The Man The Mountain Buried

Chapter Five: The Air Ambulance

By nightfall, Veilhorn had become a locked box.

The only road out of the valley closed at six "for avalanche risk," although the snow on the pass had been stable for two days and Luca had read the bulletin himself. Family guards in dark coats appeared at the clinic doors, two at the front and two at the back. Nico lay in a bed on the second floor and Tomas Verhoeven lay in a room down the hall, and every nurse, every drip and every lock in that building answered to the Ostergaards. Nobody left the valley now unless the family said so.

At midnight, Luca sat on the edge of his cot in the staff quarters with an old phone in his hand. He had bought it four years ago and never once switched it on. He knew the number by heart. He had dialed it in his head a thousand times and never let himself press the last digit.

For the first time in five years, he made a call as Whiteout.

It rang three times. Then a woman answered, low and wary, the same voice that had talked him onto ledges and rooftops in a dozen countries. "Who is this?"

"Mags," he said. "It's me."

Silence followed, ten full seconds of it. He could hear her breathing, and behind it the hum of a hangar at night.

"No," Mags Oduya said at last. "No. I flew over that slope for three weeks. I stood in that church and read a eulogy for you." Her voice cracked and came back hard. "Five years. You let me grieve for five years, you selfish, stubborn man. Do you know what that did to me?"

He didn't defend himself, because there was no defense. Then he heard her crying, a ragged and furious sound, and he closed his eyes and took every second of it.

Finally she drew a long breath, and the pilot came back. "Okay. You didn't call after five years to say hello. What do you need?"

He told her everything, fast and plain.

Mags had been born in Lagos and had flown every one of Whiteout's missions. When he died, she had taken the fees he'd banked and built them into a rescue foundation. It held hundreds of millions now, and half the governments in Europe had called it in their worst hour, for ferry fires and mine collapses and trains swept into flooded gorges. Those governments took her calls.

"This minister whose grandson you pulled out of the lake," she said when he finished. "His government has used us twice. They owe us." He heard a keyboard start clicking. "Give me until morning."

By noon, an air ambulance in the white and blue colors of the minister's government was circling Veilhorn.

It came in low over the Summit Terrace, where the family's guests were at lunch, and every head turned to follow it. Below the terrace, Reinholt stood on the helipad with six patrolmen and a snowcat parked across the landing circle. The helicopter hovered above them with its rotor wash tearing snow off the roofs, and it had nowhere to set down.

Luca stood at the edge of the pad with his phone pressed to his ear. "He's blocking it," he said quietly.

"I know," Mags said. "Watch his face."

Thirty seconds later, Reinholt's phone rang. He listened, and his jaw went tight. Mags filled in the rest for Luca in a few short sentences. The minister's office had called the Ostergaards' lawyers directly. The minister was personally requesting the medical transfer of the injured journalist and of the boy whose brother had saved his grandson's life, and he was requesting it as a diplomatic matter. The family could not refuse, not with a terrace full of bankers and princes leaning over the railing to watch.

Reinholt lowered the phone. He looked across the pad at Luca for a long moment, and then he raised one hand. The snowcat backed off the landing circle, and Reinholt stepped aside.

The helicopter settled onto the pad. Two flight medics jumped down and ran for the clinic, and within ten minutes they came back pushing two stretchers through the snow.

Nico had color in his face again. His eyes found Luca's at once, and he caught his brother's hand as the stretcher passed. "You're not coming."

"Not yet," Luca said.

"Luca." Nico's grip tightened. "Be careful."

"Always." He squeezed back and let the medics lift him in.

Tomas came next, his broken leg splinted from hip to ankle and his face grey with pain. As the medics swung his stretcher toward the door, his hand shot out and caught Luca's collar, pulling him down close enough that the rotor noise couldn't steal the words.

"The faces in the ice," Tomas whispered. "I knew one of them. I've seen her picture a hundred times, in the old newspapers." He swallowed hard. "Liv Ostergaard."

Luca went still.

Everyone in Veilhorn knew that name. Liv Ostergaard had been Gunnar's wife and Sigrid's mother. Fifteen years ago she had gone out skiing alone one morning and never come back, and the papers had called it a tragic accident on the mountain she loved. Search teams had looked for a month. Her body was never found.

Tomas let go. The medic slid the door shut, and the engines rose to a scream.

The helicopter lifted off the pad, tilted its nose toward the mouth of the valley and climbed away over the trees, carrying Luca's brother out of the Ostergaards' reach. Nothing on board carried Mags's name, or his.

Up on the terrace, the guests who had laughed at the lift monkey the day before watched it go. They had all seen him standing at the edge of the pad with a phone to his ear, and they had all seen Reinholt step aside. They whispered to each other over their glasses, and not one of them could work out who the mechanic had called.

Luca lowered the phone and turned into the rotor wash, squinting against the flying snow.

Sigrid was standing three meters behind him.

She wore her red patrol jacket, and her face was white. She didn't move or speak. She just stood there in the settling snow and looked at him, and f

rom the expression in her eyes, he knew she had heard every word.