Iceland: An International Thriller (The Flense Book 2)

by Saul Tanpepper

  She hurried into the library, glancing out the dirty windows at the car. The man was leaning against the door smoking a cigarette. She watched as he idly flicked an ash with his thumb, took another deep drag, then dropped the butt to the drive and stamped it out with the toe of his shoe.

  After paying him and sending him on his way, she plucked the cigarette butt out of the driveway and took it inside. After disposing of it, she climbed the stairs and rapped gently on Jacques' door. As expected, there was no response. She tried the knob.

  The room was a mess, clothes tossed everywhere, the bed unmade. She glanced at his workstation, where the computers hummed quietly in their slumber.

  "Jacques?"

  She knew he wasn't home. He only locked his door when he was inside, as if he were afraid of being jumped.

  His toothbrush was dry, as were the towels hanging in the bath. It seemed he hadn't been around for at least a day.

  The pill bottles he normally kept on the sink were gone.

  "I wish you would tell me where you go," she whispered. "I just hope you are all right."

  She was desperate to get something into her stomach, but she could no longer bear to wear the clothes she had on. Stripping off her top, she made her way down the hall to her own private bath and turned on the shower.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  The radio resting atop Cheong's bag softly squawked. "Sir? We've got a car at the front gate."

  Cheong heard the message, but kept staring down at the grinning skull. He couldn't help it. He couldn't believe his eyes, like it was just a trick of the poor lighting. The casket had been a surprise, but even then he would have bet it was empty.

  He couldn't explain his thoughts. Despite all the paperwork attesting to the brother's death, he'd always wondered. Now, here was even more proof he'd been wrong. Yet, he still couldn't accept it. His belief to the contrary had been much deeper than he had even realized.

  "Have you seen enough?" Michel asked.

  "Sir?" the voice on the radio cut in. "It's the woman, and she just opened the front gate. She's getting back into the car. She's driving up to the house now."

  Michel began to shut the lid.

  "Wait," Cheong told him, snapping out of his fugue. "Just give me a moment. I need to think."

  "But there is—"

  "Wait."

  He hurried over to the radio. "Are you hidden?"

  "Yes, of course."

  "Stay put then. Monitor her. Make sure she doesn't come out to the back." He stepped farther away from the cluster of graves and began to circle around the clearing, testing whether there was any direct line of sight between him and the house through the trees. There wasn't.

  "She's arrived at the front entrance, sir."

  "Do what you must to keep her away from here. Do not show yourself. Understood? I don't want her coming back here. We've just gotten down to the casket."

  "You got it, boss."

  "Go to silent mode. Text my phone if you need to."

  He tossed the radio back onto the bag and swore in frustration. What the hell was she doing here? She was supposed to be hundreds of miles north.

  "Okay, Michel," he said, spinning around. "I need you to open it up all the way."

  "Pardon?"

  "The casket, open up the bottom. I need to see the rest of the body."

  "But—"

  "We're safe for now. Please, just do it. I need to be absolutely certain."

  As if the top half of a body isn't proof enough?

  Michel shrugged, then began to work on the remaining screws holding the lid locked shut. When he was finished, he stood on the edge of the part of the casket that had already been opened and began to pry at the other half of the lid. It was considerably less willing to yield, and when it finally did, it was with a loud squeal that set Cheong's teeth on edge.

  "Now help me down."

  "Into the grave?" Michel asked, incredulous. "There is already too little room for the both of us."

  But Cheong ignored him and began to lower himself into the hole. He set his foot on the lid and inched his way over the edge while bracing himself against the opposite wall. He used the severed tree roots for handholds.

  Dirt showered down, some of it landing inside the casket. Some slipped into the sleeve of his coat, and he imagined the worms crawling on his skin.

  Michel held the flashlight with one hand while guiding him onto the edge with the other, steadying him. For his part, Cheong was careful not to let his foot slip inside the coffin.

  He beckoned for the flashlight, then bent down and shone it on the face of the corpse. Down here where the air was still and he was only inches above the body, the sweet moldering scent of decay was considerably stronger. Not noxious, but earthy. The processes which allowed the body to be consumed and mummified in the oxygen-free environment beneath the ground inhibited putrefaction. Instead, the flesh shrunk as it dried, and the skin turned into a stiff leathery rind pulled taut over the drying sinew and bones.

  He angled the light forward. The face was unrecognizable, little more than a wrinkled husk drawn over the cranial infrastructure. Hollow eye sockets. A collapsed nose. Lips pulled away from blackened teeth in a death sneer.

  He straightened up. "He wasn't embalmed. Strange."

  Michel didn't respond.

  "Hair color's right."

  Much of it had fallen away from the skin and settled onto the pillow at the bottom of the casket. The corpse was dressed in a dark blue suit.

  Once more he bent down, this time at the waist, crowding Michel even further toward the foot of the casket. Gingerly, he reached over and began to tug at the shirt, pulling it out of the pants. The belt was stiff and unforgiving.

  "What are you doing?" Michel asked. Cheong could hear the revulsion in the man's voice, as well as the uncertainty, but he ignored them both. He knew his actions were crossing another line, but he didn't intend to stop now. There would be yet more lines to cross before he was finished.

  He imagined his superiors would get an earful when the reports were filed, and he'd have to explain his actions. But he'd cross that bridge when he came to it.

  At last the shirt came free. The skin underneath was the same dark grayish brown. It, too, had sunken as the internal organs withered as they dried. He ran his gloved finger over the unnatural seam situated at the base of the man's rib cage. The old surgical scar extended from the end of the sternum outward toward his left side.

  Cheong straightened up again. "I want pictures," he said. "Face, hands, and . . . that." He pointed at the exposed abdomen. "Close ups with good lighting. I'll also want samples. Hurry. Then let's get this thing sealed back up and the dirt replaced."

  "So, it is him, then? It is the brother?"

  Cheong stared for a long time at the corpse, cursing his inability to believe. Finally, he nodded. "Yes, I guess it really is. It's Jacques de l'Enfantine."

  Chapter Thirty

  "Jacques?" Angel called, turning off the shower and sticking her head out to listen. "Jacques, is that you?"

  The house was silent.

  She had finished scrubbing away the visible blood and dirt long ago, taking her nail brush and scraping it from beneath her fingernails and across her knuckles until her hands were bright red and her fingertips throbbed from the abuse.

  The hot water had long since turned lukewarm and barely managed even that. She'd scrubbed at the rest of her skin with a rough washcloth, as if she could sand away the gooseflesh, the whole time muttering unconsciously about tiny black spots.

  Then she washed and rinsed her hair three times.

  She might have stayed beneath the spray, even had it turned frigid, but she thought she'd heard a door shut. Had she remembered to latch the front when she came in after paying the driver? Had she locked the door?

  She couldn't remember.

  Only the sounds of the water dripping off of her and draining away into the pipes came to her ears.

  She swung the glas
s shower door wide and stepped out, not heeding the puddles she left on the tiles. She grabbed her robe off the hook, wrapped it around herself, then pulled a towel off of the warming rack and tucked it around her head.

  "Jacques?"

  Her voice carried hollowly through the empty house, filling every corner before dispersing like dust. She slipped down the hallway and out to the balcony over the main foyer and looked down.

  The front door was shut; there was no sign that anyone had been there. Raising her eyes to the two-story windows, she peered out toward the front drive and lawn. She leaned down until she could see through the railing out to the gate. All was quiet. She saw no one.

  To her left, the ancient grandfather clock began softly to chime, tolling out the hour. She turned her head and saw with a jolt that it was already nine o'clock, and she sucked in a sharp breath. There was so much to do, and half the morning was already gone. There were arrangements to be made, a new phone to purchase and activate and sync, packing. And she still hadn't eaten a thing since the previous night's barbecue.

  Stop procrastinating. You can sleep and eat on the plane.

  She hurried back to her room and slipped the robe and towel off and stood naked in front of her mirror. Once more she noticed how quickly time was catching up with her, time and stress and exhaustion. The bags beneath her eyes were a deeper hue than usual. And did it seem like there were even more strands of gray on her head than the other morning in the hotel in Paris?

  Not the other morning, honey. Yesterday. Barely twenty-four hours ago.

  Twenty-four hours and more than a hundred and twenty dead. Possibly many more, once the guards and scientists were taken into account. And what of the other refugees, the ones who had gone to the other two sites? What if the same thing had happened to them?

  It just couldn't seem possible, not without a single word being reported about it on the radio. She had listened as long as she could in the car before succumbing to her exhaustion. And the driver had not mentioned it after she woke up.

  She hated the way the skin on her abdomen was beginning to sag. Old scars, some from as far back as her childhood, were beginning to blend into the wrinkles.

  "Is this what thirty-three looks like?" she wondered aloud. She felt so much older than that.

  Beyond the mirror was the window overlooking the back part of the property, which extended several hundred meters down a slope to a wrought iron fence and the gate that let out onto the Rue des Moineaux.

  The entire hillside had once been planted with wine grapes, but her father had ordered many of them removed years before, an irony given that the man consumed more than his share of wine through the years. But he had always hated the idea of the vines, complaining about their propensity for growing quickly wild, attracting wildlife, and dropping rotten fruit covered in mold. They were messy and required too much tending, in his opinion, so he'd had them plowed under and allowed the land to return to its natural state.

  It was perhaps her father's only decision which her brother agreed with in his adult life.

  The old trees, however, stayed. Her mother flatly refused to allow them to be chopped down. She told him they had earned their right to remain. And it had been her idea to situate the family plots within the densest growth of them in a swale near the far back corner of the property.

  Honoring her wishes, Angel and Jacques had placed their parents' remains there upon their return from St. Moritz. Jacques had refused to say anything, other than to point out the blatant lies on their tombstones. Then, in a fit of pique, he flew into a rage and destroyed the headstone that had been made for himself. It was never replaced.

  The burial was the last time she had visited the site. Like the house, it held so many painful memories — of broken promises and unspoken words — that she preferred not to be reminded.

  A car passed along the distant road, appearing between the bars of the back gate. The road was rarely used, as it dead-ended at a construction project abandoned many years before. Angel wondered idly if the lock even worked anymore. It was probably too rusted by now to accept a key.

  But even if it was still in good condition, the key was, in all likelihood, lost.

  Perhaps she'd take a moment to walk down before she left for the airport. It had been years since she had done it. Years, in fact, since she'd even stepped off the back porch. She might not have another chance.

  She turned away from the window with a deep sigh and finished toweling herself dry. She went to her closet to pick out a new outfit, something comfortable and light. Something she could travel in, yet which would allow her to blend in with the locals. And scarves. She would need to bring a few of them, too, to cover her head.

  Her eyes caught the pile of ruined clothes in the corner of the room and she wished she'd thought to throw them into a bag for disposal before showering. The idea of touching them again, contaminated with the blood of the nanite-infected — which is how she had come to view them, as infected, as if the tiny machines were a kind of parasite — made her skin itch, especially when she remembered what the evil things had done to Stefan Nordqvist and the other poor victims.

  No longer did she harbor any illusions that the nanites could, if properly managed, usher in a new era of human medicine. Not after witnessing the damage they could inflict. If all it took was a simple wireless command sent over the phone, then how could anyone imagine they were safe to use in this day and age, when signals passed through the air from all manner of sources? The risk of abuse was simply too great, and not just by terrorists, but from legitimate sources. Officials, even well meaning ones, might see opportunities for punitive applications.

  They had to be stopped, she had come to accept that. But she couldn't do it alone. She needed help. And the only other person who understood the threat like she did, was already in their grip.

  She had to get him back. She didn't know how she would do it. She had no experience negotiating with people like this. And going to them was downright reckless, even suicidal. But it was the only plan she could think of.

  Outfit chosen, she dug out a pair of panties and a bra and slipped them on, then returned to the bathroom for the oils and lotions and powders. A last extravagance. She wasn't even sure why it mattered. She just wanted to pamper herself for once. She thought she had earned it.

  Jacques had always laughed at her use of such indulgences, even though she rarely did and only sparingly. Not like her female classmates at Stanford, who primped for hours in front of the mirror. In her opinion, American women were excessively preoccupied with their skin— the way it looked, the way it smelled, the way it felt. It troubled her that her young French colleagues seemed lately to be developing the same self-absorbed attitudes.

  Jacques had denounced such affectations with the same fervor that he denounced all things he considered unnatural or unnecessary. "It is terrible for all of these chemicals to be entering the environment," he'd said. "If they are bad for the world, how can they be good for your body?"

  But she'd turned it back on him, scoffing that he could benefit from using a little soap and deodorant himself when he showered. She may lament the overuse of toiletries, but she could never understand their total banishment, either.

  This had been before his accident, when he was still at school and playing the misunderstood artist card pretty hard and pretending he wasn't the offspring of a multi-millionaire. In the days when he thought facial hair and body odor made him more attractive, more creative, more in touch with the natural world. His bohemian years when everything about his family and Chèvrefeuille had shamed him, when he eschewed all comforts and subjected himself to the most austere of conditions. He'd even rejected his own name, though he'd never felt so strongly as to do anything legal about it.

  When she was finished with the skin preparations, she carefully replaced the various bottles and tubes back into the cabinet.

  There, on another shelf, stood a row of prescription bottles, a duplicate set of the
ones she'd left in her bag back in the hotel in Paris. Half of the medications had been newly prescribed since her return from China, to help her with her injuries and to cope with the mental trauma. It hadn't escaped her notice how many of them mirrored the prescriptions Jacques regularly took. And how many of them were so similar to the ones she had found in her parents' cabinets after they died. It was a curse of the l'Enfantine name.

  Barely a day had passed since her last dosage, and she wasn't feeling any of the typical symptoms which accompanied missed pills, the anxiety and claustrophobia, nothing that couldn't be explained by the horrors she had endured in the past twenty-four hours.

  Nevertheless, she carefully tapped the tablets out and dutifully swallowed them with water from the vanity, slurping it from her cupped hands before gagging at the thought there might still be nanites caught within the microscopic creases of her palm. She told herself not to be so paranoid. There couldn't possibly be anything left on her.

  She managed to keep the pills down. It didn't pay to tempt fate as she had in China, when she'd forsaken her medication regimen for several days and suffered for it. On this trip, she'd need her wits about her as much as possible.

  When she was finished in the bathroom, she gathered the bottles and placed them into a new toiletry bag and tossed it onto the bed. They would be duplicates, as she intended to collect the set she'd left in Paris before boarding the plane, but it was better to be safe, just in case something had happened to the other set over the past twenty-four hours.

  It was half past ten by the time she finished packing her bags and set them by the front door. While she waited for the car to arrive, she called around to the local Préfecture de Police and the hospitals, asking if they had heard from her brother. The registrar at the police station was new and unfamiliar with the routine, and so had to ask for his name.

  "No, Mademoiselle," the young man replied, checking the logs. "I see no new reports for your brother in the past two weeks. Nor are there any unidentified bodies in the morgues."