Free White Death: An Alex Hawke Novella by Ted Bell Page B

with a fall of roughly six feet into a snowbank. Almost directly below the Murder Wall.”
    Hawke asked, “Why not inspect the Wall using helicopters? Find the hidden entrances somewhere on the face?”
    “Good thinking. In fact, it was Wolfie’s first thought. We discussed that idea at length but came to the inescapable conclusion that the idea was not feasible. The sound of hovering choppers outside would alert anyone inside. Steel doors would instantly seal the mountain for good. Instantly impenetrable. Impervious to any attack by air, leaving us no choice but to use heavy artillery to blow a hole in the side of our nation’s most infamous tourist attraction.”
    “I see your point,” Hawke said, mulling it over.
    “You don’t seem very happy about the prospect of scaling the Murder Wall, Alex. Frankly, no one in his right mind could fault you if you decide not to attempt it again. I, for one, would never blame you. You came extremely close to dying up there.”
    “No, no,” Hawke said impatiently, “that’s not what I’m thinking about at all.”
    “Then what are you thinking about, Alex?” Sigrid said, her eyes suddenly clouded with fear.
    “Blinky, get Wolfie on your mobile right away. Tell him we won’t be coming to St. Moritz. Tell him something rather more pressing has come up.”
    “You’re going up there, aren’t you?” Sigrid said, her voice trembling.
    But Alex never replied.
    He was quietly staring at a soaring white peak far in the distance. It stood there, towering over the others surrounding it and putting them all to shame.
    T he following two weeks flew by with near miraculous speed, he noticed. He spent long days in mental and physical preparation for his imminent ascent. Two frostbiting days in the mountains, three exhausting days in a stifling-hot Tenth Mountain classroom, studying his evolving route of attack. Wolfie’s ranking army alpine experts were merciless to the point of sadism.
    They pounded him on everything from projected weather and storm conditions during his ascent to potential avalanche and rock fall danger, to his meds and supplements, his pain tolerance, and his mental stamina.
    And, finally, coaching him through a deep-dive investigation into the most recent decade’s history of fatal attempts by climbers seeking to put the notorious White Death on the proper side of their ledgers.
    In the late afternoons, while the great criminalist Congreve was working the murder case and the missing Sorcerer, Alex and Wolfie went shopping. Browsing the various alpine gear shops of Zurich, they were like two women trying on dresses at Harrods, though style and glamour were hardly their goal. Wolfie wanted to make sure Hawke was well-equipped before his ascent.
    Their only objective was Hawke’s ultimate survival in the coming test of endurance, skill, and luck. Some of his most basic equipment came courtesy of the Swiss Army. But the more sophisticated gear, the highly sophisticated, state-of-the-art climbing equipment and the most advanced survival tools and climbing techniques, all came from a little-known, back-alley shop called Schussboom.
    It was very convenient, located off a back street just two blocks from his rooms at the Bauer au Lac. There he met the owner, an elderly man named Luc Bresson, a famous French climber who was both the first and the last man to conquer White Death. M. Bresson was of medium height, bone thin except for his wiry musculature, and exceedingly charming. Blue eyes a’twinkle, a luxuriant white moustache. And laughably bushy white eyebrows sprouting sprigs of hair that looked like the weird antennae of a praying mantis waving about in the breeze.
    Bresson’s own story was quite amazing. And when Luc heard Hawke’s tale of his grandfather’s bones and his own doomed attempt to retrieve them, the two men had become fast friends almost instantly. Hawke learned far more in a concentrated half hour with Luc than he had in all the many hours he’d