White Death: An Alex Hawke Novella by Ted Bell

spent in Wolfie’s classroom. In two short days, it seemed that Luc Bresson had become both his mentor and his guardian angel.
    It would prove to be one of fate’s better ideas before all this Sturm und Drang was over.
    H awke spent the better part of that warm, sunny Sunday afternoon in mid-December on the deck of a famous restaurant, high in the Alps. A glorious spot, accessible only by cable car. He and Sigrid had invited Blinky to join them in an alpine brunch at Grossescheidegg, a popular five-star restaurant and Gasthaus pitched on the side of a towering mountain.
    Hawke stood waiting in the sun on the busy deck, waiting to be shown to their table right next to the rail. He stood transfixed at the sight of the beckoning giant. And he finally came to a startling realization. In truth, he was afraid of that mountain. Even now, seated with his friends at a table on the rail, looking up at the mist-enshrouded pinnacle, his groin tingled with icy fear.
    And, yet, still his hands itched for the touch of the bitch’s cold and ragged rock, the looming vertical face before him. He felt exhilarated at just the thought of trying to beat the savage into submission once more. Once again, he found himself eavesdropping on that perverse internal dialog, the duel between his flinching mind and his boisterous spirit; a conversation that every serious mountaineer knew so well.
    Grossescheidegg was known for its outstanding Ungarische Goulasch . The broad terrace, filled with round white metal tables and giant red umbrellas, had spectacular views of the murderous mountain that, even now, beckoned to him. To reach the celebrated watering hole, you had to drive along the lake south of Zurich for roughly an hour. In the center of the tiny village of Verblen was a cable car station. The views from the swinging car alone were worth the trip up to Grossescheidegg, situated at 13,000 feet.
    While waiting for their food to arrive, Hawke admired Sigrid standing at the rail among a small group of Italians. She was the long-legged blonde, the one with the deep bronze tan, the one who was using one of the six coin-operated telescopes. The scope she’d deliberately chosen was in a direct line between Hawke and the mountain peak.
    The weather had changed drastically over the weekend. Days were now warm and sunny, and Sigrid’s wardrobe had been adjusted accordingly.
    She had chosen to wear tight white shorts, and very clunky clogs. She bent over the instrument, directing her excellent bottom toward him. He could not help noticing that her splendid mountain tan must have been acquired in those very shorts. Since the advent of very short skirts, Swiss women had returned to those remarkable clogs. Some Bernese wag had once said that Swiss women’s shoes had been made by fastidious Bernese shoemakers who had had the shoes carefully described to them on the telephone but had never actually seen them firsthand.
    “Quite a spectacular vision,” Blinky said, sipping his pale Pinot Grigio.
    “I could not possibly agree more,” Hawke said, taking a deep draught of his St. Pauli Girl, chosen because the beer label had a bosomy milkmaid in a revealing dirndl. “Simply awe-inspiring,” Alex replied, his eyes fixed on this woman who had taken such a hold of his life.
    “Alex, my old friend. I refer to the mountain.”
    “Ah. That, too!”
    Alex now followed the direct line created by following Sigrid’s telescope angled up to the mountaintop, and focused his eyes once more on what he now thought of as his personal demon.

 
    C HAPTER E IGHTEEN
    W hite Death. Appropriate name, Hawke thought. Early mountaineers had given the mountains far more benign names: Jungfrau, the Virgin. Monch, the Monk, and so forth. But this particular massif had a far more malicious moniker: the White Death.
    Always known to Hawke as “the Bitch.”
    That was because the alpine pioneers had long ago listed it as one of the “impossible” faces, in the days when sportsmen