From the well-stocked bureau I chose a fresh shirt. Borgias and the Mafia, that was enough for the mind to conjure with. Even today, centuries after the height of their power, the Borgias meant evil and omnipotence. No wonder Vera and her father were treated with such respect in Europe and America by men who would wipe their feet on history books. It also explained why King would be trusted as the guardian of Snowman, the Mafia’s neutral ground. As a Borgia, he had their esteem and fear, and at the same time he was not connected to any Mafia family. This was only part of the explanation — it didn’t take into account Kang’s personality, which was hardly that of a mere caretaker — but it said something about Vera.
I first really noticed her ring because it was a special land of cameo, the hollow kind that the Borgias first made popular for carrying discreet amounts of poison. That ring had been on Vera’s hand in our most intimate moments. Did it carry my death sentence?
The room phone rang to tell me supper was served.
King, Vera, and I ate in a glass-enclosed patio that overhung the mountain. The meal was Veal Milanese, the wine a white Frascati. Our entertainment was the Cascades themselves, their snow blazing like fire in the rays of the setting sun.
“Perhaps I was a little brusque for a host before,” King mentioned as the table was cleared for brandy and cigars. “You must have some questions about Snowman. Please ask them if you do.”
“I do. For instance, how do you manage to keep a place like Snowman out of public notice? I know this is about as out of the way a place could be, but still some private planes must venture nearby sometimes. How could they miss you?”
“They don’t. But, to begin with, we have invested some money in a few men at the local weather bureau. They are paid to report fog or air turbulence in this area at all times. Very rarely, a private pilot enters the area anyway and comes close enough to see Snowman. A Cobra is sent to shoot the intruder down. Naturally, the loss of life only reinforces the message that this is not a good area to fly through.”
“Doesn’t the pilot radio that he is under attack, and aren’t search parties sent out?”
“The very first thing we do is jam all radio transmission,” Vera answered. “As for search parties, we also have some men at the Civil Air Patrol to mislead planes far enough away.”
“That certainly sounds like complete protection.”
“Mr. Senevres,” King tapped some cigar ash into a silver tray, “that is only a small part of the protection. Weren’t you wondering how much the families of the Mafia pay for this sanctuary I provide?”
“I was. I thought it would be impolite to ask.”
“One hundred thousand a family, a year, plus expenses. The arrangement I have for intruders who come by plane is only the start of Snowman’s protective system. We have the most sophisticated system money can buy. Come with me. I think you’ll be interested. As a matter of fact,” King allowed himself some amusement, “I’m even interested.”
Fourteen
We were three levels down under Snowman, but we might have been in the War Room of the Pentagon. Over a full bank of computers and programmers was an illuminated map showing Snowman in the center of all the mountains within a radius of ten miles.
“Part of the expenses,” King said. “The newest Honeywell computer.”
“But what for?” I asked. “Radar would cover the sky and your helicopters scan the ground. Nobody would try to approach through the mountains at night.”
“And if they did.” King waved one of his programmers aside and pressed a square button. One of the computer’s magnetic tapes became alive. On the screen two words, HEAT SENSORS, flashed and vanished. From a score of different points blue circles lit up. SOUND SENSORS flashed next. Again blue circles followed. “If they did, we would see some red lights. Tell me, Raki, what do you think we would do then?”
“Send out your Cobras?”
“Yes?”
“And have the Cobras attack.”
“No. No, Raki. You miss the essence of Snowman, just what makes this the perfect fortress that it is. And I’m surprised because you’re so clever. The way you manipulated the appearance of another kind of snow, opium, was a stroke of genius. Your snow was its own camouflage. My snow is its own weapon. Outside of a nuclear bomb or a volcano or an earthquake, perhaps the most powerful weapon on earth. What do you know about snow, Raki?”
“It’s white and cold. Not much more than that.”
“Then learn.”
King halted the sensor bank and pressed a button on the next computer. The map vanished from the screen and in its place were shifting crystals magnified 100 times.
“There are many kinds of snow. One Japanese scientist has defined seventy-nine different types. We, however, are willing to settle for the ten kinds used in the International Snow Classification Scale. This particular kind of snow is called plates. You’ll notice an inset with the international symbol, a hexagon.” King pressed the next button in the computer sequence. “Stellar crystals, like parallel stars. The symbol as you see is a six-pointed star. Plates and stellar crystals are what most people think of when they think of snow. But there are many other kinds.”
With Kings finger down on the computers RUN button, a profusion of crystals and symbols seemed to explode on the screen. Columns, needles, spatial dendrites, capped columns, irregular particles, graupel, ice pellets, and hail bloomed in icy splendor while my host talked.
“Avalanches are what I’m talking about. Avalanches falling thousands of feet, carrying a white blanket weighing a million tons, enough snow to bury whole armies, that’s what makes Snowman impregnable. But what makes an avalanche? Not just gravity, my friend. You have to consider temperature, depth hoar, rime, grain size, water content, wind drift, evaporation, tensile strength and viscoelasticity, and layer formation. Plate crystals easily make wind-driven avalanches. Needles and granular fragments pack together like a block of concrete, slower to break apart but colossal in its power when it does.”
“When it does,” I interjected. “That’s not a very dependable protection.”
“Like the weather, you mean? At one time you would have been right. But what do you think I have this computer brain imbedded beneath Snowman for? At a thousand sites in this part of the Cascades range I have not only heat and sound sensors but sensors grading every change in the snow formation. Telling me crystal formation, water flow, layer depth and stress, like the inventory of an armory. I would like to claim it was all my own idea but it was not. Look!”
King placed a magnetic tape on a computer. As soon as the tape started whirling, the screen filled with a mountain view.
“This is a film made by the United States Government at Alta, Utah in January 1964. It was made after a prolonged snowfall of fifty inches, and it illustrates avalanches and their causes.”
The screen showed a shelf of snow. The snow seemed solid enough. The film switched to a man in Forest Service uniform making a snowball. He smiled at the camera like a kid, and, like a kid, he threw the snowball. It was a soft lob, and it landed on the shelf with no more impact than a pound, but the whole shelf broke away. The Forest Service cameraman obviously knew what they were doing. The film followed a fracture line that stretched a mile down the slope as more and more tons of snow collapsed.
“Too unstable for our purposes,” King commented. “New snow on depth hoar. What we want is a reliable formation but capable of being triggered.”