Avalanche Read online

  “Yes, sir, of course, sir. Christie’s actually had you in a less expensive room. You were upgraded by Mr. Al-Fayed. Still, you must sign.”

  “Who’s Mr. Al-Fayed?” Robert asks.

  “He’s quite well known here. Among other things, he’s the largest private shareholder in BioSwiss.”

  “Pharmaceuticals…whoa, did you hear that, Ali? Some guy named Al-Fayed upgraded our room.” Robert looks from Ali back to the receptionist. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.”

  “I assure you,” the receptionist says, “you will be very comfortable.”

  “I’m sorry, but what does a pharma guy want with me?”

  “He left you this note.” The receptionist slides a thick envelope across the counter.

  “Wow, that looks like a wedding invitation,” Ali says. “Nice paper.”

  Robert opens the envelope.

  “What does it say?”

  Robert reads it: “Mr. Abdul Al-Fayed requests the pleasure of your company for dinner at the Sommerset Restaurant. Répondez s’il vous plaît.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow night.”

  “Hm. I thought this trip was just for the two of us. Our fairy tale?” Ali puts her arm around Robert’s waist.

  He smiles mischievously, flips the invite to the receptionist, and pulls Ali to him.

  The room is an aphrodisiac. Every texture is soft, exquisite. It’s not home. Ali kisses Robert passionately despite the presence of the tall valet, standing with their bags.

  “Dis, is der sauna, unt minibar, unt coffeemaker.”

  Ali unbuttons Robert’s shirt and kisses his neck.

  “Und perhaps I leaf you alone.” The valet quickly exits and closes the door behind him.

  As she works her way down his chest, Ali says, “There was a woman in the lobby with a lynx on a leash.”

  Running his fingers through her hair, Robert says, “I saw a guy in a bearskin suit.”

  Now at the bottom of his shirt, Ali continues, “She had a diamond the size of an ice cube around her neck.”

  They drop onto the fur rug in front of the fire. “He had a bolo tie with an oil rig in the middle.”

  “I love this place.”

  A doorbell chimes.

  “What is that sound?” Robert asks.

  “Someone’s at the door. Maybe the valet wants to show us our robes.”

  The doorbell chimes again. Someone raps firmly on the door.

  “I’ll send him away.” Robert gets up and opens the door, shirtless.

  Two imposing men in black suits stand at the door. One of them extends the envelope—the invitation that Robert had left at the reception desk. “Mr. Al-Fayed would like to know if you are pleased with the room?”

  Robert closes the door behind him so the men cannot see his semi-naked wife. “Yes…Unexpected, but very kind.”

  “Mr. Al-Fayed has extended his generosity to you. Now, he would like the favor of your reply. Shall you meet him for dinner tomorrow night?”

  “I’m sorry, but—”

  “He seeks your expertise on an urgent matter.”

  Robert nods. “May I bring my wife?”

  “Seven in the lobby. A driver will take you to meet Mr. Al-Fayed at Sommerset Restaurant. Mr. Al-Fayed will be most pleased.”

  Chapter 7

  When he steps back in the room, Ali is not lying on the bearskin rug. He hears running water and follows it to the bathroom, where steam billows. Robert quickly drops his clothes and follows Ali into the shower. “Whoa,” he says, grabbing for the knob. “Too hot!”

  “No!” she says. “Now it’s cold.”

  “It’s not cold.”

  “Seriously, just get out of the shower. This never works.”

  Robert leans back against the marble. “I’ll just wait,” he says. “It’s not good for your skin, you know, the extremely hot shower.”

  “We’ve been over this a million times.”

  “Okay. Sorry.”

  Ali gets out and wraps a towel around her waist.

  An hour later Robert finishes buttoning his shirt. “Ready?” he asks. She’s always late.

  “Almost,” she replies, leaning into the mirror, lipstick in hand.

  “I told the hostess we’d be down in five minutes. We don’t always have to be late.” He slips on his tweed jacket and thinks, I shouldn’t have said that.

  “Seriously,” she says, looking him up and down, “are you trying to kill the romance? Why don’t you just put on some Teva sandals while you’re at it?”

  He holds out his arms and looks at the sleeves. “Are you saying you don’t like the tweed jacket?”

  “It was okay in the nineties because it was so retro. Now it’s just…No, I don’t like it.”

  “But I wear it every day.”

  “Exactly!” She lifts her palms and rolls her eyes.

  “Is there anything about me that doesn’t subtly bother you?”

  “You promised me you would change.”

  Robert comes up with a plan. “Okay, Ali. I’ll meet you downstairs in five. A new man.”

  The boutique in the lobby is foreign to Robert in more ways than one. He finds a tall, blond saleswoman and asks, “What’ve you got that’s cool? Something young, something an Internet billionaire or…a secret agent would wear.”

  The saleswoman struts over to a rack and removes an iridescent blue hoodie. “This is very cool.”

  “Kind of casual, wouldn’t you say?”

  “You wear it under a more conservative jacket. Like this.” She holds up a black blazer. “It’s Tom Ford.”

  Robert turns the price tag and winces. “Ouch. That costs more than my first car. But…anything to make my wife happy, right?”

  “You know what they say,” the saleswoman says coyly. “It’s cheaper than a divorce.”

  Robert puts on the hoodie, then slips the blazer over it.

  “That’s the look,” she says.

  Robert sees a foreign figure in the mirror. He holds out the tweed jacket, stares at it longingly. “We had a good run, friend, but now it’s time to say good-bye.” He turns to the saleswoman and asks her, “Do you have a charity box?”

  She laughs. “This is Gstaad.”

  Chapter 8

  Robert stands at the elevator, shifting his weight from side to side. He looks down at his brown wingtips. “You guys are safe, for now.”

  “Hey, buddy. You’re the art professor. Professor—?”

  Robert looks up from his conversation with his shoes. “Monroe. Robert Monroe. You look familiar, too.”

  “From the airport.”

  “What a coincidence.”

  “How do you like your room?” asks Ken.

  “It’s…”

  “A suite?”

  Robert subtly nods. The doors to the elevator open up, and Ali steps out. She sparkles in the tiny bright halogen lights.

  “Wow,” he says.

  “Look at you,” she says. “A changed man.”

  “Anything for you. How could I ever be so lucky?” says Robert, taking her hand. “This is…” Always polite, Robert turns to introduce the stranger, but he is gone.

  Chapter 9

  Ken steps out of the stairwell into a utilitarian world of large, stainless-steel front-loading laundry machines and loud dryers. He bumps into a woman wearing a black-and-white maid’s uniform under a black scarf. “Sorry,” he says as he subtly steals her ID card, palming it in his hand.

  He swipes it at a computer terminal and enters MONROE.

  At the door to the room, Ken looks both ways, knocks gently, then swipes the card.

  Inside, he searches, going through everything in the room piece by piece. It must be on him, he thinks.

  Ken hears a card slide in the door. There is no time to hide.

  “Hello, Ken. Or is it Kouresh?”

  “Hey, buddy.”

  Ken feels a sting. He touches the feathers of a dart now lodged firmly in his neck.
/>
  Chapter 10

  After dinner Ali and Robert decide to take a walk. Outside, large snowflakes tumble and swirl softly in the night sky. They wander down into the village.

  They stop and kiss in the middle of the quiet, snow-covered street.

  “You think Marcus is up?” Robert asks.

  “Let’s FaceTime him.”

  Robert gets out his phone and dials.

  They wait. Marcus’s face comes up in the screen, his eyes groggy, his hair disheveled.

  “Hey, panda bear, did we wake you?” asks Ali.

  “Hey, Mom. Hey, Dad. What are you guys doing up? Is everything okay?”

  “Your dad has a new look.”

  “Check this out.” Robert hands the phone to Ali and slowly turns in a full circle so that Marcus can see everything.

  “Whoa,” he says. “Are you trapped in a snow globe?”

  “Nice observation, son,” says Robert.

  “I love you, panda bear. Go to bed.”

  “Okay. I love you guys, too.”

  In the bedroom, at the end of the night, Ali tells Robert, “Lie naked, right there, on the duvet.”

  He follows orders. She stands before him and searches deeply, silently in his eyes. She lifts her sweater over her head, then folds her hands behind her back, her arms reminding Robert of a swan. She leans forward, cups her breasts, and slides off her black bra.

  The slow sound of the zipper on her leather skirt makes Robert a little breathless. It falls down her thighs to the floor. She is back to where the night began, in nothing but her black nylons. He sits up and reaches for her. She takes his hands in hers and they move across her hips to the small of her back. Her hands slide up his shoulders and meet at the back of his neck. He pulls her down on top of him and everything is new again.

  Chapter 11

  When Ken opens his eyes he is no longer Ken or Kouresh. Strapped to a table, he can only move his fingers and toes. The light is bright. It’s as if they are planning to operate.

  He hears Arabic, which he does not understand, and some Farsi, which he knows perfectly. “Shia bastard…buying…computer…worm…” The words drift by like clouds.

  Then someone is speaking in English, American English, Kentucky English.

  “Hey there, Ken, or should I call you Kenny? Or Kenneth? Or Kouresh?” The two passports are dropped on his chest.

  A large, round head blocks out the light. It brings a flame over and sucks that flame into a pipe, once, twice, three times, until the orange embers glow. Each time the flame rises out of the pipe and flickers, Ken can see a little bit more of the distorted face. It’s round and rubbery, with craters like the moon.

  “Goddamnit, Ken. I’m talking to you! I hate to be ignored,” the man says, and exhales a plume of smoke into the light.

  “Ah…Ah…Ah…Ken! I said call me Ken.”

  “Do you smoke, Ken?”

  “No. I quit a long time ago.”

  “I never met a man who didn’t smoke, under the right circumstances. How ’bout after dinner?”

  “No…”

  “How ’bout after sex?”

  “No…”

  The distorted man would smile if his face moved that way. Instead, two pools of saliva form in the open corners of his mouth. He sucks air. “Have you ever made whiskey, Kenny?”

  “No.”

  “Well, of course not. It’s against the Koran. But do you like whiskey?”

  “Yes. Very much.”

  “Well, let me tell you about the distillation process. When you heat up alcohol it evaporates quite quickly. Some of that evaporation turns into the best whiskey in the world—Kentucky kind. The other stuff will make you blind as a bat, might even kill you.”

  Ken begins to sob a little.

  The round face leans in close, puffs on his pipe. Ken can see the skin is opaque. Threadlike blue and red veins run beneath the surface. “Ken, what I’m trying to do here is to distill the truth.”

  Ken snivels. “Okay.”

  “Just the right amount of pain is like just the right amount of heat—the truth will rise from you like ether. I’ll capture it in a bottle. And I’ll have one of the most valuable things in this big, dirty, deceitful world of lies and half-lies.”

  “The truth?”

  “The truth, Kenny! Don’t say it like it’s a question.”

  “I will tell you the truth. I swear to God.”

  “Which god, Kenny? A man with two passports probably got more than one god, too.”

  “No. I swear. I swear on the life of my children.”

  “Just had to bring the children into it, didn’t you? That’s real heartwarming. Now, Ken, let’s go back to the first stumbling block in our relationship. Do you smoke?”

  “No, sir.”

  The man slaps his hands together in a brutal crunch. “Right back to square one! Okay, it’s time for science class.”

  The rusty sickle drops down on Ken’s chest and slowly splits the seam to his pants. A small squeeze bottle fills his navel with gasoline. The contents of the pipe, the orange embers, are emptied onto Ken’s quivering chest. Ken screams in pain.

  “Details, Ken. It’s all in the details.” The rusty sickle pushes down, in between the gasoline and the pipe embers. The fluid flows. The embers roll. They meet. The man called Pumpkin leans in and blows on the embers. The gas erupts in flames for ten excruciating seconds, then is out.

  Two gloved hands pull at Ken’s hair and lift his skull. He sees his own charred skin smoldering.

  “I’ll ask you one last time, Kenny. DO. YOU. SMOKE?”

  In tears of pain, Ken blurts out, “I SMOKE! I SMOKE!”

  “Hear that? Sounded to me like the truth.”

  “What! What do you want to know?”

  “Tell me, Ken, everything you know about the Italian.”

  “He’s got a partner! A woman named Yøta!”

  Chapter 12

  When the sun is just up over the Alps, Ali and Robert hit the slopes. The crunch of the snow beneath their skis, the feel of the crisp mountain air, it’s invigorating. From the top, Ali takes off. It’s easy to keep her in sight, in her vintage cornflower-blue one-piece ski suit. It even has a yellow belt.

  He gives chase. This is just like when we met at Dartmouth. I have missed this, thinks Robert.

  She moves gracefully, effortlessly. As she gains speed, a vapor trail of snowy mist builds behind her. The tiny crystals frost Robert’s cheeks. The trail plateaus, then drops off between two thick groupings of pine trees. The steep path has just the perfect amount of room for them to ski side by side, their rhythms matching perfectly.

  It’s a magical moment—until a skier in black pants and a silver jacket recklessly skis between them. His path forces Ali toward the trees, where she throws all her weight onto her skis’ edges, chattering to a stop on the side of the run.

  Robert yells to her, “You okay?”

  “Fine!” she yells back.

  Robert turns his attention downhill and gets into a racer’s tuck.

  He gains distance on the reckless skier, now entering a field of large moguls. Robert’s a little surprised that his legs still have the ability to absorb the shock of each bump, but they do. He’s running purely on instinct now, and it’s working.

  Near the bottom of the mogul field, Robert overtakes the skier, gets in front of him, and stops cold, holding his hands out for the man to stop. The skier hits a bump as hard as he can and attempts to jump over Robert. Robert ducks down. The skier barely clears him, then loses a ski on a hard landing. He falls face-first into a large pile of snow.

  Robert skis over to the fallen skier. “You okay?” he asks.

  “Yes. But no thanks to you!” The man is young and speaks in a heavy Italian accent.

  Robert offers a hand up. The man refuses it, standing on his own and dusting the snow off his silver jacket.

  “You almost ran my wife into the trees up there.”

  “What? You almost killed
me down here. Let’s say we are even.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” Robert says. “I just wanted to get your attention.”

  “You did that with your skiing more than your attempt to stop me. You’re…not bad.”

  “Thanks. You, too.”

  “I’m Eugenio.”

  “I’m Robert.”

  Ali skis up to the two of them. “What was that all about?”

  “Hey, honey, this guy who almost killed you is named Eugenio.”

  Ali takes off her helmet and goggles and musses her hair. Ali’s eyes are bright, her smile big.

  Suddenly Eugenio is penitent. “I’m so sorry. I was…a little wild. Forgive me. It’s just my nature.”

  Robert is tickled by the candid self-appraisal. “No worries, Eugenio. I used to be a little wild, too.”

  “And the mystery woman? What is her name?” Eugenio asks smoothly.

  Ali is blushing, Robert notices, due to Eugenio’s combination of bravado, youthful, rosy cheeks, and big blue eyes.

  “My wife’s name is Ali.”

  Eugenio kisses her on both cheeks. “She is lovely,” says Eugenio. “Perhaps we could meet for drinks tonight? The first round is on me.”

  “We have a—”

  “That would be lovely,” Ali interrupts her husband.

  “Very well. The bar at the Olden Hotel. Shall we say eight?”

  “Eight,” Ali says, though she sees her husband squirm at the thought.

  “Eight. Sounds good,” says Robert.

  Eugenio clicks in and skis off.

  “You meet your mysterious Arab for dinner. I’ll meet Romeo.”

  “It was Eugenio.”

  “I know,” Ali says with a playful kiss.

  Chapter 13

  The lobby of the Gstaad Palace is buzzing with the frenetic energy of cocktail hour, but Robert is still, his hands folded before him. When he left Ali she was fresh out of the shower, wearing nothing but black nylons, blow-drying her hair in the mirror. The way that she bent so lithely at the waist, he wanted her, but when he put his hands on her hips and kissed her neck she tossed her hair and said, “You’re the one who decided to have dinner with the billionaire.” As a poor consolation, she kissed him lightly on the lips, then giggled as she used her thumb to wipe off the lipstick she had left.