Betrayal Protocol, Cold Divide
Chapter 2: Patterns in the Ice
The chalet’s command centre buzzed with subdued energy, the kind that came with early breakthroughs and mounting questions. Mila Novak headphones perched on her ears, barely looked up from her laptop as Alina entered. She secretly loved a new case and all the drama and this one was almost a guilty pleasure. In another world she may have been out digging up bodies and catching the bad guys the old fashioned way but her grasp of computer sciences was apparent when she was twelve as she beat her brothers hands down at games. It wasn't long before the call of coding beckoned and she was hooked to the flashing pixels. On screen now amidst the familiar cacophony of a live and fast moving case, strings of digits flickered, punctuated by partially decoded phrases.
“The cipher’s coming together,” Mila said, her voice clipped. “I’ve got a repeating phrase: Phoenix Initiative. Sounds like Cold War jargon, but there’s nothing concrete yet.”
“Cold War spy drama,” Fabian interjected from the kitchenette, cradling a cup of steaming coffee. “It’s so old-school it hurts. A cipher in the age of quantum encryption? Almost romantic.”
“Or staged,” Alina replied, pacing by the window. The towering Edelweiss Peak loomed beyond the glass, its frosty summit wreathed in morning mist. “If someone wanted us to think this was predictable, a cipher straight out of a Le Carré novel would do the trick.”
Fabian raised an eyebrow. “So you think this is a distraction?”
“I think it’s convenient,” Alina said, crossing her arms. “And I don’t trust convenient.”
Alina paced the floor, biting her lips.
"Let's take another look at the crime scene," she said shoving an empty coffee cup into Fabian's hand.
She was a petite woman, always in jeans, and today a polo neck covered her pale slender neck and a long purple scar from her ear to her collar bone. It came with the job and she was proud of it, a badge of honour she was given by a would be assassin who she saw arrested and handed back to Germany. But today it was bloody freezing and the heating had been off for months in the absence of an international case of interest between countries.
The ice cave had taken on an eerie stillness since the investigators left. Alina and Fabian descended the narrow path, their breath fogging the frigid air. Snow crunched beneath their boots, the only sound in the pristine silence.
“Hard to believe this place is a murder scene. I mean, how'd anyone get a body out here anyway?”
“Focus,” Alina snapped, shining her flashlight along the icy walls. “Something about this doesn’t sit right. The body was displayed like a macabre art installation, but there’s no blood trail. Either this killer cleaned up perfectly, or...”
“...the kill didn’t happen here,” Fabian finished, crouching near the snowbank where Viktor Rodin’s torso had been propped. He frowned, pulling out a penlight to examine the ice more closely. “Look at this.”
Embedded in the frozen wall was a shard of glass. Fabian extracted it carefully, holding it up to the light. The surface glinted, revealing tiny etchings.
“Looks like part of a lens,” Fabian said. “High-end surveillance equipment, maybe? The kind used for recording or transmitting.”
“Which begs the question,” Alina said, her voice taut, “if someone was watching, why didn’t they stop this? Or did they know it was going to happen?”
Fabian put the shard with gloved fingers into an evidence bag. “I'll get Mila to take a look.”
'It may be nothing, there are a lot of accidents on the slopes. Especially those bloody snowbladers.'
Back at the resort with its glittering chandeliers and polished marble floors, Alina could sense the tension, the unspoken awareness that something gruesome had shattered this alpine haven’s tranquility.
"We need to ask you some questions," Fabian looked at the receptionist with his stern-do-as-ask look flashing his credentials.
"This guy," Alina showed a snapshot of their vic, "he was staying here yesterday. and the day before. Were you around, did you see him?"
The girl was young and had a rather fake demeanour. Alina knew this type of receptionist, the ones that only cared about the rich people they serviced and the big tips. It was hard to get them onside.
"I was on last two days, I never saw him. I would have noticed him, he is quite distinctive."
"Room 331, said Alina....who checked him in?"
The receptionist mustered a sigh as she pulled up details of the room.
"Oh this guy, no he isn't your guy, this is my guy." The receptionists swung the screen round with the artistry of a smug ice skater, and smiled.
Alina and Fabian worked through a list of staff and guests, focusing on those who had interacted with the imposter Mr Rodin. Most were evasive, their answers polished but hollow. Only one, a ski instructor named Lukas, provided anything useful.
“I saw him,” Lukas said, his brow furrowed. “Two nights ago, near the private lounge. He was with someone.”
“Did you catch what they were saying?” Alina asked.
“Not really,” Lukas admitted. “But Mr Rodin looked kinda mean. He had 'people'."
"People?" quizzed Alina, becoming increasingly impatient with this stupid rich people code.
"Body guards," explained Lukas.
On the way back to base with warm coffee in hand Alina and Fabian go over the details of the contradicting lines of evidence.
"So we have some dude," said Alina, "who is Mr Victor Rodin, but not our body in the snow, who may or may not be the Viktor Rodin, a former Soviet spy whose murder has alarmed MI5. We need to check out this other guest with Interpol. Maybe there are just a lot of Mr. Victor Rodin in the world."
Fabian laughed, "Now that would be funny."
By mid-afternoon, the team gathered in the chalet’s briefing room, where Leena Anders, the forensic pathologist, appeared via video call. Her no-nonsense demeanour was sharpened by glaring surgical knives and the crisp apron she wore.
“I’ve just finished the preliminary autopsy,” Leena began, adjusting her glasses. “This case is... unusual, to say the least. You guys are gonna love this."
The team closed in on the screen. “How so?” Alina asked.
“For starters, the severing of the body was done haphazardly, an electric logging saw fits the marks left....or similar. It ain't easy to hack a man in half. But here’s where it gets really strange: the tissue degradation doesn’t match the time of death.”
“Meaning?” Fabian asked, leaning forward.
Leena hesitated, as though unsure how to phrase it. “The body shows signs of having been frozen for an extended period. Decades, perhaps.”
The room fell silent.
“You’re saying he wasn’t just left in the snow,” Alina said slowly. “He was stored on ice, then deposited at the scene?”
“Exactly,” Leena confirmed. “I’ve also found traces of cryoprotectants in his tissue—chemicals used in preservation. Whoever killed him didn’t just murder him. They kept him in cold storage then thawed him out.”
"Do we know it is our Victor Rodin?" Alina hated a confusing set of clues.
"I would bet my job on it," said Leena. "Teeth and bone records all match, this guy had a lot of injuries throughout his adult life. Age at time of death, late forties, early fifties, but I need to be flexible here as things get tricky in a deep freeze."
Back at her station, Mila frowned at the latest decode. “I’m not sure about this cipher,” she admitted. “The pattern is too clean, too deliberate. It’s like whoever wrote it wanted us to solve it.”
“Another breadcrumb,” Alina muttered, leaning over her shoulder. “What’s the latest?”
Mila gestured to the screen. “It’s more of the same: Phoenix Initiative, a series of numbers, coordinates pointing to old Cold War sites. It’s pointing us to a narrative, but it feels... scripted.”
“Because it is,” Alina said. “This isn’t just a murder. It’s theatre. Someone is very proud and they want us to notice them."
Fabian entered, tossing the evidence bag with the glass shard onto the table. “Add this to the pile of oddities. High-end lens, found at the scene. Either someone was filming this or monitoring it.”
Alina stared at the shard, then back at the decoded cipher. Her instincts screamed that the answers lay elsewhere, buried under layers of misdirection.
“Mila, dig deeper into that footage. See if there is more, check social media and get a call out for any holidaymakers who have footage around the time,” she said. “And focus on Petrov’s movements. If he’s connected, we need to find out how.”
“And what about the cipher?” Fabian asked.
“Keep it on the back burner,” Alina said. “It might be relevant, but right now, it feels like smoke and mirrors.”
As night fell, Alina stood by the window, watching the snow swirl under the pale moonlight. It was romantic and serene, if there had not been one of the most gruesome murders she had come across.
Fabian approached, a rare seriousness in his expression.
“You think this is bigger than our spy, don’t you?” he asked.
Alina nodded. “Whoever did this is playing a game. And there is money or something even bigger at stake. Fabian offered her a wry smile." He knew Alina of old. She always went in head first and she had the best clear up rate of any of her peers.
Alina was staring at the murder board. “This is just the beginning, we need to be on high alert. The last alpine case I worked on did not end well."
To be continued...
©2024 Sarnia de la Mare
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Betrayal Protocol, Cold Divide by Sarnia de la Mare Ch 1 Shadows on the Snow
