Polar Shift (NUMA Files 6)

The name he had discarded decades before sounded shockingly alien to his ears, but he held his smile.

"I'm afraid you are mistaken, friend. My name is Svensen. Arne Svensen."

Taking his time, the skier planted his ski poles into the snow, removed one glove, reached inside his suit and extracted a PPK Walther pistol. "Let's not play games, Arne. We've authenticated your identity with fingerprints."

Impossible.

"I'm afraid you've confused me with someone else."

The man chuckled. "Don't you remember? We were standing behind you at the bar."

The old man combed his memory and recalled an incident at the Hell Roaring Saloon, the apres-ski watering hole at the bottom of the mountain. He had been pounding down beers as only an Austrian can. He had come back to his stool from a restroom break and found his half-filled beer mug had vanished. The bar was busy, and he assumed another customer had mistakenly walked off with his drink.

"The beer mug," he said. "That was you."

The man nodded. "We watched you for an hour, but it was worth the wait. You left us a full set of fingerprints. We've been on your ass ever since."

The schuss-schuss of skis came from up-trail.

"Don't do anything stupid," said the man, glancing uphill. He covered the gun with his gloved hand.

A moment later, a lone skier flew by in a blur and disappeared down the trail without slowing.

Schroeder had known that his transformation from cold-blooded warrior to human being would leave him vulnerable. But he had come to believe that his new identity had successfully insulated him from his old life. The gun pointed at his heart was persuasive evidence to the contrary.

"What do you want?" Schroeder said. He spoke with the world-weariness of a fugitive who had been run to ground.

"I want you to shut up and do what I say. They tell me you're an ex-soldier, so you know how to follow orders."

"Some soldier," the other man said with undisguised scorn. "All I see from here is an over-the-hill guy crapping his pants."

They both laughed.

Good.

They knew he had been in the military, but he guessed they didn't know that he had graduated from one of the world's most notorious killing schools. He had kept his martial arts and marksmanship skills honed, and, although he was pushing eighty, constant physical exercise and strenuous outdoor pursuits had maintained a body many men half his age would have envied.

He remained calm and confident. They would be on his turf, where he knew every tree and boulder.

"I was a soldier a long time ago. Now I'm just an old man." He lowered his head, hunching his shoulders to project an attitude of sub

mission, and injected a tremor into his deep voice.

"We know a lot more about you than you think," said the man with a gun. "We know what you eat, where you sleep. We know where you and your mutt live."

They had been in his house.

"Where the mutt used to live," said the other man.

He stared at the man. "You killed my dog? Why?"

"Your little wiener wouldn't stop yapping. We gave him a pill to shut him up."

The friendly little female dachshund he had named Schatsky was probably barking because she was glad to see the intruders.

A coldness seemed to flow into his body. In his mind, he heard his classroom mentor, Professor Heinz. The cherubic psychopath with the kindly blue eyes had been rewarded with a teaching sinecure at the Wevelsburg monastery for his work designing the Nazi death machine.

In skilled hands, nearly any ordinary object can be a lethal weapon, the professor was saying in his soft-spoken voice. The hard end of this newspaper rolled into a tight coil can be used to break a man's nose and drive the bone splinters into his brain. This fountain pen can penetrate the eye and cause death. This metal wrist-watch band worn across the knuckles is capable of breaking facial bones. This belt makes a wonderful garrote if you can't quickly remove your boot laces …