Iceland: An International Thriller (The Flense Book 2)

by Saul Tanpepper

  To the saline solution remaining in the IV bag, she injected an entire vial of Fentanyl and opened the valve wide, draining the powerful narcotic into the man's body within minutes. The spasms soon stopped. His breathing followed shortly after. Then his heart.

  And still the nanites continued their deconstruction unabated. By the time she was ready to open the door and face the horror she expected outside, half of Stefan's face was gone, the skin shrunk to the bone and tearing apart.

  When she found the stretcher and brought it back to move Padraig, Stefan's liquefied brains were leaking out through his nostrils and eye sockets.

  The scene outside the room had been so much worse than she'd expected, a painting straight out of hell. The outer room and hallway were flooded in gelatinous goop and brittle bones. Piles of soggy clothes. Blood splattered the walls and ceiling, liquefying, dripping. It looked almost like their bodies had exploded.

  She drove away from there without really knowing where to go or what to do, just knowing that she needed to get as far from that horrific place as possible.

  Released from the grip of the Fentanyl drip, Padraig had woken up soon after. He resumed his moaning. He quieted after she gave him a shot of the drug into his arm, though he didn't sleep. She feared administering too much, as she had no way to monitor his breathing or his heart.

  Then, remembering what he'd said earlier about not feeling his toes, she ran her fingertips over his lower spine, finding the unmistakable bulge of the dislocated disk right away.

  The injury was worse than she had feared. It was then that she knew he needed to get to the hospital. He was already at risk of losing his ability to walk. But how to explain what had happened to them without launching a massive police investigation?

  Crashing the car and setting it on fire had been easy. So had the lies she'd told when the emergency personnel arrived. Waiting for them had been hard, because there was nothing but the burning car to distract her thoughts.

  The SMUR driver started up the engine, then turned and asked if she was ready to go. She nodded.

  The back doors slammed shut and the vehicle pulled out onto the road on its way to the hospital.

  * * *

  Angel sat in the waiting room outside of the salle de réveil — recovery room — and spun Padraig's cell phone between her fingers as she waited for him to wake up from the operation. The phone was locked, of course, not that she needed it. She still had Stefan's in her pocket, and she knew his code. But it was the image on Padraig's lock screen that captured her attention now.

  The photo showed a happy family of four, two adults and two teenagers, one girl and one boy. They were on a tropical beach somewhere, all of them laughing with unadulterated joy. She wondered jealously what the picture's story might be. And while the image bore only the most passing resemblance to her own family growing up, it was enough to evoke a deep sense of loss.

  She caught herself returning Padraig's goofy grin with her own and shifted self-consciously on the hard plastic chair and looked around to see if anyone was watching her. But the room was empty.

  The utter normalcy of the photo was such a contrast with what little she knew of the man that it made her wonder how much of the scene was fake. Did the people exist? Were they real?

  She glanced at the clock on the wall. It was almost four in the morning, and she was utterly exhausted. Her eyes felt puffy and dry. They stung if she blinked, stung if she didn't. Closing them didn't help, as the darkness invited in its own torments. Her throat was parched and itchy, which she attributed to the dry, antiseptic air of the hospital. She was hungry. Despite everything that had happened to her, she wanted to eat.

  The body craves what it needs.

  "Why would they eat us?" she muttered. "Does the human body crave its own flesh?"

  She heard a noise and looked up in time to see a young girl staring at her. There was a flurry of noise and the girl's father scampered into view. He looked defeated, but sounded relieved to find the girl. He grabbed her hand and whisked her away, chiding her not to wander off like that. She needed to stay put so she could welcome her new little brother whenever he finally decided to make his appearance.

  Padraig had been too drugged to understand what was happening when they wheeled him into surgery. The medics had given him a morphine drip, and it completely knocked him out. He slept through the CT scan, the results of which confirmed what Angel already suspected, that a disk had been severely dislocated.

  But the risk, she was told, was far greater than even her worst fear. The herniated cartilage wasn't just pinching the nerve but restricting blood flow. "We must relieve the pressure," the neurologist told her. "We must operate immediately. Yet even then, your husband may be permanently paralyzed."

  She told him she wasn't his wife.

  Afterward, before they wheeled him out to the recovery suite, the same doctor came out to tell her that it was finished. The sober look he'd worn earlier was now even grimmer. "We performed a spinal fusion. The procedure went very well, but there is much swelling, and he has no neural response below his hips. Once the swelling goes down, we will see, but it does not look good. The nerves may be permanently damaged."

  She nodded distractedly, not bothering to try and look shocked. Her mind was far away, and the words, even as bad as they were, seemed like a foreign language to her.

  "The nurses will bring him out in about a half hour, once he starts to wake. He will be groggy. I am afraid you won't be able to talk to him for a while." The surgeon's eyes crinkled with sympathy. "Then they will take him to his room. You are welcome to stay if you like. Have you contacted his family?"

  "I do not know how to."

  "I see." He patted her on the arm. "Then perhaps you should go home. The registration desk will figure it all out. They may have already contacted his wife. She may be on her way, in which case . . . ." He let the thought go unfinished.

  She gave the surgeon a startled look, suddenly realizing what he meant. "It is not like that. I am only a friend. I think I will stay."

  He shrugged, then excused himself.

  Now it was half past four in the morning, and she knew she'd have to make a decision soon. She called the house, not with Stefan's mobile, but from one of the hospital's phones. She left a message for Jacques asking him how he was doing. She knew he wouldn't answer the call. He never did, though he might check the messages if he were home.

  "I am with a . . . a friend in the hospital," she said. "He just got out of surgery." She sighed deeply and almost hung up then. "I would ask you to call me back, Jacques, but I know you won't. You never do."

  Then she laughed uncertainly, as if she feared he might actually take her up on the challenge and pick up the line, just to prove her wrong. But he didn't.

  "Anyway, I lost my phone, so you cannot reach me that way, so never mind."

  It didn't matter anyway. She planned to see him in a couple of hours. As soon as Padraig woke and she could explain what had happened back at Nordqvist's ranch, she would tell him about her plan to go to Turkey to find Norstrom. He'd object, but what else was she going to do? Norstrom would do the same for her.

  If he's even still alive.

  She had no assurance he was.

  Then, when Padraig was asleep again, she would leave him and go home. She would shower, eat, and prepare. She hoped Jacques would be there. It wouldn't change her mind either way if he was or wasn't. But if he were home, she'd tell him to take care of himself. She hated talking through the door. It was like talking to a tombstone and hoping the dead were listening. "Take care of yourself, little brother," she'd say.

  Because she wasn't sure when she might make it back again.

  Or if.

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Alvin Cheong stepped out of the jet and into the crisp morning air. He adjusted the gloves on his hands as he waited for Emily to descend the portable stairs to the tarmac. After checking the idling car waiting for him, she looked up and nodded. />
  "The team is in place?" he asked.

  Another nod. "Yes, sir."

  "Shovels? Bags?"

  "Everything's in the trunk."

  "Good. Thank you."

  She shut the door after him, then returned to the plane. He watched her as they drove away. Such a sweet girl, he thought. Truly a shame there wasn't enough room for her in the bunker.

  Fog had settled in heavy drifts in the valleys and over the city, but traffic was light. Most people were either still asleep or just waking. But as the car ascended the hill toward the estate, they surfaced above it into clear dawn light. The sky was a wan gray tinged with orange and purple. It was good to leave the rain of Iceland behind him.

  They reached the front gate of the house shortly before five and, as before, were met by one of the local contractors. "Just arrived. House is empty," the man confirmed. "No sign anyone has been here in at least a week, maybe two." He held up a stack of mail.

  "Make sure someone goes through it," Alvin instructed. "I want copies of everything."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Any word from our girl?"

  "She left a message on her machine a few hours ago. She's in a hospital."

  "Something happen to her?"

  "Sounds like a friend of hers is having some sort of operation. She's fine."

  "Who did she leave the message for, her housekeeper?"

  The man shrugged. "She said Jacques. That's the dead brother, right?" He chuckled. "She is a bit toctoc, if you don't mind my saying, sir." He rapped his knuckles on the top of the car.

  Cheong didn't respond.

  "You know— fou. Crazy."

  "I know what you meant."

  "So, she is leaving messages for her dead brother and—"

  "Do we have eyes on the back gate?" he asked impatiently.

  "Of course, sir. My cousin."

  "Good, keep watch on the front."

  The man nodded, then handed a small radio in through the window. "Channel seventeen. Michel is waiting for you in back."

  No lights were on inside the house, though the lamps along the drive were still lit, as was the light over the front door. The white paint on the house's trim looked dingy, and fallen leaves had formed drifts along the foundation.

  They drove around to the back, using as much of the gravel drive as possible. Any farther and they would risk raising someone's notice. Alvin got out and retrieved the shovel and his bag from the trunk. "Wait on the street until you get my call," he told the driver.

  The house was situated at the top of the rise overlooking a broad valley, itself populated by several hundred acres of grapes from a handful of large wineries and dozens of smaller ones. The stubs of a few of the ancient vines still stood on the l'Enfantine property, mostly in forgotten corners, though all but a few had died off from lack of irrigation. The sprinkler system hadn't worked in years. The rest of the vines had been plowed under long ago.

  The sky above was beginning to lighten, but the sun had yet to show itself. All was still in shadow. Though dressed in black, Alvin kept to the darkness beneath the trees at the edge of the property, walking briskly through the tall wet grass on a narrow trail likely made by deer, he soon came to a small copse separated from the rest of the trees.

  A man emerged to greet him. He was rather large and hard-looking, a laborer by the size and condition of his hands. He was dressed for several hours of dirty toil.

  "Bon matin, Monsieur. Je m'appel Michel."

  "English, please." Alvin handed him the bag. "There's a tarp inside and some tools, plastic bags. I want samples."

  The man nodded, took the bag, then reached for the shovel.

  "I'll break ground."

  The man shrugged. "As you wish."

  "You have photos?"

  "Oui. When we are finished, everything will be exactly as it was before."

  Alvin leaned the shovel against a tree, then approached the short line of stones. They were modest in appearance, almost hidden within the dense, tall grass.

  "You'll fix it so it looks just like it does now?" he asked Michel, more curious than doubtful. His men knew what he expected, and he knew that they would do as they said they would. Still, they would be disrupting ground that had been untouched for years. Hallowed ground. And an abundance of growth.

  "Don't worry, Mister Cheong. As I say, it will all be fixed like before."

  All three of the stones present were engraved, each bearing the name and date of birth of the family members. According to the report from their previous search, a fourth headstone had been found in the house, tucked away in a corner of the library underneath an oilcloth. He remembered that it was like the others here, except that it lacked a date of death. ANGELIQUE SOPHIA MARGUERITE DE L'ENFANTINE, it said. And translated from the French: BELOVED DAUGHTER AND SISTER.

  Similar sentiments had been etched on each of the parents' headstones— BELOVED MOTHER AND DEVOTED WIFE; BELOVED FATHER AND HUSBAND. Yet, oddly, Jacques' marker lacked anything of the sort. Upon closer inspection, it was evident that his stone didn't match the others. It was slightly smaller and made of a courser material. Besides his name and dates, there was a simple phrase scratched crudely but deeply into the stone: LE PRÉTENDANT EST MORT.

  "What does it say?"

  Michel leaned down and squinted. "It says 'the pretender is dead.' "

  "Pretender? That seems harsh."

  Michel shrugged.

  "Is that a common phrase for a gravestone?"

  "No. I have never heard of such a thing before in my life."

  * * *

  Michel's shovel hit something solid shortly after seven, and within twenty minutes he had cleared enough of the dirt away to confirm that it was, indeed, a casket.

  He leaned the shovel against the side of the grave and wiped the sweat from his face. "Enough, Monsieur? Or shall I continue?"

  Cheong stepped over to the edge and looked down. To be perfectly honest, he'd been surprised to find anything down there. In fact, part of the reason he'd come to Lyon was because he wasn't convinced the boy was dead. It was partially why the other man's comments about the phone message up at the house had startled him, like it was evidence of his suspicions.

  He didn't know why he shouldn't believe what the grave marker told him, or the death certificate. He wasn't even sure why it mattered, other than he had been harboring doubts about the woman for a while. Something about her and the whole affair of her brother's death just didn't sit right with him, and he had come to trust his instincts over the years. They kept him alive while he was on the run during his teenage years, and they helped him make his fortune later in life.

  Those same instincts had led him to 6X and allowed him to find the value in their overly cynical beliefs. He didn't subscribe to them as absolutely as most of their other followers, but he did accept enough of them to know that it was better to be prepared than not. And 6X had both the means and the urgency that suited his own pessimistic views of humanity's trajectory.

  Michel stamped his foot on the lid. The hollow sound it produced proved there was an airspace underneath the wood.

  "It is a good coffin," Michel said, shining a light over the surface. He bent down and scraped some of the dirt away from one edge. "Good material, I think. Sealed shut with screws."

  Cheong frowned. Yet more evidence that his instincts had misled him. But he wouldn't be fully satisfied until he saw the body with his own eyes.

  "Perhaps you would like to open it, Monsieur?"

  "Me?" he said, startled. "No. Stay there, I'll get the automatic driver."

  The sound of the tool barely escaped the hole, and yet Cheong felt as if it would carry across the field and alert passersby of their crime. He wanted to urge Michel to hurry, but he bit his tongue. Prodding the man would not help.

  After the eighth screw, Michel handed up the driver. Cheong set it aside, then lowered a small, hooked pry bar. A moment later, the top half of the lid unsealed with a hiss. Michel backed up, wavin
g the stale air away, then reached down and wrenched the cover fully open.

  The sun had risen by then, and the sky was a pristine blue, but within the copse of trees, there were only scattered bits of light, like confetti. None of it reached down into the grave. Cheong aimed his flashlight toward the bottom and flicked it on.

  Out of the darkness rose the mummified visage of a long-dead corpse.

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  "Mademoiselle? Excusez-moi, s'il vous plait?"

  Angel opened her eyes. She tried to raise her head from the back of the seat and winced. She was sore all over, but the stiffness in her neck nearly made her cry out in pain.

  "Nous sommes ici. Chez . . . ." The Über driver squinted up at the plaque by the gate. Some of the honeysuckle for which the place was named had grown down and covered it.

  "Chèvrefeuille," she grunted, and cleared the dryness from her throat. She got out and keyed in the code, then told him to drive up to the house so she could collect some money to pay him.

  "It is three hundred sixty euros," he told her in French. "Because now I must drive all the way back to Dijon."

  "I understand."

  She had no keys with her, but she always left a spare beneath one of the many pots on the porch. The plant that had once grown in it was dead, the stem and dirt bone dry. She found the key and let herself in.

  "Jacques?" she shouted up the steps. She expected no response, other than the echo of her own voice. And she received none but that.

  It didn't matter what time of day or night it was. He had no schedule. He might be asleep. Or he might be out. He might be deep inside his own head working on a new article for his blog. But in none of those scenarios did she seem to play any role. They were like ghosts to each other, their worlds overlapping, yet never touching. They were aware of each other, but neither could seem to figure out a way to interact.