The Alps were a line of axe heads leaning against each other, dangerous and sheer. Hannibal had dragged his ragged column up and down before finding a way through them, and every morning the sun did the same thing. The snow was filthy with thin red light, like the site of some winter slaughter to make the spring come out.

Luke shook my tent to wake me up, then he left to get coffee when he saw the lantern glow from inside. The tent flap hissed like a snake. I stepped out and joined the fire in my long underwear and a pair of boots.

“Ok, so.” I said, warming myself.
“I can feel it,” said Pete, “it will be today.”

Of all the places in the world, we weren’t near any of the good ones. We had oatmeal and bacon for breakfast, and hot cocoa powder with dried marshmallows. Then we packed everything up and began hiking again, over some small hills that looked the same as every other hill I had seen for the last eleven days.

I had an over and under shotgun broken in the crook of my arm. Luke and Pete both had high-caliber hunting rifles on straps over their shoulders. Professor Murray was unarmed, of course, but his assistant had a sub-machine gun that she carried in one hand, even while she guided him with the other.

In a little valley, hardly more than a mud hole, we found the crater where the helicopter had crashed. The cockpit was split open, and the prop was bent as Geller’s spoons. All the meat had been stripped off the pilot’s bones. There was no sign of the suitcase.

“Somebody beat us here,” said Pete.
“Probably the Germans,” I said, “we saw them in Berne, buying climbing gear. I bummed a cigarette off of Friedrich.”
“Why didn’t you say something on the plane?” he asked, suspiciously.

As I prepared my middle finger for a brief response, the Professor’s assistant began motioning for us to come to the other side of the plane. There, where the snow had piled up beside the fusilage, were the bodies of the Germans, their boots and frozen limbs sticking out of the snowbank. I found Friedrich’s body and felt inside his pockets for a pack of cigarettes.

When we moved the snow, we found them huddled together, their skulls caved in, skin black and shrunken around them like it had been vacuum-sealed. Murray picked up a thin ribbon of plastic from the edge of the pile, and held it up to the wind. It flapped and writhed, but finally he succeeded in bringing both ends together. When he did, it formed a perfect circle, with a crack in the middle.

Around the rim of this circle, symbols had been stamped in black ink. Most of them were unfamiliar to me, little squiggly marks that looked halfway between Rorschach blots and Kanji scripts. One of the symbols I did recognize, though—it was the symbol of the Stasi, East German Secret Police, stamped on the other side of the ribbon.

“Standard issue circle of protection,” said Pete. “Portable, collapsable, cheap to mass produce. Plastic, with a silver stripe poured into the mold. Three foot radius.”
“Not rated for sub-zero temperatures, though. It must have cracked from the cold when they were inside. That’s why I buy American,” said Luke.
“I wonder what got them,” said Murray.

We all paused, listening to the roar of the wind as it scoured the mountainside. Silently, each of us accepted the reality of the situation — We were above the tree line, now, where life was cheap and everything was in conspiracy. Here is a riddle to puzzle over in the dark: why don’t they build churches this close to heaven?

The guns were some comfort, but little use. We all knew one or two spells, but ultimately it was going to come down to luck; who got the drop on whom. I pulled the flashlight out of my pack.

“Yeah, Professor, tell us what got them,” I said.

I cracked the shotgun closed and pressed it to his assistant’s forehead. “Drop the Uzi, beautiful.”

Nobody knew what to make of this, and I must admit it was something of an improvisation. However, she relunctantly dropped the weapon, and it sank a few inches into the snow. With the gun barrel biting into her scalp, I pushed her back until she was out of reach, and tore off the Professor’s dark sunglasses.

“What is going on here?” he said.
“See for yourself,” I replied, raising the flashlight to eyes. He immediately recoiled, drawing backwards and blocking the beam with his hand. His assistant dashed forward, groping for the Uzi she had dropped, but I swung the barrel around and blew a hole in the snow in front of her. That stopped her. The report echoed in all directions.

I looked up at Pete, Luke and Murray, who by now had drawn their weapons.
“He’s not blind after all,” I said. “Let’s hope he’s not dumb, either.”

We were so small, so helpless on the back of the mountain. If you could rise into the air like a puff of smoke you would lose sight of us long before you could see the whole thing at once. There is little one can do when faced with the complexities of a situation like this. Someone had beaten the Germans and opened the suitcase already. Why, I’d never know, but the last thing to escape when the lid comes off is always, as they say, hope.

The Professor sighed and began to talk, while his assistant gave me dirty looks. By now the light was almost half way gone from the day.