and
helicopters were still arriving in significant numbers.
During one twenty-minute period they were landing in
such a solid concentration that as soon as one plane
rolled off the runway and on to the apron another came
in to land.
On the front de neige a carnival atmosphere prevailed.
At the bottom of the Diable the stand of bleachers set
around the finishing gate and winners' enclosure was
already packed, and a dozen corporate entertainment
tents lined the course for a hundred metres on both sides
of the slope. Behind the bleachers was the small fairground
with a carousel and gondola swings, adding
mangled organ music to a soundtrack of echoing tannoy
announcements and the buzz of the crowds settling in
their seats or making their way up the hillside, many
lugging picnic hampers and tables and chairs with them.
Along the course a number of trees had been colonised
to ensure good vantage points and quite a few people
perched on the scaffolded camera platforms put up by
the various TV companies.
Welcoming CreditFrancePlus guests to her hospitality
tent, Mathilde decided that this year her performance -- and ingenuity - had been inspired. After finding Bruchet
immovable with regard to the camera platform and TV
van right outside her tent, Mathilde had enlisted Sophie,
Patric and Bruno to help reposition the canvas banner
bearing CFP's corporate logo. Instead of decorating the
entrance to the marquee it now formed a barrier between
the German TV company's transmission van and the CFP
deck. She had calculated correctly that every time the
camera on the platform swept down to follow the Diable
skiers through the finishing line, CFP's logo would be
prominently displayed at the bottom of the screen.
According to one of the technicians, the race would be
transmitted live to more than three million German
subscribers, and it was this figure that Mathilde mentioned
to her boss when he pointed out that their site was not
quite as confortable as in previous years. The thought of
three million German viewers seeing CFP's logo put the
smile back on his face. When Mathilde told him that it
wasn't going to cost anything either, the smile turned
into a beam of delight.
She was introducing her boss to her sister Sophie, the
mother of one of the competitors, when, at 10:45, fifteen
minutes before the first race, the live-feed screen behind
the CFP bar that up until now had been playing looped
promotional films about Les Hauts suddenly flickered
with static and then opened on the starting platform
nine kilometres and 1,345 vertical metres above them.
Beyond the CFP tent the crowd in the bleachers
roared with anticipation then hushed as they watched
Uli Wilman and Tanner White fill the screens, poling
forward to the Diable's start line.Three metres apart, they
eyed the course dropping away below them, glanced at
each other and waited for the pop of the champagne
cork that, sixty years beforeJean-Claude Bezard had stipulated
should be used as the starting signal.


86

Apart from the first three kilometres of the course, beyond
the reach of Jules Dessin's tracked Leitwolf piste-bashers,
the Diable had been feverishly groomed, the freshly fallen
snow packed into a tined, grooved autobahn easily wide
enough for three skiers racing side by side. The width of the course, however, did not remain constant. There
were certain sections -- on the cambered bend below the
CouloirValentina, across the stepped slopes of Rat-a-Tat,
and through the treeline above Mijoux - where the
course narrowed. If the skiers were still level by then,
they'd be skiing shoulder to shoulder.
By the time competitors reached this treeline, any lead
in excess of thirty metres usually meant that the lead
skier -- bar a fall -- would be first through the finish gate.
Which was exactly what Uli Wilman believed as he
compressed through a steep Mijoux bend thirty metres
ahead of the American. For Wilman it was to prove a
fatal misjudgement. A patch of shadowy snow where the
sun had yet to reach snatched at his lower ski and sent
a tremor of fear and uncertainty flooding through his
body, his trajectory momentarily compromised as he
fought to regain control. In those fleeting, heart
squeezing, adrenalin-pumped moments White, taking a
higher, sharper line, drew level with the Swiss and then,
better placed for the final long bend, drew fractionally
ahead. Eight seconds later the American Tanner White
was through to the next round and Uli Wilman was out.

Fifteen minutes after White swept through the finishing
gate at the bottom of the Diable run, a second champagne
cork popped on the starting platform and Philippe
Bezard and the Englishman Michael Cole powered off
their sticks and plunged down the first, terrifying slope.
Curving to the left, away from the rocky couloir where
Mathilde had nearly come to grief, the two men crouched
over their skis and took the first cornice jump side by
side, knees to chests, Cole closer to the ground than
Philippe, their snowy vapour trails coiling in the air
behind them.
Normally Les Hautiens would have welcomed the
pairing of their own homegrown Bezard with an
Englishman. Since Great Britain had only ever made it
through to the Diable on three occasions in the race's
sixty-year history, it might have been assumed that the
winner of this second heat was a foregone conclusion.
But Cole was no ordinary Englishman. His first language
was Quebecois; his father was a Canadian diplomat, but
his mother and his passport were British. He had learned
to ski in British Columbia and Alberta, honing his skills
on Goat's Eye and Grizzly at Banff and Fernie, on
Blackcomb at Whistler and through the Back Bowls above
Lake Louise. He was nineteen when he made the British
squad and twenty-three when he skied Great Britain
into fifth place in the previous year's World Cup rankings.
Cole, everyone in Les Hauts knew, was a more than
worthy contestant.
For the first kilometre there was never more than
twenty metres between the two skiers as they competed
for the best line. Down the Dolon slope Cole drew
ahead, but as they skirted the Gouvion pipe and raced
for the timber line across Rat-a-Tat, Bezard clawed the
lead back, and as they sped past the Loge des Hauts, its
terraces packed with cheering spectators, the two skiers
came close enough to carve 'powder eights' if they'd
been so inclined.
It was in the trees, where the track narrowed and the
live-feed cameras provided only brief flashes of the two
men as they plunged downhill, that Cole drew ahead.
When they streaked out of the trees above the Mijoux
run, a groan lifted from the finishing-line bleachers,
drowned out by an excited 'Here he comes, Here he
comes, Here he comes' from the British contingent.
But like Wilman before him, Cole misjudged the final
curve on the Mijoux section, took it too low and saw
Bezard flash by on the higher line.When Bezard powered
through the finish gate, fists pumping the air, the lower
half of his body lost in clouds of glittering snow, there
was only a ski's length between them.

As far as the Austrian World Champion Hans Lenterbrun
was concerned, Rudi Zaitsev didn't exist. He ignored
the Russian's attempt at a sportsman-like handshake in
the starting tent and poled forward to the ledge as though
he was racing alone. By the time Zaitsev joined him,
Lenterbrun had pulled down his goggles and was running
his skis through the snow, leaning forward to plant his
sticks an inch below the ledge.
'Good luck,' tried the Russian again, as he drew level
with Lenterbrun and planted his own sticks.
'Fuck off,' replied the Austrian and he punctuated the
insult with a gob of green phlegm that sank into the
snow a centimetre from Zaitsev's right ski.
Though spectators were unable to hear this exchange
on the live-feed screens, a large number saw the Austrian
spit and a low boo rose from the bleachers. For some,
it was simply bad sportsmanship, but for those who knew
Lenterbrun's character and these two skiers' history it
had almost been expected.
Before Zaitsev's disappearance Lenterbrun had skied
against the Russian on three previous occasions in World
Cup competition - at Kitzbiihel, at Saas-Fe, and at Crans
Montana. When Lenterbrun first won the 'Kaiser's'
Hahnenkamm downhill in 2004, Zaitsev had lost a ski
at the final turn; at Crans Montana he had come in
nearly twelve seconds behind the Austrian; and at SaasFe,
after a bout of flu, had failed to qualify in either giant
slalom or downhill. In Lenterbrun's book, the Russian
was a novice and their pairing an insult to his own world
ranking.
Thirty seconds later the champagne cork popped and
Lenterbrun was off. He skied straight and fast for the
first fifty metres, picked up a good line on the Murone
traverse and held his lead through the Couloir Valentina
before the Russian streaked past him over the Chamoix
ridge. It was the last that Lenterbrun saw of the competition
beyond a spray of snow some distance ahead of
him. By the time he came through the Mijoux treeline,
Zaitsev was already a hundred metres clear and when
Lenterbrun finally made it through the finishing gate at
the bottom of the run, Zaitsev had removed his helmet
and goggles, pulled off his gloves and was signing autographs
at the barrier.
For the first time in his life, the Austrian understood
what it felt like to lose. It was a bitter taste that stayed
in his mouth for the short time that he had left to live.

87

After the last of the morning's heats and with three hours
until the next round, the bleachers around the winner's
enclosure soon emptied and those not fortunate enough
to have secured an invitation to a corporate hospitality
marquee, or smart enough to have brought their own
picnic hamper, rapidly dispersed to one of the dozen or
so restaurant terraces along the front de neige, or headed
into the old town for a pression and Croque Diable.
At Bar Mique Ginette Miquellier stood at the door
and watched the crowds stream into Place des Sommets
from the front de neige.
'lis arrivent maintenant,' she called out and her staff
braced themselves for the onslaught. Within minutes
customers clamoured three deep at the bar for orders
to be taken, or waded through the crowd looking for space to drink their pressions and vins chauds and eat
their croques. Just like every bar in town, widescreen
TVs had been set up to show the heats so far -- with
endless replays -- but at Mique's any commentary was
replaced by a more appropriate soundtrack: J. J. Cale 'Devil
in Disguise'; the Rolling Stones - 'Sympathy for
the Devil'; Alison Moyet - 'That Ole Devil Called
Love'; in fact, anything with the word 'Devil' in title
or lyrics and every track at full volume. Except, that is,
when Philippe Bezard appeared on screen, accompanied
by whoops and cheers as he flashed into the
winner's enclosure, and by Dinah Washington singing
'Mad About the Boy'.

Along the front de neige restaurants were packed, and on
the terrace of the Auberge des Hauts Aigles a buzz of
excited chatter rose from the parasoled lunch tables.Wine
was poured, lunch was served and, taking over from his
daughter Nathalie, Hugo weaved among the tables and
his guests, making sure that everyone had everything they
needed and letting everybody know that, mais bien sur, Philippe Bezard was indeed his nephew.

At Hopital des Hauts Jean Lesage left his sleeping wife
and daughter and shared a beer with Francine Malland
in a near-empty staff canteen.
'Old Benoit's looking pretty pleased with himself these
days,' ventured Lesage, stealing a look at Francine who
was watching the race on the canteen TV.
'Is he? Oh, that's nice,' she replied, taking a swig of
beer to cover her smile. Things didn't stay quiet in Les
Hauts for long, she thought, and for a moment Francine
wondered if she should say something, confide in Jean.
But she decided against it. As her mother had always
reminded her, it was bad luck to count your chickens
until they were safely home to roost.

In the Bureau des Pistes et Secours Nathalie Bezard
found Paul Garamonde asleep at his desk, head resting
on folded arms. He'd left the chalet early that morning
and, it seemed to her, had done nothing but toss and
turn most of the night. He must be exhausted, she
thought, as well as worried. He'd told her about his
concerns after meeting with Hugo, and she'd tried to
put his mind at rest. It would be all right, she told him.
Everything would be fine.
Now, quietly, she unloaded the pannier she'd brought
from the Auberge's kitchen, laid out lunch, then woke
him with a long, lingering kiss.

Since her paying guests were not returning for lunch,
Madame Laclere turned on her television for the first
race between Tanner White and Uli Wilman, settled
herself in a favourite chair and promptly fell asleep. Being
no great fan of the Swiss, she was delighted to see that
the American had won his heat when, a couple of hours
later, she finally awoke.

Jacques Bruchet, in a fetching yellow ski outfit he hadn't
worn since the previous year, toured the hospitality
marquees and VIP suites around the winners' enclosure,
his 'access all areas' credentials hung easily around his
neck. He shook hands, he clapped backs, joked and
laughed, and gloried in his role as host. This, he thought
to himself, was going to be the best Diable ever. And in
just four months' time he'd be settling beside the pool
at Les Fragonards, all expenses paid.

88

White's eyes were closed, an iPod was clasped to his chest and
headphones were plugged into his ears. Mascov, the
American coach, didn't bother to say anything. He just
tapped White's boot with his own and hitched a thumb
over his shoulder.
'Time to go?' asked White, opening his eyes, pulling
the white leads from his ears and feeling a whisper of
cold air stroke his cheeks.
'Time to go,' replied Mascov.






There were two tents at the top of the Diable run, the
larger one divided into prep areas for the skiers and their
coaches, and the smaller of the two a holding area where
contestants waited until called forward to the starting ledge.
In the prep tent, furthest away from the start, Philippe
Bezard hauled himself off a makeshift massage table and
zipped up his Lycra ski-suit. Standing at the head of the
table, Perouse wiped his oiled hands on a towel.
'Remember what I said. No heroics.'
Philippe Bezard gave him a look.

Two compartments along, the Russian coach Razin
took a pair of skis from the rack and checked the
bindings.
'It's clouding over and getting colder,' he said. 'We'll
use the twelves.'
'Whatever you say, coach,' replied Rudi Zaitsev and
he leaned down to snap the clasps closed on his boots.

Tanner White was sitting between the two tents, leaning
back against crossed skis dug deep into the snow.

As the three skiers took their places on the starting
ledge, running skis over the snow, adjusting goggles and
getting a good grip on their sticks, an icy breeze started
up on the summit ridge of Courcelle. Unseen by anyone,
a small crack opened up in the sun-softened surface of
the snow and, centimetre by centimetre, it reached out
along a track that tipped down towards the base of the
Murone Glacier, running at a jagged, slightly diagonal
angle to the distant, rising face of Mont Vialle.
No more than a hundred metres below this crack, on
the Diable ledge, a champagne cork popped and the
three remaining skiers launched themselves on to the
piste.

89

It was the night of the Champions' Dinner and Mathilde
looked in the mirror. Hair up? Or hair down? She couldn't
decide. She was wearing a black silk blouse with motherof-pearl
buttons and a military-style collar that belonged
to her sister, and a full silk-taffeta skirt that she had brought
with her from Paris. Holding up her hair, she spun round
in front of the mirror, then repeated the movement with
her hair down, letting it swing free around her shoulders.
Outside in the corridor she heard footsteps coming
towards the bedroom and a tap on the door.
'There's been a change of plan,' said Patric from outside.
'Sophie and I are going in now, and Alex will pick you
up when he brings Thea over. Is that okay?'
'That's fine, absolutely fine,' replied Mathilde. 'We'll
see you later, then.'
'See you later,' replied Patric and, with a jaunty whistle
that sounded very like the first few bars of'Some Enchanted
Evening', he went back the way he had come, the boards
creaking beneath his feet. Five minutes later Mathilde
heard the garage doors open and the 4x4 start up. With
a toot on the horn, Patric and Sophie were gone.
Across town from the Bezards' chalet, Thea was curled up
on the sofa watching yet another replay of that afternoon's
race, a CNN commentator providing voiceover as the three
second-round skiers streaked down the Piste du Diable.
She'd seen the whole thing with Bruno on the live
feed screens in the CFP hospitality tent that afternoon,
but she still felt a gripping shiver of excitement as she
watched the three skiers race for the line - Bruno's elder
brother Philippe just a younger version of his father; the
Russian Zaitsev with his dark,I moody eyes and
square-cut jaw, and the American Tanner White.
Of the three, it was Tanner who got Thea s vote in
the looks department. He was just so . . . cool. He may
have come in third behind Philippe and Zaitsev but he
handled his defeat graciously, with an easy smile and a
philosophical shrug of the shoulders.
'Hey, you know, you try your best,' he told the CNN
reporter in the winner's enclosure after the race. 'But that's
an awesome downhill, man, one of the baddest, I'm telling
you. And those two guys. . .' Tanner gestured to the two
finalists being mobbed behind him. 'Those two guys ski
like angels. It was, like, a privilege to race with them.'
'So who's going to win tomorrow?' asked the interviewer.
'You got money on one of them?'
'Well, that's a tricky proposition, I'm telling you. I
mean, Zaitsev s real fast, you know? But the French guy
. . . Whoa! He skis like he means it.You know what I'm
sayin' here? Skis like he owns that hill. He's one tough
player and no mistake.'
And then that grin, and the curls of blond hair pushed
back off his brow and those dimples creasing up in his
cheeks. . .
'So how do I look?' came a voice from behind her.
Thea turned from the screen and saw her dad in the
doorway. He was dressed in black tie, his bow a little to
one side, his grey hair still wet from the shower. He was
no Tanner White, thought Thea, but he looked really
handsome - lean and trim, tanned and fit from his skiing,
but his smile hovered with uncertainty. He was so nervous,
she just loved it. She'd never seen him so unsettled.
'Not bad, Dad. Not bad at all.' She leaped off the sofa
and came over to him, reached to straighten his tie. 'Yup,
you'll do.'
'So. You ready?'
In the car driving down rue des Sommets towards
Patric and Sophie's home, Thea briefed her father.
'Whatever you do, don't spend the whole time talking
about yourself. Or your work. Or . . . Mama. Get
Mathilde to do the talking. Ask about her. The things
she likes, her family. Women like it when you're interested.
We hear that me-me-me stuff all the time. Kinda
get's boring, you know?'
'I have been on a date before, young lady'
'Oh yeah? Like when? And who?'

At the Bezard chalet Mathilde went downstairs. In the
salon Bruno was spread out on the floor, chin in his
cupped hands. Like Thea he was watching a slo-mo,
frame-by-frame replay of Philippe and Tanner White
battling it out for that second place.
'Yoh,' he cried as his brother crossed the line no more
than a metre ahead of the American. 'Way to go, bro.
Way to go.'
'Bruno.'
Tearing his eyes from the screen, Bruno turned to the
voice. It was Mathilde, but not liice h~'A

of white paint on her skirt.	P
'Nothing,' he said
withyourLuPtfo::s^^n:irerseenyou
'Its a skirt, Bruno. A skirt and blouse''
Okay, sure, skirt and blouse I mean. But it's not jeans
You always wear jeans.'
'You want me to go and put jeans on> For the
Champions'Dinner?'
Bruno shrugged as though he wasn't sure.

Then slowly looking her up and down, he shook his
head I don't think so,' he said at last.

90

Denise Aumont finished applying her lipstick. 
on her part, she'd finally made Hugo promise a small
table for her and a friend at the Champions' Dinner.
And she'd believed him.
And then he had let her down.
Let her down badly.
Denise had been in the resort for four seasons now
and had never made it to a Champions' Dinner. A drink
in the lobby bar was as close as she had come on Les
Hauts' night of nights. Which meant she'd been thrilled
by the invitation and been particularly attentive when
Hugo finally gave in. She'd also been in no doubt who
the friend would be. Lucien, of course. Lucien David,
her manager at SkiSavvy. She knew he'd be just the
perfect escort and he'd been as thrilled as she was when
she asked him to accompany her.
It was then that Denise discovered, after calling the
Aigle d'Or to confirm her reservation, that she was
booked for the second sitting.
Those two little words -- the very idea they conveyed
- had snatched the breath from her body as forcefully
as if she'd been slapped.
Deuxieme. Deuxieme. Deuxieme service. The . . . the . . .
shock of it. The . . . humiliation.
And the nerve. The nerve of the man. How dare
he? How dare he? Was he worried she'd misbehave?
Be indiscreet? Draw attention to herself? Just who
exactly did he think she was? Some little shopkeeper
he could pass an idle hour with? Someone he had to
hide away in the deuxieme service to avoid any embarrassment?
Well, he could damn well think again, the
pompous little . . . hotelier.
She'd go, of course, but as far as she was concerned
Hugo was history. And if he thought for a single second
that he was going to call by later, after he'd got rid of
his wife, he had another think coming.
Down in her galley kitchen Denise mixed herself a
Bloody Mary and reached for a cigarette. Noting lip
gloss on glass and filter, she pulled out her compact,
snapped it open and checked that she hadn't used too
much. Time for pastures new, she decided, dabbing a
tissue against her lips.
And, as of that very afternoon, she had just the man
in mind.
She'd been about to close SkiSavvy early when the
shop door opened and a tall gentleman in his late fifties
stepped inside to enquire about the Zemba gloves in the
window. With his full head of grey hair rather long and
unruly, the face lined, the eyes soft and gentle, there was
something a little scruffy and professorial about him. And
increasingly familiar. Lucien had been first to approach
him, going to the window to remove the gloves, but
when Denise realised who it was it hadn't taken her long
to move in and take over. The Russian, Maxim Kalagin,
the one with Hugo in that front-page photo in Les Jours
Hautiens when that fabulous diamond had been unveiled
the previous week. Such a charming man, such exquisite
old-world manners. And all alone, no slinky Soviet
trophy gold-digger on his arm like so many of those
Russian party-boys. And, as far as Denise knew, no
mention in the newspaper stories of a wife or children
to share the burden of that vast wealth. And there he
was, in her shop, remarking on the gloves' fine stitching,
the soft rabbit-skin lining, the horn buttons at the wrist.
His father had been a tailor, he told her, in St Petersburg, so he knew quality when he saw it.
At which Denise had exclaimed at such a remarkable

coincidence, for her father, too, had been a tailor (well,
he might have been) and what a small world . . . how
extraordinary ... so much in common, n'est-ce pas?
And so it had gone. The gloves were paid for and
slowly and carefully wrapped. Uncertain smiles were
exchanged. He kissed her hand. And she blushed sweetly.
And in just a few more minutes, if Lucien wasn't late,
she was off to the Auberge des Hauts Aigles where Maxim
Kalagin was staying and where she'd make damn sure
she bumped into him again.
A man without a wife . . .
And a man with enough money to wager a hundred
carat, twelve-million-dollar diamond on the outcome of
a race.
Now there was a jewel worth having . . .

91

Benoit Crespi lived out at the airstrip in a small apartment
above his office. It was the first time that Francine
Malland had ever visited and he'd spent the last hour
tidying the place up. Sofa cushions plumped, the carpet
vacuumed, magazines and newspapers tidied away, a
discreet spray of aftershave here and there because he

didn't have air-freshener. It was minus ten outside but
he could feel the sweat soaking into his T-shirt and
sticking it to his back.
Benoit may not have been the tidiest man in the
world, but he was a good cook and he'd gone to some
trouble to get their late dinner just right. Keep it easy,
keep it easy, he'd told himself when shopping for the
ingredients. No souffles, even if they were his piece de
resistance; and no tricky sauces that might curdle if he
didn't pay attention; and nothing that took too long to
cook; and nothing too heavy. Keep it light, keep it light.
In the end he decided on a simple salade of mdches and gesiers - she'd told him once it was a favourite of hers
- followed by a half-dozen grilled cotelettes d'agneau from
Daille's and a dish of pommes lyonnaise. The potatoes were
another speciality of Benoit s, but a lot easier to make
than a souffle. He'd put them in the oven before he
started on the vacuuming and they'd be done to a turn
by the time Francine arrived. All he had to do was prepare
the salad, mix a vinaigrette and heat the grill and . . . merde, shower, shave, clean his teeth, get dressed. He
glanced at the time. A little after eight o'clock. She'd told
him on the phone that her shift finished at eight and
that she'd be calling in on her mother at the Residence
before coming out to the airstrip. Not long now.

Francine pulled off Route des Passeurs and made her
way past the Lycee playing fields and the Centre des
Pompiers Municipal towards the airstrip. The coaches
parked here for the race had all departed but their tyre
tracks had left a murderous criss-cross ridging of snow,
ridges that had already started to harden in the freeze
and snatched maliciously at her steering wheel. Up ahead,
beyond the bouncing beams of her headlamps, she could
see a scatter of lights beyond a chain-link fence.
She wondered what her mother would have said if
she'd known where her daughter was headed.
The Crespis? The garage people? But they're riff-raff, she
would have declared. Please tell me you're joking, cherie?
Please. You surely can't be serious?
It was what her mother had said about all her
boyfriends. But now there was no need to worry, no
need to explain, no need to tell those little lies that kept
her mother happy - or as happy as she ever could be.
But old habits died hard. When Francine called by after
her shift at the hospital, she'd worn no make-up and had
a change of clothes in her bag. As soon as the nurse
came with her mother's dinner, she'd kissed the old lady
goodbye, was rewarded with yet another 'do I know you?' scowl, and after ten minutes in the Residence's staff restroom
she was ready to go.
Pulling through the airstrip gate, Francine parked
where Benoit had directed, snapped down the visor
mirror and gave herself a final once-over.
As she stepped from the car, a door opened and a
column of warm yellow light spread across the snow.
'You made it.'
'I made it,' she replied.

92

While Benoit poured Francine a Scotch - specially
bought for the occasion -- and made her comfortable on
a sofa that had seen better days, the piste-groomer Georges
Raclin climbed up into the cabin of his Leitwolf, set the
temperature to 21°C and called up service HQ on
channel three.
'Ready to roll,' he said into a hiss of static. Without
waiting for an answer, Raclin slotted the mike back in
its holder and made final adjustments to the high-sprung
Recaro driving seat. Old Bidolphe must have driven the
unit the previous shift - Raclin's night off - and the
short-ass had left the seat so low and tight to the windscreen
that Raclin had to clamber in over the armrest.
If there was one thing he hated more than anything, it
was someone else driving his rig. And not leaving it as
they found it.
Powering up the Leitwolf's rear-mounted engine,
Raclin engaged reverse and steered the tracked mogul
dozer from its space behind the Bureau des Pistes as
though it were no more cumbersome than his old Deux
Chevaux. Once clear of the other units, he tested the
front and rear hydraulics - working the side paddles,
engaging the elevators and checking the pitch angle
controls. Satisfied, he snapped on his four-point safety
harness, watched the engine temperature rise to green
on his right-hand computer console, tapped in the time,
and reached for his logbook tucked away in the door

pocket.
As if he needed to know which piste he was working.
Since the snow had stopped three days earlier, the
team had been out here working the Diable like it was
the only piste in the world, making the most of the new
fall and combing it to a uniform silkiness. Tonight was
the last run-over before the final race and Raclin had
the slope - the whole of it -- to himself.
Pulling back on the throttles, Raclin counter-rotated
on his metre-wide aluminium snow-tracks, engaged drive
and set off for the hill, the engine a soothing, dulled roar
through the soundproofed cabin windows. Over to his
left lay the Pas des Enfants, the glittering terraces and
windows of the front de neige, and beyond that a glow
of lights from Les Hauts. Somewhere there his daughter
was reading bedtime stories to his two young grandchildren.
Maybe the tale of little Valentina heading off
into the mountains, just like he was doing now. Except
Raclin wasn't on foot. And he'd be back home in time
for breakfast. Without thinking, he began to hum the
song he'd learned as a child, singing with the others on
his way to school.

Little Valentina
Setting out one day
Goes to find her father
Somewhere high above.
Ham and bread
And cheese and wine
She knows the things
That please him.

But basket in hand and bonnet on head,
Is all that we remember.
For now she's gone, and won't be back
Poor Valentina.

93

Jean Lesage hated leaving his wife and his new daughter
at the hospital. He always, unaccountably, imagined that
it would be the last time he saw them. It seemed an
entirely irrational thought but he couldn't shift it.
According to Monsieur Paume, the surgeon brought
in to operate on Michelle, his wife's condition, while
still critical, was at least stable. Her ankle had been set,
the injuries to her pelvis secured and two days after the
operation the ventilator that had aided her breathing had
been finally disconnected. She was still attached to a drip
and a monitor bleated quietly beside the bed, but she
was alive. And recovering. She could open her eyes and
Jean could swear that she smiled when he lifted their
daughter for her to see, when he laid the baby across
her chest so that the fuzzy little head brushed against
her chin. Michelle couldn't hold her child yet, but at
least she could feel the baby's weight against her breast,
hear her tiny little cries, and see her.
But Jean Lesage had yet to hear his wife speak.
'It could be a few days, or a few weeks,' Francine had
explained to him. 'The swelling has gone and pressure
has been taken off the brain, but there is still bruising.
It will take time, Jean, but I promise you she is on the
mend.'
And so the days slipped by, the windowsill in her
room dressed with flowers she couldn't turn her head
to see, and the bedside cabinet set with fruit she could
not yet eat. But gradually Jean could see the colour
seeping back into her cheeks, the light into her eyes, feel
her fingers tightening round his, her strength returning.
Soon it would all be over and he dreamed of the day
he would find her sitting up in bed when he came to
visit, or the bandages removed, or a wheelchair on hand
so that he could push her around.
Soon, soon, soon.
And yet ... as he kissed his wife and child goodnight,
as he closed the door behind him, there was always the
sense that something might happen, something would
go wrong, and that his dreams would turn into nightmares.
Sometimes, like tonight, he'd walk along the
corridor and then stop, go back, to make sure everything
was all right, that nothing had happened in the
few seconds he had been out of the room . . .
It was ridiculous, he knew, but he couldn't help himself.
As he stepped out of the hospital and felt the blast of
cold on his cheeks, he turned and looked back up at
their window, four floors above.They were sleeping when
he left them and as he set off for home - across the
Place des Passeurs, up rue de la Courcelle, heading for
allee des Cols and rue des Saintes -Jean Lesage wished
his wife and baby daughter the sweetest and happiest of
dreams.

94

Thea and Bruno were watching yet another replay of that
afternoon's race when the phone rang. Ever since the
grown-ups had departed for the Champions' Dinner,
the two of them had settled into an easy, stay-at-home,
share-a-pizza, watch-a-movie routine, each as comfortable
with one another as brother and sister, although Thea had
started thinking she wouldn't mind if their relationship
moved up a gear or two, while Bruno had finally noticed
that the little English schoolgirl really was very pretty
indeed, had a good line in chat and possessed what looked
like a rather fine figure for a girl her age.
Dragging himself away from the screen, Bruno went
to the phone and picked it up.
'Hey, ca marche? 'Thea heard him say by way of greeting
and she knew it had to be one of his friends. And then,
'Yeah, sure. Sounds cool. Half an hour? No problem. I
got a friend too. Non, elle est la. Branchee, oui. She's cool.
Great.'
When he put down the phone he said to Thea. 'That
was Laurent.You met him when we went boarding that
time? He's asked us to a party. He's coming by to pick
us up. What do you say?'
'What about your dad? And mine?'
'Hey, we just take our mobiles. Call them before they
call us. And anyway it'll be hours before they're back.
They'll never know. What do you say?'
It didn't take long for Thea to make up her mind.
'Why not? Sounds good.'

95

It had been just the best evening, thought Francine. A
great dinner. Great company. Such fun, such laughter.
Sitting back in her chair, stretching out her legs under
the table, she watched Benoit pull out a foil-covered dish
from the small oven in his even smaller kitchen. A third
course, she couldn't believe it.
From the moment she arrived at the airstrip and
stepped into Benoit's warm, if uncertain embrace,
Francine had a hunger for only one thing. The man
himself, ushering her into his home, taking her coat,
leading her to a sofa, putting on music, making sure she
had everything that she wanted. What she actually wanted
was to hold him and not let him go, to find the bedroom,
pull off his clothes and make serious, flagrant love to
him. But she could smell the rosemary and garlic, saw
the care he'd taken to set the table, and the nervousness
in his eyes as he checked his watch and glanced towards
the kitchen.
So dinner, first, then. Whether she was hungry or not.
And what a meal, starting with her favourite salade
des mdches et gesiers (how sweet of him to remember),
then the most beautifully presented cotelettes d'agneau and pommes lyonnaise. And now, she could see, a third course
on its way She wondered idly if it was just Benoit wanting
to make a good impression, or shyly delaying the
inevitable.
But it was clear they'd spent too long chatting over
the remains of the cotelettes, drinking their wine, gazing
at each other over a flickering candle. And, now, whatever
it was that Benoit had prepared was beyond rescue.
'Merde, merde, merde . . .' she heard him whisper frantically.
Benoit
was tugging the foil from his over-baked pear tatin when he felt an arm slide round his middle and
lips whisper at his ear.
'If it's burnt, darling Benoit, there's always me,' the
voice purred.

96

At twenty past ten Georges Raclin reached the first ledge
above Mijoux and let the Leitwolf idle for a moment,
the slope behind him a packed and combed trail for the
final two skiers to power down the following morning.
He'd watched the races on TV before coming to work
and like everyone in Les Hauts he couldn't help but feel
a great swelling pride that their very own Philippe Bezard
was through to the final. But who would win the
following day, who would be first over the line and take
that diamond, he wondered? Philippe Bezard? Or the
Russian, Zaitsev, that everyone was talking about?
Apparently his skis were state of the art. . . whether they
were or not, Raclin couldn't say. What he did know was
that the Russian had set the fastest time so far, only two
seconds slower -- according to his son-in-law -- than the
course record, which had stood for twenty years .Whatever
else happened, the final tomorrow was going to be a
corker. He just hoped, like everyone else in Les Hauts,
that it was young Philippe Bezard who got down the
hill first.
Throttling up, Raclin started along the treelined second
section of slope - left to the top, then down on the
right; up the middle, then over the seams, spinning the
Leitwolf round at the end of each run. After all these
years he could do it with his eyes closed. As he climbed
the slope for the last time, he took his left hand off the
throttles and reached for his wallet of CDs, flicking
through the leaves without looking at the titles. Fifth
one in. The Best of Baroque. He slipped out the disc and
slid it into the player.
Three tracks in -- a Pachelbel 'Adagio' -- flattening
down the middle seams above Pendu, Raclin reached for
the light controls and switched on the main overhead
xenon lamps. A pool of white opened up ahead of him,
a swirl of snow-dust from the plough dancing across the
windscreen, bluey-purple in the beams of light, tugged
away by the breeze over the roof of his cab.
He glanced at the outside temperature gauge. Sixteen
degrees below, already seven degrees colder than when
he'd set out. By the time he reached the Brow -- as far
as the snowploughs could safely venture (a forty-eight
degree incline was the recommended maximum angle
for the Leitwolfs) - it would be down to twenty below.
Easy
In fact, it was a little under nineteen when he finally
reached the top of his run - the last treatable stretch of
piste. Not as cold as Raclin had anticipated. Anything
over twenty-five and he stayed in the cab for his halfway
coffee. This time he could switch off, climb out of the
rig and stretch his legs.
But nineteen below was still nineteen below and after
the warmth of the cab Raclin felt the cold like an icy
steel blade slicing the skin from his cheeks. His coffee
didn't help much either and, leaving the thermos wedged
into the treads of the tracks, he walked beyond the glare
of the headlights for a pee, his boots crunching over the
softly packed snow.
A quick one, he thought, unzipping two sets of flies
and turning his shoulder to the wind, a low moaning
that sounded as though it came from deep in the earth.
Raclin was halfway through his pee and concentrating
on the looping flourish between the Y and the 'R' when
a movement caught his eye, something flashing through
the Leitwolf s headlamps to his right. A pair of foxes. A
pair. You rarely saw two together. He was marvelling at
it, turning his head to follow them into the shadows off
piste, when it suddenly struck him that they were moving
faster than he'd ever seen foxes move before. Low to the
ground, with their ears pinned back close to their heads.
As though they were running away from something,
rather than running after something.
And then the sound of the wind seemed to pick up
again, growing louder as he stood there, shaking off the
last drops. For a moment Raclin thought it was maybe
another rig coming up over the rise. But he was the only
one out, he was sure of it; that's what Dessin had said.
Also there were no headlights to be seen. And he could
now clearly make out that the sound was coming from
above the Brow -- where rigs weren't permitted to go.
He looked up the slope but could see nothing in the
bright starlight.
But whatever it was the sound was definitely growing
louder, no doubt about it, a rising howl of wind that
suddenly splashed across the side of his head.
He knew then what it was, and knew he had only
seconds to live.
There was nothing he could do.
Just turn where the wind had come from and
. . . Georges Raclin was gone in an instant
. . . Somersaulting over the metal tracks of the Leitwolf
and smashing through the cabin door . . .

. . . And then the Leitwolf went too, picked up by the
wall of snow that followed the blast of air and sent cartwheeling
down the slope as though it were no lighter
than a snowflake.

97

Both the Auberge's sommelier, Pierre Canove, and the
maitre d'hotel, Gaston Lefevre, agreed that there had
never been a Champions' Dinner like it. Standing at the
eagle-wing lectern that held the Aigle d'Or's reservations
book, Lefevre totted up the final number. A hundred
and forty-six covers for the first sitting, he told Canove.
And more than two hundred bottles of wine between
them, reported the sommelier, unwinding a cork from
his corkscrew, squeezing its stained tip between his fingers
until tiny beads of wine appeared. Some of the best
Bordeaux and Burgundies in the cellar, he continued,
the last of the deuxieme cms '71s, at least a dozen La
Taches and Richebourgs, not forgetting the magnums
of vintage Billecart-Salmon Rose at the Champions'
reception.
And still one more sitting to go, said Lefevre, for those
poor unfortunates who had left their reservations too
late and had to make do with the deuxieme service. It was
the first time they'd ever done two sittings for the
Champions' Dinner, but this year the demand for tables
in the best dining room in Les Hauts had been outrageous. Monsieur le Directeur, Hugo Bezard himself, had
made the decision two weeks earlier.Two sittings. Seven
thirty to ten-thirty. Ten-thirty to . . . whenever. Both
Lefevre and Canove knew it would be dawn by the time
they found their beds.
If they found them at all.
Unlike the two skiers still in contention, herded from
their respective tables by stern-faced coaches and taken
back to their lodgings. By now they would be safely
tucked up in bed while the other four who'd lost on
that hazardous slope would likely be drowning their
sorrows in Bar Mique.
Of course, Diable tradition dictated that there was no
such thing as a loser, another of Jean-Claude Bezard's
whims: 'N'importe qui pent gagner, n'importe qui pent saisir
le prix" And that sentiment still stood sixty years later. Les Diables Tristes, they were called, the four skiers knocked
out that first day. Tristes, not vaincus. Which, as Lefevre
and Canove well knew, was why the dinner at the Auberge
des Hauts Aigles was always held the night before the
final race. So that no one skier would hold the title and
the limelight. For this one night each of the six competitors,
whether they had skied their way to the final race
or not, was acknowledged a champion, an honoured
guest of the legendary Jean-Claude Bezard, and each
presented during the first sitting with their Diable
competitor's lapel badge - crossed gold skis over a devil's
platinum pitchfork.
But for all Jean-Claude's sentimental whimsy, the
sommelier and maitre d'hotel also knew that, just like every
other year, every Champions' Dinner, there were only two
names on everyone's lips - the two who'd be skiing in the
final. And this year those two were Zaitsev and Bezard. By
lunchtime the following day one of them would be crowned
the Devil's Own and take possession of the Kalagin
Diamond.
But not tonight. Tonight was an occasion to celebrate
sporting prowess, to toast the Diable s sixtieth anniversary
and, despite the skiers' early departure, both Lefevre
and Canove noted happily that those guests now arriving
for the second sitting seemed no less excited - as they
settled at their tables - than those who had come before
them. Which, they agreed, was what Monsieur le
Directeur had probably bargained on.
Even after a hundred and forty-six covers the Aigle
d'Or still glittered as seductively as the Kalagin Diamond
in the lobby. The worn leather booths for six along both
sides of the room, the seven premier tables in the window
alcove, and the twin line of tables staggered through the
middle of the timbered, tartan-carpeted room had been
relaid, cutlery and glassware sparkled, and fresh candles
had been lit within the intricately worked bouquets of
lavender, budding roses, edelweiss, gentian and camomile
~ the skiers' national flowers - that Jacqueline Bezard
had devised as table decorations.
With just a two-table overlap to sort out from the
first sitting - a party of German TV producers and their
wives and, close by, Make Bruchet's group -- Lefevre and

Canove wished each other luck and parted company, the
sommelier returning to his parchment-covered Cartes des Vins, the maitre d' wondering how best to dislodge
Monsieur Bruchet and the Germans so that he could
bring in his remaining guests from the bar and salon.
He was about to leave his reservations book in order
to hurry them along when he spotted Nathalie Bezard
heading in his direction.
'Gaston,' she said, throwing her arms over the eagle
lectern and drawing close, 'I have a distinct feeling that
I'm about to become your very favourite girlfriend.'
Lefevre felt himself blush. He adored Mademoiselle
Nathalie above the whole Bezard clan.There was just something
so fresh and enticing and lovely about her, something
so . . .
'The Robertsons send their apologies, but Madame is
feeling unwell,' Nathalie whispered. 'They will not be
able to make dinner and trust that this late change of
plans will not inconvenience you in any way. I passed on
your condolences and your assurance that this would not
be a problem.'A mischievous smile curled across her lips.
. . . God, that Paul Garamonde was a lucky fellow,
Lefevre was thinking, when it suddenly dawned on him
what Nathalie was saying. An extra table, just when he
needed it.
"As you say, Mamselle, not a problem at all,' replied
the maitre d' with a warm, complicit smile, and he felt
a flutter of relief beneath his starched shirt-front.
Shortly after, bowing deeply, Gaston Lefevre welcomed
the Rheinhardts to the Aigle d'Or, ushered them the
length of the restaurant to the Robertsons' sadly surrendered
table in the window alcove and, dealing them a
menu card each, wished them bon appetit.

Just one more table to find, thought Lefevre to himself,
unless either the Germans or Bruchet decided to call it
a day.
He was making his way towards the German table to
see if he could lure them away when he saw one of the
men throw down his napkin, push back from the table
and pull out his companion's chair.
Stepping forward to help with their departure, Lefevre
now realised that Maire Bruchet and his party could stay
just as long as they wished.

98

Yves Primaud, the lift-station engineer, was woken by
his dogs in the barn. There were just two of them but
they were barking and howling louder than a whole
pack, rattling the chains that secured them. He glanced
at the clock on the bedside table: 10:47 p.m. Normally
his wife would have woken too and like as not told him
not to bother, to leave the damned beasts where they
were, they could sort out whatever it was without any
assistance from him. But Yves' wife had died the year
before and now there was no one to hold him back.
Not that it would have made the slightest difference.
Yves pushed back the quilt and struggled from bed,
reached for the bedside lamp. He pressed the switch but
nothing happened. No light. He tried again. Nothing.
Just a spill of bright starlight slanting in through the
window. Either a fuse had blown, or the power was out,
a cable down somewhere. Just as well he had the range
in the kitchen and kept it fed or he and his son, Alain,
would be drinking cold coffee for breakfast. And when
Alain got back from his snow-clearing shift in a few
hours' time, Yves knew that the boy would be needing
something hot to take off the chill.
Pulling on slippers, Yves levered himself to his feet
and headed for the landing. He tried the light switch at
the top of the stairs but that didn't work either, so he
reached for the banister and went carefully down to the
hall. In the kitchen he took a coat from the rack, pulled
it on over his nightshirt and unlocked the back door.
The sound of the door opening sent the dogs into a
fresh frenzy of barking, accompanied now by a soft whimpering,
the pitiful whine that he knew was fear. Something
must be in the barn with them, he thought; something
had to be threatening them. But he couldn't for the life
of him think what it might be. It couldn't be wolves -- they hadn't been seen in these parts for years. And there
wasn't much of anything else that would set off his dogs
like this.
'Taisez-vousl he shouted out as he trudged through
the snow, pulling up the collar on his coat, then shovelling
his hands into its pockets. 'Keep it down, keep it
down. What's the matter with you?'
Yves was halfway across the yard, between the back
door of the house and the barn, when he stopped in his
tracks.There was another sound now, and it wasn't coming
from the dogs or the barn. A distant rumble like thunder
working itself up to a pitch, accompanied by a snapping,
splintering sound. He looked around but could see
nothing in the starlight. Yet the rumbling and snapping
and splintering was definitely growing in volume and
the ground beneath his feet seemed to shiver and shake.
Behind him the back door slammed shut and he spun
round in time to see the wooden shingles peel off the
roof of the farmhouse like a pack of playing cards,
followed by the rafters that held them and the bed he'd
been sleeping in not five minutes before, spinning out
of the bedroom and flying over his head.
Like Georges Raclin, there was nothing Yves Primaud
could do.
Nowhere to run.
Nowhere to . . .
. . . He was gone in an instant, picked up like a rag
doll and flung to eternity . . .
. . . Along with the house and the barn and the dogs
and, in the lean-to garage, the old Nissan 4x4 that he
and his wife had bought at the dealership in Bourg.
A minute later nothing remained of the Primaud
homestead save a scatter of broken branches and a layer
of fresh, crumpled, creaking snow.


99

The Aigle d'Or had the best view of the mountains of
any restaurant in Les Hauts, its furthest wall made up of
three rows of six windows, one above the other, eighteen
panels of glass. And because the restaurant floor was
stepped, three levels between the entrance and windows,
every table enjoyed a magnificent view of the slopes
beyond - the centralVal des Cols rising up to the Murone
Glacier between Mont Vialle and Mont Courcelle, the
narrower Val des Salvettes to the south and the Route
Plesse to the north, each of these valleys separated by
tree-covered ridges reaching up into vast snowfields below
the Hauts des Cols.
At lunchtime sunlight coming off the snow splashed
over the restaurant's beamed ceiling and glowed off the
cream Frette linen, a bright white light that the tartan
carpet and log walls and maroon leather booths warmed
and diffused. At night, however, the wall of plank-framed
windows overlooking the slopes turned into silvered
mirrors, a three-strand necklace of bevelled glass, each
of the eighteen panes glittering with a starry wash of
light from table candles and wall sconces, cutlery and
glassware, winking like stars as waiters and guests passed
between the tables, the night beyond almost invisible
unless you cupped your hands and brought your eyes
close to the glass.
It was exactly this that Madame Marika Rheinhardt
did at a little before eleven o'clock, sitting at table seven
with her husband. Leaning towards the window, she raised
a hand against its cool mirrored surface and gazed out
at the starlit night, then down at the Auberge's terraced
deck one floor below - its picket-fenced edges illuminated
by uplighters set at half-metre intervals - nodding
in gentle, disinterested commiseration as her husband,
Wolfgang, complained about the wait for his order of
Chateau Cheval Blanc '64.
She was about to turn back to him when she felt the
glass against the edge of her cupped hand start to tremble,
an uneven movement that settled in seconds into a steady
vibration. She lifted her eyes from the deck and peered
into the darkness where a scatter of lights on the Salvettes
slope seemed to blink out one after another, as though
the householders had decided to switch them off at half
second intervals.
And then the strangest thing.
Spinning towards the Auberge des Hauts Aigles,
heading straight for the steps leading to its timbered
deck, came what appeared to be a truck, or maybe a
4x4, tumbling silently, boot to bonnet to boot to bonnet,
across the snowy wastes of the Pas des Enfants. It looked
like a toy but Madame Rheinhardt realised it couldn't
be, her eyes widening in wonder as it caromed past the
carousel, smashed against the deck steps and spun . . .
But Madame Rheinhardt didn't see the truck smash
into the Salle du Matin one floor below her. In the
millisecond before it struck, the shivering panel of glass
against her hand, and the other seventeen panes that overlooked
the deck, reached such a pitch of pressure that
they suddenly shattered into thousands of slicing splinters,
propelled across the Aigle d'Or by a blast of icy air
that sucked cloths off tables and bodies from chairs.
The structural weakness of a wall made up almost
entirely of glass, though framed by a stout border of
split-logged planking, became abundantly clear before
the last shards of blood-stained glass had scythed through
the restaurant and embedded themselves into the far walls
or shot through the entrance into the salon and bar
beyond. For this deadly blast of icy air and its attendant
shimmering spray of glass-splinter shrapnel was but a
prelude to the main event: a howling jet-stream of snow
that tore through the wall, wrenched free the window
frames and supporting logs and hurled them after the
glass, a wall of snow and ice and debris that had picked
up a speed in excess of three hundred kilometres per
hour on the long run down from the Hauts des Cols,
producing an impact pressure of nearly a hundred tonnes
per square metre.
No one in the restaurant screamed.
No one had time . . .
... To think, to respond, to react.
The Rheinhardts, Marika and Wolfgang, were sliced,
diced and julienned as effectively as a fistful of chives
under the blade of a knife.
Jacques Bruchet, thinking about his villa in Martinique,
was snatched from his chair, had the clothes ripped from
his body and was wrapped round the brass rail between
the restaurant's first and second levels as easily and effectively
as a dressing gown cord.
Two tables away Lucien David was pouring Denise
Aumont a glass of the '82 Clos Haut-Peyraguey Sauterne
that she had deliberately and extravagantly selected from
the Carte des Vins, when the breath was snatched from
his lungs and a candlestick spinning through the air like
an Indian tomahawk struck him fatally in the forehead.
The last thing he saw before the candlestick hit him was
his companion tugged from her chair, Cossack skirt
billowing immodestly around her waist, and flung across
the room like a bundle of dirty washing.
The maitre d'hotel, Gaston Lefevre, returning to his
reservations book at the entrance to the Aigle d'Or, took
just a second longer to die. If he had lived he would
have remembered turning, as though sensing an intruder
behind him, some inexplicable disturbance in the soft,
humming efficiency of his domain . . . turning towards
a hurricane blast of glass splinters that ripped the toupee
from his skull and carved the meat from his shiny cheeks
in rubied carpaccio slices.
Nor were the party of Germans who had stayed late
at their table saved from the horror. They may have left
the restaurant, but one of the wives, who had drunk a
little too liberally at dinner, insisted on one final coup de something before going to bed. Two cognacs, three
Kummels on the rocks and a large single malt had just
been placed on the bar when that icy wave of frigid air
snatched up their drinks and blitzed the room with a
hailstorm of glass shards.
Of the one hundred and forty-eight guests at the
second sitting of the Champions' Dinner in the Aigle
d'Or restaurant, and of the thirty-two members of staff
who waited on them, not a single person remained alive
longer than a few seconds after the first avalanche hit.


Part Five

'If you're caught in an avalanche, you pray or die.
Sometimes you do both . . .'
Auguste Garamonde
(1886-1958)

there would still be sizeable drifts on Route des Passeurs,
drifts it would be his responsibility to clear before the
coaches returned the following morning for the final
race of the Diable.
Pulling back the cuff of his parka, Dessin glanced at
his watch. Ten fifty-two.
'Hey, boss,' came a voice from the hangar door.
Dessin turned.
It was Jean Daille, the butcher's eldest son, a tall
gangling lad who was usually the last to arrive for any
clearing operation. 'I just got a call from Alain up on
Salvettes. Said he was running late, but was on his way,
but then he got cut off. The line just went dead.'
Dessin frowned. Phone lines didn't go dead. Not his
phone lines. He turned back to the slopes in time to see
lights blinking off on the lower reaches of the Salvettes
ridge, and felt the light westerly breeze that had whispered
behind his back abruptly change direction and
buffet against his chest and face. An easterly, straight down
from Murone. Beside him the flames in the brazier surged
upwards as though propelled by a bellows. The next
instant they cowered down just as quickly, sucked back
to the coals, licking over the edge of the brazier as though
looking for somewhere to escape.
Dessin's stomach tightened and turned, and he searched
for the word he needed. It came out as a hoarse, disbelieving
whisper too far down the back of his throat to
gain substance or volume.
Then he saw it - a smoky white shroud billowing up
through the lowest treeline and heading straight for Les
Hauts.
He tried for the word again, and found it.
'Avalanche?

It was louder this time, but so was the whistling sound
now racing across the Lycee playing fields towards him.
Dessin turned back to the hangar where Jean Daille
stood in the open doorway. There was a puzzled look
on the younger man's face as he looked out into the
night.
'C'est une avalanche' cried Dessin. 'A-VA-LANCHEF


Paul Garamonde felt a warm, wet tongue lick across his
ear, his nose, his mouth. He opened his eyes and saw
Coco sitting on the sofa beside him. Now that she had
him awake, she gave a low, imploring whimper.
Garamonde pulled back a sleeve and looked at his
watch. A little after ten-forty. The old girl must be
bursting, he thought guiltily. He should have taken her
out the moment he got back. But he hadn't. After another
late night at the Bureau, he'd made himself an omelette,
eaten it in front of the TV, then promptly dozed off
Beyond his stockinged feet, propped and crossed on
Nathalie's coffee table, he could see Arnold Schwarzenegger
rattling off a few hundred rounds at a patch of jungle. If
Coco hadn't woken him the sustained burst of gunfire
certainly would have. Stretching painfully, he eased his
stiffened legs off the table and got to his feet.
'Okay, okay. Give me a minute, you hound.'
Tail wagging, Coco pranced ahead to the front door
and Garamonde followed, pulling on his coat, kneeling
down to strap on boots. As he bound the laces round
his ankles and knotted them, Coco gave a soft, whining
bark which sounded, Garamonde decided, like a
desperate, pleading indignation.
'Ecoute. I need shoes, you oaf. Even if you don't.'
Outside the chalet Coco raced up the street, its pavements
banked with shovelled snow, and Garamonde
paused to look up into a bright starlit night. There was
just a gentle breeze drifting in from the west and he
was relieved to see that the snow forecast by the meteo appeared to be holding off. He rubbed his hands together,
and took a deep breath. It wasn't as cold as he'd
expected either. According to the last forecast he'd
received down at the Bureau des Pistes another front
was expected in the next few hours, from the northeast,
and temperatures were set to plummet. It meant
another heavy fall and, depending on day-time temperatures
and wind speeds, hazardous conditions in the
days to come.
Crunching over the snow Garamonde followed Coco
up the street, praying that the overnight charges he'd
reprogrammed earlier - lower weight limits on the nets
and higher charge mixtures for the oxygen and propane
blasts - would deal with any problems. Since Maire Bruchet
and Hugo Bezard had made it clear that closing the slopes
was not an option, it was about the only thing he could
do for now. But if conditions looked bad the following
morning, he'd already resolved to go above their heads
and call in a high-risk alert to his superiors in Cariol.
Let Bruchet and Bezard argue the toss with them.
Climbing the half-dozen steps to the Bellepic
belvedere, a railed terrace at the end of the road which
afforded one of the finest views of Les Hauts, Garamonde
leaned against the railing. As Coco snuffled her way
through a likely bank of snow, he looked across the valley
at the looming ghostly outlines of Vialle and Courcelle
rising dramatically into the night sky, and down at
the golden pool of light in the centre of town. Somewhere
in that pool of light, Nathalie was working the
Champions' Dinner on what was probably Les Hauts'
most important night of the year, making sure her guests
had everything they wanted. She'd told him at lunch that
she'd be home as early as she could manage. But she also
told him not to wait up. Her father had organised two services and Garamonde knew that the girl he loved
wouldn't leave until the evening - and her duties - came
to an end . . .
Over by the steps, having found an appropriate spot,
Coco hunched down and fixed Garamonde with a long
reproachful look.
Look, she seemed to be saying, I was desperate.
. . . Which meant that Nathalie would be stealing into
their bed sometime between three or four the next
morning. About the same time that he'd be getting up.
Perhaps, he thought, there might be time, in the overlap,
to . . .
Then, leaning on the rail, with Les Hauts spread out
below him, Garamonde felt a shift in the air, a certain
resettling of the ambient barometric pressure in theVal des
Aigles, as though some strange inexplicable displacement
had altered the dark ocean of the night.
And then he heard the first soft rumble, far out beyond
the light-spill of the front de neige, a rumble that grew
into a shuffling roar which he recognised immediately.
Coco heard it too as she scraped politely at the snow, and she stiffened as though detecting prey, her nose
sniffing at the gust of freezing air that sped up the street
to them, making the stars above and lights of Les Hauts
below quiver as though seen through some invisible
shaking jelly.
Coco growled and Garamonde felt his ears pop right
and left together. He sucked in a breath and his
heart leaped, a hammering beat.
He'd left it too late. He'd left it too late. What he had
feared most in the world was happening. Right now.
Right in front of him.
It was a hypnotising sight.
Far below, like a storm surge over a seaside promenade,
a great spraying wall of snow blasted over the roof
of the Auberge des Hauts Aigles and its neighbours,
pummelling down on to Place des Sommets and
streaming into the town like a white tidal wave. A series
of hollow 'whumphs' followed as the sound reached him,
and then still more white waves exploded over the front

de neige.
Seconds later Garamonde was running down the street,
an icy dread coursing through his blood, Coco snapping
and barking at his heels.

102
Madame Laclere was normally a good sleeper, usually
in bed by ten o'clock except when baby-sitting duties
had her staying up late. Since Thea was spending the
evening with the Bezards and since the two Americans
who had rented out her spare room for Diable week
had their own key to the front door, Madame Laclere
was comfortably asleep, when suddenly her old eyes
sprang open.
For a moment she didn't move. Listening. Had her
guests returned earlier than expected? Was it the sound
of them coming up the stairs that had woken her?
Somehow she didn't think so, but she listened for them
anyway - the creak of that loose floorboard on the half
landing, whispered voices, the hall light being turned off
as she had instructed, their bedroom door closing. Instead
Madame Laclere heard the shutter outside her window
give a shivery rattle. If the catch had worked loose and
a breeze had started up she knew it would keep her
awake all night. Reluctantly she got out from under
the eiderdown and pulled a shawl around her shoulders.
The room was dark, but she didn't bother to switch
on the bedside light. She knew where the window was,
she knew what to do.
But before she had taken a step the shutter started to
rattle again. And this time it didn't stop, growing in
volume until it sounded like a runaway train shrieking
towards her.
Madame Laclere had lived in Les Hauts all her life
and she knew what was coming. For a woman of her
years she wasted not a moment dropping to her knees
and scrambling under the bed.
It had saved her life once before.
Maybe it would do so again.

103
But it had all been so difficult to resist. She knew that
Bruno wouldn't go to the party if it meant leaving her
behind. And the last thing she wanted to do was spoil
his fun. Which meant she was almost obliged to agree.
It was also worth remembering that he had wanted her
to come along and, most flattering of all, that he'd referred
to her as branchee and la - cool, no less - in his phone
conversation with Laurent. She really didn't have a choice,
did she?
But it was only when she closed the RAV's passenger
door and reached for her seat belt -- the boys up front
didn't bother, she noticed - that her tummy did a little
flip. Whatever excuses she'd managed to come up with
to justify this little jaunt, she was forced to acknowledge
that they didn't quite hit the mark, didn't quite convince
her that what she was doing was okay. And if they didn't
convince her, they were hardly likely to convince her
dad. He would be pissed. And rightly so.
Oh God, she thought, as Laurent drove down the
Salvettes road and turned left on to Passeurs, please let
everything go right. Please lets get back before the
grown-ups. And please, please God, don't let Dad ever
find out.


The moment Thea and Bruno climbed into Laurent's
car, a neat little RAV4 with a great sound system, Thea
felt bad about it. For all her bravado in front of Bruno,
leaving the Bezards' house without permission, without
letting her father know what she was doing, did not sit
easily with her. It was deception, pure and simple, and
she knew that that was how her father would see it. If
he ever found out he would not be pleased. Seriously
not pleased.


104

As far as the Aigle d'Or sommelier, Pierre Canove, was
concerned, there was not a shadow of a doubt about it. It
was the Rlieinhardts on table seven who had saved his life.
The restaurant had been packed for the deuxieme service, every cover taken, and the brigade was rushed off its
feet. Foie gras and caviar simply flew from the kitchens,
the last of the Aigle d'Or's celebrated Chateaubriand had
been ordered within minutes of the second sitting, and
orders for Dom Perignon and Crystal were making a
serious dent in the fridged supplies that had been brought
up from the cellars earlier that day.
Other fine wines were also taking a hammering and
when Monsieur Rheinhardt selected a rare Cheval Blanc
'64 to accompany his canard roti, it was Pierre Canove
who went down to the cellars to fetch it. If Monsieur
Rheinhardt had chosen any other wine than the Cheval
Blanc '64, the sommelier would have sent one of the
waiters. But a Cheval Blanc, like the last of the deuxieme
cms '71s, the Taches and Richebourgs ordered earlier
that evening, needed special care when it came to
handling. Send down one of the waiters, and they'd scrape
off the labels as they pulled the bottles from their racks,
wipe off the dust of decades as they stuffed them under
their arms, and shake the life and soul out of them. He'd
told them a million times, but still they did it. Which
was why, for the Cheval Blanc '64, Pierre Canove elected
to make the trip himself. Besides, Monsieur and Madame
Rheinhardt had been coming to Auberge des Hauts Aigles
for years and they always dined at the Aigle d'Or. They
deserved the personal touch.
The Auberge's wine cellar ran the length of the property.
Its walls were lined with stone bins for the older
wines and metal racks for the younger ones, the pathways
between them thickly gravelled and lit with candles.
Pierre Canove had just reached the bottom of the cellar
stairs when he felt the ground tremble beneath his feet
and heard a great howling roar overhead. The trapdoor
he'd just come through slammed shut with such force
that his ears rang, every candle flame was snuffed out
and in the darkness a rack of wine toppled over, spilling
bottles on to the gravelled path.
It took a second or two for him to gather his wits.
The first thing he did was run back up the steps and
push at the trapdoor. But there was no moving it. He
knew instantly what had happened.
An avalanche. It could only be that. And a massive
one if the snow had reached as far as the cellar trapdoor.
He cocked an ear and held his breath, listening for
a sound, then shouted out: 'Quelqu'un la?' As the words
faded he strained to hear something, some response. But
no voice came back, not a sound from above save the
occasional creaking of a heavy weight on the wood
beamed ceiling that sealed him off from the rest of the
Auberge.
Pulling a lighter from his pocket, Canove flicked it
on and glanced into the dancing shadows. At the bottom
of the stairs, lying on the gravel, he spotted a toppled
candlestick. A minute later he transferred the flame from
his lighter to the wick, pocketed the lighter and, in the
candle's guttering light, he made himself comfortable on
the bottom step. Clasping his knees, digging his heels
into the gravel, he tried to imagine what it must have
been like, that terrifying blast of snow. How many friends
- how many staff and guests - had survived? he wondered.
Anyone in the main salon or the Salle du Matin would
have had little chance, he reasoned, judging by the power
of the avalanche. But the Aigle d'Or was on the second
floor. Surely they would have survived up there? And
surely rescue teams would soon be digging down in
search of survivors?
It was then, reflecting on his good fortune but realising
it would probably be a long time before anyone
reached him here in the cellars, that Pierre Canove had
an idea. Something to pass the time. And if the damage
above was as bad as he feared, then who the hell could
begrudge him?
Taking up the candle, he got to his feet and headed
for the stone bins that held the Grands Cms. Passages four
to eight. At the entrance to each passage he peered at the
dusty labels in the candlelight: Medoc, St-Estephe, Pauillac,
St-Julien and Margaux. And making his way down one
passageway after the other, he whispered the names of the
great chateaux: Lafite, Latour, Haut-Brion, Cos d'Estournel,
Mouton-Rothschild, Pichon-Lalande, Palmer.
And the vintages: '86, '82, '66, '61 - all the way back
to '29 and '28.
Twenty years now, he'd served as sommelier at the
Auberge des Hauts Aigles, twenty years tasting the wines
he recommended, savouring some of the finer half
finished bottles left on a table, occasionally sampling a Grand Cm with Monsieur Bezard to ensure the wine
wasn't past its best. But nothing more than that.
Until now.
With a sigh, Pierre Canove pulled a corkscrew from
his waistcoat pocket.
Where to start? he thought to himself.
Where to start?

105

When Marc Monbalt heard his door buzzer sound, he
was stepping out of the shower. Pulling a towel from the
rail he dried himself with a few cursory wipes, wrapped
it around his waist and went through the apartment to
open the door. He looked at his watch. A few minutes
before eleven. Who could be calling by so late?
Marc had returned home from the Bureau des Pistes
an hour earlier. He was dead beat after an afternoon shift
at the gendarmerie and a stint at the Bureau des Pistes
with Paul Garamonde, and had been looking forward to
an earlyish night. The last thing he wanted was a visitor.
Debating how to get rid of whoever it was, Marc
pulled open the door. Standing there on the open, third
floor walkway of his apartment block was his next-door
neighbour, the widow Maxine Felus, her grey hair caught
under a scarf and bony hands holding out a baking dish
wrapped in foil.
She glanced at his bare chest, the towel round his
waist, the wet hair slicked back from his forehead, lJe
m'excuse, Marc. I seem to have caught you. If it's not
convenient?'
'No . . . No, it's fine,' he stammered, stepping back,
opening the door wider. 'Come in, come in.'
'I prepared too much,' said Madame Felus with a
nervous smile, staying where she was but holding out
the dish to him. 'I know it's late. But, when I heard you
come back, I thought--'
There was no time to say any more. From the end
of the street came a sudden and sustained gust of wind
that whipped down the walkway, snatched the dish from
her hands and seemed to tip Madame Felus off balance.
By the time she recovered, leaning into the squall of
wind, reaching out a hand to Marc, a wall of snow
following the wind simply whisked her away. One
second she was there, reaching out to him, about to
say something, when this howling blast of snow sent
her spinning along the walkway like a skittle knocked
off its spot.
Not a sound from her.
Gone.
If Marc hadn't taken that single step back to open the
door for the old lady, he too might have been sucked
from his apartment by the icy maelstrom that rushed
along his walkway. As it was, he was knocked off his feet
by the blast but was far enough in to reach for a radiator feed pipe as the tornado of snow and ice hurtled
past his door - slamming it shut, blasting it open, slamming
it shut -- a whirlwind of paper and magazines and
cushions and bedding and CDs from the apartment
whipped away in a blur of rattling colour and sound, his
towel snatched from his waist, his body tugged towards
the door. It was as if someone had punctured the fuselage
of a pressurised aeroplane cabin.
Just as he was thinking he couldn't hold on another
second, the sound and the fury passed, the door to his
apartment slammed shut -- and stayed shut.
Lying there on the floor, drowned in silence, he knew
straight away what had happened and that his neighbour
was dead. As he pulled himself to his feet, his skin breaking
out in a shiver of goosebumps at the cold and the shock,
Marc felt a great sorrow for the old lady She'd been like
a mother to him, always looking out for him, taking in
his laundry, bringing him something to eat when he
came home late and alone. And that was what had killed
her, Marc thought. If only Madame Felus had stayed in
her apartment, or come round earlier, she'd still be alive.
Instead . . .
And then he remembered all his friends -- Paul and
Beni, Jean and Michelle, Patric, Sophie, their kids. And
everyone out on the town, partying after the Champions'
Dinner and looking forward to the Diable final the
following day All the people he knew in Les Hauts. All
the visitors.
Where were they? What had happened to them? Had
they been swept away like Madame Felus? Would he
ever see them again?
Running back to the bedroom Marc found his mobile
and speed-dialled the gendarmerie. The connection was
made and the number rang. And rang. And rang. Finally
the message service came on line. The same happened
with every other number he rang.
Tossing the phone on to the bed -- the sheet, pillows
and quilt stripped from it - Marc pulled on his red rescue
gear and ran back to the front door.
But there was no walkway. The door to the apartment
opened on to thin air, the top-floor balcony above
him, his own, and the one below it ripped from the side
of the building, and the road beyond buried beneath a
field of broken, lumpy snow strewn with all manner of
debris -- a three-seater ski-lift chair still attached to a
coiled length of cabling, at least two pine trees shorn of
their branches and a TV satellite dish caught and fixed
in the deadly flow.
Already, in the stillness following the roaring fury of
the avalanche, he could hear survivors calling out from
their homes, and there, at the end of his street, he spotted
someone crawling out on to the snow from a top-floor
window. Marc recognised him. It was old Geralde who
worked at the Poste. Marc watched as he got to his feet
and looked around. There was a dazed, glazed listlessness
to his movements, as though he had just woken up and
hadn't yet realised what form his alarm call had taken,
unable to comprehend the scene of desolation that
greeted him.
With no way out from the front, Marc went through
to his small galley kitchen, opened the back door and
stepped out on to the fire escape. Unlike the walkways
it was still in place, zigzagging down the back of the
building, and he clambered down to where the snow's
frozen high tide had reached. Carefully he tested his
weight on the snow and, establishing that it would hold
him, he made his way round to the front of the block.
It was then, wondering what to do first - stay and
help the neighbours, search for his friends, or report to
the gendarmerie - that the streetlights flickered out and
his world was plunged into darkness.

106

As they dropped down the Salvettes road Thea comforted
herself with the thought that at least Laurent seemed to
be a careful driver, keeping his speed low and applying
brakes in good time for the Passeurs--rue des Saintes
crossroads. Thea was thinking she'd keep an eye on his
drinking at the party and, if necessary, call a cab if she
saw him have too much, when Bruno pointed up at the
central traffic light hanging on a cable across the road.
A moment before it had hung there in front of them,
stubbornly red. Now it started to swing madly from side
to side. The next moment the cable snapped and it was
flying through the air, heading down des Saintes.
'Whoa,' said Laurent.
'Did you see that?' exclaimed Bruno.
Then the two cars in front of them started to slide
sideways, as though dragged by some invisible force. A
second later the first car, another 4x4, suddenly flipped
into the air and followed the traffic light. As it spun out
of sight, the brake-lights on the car behind it blazed frantically
but its slide continued.
'Merdel shouted Laurent.'It's a fuckin'--' and, ramming
the RAV into reverse, he swung an arm over the seat,
checked through the rear windscreen and took off backwards.
What
happened to them there at the crossroads seemed
to happen in slow motion, but Thea knew it couldn't
have been more than a few terrifying, powerless seconds.
Since there were no cars behind them, and with Les
Hauts' cinema acting as a windbreak, Laurent was five
metres back before their speed started to slacken, despite
his foot pressing hard down on the accelerator. It was
then, over his shoulder, that Thea saw the car in front
of them start to rock to and fro, the passengers inside
grabbing for something to hold on to. Then the car
tipped over on to its side and roof and started rolling.
Up ahead debris was flying straight across the street,
so fast it was difficult to tell what anything was. Suddenly
something large hit the rolling car and it spun around,
caught the blast full on and in the blink of an eye it was
gone.
'I'm losing power,' screamed Laurent, as the RAV came
to a halt and then started back the way it had come,
chips of ice and snow showering up from its spinning
tyres. 'Something's pulling us ... I can't seem to--'
His words were lost as a screaming wash of ice and
snow suddenly hurtled across the road, blanking off their
view of the way ahead, a giant dirty-white express train,
its features blurred with a fabulous speed and power.
And now, despite Laurent standing on the brake pedal
and Bruno hauling up the handbrake, the car was starting
to move faster. Picking up speed and slithering straight
towards the roaring wall of snow, sideways on to it, straddling
the centre of the road.
'Do something,' Thea screamed. 'Please do some--'
But neither boy heard her as their world tipped upside
down, the car abruptly sucked into the slipstream of the
speeding thunderous slide, its headlights spinning, its body
blasted by tumbling blocks of snow and ice.
The breath was snatched from their lungs and they
were gone.

107

If Jean Lesage hadn't stopped to light a cigarette when
he reached the corner of allee des Cols he would have
died the moment he stepped out into rue des Saintes.
The blast of wind came first, a great whistling hurricane
filled with endless detritus that it had picked up
on its way down the slopes and through Les Hauts much
of it deadly like the billboard from Les Hauts'
cinema cartwheeling past, some of it decidedly less
hazardous like the billposters ripped from the bulletin
board outside the ski-school, the waste-paper from a
dozen bins and strings of coloured bunting - a solid rush
of frigid air that snatched the cigarette and lighter from
Lesage's hands, ripped the woollen hat from his head and
sent him sprawling to the cobbles in a spinning heap,
greedily intent, it seemed, on sucking him out of the
alleyway. For what seemed a lifetime, but was probably
no more than half a minute, he found it impossible to
draw breath, as though all the air had been snatched
from the narrow confines of allee des Cols, the pressure
wave tugging at his lungs as if seeking to tear them from
his ribcage.
As he struggled to push himself away from the torrent,
out of the sucking whirlpool of wind, Lesage knew
exactly what was happening. What at first he had thought
was a lorry thundering down rue des Saintes - the reason
he'd stopped to dig for his cigarettes before stepping out
and crossing the road -- was in fact an avalanche.
A second later he knew it for certain as a jet stream
of snow followed the wind, a great boiling wave of it
sweeping down des Saintes not a metre from his left
foot. It hit the corner wall and rose up in a great plume
of snow that buried him to his chest, a spinning wastepaper
bin from a nearby bus-stop crashing off the wall,
slicing across his forehead in a glancing blow and opening
up a two-inch gash between eyebrow and hairline.
It was the waste-bin, and the wound it delivered, that
kept Lesage conscious. A trickle of warm blood closed
his left eye, dripped across his cheek and seeped into the
collar of his coat, the pain sparking his reflexes, kick
starting his survival instincts as effectively as a slap across
the face. Desperately he hauled himself out of the snow,
fell against the wall and tried to scuttle back along the
allee, now a tunnel as a shadowy rushing spume flew
over the rooftops, bridging the passageway and blocking
out the night sky.
And then, as though someone had pulled a plug from
its socket, the fury abated and the massive slide slowed
to a halt, a wall of snow more than five metres high
packing down, compressing, squeaking and groaning with
its own subsiding weight.
At both ends of the allee des Cols.
Staggering to his feet, wiping the blood from his face,
it took a moment or two -- wondering at his close escape
-- for Lesage to remember where he had come from,
where he had spent the evening.
His wife's bedside, and the perspex cot that his daughter
lay in.
Hopital des Hauts.
At the other end of allee des Cols and just three blocks
down rue du Courcelle.
Running back the way he had come, Jean Lesage
reached the plug of snow and ice at the end of allee des
Cols and started climbing.
He was halfway up the wall when the lights of Les
Hauts shut off and darkness -- a deep velvet darkness --
fell over the town.

108

They were lying together in Benoit s bed, Francine curled
into his arm and running her thumb over the cleft in
his chin, when something seemed to buffet against the
bedroom wall, making the window-panes rattle in their
frame. It was as if a giant had laid his shoulder against
the building and given it an unexpected shove.
Down the corridor, in the kitchen, a saucepan toppled
from the cooker and clattered on to the floor.
'Jesu, what was that?' said Benoit, jerking up from the
pillow.
There was a second's silence and then a distant, but
distinctive,'whumph' sound from across the Lycee playing
fields.
They said the word together -'Avalanche!' - and leaped
from the bed, Francine pulling on her clothes while Benoit
went to the window and hauled up the blind.
'Looks like a slide on Passeurs,' he said. 'Just licked
across the road beyond Salvettes.' Going to the side of
the window, he peered through it at an angle, the only
way he could see Les Hauts, even if the view was half
blocked by the end of a hangar. 'It all looks okay . . .'
Across the bed, Francine had dressed and was running
from the room. In the salon, candles still burning on the
table, she searched for her bag, found it, pulled out her
mobile and phoned the hospital. Usually her call was
picked up within three rings, but by nine . . . ten . . .
there was still no answer.
'The lights,' she heard Benoit say. 'Christ, the lights
have just gone out. Everywhere.'


The first emergency call was made within minutes of
the avalanche coming to a stop two hundred metres short
of the Centre des Pompiers Municipal. While his four
strong road crew leaped up into their rigs and set off
for the four-metre-high frozen wave of snow and debris
spilled across Passeurs and blocking the road into town,
Jules Dessin ran to his office and, confirming the phone
lines were down, radioed the mountain emergency centre
in Cariol.
Details were taken, assurances given and ten minutes
later calls were going out to all available emergency
medical teams, the Army base at Gassonnet, and the US
3rd Airborne in Chavalotte.
Medical teams were accessed through the emergency
switchboard at Albertville general hospital and phones
and pagers started ringing shortly after eleven-twenty.
Forty minutes later the three-man emergency crew on
standby at Albertville hospital was joined by the call-outs.
Twenty minutes after that the first of three Medi-Express
helicopters had started up its rotors when instructions
came over the pilots' headsets that they were to fly to
Chavalotte rather than head direct for Les Hauts. There
were strong headwinds over two thousand metres and
the 3rd Airborne's heavier and stronger Chinooks would
be making the first run to the mountains. Conditions
were set to improve around dawn, but until then rescue
flights would have to be re-routed through Chavalotte.
It would mean a delay, they all knew, but it was the safer
option. Better the teams getting through to Les Hauts
than being swept into the side of a mountain. And maybe
starting another avalanche.
These same instructions were relayed to the French
Army base at Gassonnet where a dozen trucks were
already loading up men and supplies for the short trip
to Albertville. Instead of indicating right when pulling
out of the base, the lead vehicle turned to the left, the
Chavalotte road, and the rest of the convoy roared after
it. Three hours after the emergency call from Jules Dessin
was received, three American Chinook helicopters, loaded
with emergency rescue teams, food and medical supplies,
lifted off the tarmac and swung east, over the rising slopes
of the Dauphine plain and up into the mountains.

no

It wasn't the blast of frozen air preceding the avalanche
that killed the Austrian skier Hans Lenterbrun, or the
wall of snow and ice that followed. It was a bark-stripped
trunk of spruce -- branchless, splintered at both ends,
snapped clean from its roots above the Mijoux run and
hurled down on to Les Hauts by the icy hurricane that
followed it. Cartwheeling across the Pas des Enfants the
tree-trunk missed the Auberge by less than a metre,
tumbled down the allee des Neiges and rose into the air
like a spinning propeller. It was the last thing that Hans
Lenterbrun saw.
After leaving the Champions' Dinner Lenterbrun had
decided to drown his sorrows at Mique's. The fact that
no one recognised him only served to deepen his gloom.
There he was on the TV above the bar, coming in
slope-shouldered behind Zaitsev, but no one made the
connection. Even if he was still wearing his dinner suit,
with the Diable competitor's medal pinned to the lapel.
Perhaps, he decided, it was just as well.There was nothing
worse than recognition followed by commiseration, not
that he had had too much experience of that in his
racing career. After sinking a couple of pressions, feeling
a certain unexpected comfort in the anonymity, he had
moved on to shots of Jaegermeister. But rather than
ease any pain, the alcohol only increased his self-absorption
and despondency. This, he decided, was the worst
day of his life, a day he would never forget. And the
sooner it was over, the better. He left some money on
the bar, pulled on his coat and carefully negotiated the
steps leading down from Mique's to the place. At the
bottom he looked around, got his bearings and started
back to his lodgings. Feeling bitterly sorry for himself,
he had reached the corner of his street when he heard
a deafening sound blast down one of the allees leading
to the front de neige, and turned in time to see what
looked like a brown twig whistling towards him. In the
blink of an eye, the twig was the size of a tree trunk,
and in another instant it smashed against his head and
chest like a giant uppercut, separating the top and bottom
halves of his body at the belt as cleanly and effectively
-- though a great deal faster -- as a surgeon's saw. The
crumpled, rag-doll remains of his upper body were
hurled against the walls of the Boulangerie Bernard
while his bare legs, stripped in an instant of his trousers
and thermal long Johns but still laced into his boots,
were sent spinning down the slope towards rue des
Hauts.

Ill

It was the cold that woke Alex, a sharp, pressing chill
that felt like the points of a thousand knives pricking at
his cheeks, his forehead, his hands.
It was . . . painful, the cold.
Painful enough to wake him.
Which meant ... he was alive.
He knew at once that he'd been caught in an avalanche.
And he knew that he'd survived - for now. He hadn't
died. Thank God. Thank God. Thank God . . .
It was then, at that very moment of soaring elation
and relief, that a mighty punch was delivered straight
into his solar plexus, the force of the blow snatching
away what little breath he possessed:
Thea.
He grappled with the name, trying to sort the flood
of information that stormed into his brain.
Thea. At Patric's house with Bruno. Stretched out on
the floor watching The Simpsons when he and Mathilde
had left them just a few hours earlier. Impatient for the
grown-ups to leave so they could have the house to
themselves.
But were they safe? Had the avalanche struck them?
Had it come from a side valley and swamped Salvettes,
or raced straight down from the Hauts des Cols?
Alex tried to think, to work it out.
If the slide had started on the Hauts des Cols, homes
on the Plesse and Salvettes ridges would have been spared
the worst. But if the slide had started up on the Plesse
ridge, or higher up Salvettes or on Vialle . . . that was
another matter!
At least Patric's house was high, Alex thought, feeling
a certain comfort in the fact. One of the highest in Les
Hauts, he knew, built more than a century earlier below
the first treeline and on a rising stand of granite. They'd
be safe there, surely? A slide from whichever direction
could never have reached as high as that. Could it?
And then . . .
A second name sprang at him.
Mathilde.
One minute he'd been crossing the place with her,
wondering what they should do next, now that the
Champions' Dinner was over, where they should go,
whether he dared just stop there in the place and lean
down and kiss her . . .
And the next minute, her coat-tails and scarf had been
flung across his face and her arm had been ripped from
his . . .
And she wasn't there any more.
As though spirited away.
Just gone.
Their names ricocheted through Alex's head . . .
Thea. Mathilde.
Thea. Mathilde.
Thea . . .
And then Alex felt the searing, fiery points of those
knives again, pressing deeper into his face, his hands; each
icy blade-tip close to puncturing the skin. And he remembered
where he was. What had happened.
He must move. He must do something.
And he must find them.
Thea.
Mathilde.

112

She'd been surfing, Mathilde decided. She was at the
family's summer home near Hossegor, the large wood
plank villa set in the dunes above a border of breakers
and golden sand. She'd gone surfing, as she'd done every
summer from the moment she was old enough to clamp
the board to her belly and ride the waves. Except this
time she'd been caught in a wipe-out, the wave chasing
her, overtaking her, snatching her from the board and
tossing her about in its spuming, swirling waters.
Except . . . why was she surfing at night? wondered
Mathilde.
Why wasn't she spinning through a torrent of thunderous
water and bubbles and sand?
And why, come to think of it, had the crashing wave
that snatched her off her board suddenly come to a stop?
An icy, silent stop?
As Mathilde's senses reasserted themselves, she took in the surroundings. Not water, but a pressing, squeezing
weight of cold. No light and no sound save a deadening,
creaking silence.
She knew she'd curled into a ball when the wave or
whatever it was - struck, just as her father had taught
her. 'Don't fight it, my darling, the sea will always be
bigger and stronger than you. Just find the current that
the wave sends out in its wake, swim towards it and
gravity and the air in your lungs will do the rest.'
Except. . . there was no current. And her arms seemed
unwilling - or unable - to make any movement at all.
And gravity seemed to be playing no part at all in the
process of surfacing. It was as if she was being held under
the water, trapped beneath the surface, and it dawned on
Mathilde that she couldn't really say for certain if she was
upside down, or sideways, or the right way up. So monumental
had the wave been that, in the tumbling, rushing
moments before it heaved to such an unexpected stop,
she had completely lost any kind of spatial awareness.
Mathilde suddenly remembered where she'd been
when the wave struck. In Place des Sommets. At least
six hundred kilometres from the beach at Hossegor. And
then, with a realisation as chill as the icy tomb that held
her, a single word clamoured in her head.
Avalanche. Avalanche. Avalanche.
She'd been caught in an avalanche. Not a rogue wave
on the Atlantic coast. An avalanche in the French Alps.
Like that slide that caught her on Diable. That was how
it felt. That day when the ground had fractured into
snowy crazy-paving, given way beneath her and swallowed
her up.
Had it not been for that hand snatching at hers, Alex's
hand . . .
Alex. Alex.
In that dark, icy place, the name registered with a
bright blast of clarity. And what they'd been doing. The
two of them coming down the steps of the Auberge,
after the Champions' Dinner, his arm looping through
hers, drawing her to him as they stepped carefully across
the icy skin of the place. And how she'd liked the feel
of it. His arm, clamping her to him. The strength of it.
The determination. He liked her, she knew it, and she
. . . well, she liked him too. She had never known a man
like him. So kind, so gentle, with those deep, dark, sad
soulful eyes . . .
And she remembered, lying there in her snowy tomb,
how she'd wondered where they would go, where he
would take her? What they would do, now that the
dinner was over? She'd also been thinking what it would
be like to kiss this man, when there came a low, growling
sound, a distant rumble of thunder that grew into a
shrieking roar, like a giant bellowing in their ears. She
felt again that sudden gust of wind and saw once more
the man weaving his way across the place, staggering up
the slope, then turning towards the blast in a kind of
frame-by-frame slow motion, and . . . and something had
hit him, something huge and long and spinning. And
then he was gone, not there any more, just whipped
away.
And the next instant she and Alex were caught in the
same blast, the two of them torn apart and sent tumbling
and spinning through a vast shower of snow . . .


Avalanche.
Avalanche ...
They'd been caught in an avalanche.
But as the word sank in, all sense of fear, or horror,
or desperation at her circumstances seemed to fade She
even felt the start of a giggle, amused to think that in
the last couple of weeks she had survived not one, but
two separate avalanches. Two slides in a fortnight and
she was still alive. What were the odds on that? she
wondered. And as she lay there, the cold press of snow
that packed against her body seemed to settle into a kind
of strange, swaddling warmth.
Of all the ridiculous things, thought Mathilde.
How extraordinary ...
Suddenly all she wanted to do was close her eyes and
drift off to sleep.

113

It took Jean Lesage forty minutes to make it back to
Hopital des Hauts, in normal circumstances an easy stroll
that would have taken no more than seven or eight
minutes.	, ,
But these weren't normal circumstances. Once he
pulled himself to the top of the snow wall blocking off
allee des Cols, it was as if he'd climbed into a different
world. Standing on the frozen surface of a great white
river packed between the brick banks of what had once
been rue du Courcelle, Jean gazed around in dread disbelief
at a landscape that bore little relation to the town
he'd grown up in. A landscape shrouded in darkness, lit
only by a scatter of glittering distant stars. A lunatic's
landscape of tumbled ice and snow, nothing less than a
surreal stage set devised by some experimental theatre
group in which the root boll of a pine tree rose from
the snow like a giant black mushroom, a shattered telephone
kiosk caught in its tentacled grip. And not a single
actor save him on this chill-whipped stage, standing there
in a darkness that glistened with snow crystals, clouds of
them settling on to the tumbled mass of snow that had
swept down and obliterated his home town.
But there was no time to wonder at these new
surroundings. His wife and child were three blocks away,
and Jean had to get to them.
He quickly discovered that this was easier said than
done, his journey back to the Hopital des Hauts on Place
des Passeurs a hazardous, stumbling trek across a snow
boulder terrain that rose to the level of du Courcelle s
rooftops. It was a shadowy, slippery, ankle-jarring path
littered with debris and cut with treacherous gaps that
he was forced to jump across, praying that the snow he
landed on would bear his weight. Twice it didn't and he
had to drag himself out of icy trenches.
After thirty minutes he noticed that the level of the
snow was dropping, sloping down, revealing for the first
time the top-floor windows of the buildings on du
Courcelle. Here, he knew, the flow of the avalanche had
started to ease, the surge weakening, its terrifying power
playing out.
But if he thought the journey was going to get any
easier, he was mistaken. As he reached the bend at the
bottom of du Courcelle, the river of snow tilted dramatically,
reaching up above the right-hand rooftops but
dropping down as low as pavement level on the left. It
would have been so easy to slide down that slope and
reach the pavement, and he would have done so had it
not been for a wrecker's yard of cars and vans and bikes,
once parked along du Courcelle but swept up in the
fury of the avalanche and bulldozed into a tangled mountain
of twisted metal effectively blocking his path. Instead
Lesage had to clamber up the right-hand slope and, at
rooftop level, negotiate his way around the obstacle until,
finally, he was able to clamber down on to solid ground.
Out of the path of the avalanche, head throbbing
from the gash above his eye, Lesage started to run, making
for the small square whose western side was occupied
by the Hopital des Hauts. But as he turned into the place his heart sank. If the bend in rue du Courcelle had
slowed and diverted the path of the avalanche, the wide,
arrow-straight boulevard des Passeurs had put nothing
in its way, funnelling the avalanche across the square and
piling it up in a steep snowy slope against the stone
clad and timbered facade of the Hopital des Hauts.
Racing towards the slope, all Lesage could see was the
top line of windows just below roof level.
His wife and his daughter were one floor below.

114

Patric and Sophie had left the Auberge just a few discreet
minutes after Alex and Mathilde, and were standing on
the front steps when the avalanche hit. They were talking
to the concierge Didier Lougin -- to give their friend
some time alone with Mathilde - when a screaming blast
of freezing air from the lobby burst through the double
doors and sent Lougin tumbling down the steps.
Seconds later an armchair from the reading room
slammed into the doorframe and wedged itself there,
damming most of the roaring cascade of snow that
followed.
Pulling Sophie to him, the two of them cowering into
the log wall of the Auberge, Patric looked over her shoulder
in time to see slabs of snow hurtle down from the roof,
and two huge claws of snow shoot out from the allees either side of the Auberge, surging into Place des Sommets
like a high, hungry tide.
Twenty metres away he saw the right-hand claw race
towards Alex and Mathilde and snatch them up like crumbs
before a brush, sweeping them towards the centre of the place where it joined forces with the left-hand claw. The
point where the two waves met suddenly rose upwards
in a tumbling vortex of churning snow several metres
high that swallowed in one mighty gulp the fountain and
statue ofValentina.
On and on it raged, a roaring tide that filled the place like sugar poured into a bowl, its surface growing higher
and higher with every second as the narrow opening at
the bottom of the place held it back, limited its flow.
With no quick way forward, no real means of escape,
the snow kept rising, splashing up past the square's second
floor windows, its roiling surface spewing out wrapped
parasols, wooden loungers and lines of fencing before
sucking them back under again. As far as Patric could
see only the corner entrance to the Bar Mique and this
side of the Auberge had escaped the deadly tide.
And then the flow creaked to a stop and everything
went quiet. An absolute, deadening silence as though the
whole town was holding its breath.
But the silence didn't last long. A burglar alarm from
some buried shop started up and through the cold, still
night air more alarms began to sound - other shops, and
parked cars too. And from above, with a terrifying screech,
a log beam from the topmost corner of the Auberge tore
free of its holding and came crashing down on to the
roof of Maire Bruchet's Mitsubishi, the 4x4's back windscreen
exploding in a spray of glass chips. Further
screeches came from above as a second and then a third
beam followed, effectively flattening the mayor's car, Patric
and Sophie ducking away in case one of the beams
toppled the wrong way on to the Auberge steps or
brought down the porch roof on top of them.
'You okay?' whispered Patric, loosening his grip on
his wife.
'I'm fine. I'm fine,' Sophie replied, pushing free from
his embrace and looking out at the place. There was a
shocked, wondering expression on her face. 'Matti! Alex!'
And then, with a sudden, desperate, overriding concern,
she turned back to Patric. 'The boys. Philippe, Bruno.
And Thea. Will they--'
'They'll be fine, they'll be fine,' he reassured her, remembering
the claws of snow, sweeping into the place from
both sides of the Auberge at exactly the same moment.
Which meant that the avalanche must have come down
from the Hauts des Cols, a direct hit on the front of the
Auberge. By his reckoning the avalanche would have
passed their home by a considerable margin. 'The slide's
come down from the Cols. It couldn't have hit the ridge.
Did you bring your mobile? Call the house. And call
Philippe. You'll see.'
While Sophie scrabbled about in her clutch bag, found
her mobile and punched out the first number, Patric ran
down the steps to Lougin.The old concierge was unconscious
but alive, a livid red graze standing out on his
forehead where the side of the door had hit him. Patric
propped him up against the steps, made him comfortable,
then raced to the snowfield which now filled Place
des Sommets like a great plug of meringue, its edge a
steep slope of crumpled snow rising more than four
metres above him. Somewhere out there Alex and
Mathilde were buried.
As he started up the wall, scrabbling for a foothold,
Patric wished he was wearing boots. The patent leather
pumps he'd put on for the Champions' Dinner were more
encumbrance than help, impossible to get a grip with.
From somewhere below him, over the dulled, buried
wail of alarms, he heard Sophie get through to Philippe.
He felt a wave of relief flood over him. One son accounted
for. Safe and sound. Thank God, thank God, thank God.
As he struggled up the side of the snowpack, he prayed
that Bruno was too. And Thea. And that he was right
about the direction and strength of the avalanche. With
avalanches, you couldn't take anything for granted.
From below, Sophie called up to him. 'Patric. Patric.
The house. There's no answer. I can't get Bruno.'
'The lines'll be down for sure. Try his mobile. They've
probably gone out to see what happened.'
'I tried,' wailed Sophie. 'Nothing.'
Patric felt icy fingers close round his heart.
'They'll be fine,' he shouted back, trying to believe it
himself, trying to persuade himself that Bruno and Thea
probably had left the house to see what was happening,
and that his son actually had left his mobile behind. And
it did make sense. It did fit. 'Knowing Bruno he forgot
to take it with him,' he continued, finally hauling himself
over the lip of the snowpack as Sophie started up the
wall after him, her trouser suit more fitting for the climb
than the skirt she'd considered wearing, but her shoes as
useless as his. 'You know what he's like. It's just the kind
of thing he'd do,' said Patric, lying on his stomach and
reaching down to pull her up.
'You're right, you're right,' she panted, struggling over
the lip and flopping down beside him. 'I'm sorry. It's
just . . .'
'What about Philippe? What did he say? Is he okay?'
'He's fine, thank God. Tipped out of bed, that's all. I
told him where we were and he said he'd be here just
as soon as he can.'
Helping each other to their feet, Patric and Sophie
looked around from their new and unfamiliar vantage
point, a metre or so above the roof of the Auberge porch
All the way round the edge of the place, other figures
had appeared -- squirming out of second-floor windows
on to the snow, or climbing up the edges as they had
done. And where before there had been only a stunned
silence when the avalanche finally came to a halt, voices
could now be heard as well as alarms -- isolated, uncertain,
echoing. Pleas for help, a scream of pain, a hesitant,
shouted name:
'Gilles?'
'Petra?'
'Georgie? Answer me. Where are you?'
Filling her lungs, Sophie added her voice to the
growing roll-call of names starting to echo around the place.'Matti? Mathilde? Can you hear me? Alex? Aaaa-lex.'
And then every streetlight and house-light around the place went out in a single blink, the Auberge's spotlights
dying more slowly. But dying all the same. Just the wail
and beep-beep-beep of alarms in the darkness, and a
sudden clamour of frightened voices.
'Where did you last see them,' shouted Sophie, now
just a dim shadow to Patric's right.
'Just about where we're standing,' said Patric, trying
to get his bearings, trying to gauge the flow and direction
of the snow before it halted. 'But they won't be
here now. They'll have been swept across the place, down
towards rue des Sommets.That's where we need to look.'
'Let's just hope that they didn't hit the fountain,' said
Sophie as they set off across the snowpack, clambering
across the broken, slab-strewn snow, heading for the far
end of the place. Normally there was a slope here, but
even in the darkness both of them could see that the
surface of the snow was level, which meant it would be
deeper by a metre or more at the bottom end of the
square.
For what seemed an age the two of them scoured the
surface of the snow at the bottom end of the place, at
the entrance to the passage that led to rue des Sommets,
digging here and there, calling out Alex's and Mathilde's
names, a vivid, chilling desperation directing their efforts
and sharpening their voices.
Twice Sophie stopped to call Bruno, breaking the
connection as soon as she got the answering service.
'Next time leave a message,' said Patric gently. 'So he
knows we're okay'
'Didn't I do that?' asked Sophie in a kind of wonderment,
that she could have forgotten to do something so
obvious. She was about to redial when suddenly, in the
gloom, not five metres from where they worked at the
snow, they heard a voice -- a jubilant, terrified shout.
'A foot. Alors, I think I've found a foot. Vitel Vitel Id!

115

It didn't take Alex more than a few moments to work
out his position. The oyster of warm phlegm that he'd
pushed from his mouth curled over his top lip, slid down
the line of his nose and pooled into his left eye. Which
meant only one thing: he was lying on his back with
his legs directly above him, the top of his head pressed
against the snow and his arms crossed, and clamped,
pharaoh-like, against his chest.
A cold, icy dread stole into Alex's belly, reached for
his vitals and squeezed. He didn't need anyone to tell
him that this was about the worst position to be in. If
he pushed with his legs he'd simply sink deeper into the
snow and with his arms trapped where they were there
was no way he could 'swim' his way out.
Fighting back a wave of desperation he tried to think
what to do. How deep was he? How long had he been there? And then . . . how long did he have to live?
Suddenly, without warning, images of Thea flashed
into his mind. The baby in a pram, a pair of wide, questioning
eyes peeping over her blanket, he and Tandie
taking turns to push her around Battersea Park; the little
girl sitting cross-legged in the front row of her first
Wrokely Hall photo; the sulky teenager who had pretty
much ignored him the whole way out to Les Hauts; and
the young lady in her sprigged dress who'd looked so
achingly like her mother.
In an instant his resolve hardened, the thought of
his daughter filling his trapped limbs with a determination
to be free, to be out of there. He must do it for
Thea, he must survive for her. He couldn't let his
daughter lose two parents in the space of just eighteen
months. She needed him, now more than ever. And
they'd been getting on so well together. For the first
time in her short life he was getting to know his
daughter. And she him. With a wince of pain he remembered
her sliding on to his lap, wrapping her arms round

him and sobbing into his collar, her hot, catching breath
on his neck.
Oh God, oh God, thought Alex, the pool of phlegm
that had slipped across his left eyelid just minutes earlier
now turned to a scab of ice, cracking and breaking up
as he squeezed his eyes tight, trying to shake off the
memories. This is just unbearable. I must get out, I must get
out. But how?
Letting out a sudden, desperate gasp of air Alex felt
his chest deflate and his arms loosen in the snow's grip.
He couldn't afford to put too much carbon dioxide into
the tiny air pocket he'd been granted but he emptied
his lungs once again, sucking in his chest and stomach.
This time he managed to shuffle his arms free and slowly,
pulling away from the snow, he brought a hand to his
face. He poked out his tongue and felt for his fingers in
the darkness. He tasted their rough tips and felt an unaccountable
surge of elation.
He was doing something; he was going to get out of
there. He was going to survive. For Thea.
But after five minutes all he'd managed to do with
those five freed fingertips was scrape a hole no larger
than a fist in the snowpack that entombed him.
At this rate it would take a month to dig himself out.
And he didn't have a month.
He had just a handful of minutes, how many he
couldn't calculate. But that was all. Just minutes.
Either he'd suffocate or he'd freeze.
And then something gripped his ankle, tugged at his

foot.

116

Mathilde knew she was falling asleep, drifting deeper and
deeper into a warm, weightless dream, wrapped in a snug,
coddling duvet of. . .
Snow! Ice!
The words screamed through her head.
If she fell asleep she would die.
Instantly she sprang awake.
And knew that this time there would be no hand
reaching for her. If she was to live she must push away
sleep, push away surrender and fight for her life.
How long did she have? she wondered, as though
considering some objective puzzle. She'd read the stories
in the newspapers, heard the bar-room tales in Mique's.
Fifteen minutes if she was less than a metre from the
surface, ten minutes if she'd ended up between one and
two metres. If she'd been buried deeper than that. . .
Of course, she'd also heard the stories of people dug
from the snow having survived hours, sometimes days
in their icy tombs. But they were just stories. People
trapped in homes, in basements, or cars or railway
carriages. Right then, cocooned in snow; grim reality
seemed to be telling her an altogether different tale. If
she wanted to live there was no time to lose.
The trouble was, she didn't know how long she had
been there. And she didn't know how deep she was. And
she didn't yet know in which direction to dig. At least
she'd kept her mouth shut, as she would have done in
a wave, so no snow had packed into it to freeze into a
ball and suffocate her.
For a full thirty seconds, taking the tiniest breaths, she
made a mental inventory of her body, from toes to snow
crusted eyelids, scanning for pain, for responses. Had she
broken an ankle, a leg, an arm . . . her back, her neck?
Her heart started to hammer at the prospect of severe
injury but she knew that a hammering heart would do
her no good. She must stay calm, conserve her energy.
And think.
First things first.
Having established that she appeared to have sustained
no serious or immobilising injury, the next thing to do
was see if she was able to move. If she could, she should
do so quickly before her body heat melted the snow
that was packed around her and turned it into a hard
icy shell. She wiggled her feet, her toes - where were
her shoes? Next she concentrated on her legs, side by
side, bent in just the same way she bent them in bed,
one knee just above the other, and she managed a very
abbreviated cycling motion with her thighs, as though
she was pushing down on the pedals of a bike. So far,
everything below her waist seemed to be in working
order, but with movement restricted to no more than a
few centimetres.
The top half of her body felt a little less cramped.
Her left arm was raised towards her head as though

shading her eyes from sunshine and there was a pocket
of snow-free, air-filled space between arm and chest. Her
other arm was flung outwards as though making a Nazi
salute, and her head, bent slightly forward, tilted a little
to the left.
Having gathered all the available information, she tried
to picture her shape in her mind. All she could think of
was the crouch of a shot putter in the seconds before
the ball is thrown -- legs bent, one arm in, one arm out.
What she had to do now was harness that spring-like
position and use it to push up and out of her coffin
before she froze to death or suffocated.
But which way was up?
She'd heard of people caught in avalanches actually
digging themselves deeper in to the snow. But in a flash,
she remembered how to tell which way was up and
which way was down.
Pee or spit.
Since she'd visited the Ladies' room minutes before
leaving the Auberge, she didn't need to pee. So she sucked
some moisture on to her tongue and opened her mouth.
And then she was coughing, choking, as the wedge
of saliva slid down her throat.
She was on her back!
And then the configuration of her body made sense:
her curled legs were in front of her, and her knees a
little below chest height. It was as if she'd been sitting
in a recliner and had just leaned forward - to reach for
something? To stand up? - when the movement had
been frozen, as though someone had pressed the 'Pause'
button on a DVD.
And then she realised how lucky she'd been.
If the saliva had dropped from her open mouth she'd
have been the other way round, lying on her stomach,
and it would have been a great deal harder to dig a way
out.

117
Garamonde picked up a piece of roof tiling from the
road and hurled it with all his might at the front window
of a neighbourhood hardware shop. Six blocks west of
rue des Sommets where the avalanche had failed to reach
- its charge down the mountain broken by the barrier
of hotels and restaurants along the front de neige, and
absorbed in the streets behind - the shops were more
practical in terms of merchandise. Which suited
Garamonde s purpose admirably.
He watched the stone slate wheel through the air and
then shatter the glass. Beside him Coco gave a couple
of barks and wagged her tail excitedly.
cReste. Reste la,' ordered Garamonde and he stepped
through the smashed window. Behind the counter he
pulled the most powerful torch he could find from the
shelves and, checking to see it had batteries, he switched
it on. A thick white beam of light flooded the darkened
shop and he flashed it around to see what else he could
find. Without a thought he helped himself to a wide
plastic-scooped shovel, an ice axe and a pair of jointed
probes, then shattered the glass top of the serving counter
and reached in for a hefty sheathed hunting knife. If
Nathalie had been caught by the slide he'd need them
all to find her.
And time, of course. He'd need time most of all.
Outside he heard Coco start up another round of
excited barking. Thinking she might have found something,
Garamonde climbed back out of the shop.
The first thing he saw was snow, drifting down from
the night sky, enough of it to cover Coco's back in a
long white scar.





118

In the pitch-black icy womb that held her there was just
enough space for Mathilde to use her left hand to scrape
away at the snow. Her outstretched right arm was still
held fast in what felt as heavy and unyielding as a plaster
of Paris cast, but as she dug away with the left, opening
up the space around her head and shoulders, relieving
the pressure, she felt her right arm start to free up -- gradually at first, but then more easily -- and she pushed
and wiggled her elbow and wrist to speed things up.
Seconds later a large lump of icy snow dropped past her
face and exploded in her lap. It made her heart skip a
beat - was it the start of a cave-in? Would she be smothered?
-- but she now had both arms free and a sizeable amount
of space in front of her.
If it hadn't been so dark she would have seen the rope
hanging down in front of her face, released by the fall
of snow that had trapped her arm. The only way she
knew it was there was when its end slapped hard and
icy against her cheek as she scrabbled frantically at the
snow. She snatched for it in the darkness as though it
might be pulled away from her at any moment, missed
it, then felt for it more carefully and finally gripped it
in her freezing fingers. She knew immediately what it
was and realised, with a surge of relief, where it led.
Upwards.
Five minutes later, after working the rope like a crazed
bell-ringer, scouring its frozen strands against the snow,
she was able to pull herself into a more upright position,
a shower of icy flakes dropping into her collar and
slipping down the front of her blouse. If the avalanche
had come in daylight she might have been able to see
- get some idea of her progress, and how close or distant
she was from the surface. But now, at night, there was
nothing beyond a terrifying inky blackness, no difference
between closed and opened eyes.
Every few minutes Mathilde let go of the rope and
reached upwards, calculating the progress she'd made,
scraping with her hands to spare the rope. She knew that
if it broke before she got near the surface the chances
of getting out would be greatly reduced.
What she didn't think to consider was how the rope
got there and how it had become frozen in such a short
time.
She found out after a few more minutes when the
path of the rope slanted to the right, and the amount of
play it had provided diminished suddenly. It was clearly
attached to something. She let go of the rope and pushed
her hands into the opening, scraping away at the snow.
By now she'd pulled herself forward enough to be close
to kneeling and pushing upwards she felt a knot and a
stiff fold of material, like washing left out on a frosty
night.
She knew from its bulk that it was a body, and since
there was no response from her prodding she assumed
whoever it belonged to was dead. Carefully she moved
to the left, calculating that if it unexpectedly broke free
from the snow and ice that held it she would be directly
underneath.
It was a fortunate move. Just seconds later the body
collapsed into the space that she had opened up, wedging
up against the tops of her legs.
For a moment she thought she was trapped but
stretching out her arms she realised that the falling body
had opened up even more space above it, and that, miraculously,
the rope continued upwards. If she could free her
legs, work her way round the body and then - just a
horrible thought - stand on it, she'd be at least a metre
closer to the surface. And life.
Gingerly, as respectfully as she could, she tried to push
the body aside, manoeuvre it out of her way. But there
was an unexpected weight to it. Not a dead, pliant weight
- a man judging by the trousers - but a solid, frozen
weight. She knew this for certain when, in the darkness,
she felt the end of a sleeve and then a hand, the fingers
frozen into icy stiffened talons. Whoever it was had been
under the snow a lot longer than her. This was no
avalanche victim, this was . . . this was . . .
And then Mathilde felt a strap around the wrist, like
a watch. But as her fingers examined it she decided it
was more of a loop, a loop that seemed to be attached
to something. Holding her breath she let her fingers
follow it until they came to ... a handle. And at the
end of the handle, the twin curved blades of... an ice axe.
A climber. The body belonged to a climber, a mountaineer.
Someone killed in the mountains -- weeks,
months, maybe even years earlier. A climber brought
down from the mountains with the avalanche.
Her heart soared at the discovery. If she could get that
ice axe off the man's wrist, if she could make enough
room for a swing she could forget using her hands or
the rope. She'd be able to dig her way out with the axe.
But getting the axe free wasn't as easy as she'd hoped.
Like the rope tied to the climber's waist, the strap had
stiffened in the cold and had to be wrenched from the
wrist with a sickening series of tugs and corresponding
snaps. Just as well it was dark, she thought to herself. For
all she knew the snapping could be fingers broken off
the hand.
After a half-dozen grunting pulls, the loop finally separated
from the man's wrist. But as it did so the body
lurched against her and in the darkness she felt the man's
back and shoulders topple on to her.
Still gripping the axe, Mathilde raised her hands and
pushed at the shoulders, trying to get the body off her.
It was then that two things happened.
As she gripped the shoulders of the corpse she realised
it had no head. Just the collar of a parka and the splintered,
jagged stub of a neck.
Stifling a scream, instinctively pushing away from the
body, she then felt a strange vibration in the small of her
back.

For a moment she couldn't think what it was. And
then she remembered.

119

There was not much that Alex could do to help either
himself or his rescuers as they dug him from his snowy
grave. With the ice and snow cleared from his legs, the
unsupported weight seemed to push him deeper and
deeper into the snow and there was nothing he could
do about it, his mouth curled into a grimace of pain as
a twisting shaft of cramp skewered down through his
calf muscle and into his toes, his lungs screaming for
air.
'He's alive, all right,' he heard someone say and, with
what seemed like only suffocating moments to live, he
marvelled at it.
'Hold on there, big fella, and stop that kicking,' the
voice continued.
Then, after what seemed like hours, hands had him
by the waist, fingers feeling for a grip on the band of
his trousers.
Please God, please don't let them be pulled off, thought
Alex, aching now to use some of his own remaining
strength to get himself out of there, to push himself free.
It happened soon enough, with a series of final tugs
that had him hauled out feet first from the snow, like an
animal dragged from its burrow, his shirt and jacket sliding
over his head in a wet, white, icy covering.
For a moment he lay there on his back, on the lumpy
snow, suddenly too exhausted and too cold to move.
'Get a blanket, anything,' shouted a voice that sounded
vaguely familiar.
Someone pulled the shirt off his face and Alex
squeezed open his eyes. High above he could see a spread
of glittering stars haloing the outline of a shadowed face,
a fall of hair. He didn't need to see the features to know who it was. The voice had been familiar. It belonged to

Patric.
'Alex? Alex? You okay? You're up. We found you.'
He spoke in French, then repeated everything in
English, wiping the snow and ice from Alex's face, the
crystal dust slicing across his icy cheeks like a thousand
razors.
Alex tried to brush away the hand, but he couldn't
manage it, couldn't raise his arm.
He tried to say something but a swollen tongue
blocked the words. He sucked at his cheeks for saliva,
parted his lips and felt a trickle of snow melting between
them. He hadn't realised how close he'd come to suffocating
in that icy hole, upside down in the snow, dying
alone with just a flickering home movie ofThea running
through his head, knowing he would never see her
again.
Thea!
With an involuntary gasp, Alex sat up and grabbed
Patric by the shoulders.
He tried to say his daughter's name but the frozen tip
of his tongue and his chattering icy teeth couldn't quite
manage the necessary sibilance. Instead the name came
out as 'Kay-ah?', 'Kay-ah?'
But Patric understood.' Chez nous. Chez nous. Tout va
bien, les enfants] he replied, knowing that now was not
the time to cause his friend any unnecessary anxiety. As
he well knew, people dug out of the snow had been
known to die of shock or heart failure following their
rescue. When Alex had his strength back, that's when
Patric would bring him up to speed. And maybe there'd
be no need. Maybe, as he'd assured his wife, Bruno and
Thea really were safe.
As expected, a look of relief spread across Alex's ice
rimed face. Releasing Patric, he settled back in the snow
and felt a wave of relief. It seemed to shiver through his
body like a ripple of sea water over corrugated sand and
then, somehow, it turned into a soothing flow of delight
that chipped a tiny smile into his chafed lips and brought
warm tears to his icy eyes.
She was safe. His daughter was alive.
Then Alex remembered the other name. 'Matti?' he
began, his lips scouring together.
Someone had found a blanket and was tucking it
around him, while two of his rescuers rubbed violently
at his legs and arms, the warmth seeping back into his
bones.
He tried the name again 'And Matti?'
Patric said nothing for a moment and then, 'We're
still looking. We'll find her.'
Alex closed his eyes, his body jarring with the
massaging hands, his teeth rattling in his head.
'Call her,' he croaked. 'Mobile. In her pocket.'

120

The higher Jean Lesage climbed, the harder it got. A
light fall of new snow caught in his eyelashes and tickled
his cheeks. As he closed on the top-floor windows of
Hopital des Hauts where the slide hadn't quite reached,
the slope steepened dramatically Already the three men
he'd been climbing with had lost their footing and slid
back down to the bottom. He could hear their voices
calling up to him, urging him on.
The four of them had met on the edge of Place des
Passeurs where another wall of snow blocked their way
They'd all had the same thought. The back of the building.
The car park entrance.Where the avalanche hadn't reached.
But it had.
That massive wave of snow pummelling down boulevard
des Passeurs had blasted through the hospital's
ground-floor reception area and accident and emergency
unit and come streaming out of the rear entrance, smashing
through windows and walls and spilling like an icy tongue
across the car park, its surface and edges littered with
gurneys and beds and trolleys. And bodies. Scattered
around like dolls on a nursery floor. Twisted shapes in
pyjamas and nightdresses and staff uniforms, some caught
by the snow - just parts of their torsos showing.
Trying not to look at the corpses, they searched the
back of the building for an easier way in. It didn't take
them long to see that access here would be even more
difficult than the front. They would have to tunnel their
way in through a wall of snow because climbing was
not an option. For two floors above the ground floor
there were no windows, just a wide expanse of brick
decorated with a mosaic mural of the peaks of Les Hauts,
the same peaks that had sent down this deluge of snow,
ice and death.
'It'll have to be the front,' Lesage had told them and
not waiting for an answer he had started back the way
they had come. 'Any of you climb?' he shouted over his
shoulder.
"Me, I done some,' said the youngest of his three
companions as they followed after him.
'You got any gear close?' asked Lesage.
The lad thought for a moment.'In the car, some rope.
But that's--'
'Where's your car?'
'Over there,' he said, pointing to a VW Beetle parked,
miraculously undamaged, only a few metres from the
tangle of wreckage at the bottom of du Courcelle.
'Get it fast,' snapped Lesage, then he turned back to
the wall of snow and dug his shoe in. 'You two, give me
a hoist up, will you?' he said.
Moments later he was on top of the sloping snow
pack and reaching down to pull up his companions, a
night-duty porter from the hospital and, dressed in pyjama
top, trousers and parka, the proprietor of a bar on the
corner of des Passeurs.
Last up was the lad with the rope.
'You and me, we go first,' said Lesage taking the coil
of rope and slinging it over his shoulder.'You two follow.
And don't come up behind us in case we fall. Compris?' Twelve minutes later, grunting and cursing their way
up the slope, one by one his three companions had lost
their hold and gone sliding back down.
Now it was just him, the coil of rope and a window
ledge no more than a metre and a half above him. Pressing
himself against the slope he pulled back a foot and kicked
the toe of his boot into the snow, testing the hold in
much the same way that he would if he was crossing an
ice field onVialle.The foothold held and he reached up,
fingers just centimetres from the ledge. Goddammit!
Pulling back his other boot he kicked in again, tested
the hold and reached up once more, his fingertips finding
purchase on the ledge a fraction of a second before the
snow gave way and his footholds were gone. With a
superhuman effort, Lesage hauled himself up on to the
ledge and squirmed through a broken window, its wooden
sash frame a skin-dicing border of splintered glass.
Safely through the window, ending up in a pile on the
floor, he got to his feet and looked around. He was standing
in a corridor with two sets of swing doors in front of
him, a lift at one end and stairs at the other. Above one
of the doors was the word Theatre and above the other Preparations Medecins. He'd never been up here himself,
where operations were carried out, but he knew that his
wife had.Through those same swing doors, they'd wheeled
her broken body, prepared it for the work to come . . .
'You okay?' came a distant voice from the bottom of
the slope.
Snapping to, Lesage shouted back that he'd made it
and then focused on the task at hand. He saw what he
was looking for in an instant. A fire extinguisher bolted
to the wall between the two sets of swing doors. Releasing
the extinguisher and kicking it away, he pulled the coil
of rope over his head, found the end of it and secured
it to the wall-mounting that had held the extinguisher.
Paying out the rope he flung it through the window.
Now the others could climb up after him.
But there was no time to wait for them, or help them
up. They'd have to do that for themselves.
Somewhere, one floor below, was his wife. And his
daughter.

121

Mathilde could hear distant, muffled voices and a creaking
in the snow as people passed somewhere in the blackness
above her head. So close. They seemed so close. But
the snow that pressed around her distorted the sounds
in such a way that it was impossible to gauge how far
away the voices were.
But now she had an axe. If she could only just push
the weight of the headless corpse off her legs and clamber
up on top of it she'd be able to cut her way out of the
snow.
Which was exactly the moment she identified the
vibration in the small of her back. Her mobile. Someone
was calling on her mobile. She couldn't believe it, she
almost wanted to laugh out loud at the ridiculousness
of it.
She was trying to pull the coat out from behind her
and reach for the phone in her pocket when there was
a loud, grating crack and the wall of snow on the left
side of her gave way and the avalanche started up again.
It was as if a plug had been pulled in a sink and the
water was pouring down the drain.
Clapping her hands over her mouth, Mathilde went
with the flow, trying to kick away the body that followed
and keep her distance from its bone-breaking weight;
she would not let it trap her again. But this time the
avalanche was not another roller-coaster ride but a soft,
gentle slide that spilled her out on to a hard, level surface,
the body roiling past a metre clear.
She lay there a moment, blinked and pushed herself
up on to her elbows, her body suddenly free of its snowy
straitjacket, the air noticeably warmer than the tomb
she'd been buried in.
For the first time, too, Mathilde could see light, a half
dozen sweeping torch beams reaching down a slope of
snow that appeared to have flowed through a shop
window -- the mighty crack she'd heard as the glass gave
way against the weight of the snow. She was out of its
grip, just the bottom half of her legs dusted with chips
of ice and glass that glittered and sparkled in the beam
of the torches.
She was out of the suffocating darkness.
She was free.
And alive.

122

Not bothering with the lift, which would surely be out
of commission, Jean Lesage took the stairs, leaping down
two at a time till he reached the fourth floor. A blast of
frigid air pulsed off the blanket of snow that had poured
through the landing windows, blocking out the night,
and sweeping past the central nursing station, taking
everything with it. In the thin gloom of emergency
lighting, heaped up against the back wall Lesage could
make out a smashed bundle of computers, upturned chairs
and what was clearly a splash of blood staining the snow
below a pair of bare, shoeless legs.
In the last few days, visiting Michelle, he'd learned
the layout of the fourth floor where post-op and intensive
care patients were held.When Michelle was admitted
there were just three other patients in post-op and only
Michelle in intensive care. But in the last four days the
other patients had been discharged. When he'd left here
two hours earlier, stroking his sleeping wife's hair, leaning
down to kiss her forehead, Michelle was the only patient
on the fourth floor, in a room of her own looking over
Place des Passeurs. It was the fourth room down on the
right and as he made his way to it Jean Lesage prayed
that somehow her windows had held.
If it was anything like the spill of snow on the
landing . . .
But it was worse.
The door to her room, blasted open, hung drunkenly
from the top hinge, mired in a sea of snow and debris
that had spilled out into the corridor. Climbing over it,
he peered inside the room, the emergency lighting illuminating
with a crypt-like glow a mass of snow that had
hurled Michelle's bed and monitors into a corner of the
room. Scrambling over the packed waist-high snow, his
breath panting out in clouds, he made his way to the
toppled bed and peered over its edge.
Michelle lay wedged between the mattress and the
wall, the wires and tubes that had been attached to her
body ripped away, the monitor a blank screen. He reached
out a hand and his fingers touched the bandages around
her head, pushed away a few stray wisps of hair that
showed.
Slowly, astonishingly, her eyes flickered open and she
seemed to be focusing on him.
'Jean? Is it you?'
It was the first time since before the accident that
he'd heard her speak.
lOui, oui. C'est moi, c'est moi, cherie. Are you okay?
What can I do?'
A smile crossed her lips but her eyes closed. Then the
smile disappeared and the lips set in a stiff, determined
line. When she spoke the words were weak, whispered.
'The baby. Get the baby. They took her. Across the hall.'
'I'll be back,' said Lesage and reached for her hand,
squeezed it. 'I'll find her and be back for you.'
As he stumbled from the icy wreckage of Michelle's
room there was no doubt in his mind that his daughter
would have died if she hadn't had her own room across
the hall. Either the baby would have been hurled out of
her cot by the force of the avalanche blasting in through
the window, or she'd have frozen to death in the cold.
It wouldn't have taken long.
Pushing open the first door directly opposite Michelle's
room, Lesage cast around in the gloom. A bed, a bedside
cabinet, a chair, a TV set high on the wall - all the usual
hospital furniture but none of it disturbed. In a corner of
the room by the unbroken window looking over the car
park four floors below, a curtained screen still stood as
though unaware of the mayhem beyond the door, the force
of the avalanche spent by the time it reached the corridor.
But the room was empty.
Lesage came out and tried the next room. The same
neatly arranged furnishings, but empty too. Where on
earth had they taken his daughter? Could she be back
with that nurse under the bundle of snow and wreckage,
he wondered fearfully? Had the nurse taken his daughter
there and been swept away? Could that blood in the
snow belong to his baby? Lesage shuddered at the thought
and for a moment wasn't sure what to do -- to carry on
searching each of the rooms along the corridor, or go
back to the nursing station and dig for bodies.
And then he heard it, a fractious little wail coming
from behind the third door along. It was as if his daughter
knew he was close by, knew he was looking for her, and
she was calling out for him.
He pushed open the door and there she was. Instead
of the bed, there was her wheeled perspex cot in which
he could dimly see her tiny arms waving in the air, her
little legs kicking out as though to attract his attention.
In a moment he was through the door and scooping
her up in his arms, pressing her to him, covering the top
of her warm little head in tender cooing kisses.
Holding her with one arm he reached into the cot,
snatched up the blanket, wrapped it round her and headed
back to Michelle's room.
As he clambered past the door, a torch beam flashed
at the end of the corridor.
'C'est vous? Are you there?' came the same voice that
had spoken to him earlier when he fell through the
window. The young lad with the rope.
'Oui. Id. Aidez-moi, s'il vous plait] he cried out and,
holding the baby close, he climbed into Michelle's room,
struggling across the crunching, icy spill of snow.
'I have her. I have her,' he called out to his wife.
But there was no response. When he reached the bed
he looked down at his beloved Michelle and with a
great numbing emptiness he realised that she was gone.
Her eyes were open, staring at the ceiling. Wide open, but unseeing. In his arms his baby daughter opened her
red toothless mouth and bellowed out a desolate, heart
stabbing wail.

123

Francine Malland may have come to Benoit's apartment
dressed for an intimate dinner, but her work clothes and boots were stashed in her car. Running outside, cowering
from the blast of cold, she pulled them from the back
seat and ran back to the office. In the darkness she got
dressed a second time - more appropriately this time and
as she pulled up the zip on her coat, headlights
flashed across the ceiling and she heard Benoit's Jeep
brake to a halt outside.
'There's no way we can drive,' he told her, tossing his
car keys on to the desk. 'The slide's come halfway down
the airport approach road. And it's big. We'll take one of
the choppers.'
Following him outside, Francine watched as he hauled
open the hangar doors and disappeared into its shadowy
interior. Moments later a spotlight blinked on. It was
attached to the belly of a helicopter, a bright yellow helicopter
that Benoit proceeded to haul out into the open.
Clear of the hangar, he jumped up into the cockpit.
'Come on,' he said, waving her round to the passenger
side.






;f'l:..i;

418
419

If! I

I'll1:!

«¦¦!'. If
By the time she had buckled on her seat belt, the
cockpit was illuminated in a soft green glow from the
instruments, a few shreds of snow settling on the glass
roof above their heads. From the same direction she could
hear the whine of a motor start up, followed a few seconds
later by a dull clunk-clunk that didn't sound at all right. LMerde] swore Benoit, killing the engine. 'C'estfoutu . . . completernent! He reached into his lap and started to
unbuckle. 'I'll get the Agusta. It's bigger. But you'll have
to help.'
Abandoning the Bell, Benoit dashed back into the
hangar and, between them, they managed to bring out
the Agusta. It was a great deal bulkier than the Bell, and
more difficult to manoeuvre, and as she listened to his
instructions, did what he asked, she wondered what they
would find in Les Hauts. What was left of Les Hauts.
How bad had it been? she wondered. How many dead?
Dying? Critically injured? Her ribs ached with the tension,
the tension of waiting what seemed a completely disproportionate,
life-threatening amount of time. But it had to
be worth it, she counselled herself. Benoit knew what he
was doing. He would know not to waste any time. He
was as desperate as she was to get going. To do something.
But just how long would it be before they could get
airborne? What else did Benoit have to do? Surely it
couldn't take all this time? Was there anything she could
do to make things happen faster?
At last Benoit climbed up into the cockpit and she
joined him. Buckling up, his hand danced around the
controls, flicking switches, pressing buttons, a blue glow
this time rising from the instrument panel.
And then - however long it had taken to get this far
-- the engine finally started up, another whine from
behind her head, and the rotors drooping beyond the
windscreen began to turn, now flicking past the windscreen,
now a blur as the cockpit shook and rattled and
the engine roared, then screamed.
'Put this on,' shouted Benoit, tapping her arm with a
headset.
She did as she was told and the scream of the engine
dulled. By the time she had the headset comfortably
arranged, with Benoit's voice in her ears, calmly radioing
in an avalanche alert to a controller in Albertville, she
was suddenly aware that the view in front of her was
changing, the helicopter was turning, that the shuddering
was easing. And then, with a surge of gratitude, Francine
realised that they were, at last, finally, airborne and heading
towards town, a lacy veil of snow flying past the windscreen,
the Agusta s undercarriage spotlight dancing below
them over the uneven tumble of snow.
The moment they passed beyond the airstrip, rotor
blades biting into the night sky, heaters blasting away the
metal coldness of the cockpit, they could see all they
needed to see. Not just a slide on to Route des Passeurs
but a rising slope of snow and debris barring the way into
town. Benoit had been right. Flying was the only option.
Beside him she peered through the glass door panels
as the Lycee playing fields swept below them, four of
Jules Dessin's snowploughs dwarfed by the wall of snow
confronting them.
'It starts at the Lycee,' she shouted.
'It's okay. I can hear,' Benoit replied, raising the headphones.
'Sorry,
sorry, it's just. . . it's everywhere. So much. So
big.'
Benoit leaned forward and flicked a switch, swooped
low and a second great pool of blue light swept over
the scene of devastation below them -- cars flung into
heaps, roofs stripped away, walls pulled down to reveal
bedroom wallpaper, a chair-lift wedged between two
buildings, even a pair of carousel horses prancing out of
the snow. And, the closer they came to the centre of Les
Hauts, the bodies -- scattered, crumpled, like litter.
Swinging around, Benoit turned across boulevard des
Passeurs and lined up for Hopital des Hauts. But there
was no hospital, just a vast slope of snow, a frozen wave
splashed up against the front wall.
'I'll try the back,' said Benoit.
Francine shook her head. 'It doesn't matter. It'll be
me going to the bodies, rather than bodies coming to
me. I'm probably more use in the middle of town.'
'You want me to drop you there? Front de neige?" 'That would be great,' she replied. And then, more
quietly, she said, 'But before you do, maybe you could just
take a pass by Residence des Hauts? My mother . . .'

124

Nathalie Bezard felt a cold breeze whisper across her
cheek and her eyes opened into a spin-drift darkness of
snow. For a moment she thought she was in bed, lying
on her stomach, the way she liked to sleep. But her
cheekbone was pressed against a freezing marble tile not
a warm soft pillow. She frowned, then shifted lazily, just
as she did every morning when she woke up. It was the
gentlest stirring of her body but it sent a jagged lightning-flash
slice of molten pain shooting up her left leg.
Tears sprang into her eyes and she screamed. But the
scream brought a second and more enduring wedge of
pain from deep within her chest. Taking a short, gentle
breath as the agony subsided, she waited a full minute
before carefully exhaling, allowing herself a pitiful
whimper as she did so. Something heavy was pressing
down on the backs of her legs and, judging by the throbbing
stab of pain, whatever it was it had clearly done
some damage. She also noticed that she was covered in
a layer of fluffy snow. The first thing that came in to her
mind was that it didn't snow inside. The snow was
supposed to be outside. So what on earth?
And then everything came tumbling back.
An avalanche. They'd been hit by the slide that her
lover Paul Garamonde had been so concerned about. So
concerned that he'd gone to Maire Bruchet and her father
the day before, so concerned that he'd decided to call
Cariol if conditions worsened. With a chill, she wondered
where he was, hoping against hope that he'd gone back
to her chalet, as he'd promised her he would at their
picnic lunch in the Bureau des Pistes, in time to take
Coco for a walk.
She was putting it all together, her movements since
the Champions' Dinner, the last things she could
remember - talking to Gaston Lefevre, joining Maxim
Kalagin in his west tower penthouse for an after-dinner
drinks party, chatting with one of his guests, excusing
herself to go to the bathroom to freshen up -- when a
shadow loomed out of the darkness.
'Is there anyone alive in here?'
'Moi. C'est moi, Nathalie,' she heard herself whisper.

'lei. Ici!

125

Kneeling on the wooden floorboards of Bar Mique,
Django snatched up a length of tablecloth and ripped it
in half. Rolling it up into a tight coil, she wound it
round the top of the man's thigh. As she tightened the
knot she could see the pulse of blood ease off and through
the man's torn jeans could make out for the first time
the meaty gash where the blood was coming from. As
far as she could tell, the shattered end of the man's femur
had torn through his skin and must have nicked an artery
on the way. It was the only explanation for that endless
flow of blood pumping from the wound.
For the second time in its history, Mique's had
somehow escaped the worst of the avalanche, and in the
last hour the wounded and the dying had been brought
there in increasing numbers.Tables were cleared to make
room for the victims, oil lamps were set up on the bar
and the room, and everyone in it, was cast in a shadowy
gold light, the music that had blasted from the sound
system now replaced by a low, monotone groaning, with
as many cries for help from victims as from those trying
to care for them.
'I need blankets . . .'
'Will someone bring me bandages . . .'

'Is there a doctor . . . ?'
'Please stop the pain. Please, please stop the pain . . .'
'Something to drink . . . please, someone give me
water . . .'
Though she'd trained as a nurse, Django had seen
nothing like it in her life. For the last hour - or was it
more than that? - she'd been operating in a kind of
numbed, deadened state, moving from one damaged,
broken body to the next. She'd been a little girl on the
other side of the world when the last avalanche hit Les
Hauts, but she'd heard enough to think she would know
what to expect, what a slide could do. Yet nothing could
have prepared her for the true and escalating horror of
it, the injuries she'd seen, and tried to treat, moving from
one bleeding body to the next. If a slide could bring
down a building, what it could do to a human body was
beyond comprehension, the twisted, bloodied rag-doll
damage beyond her ability to do anything more than
whisper encouragement, take off her jacket to act as a
pillow, or hold a hand as one after another of the victims
she tried to comfort succumbed to their injuries. So far
at least a dozen bodies had been taken outside and stacked
on Mique's terrace, their places quickly taken by new
arrivals brought in from Place des Sommets and the
surrounding streets.
Once again Django wondered at the deadly devastation.
The
bar had been packed when the doors and windows
simply imploded, the blast of frozen air that accompanied
it hurling everyone to the floor. And as they lay
there, stunned, the floor itself began to move and shudder.
Someone close to her screamed, another shouted 'Avalanche', and from outside came a deafening shriek of
evil, as though a million witches had descended on Les
Hauts to stir their snowy cauldron. And as soon as it had
started, suddenly there was silence, an eerie unsettling
stillness, a kind of delayed response to the disaster as
though every building left standing in the place was taking
stock of itself, considering whether it should stand or
fall, timbers splitting and splintering, walls tumbling down
in a deadly, terrifying sequel to the main event.
Elsewhere in Les Hauts timbers did indeed splinter, ceilings
did crash down and walls cave in. But at Bar Mique,
in a corner of Place des Sommets, they stayed where they
were, just the odd creak to make the heart leap to the
mouth. And in that uncertain silence Mique's customers
began to stir, those that still could staggering to their feet,
helping up others, dusting themselves down and, like the
building, making their own thankful inventory.
But not everyone in Mique's, Django now knew, had
been so fortunate. The worst injuries were sustained by
those standing just inside the door, their packed bodies
acting as a kind of merciful windbreak for the rest of
the crowd as glass and debris showered in through
windows and doors. It was these poor people, the ones
who still lived, who were treated first, the dead separated
from the just-living, the first screams of pain and
shock shattering the silence.
When the slide hit, Django had been squeezed into a back booth with her Australian boyfriend, Sandy, the
bar boss Ginette Miquellier, and a couple of her snowboard
instructors. In just a matter of seconds the five of
them were rammed together as the people standing closest
to them were flung across their table. By the time this
ruck of bodies finally disentangled itself, and they realised
what had happened, Django and the rest of them had
set about helping those less fortunate than themselves,
drawn into a rescue operation that kicked into gear just
as the lights went out.
It hadn't taken long for Django and her friends to
separate, each of them going their own way, working
different sections of the bar. Satisfied that her tourniquet
on the man's leg was doing the job, Django looked
around the room. Still at the back she spotted Ginette
working feverishly on another casualty.That very moment
Ginette looked up and they caught each other's eye.
Django smiled, gave a small wave and turned back to
her patient.
As she did so, a hand was laid on her shoulder and
someone squatted down beside her.
'You okay here?' The voice had a familiar Australian
twang. It was Sandy.
'I think I've stopped the bleeding, Doc,' said Django
with a weary satisfaction, and her boyfriend leaned across
to examine the wound. He felt for a pulse in the man's
neck then looked at the blood pooling around Django's
knees, trailing all the way back to the doors of Bar Mique.
'I think it might be too late,' said Sandy gently, and
shook his head.


126

By the time Mathilde's rescuers had pulled her from the
floor of SkiSavvy and up the slope of snow that had
broken through the shop's front windows, Place des
Sommets had come alive. As they brushed her down
and asked if she was okay, if she had any injuries, she
looked around in amazement. The place was filled with
snow, as high as the second floor in some places; all the
lights were out and the darkness was swept by torch
beams and pierced by the urgent shrieks of car and shop
alarms, shrill and insistent as the screams of delight and
horror and distress echoing around the square as victims
were dug for, located, and finally brought to the surface.

Dead or alive.
And in the slanting, wailing torch-lit darkness, she
heard her own name shouted out. Her sister's voice.
Sophie. Shouting at the top of her voice, a voice that
flew around the place with all the other names, with all
the other cries for help.
Then she saw them. Sophie and Patric. Just the shape
of them. Standing side by side. No more than a few
paces away. It took only seconds -- clambering over the
crumpled snow-block surface of the slide, calling out
"I'm here! I'm here!' - to reach them, to feel their arms
wrap around her.
And there, struggling to his feet, wrapped in a blanket,
was Alex.
Clinging together, thrilled to be reunited, thankful for
their lives, the four of them staggered across the snow
field that had once been Place des Sommets, and headed
for the warm glow of lights that was Bar Mique, the
only premises on the place that had not been too badly
damaged by the avalanche.
By the time they pushed through its blasted doors,
Mique's was as crowded as an airport lounge filled with
exhausted passengers. Around Les Hauts that night,
though they didn't know it then, there were many such
impromptu rescue stations gearing up for business in the
wake of the avalanche. Here, in the centre of town, it
was Bar Mique, doubling as a field hospital, manned by
a stunned clientele who'd been drinking and partying
there when the avalanche smashed down from the mountains.
As
they made their way to the bar, Alex saw a wide
scarlet scarf of blood spattered across a framed Les Hauts
travel poster, and realised just how fortunate he and
Mathilde had been. Some of the injuries he could see
around him were appalling - bent and broken limbs,
faces gashed and bloodied, the victims reassured and cared
for by young men and women in party clothes who an
hour earlier had been dancing and drinking their way
through another raucous night in Les Hauts. Just how
raucous they had swiftly discovered when the avalanche
hit and the bodies started arriving.
Climbing over the bar, Patric reached for a bottle of
cognac and, playing barman, put down four glasses. He
splashed in the liquor and pushed two of the glasses to
Alex and Mathilde.
'A couple of these will be all the medicine you need,'
he said with an encouraging smile.
And he was right, thought Alex, tossing back the liquor.
Clasping his empty glass between two shaking hands, he
felt it sear his chapped lips, burn down his throat and
explode into his belly to spread like a wall of fire through
shivering limbs.With a final, controlled shudder that started
in his shoulders and trembled down through his body, he
found he was now able to get some purchase on the shivering
that had wracked his body since they'd dug him
out of the snow. With a shake of his head and a loosening
of his shoulders, he felt like a drowsy bee fed honey, reinvigorated,
redirected. Alive. He glanced at Mathilde, and
could see the cognac had had the same effect on her, a
hint of colour seeping back into her pale cheeks.
'You lot okay here? Vous etes confortables?" The voice,
twanging with a broad Australian accent, came from
behind them. The four turned to find a young man with
a straggle of blond curls and a pair of light-blue eyes set
in ovals of white, tan-free skin left by sunglasses or goggles.
'We're fine,' replied Patric in English, 'just a little
shaken up.'
'Looks like you've found the right cure, then,' said the
Australian, nodding at the bottle on the bar. And then,
hopefully, 'I don't suppose one of you's a doctor?'
'I have emergency training,' volunteered Patric. 'With
the mountain rescue. First aid, that kind of thing. My
wife too. And son. He's on his way here.'
'Well, we can do with all the help we can get right
now. The name's Sandy,' he told them. 'I'm just a third
year medic at uni, right? And this . . .' he gestured to the
bodies lying on the floor around them,'. . . this is just a
little out of my league. Apart from Django, over there, who
trained as a nurse, there's no one else here knows squat
beyond holding hands and whispering to the poor buggers.'
From behind the bar, Patric spotted Philippe push
through the broken doorway. He waved him over, clambered
back over the counter and hugged his boy tight
before passing him on to his mother.
'Are you hurt?' cried Sophie, suddenly registering the
dark-crimson splashes of blood soaked into Philippe's
shirt and jeans.
He looked down and frowned, as if he hadn't noticed
them before. 'Not mine, not mine. I'm fine. I was helping
out down the road ... It was bad. But what about you?
The kids? Nathalie? Hugo? Jacqueline?'
'Bruno and Thea are fine,' replied Sophie, glancing at
Patric. 'Us too. Hugo and Jacqueline . . .' She spread her
hands. 'They left before us. Hugo was taking Jacqueline
back to the chalet. Nathalie - I don't know. In the
Auberge, I guess.'
Suddenly she looked distraught - at their possible fate,
and the fact that she hadn't called their mobiles to find
out. Letting Philippe go, she reached for her phone and
flipped it open.
As she did so it began to ring, just as Sandy broke
back into the conversation.
'Is there a chemist round here?' he asked.'Apharmacie?
'Rue des Sommets,' answered Philippe. 'What do you
need?'
'Everything except nail clippers and sun-tan oil.
Bandages, dressings, antiseptics, sterile wipes, hypos,
energy sweets . . . you name it. And if you can find
anything in the dispensary . . . Anything strong. Anything
to kill the pain.'
But while Sandy told Philippe what he needed, Patric's
attention had stayed with Sophie, standing just outside
the group. He watched her speaking, then close her
mobile and slip it into a pocket. Her face was white.
Patric pushed through to her, his stomach tensing with
dread. He'd tried to persuade himself that Bruno and
Thea were safe, that the avalanche had missed them up
at the Bezard home. He knew now that it wasn't so.
'What is it? What's happened?' he asked, preparing himself
to learn the worst.
'That was Laurent's mother. She's trying to find him.
He told her he was going to see Bruno. Apparently they
were going to a party . . .'
'Party?' said Alex, turning from the bar. He looked at
the two of them, then frowned. 'I thought you said the
kids were at the house.'

127

Before he opened his eyes Bruno knew he was hurt, a
sharp piercing stab in the side of his chest every time
he took a breath.
Shit. They'd been hit by a slide. An avalanche. Back
at the crossroads. All he could remember was a great
white wave bearing down on them, blanking out the
night, lifting them up, carrying them with it, the car
tumbling and rolling along, headlights sweeping around
and around like twin torches caught in a wash cycle.
And then . . . nothing.
Now it was over, he realised. The great roar had gone.
The tumbling had stopped. The RAV wasn't moving any
more, although the sound system was still blaring.
Taking tight little breaths he opened his eyes and
tried to work out where he'd landed up. In the back of
the car by the look of it, caught up in a tartan travelling
blanket and lying on something soft, covered in
assorted boots and ski kit, snowboarding magazines, CD
covers and cigarette ends from the dashboard ashtray.
All around him the snow was packed tight against the
RAV's windows like styrofoam padding, and above him,
across two rows of seats, through the windscreen, a pale
white glow from the snow-shrouded headlights lit up
the interior.
'Laurent? Thea?' he called, but there was no answer.
He turned his head and saw a bare arm sticking out
from beneath the blanket. He recognised the ring on the
third finger - the skull and crossbones: Laurent's - and
realised what he was lying on. His friend was underneath
him, pinned by his body.
Bruno tried to squirm away and the pain in his ribs
exploded. Broken or cracked, had to be. He should have
worn his seat belt. Laurent too. But moving also brought
a sound, a low groan from under the blanket.
'Laurent? You okay?'
'Shit, man, get off me. You're breaking my fucking leg.'
With a roll to the right and another screaming shaft
of pain in his side, Bruno pulled himself clear. In the
pale light he could see a line of blood smeared across
his friend's face and a deeply pained expression, his eyes
squeezed tightly shut.
'You hurt? You in pain?'
'Just fucking everywhere,' whispered Laurent, breathing
out slowly and evenly as though he was trying to control
the pain. 'Feel's like I've got the jack up my arse and my
left foot in my ear,' he said, opening his eyes and squinting
at his friend. 'And you don't look much better. You got
blood all over you.'
Bruno lifted his right arm and ran his hand over his
face. It came away wet and warm, the palm covered in
blood. He brought it back to his head, checked his jaw,
cheeks and forehead for a wound then touched his fingertips
through his hair, feeling across the scalp. He found
the flap of skin soon enough, a couple of inches scraped
back from behind his ear. Strangely he hadn't noticed,
hadn't felt any pain. As soon as his fingers found it, it
started to throb.
'Hell, but that was some ride,' said Laurent, struggling
to get comfortable. 'You got any idea where we are?
How long we been here?'
Bruno glanced at his watch: 11:20. Which meant. . .
They'd left home around 10:45. And it was only a few
minutes' drive to the Passeurs crossroads. Merde, they'd
been out cold for nearly thirty minutes. As for where
they'd ended up, apart from lying in a tangle in the back
of the RAV, there was no telling.
Beside him Laurent pulled out his mobile and punched
in a number. 'No signal - maybe the masts are down.
How's yours?'
Bruno did the same, with the same result. 'Nothing,'
he replied.
Swearing lightly, Laurent shifted again, then reached
for something underneath him and pulled it free. 'Told
you. The bloody jack.' And then, 'Hey, how's your girlfriend?
She okay?'

128

'I'm afraid your ankle is broken, Mademoiselle,' said Maxim
Kalagin, playing a key-ring torch over her left foot, splayed
out at an outrageous angle from her lower leg. 'And it is
held down,' he continued in a slow and careful Russian
accented French, 'by a part of the sink which has broken
off the wall. Since I cannot leave you here . . .' he waved
the torch above them, at the snow now falling quite heavily
through the roofless bathroom, '. . . I must lift the sink
and cause you some discomfort. . .'
Suddenly, without any warning, Nathalie's ankle
exploded with pain as Kalagin heaved the sink pillar off
her and rolled it away.
'. . . For which, of course, I am very sorry. There,
that is better,' he said. 'Now we must get you up and out
of here before you freeze to death. You will excuse me,
I hope, if I take you to my bedroom,' he said, helping
her up, wrapping an arm round her waist.'It is the only
room left that still has a roof.'
Hobbling beside him, struggling to catch her breath,
Nathalie let Kalagin lead her out of the bathroom and
into the salon, its balcony windows and roof simply torn
away by the blast of the avalanche, the entire room buried
under a mass of lumpy, tumbled snow.
'Is there . . . anyone else . . . alive?' asked Nathalie, the
words squeezed out, remembering the dozen or so people
who were chatting and drinking there before the
avalanche struck.
'You are the first I have found, Mademoiselle,' Kalagin
replied, kicking open the bedroom door and laying her
carefully on the bed. 'There is a lot of debris -- timber
beams, furniture, glass - so it has not been easy'
'But what about you?' asked Nathalie, wincing as he
lifted her injured leg and slid a pillow beneath it.
Kalagin chuckled. 'Like you, I was . . . how do you
say? Caught in the short. If not for a pressing concern,
I too would now possibly be dead.' He went to the armoire and pulled out blankets, bringing them back to
the bed and tucking them carefully around her.
Satisfied he had done all he could, he looked at her
and smiled. 'They say it is a bad idea to offer alcohol at
times like these. But I am Russian and consequently I
have never subscribed to that belief. It is my experience
that a very large measure of good Laingski vodka usually
works the wonders.' He left the bedroom and returned
a minute or so later with vodka and glasses. 'The only
bottle I could find,' he said, sitting carefully on the edge
of the bed. He was unscrewing the top when he realised
that Nathalie's eyes were closed, her lips slightly apart.
She'd fallen asleep, he thought.
And then . . .
Dropping the bottle he reached for her wrist and
neck, searching for a pulse.

129

Reaching the high-tide mark of the avalanche where
the tumbled snow began its steep, debris-studded rise
up the Bellepic slope, Garamonde pushed his way through
the tangled Utter of branches and beams and other rubbish
that the avalanche had brought down with it, climbed the
slope and set off for rue des Sommets, paying no heed to
the bodies he came across. If anyone was alive, Coco, up
ahead, sniffing at the corpses, would alert him. But as far
as he could judge, there seemed little likelihood of life left
in the snow-dusted bodies he passed.
Finally, two blocks ahead, he saw the broad course of
rue des Sommets packed with a frozen torrent of snow.
Already the sweat was pouring down his back and chest
and he paused to catch his breath. Twice, on his way
into town, he'd fallen into narrow chasms in the snow
pack and it had taken precious minutes to pull himself
out. It might be close, but he should still take care.
Nathalie's life might depend on it. Struggling forward,
he reached the corner at last, pausing again outside the
second-floor offices of Les Hauts' travel bureau, its
windows blown in, the interior coated in a rumpled
white blanket studded with debris and sparkling with
broken glass as he played the torch over it.
judging by the height of the snow, well past the first
floor here on rue des Sommets, it was clear to Garamonde
that this avalanche was far greater than the 1983 slide.
Seventy-nine people had died in that disaster. He had
no doubt that there would be many more this time
round, and desperately hoped that Nathalie wouldn't be
among their number. At least he knew where she was,
up ahead at the Auberge, and that was where he was
headed. Just a hundred metres to the place and there, on
its other side, the Auberge.
By now, having reached the centre of town, he was
aware of more movement around him, more clamour -- shafts of torch-light in the snowy darkness, shadowy
figures searching for the lost, digging with bare hands
or makeshift shovels. And calls for help. Ignoring these
urgent, harrowing pleas -- and feeling huge guilt at doing
so - Garamonde stumbled on into Place des Sommets
where he saw a glow of lights from Mique's. Astonished
that it had somehow managed to survive yet another
avalanche, Garamonde glanced at his watch. Nearly one
o'clock in the morning, just over two hours since the
avalanche hit. Clambering on, he heard the clattering
rotors of a helicopter and saw a spill of light sweep over
the place. It was still too early for any rescue teams from
Cariol or Albertville to have reached them, so it had to
be Benoit, up in the Agusta by the sound of it.
Reaching the edge of the snowpack in front of the
Auberge, he looked down on to the front steps and
spotted the concierge, Lougin. He was sitting against a
wall of snow, a large blue lump swelling up around the
scarlet gash to his forehead, and was having his hands
carefully cleaned by the Auberge's receptionist, Ellie.
Spitting into a handkerchief and dabbing it at the
concierge's palms, she glanced over her shoulder as
Garamonde slithered down the side of the snowpack and
hurried over.
'Glass. There's glass in the snow,' she explained when
she saw Garamonde s questioning look, then bent down
to work on another splinter.
'I started to dig with my hands, Monsieur,' said Lougin.
'And look where it got me.' He shook his head, then
gave a weak smile.'Fortunately Monsieur le Maire carried
a shovel in his car. My friends here', he nodded at two
men burrowing like rabbits into the plug of snow that
filled the main doorway, 'liberated it. I didn't think he
would mind, since he is still in there.' Without thinking,
Lougin tried to wave behind him with the hand that
Ellie was working on. He gave a sudden painful wince.
'Hold still, God's sake,' she scolded him, bending back
to her task. 'I nearly had it then.'
Up on the top step, the two men who had been
digging threw down the mayor's shovels and each took
a leg of the armchair jammed in the doorframe. With a
couple of tugs, the chair tilted, slid down a few centimetres
then lodged tight again.
One of the men turned to Garamonde. 'You want to
help, grab a piece of this bloody chair and let's pull it
free. There's people in here will be needing attention.'
Garamonde recognised him immediately - his looks
and his Quebecois accent. He'd thrown his dinner jacket
aside but the black bow tie was still neatly, if incongruously,
nested in his collar. It was the English skier, Cole,
who raced against Philippe Bezard in the second heat
that morning and had been beaten by a ski's length.
Garamonde also recognised Cole's companion, the
American skier, Tanner White, who had made it through
to the final.
'I'm telling you, we get us this chair free,' said the
American, 'and we'll be in there no trouble.'
The words were hardly out of his mouth when something
in the body of the armchair cracked and, without
further warning, it tumbled free of the doorframe,
toppling them backwards and spilling chunks of ice and
snow over them. When the flow ceased, Garamonde
sprang forward, ran a gloved hand and torch beam over
the still-defiant plug of snow blocking the door and
found a narrow gap between the snowpack and the
bottom of the doorframe.
Handing the torch to Cole he set to with his own
shovel, and a moment later snow was showering out
from between his legs like Coco searching for an old
bone. Tossing aside the shovel, Garamonde took back the
torch and examined his handiwork. 'It's wide enough;
we should be able to get through.'
Dropping to his knees, oblivious to the glass splinters
that studded the snow, he squeezed into the opening,
hands and arms first, swimming forward, shoulders, hips
and legs squirming in after him - the biggest and strongest
man going first to make the passage wider for those who
followed. Before the two skiers could stop her, Coco was down on her haunches and scrabbling in after her master.
In less than a minute the beam of a torch flashed back
at them down the tunnel. From the other side of the
snow came Garamonde s voice. 'There's clearance here,
I can stand. Hurry'
One after the other - Cole first, then the American
- the two skiers followed Coco and Garamonde through
the two-metre tunnel. On the other side they got to
their feet and looked around, following the beam of
Garamonde's torch as it flashed through what was left
of the lobby, now like some ice-rimed cavern.
The bodies didn't register at once. Dusted in white,
flung around the lobby in various broken poses, they
looked like some macabre dance troupe enacting the
effects of an avalanche rather than actually being in one.
Garamonde played his torch over an arm and a leg
sticking out halfway up the wedge of snow that had
blocked the front door. Both leg and arm were bare, no
shoe, no sock, no shirt or jacket sleeve, the skin a bruised
blue, the flesh badly butchered. The arm and leg were
both far enough apart to belong to different people.
'Christ,' said Cole quietly. 'It's like a ... I mean, there
are so many'
More than twenty, estimated Garamonde, flashing his
torch around. And not a single one alive. He knew without
having to check. That blast of air, the pressure, the flow
of snow banked up around them from floor to ceiling,
just this narrow space between the reception desk and lift.
There would be no survivors here.
And not one of them, so far as Garamonde could see,

was Nathalie.
'Anyone remember the shovels?' he asked, sucking at
his bleeding fingers, biting loose a splinter of glass
embedded in his thumb and spitting it out.
'Here,' said Tanner White, lifting two into the beam
of light. The Englishman had a third.
'Okay. Good. Why don't you guys start on the snow
there and see if you can find a way through to the stairs,
and I'll--'
But he got no further.
Unnoticed by any of them, Coco had been sniffing
around the far end of the lobby and was now jumping
against the lift doors, claws tapping at the metal, an
excited, urgent barking echoing around the darkened
lobby walls.

130

The first person Rudi Zaitsev saw as he hurried down
from his chalet was an old woman in a belted dressing
gown and slippers, the hem of her nightdress fluttering
around bare legs. She was standing so still that Zaitsev
might easily have missed her in the snow-glow darkness,
but for a cough and a hand politely raised to cover it.
Zaitsev, flung out of bed by the passing slide, had been
heading for the centre of town, skirting the main flow,
to see what he could do to help, to find his friends. But
there seemed something so forlorn and unexpected about
this sudden apparition that he changed direction and
went over to the woman. Close to, he could see a web
of grey hair so thin that a pale pink scalp was visible
beneath, a haughty brooding profile directed at the great
wall of snow that now filled most of what had once
been the parking lot of the Residence des Hauts.
Zaitsev passed this building every day on his way to
and from the chalet where he, Vlassov, Razin and Dak
were quartered. Built of local Vialle stone with a pitched
chalet-style roof set above uniform rows of sealed
windows, it had the look of an office building or some
obscure municipal department - bland, anonymous and
set incongruously on the northern edge of the old town.
Most of the smaller, older houses that had crowded up
to the wall of its parking lot had been flattened and
submerged by the avalanche but this unremarkable four
storey block still stood, just a small section of its top
floor sliced clean away and only a few of its windows
shattered. Facing the front de neige at an angle quite out
of kilter with Les Hauts' almost grid-like symmetry, the
block's leading corner had sliced through the raging flow
of the avalanche like the prow of a ship, dividing the
slide into two massive torrents, one of which, Zaitsev
estimated, now occupied the parking lot to a height of
four, maybe five metres. It was in the narrow space
between the building and this wall of snow that the old
woman stood.
Zaitsev's French was limited, but he tried his best: 'Are
you okay, Madame? Can I help you? Where do you live?'
Dragging her gaze from the towering frozen wave, the
old woman turned to Zaitsev and settled on him a stern,
scowling look, one side of her face wickedly contorted,
the other serenely unaffected. It was an extraordinary
expression and after seeing her good side in profile the
full face came as something of a shock. Then she started
chuckling in a gently disbelieving manner as though
Zaitsev had just informed her that the car park was filled
with nothing more than crumbling goat's cheese.
In that moment he realised they were not alone.There
were others in the parking lot too, also dressed in their
nightclothes, men and women, standing still or stumbling
around, a look of dazed incomprehension on their
faces. And all of them, Zaitsev could now see, elderly,
not a soul under seventy. They reminded him of prisoners
released from gulag cells, uncertain what to do
with a sudden and unexpected liberty.
It was then that Zaitsev realised what the building
was. It was their age, and their dress. A hospital. Some
kind of geriatric unit? Or asylum? And so far as he could
see no single member of staff to look after this frail,
confused crowd of people, no one in control.
He knew immediately what he had to do.
Catching hold of the old woman's arm, Zaitsev tried
to turn her and steer her back to the building, its open
door a black square some fifteen metres away.
But the old woman would not be moved, and snatched
back her arm with a deeply indignant glare.
'Views] he tried again. 'C'estfroid id. Ce n'est pas bon
id pour vous!
But the old woman wasn't having it, and started to
square up to him, as though she intended to give as good
as she got.
Without thinking, Zaitsev swore in Russian, a long,
impatient burst of irritation that seemed to galvanise the
old lady in a way that his schoolboy French had not.
She frowned at the unfamiliar sounds, tipped her head
to one side and the scowl softened, drawing closer as
though to hear more clearly. Zaitsev noted the response
and obliged with another prolonged stream of Russian,
a little louder now. And then it wasn't just the old lady
who was listening, but others close to them. In just a
few moments a small crowd had gathered around him.
They might not understand what he was saying, but he
was clearly getting their attention.
In Russian, raising his voice like a general addressing
his troops, he said: 'Come, my fathers, my mothers. It is
cold here and dangerous and the wolves are howling.
We must be in our beds and keep v/arm. Here, follow
me and I will take you to a place of safety.'
And follow him they did, the old lady and those closest
to him reaching for his arms and hands and jacket and
those who couldn't, reaching for the arms of the people
who were holding his arms, until each of them was
somehow joined to him and following him.
An hour after leaving his chalet Zaitsev stood in the
darkened reception hall of the Residence with more than
forty old people moving around him, touching him,
whispering. While he tried to think what to do next, he
heard the clattering of a helicopter approaching and saw
a flickering puddle of blue-white light wash across the
parking lot.
'Stay here,' he called out in Russian. 'Stay here my
mothers and my fathers and I will be back for you.'
Running out into the narrow alleyway of space
between the snowpack and the building, he started waving
his arms. In an instant the helicopter's light swivelled on
to him and caught him like an actor on a stage.

131

According to Annette Faugere, her son Laurent had left
the house at about ten-twenty. Both Sophie and Patric
knew that it would have taken him approximately fifteen
minutes to reach their home to pick up Bruno andThea,
before dropping back down the Salvettes slope on to rue
des Hauts.The party, Annette had told Sophie, was somewhere
past the Condominium des Sommets on rue des
Saintes. Which meant that when the slide hit around ten
fifty-five, they couldn't have been further than the Passeurs
crossroads.
And that's where Alex and Patric were headed, having
dropped by SkiSawy after leaving Bar Mique to exchange
their soaked evening clothes for insulated ski-suits. From
the moment they left the shop, price tags still fluttering
from the collars, the two men had made steady progress,
keeping to the leeward side of the road where the slide
was easier to negotiate - some sections of pavement and
darkened shop windows still visible. Few words were
exchanged and after thirty minutes of hard slog on a journey
that would usually have taken no more than eight or nine
minutes, they reached the Saintes-Passeurs crossroads.
Both men could see immediately that since rue des
Saintes reached up to the very edge of the front de neige, the slide had had nothing to stand in its way. It had
sluiced down the road like a tidal wave, taking everything
with it, spilling into side streets and piling up into
great frozen drifts.
Pausing outside the cinema, on a level with its missing
billboard, the two men surveyed the scene of devastation,
new snow now falling with a certain mocking determination.
'If
they were caught they'd have been caught around
here,' said Patric, still panting from the exertion. 'Since
we haven't found any sign of them on des Hauts, I suggest
we start looking here. Best guess is they'd have been
stopped at the lights, or they'd have just got through and
turned right, headed down des Saintes.'
'I'll take the left, you take the right,' said Alex, looking
down the snow-choked street, its surface a good four
metres above the road. His heart was thumping in his
chest - more from dread than exertion. How could
anyone have survived that great blast of snow, even if
they were in a car? 'We'll zigzag down, side to middle
and back,' he said and, without waiting for Patric, he
started up the slope of snow that had once been rue des
Saintes.

132

With his car trapped in the underground car park beneath
his apartment block and no road to drive on anyway, it
had taken Marc Monbalt more than two hours to reach
the gendarmerie, stopping along the way to help where
he could, joining survivors to dig for the dead and the
buried. As a member of the mountain rescue team, he
was trained to deal with emergencies like this one and
his calm professionalism and quiet efficiency brought a
sort of order to the chaos, directing the rescuers how to
dig, where to dig, knowing that it wasn't just the sense
of urgency required to find someone beneath the snow
that drove them on, but the fear of another slide. Locals
knew only too well that a first avalanche was often
followed by a second.
For Marc there was an even more pressing need for
urgency. Despite frequent delays to help where he could,
he knew that the sooner he reached the gendarmerie
the better it would be. That's where he was needed, that's
where he could be most help. And that was where he
headed whenever the digging stopped, the bodies were
retrieved and the screaming and wailing began.
When he finally reached the gendarmerie, however, it
was difficult to see it as the building where he'd once
worked. The pitched chalet roof and top floor had been
lifted off as cleanly as a hat on a windy day, just a tangle of
tumbled beams, a towering spill of snow and a single broken
window still standing in a narrow frame of stone. As for
the rest - desks, filing cabinets, chairs - the avalanche had
dumped it unceremoniously across the parking lot. A section
of wall had flattened two of the three squad cars
parked there, and the third unit lay on its roof, shoved
up against what remained of the car park gate. There
were no lights showing and no sign of life.
Trying to remember who was on duty that night old
Sergeant Calaud? Jalle? Dollande? - Marc pushed
through the front doors but was brought up short by a
wall of snow and a mess of upturned desks, chairs and
smashed computers. Whoever had been on duty was no
longer there, or if they were they were buried under a
couple of metres of snow, snow that had blasted through
the building and swept everything before it. He marvelled
at the power of it. He'd heard stories, of course, and seen
enough slides in the mountains to know that avalanches
were dangerous, unpredictable things. But he'd never seen
what they could actually do when they picked up some
speed and hit a town. Now he knew.
Since it was clear that no one could have survived
such an explosion of raw muscled fury in the gendarmerie,
there seemed little point in searching for bodies - his
colleagues, or anyone else who'd had the misfortune of
being there when the slab hit. On the off-chance he
dialled up the chief on his mobile. Then Jalle, Calaud and
Dollande. But none of them answered his calls, just an
automated message service, the various voices polite and
distant and cheerily unaware of the horror that had struck
Les Hauts. 'The person you are calling is not available at
the moment. Please leave a message or try again later.'
What next? he wondered, looking up and down the
street. Who else should he call? His buddies on mountain
rescue? Paul, Jean, Patric, Benoit? With the
gendarmerie out of commission, the next best option
was to find out where they were, what had happened
to them, and if they needed any help. Just so long as
they answered their phones . . .

133

As he blundered down the darkened corridor outside
his penthouse suite, Max Kalagin knew he was lucky to
be alive. If he'd spent another minute talking to Vlassov
and Razin about the skis they should select for the
following day's Diable final, he'd be as dead as they were,
buried somewhere in the freezing chaos of snow and
rubble and darkness that filled his salon.
He'd just unzipped his flies when the avalanche struck.
A roaring sound that reminded Kalagin of a waterfall. A
mighty trembling up through the floorboards as though
an earthquake were shaking the life out of the building,
his hands reaching to the walls for support, a long,
sustained shuddering that had the marble slabs on the
bathroom walls breaking loose and shattering on the Ttiled
floor - though the sound of the breaking couldn't be
heard over the blasting scream of the avalanche - the
bedroom and bathroom doors bursting open with a shock
of frigid air, and a rush of snow spilling past.
And then silence. A deep, creaking, threatening silence
as though the building was about to disintegrate.
Avalanche, he'd thought, almost unbalanced by a wave
of relief that, just a few minutes earlier, he had needed
the bathroom. Had he waited a moment longer with
poor Vlassov and Razin . . . the closeness of the call shivered
through him. And as it did so, the lights above his
head had gone out with a 'plink' sound and he was
plunged into darkness.
Kalagin had no illusions. You didn't grow up in the
shadow of Mount Elbrus in the central Caucasus without
having a very clear idea what avalanches could do. The
damage, he knew, would be horrendous. And as he stepped
from the bathroom, feeling his way across the bedroom
in the darkness, what he found did not surprise him. He
doubted if a single soul remained alive in the salon.
Vlassov and Razin discussing skis; Dak, standing by the
balcony windows, trying to look inconspicuous, giving
short shrift to anyone who tried to start up a conversation.
And the rest. . . How many had been there, his
guests, the people he'd invited for drinks? He'd called
out some names but there was no answer from beneath
the chaotic rubble of snow and furniture. It was then,
checking the hallway cloakroom, its locked door now
broken open, that he had discovered Nathalie, freed her
and taken her to his bedroom.
At least, he thought, she was still alive. Asleep, possibly
unconscious, but not dead. Not yet at any rate. But shock
was as much a killer as being buried in the snow and
he knew that he needed to get help. Her ankle was
clearly broken but there could just as easily be internal
injuries - something deep and dark, ruptured, bleeding
away unseen.
Making his way along the Auberge's top-floor corridor,
only dimly lit by emergency lights, was no less difficult
than getting around his own penthouse, every door on
the front de neige side blown open, each shattered doorway
spilling out high licks of snow and rubble, studded with
clothes and pieces of furniture and, three rooms down,
an arm, blued with the cold, reaching out from the snow.
As for the half-dozen rooms overlooking the place, each
of their doors stood firm, protected by the outside suites.
He tried each one - knocking, rattling the handle - but
each door, Kalagin discovered, was locked. No guest to
be summoned, no chance to call for help or climb down
from their balconies.
Next he checked the stairs but they were plugged
tight with snow and debris pushing up from below, and
the lift - no surprise - didn't answer his call. Hooking
his fingers into its silvered doors, he tried to ease them
apart but only managed a couple of inches, enough space
to make out that the lift was wedged two floors below
on the Aigle d'Or landing. As for sliding down the lift
cable - well, there wasn't one.
Which only left the roof space. Pulling down the
ladder access, Kalagin climbed up and pushed at the large
square of planking. There was no shifting it - either snow
had piled in on top of it or one of the roof beams had
fallen across it and jammed it shut.
Coming back down, he wondered about Zaitsev, over
in one of the chalets. Had he survived the slide? What
had happened to him?
Then he heard a faint barking from the open lift
shaft.

134

Down in the lobby of the Auberge, Paul Garamonde
pulled Coco away from the lift and shushed her with a
gentle tap on the snout. With the two skiers lending a
hand, they tried to force the doors apart. For a moment
there was resistance, but then the doors sprang open and
a shaft-full of bouldered snow spilled into the lobby,
crashing down from the floors above.
The men leaped out of the way and Coco yelped and
scuttled off, tail between her legs, chased by the flow.
After a few seconds it eased and stopped and they were
able to push through the fall and take a look into the
lift shaft.
As far as Garamonde could see, the lift itself seemed
to be jammed at an odd angle two floors above them, as
though the snow that blasted in at that level had rammed
the lift off its cabling and runners, wedging it against the
concrete walls of the shaft. Unless they could somehow
loosen the lift and bring it crashing down to lobby level
there seemed no safe or effective way to get past it.
And then, beyond the lift, from somewhere on one of
the floors above, they heard a voice calling down to them.
'It's the Russian,' said Cole and Tanner White, almost
together, recognising the voice, the accent.'Max Kalagin.'
Garamonde shouted out the name and the Russian
called back. 'Yes, it's me. I need help.'
'Where are you?' asked Garamonde. 'Is there anyone
else up there?'
'I'm on the top floor. The penthouse level. And yes,
I have Mademoiselle Bezard with me.'
It was all that Garamonde could have hoped to hear.
He had found her. Found her alive.
'Alorsl he said, turning to the two skiers. 'Then we
had better get them out, n'est-ce pasT
Since the shaft looked impassable, they turned their
attention to the blocked stairwell across the lobby. But
the wall of snow was packed tight with furniture picked
up and swept down from the Salle du Matin - tables,
chairs, sections of log beaming, even china and cutlery.
And more bodies for sure.
'It'll take a while,' said Tanner White, wiping an arm
across his brow. 'Ain't no way we're gonna break through
this any time soon. Looks like we even got ourselves a
four-by-four here,' he added, and he tapped the blade of
his shovel against a bent and buckled door panel.
Garamonde took no more than a second to make up

his mind.
'Then we try from the outside. Out on the front de
neige] he told them and no sooner had he finished
speaking than he turned to the hole that they had come
through and was squirming his way out again, with Coco
waiting her turn to follow.
Fifteen minutes later, after struggling over the snow
boulders and debris jamming the side allees that led to the front de neige, the three men stood below a towering slope
of rubbled snow that reached up to the exposed roof
timbers of the Auberge. A large part of its overhanging
roof had been wrenched away and of its log-walled facade
only the two corner penthouse towers were properly
visible, standing out like distant hilltop castles on the steep
slope of snow.
'That's quite a climb,' said Tanner White, a smile
spreading across his face. 'Think you're up to it?'
'Let's see who slides down first,' replied Garamonde,
reaching for his ice axe, hammering it into a giant boulder
of ice and snow and pulling himself upwards.
From behind them came a voice.
'I've got rope if you'd prefer. Maybe safer.'
The three men -- Garamonde,White and Cole -- turned
as one. Standing there in his mountain rescue togs with
a hefty coil of rope slung over his shoulder and the breath
clouding from his mouth was Marc Monbalt.


135

The rue des Saintes was no more than two kilometres
from end to end and about fifteen metres wide, but in
the darkness and the fluttering snow it looked impossibly
long, a huge area for two men to cover with just
a shovel and probe each and two torches. Alex felt like
falling to his knees and weeping at the impossibility of
it. But he didn't. He swallowed back the tears and kept
to the task. Somewhere here, buried beneath the snow,
was his daughter.
But if he managed to keep back the tears, there was no
way he could hold off the memories. Twenty years earlier,
no more than a kilometre from here down Route des
Passeurs, he had dug for his mother, one of a dozen groups
of searchers that stretched all the way to the Chouettes
cut, making their way across what was now the airstrip,
Lycee and Centre Municipal. Whenever one of them called
out ' Voiture! Voiture iciF Alex had left the probe line and
gone running, helping to dig. Four days it took them to
find her, to dig out the family Citroen. And for about three
of those four days his mother, Honorine, must have been
alive. She'd wrapped herself in car rugs, finished the thermos

of coffee and the sandwiches she'd taken to work, and
she'd even written him a letter.
And she survived down there, for that long, because
she was in a car
So there was time.
If Laurent Faugere's car hadn't been too badly
damaged, ifThea wasn't too badly injured, there was time
to find her. To save her. And if rue des Saintes seemed
long, it was nowhere near as long as Route des Passeurs.
Of course, they weren't the only ones searching. Other
people were out there too, scrabbling at the snow, pushing
down probes, shouting out in the darkness, and Alex
comforted himself with the thought that any one of
them could find Laurent's car, and Thea and Bruno.
Down the length of the street, he could see the sweep
of torches, hear voices -- each and every one of them
doing just what he was doing. Searching for loved ones.
It couldn't happen again.
Please God, thought Alex. Not again.

136

With Laurent's help Bruno hoisted himself over the rear
passenger seat and reached out a disbelieving hand to
Thea. Her head was flung back, her arms held up as if
in surrender, and her face and neck covered in blood.
Even her teeth were red.
'Je-su,' whispered Bruno.
'She okay?' asked Laurent, now standing on the back
door of the RAV and peering over the top of the rear
seat. 'Man, is that blood?' he said. 'Is she breathing?'
'Je sais pas] said Bruno, suddenly weak with fear. 'Attends! Wincing with every flash of pain from his ribs,
he slithered across the seat back and reached for her

wrist.
'Don't bother with the wrist,' said Laurent. 'Here,
it's easier to find a pulse in the neck.' His hand
stabbed forward and he felt at her neck. The seconds
ticked by.
'She got a heartbeat?' asked Laurent. 'You checked?'
Bruno looked suddenly appalled at the thought.'You're
kidding? I. . . '
'Doesn't matter now,' said Laurent triumphantly. 'I got
a pulse. She's alive at least.'
Dieu merd, Dieu merd, Dieu merd, whispered Bruno. Thank you God, I owe you one.
Over on the CD player, the last track came to an end
and the disc ejected. For a second or two, Bruno
wondered at the sudden silence. He hadn't any idea which
band had been playing, but he was grateful that it was
over -- whatever it was.
'Hey, Bruno, reach up and switch the music back on,'
said Laurent.
'You want music?' asked Bruno, stunned by his friend's
suggestion. There was something almost blasphemous
about it. Music? At a time like this?
'That's right, my friend. And if you want to get out
of here before we run out of air, I suggest you push it
up as loud as it will go. And while you're at it flash the
headlights too.'

137

Benoit brought the Agusta in low over Hopital des Hauts,
the undercarriage light splaying over the crumpled snow,
and looked for a place to land. As he and Francine had
established when they flew past earlier, the front of the
building was not an option, with no real level area, the
snow banked up against the facade in a tumble of snow
boulders the size of a car, some even bigger. But the car
park at the rear of the building looked far more accessible.
After
leaving Francine at the Residence, Benoit had
come back to the hospital on her instructions to see if
he could find any nursing staff to ferry back to her. With more than forty residents to care for and the first
survivors already being brought in, it was clear she'd
need back-up. Bringing the chopper in to land in a
swirling maelstrom of snow, he was about to kill the
engine and follow orders when a figure came stumbling
across the spill of snow, cowering in the downdraft of
the rotors. It was a woman, a nurse, an overcoat pulled
over her uniform. Reaching up to release the passenger
door catch, she threw in a doctor's emergency bag and
climbed up into the cockpit. Judging by the dark colour
of the uniform, Benoit could see that she was one of
the senior nurses.
'You must be psychic,' was the first thing she said,
snapping on her belt.
'Only when I need to be. What's the problem? How
can I help?'
He handed her a headset. She pulled off her nurse's
cap and put it on.
'We got a call from a bus driver out on Passeurs. He
was heading down to Cariol when he got caught by the
slide.'
'He called you?' asked Benoit, increasing the Agusta's
revs and lifting off with a shudder.
'As far as we can make out, some mobiles work, others
don't,' she replied, adjusting the mouthpiece on her
headset. 'His did. He's a local man. His wife works at
the hospital so he called her number and got through.
She's on her way there now with a doctor and two other
nurses, but it'll take them an age to get there. We saw
you go over earlier and waved, but you didn't see us. I
was praying you'd come back, and you have.'
'Is the coach buried?' asked Benoit, swinging over the
roof of the hospital and taking a line on the snow-choked
rue du Courcelle.
'A metre down,' she replied. 'But he managed to smash
an emergency window at the back of the bus and dig
his way out. Trouble is, he's got thirty passengers on
board and some of them, he says, are seriously injured.'
'How far along Passeurs?' asked Benoit. 'Did he say?'
'Just past Bellinger's BMW showroom, out towards
the airstrip. We should be able to--'
And then his passenger pointed ahead.'There . . there
they are. The others.'
Benoit looked down through the panel of glass by his
right foot and saw a huddled group waving up at them.
'Can we pick them up?' she asked.
'You realise I'll have to double the fare,' he said with
a smile, and a few minutes later he set the Agusta down
on a nearby rooftop.
It was the first of many such impromptu landings and
take-offs that Benoit would perform in the hours to come.


138

Patric saw it first - a soft pulsing glow in the snow in the
entrance to a side street three blocks down from the crossroads.
As he drew closer he could also make out the dull,
distant sound of music thumping up through the snow.
'There's something up ahead,' he shouted across at
Alex. 'On the corner there. You see the lights?'
Alex didn't bother to reply. He was across the street
as fast as he could manage, throwing himself down beside
Patric and reaching for a shovel.
'How far down do you think?' asked Alex, lunging
the blade into the snow.
Patric looked around. 'Judging by the gutters over
there, I'd say a metre or two - if the car's standing on
its tail, which it looks like it is.'
Oddly enough it was closer than Patric estimated.
After no more than a dozen shovelfuls of snow the two
men, screwing up their eyes in the glare from the headlights,
finally reached a crumpled front bumper.
'It's the RAV,' said Patric. 'It's them all right.'
Turning the shovel round in his hands, he banged the
wooden handle against the metal.'Don't want any sparks,'
he said. 'That's too strong a smell of petrol to take any

chances.'
The words were hardly out of his mouth when the
music in the car was switched off and faintly, through
another metre of snow packed down tight on the bonnet,
they heard the hollow thump of fists on the windscreen
and muffled, desperate cries for help.

139

Marc Monbalt was the first to reach Kalagin's penthouse.
As he pulled himself over what remained of the balcony
and paused to catch his breath, he spotted a shadowy
figure moving cautiously towards him across the great
tumble of snow and debris that filled the salon.
'Monsieur, I am very pleased to see you . . . Here I
will help you.' It was the Russian, Max Kalagin.
'Reste la] Marc called out. 'Stay there, we'll come and
get you,' he said.The last thing Marc wanted was a crowd
on this narrow ledge.
Making himself secure, heels dug into the runners of
the sliding balcony doors, Monbalt hauled on the rope
round his waist and after just a few heaves, Garamonde
appeared.
'Some climb,' said Marc with a grin.
'Tougher than it looked,' panted Garamonde, struggling
up on to the ledge.
'There's a guy across the room. It's the Russian, I
think.'
Garamonde undipped his torch and flashed it into
the penthouse. Kalagin had climbed back down from the
rubble of snow and was standing in an open doorway
in the far corner of the room.
'Monsieur Kalagin? Is that you?'
'It's me, yes. Kalagin.'
'Are you okay?'
'Cold. Just cold. But the young lady . . .'
Garamonde felt a sudden wrench of dread. He'd
assumed that Nathalie was okay. That she hadn't been
hurt. That's what Kalagin said down the lift shaft. That's
how it sounded. But now?
'What's the problem?' he asked, unroping himself and
starting across the room.
'Watch out for the glass, Monsieur. The windows . . .
the sliding doors.'
'Okay, okay,' said Garamonde, heeding the warning
but cursing the delay. Just a few splinters had sliced up
the concierge's hands pretty badly. A sheet of broken glass
from one of the sliding doors, hidden somewhere beneath
the snow, could easily take a leg off. Whether he liked
it or not, he was going to have to be careful. Testing
every surface he put weight on -- with hands, knees or
feet -- he finally made it across the room.
'You said she's hurt?'
'A broken ankle, for sure,' replied Kalagin, leading
Garamonde down a corridor and showing him into a
bedroom. 'But something else too, I don't know what.
She has been unconscious, but now she is awake.'
Garamonde's torch found the figure on the bed, and
he saw an arm try to brush away the light.
'Paul, is that you?' came a tiny voice.
'It's me, it's me,' said Garamonde, crossing to the bed
and dropping to his knees beside Nathalie. 'And you will
never know how pleased I am to see you,' he added,
kissing her forehead, and stroking her cheek.
A big smile creased over Nathalie's pale face.
'The feeling's mutual,' she replied, coughing gently
but wincing with the effort. 'My ankle's bust, but there's
a pain in my chest,' she whispered, bubbles of blood gathering
in the corner of her mouth as she spoke.
Garamonde recognised the signs.There'd been damage
to the lungs, possibly punctured by a cracked rib. He'd
seen it before in climbing accidents. He knew what to
do, but he knew he'd have to do it quickly.
'Don't talk now. We'll have you out of here before
you know it.'
But it wasn't quite as easy as Garamonde made it
sound. With the lift out of action and the stairs blocked,
there was nothing for it but to lower her down to
Cole and White from what was left of the penthouse
balcony.
Immobilising the ankle as best they could, and padding
it with pillows, Garamonde and Marc wrapped Nathalie
in the quilt, bound her into it with dressing gown belts
and slowly, carefully, the three men manhandled the
bundle across the snow-covered chaos of the salon. When
they reached the balcony, Garamonde fashioned a rope sling and slipped it round her shoulders and under her
arms, while Marc and Kalagin set up a belay.
'If you've broken a rib, which I think you have, this
will not be a comfortable ride,' Garamonde warned her.
'But we'll be as quick and as careful as we can,' he said, maneuvering her to the edge of the balcony and peering
down the snow-rubble slope.
'Tanner, Mike,' he shouted down. 'We got a parcel for
you. You ready?'
'Lower away. We're waiting,' came a voice from far
below and, on a nod from Garamonde, the three of them
took up the strain and started to play out the rope.
'I love you,' he heard her whisper.
'I love you too,' he whispered back.



140

It was the strangest thing, thought Thea, how life
seemed to be happening all around her, yet she appeared
to be playing no part in it. She was aware of hammering
and shouting and seemed to recognise the voices, but
she couldn't make out what was being said. She felt
isolated and separate from the action and it worried
her.
She tried to remember where she was, but all she
could register was the fact that she was sitting down. Or
rather, sitting down but tipped right back. It was like
being an astronaut waiting for lift-off. Thea played with
that idea for a moment, imagining the countdown and
the rocket blast of the engines behind her.
But the blast didn't come, just a sudden draft of freezing
air across her face and more voices -- deeper, older voices.
Familiar voices.
'Elle est morte?
'Now, non, Papa. II y a un pouls, mais c'est faible!
And then there were hands scrabbling for her belt
buckle, arms reaching round her and pulling her from
the seat. She tried to open her eyes but they seemed
glued shut, the skin dry and tight, her arms and legs
strangely floppy as though the circulation had been cut off.
'There's so much blood,' she heard someone say.
Was it hers? she wondered.
'Here, use the snow,' came another voice. 'But gently,
gently'
Then Thea felt a hand on her face, an ice-cold hand
scouring away at her skin. The pain was intense and
immediate, and she flinched away from the touch.
'Be careful. Doucement] someone said.
Yes, please, please be careful, thought Thea, trying to
place the voice. The pain had been like a lightning flash
lancing behind her eyes and now her whole face was
aching with it.
But the tightness of her skin seemed to be softening,
more sticky now, and with a supreme effort, her eyes
flickered open.
'Just hold still, my darling. It's Daddy, and Patric. We're
going to try to move you. Get you out. Are you hurt?
Can you hear me?'
Thea tried to focus on the voice. 'Daddy?'
And then it all came tumbling back - stopping at the
traffic lights on rue des Saintes, that mighty rush of wind
and snow, and the screaming, howling energy of it dragging
the car forward, finally toppling it, and then catching
hold of it, spinning it over and over.
It was her fault, all her fault. She should never
have left the house. If she and Bruno had stayed at
home . . .
'Daddy, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry,' she began.
'Shush. Shush. It's okay. Don't fret. Don't worry, it's
all over now. I've got you. You're safe, thank God.'
And she felt his lips on her forehead, and his arms around her and then, moments later, she could see stars
in the sky and she knew that she was alive.

141

It was still dark when the three Chinooks from the airbase
in Chavalotte finally clattered over the Juret ridge. The
snow clouds had shifted by this time and a canopy of stars
backlit their monstrous black shapes as they dropped down
past the Gorge des Chouettes cut, great shafts of shivering
blue-white light blasting down on to the snow. But instead
of landing at the airstrip they kept their positions, one
behind the other, and made a thundering circuit of Les
Hauts, a long low sweep, assessing the damage, the access,
the layout of the town. Once this had been done, the
three pilots peeled away from one another.The first settled
in a throbbing roar of rotors and swirling snow on the front de neige a hundred metres north of the Auberge, the
second returned to the airstrip, while the remaining pilot
guided his bird down on to a stretch of snow-quilted
pasture below Bellepic, a hundred metres from the iron
railings of Les Hauts' cemetery. It was seamlessly done, as
though they'd practised the move a dozen times.
In the hours since the avalanche hit, survivors around Les Hauts had organised themselves into efficient and
well-equipped rescue and aid teams, a steady supply of
shovels, probes, gloves, hats, parkas, hurricane lamps and
torches liberated from various shops and passed around
to where they were most needed. But within an hour
of the Chinooks' arrival, the rescue operation had gone
into overdrive and Les Hauts -- or what was left of it -- was buzzing. Suddenly there were more people to dig
and probe, more rope, proper stretchers, bandages, medicine.
Whatever was needed, it was there in minutes. At
various points round town, generators had also been
unloaded, positioned and connected, and the tumbled,
rubbled snowscape of Les Hauts was lit up for all to see,
the scarred and filthy top surface of the slide cut with
paths and pocked with holes where bodies had been dug
for.
Instead of tunnelling their way into supermarkets
around town, survivors soon had a plentiful supply of
food, and long lines queued for coffee and hot soup at
any one of a number of'kitchens' rapidly deployed around
Les Hauts. Since the incoming rescue services knew that
the town's gas and electricity supply was sure to be down,
they had also brought in cooking braziers which turned
out to be little short of lifesavers in the freezing conditions.
Around the edges of Place des Sommets and on
street corners where the slide had not reached or had
been cleared away, these braziers crackled brightly and
filled the chill snowy air with the scent of coffee, toast
and sausages. And life.
Of all the equipment brought in by the rescue teams,
snow probes proved the most valuable item.When mobile
phones failed to work as effective locators, these jointed

469

metal sticks came into their own and were rapidly distributed
to volunteers. Gathering in front of the Auberge
on Place des Sommets, a metre apart, thirty men and
women now proceeded in a proper shoulder-to-shoulder
line across the expanse of snow, stopping every other
step to plunge probes into the snow. Once to the left,
between their boots, and then to the right. Stooping
down as the probes sank into the snow, pulling them up,
stooping then standing, stooping then standing, followed
by two steps forward as the pattern was repeated. It
looked like a strange and macabre dance routine carried
out in slow time, as the line worked its way forward.
By four in the morning the whole of Place des
Sommets, the side streets running off it and rue des Hauts
north to St Sulpice and south to rue des Sommets, had
been extensively probed. Whenever a probe met resistance,
the rest of the line converged on the spot and
started digging. Most of the time it was just bodies that
were recovered, bent and broken, the grating of splintered
bones in twisted limbs clearly audible as they were
prised from the snow. Occasionally, however, this grim
remorseless task was lightened when someone was
brought out alive, the survivor greeted with ragged cheers,
and shouts for hot coffee, blankets, cognac. But as time
passed, these occasional rescues became fewer and fewer
and the lines of bodies grew into banks, gently draped
in shawls of new snow.
Of course, not everyone had been caught in the slide
itself. Around Les Hauts there were many trapped less
hazardously in their homes, or hotel rooms and restaurants.
As the hours passed, those rescuers not involved in
probing, or released from it, took to the side streets of
the old town, calling out for survivors, squirming in
through broken second-floor windows to search apartments,
or digging down stairwells into basement bars
and nightclubs.
When the sky finally lightened over Les Hauts, some
seven hours after the avalanche hit, the front de neige and
the luxurious terraces that once decorated it had been
transformed into a tented city, each tent linked with metal
web duckboards over the rough and tumbled surface of
the slide, their canvas sides billowing as helicopters took
off or came in to land, stirring up a blizzard of sparkling
snow. Across the roof of each tent was a large red cross
in a white circle, and it was here that victims were now
brought.
Since the snowstorm had passed and the high-altitude
winds dropped, a swarm of smaller relief helicopters also
started to arrive, bringing up even more medical supplies
and rescue equipment, as well as evacuating the most seriously
injured, transferred to the- front de neige or airstrip
from the various makeshift medical centres where they
had been held and treated so far.
One of the first to be flown out was Nathalie Bezard,
with a broken ankle and ruptured lung. An hour after
her rescue from Kalagin's suite, a hellish descent with
the rope sling cutting into her armpits and her broken
ankle catching agonisingly in the rubble, she was
stretchered finally into a Chinook, with Garamonde and
Coco at her side.
'I'll be fine, I'll be fine,' she told him as the twin rotors
powered up and the ribbed fuselage started to shake.
'You're needed here. Go on, off with you, or I'll get
cross.'
Five minutes later, cowering from the stinging swirl
of snow blown up by the Chinook's rotors, ears battered
by the roar of its engines, Garamonde watched as the
helicopter lifted off, swung across the front de neige and
headed away to the west.
Beside him Coco whined and whimpered. 'I know, I
know. I miss her too. But she's safe now. She's safe,' he
said, squatting down in front of the dog and bringing
her face close to his. Behind him he heard the clattering
of the Chinook fade away as it dropped down beyond
the Juret ridge. 'Tell you what, hound. How about you
and me finding something to eat and drink? I reckon
we deserve it, don't you? How does Mique's sound?
Looked like they were up and running last time I looked.'
It was here in Mique's, a couple of hours later, that
Patric and Alex found him, his head resting in his arms,
sound asleep, with Coco curled up at his feet.

142

All three men had survived a night of fear and dread
and horror, but all three now had relief stitched across
their faces, their smiles quick and easy as they exchanged
news - Nathalie rescued from the Auberge and flown
out to Cariol; Sophie, Mathilde and Philippe all safe;
Bruno and Thea rescued from their buried car, Thea
dragged all the way back to the Bezard chalet on a
makeshift sled fashioned from the RAV's back seat
According to Sophie and Mathilde, who had returned
to the house after leaving Mique's and set up a food and
aid station for the neighbourhood, it looked like one of
the boys had hit her when they were flung from their
seats in the spinning car. An elbow, or knee, or foot, or
head had made contact and broken her nose, blackened
her eyes and cracked a cheekbone. Possibly there was a
slight concussion too. As for Bruno, there were several
cracked ribs that needed treatment, but far worse was
the tongue-lashing he received for going out without
permission, and putting Thea in danger. Of the three,
Laurent had come off the lightest with nothing more
than a badly sprained knee ligament to show for his
exploits. And just now, said Patric, on their way to Mique's,
a message from Jacqueline that she and Hugo were okay.
There was, however, sadder news to pass on. While
Sophie and Mathilde were working on Thea's injuries,
Jean Lesage had appeared on the Bezards' doorstep.Tucked
into his parka was his baby daughter and in the other a
pillowcase from the hospital filled with supplies for her.
Sitting at the kitchen table while Mathilde rocked the
baby to sleep, his cheeks dirt-smeared and tear-stained,
Lesage told them what had happened at Hopital des
Hauts and how he had brought his daughter to safety.
Hearing of Michelle's death, Garamonde lowered his
head and rubbed a weary hand across his eyes. Both
Patric and Alex knew at once what he was thinking that
the avalanche had been his fault, that he should have
done something sooner about the build-up. As far as Paul
was concerned, the buck stopped with the director of
the Bureau des Pistes et Secours. And that was him.
'Jesus, if only I'd--'
'Don't start,' interrupted Patric, laying a hand on his
friend's arm.'This is not your fault, Paul.What's happened
has nothing to do with you.'
'But I knew it was bad,' said Garamonde. 'I went to
Bruchet, to Hugo. Told them I was worried. That we
should close the slopes.'
'You went to Hugo?' asked Patric.
Garamonde nodded.
'And what did he say?'
'He said if you agreed to the Diable being postponed,
then he was happy to go along with it.'
'But he never said a word to me.'
Garamonde gave Patric a look. 'With Philippe in the
Diable, I guess he thought there wasn't much point.'
Patric stiffened at the implication. 'And you, Paul?
Why didn't you say something?'
Garamonde shrugged, smiled.'Same reason, I suppose.'

For a moment it looked like Patric was going to
explode with indignation, but Garamonde's gentle smile
defused it.
'Next time,' said Patric, calmer now. 'Next time you

tell me, okay?'
There was a moment's pause and Garamonde fixed
him with a steely look. 'How about right now?' he said.
Alex frowned.'You think there's anything left up there
to come down?'
'There's been new snow -- God knows how much
higher up,' said Garamonde.'I need to check SyPAC and
get things moving.'
'According to Benoit, there's not much left of our
building,' said Marc, who'd dropped into Mique's after
coordinating probe lines on rue des Sommets and the
top of Route des Passeurs. He'd spotted them from the
bar and come over to the booth with a tray of fortified chocolat. 'He's been over it a few times and says it took
pretty much a direct hit.'
'If we can reach the control room in the basement. . .
If the connections are still in place,' said Garamonde, 'then
I've got to give it a try.'

143

Hugo Bezard lay on a stretcher in a holding tent on the front de neige. His neck was secured in a brace and his
view of the world, when he opened his eyes, was limited
to a pitched canvas roof that rippled and billowed every
time a helicopter came in to land or took off. As for
any view to left or right, most of it was obscured by the
plumpness of his cheeks, and the fact that he couldn't
seem to turn his head.
Blinking in the bright morning light, Hugo felt no
pain but seemed unable to concentrate on anything.
Thoughts and images drifted through his mind but
none of them settled. Where was he? What was
happening? And what was it that was holding his head
so securely?
Suddenly Jacqueline's face broke into view and he felt
his hand squeezed.
'Bonjour, cheri. How are you feeling? You've been asleep,'
she said, and smiled gently. She watched a frown etch
across her husband's brow and knew he was trying to
make sense of what was going on.
'Where?'
'You're in a hospital. In Les Hauts. You're okay. Soon
they're going to fly you out of here to Cariol.'
She saw him scan her face, latch on to the strips of
holding plaster across the edge of her right eye where
the rearview mirror of their car had opened up a deep
four-centimetre gash. His eyes dropped down to the
collar of her blouse and a wide splash of dried blood.
'We were in a car crash,' she began, releasing his hand
to stroke the side of his head. 'On the way home. Do
you remember?'
Hugo closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. But
he couldn't remember a thing -- nothing. Had he been
drinking? Was he drunk? He felt light and woozy He
wanted to sit up, but he knew without trying that his
body wouldn't do what he wanted. Apart from the blasted
collar around his neck, the top half of his body felt fine
- chest, arms, hands ... he could move everything. But
below the waist there was a great weight of nothingness.
He tried to wriggle his toes and felt something
rough and splintery brush against the top of his foot.
Whatever it was that was wrong with him, he wasn't
paralysed. He felt a twinge of gratitude.
He was also feeling stiff and uncomfortable, so he
decided to shift position. It was a big mistake. As he
started to bend his left knee he felt towering, red-hot
fists of pain take a hold of every nerve ending in his
body and twist them like a damp cloth. His mouth sprang
open and he gasped, his hand reaching for Jacqueline.
'There, there, there, cheri.Try not to move, my darling,'
she whispered, bending close, the breath from her words
fluttering against his cheek.
Another face came up behind Jacqueline's and Hugo
tried to focus on it. The hair was awry and what looked
like some kind of mask dangled around his chin. A doctor?
'And how's your husband, Madame? Awake I see.'
'I think he might need another shot,' Hugo heard
Jacqueline say.
The man nodded. 'I'll see to it.'
'How much longer?' began Jacqueline hopefully.
The man lifted his hands, the corners of his mouth
turning down as though the answer was beyond him,
but he gave a stab at it. 'The next flight, if we're lucky'
Jacqueline thanked him and turned back to Hugo.
'What . . . happened?' he croaked.
'There was . . . there was an avalanche,' she replied.
'Last night . . .'
She didn't quite know how to continue, memory
making the words catch in her throat. But there was no
such reflexive mechanism to halt the images flooding
back.
After the Champions' Dinner she'd complained of a
headache and he had offered to drive her home. She
told him he didn't have to, she could easily get herself
back to their chalet, but he insisted. Though she didn't
say anything she was rather touched by his concern, until
he told her that he'd have to return to the hotel as soon
as she was comfortable. With a twist of anger, she knew
he was going back to see that woman.
'We were nearly home, going up the drive,' she said,
wondering if his mistress had survived and hoping, guiltily,
that she hadn't.'If it hadn't been for the rise of land and
the trees, it could have been far worse. But you . . . Both
your legs were broken. And pelvis. You couldn't move. I
managed to get out and find help. Francine of all people,
Nathalie's friend? She was working at the Residence.
She had morphine, gave you a shot, set splints on your
legs and we brought you here. You've been asleep ever
since. Which is good. You must rest.'
'And you? Are you okay?' he asked, trying to take in
everything she had told him, to make some kind of sense
of it.
She touched the plaster on her eye. 'A tiny cut. I was
lucky. But I think it will make a very sexy scar.'
'Nathalie? Patric? The family?'
'Nathalie broke an ankle but she's already been flown
out to Cariol. Everyone else is fine. They're all up at
Patric and Sophie's.'
And then Hugo's eyes darkened, the brows quivering,
as she knew they would. She knew what he was thinking.
'Auberge? Guests?'
'There were some injuries, a little damage, but nothing
serious,' she assured him. There seemed little point in
telling him just how bad it was, that early estimates of
the dead varied between one hundred and two hundred
people - guests and staff. The soldiers from the camp at
Gassonnet were currently digging through to the first
and second floors as she spoke, no more than a hundred
metres from where her husband lay. 'But you're not to
worry. Everything's fine. Everyone's doing a grand job.'
A voice, the doctor's voice, drifted in from outside his
field of vision. 'Why don't you get some rest, Madame?
Let me take over for a while.'
'It's fine. I'm okay. I'd Like to stay with him.'
'You should have a break. It's been a long night.There's
coffee and food in the place.They won't be moving him
for a while. When they do, I'll come and get you.'
'Go, go,' said Hugo. 'I'm fine. Have a coffee. Bring
one back for me,' he smiled.
Jacqueline hesitated. A coffee. Something hot to eat.
It sounded irresistible. She leaned down to kiss Hugo's
cheek. 'If you're sure,' she whispered. 'I'll be just a few
minutes. No longer.'
On the stretcher beside Hugo an old man reached
out for the doctor's arm.
'Are you taking me for a ride in the helicopter?' he
asked. 'I don't think I'd like that very much, you know.
Turns the cows' milk, it does. You won't find a farmer
in these parts that'll tell you different,' he said and
chuckled at the wisdom of his words. These young people, he thought, they didn't know a thing. Hadn't lived.

'Don't worry,' the doctor assured him. 'You won't feel
a thing.'
'Hah! That's what you people always say'

Jacqueline was only halfway down the allee, heading for
Place des Sommets and wondering how her husband
would feel when he found out about the true scale of
the disaster, when she heard the blast of a helicopter
coming in to land on the front de neige. She wondered
if she should go back. Was this the helicopter they were
taking Hugo out on? But it couldn't be. There were at
least half a dozen patients ahead of him in the queue.
And so she walked on.
For how was Jacqueline to know that four of those
injured survivors would succumb to their wounds in the
time it took her to find a coffee and sit in the sunshine
outside Mique's?
How was she to know, as she sipped her coffee, that
they were strapping her husband's stretcher on the rescue
helicopter's skid, the last man on board?

144

Leaving Coco with Ginette at Bar Mique, Garamonde,
Alex, Marc and Patric crossed the snowfield piled up
along the front de neige, and headed for what remained
of the Bureau des Pistes et Secours. As Garamonde had
explained, if the SyPAC control system survived the
avalanche then there was every chance they could activate
charges and disperse any newly fallen snow that
might pose a threat. Just because Les Hauts had been
savaged by one avalanche, didn't mean that it might not
be hit by another. In winter, in the mountains, nature
didn't give anyone the time or the luxury to tidy up
their living quarters.
'Like Benoit said, it doesn't look like there's much
left,' said Alex as they slid and scrambled over a mass of
snow-covered rubble -- all that remained of the top two
floors of the Bureau a tattered battlement of bricks and
empty window frames. Above them helicopters swarmed
like bees, circling above the town, landing, taking off.
'It would have been the first to go,' said Garamonde.
'Right in the path of the slide. Before it reached the
Auberge. Which is why the control room is in the basement.
Otherwise . . .'
The breath clouding from their mouths, the four men
reached the fractured shell of the building. With a nod
from Garamonde to follow him, Patric, Alex and Marc
slid down the slope after him and helped pull away a
wash of snow-laden branches from a narrow steel door.
Pulling a ring of keys from his pocket, Garamonde
unlocked the door and shouldered it open, the passageway
beyond banked with snow.
'It's down here,' said Garamonde. 'Watch your step, it's
steep and slippery.'
Finally they reached the basement level and
Garamonde opened a second door. It was pitch-black
inside. Garamonde tried the light switch but nothing
happened.
'I thought you said you had an auxiliary power supply?'
said Alex. 'If the lights don't work . . .'
'They're different circuits,' explained Garamonde.
'Down here the back-up supply feeds only the mainframe.'
Except
it didn't. Sitting at the console in torchlight
Garamonde tried to boot up the system but the control
screen stayed blank. He tried again, and then a third time,
fingers stabbing at the keyboard. Abruptly it blinked into
life. A flashing white cursor appeared in the top right
hand corner of the screen and somewhere behind a bank
of monitors a processor started up with a fan-like purr.
They all breathed a sigh of relief.
'Voila] said Garamonde. 'Qz marchel
After tapping out a series of commands on the
keyboard, the four monitors above the control screen
blinked on, lighting up the room they stood in, each of
the four screens split into four different mountain views.
'Neat system,' said Alex.
'It's called SyPAC. Systeme de Protection des Avalanches
Collectives. It's not the best, thanks to Maire Bruchet
vetoing my own recommendations, but we've had it for
the last four years and so far . . .'
'. . . It's done the job.'
'When it does what it's supposed to do,' growled
Garamonde, noting that only two charges had gone off
the previous night.'As you can see,' he continued, pointing
at the split-screen monitors,'we have a number of control
points around Les Hauts. Each of them is sited in an
area where, given certain conditions, snow can pile up
in dangerous amounts. Here we have the Hauts des Cols,
the Plesse ridge and the Courcelle face - three of our highest control points. And then, lower down,Valentina,
Gante, Calibere, Les Doux and so on. In all we've identified
sixteen sites that individually, or in tandem with
others, pose significant threat, many of them with a well
established history of slides.'
'What about the glacier?' asked Alex. 'I can't see any
screen for Murone.'
'We would not want to disturb anything around Murone.
The snow there packs in deep beneath the lip, freezes like
concrete and acts as a kind of support. A kind of. . .'
'Underpinning?'
Garamonde considered the word and smiled. 'C'est ca.

Exacte!
'So how does it work exactly?'
'You see these small pipes here?' Garamonde pointed
to what looked like two bent poles converging at the
bottom of each screen. 'Each of these pipes delivers a
single, pressurised shot of propane and oxygen which,
when mixed and ignited by an electrical element - a
spark? -- creates a small explosion. Pouffl It is enough to
start a controlled slide, and make the slope as safe as we
can for our skiers.
'What is clever about SyPAC,' Garamonde continued,
'is that sensors around each site estimate the precise mix
for the propane--oxygen charge to suit particular conditions
- usually around three kilos of propane to seven
of oxygen. The system also works independently, on automatic
if you like, if a storm front comes in overnight
when the Bureau is not manned. And it all happens from
here, or up in what used to be my office.'
'Don't you need to input forecast variants,' said Alex,
drawing up a chair and sitting beside Garamonde.
Garamonde grunted.'I regret, Monsieur, I do not have
that information to hand.' He turned and gave Alex a
wry smile.'I'll have to repeat the last figures we received.
There hasn't been too much change in the last twenty
four hours.'
For the next few minutes Garamonde entered the
relevant information, compensating for accurate data with
best-guess figures from his own observations of conditions
that morning - wind pattern, temperature and
approximate duration and depth of snowfall.
'So what happens now?'
'The computer identifies the dangerous slopes.'
Garamonde pointed at the sixteen frames and pressed 'Execute'.Ten of the frames blinked off, but six remained.
And there we have them. All I do now is press "Return".'
Reaching for the keyboard he did exactly that, and a
moment later six names appeared on his control screen
in a numbered column beginning with Gante.
'Why the numbers?' asked Alex.
'That is the other clever thing about SyPAC. When
the system was installed we programmed in geographical
information, along with grid references, so that
making a charge in one place doesn't set off another
avalanche somewhere else -- lower down or higher up.
To avoid loads combining on the same stretch of slope.
So. If we are ready, and our fingers are crossed . . . Let's

go
He tapped the 'Execute' key again, cocked his ear and
waited. 'Listen, you will hear them. The explosions.'
But there were no explosions. No distant crumpcrump.

Garamonde turned to the keyboard and hit 'Execute'
a second time.
Nothing.
For a moment there was silence and then Marc leaned
forward and pointed at one of the frames. The label
beneath the monitor read 'Plesse, Gante, Calibere, Les

Doux'.
'It looks like Plesse,' he said.
'What is it?' said Alex, watching the frame cloud over
with a white static. 'What's happening?'
Garamonde turned to him, his features suddenly slack
and broken. 'It starts again. Another slide.'

145

No one saw the first slide. But they saw the second.
It was a little after eight o'clock in the morning. Gus
Tavernier, a rescue pilot with Medecins Alpins, was
standing at a makeshift trestle table five metres above
what was once the terrace of Restaurant Diable when
he heard a crackle of static in his headset.
It was his friend, Leon, inbound from Bourg-St
Maurice at about three thousand metres.
'Attention! Attention! Une autre, une autre! From Plesse
this time.'
Tavernier swung round, spilling hot coffee on his wrist,
and looked to the north-east, to the sun-drenched, tree
lined slopes of the Val Plesse rising above the town. At
first he could see nothing, but he didn't doubt what his
friend had told him. Leon was in a far better - and safer
- position than he was to know what was going on.
And then, beyond the topmost ridge, Tavernier saw a
cloud of white rising up into the blue alpine sky, reaching
up towards the distant speck of Leon's helicopter.
'Merde] he thought, tossing his coffee cup into the
rubbled snow and pitching into a run towards the Red
Cross tents where he'd landed his Bell JetRanger. It was
parked fifty metres away on a rise of glistening snow
where, far below, the children of Les Hauts des Aigles
learned to ski on the nursery slopes.
Tavernier had landed forty minutes earlier, and while
rescue workers unloaded the supplies he'd brought in
from Cariol and strapped in casualties for emergency
transfer to the better-equipped Hopital Cariol, he'd come
to the trestle table for something to keep himself awake.
Now, slipping and tripping through the snow, he could
see the approaching snow cloud grow larger, higher.
Still there was no sound from what was clearly a
second slip, still somewhere high above the town. But as
he ran towards the helicopter, shouting out to the medics
to make his patients secure and stand clear, Tavernier saw
the roofs of the aid tents start to billow and flap and felt
a sudden wash of colder air across his cheeks, a fresh
pure scent of sun and cold snow filling his nostrils.
And then, as he ran, he felt the ground begin to tremble
underfoot, reverberating dully through the new cover of
snow that lapped up against the topmost floors of the
buildings along the front de neige. The JetRanger was now
only twenty metres away, but beyond its sagging rotors he
caught his first sight of the second slip, a half-kilometre
wide cascade of splintering, billowing snow and ice rising
up over the ridge then crashing down on to the slopes
below. As he hauled himself up into the JetRanger s cockpit,
strapped himself in and engaged the rotors, he glanced to
the right and saw it tumbling down the mountainside, a
wall of rolling snow boulders and spinning ice rocks.
A mountain man, he knew the figures. A hundred and
eighty kilometres an hour and rising. Fifty tonnes pressure
per square metre . . . and rising.
As if to broadcast its power, the first wave of snow,
not as high as the wave that followed, snapped away a
pair of lift pylons as though they were nothing more
than toothpicks.
How long did he have? he thought. How long before
that hurricane wind that the slip pushed in front of it
made take-off impossible? How long before that spewing,
frothing wave picked up his JetRanger and sent it crashing
into what still showed of the Auberge des Hauts Aigles?
Two minutes? Maybe three? He knew in his bones
he'd never have that much time.
Even over the turning rotors Gus Tavernier could still
hear, and now feel through his control pedals, the
approaching avalanche, already obscuring the upper slopes
of the Plesse ridge. But he didn't take his eyes from the
instruments - rev counter, rotor speed, lift gauge, engine
temp -- the blades above the cockpit beginning to blur,
his gloved fist working the twist-grip throttle, the roar
from the Rolls Royce 250-C20J engine rising to a shriek.
Through his glass canopy he could see rescue workers
stop what they were doing, look behind them, then turn
and race for cover -- if there was any to be found -- the
two girls who'd served him coffee at the trestle table,
stupidly wasting time as they searched for their bags.
A hundred metres to his right he saw two orderlies
carrying a stretcher out of one of the emergency treatment
tents. Both men saw the wall of snow racing down
the mountainside and for a moment froze. Then one of
them dropped his end of the stretcher and sprinted away
heading for the gap between the Restaurant Diable and
what was left of Hotel des Sommets. Tavernier wondered
if he'd make it.
Out on the helicopter's port stretcher skid an arm
lifted from the casualty strapped there, the sunlight
glinting off a silver cufflink, a hand waving feebly, as
though to say, 'Get going, get going! It's coming, it's
coming!'
Praying for the revs to increase,Tavernier pulled gently
at his control stick but all he managed was an uncertain
hop upwards and a frightening shudder from the frame
as the JetRanger bounced back into the hardening snow.
He glanced out of his side-window to make sure the
chopper's landing skids hadn't sunk too deep, anchoring
him to the earth. As far as he could estimate they were
down no more than a couple of centimetres, but with
the load he was carrying he knew he'd now need even
more revs to haul the JetRanger into the air.
In his headphones he could hear Leon screaming at
him through a hail of static - ' Vite . . . Vite! Elle arrive!
Elle arrive!' - but Tavernier tuned out his friend's voice
and concentrated on the rotor speed indicator. A thousand
. . . two thousand . . . three thousand . . .
He felt the machine wobble as though about to find
purchase and gave another twist of power to the pitch lever,
certain now, for the first time, that he would make it.
And, thank God, the chopper began to rise.
Slowly, slowly, gaining power, lifting up into a swirling
vortex of snow, Tavernier pushed at the stick to bank
the craft south, aiming to skim past the spire of St Sulpice,
clear the corner penthouses of the Auberge des Hauts
Aigles and gain height over the snow-filled bowl of Place
des Sommets.
But Tavernier sensed suddenly that his helicopter was
no longer responding to the messages his hands and feet
were sending it. The machine, he realised with a chill
shiver of fear, was no longer under his control.
Something else had taken hold of his JetRanger
Like a giant's fist closing round a troublesome
mosquito, the first hurricane rush of avalanche wind
snatched at the aircraft, spun it like a toy and flung it
carelessly at what remained of the Auberge s penthouse
level, its rotor blades slicing through the cantilevered log
balconies and pitching the body of the helicopter into
what remained of Max Kalagin's suite.
Seconds later a ball of flame boiled over its balconies
and spilled a waterfall of flaming kerosene on to the
trestle table where Gus Tavernier had, only minutes before,
been sipping his coffee.
But the flames didn't last.
After the wind came a roaring wall of snow as high
as the spire of St Sulpice, sweeping the length of the front de neige, and the fire was snuffed out in a blinding
powdery mass of blue and white.

146

With a full dispensary at her disposal, Francine had elected
to stay at the Residence des Hauts and set up an aid
station for the surviving residents of the hospice, and for
anyone Benoit brought in who needed medical attention.
Within an hour of Benoit dropping her off on the snow
pack outside the hospice, the old people whom she'd
seen crowding the front steps to watch her arrival had
been taken back inside, a few minor cuts and bruises
had been treated, and suitable medication provided for
one or two of the residents who had become a little
too excitable. Now, hours later, with the sky bright and
clear, and with a number of volunteers helping out in
the hospice, Francine sat on the bottom step of the
Residence, sipped a cup of coffee and thanked her lucky
stars for Rudi Zaitsev.
She hadn't recognised the Russian skier at first. In the
last few years there had been enough Russians coming
through Les Hauts to ski and party - and to be treated
for various injuries at the hospital - for Francine not to
be too surprised to meet up with one. Just one of those
things. Perhaps he was staying at a hotel close by and
had come to help after the slide, or had been on his way
back from a nightclub. At least he had enough French
for them to communicate, and was strong enough -- and
for the Russians she had come across, sober enough -- to help with the heavier work: bringing mattresses down
from the freezing upper floors where the windows had
burst and the snow had spilled in, shouldering open the
dispensary door which had jammed in its frame, and
heaving up paraffin heaters from the basement to provide
some warmth in the reception area's makeshift dormitory.
It was Zaitsev too, who discovered the bodies of
the night staff, four of them, all in the top-floor day
room where they'd been watching TV when the avalanche
struck.
But in all that time Francine hadn't realised who he
was, just increasingly thankful that he was there to lend
a hand. It was only when she spotted the badge glinting
in the glow from an oil lamp -- the crossed gold skis
over a devil's platinum pitchfork -- that she knew who
he was.
'You're the skier,' she said, as he helped her position
the heaters.
He looked where she was looking, at the badge pinned
to the lapel beneath his coat, and nodded shyly. 'But not
today, I think.'
Putting down her mug of coffee to light up a cigarette,
Francine wondered how she would ever have coped
without him. Because it wasn't just his passable French,
or his willingness to do anything or fetch anything she
asked for, that had seen them through the last few hours.
It was the almost magical rapport he'd established with
the residents, who followed him around and did whatever
he asked - so long as he spoke to them in Russian.
And Francine s mother -- who had quite failed to recognise
her own daughter - seemed to be the most captivated
of all. For what seemed the first time in years Francine
even saw the old lady smile - or as close as she could
get to a smile. Twelve hours earlier she'd been having a
tantrum over a napkin and a bowl of soup, yet here she
was doing exactly what she was told. And happy to
do it.
'You should not smoke,' came a voice from behind
her. It was Zaitsev. 'It is said to be bad for the health.'

She looked up at him. He was carrying two mugs of
coffee. He held one out to her.
Reaching up for it, she grinned and said:'I'm a doctor,
remember, so don't start telling me--'

But that was as far as she got. A gust of icy wind
suddenly spun round the corner of the Residence and
snatched the cigarette from her fingers, and then the
mugs from Zaitsev's hands. A second or two later the
ground seemed to shake and a mighty roar rose up behind
them.
'It's another one,' shouted Francine, pushing herself
up from the step and trying to stagger back towards the
door. But the wind was much stronger now, blasting
through the car park, and with a bolt of fear she felt it
wrap around her body and tug her backwards. Flailing
her arms, she reached out for Zaitsev who surged forward,
grasped her hand and hauled her up into the cover of
the doorway.
As he dragged her towards him, she caught a glimpse
of a lift pylon from the slopes cartwheeling down a side
road. A double length of steel cabling was still attached
to it and, as she watched, the cables lashed out and
whipcracked across the step where, a moment earlier,
she had been sitting.

147

Standing on the slope of snow that had banked up around
the ruined Bureau des Pistes et Secours, Garamonde, Alex,
Patric and Marc took in the scene of fresh devastation,
a two-hundred-metre long snow cloud starting to settle
along a newly covered front de neige. The line of rescue
tents had simply vanished and what looked like a giant
black spider clung to a corner of the Auberge, a column
of black oily smoke coiling up from its innards.
For a moment no one spoke.
'Merde alors] whispered Patric, shaking his head.
'It could have been worse,' said Garamonde flatly. 'It
could have been Les Doux or Glissine. Much more direct,
and steeper too. A slide on Plesse means the damage will
be limited to just the northern corner of town where
the buildings are new, block-built, much stronger than
the old town. And the front, of course.'
Alex started down the slope. 'Come on, we should
help. There'll be survivors.'
Garamonde waved him back. 'Others will do that. But
there is something else we can do. Something we have
to do, and quickly' He glanced up at the peaks, as though
checking to see that they weren't looking or listening,
then turned back at Alex. 'I think the time has come for
you to be reacquainted with your old friend Lucia.'
'Lucia?'
'Don't tell me you've forgotten?' said Patric.
'Mademoiselle Lucia Howitzer, weighing in at a generous
400 kilos, with a useful 75 millimetres.'
It had been a long time ago, but Alex immediately remembered.
Lucia Howitzer. Les Hauts' earliest avalanche control
system -- a piece of Second World War German ordnance
liberated from the Italians and mounted on the back of a
tracked lorry. When they were kids, old Grasaille would let
them help load and fire the gun, back in the days when
Grasaille was the head of piste security, and when Lucia
was the only means they had of preventing slides. Lob a
75mm shell into the cols and you did pretty much what
SyPAC did. And Lucia, by the sound of it, was still around.

Jules Dessin was waiting for them at the Centre des
Pompiers Municipal. It had taken less than ten minutes
to get there, skirting the edge of the Plesse slide on a
pair of Yamaha V-max snow sleds that Marc had found
safely berthed in the Bureau's basement workshop.
Garamonde and Patric, leading the way, took one, Marc
and Alex the other.
'I've kept her as best as I can,' said Dessin, leading them
into the hangar,'but I can't make any promises.The gun's
good if I recall, but the engine's pretty much had it. And
in these conditions . . .' he gestured back to the snow. 'I
just hope you're not going to be doing too much off
track. She won't handle it, Paul. You can have my word
on that. Just find your spot and make the best of it.'
The lady in question sat at the back of the hangar.
Despite Dessin's reservations she looked compact and
powerful, a squat, dun-coloured ten-tonne flatbed truck
with an old split windscreen, bracketed wing mirrors and
a solid-looking humped bonnet. It was equipped with
thirty-centimetre studded tyres on the front axle with
metre-wide half-tracks at the back, the flatbed above
them fitted with a revolving steel plate on which Lucia
Howitzer sat shawled in a worn tarpaulin.
Patric reached up, untied the tarp cover and pulled it
clear of the gun. Squatting behind a pair of protective
steel wings, its dulled steel barrel pointed up at the roof.
'You need any help?' asked Dessin, wiping his hands
on a cloth like a garage mechanic handing back a
customer's car after a routine service. 'Trouble is we're
low on drivers.' He paused.'In fact, we're out of drivers.'
From behind them a voice rang out in the hangar's
empty space.
'Hey, you guys. How ya all doin'?'
The five men turned. Standing a few paces behind
them was Tanner White. Since Paul and Marc last saw
him at the Auberge, the American skier had swapped his
dinner jacket for more appropriate kit - an insulated ski
suit under army fatigue pants, a North Face blue parka
and a pair of Timberland snow boots laced to his knees. All were brand new, clearly liberated from some store in
town. In comparison his face was smeared with dirt and
rivered with sweat, his grimy blond hair slicked back
under a blue bandanna.
'Well, whaddya know,' he continued, looking past
them. 'An old MAC 500. Haven't seen one of these in
a long time. My daddy used to drive one back home in
Montana. Mountain man like yourselves.' He looked at
each of the faces, then settled on Dessin. 'You're Jules,
right? Someone up in town said you were low on drivers,
so I came down to offer my services. I'm good on the
ploughs and blasters,' he said, nodding to an old Tracker
Six, 'but the 500, now there's a machine. It's what I
learned to drive on.'Without waiting for an invitation,
Tanner strode past them and swung up on to the running
board, hooked his arm through the open window and
looked into the cabin. 'Original double seat. Original
stick shift. Worth a dollar or two back home, I'll tell ya.
There's a few instruments I don't recognise, otherwise . . .'
he turned back and smiled at them. 'Sure be happy to
drive it if you're short-handed.'

The MAC's old engine caught first time/Leasing it into
gear and earning himself no more than a gentle cough
and splutter, Tanner eased the truck across the hangar
and out on to the apron, gunning the engine then letting
it idle. 'Sounds a little rusty, but she feels willin', you
know what I mean?' The mouth split in a grin. 'Just so
long as I git a turn to pop the gun.'
Ten minutes later, with nine rounds of 75mm ordnance
loaded into the racks below the platform, with Alex and
Garamonde squeezed in beside Tanner, and Marc and
Patric clinging to the gun on the platform, the MAC
started out across the Lycee playing fields, skirted the
spill on Route des Passeurs and headed for the front de
neige.
As they trundled along, Garamonde told them what
he was planning. 'If Dessin's right - and he usually is we're
going to have to keep our patrol area flat and easy.
Along this line there's four good points for firing, with
at least eight slopes just about in range. We need to set
up fast and take them out now, before the wind shifts
or the snow starts again. Any questions?'
'You're the boss,' said Tanner, leaning over the steering
wheel and double-declutching with a smooth confidence
as they breasted a bank of snow and came down the
other side of the Val des Aigles approach road.
A half-kilometre further on, Garamonde told Tanner
to turn the MAC in a wide circle and point the bonnet
into a copse of larch just short of a long depression that
in summer was the babblingValentina stream. Across the
stream and rising to a distant ridge-line was a spread of
plump glittering snow, bearing down on the southern
end of Les Hauts and held back, as far as Alex could see,
by just two lines of snow netting and a thin strip of
trees.
When Tanner brought the truck to a halt, the three
men clambered out of the cab and Garamonde took
them through the prep - opening and closing the breech,
loading the first round, and working the handled wheels
that controlled elevation and traverse.
'We need to get the shell up past that spur of rock,'
Garamonde told them. 'There's a cornice there, see it?
A hit just below that, maybe fifty metres lower, will bring
the whole lot down in a series of safe slides.' He turned
to Tanner. 'You got the brake on? Reverse gear? This
little lady gives out quite a kick.'
'It's done,' said Tanner. 'Just show us how.'
Sitting in the metal firing chair, squinting through the
spider-web sight, Garamonde spun the handled wheels
and quickly brought the gun to bear. He reached for the
rope-pull trigger and got a grip on it.
'Cover your ears, she's loud,' warned Garamonde and
tugged the rope.

148

High above Les Hauts, the report of a heavy-calibre
gunshot echoed round the peaks. In the town itself, in
the snow-choked streets, survivors and rescuers stopped
what they were doing and listened, as they might when
a jet fighter screams low overhead, registering the single
dull thud as it reverberated around the valley, from summit
to summit, and across what was left of their homes.
Those who lived in the town, or had skied there for
enough seasons, recognised the sound and smiled. An old
friend back in action. For those who did not - those
who suddenly flinched or looked concerned - they were
swiftly reassured by the likes of Madame Laclere who
was manning a coffee urn on the corner of the Passage
d'Anes, Madame Giscard on the steps of herTabac doling
out candy to children and cigarettes and cigars to rescuers,
and by Madame Bernard bringing up freshly baked loaves
from the log-fire ovens in the basement of the boulangerie.
'C'est rien. N'inquiete pas. C'est ITtalienne] the old ladies
told them. 'C'est Lucia. Pas de probleme. On y va. On y val By the time three more salvoes had been fired, no
one bothered to acknowledge the sound. If anything it
was a sign that, slowly, life was returning to normal -- or
as normal as it could be in a town that had been struck
by two avalanches in the space of nine hours. The signal
it gave out was clear. People were doing what they needed
to do. They would recover, they would survive. The
mountains would not take any more of them. There
would be no more surprises.
But if the sound of Lucia gave comfort, if it convinced
people that the worst was over, that they'd seen the last
of what nature could throw at them, then they were
sadly mistaken.
It wasn't over yet.
Not by a long way.

149

While rescue teams and survivors worked through the
remains of Les Hauts, some five kilometres away from
the front de neige and seven hundred metres above the
spire of St Sulpice a long horizontal crack appeared in
the back wall of the upper Courcelle cable-car station.
It took most of the morning for this tiny crack to
inch a jagged course between the copper downpipes at
either end of the wall, slowly extending as the weight of
snow bore down on it. But once it had established itself,
the crack started to widen and deepen, a critical weak
point which several thousand tonnes of snow and debris
had little trouble exploiting. At about the same time that
Garamonde pulled the rope trigger on the howitzer, the
crack was wide enough to accommodate the tip of a
finger. Three hours later it could have swallowed a fist.
Which was why, at a little before midday, with a tearing
grate of steel webbing from the reinforced concrete, the
top half of the wall finally gave way and the packed snow
that had rested against it thundered into the cable station,
spilling between the stiles where, just a few weeks earlier,
the lift engineer Yves Primaud had waited for Jules Dessin.
Up in the wheelhouse, the catwalk they had stood on
sprang loose from its mooring and clattered down into
the turning pit. For maybe a few moments more there
was no further movement or any other sound bar a
diminishing echo of crashing, twisted metal.
And then, breaking into the breeze-whisper silence
of the station, came a series of short, sharp cracking
sounds as the galvanised rubber collars, cushioning the
hubs of the station's three massive drive wheels, began
to split and splinter on their concrete mounts. Thrown
just millimetres off position by the shifting wall, the loads
these three collars were designed to support had become
dangerously displaced, and, one after another, the collars
finally ruptured.
The right, outside wheel-ring went first, and the
spoked steel hub that it cushioned came crashing down
on to the support pillar, sending out a shower of concrete
to ping and rattle off the metal panels of the fallen
catwalk.
A minute passed and silence settled again on the empty
station house.
A minute, give or take.
All of a sudden the concrete pillar, now supporting
the outside wheel without the protection of the
galvanised ring, simply exploded with the pressure bearing
down on it, an explosion of concrete chips that ricocheted
like shrapnel off the walls of the station.
Breaking loose and dropping with an ear-shattering
clang on to the cable-car platform the giant steel wheel,
with its sixteen red spokes, seemed for a moment not
to know what to do with itself, rocking gently on its
forty-centimetre furrowed rim.Then the very slight slope
of the platform came into play and lent the wheel a

500
certain strengthening direction, straightening out its
uncertain tipping. And slowly at first, but picking up
speed, the wide metal wheel began to turn, crunching
over the spill of concrete chips from the blasted pillar
that had, until now, held it in place.
As it reached the end of the platform and dropped
out of sight, the two remaining wheels followed its
example, crashing down one by one on to the platform.
The first of these, the middle wheel that Primaud and
Dessin had inspected, ended up leaning against the wall
but the third wheel smacked into it with such force that
both started a slowr roll down the platform. Like two
friendly drunks supporting one another, they weaved
after the first wheel until finally, lazily, they too rolled
off the platform.
When the three wheels hit the slope below the station,
each took off in a different direction. The first veered to
the right, found a steep, smooth slope and was soon
carving its way downhill, smashing through what was
left of the Loge des Hauts and heading for the distant front de neige. The next wheel hit square and true and
plunged straight ahead, thump-thump-thumping its way
down the mountainside in bounding sprays of snow, its
likely trajectory taking it in the general direction of the
Lycee des Hauts, the Centre des Pompiers Municipal
and the airstrip.
The last wheel took its time to settle on a target,
rolling along a ridge-line to the left, silhouetted against
the snowy slopes of Mont Vialle, until it slowed enough
to tilt to the right and set off down the Salvettes gully.


150

For years to come, people in Les Hauts, the people who
were there that day, will shake their heads when they talk
about the three Courcelle wheels, recalling where they
were when the wheels hit, the terrible damage they inflicted.
They were the lucky ones.

Didier Lougin, the concierge at the Auberge des Hauts
Aigles, had arrived on the front de neige two hours after
the second slide. Normally, at that time of the morning,
he'd have been at his desk in the Auberge lobby but that
day there was no desk to sit at, no lobby to patrol and
no guests to attend to. Since the second slide had come
from the Plesse slope, most of the damage had been
restricted to the northern end of town where Francine
and Zaitsev manned the Residence aid station, and along
the front de neige where there had been nothing to block
its deadly progress save a line of Red Cross tents.
By the time Didier Lougin arrived, two of the side allies from Place des Sommets had already been cleared
of the spill and it hadn't taken him long to clamber out
on to the front. When he finally got there, he was relieved
to see that the new slide had clearly lost much of its
power by the time it reached the Auberge and had failed
to cause any further significant damage beyond the corner
penthouse, where a team of army engineers were now
trying to dislodge - and make safe -- the black and tangled
wreckage of a helicopter. Further down the line of hotels
along the front, he could see people probing the new
cover of snow, but already aid tents were being re-erected,
and duckboards relaid. In Les Hauts des Aigles that
morning it was as vital to be able to treat survivors as
it was to find them, and with the Army boys from
Gassonnet on hand, rescue operations were being coordinated
with suitably military precision.
Since his hands were still bandaged from his efforts
the night before - which meant he was unable to dig,
or lift or carry anything - Didier joined forces with two
of the Diable ski coaches and helped out where he could,
comforting survivors, keeping a list of names, directing
new arrivals to the various treatment tents. But in all
that time he never strayed far from the Auberge, keeping
an eye on Tavernier's helicopter being rocked loose from
its lofty mooring and stopping to stare when it finally
crashed down the side of the building. He was also on
hand when, a little after midday, the first body was pulled
out through the Aigle d'Or's shattered windows. As the
victim was brought down the line, sealed in a sagging
black body bag, Didier stepped forward and offered to
make an identification.
'If they were in the Aigle d'Or last night, I'll know
who they are,' he told the sergeant in charge.
'I don't think so, Monsieur,' the sergeant replied gently.
lS'il vous plait] Didier implored. 'There are relatives
waiting ... it is only right.'
The sergeant gave the old man a stern look, then
shrugged. 'If you're sure,' he said at last, and nodded at
a soldier to unzip the bag.
Lougin peered into the gap, blew out the air in his
lungs and took a step back, reaching for support.
'I warned you,' said the sergeant softly.
Lougin wiped a hand across his mouth, searched for
the words.
'It is Madame Marika Rheinhardt, from Zurich. Room
seventeen. I ... I recognise the dress.'
It was at that moment, just a little after midday, that
the first Courcelle wheel thundered down on to Les Hauts.
The first to see it was one of the Gassonnet soldiers,
balancing on what was left of the windows of the Aigle
d'Or. Peering across the Pas des Enfants and beyond what
was left of the Bureau des Pistes, he shouted out a warning
- not altogether sure what it was he was warning against.
All he could see was a spray of snow and what looked
like a spinning top plunging down the slopes towards
them. Whatever it was, he knew it was nasty.
Thinking that someone had been found alive, everyone
looked up when he shouted but they saw immediately
that the man was pointing over their heads, towards the
nearest slope.
It took Didier a split-second to turn and make sense
of what he saw: a giant wheel, red spokes blurred in the
sunlight, slicing a path through a stand of larch and
heading down in their direction.
No one moved, no one had time.

With a series of massive thumps that Didier could
feel through the soles of his boots, the wheel burst out
of the trees on to the highest point of the Pas des Enfants
and, whistling through the air, its shadow hurtling across
the snow, it bore down on them. Twenty metres away it
hit the ground and, with a terrifying whooshing sound,
it sailed through them, rising up the slope of snow banked
against the facade of the Auberge. In an explosion of
shattered timber, ice and snow it blasted through the
upper floor, sailed into the air above the Auberge before
smashing down into Place des Sommets beyond.

After seeing his mother and Mathilde safely back to the
house, Philippe Bezard had come back down to Les Hauts
to help where he could with the ongoing rescue operation.
Quite by chance he had met up with Mike Cole
and Uli Wilman on a probe line shuffling its way down
rue des Sommets, and in the hours since then the three
skiers had pretty much stayed together. Working as a team,
they'd cleared some of the allies leading up to the front
de neige after the second slide, dug for survivors, helped
lay down what felt like a couple of kilometres of wood
and metal duckboarding, and carried stretcher victims to
the emergency medics flown up from the plains.
Now, at a little after midday, they were taking a well
earned rest outside Mique's, beers buried in the snow
to keep them cool, bratwurst 'dogs smoking and sizzling
on a nearby brazier. As they tipped back their cans and
waited for the sausages to cook, the first Courcelle wheel
bounded in across the Pas des Enfants. Cole was the
first to hear it -- the thumping and the screams from
the front de neige -- and he was out of his chair before
Philippe and Uli Wilman knew what was happening.
But since the Auberge blocked their view of the slopes
the three skiers had no idea what was heading in their
direction.
Since his rescue from the Auberge, Max Kalagin had
worked the probe lines, dug for survivors and helped
with the injured at an aid post on rue des Sommets.
After the second slide, he had volunteered for work at
a food station in the Mairie car park, ladling out hot soup
to a line of rescue workers and survivors. So many had
passed in front of him that he rarely did more than glance
at the bowl or cup or mug held out for a measure of

soup.
'I trust that your food is as good as your vodka,' said
a familiar voice.
Kalagin looked up and his face creased with a sudden
and unexpected delight. Standing right there in front of
him was Rudi Zaitsev offering a bowl. Dropping his ladle
and getting one of the other helpers to take his place,
Kalagin came round the trestle table and hugged the skier.
'I wondered what happened to you. Someone said that
the chalets were not hit, but there was no sign of you.'
It was exactly then, as Zaitsev began to explain about
the old people at the Residence, that the Courcelle wheel
that had done such damage on the front de neige and in
Place des Sommets smashed through the back wall of
the Mairie and crashed down on to the food station.
Landing at an angle it flipped on to its side and, spokes
still spinning, scythed its way across the car park.
Zaitsev's reactions were faster than his fellow Russian.
He shoved Kalagin to the left and then dived to the

right.
For one of them it was the wrong way to go.

Jules Dessin knew exactly what was sweeping in across
the Lycee playing fields, shattering a set of rugby posts,
and slicing through the centre of the sports hall where
a dozen or more patients from the Residence had been
transferred only a couple of hours earlier. With nothing
more than that to slow its progress, the second Courcelle
wheel was packing a hefty punch, its weight to speed
ratio exerting a power far in excess of its seven-metre
diameter and fourteen tonnes.
Watching transfixed through his office window, Dessin
realised that the wheel was heading straight towards the
Centre des Pompiers Municipal, with nothing between
him and the spinning wheel save a thin hangar wall and
a pane of glass.
Seven seconds later the wheel reached the forecourt
and tore through the building like a roller blade slicing
through pizza. The metal walls crumpled like cardboard,
a half-dozen A-frame beams that supported a lightly
pitched roof snapped like pretzels and a bank of fuel bins
stored at the back of the hangar were scattered like skittles
and ignited with a crackling blast, a roiling, billowing
mushroom of orange flame marbled with black smoke
that rose like a pillar into the sky, a fiery hail of burning
wood and metal dropping in a scorched circle around it.
Undeterred, the wheel ploughed on across an open
snowfield as though nothing could stop it until, two kilometres
further on, the land started to rise towards the
slopes of Mont Juret, a gentle enough incline but one
that ended in a four-metre granite cliff. With a mighty
bell-like clang-ang-ang-ang that shuddered through the
valley the wheel hit the stone ledge, sprang into the air
like a puppet whipped off a stage, flipped over twice and
fell flat on its side hidden from sight by a metre-thick
mantle of snow.
As for the third and last wheel. . .


151

Of the five rounds fired into the mountains that morning,
at five separate salients between the Gorge des Chouettes
and the Glissine slope, Lucia's gun crew - Garamonde,
Alex, Tanner and Monbalt -- had acquitted themselves
admirably. At Glissine it had been Patric's turn to sit in
Lucia's lap and tug the firing rope.
Either he was tired, or anxious not to fluff it in front
of his friends, but Patric put a little too much shoulder
into the tug. The knotted end of the rope slipped
through his fingers, and his clenched fist swept down
to connect with the breech-block release mechanism.
In a split-second Lucia fired, recoiled and discharged
the empty shell-casing before Patric knew what was
happening. As the breech-block at the end of the barrel
swung open and grazed the skin from wrist to elbow,
a plume of hot gas from the barrel scorched across his
left cheek.
They wanted to take him to one of the aid tents
but Patric was adamant. His house was closer, he told
them. They could drop him there and he could get
Sophie to see to him. When he was patched up
he'd find out where they were, and come and join
them.

Sophie was bringing in logs when she saw Patric trudging
up the driveway, cradling his injured arm.
'What have you done to yourself,' she called from the
porch, dropping the logs and coming down the steps to
greet him.
'I got bitten by Lucia,' he replied sheepishly, showing
the grazed forearm and wincing as she let her fingers
trace across his scorched cheek.
'You need to have Francine look at this,' said Sophie
anxiously.'And you're white as a sheet.You foolish, foolish
man,' she chided, catching his good arm and steering
him up the steps.
'Francine s here?'
'Benoit brought her up from the Residence after the
second slide,' she replied. 'Her mother too. When they
transferred the old folk to the Lycee, Francine asked if
she could bring her here instead. So, of course, I said yes.'
'And how's Bruno? And Thea?' he asked, as she led
him into the kitchen and sat him at the table.
'Fine and fine. Grace a Dieu] replied Sophie, crossing
herself quickly. 'How lucky we've been, non? When so
many others . . .' She gave a deep sigh, patted his shoulder,
then went off to fetch Francine. After a couple of minutes
Sophie returned alone. 'Fast asleep, like all the rest,' she
reported. 'It seemed a shame to wake her, so you'll just
have to make do with me.' Noticing the SkiSawy label
caught in the collar of his Sno:Bro ski-suit, she tugged
it out and gasped at the price.'Monstrous,' she exclaimed.
'And in case you didn't know it, Monsieur, canary yellow
is not your colour.'
'It was the first one I found in my size,' Patric protested.
'And look,' she said, playing with a zip on the arm.
'It's even got a pocket for your lipstick!'
Just then, as she dropped the zip and crossed the
kitchen to the medicine cabinet, Sophie saw through the
window a huddled figure standing alone in the garden,
knee-deep in snow, looking down the slope at what
remained of Les Hauts.
There'd been so many people passing through the
house since she and Mathilde got back with Philippe
that at first she couldn't say for sure who it was. But
then she recognised the fur-collared coat. Old Madame
Malland, Francine's mother. They'd put her to bed in
Patric's study, but she'd obviously woken up, got out of
bed and somehow made her way into the garden without
anyone seeing or hearing her.
And there, stepping from the salon's French windows,
was Thea, in her dressing gown, going out to bring the
old lady back inside.
Even from this distance Sophie could see the scowl
on Madame Malland's face as Thea reached for her arm
and tried to persuade her back into the house.
'But right now, Little Miss Sno:Bro, you'll just have
to wait your turn like everyone else,' said Sophie, reaching
for a coat. 'There's someone else needs a helping hand
more than you.'
'Who? What help?' asked Patric, turning to look out
of the window, then getting up to follow her.
'Francine's old mother trying to make a run for it,'
replied Sophie, pulling on her fleece. 'And darling Thea
trying to get her back inside. I'll be back in a moment,'
she said.
And that was the moment, reaching for the door
handle, that Sophie saw both Thea and Madame Malland
turn sharply to the right, as though someone had called
their names.
As soon as she opened the door and stepped out into
the snow, Sophie also heard what Thea and the old lady
had heard. And she looked where they were looking, at
the wooded slope that rose up beyond their property.
But it wasn't a voice she heard. And it wasn't names
being called out.
It was something else, something gigantic, crashing
down through the trees, hurtling towards the house.


152

After dropping off Patric, Garamonde took a call from
Benoit.
'Give me ten minutes and we'll be there,' was all he
said. Slipping the mobile into his pocket, he told Tanner
to head back to the front de neige where Benoit was
waiting for them.
'You missed some fun,' said Benoit coming over to
the MAC as it drew to a halt just a few metres from his
helicopter. He looked tired and shot, flying to and from
Bourg and Cariol since before dawn, taking the wounded
down and bringing supplies up. He must have done the
trip a dozen times and it showed. 'Looks like a couple
of the Courcelle wheels sprang loose,' he continued.'Hit
here and over at the Centre Municipal.'
As Garamonde and Alex clambered out of the cab
they looked where Benoit pointed, at a column of dark
smoke coiling up into the blue sky beyond the shattered
facade of the Auberge.
'Casualties?' asked Alex softly.
'Don't know about the Centre yet, but it was pretty
bad here,' replied Benoit. 'You can see where the wheel
came down,' he said, nodding at its staggered track across
the Pas des Enfants.'Missed your office by a metre or two,
Paul, but bounced up and whacked the Auberge. According
to the boys from Gassonnet, it smashed into the place, took
out the annexe of the Hotel des Alpes and pretty much
wrote off the Mairie the other side of rue des Sommets.'
'So what's the problem. What can we do to help?'
asked Garamonde.
Benoit shook his head. 'It's not the wheels. There's
something else, I'm afraid. Something I think you should
see.' A concerned expression settled across his features. 'I
think we might have a problem. A big problem.'
Leaving Marc and Tanner with the MAC, Garamonde
and Alex clambered into the Agusta, Garamonde up front,
Alex strapping himself into a back seat. As they reached
for their headsets, Benoit powered up and the helicopter
juddered away from the ground. Five metres . . . ten
metres . . . Marc and Tanner on the MAC dropping
below them, shielding their upturned faces from the
whirlwind of snow. The next moment Benoit banked
away towards the Gorge des Chouettes, flying low over
the burning ruins of the Centre Municipal and the first
of the supply lorries driving up from Cariol and the
surrounding towns.
'Where are we going?' asked Garamonde.
'We have to come in from south of the Vialle face,'
explained Benoit. 'Right now a sneeze could shift the
whole lot. But the wind's from the north and the rotors
shouldn't be a problem if we come in downwind.'
'You sound like there's a wild animal out there,' said
Alex from the back seat.
Instead of using his headset Benoit turned, looked
hard at Alex and nodded.
As they swung over the gorge and turned east towards
the Vialle ridge, Alex had a long, sweeping view of Les
Hauts and the great washes of snow from Plesse and the
Hauts des Cols that had wiped out a large part of the
town, a scatter of doll-like debris in a sea of crumpled
snow, like the mess a child might leave on the floor of a playroom. Suddenly the disaster made sense or, at least,
Alex could now get its measure, their altitude offering
a whole new perspective to the scene of devastation
below. Down on the ground the task of rescue and survival
had seemed monumental, the odds stacked against them,
but here, at altitude, there was a sense of proportion and
scale, a feeling that what had happened could finally, and
would certainly, be dealt with - the bulldozers and snowploughs
at work, a line of lorries lumbering out of the
gorge and heading up Route des Passeurs, helicopters
taking off and landing, rescue squads teeming like ants
over a giant spill of sugar.
The very next moment Les Hauts disappeared behind
a tree-stubbled ridge only a hundred metres below the
Agusta's skids. Once again, the perspective - and the
view - changed. For all the world they could have been
taking one of Benoit's sightseeing flights round the mountains.
But
this was a sightseeing trip with a difference.
'It'll be a bit bumpy when we come in round the
hill, so hold on tight,' said Benoit, his voice crackling
over their headsets. 'If you want binoculars, they're by
your seats. But I don't think you'll need them,' he added
ominously.
By now the ridge had played out into a slope of steep,
glittering snow, its lowest edge cut by a granite face, the
snowfield like a layer of icing on the top of a cut cake.
Ears popping, Alex and Garamonde gazed out,
wondering what it was they'd been brought to see.
They didn't have long to wait.
As Benoit had warned them, the ride suddenly became
bumpy, the Agusta dropping and side-slipping to left and
then right in what felt like a single movement, the blades
above their heads clattering wildly, screaming for purchase
in the chill, choppy air, flicking strobe-like shadows across
the cabin as the sun exploded through the open side

door.
'Take a look. You'll see. About five hundred metres
back from the edge,' said Benoit as he slanted the Agusta
upwards.
Directly ahead, looming beyond the northern ridge
of Vialle was the long blue lip of the Murone Glacier.
'You get just the one chance,' continued Benoit. 'The
wind's dropping and I daren't do this again.'
Holding the glasses as tight to his eyes as he could to
minimise the jarring, Alex scanned the surface of the
glacier, a shaking blur of dirty, soiled ice cut with jagged,
serrated cracks.
And then, flashing across the lens, and back again,
Alex saw what Benoit had wanted them to see and his
blood turned as cold as the ice below them.

153

'I hate to spoil a good party,' said Benoit as he banked
away past the Vialle face, 'but I'd say it's got bigger since
I last saw it.'
'When was that?' asked Garamonde, the Agusta
sweeping back the way it had come, the turbulence behind
them now.
'Maybe forty, fifty minutes ago. Just before I called
you.'
lMerde] said Garamonde. 'C'est catastrophe!
'What? You think it's going to break off?' asked Alex.
'You saw it. What do you think?'
Alex didn't have to think. If Garamonde was worried,
then so was he.
The crevasse that Benoit had shown them was nothing
less than a gleaming blue gash of freshly opened ice, far
deeper and wider than any other crack or fissure on the
Murone Glacier. Now Alex knew why Benoit had kept
his distance. The tip of the glacier looked so close to splitting
away that it didn't seem unreasonable to suppose that
the clattering of the Agusta's rotors might be all that was
needed to . . . what? -- release a couple of million tonnes
of ice down the side of the mountain, straight into Les
Hauts? Or what was left of it. To finish off the job that
the two avalanches and Courcelle wheels had started?
As they came out from behind the Juret ridge,
Garamonde leaned out of the door and looked back at
the top of the Hauts des Cols.
'That first slide,' he began. 'So much higher . . .' He
pulled himself back into the seat, shaking his head. For
a few more minutes no one spoke, and then, as they
came over the gorge once again and Benoit banked in
for Les Hauts, Garamonde told them what he wanted.
'We're going to have to act fast,' he said. 'Beni, put us
down by the Bureau and wait. How's your fuel?'
'Filled up in Cariol. Presque complet! 'Alex, I want you to stay with Lucia. Get Tanner to
put the truck right in the middle of the front, maybe
fifty metres to the left of the Auberge and as far up the
nursery slope as he can manage.'
'You're going to shoot at the glacier?'
'No, you are,' replied Garamonde, and struggling from
his seat belt he was out of the Agusta before the skids
touched the snow. Crouching down to avoid the rotors,
he set off at a run for the Bureau.
Five minutes later he was back with two sticks of
dynamite in each hand.
'All I could find,' he said with a grim expression.
'Now- you're going to blow it up?' said Alex when he
saw the explosives.
'If we don't do something very soon, mon ami, that
whole tip - all of it, back to the crevasse - is going to
break off. But maybe, just maybe, we can get in first.
Each of these sticks has a twenty-second fuse. They are
maybe not the largest charges, but in the smaller cracks
they will do a lot of damage. If Benoit can get me into
position, I'll drop them from the tip back to the crevasse.
Boom-boom. Boom-boom. Break it up before it breaks
away. Better we have small blocks of ice to deal with
rather than one big lump, n'est-ce pas?
'And if that doesn't work?' asked Alex, as Garamonde
unzipped his parka and tucked the explosives into it.
'Well, that's where you and Lucia come in.'

154

Alex watched the Agusta rise into the air, its rotors a
screaming blur. Through the billowing swirl of snow he
saw Garamonde give him a brief salute. He waved back,
then shielded his face from the stinging snow-blast as the helicopter peeled away.
Four sticks of dynamite.
And just four 75mm shells.
This was going to be fun, he thought, thanking God that at least Thea and Mathilde were out of harm's way. The Bezard chalet was well beyond the glacier's likeliest line of descent.


'Hey, man.You look like you seen a ghost,' said Tanner,
as Alex stumbled back to the MAC.
'Everything okay?' asked Marc a little more
gravely.
Quickly Alex explained the situation, pointing out
where Garamonde wanted the gun to go.
'You guys sure know how to give a boy a good time,'
sighed Tanner, shading his eyes as he looked up at the glacier.
'Just take care of the truck,' said Alex. 'We might need
to get out of here in a hurry.'
'Man, I can run faster than this old girl,' said Tanner,
climbing into the cabin and starting up the engine. A
cloud of black smoke belched from its exhaust.
'I bet you can,' Alex smiled. 'But I can't.'
'What about the others?' asked Marc, as Tanner spun
the steering wheel and drove off, the two of them
trudging after it. 'I mean the people in town. Maybe we
should warn them.'
Alex gave it some thought. He and Tanner could
handle the gun by themselves. Having Marc start getting
people out of the firing line, or as high up the far slope
as they could manage, might easily save hundreds of lives
-- if things didn't go according to plan.
'Good idea. Everything from, say, Place des Sommets
and St Sulpice to beyond rue des Hauts. If it hits, it'll
hit the old town. Just like the first avalanche.'
The two men stopped and shook hands.
'It's done,' said Marc. 'Et bonne chance, ami!
'Et toi, aussi] replied Alex.
Up ahead Tanner slowed the truck to a stop, then
reversed a few metres, sinking the back fender into a
bank of snow, the barrel of the howitzer pointing up at
the glacier.

155

As Benoit swung past the gorge, Paul Garamonde told
him what he wanted, then unstrapped himself and crawled
into the back of the Agusta. Stepping into a safety harness,
he secured himself to a roof strut so that he wouldn't
fall out, reached for the two side doors and yanked them
open. A blast of freezing air and the roar of the rotors
ripped into the compartment. For a second the Agusta
bucked and tilted but Benoit quickly had it under control.
As soon as it steadied, Garamonde leaned across and
looked through the left-hand door at the distant glacier.
Even from four, maybe five kilometres out he could see
the thin grey scar of bare rock where the supporting
mantle of snow and ice had cracked and given way when
the first slide came down, the snow slope fracturing far
higher than it ever had before.
Which was why the crevasse had opened up five
hundred metres back on the glacier.
Simple physics. Just not enough support.
'Beni, you're going to have to come in from below,
from the slope, up the face and then over,' said Garamonde
into his mouthpiece.
'How high do you want me?'
'Close as you can get. No more than twenty metres.
When you hear the last charge, we're gone. Compris?'
'I got it. But hold on tight,' replied Benoit. 'There'll
be a wind coming off that glacier when we reach the
top and it'll get pretty choppy.'
Four minutes later the gash of bare rock below the
Murone Glacier raced up to meet them as Benoit brought
the Agusta in low. Squeezing himself down between the
rear seats until he was kneeling on the floor, Garamonde
started shuffling backwards to the right-hand door, his
hands gripping the seat struts. When he felt his knees at
the edge of the cabin floor, he dropped down on to his
stomach and let his legs hang out of the helicopter, the
slipstream and downdraught tugging at his trousers, his
boots scrabbling blindly for the skid somewhere below
him. Finally he felt the bar knock against the sole of his
left foot and he clamped down, feeling the skid lock into
the heel of his boot. With one foot in place the other
followed without too much trouble.
Remembering to pull off his headset, Garamonde
pushed himself away from the cabin floor and gave his
weight to the safety rope clipped to the harness. Before
SyPAC, or when they needed the kind of access that
Lucia couldn't give them, this was often the way they
dealt with possible avalanches, a couple of charges dropped
from a helicopter - sometimes a firecracker was enough.
But it was a long time since he'd done this and
Garamonde was surprised how rusty -- and uncertain he'd
become.
Slowly, carefully, he played out the harness rope and
transferred his weight from the floor of the cabin to the
heels of his boots. Knees bent, his backside pushing out
into thin air, he let out the rope, centimetre by centimetre
as though preparing to abseil down a rock face, until his
legs straightened and his knees braced. He was where he
needed to be, leaning out from the skid with enough room
to take the dynamite from inside his parka, pull the twenty
second fuse bar with his teeth and drop the explosive.
By now Benoit had slowed the Agusta s forward speed
and was starting to rise up the face of the glacier. A blast
of frigid air pulsed off its ice wall, and a chill wash of
downdraught from the rotors beat around Garamonde s
head and shoulders. Benoit had brought them so close that
he could see the fractures and breaks in the ice, blue vertical
fissures that reached deep into the tongue of the glacier.
Please God, please God, let it work, Garamonde prayed,
as the Agusta rose like an open-sided lift up the wall of
the face. A moment later it drew level with the lip of
the glacier and, as Benoit had warned, the machine started
to buck and roll. Garamonde clung to the rope and
braced his legs against the skid to stop himself being
dislodged or flung against the side of the helicopter.
Then all of a sudden, between his legs, he could see
the top of the glacier, now dropping six . . . eight . . .
ten metres below him, its surface roughly gouged with
deep, slicing cuts and menacing, blue-shadowed cracks.
Without looking, Garamonde reached inside his coat
with his free hand and brought out the first stick of
dynamite, his eyes scanning the glacier below for a likely
target, a deep enough fissure. As Benoit gently increased
their ground speed, as he'd been told to do, Garamonde
found what he was looking for. Putting the metal pin
between his teeth, he pulled it out, started counting,
leaned down and hurled the stick at the ice below, hard
enough to counter the slipstream.
And he saw it hit home, scuttling off the edge of the
crack he'd spotted and dropping down into its darkening
blue heart.
. . . Seventeen . . . sixteen . . .
Garamonde reached for the second stick, pulled the
pin and, twisting out to the right, flung it into another
wider crack coming up beneath him. But this charge
didn't go as deep as the first, and came to rest on a ledge
of ice no more than five metres down.
. . . Twelve . . . eleven . . . ten . . .
Benoit was moving faster now and the slipstream was
tugging at Garamonde's parka with malicious intent, flattening
it against his chest, making it harder to get a grip
on the third stick of dynamite. Finally he had it and,
pulling the fuse, he hurled it down at the ice, knowing
as he did so that he had no real target, just hoping this
third charge would find a likely crevice . . .
. . . Seven . . . six . . .
Any second now the first stick would blow.
One more stick and they were out of there.
. . .Three . . .Two . . .
Garamonde was reaching into his parka for the last stick
of explosive when the first charge blew, a mighty crack
somewhere behind them. He looked back over his shoulder
as a plume of ice and snow shot up into the air as though
someone had popped a cork on shaken champagne.
But he couldn't see whether the explosion had done
its job, chipping off the tip of the glacier, the first of
four staggered explosions that he prayed would shatter
the block into more manageable, less dangerous pieces.
Inside his coat, Garamonde found the last stick, pulled
it out and looked ahead for one final, suitable target
before they reached the big crevasse. In seconds he spotted
what he was looking for - a series of narrow
cracks and fissures that ran in a staggered line from one
side of the glacier to the other, from the flanks of Vialle
on his right to Courcelle on the left. He watched the
target come nearer and was pulling out the pin when
the second blast sounded.
The second stick hadn't gone as deep as the first and
a wave of pressure reached out towards them, buffeting
the Agusta from behind. Unprepared for the sudden jolt
and tilt, Garamonde was flung sideways, his shoulder
crashing painfully into the edge of the cabin door, his
boots slipping from the skid. In an instant he was falling,
only to be brought up short by the rope attached to his
safety harness. Dangling beneath the belly of the helicopter,
the firing pin still clenched between his teeth,
the harness straps pinching into his thighs, it took just
a few seconds for Garamonde to realise that the last stick
of primed dynamite was no longer in his hand.
But where was it?
Had he dropped it? Was it even now tumbling down
towards the glacier? Desperately he swung round, spitting
out the firing pin, searching behind them to see if
he could spot it.
But there was nothing. No sign of it.
And then the third stick of dynamite blew.
Lying on the surface of the glacier, having found no
suitable cut or crevasse, there was nothing to cover the blast and the shockwave delivered a far heftier kick to the Agusta. Its nose went down, the rear fin lifted and
Garamonde swung up sideways against the skid, managing
somehow to loop an arm and a leg over it.
And as he hung there, clinging to the skid, he felt
something press against his ribs and his heart raced.
Something long. Something stiff.
He peered down into the open top of his parka and
saw it. The last primed stick of dynamite.
It hadn't fallen on to the glacier. When that second
blast came and tipped him off the skid, it had somehow
slipped from his hand as he pulled the fuse and dropped
back into his coat. And there it was, like an unopened
tube of sweets, held by the straps of his safety harness.
How long? How long since he'd pulled that fuse.
Ten seconds? Twelve seconds?
How much longer did he have before the charge
blew? Certainly not enough time to climb back up on
the skid.There was only one thing he could do. Releasing
his grip on the skid, Garamonde swung down below the
helicopter once more, battered by the slipstream, twisting
around at the end of the safety rope, one hand struggling
to pull down the parka zip, the other burrowing
into his jacket to reach the charge, or maybe push it past
the harness straps so it would fall out of his parka.
And then, as the zip gave and he got his fingers to
it, he felt it slip from his grasp, shifting from his waist
to lodge in the small of his back.
He knew in an instant he'd never reach it now.
Never shake it loose. Pull it free. Hurl it away.
Desperately he tried to think of something. What else
was there? What else could he do?
But he knew there was nothing.
No choice. No possible alternative.
Not if his friend Benoit was to live.
Nothing else for it.
For a second, the sound of the Agusta's clattering rotors
faded away and a sudden and numbing sense of loneliness
swept through him. But he shook it off. Balling his
fist, he slammed it down on to the emergency release
clasp on his safety harness, saw the rope spring away from
him, and the very next moment he was falling . . .
. . . praying that Benoit would survive the blast . . .
. . . thinking of Nathalie . . .
. . . knowing he would never . . .


156

Benoit had just about managed to bring the Agusta under
control after the third blast when something strange
happened.
A sudden lightness.
An unexpected spurt of acceleration and elevation.
A certain tip to the left.

As though a weight had been released, a cargo ditched.

It was the smallest sensation, just a flutter of difference.
But Benoit sensed it, felt it in his hands and in his
feet.
And then it was gone.
He glanced at the dials but could see nothing amiss,
then looked over his shoulder into the back of the cabin.
Had something tipped out of the helicopter through the
open door?

And in that instant he saw the safety rope dangling
weightless from the roof strut where Garamonde had
fixed it. It was slapping loosely against the lip of the
doorway when it should have been taut, straining.
Twisting to his right, he looked through the side
window, back towards the skid.
The last time he checked, Garamonde had been
standing there, leaning out to drop the charges.
But not now.
Now there was no sign of him.
Something had gone wrong. Horribly wrong.
But there was no time to properly take it in. Without
any warning, a mighty explosion erupted somewhere
behind and below him, catching the Agusta and hurling
it forward.
Too close, Benoit realised as he fought for control, the
Agusta tipping up on its nose, the scarred surface of the
glacier filling his field of vision, racing past below him.
That last charge had been way too close. Closer than
any of the others.
And close enough, he suddenly realised, to deliver a
final, fatal blow.
With a shrieking, screaming clatter that shuddered
through the Agusta, Benoit felt and heard the rear rotor
blade rip free from its mounting, slice through the tail
assembly and tear it apart.
The next moment, just as Benoit knew it would, the
Agusta started to roll and yaw and spin, the cloud of black
oily smoke from the last explosion flashing past his windscreen
as the helicopter turned and turned and turned
again, sweeping across the surface of the glacier, plunging
past the jagged northern ridge ofVialle, and hurtling over
the sloping snowfields that led down to Dareggio.
And losing height with every second. Dropping with
every spinning turn . . . dropping, spinning . . . dropping,
spinning . . .
He was going to crash.
There was nothing he could do to stop it.

157

Sitting in the firing seat of the MAC 500, Alex was too
far away to see Garamonde hanging from the Agusta, or
dropping the charges, but he knew what his friend was
trying to do. He could also tell, by Benoit's measured
approach to the glacier, the way he brought the machine
up to the lip and then tipped forward to skim over its
surface, that everything appeared to be going as planned.
For the hundredth time he wished he'd taken the binoculars
from the Agusta so he could see everything more
clearly.
When the first stick blew, Alex heard nothing but saw
a plume of snow and ice shoot into the sky and, a second
later, a large slice of glacier broke away and smashed into
a thousand glittering pieces on the slope below. Moments
after the sound of the explosion reached him -- a dull
muffled cough - another spray of snow and ice feathered
up against the blue alpine sky and another wedge of
glacier shifted, teetered and then followed the first, shattering
on impact into a million pieces.
The third blast, when it came, was different - a wide
dusty cloud of snow and ice fanning out into the sky. It
was louder too, this third blast, but for some reason it failed
to break off any of the glacier as the other two had done.
One more to go, thought Alex as the cloud of snow
swept the helicopter out of sight. He remembered the
crevasse, how far back it was from the lip. If the last stick
of explosive hit its target, there'd be no more than two
blocks to deal with, both of them likely doing the same
as the first two, crashing down one on top of the other
and splintering into harmless, flying chunks of ice.
Then the fourth and last charge exploded.
'Whoa!' said Tanner, sitting on the tailgate below the
gun. He glanced up at Alex. 'That was . . . that did not
look good.'
But Alex didn't reply. Every shred of attention was
focused on the ball of orange flame billowing up over
the top of the glacier. It was the first flame he'd seen
and somehow it seemed wrong. It just didn't fit the
pattern. He waited a few more seconds, squinting up at
the distant glacier, wishing again for those binoculars.
By now, with the four charges dropped, the Agusta should
have been banking round the south side of the glacier
and dropping down along the Vialle face, maybe ten,
twelve minutes from touchdown.
But there was no such movement, no black speck
skimming across the snow-white slopes of Vialle. Just
that boiling mushroom of angry flame burning out into
a roiling black cloud, the sound now reaching down to
them, a strange, unfamiliar crump.

'Whaddya think?' asked Tanner. 'They okay up there?'
Alex shook his head. 'I don't know,' he began, but
then he stopped. Because he did know, even though he
couldn't quite believe it, didn't dare credit it.
Something had gone wrong. There'd been an accident.
Either the helicopter had crashed into the glacier,
or that last stick of dynamite had somehow gone off
before its due time.
Which meant that his two friends, Paul and Beni,
were . . . gone.
Dead.
As final and frightening and horrifying as that. For all
his disbelief, his desperation to have it otherwise, he knew
there could be no other possibility.
Alex tried to take it in, make some kind of sense of
it. Thirty minutes earlier he'd been flying with them, in
that very helicopter, right up there, over the glacier. And
now they were gone. He would never see them again just
a fleeting final image of Paul flicking a salute from
the Agusta's cockpit, and Beni in his sheepskin flying
jacket reaching up for switches on the overhead control
panels. He'd grown up with those two men - loved them
as a boy and come to love them as a man -- and still
half a lifetime to share with them. Yet now, after just a
couple of weeks together, they were gone. And never
coming back.
Alex tried to swallow but his throat filled with a tight
knot of aching grief, and hot tears sprang into his eyes as
the last shreds of oily black cloud faded against the blue
sky. It was as if, suddenly, nothing had happened up there.
It can }t.. . it can't. .. it can't be true, he thought, wishing
he could somehow change what had happened above
the Murone Glacier.
It isn't fair. It isn't right. Not Paul and Beni, not those
two. Please God, not those two.
And then he thought of Nathalie and Francine and how
much worse the pain would be for them, what suffering
and desperation they would feel when they heard the news.
All night and all that day people had died in Les Hauts.
But these two deaths . . .
'There she goes,' exclaimed Tanner.
Thinking he meant the helicopter, Alex squinted up,
searching the sky and the slopes for the Agusta.
But it wasn't the helicopter Tanner had seen.
It was the glacier.

158

Like the explosions, the movement came first. A giant
block of ice easily twice the size of the Auberge des
Hauts Aigles broke away from the glacier, toppled down
on to the slope and left a clean blue wall of ice behind
it. Unlike the two before it, this last block didn't shatter.
But it didn't move either. It just lay there at the top of
the slope like a giant blue and white ice cube.
Only then came the sound - a mighty, wrenching
crack that ricocheted around the valley, a grating fabric-

ripping tear that made the dynamite charges sound like
bursting bubble wrap.
'Check. That. Out,' whispered Tanner in an awestruck
voice.

But Alex wasn't registering the sound. His eyes were
on the ice, straining for any sign of movement.
There was none. It was as though this great glass cube
had plugged some hole in the ground and wouldn't be
shifted.
Alex let out a breath. The ice was firm. In the days
and weeks to come new snow would pack in around its
base and cement it to the slope. The sun would work
on it and soon all those hard, brittle edges would soften
down, round out. By the end of the summer, separated
from the main body of the glacier, it would be a stump,
a serac, a column of ice they'd photograph for fancy
postcards and sell on the racks in Madame Giscard'sTabac.
His friends Garamonde and Beni might have died doing
it, but through their sacrifice they had saved Les Hauts.
At that moment, as Alex started thinking once more
about his friends, the massive block of ice started to shift.
It hadn't plugged a hole. It wouldn't feature on postcards.
It
was on the move.
'Hey, man, you see that?' called Tanner.
'I see it,' said Alex.
At the top of the Hauts des Cols, the block slowly
turned, swivelling around as though it were set on a bed
of ball bearings.
From his seat behind the gun, Alex felt his heart start
to pump.
'Tanner, let's get those shells up.'
'You think it's gonna roll?'
'No. I know so.'
'And we're gonna stop it?'
and he leaped off the ungate and
ran round to the side of the MAC. He reached into the
back where the shells were stored.
Up on the platform, Alex slid out of his seat
reached down for it, got a grip and hefted it towards him. Pushing a fall of blond hair out of his eyes, Tanner
looked up at Alex and grinned.
'Hey, bro?'
Alex cocked an ear. 'Yes?'	;
'Now I know why you don't run so fast.

"It's on account of those balls you got swinging
between your knees.'

159

It was impossible to estimate the speedand  impossible to accurately estimate the distance 
the block of ice was travelling. All Alex knew with any certainty was that it was
heading in their direction. And rapidly gaining
momentum.
For the first time since he'd been buried in the snow
in Place des Sommets, Alex wondered if he was going
to die out there on the front de neige, sitting in Lucia's
lap. Thea, Mathilde and his friends might be out of the
line of fire but, so far as he could calculate, he was directly
in the path of this sliding, tumbling wedge of glacier.
He tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry.
Four shells. Four chances. At a moving target. It might
have been a big target, but that didn't make him feel any
happier. Or any more confident.
Aim-fire-reload; aim-fire-reload; aim-fire-reload; aimfire-reload.

It was as simple as that, and as difficult as that.
And then, one way or another, it would be over.

'You notice how quiet everything is?' asked Tanner,
leaning against the platform.
Alex listened. Nothing. Not a sound. He hadn't
noticed.
'Guess Marc musta gone in there and shouted "free
pizza". Ain't even any choppers. Just you and me. Feels
kinda . . . weird.'
Alex didn't have the spit in his mouth to reply, so he
tried to clear his throat and make it sound like a grunt.
He abruptly realised he was frightened. Very, very frightened.
He glanced down at Tanner. The young American
looked as cool as a Calvin Klein underwear model on
Prozac, just standing there in the sunlight, tossing back
his hair and catching some alpine rays as though he
couldn't think of anything better to do, or any place
better to be.
'Can you pass up some snow?'Alex managed to croak.
'You gonna throw a snowball at it now?' asked Tanner,
reaching down and picking up a gloveful. He shaped it
into a ball and tossed it up.
Alex pressed the ball to his lips, sucked in the ice
cold melt. He wondered why he hadn't thought to do
it before. Suddenly he felt better.
Tossing the snow aside, he leaned forward and peered
through the spider-web sights. It was, he thought, like
playing one of those early computer games he'd made
his first fortune with.
But this was no game.
This was real.
The block of ice was still some distance away, rolling
and tumbling and skidding down the slope towards them,
sending up a mighty bow wave of snow. But Alex could
now see that it had strayed beyond the outside ring of
the spider-web sights.
It was getting bigger.
Which meant it was getting closer.
'Looks like speed's picking up,' said Tanner in a deadbeat
drawl. 'Hundred? Hundred twenty? I'd get firing
about now if I were you.'
Reaching for the handled wheel that controlled the
gun's angle of elevation, Alex spun it and the barrel
started to rise. He rewound it a tad, sighted, and his
fingers felt for the firing rope. And he pulled.
The blast was enormous. In the silence that Tanner
had remarked on, the report exploded around them,
batting across the ruined facades of the front de nei^e.The
team had fired off five salvoes that morning but the
sound of the howitzer still startled him.
'Good one,' shouted Tanner.'Maybe a hundred metres
short but dead in front. Here's number two. Get moving.'
As if on automatic, Alex released the discharge, the
empty shell-casing clanged down on the metal floor of
the platform and Tanner hopped up and shoved in number
two, slamming shut the smoking breech mechanism.
'Go,' he yelled, and Alex pulled the rope.
Another blast and Lucia shuddered with the recoil,
its fender pulling clear of the snow.
'Strike one. Strike one,' whooped Tanner, as a burst
of ice shattered off the speeding block.
In the face of the American's fearless confidence, Alex
felt like a scared old man. Even if he had just scored a
direct hit. The only trouble was that the 75mm shell
didn't seem to have done much damage. The giant ice
cube was still heading in their direction, bigger and faster
and now, stung by the shell, it looked even more hellbent
on revenge and destruction.
Alex pulled the discharge and the second shell-casing
shot out, hit the first one, then tipped off the platform
and into the snow. Seconds later Tanner had number
three in the breech and was locking the bracket.
Without asking, Tanner spun the elevation wheel.
'Shoot,' he cried.
Another blast. Another hit.
Though not as direct as the first strike, this second
one seemed to cause more damage. A corner section
about the size of a small house spun off the right side
of the glacier and the brute seemed to shimmy a little
to the left, as though the shells were making an impression
at last.
'Yoh!' cried Tanner, heaving out the last shell from
the rack, waiting for Alex to pull the discharge.
When he did, nothing happened.
'Come on, man, come on, man,' urged Tanner.
Alex pulled again. This time the bracket released but
the shell-casing seemed to wedge in the barrel.
'Oh shit,' cried Tanner. Dropping their last shell in the
snow he leaped on to the platform and, bare-handed,
wrestled the casing out, jumped down into the snow,
got the live shell in his arms and bounded back up on
to the platform. A second later he slid it home, crashed
the bracket closed and Alex fired.
The moment he pulled the rope and the blast echoed
out across the Pas des Enfants, Alex knew he'd done
something wrong, knew he'd forgotten something. It
didn't take more than a moment to realise what it was.
In his haste to fire, he'd failed to drop the barrel's elevation
to compensate for the angle and speed of descent.
Instead of hitting it, their last shell sailed over the top
of the iceberg and threw up a massive column of snow
and smoke a hundred metres behind it.
'Shit,' said Tanner.

160

Fired at a stone wall more than fifty metres thick, travelling
at a speed in excess of a hundred kilometres per
hour, at a distance of twelve hundred metres and closing,
an eight-kilo 75mm shell with a muzzle velocity of 380
metres a second can cause considerable damage.
But it won't stop the wall.
Ice is different. It's fragmented. It's frozen water, its
interior honeycombed with pockets of stale air and
fissured with ancient cracks. It may be deadly, but it's
also old and unstable. The ice bearing down on Alex,
Tanner and Les Hauts had already been hit twice, and
though it might have looked like the second strike did
all the work, blasting away a slab, it was actually the first
hit that did the real damage. Though its forward
momentum and its weight had not been significantly
lessened, deep inside the heart of the iceberg, like a windscreen
hit by a piece of gravel, a crack splintered out,
spreading minutely as the berg bounced down the slope.
A thousand metres . . . eight hundred metres . . .
Alex and Tanner watched in dismay as it ground on
down towards them, close enough now for them to see
a glittering slipstream of ice chips billowing off it like
the milky tail of a comet tearing through space.
'Time to get moving,' shouted Tanner, as the ground
beneath their feet began to tremble and the sound of
the iceberg reached them - a hissing, creaking, blackboard-scratching
screech.
It sounded, thought Alex, not unlike a snowboarder
coming down a slope. A rather ugly, threatening sound.
But a million times uglier. A million times louder. And
a million times deadlier.
Clambering up into the MAC's cabin, Tanner reached
for the ignition.
It's not going to fire, thought Alex. The engine's not going
to catch.
And he was right.
'Come on, baby. Come on, baby,' he heard Tanner
saying, cajoling the MAC into action, the starter motor
whining like a spoilt child.
Alex sat paralysed in the firing seat and watched the
berg draw closer, the barrel of the howitzer pointing like
a thin finger at a flying fist of ice.
I am going to die, thought Alex, and he closed his eyes.
Even if I jump off the truck now and start running, it's too

late.
Even if Tanner gets the truck moving, it's too late.
Tltia. Thia. I love you. I love you so much, my darling . . . and I will always be with you ... I will always be near . . .
Just a few hundred metres away now, the great mass
of ice raged on towards them, rolling, tumbling. And
then it hit a small ridge and lifted no more than a metre
off the slope. It had done this many times barrelling
down from the Murone Glacier, bouncing every now
and then as its weight and velocity, its rough fractured
surface and the unevenness of the slope, sent it airborne.
But this time, when the berg hit the ground, it did so
at a critical point, at exactly the moment that the webbing
of cracks started by that first strike reached the outside
of the tumbling mass.
It was this leading crack that hit the snow on impact,
this crack that bore the weight of the berg.
And the weight was too much for it.
In an instant more than three quarters of the berg
exploded in a shattering blast of icy shrapnel, diamond
chunks rocketing into the sky and out towards the front
de neige in a blinding, battering salvo of icy malevolence.
Alex's
eyes sprang open at the sound, registered this
new threat and he ducked down behind the metal panels
of the gun and pulled up his legs as a thousand splintery
shards of ice smashed into the truck.
But the worst was still to come.
Three-quarters of the block may have disintegrated
but a quarter still remained, spinning now like some
crazy fairground carousel that had shaken off its moorings,
the sun flashing off its mirrored flanks, its deadly
shrieking shadow reaching out for them.
Alex felt an icy whirlwind splash across his face.
'Grab something!' he screamed at Tanner.'Grab something
and hold tight! It's going to hit us!'


Aftermath

The child was born in the summer, five months after
the slides that devastated Les Hauts, when the slopes
were green, cowbells clanged dully, and rich pasture
reached down to the front de neige. He had a thick nap
of curling black hair, large hands and feet and, judging
by the length of him, he would grow to be just as tall
as his father. He had piercing grey eyes, sharp as flint, a
stubborn button-like nose, and strong little fingers that
gripped hard at Nathalie's breast when he fed. She called
him Auguste, after his great-grandfather, and whenever
she looked at him, swaddled in a snowy cotton cocoon,
she couldn't decide whether she wept with joy at his
unexpected arrival or sorrow at her terrible loss.
The boy was delivered by Doctor Francine Malland
and the obstetrician, Charles Laclere, on the top floor of
Hopital des Hauts, one of the first buildings put back
into service after the disaster. He arrived naturally, after
a short labour, at a little before eleven o'clock on a Friday
night. When Madame Laclere learned the time of the
birth from her nephew she exclaimed at it, and everyone
she told - particularly Madame Daille, Madame Giscard
at the Tabac and Amelie Bernard -- all agreed that it was
indeed a coincidence extraordinaire.
In the days following the birth, Nathalie and her son
had many visitors. Jacqueline, the child's grandmother,
was the first to visit, accompanied by Maxim Kalagin
who brought a small gold icon of Our Lady of Kazan
that had belonged to his mother. In the months following
Hugo's death, the Russian had become Jacqueline's
constant companion and it hadn't passed unnoticed by
those who knew her that, despite her loss, there was an
increasing lightness about her, even a certain youthfulness.
Nor, indeed, did it go unnoticed among the Bezard
clan when her hand strayed for Kalagin's arm, or she
touched his leg, or deferred to his opinion - someone
in the family remarking that the Russian might have lost
one jewel, but he'd found another in Jacqueline. After
their visit Nathalie fixed Kalagin's icon at the head of
Auguste's cot, and fed her mother's chocolate truffles to
Coco who lay beneath the bed.
Patric and Sophie Bezard came next and knowing
Nathalie's real taste Patric arrived with a bottle of ginipi
des alpes, a strong resinous liquor brewed from alpine
wormwood and celebrated as a tonic. Despite Sophie's
heated objections, he insisted on wetting the baby's lips
with this elixir.
'Paul would approve,' said Patric. 'And so does his son.
There, look how he licks it up.'
A month later, wearing his grandmother's christening
gown, Auguste Jean-Pierre Paul Garamonde-Bezard was
taken to St Sulpice where a trickle of cool alpine water
was poured on to his thickening black curls. Most babies
cry at that moment. Auguste gurgled with delight.
The old church was packed for the child's christening,
the service occasionally interrupted by a flapping tarpaulin
sheet covering the hole in the roof where the spire had
once stood. Afterwards there was a party at the Bezard
chalet on the Salvettes ridge, its kitchen and garage, which
had been vaporised by that third spinning Courcelle
wheel, now rebuilt and refurbished - much to Sophie's
delight.
That first summer after the slides there were two more
christenings in Les Hauts - a time for new beginnings,
a number of the older folk remarked. A week after
Auguste there was Aubaine Lesage whose father Jean had
taken over Paul Garamonde's job at the Bureau des Pistes
et Secours. Aubaine is growing fast and when he puts
her to bed each evening Jean tells her about the mother
she is already beginning to resemble. Her name, in
English, means 'Godsend', and for her father no other
word comes close.
As for the third and last christening at St Sulpice, that
came a few months later.
It is in the way of these things that, as a doctor,
Francine should have been aware of her own condition
much sooner. But three months had passed before
Nathalie -- who had noticed (frites and ice cream?) -- handed her friend a pregnancy testing kit and pointed
her towards the bathroom. When the sample turned the
requisite colour, both women burst into tears and hugged
each other so hard that Coco started barking.
This time the tarpaulin was gone from the roof of St
Sulpice and a new spire was in place. It was just as well. Les maux d'automne might have passed but rain still
hammered down on Les Hauts when Francine stepped
up to the font and passed her swaddled son to the cure.
When the baby was finally returned to her, Francine took
the child and laid him on her husband's lap. Only recently
released from the specialist burns unit in Geneva and still
confined to a wheelchair, Benoit Crespi cradled his son
with bandaged hands and, despite his best efforts, felt a stream of hot tears burn down his smooth pink cheeks.
Following the christening, Patric and Sophie Bezard
hosted a reception party in the newly opened Salle du
Matin at the Auberge des Hauts Aigles. Having borne
the full brunt of the first slide, the damage to the old
Auberge was extensive and best estimates on completing
the reconstruction work varied between a year and
eighteen months. With Hugo Bezard lost in the second
slide, Patric and Sophie took on the project, and both
Philippe and Bruno have indicated that when the time
comes they too would like to join the family firm.
In the months following the slide Alex and Mathilde
spent a great deal of time together, first at the hospital in
Cariol where Alex recovered from his injuries, and later
in Les Hauts where Mathilde coaxed him off crutches and
on to sticks and finally saw him take his first steps unaided.
But then, soon after the christening of Paul Crespi,
they went their separate ways.
At her own request, Thea had returned to Wrokely
as a weekly boarder and each Friday through the
Michaelmas term, Alex was there to pick her up. When
she came home at half-term, Thea knew immediately
that there was something on her father's mind. When he
finally explained what he was thinking of doing, she
experienced an odd and unsettling kind of disappointment.
Apparently in the last few months he'd invested
advice, and a considerable amount of money, in a ski
making venture set up by Max Kalagin. It appeared that
Kalagin had invited Alex to join the board and, in order
to be nearer the new factory that the Russian had just
set up outside Cariol, Alex was thinking of returning to
Les Hauts full-time. Before he did anything, however, he
wanted to know how she felt about it. She told him she
was proud of him and happy for him, which she was,
and that she would love to live in Les Hauts. But deep
inside she wished he'd been telling her something else,
something much more important. But it was not to be,
and Thea returned to Wrokely after the half-term break
in a strangely glum and restless frame of mind, wishing
she had had the nerve to ask her father about Mathilde.
After her extended stay in Les Hauts, Mathilde
Deslandes had finally returned to her apartment in Paris.
In the weeks that followed she went back to work, met
up with friends and started to pick up the pieces of her
old life. But for some reason she just couldn't settle.There
was something she wanted to do, something she needed
to do. In short order she resigned her position as
marketing director of CreditFrancePlus, sold the lease on
her apartment, stored her belongings and travelled south
to the old family home near Hossegor where she'd
learned to surf as a girl.
As well as taking long solitary walks along the beach
she began work on a book describing the disaster in Les
Hauts, resisting the temptation to call her old lover Gilles
to ask for advice. It took seven months to complete the
manuscript and for a month after finishing she wasn't
quite sure what to do with it. In the end she sent it to
her sister who read it in one sitting and promptly passed
it to Patric. After he'd read it he parcelled it up and,
without saying anything to Mathilde, he sent it to a
publisher he knew, a regular guest at the Auberge.
The first Mathilde heard about it was a phone call
from the publisher in Paris, followed later that day by
further calls from an agent in New York and a film
producer in Los Angeles. Within four months of those
phone calls, her book stands in pole position in the New
York Times bestseller list.
If the book was something she felt she had to do,
Mathilde s return to Les Hauts was another.
On a bright summer's day, after a wild shopping spree
with her sister in Paris, she finally married the man she
loved. Since he had been married before, the ceremony
took place in the Hotel deVille in Cariol with family and
close friends only. The following day, a Saturday, the couple
repeated their vows in the church of St Sulpice and were
blessed by the cure. At Patric and Sophie's invitation, the
wedding reception was held in the Aigle d'Or restaurant
at the recently reopened Auberge des Hauts Aigles.

It is in the nature of stories such as these that smaller
but no less significant events often happen at the same
time as the larger ones. And what happened that summer
day, in another part of Les Hauts des Aigles, eighteen
months after the disaster, is also worth recording.
At about the same moment that Alex and Mathilde
Ryland cut their wedding cake in the window alcove
of the Aigle d'Or, a young English boy, playing on the
banks of the Valentina, noticed something bright and
shiny in the shallows. Even as he watched, the current
caught it and shifted it further downstream and he was
forced to pull off his socks and sandals so that he could
wade into the icy water to retrieve it. It was round and
heavy and when he held it up it sparkled in the sun.
Later that day he showed it proudly to his parents who
had set up a tent at a camping site off the Passeurs road,
but they paid no real attention - just another stone their
son had picked up. At the end of the holiday he stowed
it away in his knapsack, took it home with him and
added it to his collection.
Despite challenges from his friends he's never been
persuaded to risk it in a schoolyard game of marbles.

Postscript



Philippe Bizard may not have won the Diable Downhill, but
then no one did that year. He did, however, go on to win that
season's World Championship with the fastest time ever recorded
on Kitzbuhel's Hahnenkamm downhill course. When he climbed
on to the winner's podium at the end of the World Cup season
he did so with Mike Cole and Uli Wilman standing either
side of him, their silver and bronze medals flashing in the alpine
sun. As for the Austrian skier, Hans Lenterbrun, his body has
never been found.

When the last remaining section of the Murone Glacier struck
the MAC 500 and blasted it back against the front de neige, all Tanner White could find to hang on to was the steering
wheel. Both wrists were broken and ten days later he was flown
home to the States. When Renie Pelletier, who had cared for
him in the days after the accident, came out to visit him in
Montana, she decided to accept his invitation to stay on awhile
and become a farmer's wife.

Of the one hundred and twenty-two guests staying at Auberge
des Hauts Aigles when the avalanche struck, only eighteen
survived. And of the forty four staff on duty on the night of
the Champions' Dinner only nine made it out alive. One of
these was the sommelier Pierre Canove, finally released from
the Auberge caves fifty-seven hours after the first avalanche. In
that time he had sampled more than two dozen of the greatest
vintages declared in the last hundred years, his favourite a 1904
Tokaji Aszu Essencia whose stained, tattered label bore the
twin royal eagles of the Romanovs. After rescuers hauled him
through the trapdoor he swore that he would never drink again - nothing would ever come close to what he had tasted. Eighteen
months later he's still dry.

Jules Dessin is still Les Hauts' station chief based at the newly
constructed Centre des Pompiers Municipal. He is currently
working with the lift manufacturer HintelWerkFabriken GmbH,
and supervising the completion of a new network of ski lifts
for the slopes of Les Hauts. The first cable-car run is scheduled
to open soon.

Following the deaths of his colleagues at Les Hauts'
Gendarmerie, Marc Monbalt has been promoted to Deputy
Chief of Police. He is still a member of the Mountain Rescue
team and, when time allows, is on hand to help Jean Lesage
with Les Haut's newly-installed avalanche warning system. In
recent months he has started dating Ginette Miquellier.

The old concierge, Didier Lougin, did not return to work. He
survived the murderous passage of that first Courcelle wheel,
but died of a heart attack -- a broken heart, his widow swears
- a week later. His name is one of the nine hundred and
twenty-eight inscribed on the memorial in Cimitiere des
Hauts.
Like the one before it, this memorial is a massive block ofVialli
stone, the broken red spokes of the first Courcelle wheel bedded
into it. From certain angles it looks like a red fan held in a
grey fist. On the face of this stone, set above twelve greening
brass panels, a stonemason from Cariol has chipped out these
words:

Aux Morts des Hauts
Pris par les Montagues
14, 15 Fevrier 2008

The names in the panels beneath are listed alphabetically, each
surname followed by a single initial.
Names for all to see.
Names to remember:
Aumont, D, three down from the top on the first panel.
Followed two lines further on by
Bezard, H.
Bruchet, J.
And then the rest, panel after panel:
Dakine, P.
David, L.
Felus, M.
Garamonde, P.
Lefevre, G.
Lenterbrun, H.
Lesage, M.
Lougin, D.
Malland, A.
Mascov, L.
Perouse, A.
Primaud, A.
Primaud, Y.
Raclin, G.
Razin, C.
Tavernier, G.
Vlassov, N.
All the way down to the last name, on the last of the twelve
panels:
Zaitsev, R.
When that first Courcelle wheel scythed through the Mairie car park, it was Rudi Zaitsev who went the wrong way.

Four months after the avalanche the bodies of three climbers
were returned to their next of kin. Back in the States the
parents of Nick and Billy-Ray took their boys' ashes to the
summit of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park and cast
them to the mountain winds.

As for the English climber, Johnnie Peat, he was laid to rest
in the family crypt at Calmsden in Gloucestershire. Above the
door of this crypt the following words have been cut into the
stone:

A Boy Who Loved Mountains Rests Here

The End.