Free Red Snow by Michael Slade

them in the lobby.
    “This is most inconvenient,” fumed the manager. “No doubt it’s a hoax perpetrated by one of our competitors to undermine tonight’s event. It’s a cutthroat business, trying to go for the gold.”
    “You’ve touched nothing?” Dane asked.
    “Of course not,” Hawksworth replied, offended that anyone would think he didn’t do things just so.
    The three rode an elevator to the eighth floor and angled along a hallway wide enough to allow drunks to wobble shouldered skis. Even so, the wallpaper had scars. The door to room 807 was blocked by a security guard with a pair of bolt cutters.
    The sergeant rapped on the wood.
    “Police,” Dane announced.
    Three times he knocked, and three times got no reply.
    “Who rents the room?”
    “A company called Ecuador Exploration,” Hawksworth stated. “They’re new to us.”
    “How does the door work?”
    “Three locks. Combination keycard and deadbolt, and a swing-bar door guard. I have a master key to override the first two. Ken here has bolt cutters for the bar.”
    “Allow me,” Dane said, holding out his hand. “Fingerprints,” he added.
    Hawksworth passed him the master key, and the Mountie stuck it in the slot. That popped the electronic lock and automatically twisted the deadbolt. Cautiously, Dane used his gloved hand to depress the handle, careful not to smudge any prints. The door swung open about an inch before the knob caught in the swing bar.
    “There,” he said, indicating where the guard should cut.
    Ken eased the bolt cutters through the gap between the door and its frame to snip the metal.
    Crunch!
    The knob fell to the floor and the door swung wide.
    “Jesus Christ!” Jackie gasped, staring at the bed.
    Dane stood stunned.
    “There’ll be hell to pay for this,” he swore to himself.
    It wasn’t blue murder.
    It was gold.

Shrunken Head
     
    Snow was falling in fat white flakes as the potential podium topper stood in line for the chairlift. Too bad the weather wasn’t conducive to a little spying. With all the competitors here to test the terrain before the real thing, he’d hoped to be able to eyeball their performance-enhancement teams and compare them to his own.
    Whiteout, however, meant a blind eye.
    “Look upon the Olympics as going to war,” Will’s coach had said. “Strategy counts. So does spying.”
    As in war, it was all about national pride. As host of the world’s top winter sports event, Canada had shoveled over $100 million into its Own the Podium program, designed to identify top athletes and whip them into shape. Will had been fussed over by a gaggle of physiotherapists, biomechanists, sports psychologists, and conditioning gurus. They’d put reflective stickers on his knee and ankle joints and then videotaped him jumping for a computer to detect any “muscle activation abnormality.” Wind-tunnel testing had helped him shave seconds off the clock.
    “We have a super skier,” stated their report.
    Meanwhile, 150 researchers at dozens of Canadian universities were at work on Top Secret, a high-tech program developed to give golden boys like Will the tenth- or hundredth-of-a-second edge required to nab a gold medal. Top Secret alchemists reduced friction on suits and helmets, matched ski waxes to weather conditions, and timed the release of their best innovations so it would be too late for foreign spies to copy them.
    For Will, however, the ski was on the other foot. Wars, he knew, are won by spying on the competition, and today would have been the ideal opportunity to check out his rivals for clues to what was hidden up their sleeves.
    If not for this veil of snow.
    Sport could be so unfair.
    But all that vanished from his mind as Will clomped onto the spot where the chairlift would sweep him away. A curvy creature filling out a red ski suit slid into place beside him. A pulled-down toque, a pulled-up turtleneck, and yellow goggles masked her face. But if her looks complemented the hourglass