Ice water stops your breathing, sends your diaphragm into spasm, and convulses every muscle, but the choice was simple: remain hidden, or die. He would be scrambling down the glacier, rifle in hand, padding to the edge of the water, sights trained, ready. I spasmed downward to avoid thrashing at the surface. I’d been in the water five or six seconds, but could fight to hold my breath another two at most. Think! Sun. Setting sun: dazzled water. It might be enough. I let myself rise gently. A quick fin of my right hand sent me into a roll, and I broke the surface for a split second, like a floater, exposing only my shoulder and lower face, but long enough for one huge suck of air, blessed air, then back down. My eyes stung with the minerals and the cold, but I could see the cloud of blood, brown in the green water, trailing from my shoulder. The cold would soon stop the bleeding. He would think me dead. I dived, but slowly, gently, and stroked towards the shore. He had the gun, but I had the sun: he wouldn’t be able to see beneath the surface reflection, but I would see his shadow. Gloved right hand for the barrel, bare left for the trigger: he was left-handed. I felt along the lake bed until I found a smooth round stone that fit my palm.
The blood had made him careless. He was standing right at the edge of the water, one foot actually in it, rifle held only loosely to his left shoulder. I finned my way gently to his left, counted to three, and roared up out of the water, stone swinging—
—only it was more of a stumble than a roar, and the rock that should have slammed into his temple crunched into his left knee instead. He went down with a splash, face first. I was on my knees, heavy and useless with water. I swung the stone at his head, but slipped and thumped him between the shoulder blades. He thrashed and convulsed in the cold. I couldn’t summon any strength; it was as though someone had pulled the plug and everything had just drained away. I dropped the stone and shoved him, boatlike, out into the lake, only just retaining the wit to hang on to his rifle. He spasmed, swallowed water. I pulled out the clip and put it in my pants pocket, jacked out the round he had already chambered, then used the rifle as a crutch and heaved myself to my feet. I was so numb with cold I couldn’t tell where I’d been shot.
Think. Think fast. I swayed and closed my eyes, opened them again. He was definitely moving more slowly now. Very well, then. I tossed the rifle alongside my pack.
The water was just as cold when I waded back in, but I only had to go up to my thighs. He was barely conscious. It affects some people that way. I caught the neck of his jacket—some quilted cotton thing, sodden—and dragged him to the shore. Hauling him up was hard. I got him most of the way out and his eyelids started to flutter. I dropped him, found my stone, and hit him on the forehead, but not too hard. I wouldn’t need long. I dropped the stone back in the water, which rippled heavily, the murky brown cloud of my blood still clearly visible, and finished dragging him out onto dry ground. A quick search gave me his wallet, keys with Volvo logo on the fob, and sodden cigarettes and lighter. I flicked the lighter. Nothing. I held it up to the failing sun—half full of liquid—flicked again. Nothing. His driver’s license said John Turkel; so did the Blue Cross Card. Careless. No rental papers for the car. I pushed the keys into my pocket and everything else back in his.
My muscles were like lumps of wood stuck haphazardly onto cardboard bones. Nothing worked right. My fingers hung from my hands like thick, stupid bunches of bananas and I kept falling down because I couldn’t feel my feet. It took five tries to strip off my sweater, more for my pants and shoes, and then I half stumbled, half ran to the glacier, where I rolled in what snow I could find to absorb most of the excess water from my bare skin. Patches of bright red stained the snow here and there but it wasn’t too much. I stretched and flexed and staggered in circles until feeling returned to my torso, to thighs and wrist, and then I ran some more while I squeezed as much water as I could from the sweater and undershirt and pants. The trot back to my pack was reasonably steady but the shadows were so long I shied at pebbles, thinking they were boulders.
When I got to my pack, all I wanted to do was sit down, but I didn’t dare. I fished in it, standing, tilting it this way and that until the slippery plastic compresses slithered out into my clumsy hands. They were cold as eels, but two quick twists started the catalytic reaction and they began to warm. I held one compress against my chest with my right hand and tried to use my left to wrap the other tight inside my wet sweater and pants but my arm wouldn’t work properly, just flopped about. Try again. Slowly. I managed, one inch at a time. The bullet had hit something important. No time to think about that; there were more urgent things to deal with: getting my body temperature back up, warming the wool sweater and pants enough to put back on and trap what heat I could coax my body to produce.
In the gathering twilight the rocks near the lake looked like comfortable brown cows settling down for the night. I walked from one to another, found one that was still warm from the sun, and spread my undershirt out on it. An inch at a time.
I put the compress between my teeth and dragged my pack over to another rock, sat down, and dropped the compress across my thighs. I had to balance the plastic thermos cup on the turf to pour the hot, sweet coffee, and it wobbled precariously. I drank a whole cup, poured more, dug out some chocolate, chewed and swallowed, chewed again. My hands ached around the hot cup, the right just with cold, the left with more. Another ache bloomed high up on my back. Later.
More chocolate, the last of the coffee. Put it all away in the pack. Walk to gunman. Turkel, John Turkel.
Walking felt strange, as though someone had removed my arms and legs and then reattached them using odd connections. I squatted a few feet from the man, who was shaking convulsively with his eyes closed, and tossed a pebble at him. When he opened his eyes and saw my nakedness, his pupils dilated, then contracted.
“Talk,” I said in English.
He stared at me.
I didn’t have time for this. “I imagine your knee hurts, if you can feel it at all. You’ll need several hours’ surgery before you walk on that leg again. You are soaked through with freezing water and are in the first stages of hypothermia. Perhaps your thought processes are becoming cloudy. Let me make it clear: you will tell me everything about who sent you to kill me and why, or you will die out here.”
I watched him gather his pitiful resources—two quick breaths, flare of nostrils, tightening of muscles around his mouth—and when he lunged, I swayed to one side and hit his already bruised forehead with the meaty side of my fist. He went down like a punched-open inflatable doll.
This was taking too long. I rooted around a bit in the grass until I found another rock.
While he was still groaning, I smashed his other knee. He screamed. I waited until he had finished. “I’m in a hurry. Can you understand what I’m saying?”
A groan. I slapped his knee lightly. Another scream.
“John, answer me. Can you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“Listen carefully. Both your knees are smashed. It’ll be dark in a few minutes. The only way you will survive tonight is with my help. I will only help you if you help me. Where is your car?”
His shaking had changed to long, rolling shudders and he didn’t seem to care about his car. I lifted my hand. “No! It’s…it’s…” He had to clench his jaw to stop his teeth from clacking together. “Miles, three maybe, valley.”
“In the Nigard Valley?” There was still enough light reflecting from the water to see his nod, or what seemed to be a nod amid all the jerking and shaking. “North or south?”