"What became of them?"
"What happens to all of us? The bottom of the lake to feed the fish," said the old man in Italian.
It's true, thought Elata. "E vero."
The island fortress was built straight up from the sheer, chiseled rock; the water lapped against the walls. The only spot to land was a small ramp of mossy rocks flanked on both sides by walls, which made it easily defended. It was impossible to see what might be behind those walls, in the castle beyond, from the water.
The driver reversed the propeller as they approached, slowing to a bare crawl; he turned gingerly, stopping parallel to the rocks, but still a good three or four feet from the island. Elata bent and took off his shoes, rolling his pant legs up; he guessed the water would come to his knees. He reached for his bag, but Peter grabbed hold of it, nearly throwing him off balance.
"What's the story?" Elata said.
"We're not allowed on the island. Just you. They're watching."
"I can't have my bag?"
"They're very nervous, and they're calling the shots."
"Well, I need something from it."
"So take it."
Elata reached into the knapsack and took out the letter he had been given at the Musee Picasso. He palmed his alphanumeric pager as well, putting both into the inside pocket of his wool suit coat.
"We'll be here, painter," said Peter. "Just don't do anything stupid. They're not very forgiving."
Elata threw his shoes and socks to shore and got out of the boat. The water was deeper and the rocks more slippery than he'd thought; he slid backward, stopped only by the side of the craft. His pants were wet well up to his thighs.
If the letter got wet, the daub of paint it contained would be useless. He took off his jacket and held it high above his head, not even daring to throw it ashore for fear he might miss. He walked forward slowly, waddling more than walking. Finally, he reached the dry rocks and could put on his shoes and walk up the ramp.
Elata expected to hear the motorboat rev back up behind him. He expected bullets to glance off the rocks. He expected to die any second, the victim of an elaborate setup.
"Signor Elata?" asked a voice from behind the rock wall on the left.
"Yes."
"Buon giorno, signore. Come sta."
"Sto bene," he said, trying to take a breath.
"I much admire your work. You are a genius," said a short, thin man with close-cropped hair who stepped out from behind the rock. A small sapphire earring sat in his left lobe. He reached out eagerly and shook Elata's hand. "I have long wanted to meet you."
"Okay."
"You are the third expert Signor Morgan has sent, you understand. But the others--they were clerks. Academics. Schoolteachers." The small man practically spat as he spoke. "You will understand this. You--it is a pleasure to meet you. Truly."
Elata started forward. The man caught him.
"I must warn you, my associates, they are very, very suspicious. There are video cameras. One right there, you see?" He pointed toward the yellow wall of the castle where there was, indeed, a video camera. "They hover nearby in a helicopter. Anything bad that you do, anything even suspicious--I'm afraid that it will not go well for you."
Elata nodded.
"I would not like you hurt. That would be a terrible thing. You have much more to accomplish, eh? The world should not lose you." The Italian could not have been more sincere. "You may leave when your inspection is done, but the others must stay," added the man.
"Why?"
He shrugged. "Until the transfer is complete. Simply a precaution. These exchanges are always difficult to arrange. It is a dance. My partner wanted you to stay as well, but I persuaded him that you would be insulted. We would not want you insulted." The man smiled and nodded. "A small boat will pick you up. Signor Morgan will not object, I am sure."
"Can I see the paintings, please?"
"This way," said the man, springing forward.
Elata followed him up the ramp to a narrow corridor behind the wall, and then around a sharp corner that led to the castle interior. A large wooden door stood open. The Italian entered; two men in creased jeans sat glumly on a small bench just inside. Elata guessed they were the other experts Morgan had sent; he wondered what their opinion had been.
This was too elaborate to be a trick, but perhaps the sellers would simply kill anyone who thought the paintings were fraudulent.
Morgan was supposed to protect him, the bastard. How could he give his true opinion under these conditions? He had the letter--but what good was it? How could he compare the paint? He trusted his eye better than any laboratory, but still--this was a job for a team of scientists, not an artist.
The short Italian pushed open a small rectangular wall at the side, its thick iron hinges creaking harshly. Elata had to stoop to step through.
Light flooded into his eyes. He'd stepped into a small courtyard.
Fourteen paintings, each approximately eighteen by twenty-six inches, stood on easels before him. He looked at the first and his lungs ceased working; his eyes turned to the second and his heart stopped. By the third he knew he would never himself pick up a paintbrush, either to make a forgery or do something of his own.
There was no point. These fourteen paintings held all possibilities of art--not merely agony but joy, not simply sorrow but triumph. Beyond this there was nothing.
"You may use this phone," said the Italian, pressing a cell phone into his hand. "Take your time. I will leave you." He retreated, then paused at the door. "Of course, if you think they are fake--"
"They're not fake," said Elata. There was no sense bothering to compare the paint.
"You'll want to study them carefully before your conclusion. There are X-rays, whatever you want."
Elata said nothing.
"I'll leave you," said the Italian, slipping away.
The phone rang just as Morgan pushed himself back from Lucretia on the divan. Minz, her head resting on her sister's leg, reached for him lazily.
At other times, most other times, he would not have bothered to answer the phone, but he was waiting for this call. He reached back and took the handset; as he brought it to his ear he felt a sharp pain in his chest, a difficult feeling of remorse--what if the Picassos were fake?
The Italian and his partner would be eliminated, but that would be no consolation, none at all.
"Yes," said Elata. His voice was hushed, the syllables of the word drawn out.
Morgan said nothing, reaching back and hanging up the phone instead. He slid one hand beneath the oversized divan, reaching for the alphanumeric pager so he could set the exchange in motion.
His other hand slipped onto Minz.
"Be with you in a moment, hon," he said, turning his full attention to the pager's miniature keyboard. "But we'll have to make it quick; I have to meet a helicopter at the airport in ten minutes."
FOURTEEN
NEAR COLD CORNERS BASE VICTORIA LAND, ANTARCTICA MARCH 13, 2002
THE SNOWMOBILES DESCENDED TOWARD COLD CORNERS through razor bends in the slope, tacking between rock falls, ramparts of drifted and avalanche-piled snow, blue ice pinnacles that soared hundreds of feet into the dusky hanging clouds.
Out front, Burkhart again coaxed the team to speed, his engine greedily pulling fuel from the tank. The wind bragged in the faces of his riders, pelted them with freezing precipitation. Spiral blooms of snow and hail exploded in the beams of their headlamps. Bullets of electrically charged graupel smacked their helmets, flattened out with little coughs of static that went rasping up and down their encrypted radio communications link.
If his task went off as Burkhart intended, the storm would be their only resistance. But in matters like this there could be sudden and unexpected turns, and he had done all he could to prepare his men for a change in plans.
Their firearms had been an easy choice. Lightweight, compact, field-tested after hours sheathed in ice at minus- 300degF cold-chamber temperatures, th
e Sig Sturmgewehr
552's were optimally designed for extreme-weather commando action. Their hinged trigger guards could be moved to the left or right to facilitate firing with alpine-gloved hands. The variable-magnification optics were frost-resistant and reticulated with luminous tritium markings, their foresights hooded against glare and snow. Each of the transparent three-stack magazines under their barrels held thirty rounds of 5.56 x 45mm NATO ball ammunition. Attached side by side for rapid open-bolt reload, they effectively gave the guns a ninety-round capacity.
The riders carried these assault weapons on their backs in biathlon harnesses, as Burkhart had done on ski-patrol drills with the Swiss special forces, where he'd had to unclip his weapon from its straps and zero in on a line of numbered targets from both prone and standing positions, firing after rapid downhill runs, his performance measured to a rigorous standard of time and accuracy.
In his elite unit, Burkhart's skills had leaped above the highest bar. It was as if he were born possessing them. But he'd accepted recognition from his superiors and comrades with indifference. His competitiveness came from old angers of the soul, and he'd worn his decorations as emblems of a secret spite. For the child of the moon, every medal pinned to his chest was a reminder of some beautiful shining face that had once looked scornfully at him under the sun, left further in the past as he flogged himself toward new levels of accomplishment.
At last, though, it was restlessness as much as anything else that had sent him along the path of the mercenary. His prowess had seemed wasted against cardboard soldiers. What pluck was there in mock combat against an enemy that bled red dye? Games had not demanded enough of him. And so he had moved on to find a profitable and satisfying alternative.
Since then Burkhart had only improved upon his innate abilities, refining his tactical know-how, his situational adaptability. He had actualized a vision of his own potential, made it hard as steel, and found a kind of chambered peace within it.
Now Burkhart took a sinuous curve around a glacial edge and urged his bike over a series of jarring bumps into the downhill channel he had reconnoitered before the storm. A final glissading run, his flaps threshing up a wake of powder, gravity squeezing the ribs around his heart, and then he was on a smooth flat field of ice, headed across the basin between the mountains and frozen shore.
Dimly visible through the snow, just a handful of miles seaward, lay the UpLink base.
Cold Corners Base
"Pete."
Nimec turned his head from the window in the empty corridor. It was oval and not much larger than a porthole, its fixed pane reinforced with a shatter-resistant polymer coating. He had stood there alone staring at the thick pulsing snow outside, listening to the freight-train roar of the wind, once pressing his hand against the glass to feel its buffet. He could see neither land nor sky, only the close, incursive whiteness.
"Meg," he said. He had not noticed her approaching. "Figured I'd take a look at the thousand-pound giant."
"And maybe stare him down?"
"Maybe."
She stood beside him awhile.
"I've been trying to find you," she said. "Ron Waylon told me he'd taken you on the grand tour, then left you at your workstation after you two went poking around the utilidors."
"How'd you know I'd be here?"
"I didn't exactly. Just had a hunch you might be where everyone else wasn't, and wandered around until I hit the spot."
"It would've been faster and easier to have me paged."
"But absent the intimate touch for which we strive at this lodge."
Nimec looked at her another moment, then moved his somber eyes back to the window.
"I know what you're thinking and feeling, Pete," she said.
"Never occurred to me you didn't."
"One thing to keep in mind is that the storm won't reach the Valleys. None of them do. The mountains form a barrier. And any snow that does get over them is dried by the katabatic effect before it hits the ground."
He kept staring out the window.
"Our people have been missing eleven days," he said.
"Yes."
"Maybe no one's been able to get to Bull Pass on foot since they were lost. Or obviously down in a chopper. But the boss told me MacTown sent out pilots in Twin Ospreys. And we've used Hawkeye III. State-of-the-art satellite recon that can practically image a mole on somebody's chin."
"Pete, you know air and orbital sat searches are hampered by the terrain no matter how sophisticated the tech. There are recesses, cliff overhangs . . . too many blind spots."
Nimec turned to her again.
"Eleven days," he said. "And counting. We have to be honest. Let's believe they found food and water caches. Give them that. How long before they'd all succumb to the cold? When do we stop talking rescue, and admit anything we do is about recovering bodies?"
Another silence.
"I won't offer false encouragement," Megan said. "Not to you or myself. But neither will I stop hoping. You'd have to know Scar. He'd try to find places where they could shelter, and the same ground features that make hunting for his group difficult might very well provide it."
Nimec didn't reply. He was conscious of the wind barreling outside.
Megan studied his face.
"There's more on your mind," she said.
He waited a moment, then nodded.
"Working with Tom Ricci these past couple of years . . . I suppose the way he thinks outside the box has started to rub off on me. Something about the rover disappearing, and then those people who went looking for it, makes me suspicious. Or maybe that's going too far, using too strong a word. It makes me wonder. I'm not sure about what. I figure the reason I'm not sure is there's probably nothing to it. But I've been on my job so long, I can't stop wondering. It's instinct. Doesn't matter where I am. Doesn't matter that it's pretty hard to imagine who'd want to make trouble for us here, interfere with what we're doing. Or how they could. I'm looking for answers when I can't even decide if there are any logical questions." He paused, moved his shoulders. "I wish I could put it to you straighter."
"You've been straight enough," Megan said. "I never disregard your instincts, Pete. We need to talk more about this."
"Yeah," he said. "But it's late, and I want to sit on my thoughts a little longer, give them a chance to work themselves out." He paused. "That's why I waited to bring them up."
Megan looked at him. The blowing wind and snow slammed aggressively against the window.
"I'm supposed to meet Annie for drinks," she said. "You can join us if you like. It might make the waiting easier. For you and me."
Nimec was quiet.
"Better not," he said then. "Don't think I'd be very good company."
She stood looking at him a few seconds, nodded.
"We'll be at the bar if you change your mind. You know where it is?"
"I can find it."
She nodded again, and started away down the silent corridor.
"Meg?"
She paused, half turned toward Nimec.
"I almost forgot to mention you run one hell of a lodge," he said.
Megan smiled warmly at him.
"Appreciated," she said.
Burkhart heard a cannonade in the southern distance: long rolling rumbles, a bellowy roar, then a rending crash. Someone less familiar with Antarctica might have mistaken the din for thunder, but that was an infrequent occurrence on the continent. Instead he knew it to be a berg calving from the ice sheet, its great tortured mass breaking off into the sea, the stresses of its division accelerated by the storm.
As the sounds continued rocketing across the sky, he set his full attention on the dome some eighty or ninety feet up ahead. His men waited at his sides, snow whipping around them, their snowmobiles left a short distance back. The vehicles would have made this final stretch of ground easier to cross, and Burkhart was convinced the wind would have muted the buzzing of their engines even if they had ridden straight into the c
enter of the compound. Still, he'd taken no chances and ordered his group to dismount.
Given a choice, Burkhart would have vastly preferred the storm's assault had not coincided with their mission. But he had refused to be stopped by caprices of the weather, and decided what couldn't be helped might be turned to his advantage. For one thing, it reduced the likelihood of his men encountering base personnel--almost certainly they would shelter in until conditions improved. It was also just as well he would not have to worry about the observation cameras mounted high on the desalinization plant's dome. To his knowledge, no other Antarctic research base had any real perimeter surveillance, a measure believed pointless in an environment that gave natural safe haven from attack . . . and unworkable besides. Nor did the rest of the installations maintain defensive forces. While UpLink had broken with convention and done what it could on both accounts, the cameras were little more than token reminders. Scarecrows to frighten the birds away from the crop field. Having learned about them independently from Granger and the captive scientist, Burkhart had originally planned to steal past blind spots in their placement and motion patterns, and if necessary knock out those that presented the most serious threat of detection. He had been bothered by the thought that disabling them could trip an alarm and alert the facility's security contingent to his team's presence nonetheless, but that too had ceased to be a meaningful consideration.
Once he'd learned of the storm's approach, Burkhart had become sure it would incapacitate the cameras, and what he saw now supported his confidence. Cataracted with snow, their lenses stared outward from the roof of the dome like blank, blind eyes.
There would be nothing to come in the way of his entry.
His submachine gun held at the ready, he led his men forward through the battering wind. He estimated its speed at close to forty knots, strong enough to rock him on his heels--and the worst of the storm was still many miles and hours to the south. When its brunt finally struck, Burkhart realized travel of any kind would be out of the question.
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