“Because otherwise he would have used it already, wouldn’t he?”
Sam wasn’t completely convinced by her logic, but he agreed that their priority was to get to a position above the man.
He cursed himself for his own stupidity in not bringing along a weapon, especially after the attempt on his life at the bottom of Lake Solitude. Sam had hoped that whoever had attempted to kill him down there, had done so in an attempt to protect whatever secrets the lake held, and not because they were specifically trying to kill him.
Like all fools, he had convinced himself that he would be safe, because whoever they were, they didn’t know who he was or where he’d gone. He’d hoped that they were simply trying to protect their own interests, and hadn’t yet discovered that it was him.
And he’d been wrong.
Taking a quick look behind himself, Sam could see that on the flat ground of the ledge they’d neither lost nor gained ground on their opponent.
When he again turned his head, he was horrified to discover that the ledge had ceased to exist.
“Now what do we do?” Aliana asked.
“What about that?”
Above them was another set of stemples, old and rusty, leading upwards, and along in the other direction up the mountain. He could just make out where the top of it met up with a more recent, modern path.
Aliana’s pupils dilated at the suggestion.
“That looks like it hasn’t been used in a half a century!” Aliana exclaimed.
Sam grabbed one with his hand, and pulled on it with all his might. “I don’t care how long it’s been here. We’re all out of options. I just hope it holds.”
“I don’t know how secure those stemples are.”
“Neither do I, but would you rather wait and see what our friend wants with us?”
“No.”
Acknowledging the danger they were in, Aliana started to climb. Without a running line to clip into, she was at the mercy of the bolts which she climbed. A single misstep here would mean certain death.
Fortunately, she was athletic, and had told him that she used to do this during her holidays as a child, and maintained a good pace up the mountainside.
Sam struggled, but managed to keep up with her.
Below, he could now see that the man who had gone by the name of Carl, had chosen to follow them.
Although Carl hadn’t said a word, Sam was now certain that the man was there to kill them both. After all, no one risked their lives climbing a ruined set of iron rungs, unless they had something important to catch.
Sam took another brief look at Carl, down below.
There was something sinister about the mechanical way the man climbed the steps. He was much faster than either of them. At this rate, he would catch up to them well before they reached the top.
Looking around, Sam discovered that he had very few options when it came to looking for a weapon.
Chapter Eighteen
Blake cursed his age, as he looked up at the mountain.
Years ago, he could have scaled these mountains as fast as the best of them. But those days were long gone now.
The Rockblitz was one of those ritzy climbing clubs, found all over Europe, where you could eat good food and drink good wine, while comfortably watching as your companions struggled to scale the distant mountains; and testaments of man’s strength over nature.
There were a number of men around, carrying massive optical-zoom cameras, and taking pictures of the climbers today.
He noticed that one of them was standing at the end of the viewing platform, a Mediterranean man with long dark hair. The photographer had set up his camera on a tripod so that he could follow someone’s ascent, and had now sat down to have a smoke.
“Excuse me, sir. May I borrow your camera for a few minutes to try to locate a friend of mine?”
“No, monsieur. I am using it to keep an eye on my own friend’s ascent.”
“Your friend will be there for a long time yet,” Blake reassured the man, and pulled out his wallet, extracting two purple 500 Euro notes, and said, “I only need to borrow your optical zoom lens for a few minutes while I locate my friends.”
The man shrugged his shoulders, pocketed the proffered Euros, and sat back down to finish smoking his cigarette.
Blake sat down on the chair set up behind the high-powered lens. He followed the line of the Via Ferrata until he spotted the first climber. It was a woman, in her early twenties, her brown hair casually tied back in a ponytail, and nice legs, he noticed. At any other time, he would have enjoyed admiring her further, but having easily determined that she was not who he was after, he continued using the lens to zoom in further up the line.
There were literally hundreds of Via Ferratas in sight, and more than a dozen mountains ahead of them. It was one of the main reasons why this particular lookout, was the choice for avid climbing photographers and filmmakers. It could take him all day to find them, but his friend’s message said that they had started their climb on the Via Ferrata Con Grande, and he was confident that he would spot them soon enough.
It ran for nearly a four hundred feet vertically, and once reaching the top of it, a climber could continue on another four pathways.
Blake continued following the line of the iron trail up the mountain, occasionally stopping when he spotted a climber, to see if he’d found them.
It was taking much longer than he thought it would.
He felt the tap on his shoulder, and turned to see that the owner of the telescopic lens was now extinguishing his smoke.
“I’ll have my camera back now,” the man told him.
“Please, monsieur. I have not yet found my friends, and I assure you that I will not be much longer.”
“A couple more minutes, and then I don’t care that you just gave me 1000 Euros, I have a job to do today, and it’s worth a lot more to me than a 1000 Euros.”
Without taking his seat again, Blake bent down until he could train his eye on the line. This time, he started at the top and quickly worked his way down.
Finally, he spotted them.
The woman was in the lead position, and Sam Reilly was close behind her on the wall.
His friend, he noticed, was pushing himself to his absolute limits, but was closing the gap between himself and the other two. The man was now about fifty feet below the next person up the ladder.
Training the lens just below the three of them, his eyes stopped scanning when he saw a fourth climber. This man was only a little further behind his friend, and he seemed strangely familiar. He focused in on the man’s face — and even at that distance, he instantly recognized the man.
What the hell are you doing on the mountain?
There was no mistake about it.
There was no way the man was there purely by coincidence.
Blake thanked the photographer, and walked away from the camera, pulled out his phone, and made the call.
“Yes?” A surly man’s voice answered.
“I have spotted him.” He uttered each word slowly and deliberately.
“Good. Where are they now?”
“Halfway up a side track of the Grande Via Ferrata.”
“Do you think they know about it, then?” The man’s normally cold voice held a little more concern than usual.
“They must. The coincidence otherwise is surely too much,” Blake Simmonds acknowledged.
“What are you going to do about it?”
“I'll have one of our own helicopters meet me here shortly and take me to the top, where I will meet them personally.” Blake fidgeted with the cell phone, and then said, “I’ll be prepared for any eventuality, of course.”
“Excellent. I knew I could trust you,” the stern voice on the line said.
“There is something else.”
“Yes?”