Page 40 of Mountain Struggle

Damien nodded to his team, then spoke up again louder so the man could hear him over his phone conversation. “We’ll be on our way now, sir. If you need anything, please call 112. We’ll be happy to speak, if we’re not busy attending an actual emergency.”

And with that he turned around and started down the road, leaving the man shouting obscenities into his phone.

“Do you know who that was?” Gael asked, looking up from his phone.

“An asshole,” Jens replied quietly. Damien hid a smile. Jens never used that kind of language, either in English or in his native German language.

“Yes, but what kind of asshole?” Gael insisted, turning his phone around so they could see the screen. On it was a picture of a man—clearly their friendly tourist, albeit elegantly photoshopped to disguise the double chin and the lightly protruding belly. “A rich asshole.”

“I don’t recognize him,” Hiro said.

“You wouldn’t, unless you were Russian.”

Damien groaned. “Please tell me he’s not a politician,” he said, thinking about the shit that could rain on him from above.

“Not quite that bad. He’s a billionaire—he owns hotels and shopping centers, but what he really likes is funding startups. He’s the investment arm behind three unicorns, all of them in the cryptocurrency world.”

“Shit. That’s worse than a politician.”

“Get ready for a late night, Commandant,” Gael said lightly. “The rest of us are going to Stella’s bar tonight.”

“I’ll give the Colonel a heads up, assuming he hasn’t already heard about our brief encounter, then head out to meet you guys. I think I need a beer.”

“For what it’s worth, Commandant, I think you did the right thing,” Jens said quietly.

Yeah. Let’s see how far that excuse gets me.

#

As it turned out, the Colonel had already heard about their encounter with the Russian billionaire. When Damien arrived in his office, his boss was sitting on his chair. Nobody knew if Colonel Pelegrin was completely bald, since he’d been shaving his head for a good twenty years.

“Do you like this chair, Damien?” Colonel Pelegrin asked.

Damien sighed, standing at attention.

“I do, Colonel,” he replied.

“Good. Try to remember how much you like it, next time you and your team choose to leave a VIP stranded on the mountain.”

“Yes, Sir.”

The man relaxed, and a small smile curved the top of his mouth.

“Now, tell me what really happened,” he said.

“We heard a man might need assistance, so we headed up to check. He was sitting there, not injured, but told us he wanted a ride down. It was my decision to leave him there. I told him we’re not a taxi service—we’re not, right, Colonel?”

The colonel laughed. “You’re correct about that, but it’s also not our job to piss VIPs off. I got a call from Paris, Gray. Do you know how much I hate calls from Paris?”

Damien nodded politely. He was smart enough to recognize a rhetorical question when he saw one.

“Colonel, he wasn’t hurt. He wasn’t lost. He didn’t need our help. He demanded a ride down the mountain because he wasn’t having fun.”

Colonel Pelegrin’s mouth turned into a thin line. Damien smiled inside—fun wasn’t a concept the colonel put much stock in.

“I’ll take care of this, Gray. Just make sure I don’t get any more calls from Paris,” the colonel said, standing up and moving to the door.

“Uh … Colonel, is he still up there?”