Pandora's Curse

by Du Brul, Jack

  Mercer regarded Lasko for a minute. “You could be right. I don’t know. But the evidence suggests that the C-97 was carrying radioactive material that leaked when the plane crashed, poisoning Jack Delaney and later killing Stefansson Rosmunder.”

  “So what do we do?” Ira asked.

  “Finish unburying Igor and bring his body to one of the cold laboratories and then try to contact the Air Force again. Maybe the communications are back up.”

  “What about Delaney?” Ira turned, hearing someone approaching down the corridor. It was Marty.

  “We’ll keep that to ourselves,” Mercer said quickly. “The body’s not hazardous to handle, but until we hear from the military, he should be off limits.”

  “Agreed,” Ira said out the corner of his mouth before addressing Bishop. “Bern okay?”

  “He took some aspirin and is asleep right now.” Marty Bishop looked ravaged by guilt. His eyes were dull and he spoke as if each word caused him pain. “Mercer, ah, listen, I, ah . . . It was my idea to bring the generator down here. This whole thing wouldn’t have happened if I had talked to you or Ira first. I nearly got us killed.”

  “You’re right,” Mercer said mildly, not letting Marty flinch from his responsibility. “It was a stupid thing to do and you two were lucky. This hallway is probably still full of fumes, so for the next twenty-four hours I want the entire facility off-limits.”

  Mercer caught Ira’s eye, making sure he would agree with the lie. The base would be safe in just a few hours.

  “That’s a good idea,” Lasko agreed. “That should give us the time we need to notify the Air Force too.”

  “Okay,” Marty said. “I think I’m going to lie down for a while myself. I feel like shit.”

  “Go on ahead. We’ll take care of Igor.”

  Two hours later, Igor Bulgarin’s body had been placed in one of the cold laboratories. Mercer and Ira had also wandered through Camp Decade, looking for evidence that the Russian had gone there for a drinking binge. Other than some old bottles hidden fifty years ago in the enormous garage, they found nothing. Neither man was surprised. There were tens of thousands of square feet of rooms and passages and closets where Igor could have hidden an empty liquor bottle. Giving up, they used a length of chain and a padlock from the Sno-Cat to secure the base’s main doors. No one would be able to enter Camp Decade without them knowing it.

  Mercer and Ira met up with Erwin Puhl in the mess hall. The German scientist was still in shock over Igor’s death. He sat in an almost catatonic state, his eyes unfocused and unblinking. He hadn’t even bothered removing his parka or gloves. A cup of coffee in front of him had gone cold. The only words he’d spoken were, “My brother.” It was obvious that he and Igor were a lot closer than anyone thought. He seemed inconsolable.

  Greta Schmidt was at the back of the hall, speaking with some of her people. After an appropriate amount of time had passed, she approached the table.

  “Dr. Puhl?” Erwin looked up into her blue eyes. The juxtaposition of her vibrant beauty and his desolation was unsettling. “I just learned how long you and Dr. Bulgarin have known each other. It is a terrible thing to lose a friend. I am very sorry for you.”

  Erwin said nothing but continued to stare at her. His lower lip quivered. She placed a hand on his shoulder. “As soon as we reestablish communications with the Njoerd, I’ll have a helicopter sent to remove his body and make arrangements to have him flown back to Moscow.”

  “St. Petersburg,” Erwin said softly. “He was from St. Petersburg.”

  “Yes, of course. How could I have forgotten?” She glanced at Ira and then her gaze settled on Mercer. “Is it safe for your people to be working in Camp Decade?”

  “It will be,” Mercer replied. This was the first sign of any tenderness he’d seen from her, and it was surprising. “I’ve closed it for twenty-four hours to let the gas fumes dissipate and to let the avalanche that struck Igor settle. Tomorrow we’ll go back in and shore up the ceiling where glacier movement has weakened it.”

  “Werner and I have already discussed calling the Surveyor’s Society and asking them to cancel your expedition. In light of Dr. Bulgarin’s death, we feel the base may be too dangerous.”

  The gentleness she’d just shown Erwin had vanished. There was a challenge in her voice. Mercer responded in kind. “That will be up to Marty Bishop’s father and Charles Bryce. You can’t order us to leave.”

  “I can, Dr. Mercer. And if it becomes necessary, I will.” She executed a military-style snap turn and stormed away.

  “Talk about Beauty and the Bitch,” Ira mumbled.

  “It might be best if we did leave,” Erwin said. “Igor’s death . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “Not even when Brunhild there tells me to,” Ira snarled, nodding as Greta retook her seat at the other end of the mess hall. “I don’t like to leave a job unfinished.”

  “Neither do I,” Mercer agreed. “But I’m beginning to wonder what our mission really is.”

  He spent the remainder of the day with his Geiger counter, traversing the snow piled on top of Camp Decade to get a more accurate fix of any radiation readings. Mercer didn’t expect to find anything new, but he needed the hours of solitude. He tried to put what had happened in some sort of perspective and found there wasn’t any. Igor was dead and no amount of thought would change that fact. He could only hope that, when he discovered why the Russian had gone to Camp Decade, he would be able to dispel his misguided feelings of responsibility.

  Every few hours Mercer returned to the mess hall to inquire about the communications problems. Each time he was told that they had only received broken transmissions from the Njoerd and absolutely nothing from the office in Iceland. The technicians doubted that their own signals were getting out and all agreed that the problem would persist for a few days at least.

  It was at dinner that the first clear call came through. Mercer and the rest of his team were trying to keep Erwin’s mind occupied by playing lazy games of poker over stale coffee when the short-wave transceiver in the corner of the room burst to life. Even through the squawking distortion of static, everyone could hear the hysteria in the voice.

  “. . . ayday! Mayday! Geo-Research base camp! . . . eo-Re . . . rch . . . camp! . . . is inbound helo from Njoerd. I am . . . ixty kilometers east. Turbine is . . . ailing. We are . . . oing down!”

  The comm officer scrambled to get his headphones on. Around him a dozen people clustered shoulder to shoulder. “Inbound helo, this is base camp. We understand you are sixty kilometers east of our location and are declaring an emergency.”

  “. . . ank God!” the pilot of the helicopter screamed through the ether. “Storm approaching. Tried to beat it. Engine o . . . heat. I can’t keep us in the . . .”

  Mercer pulled Werner Koenig away from the group of anxious listeners so his voice wouldn’t disturb the radio operator. The Geo-Research supervisor was shaken by what he was hearing. Not wanting to add to Werner’s distress, Mercer spoke calmly, reassuringly. “You still have Sno-Cats out there, right?”

  “Yeah.” Koenig couldn’t tear his eyes away from the radio, his concentration on the drama that was unfolding too quickly for him to comprehend. “There are two teams on the ice.”

  “Where?” When Werner didn’t answer immediately, Mercer grabbed his arm, allowing his voice to rise slightly. “Where?”

  “Ah, team one is coming in from the south.” He looked at his watch. “They should be here in another twenty minutes.”

  “And the other team?”

  Werner suddenly understood why Mercer was asking about the ’Cats. He sounded miserable because the answer was one he did not want to give. “They’re due west of us, maybe fifty kilometers away.”

  “Damn it.” Any chance of a successful rescue depended on each second Mercer could gain. “Where’s your rally driver, Dieter?”

  “He’s with team two. What are you going to do?”

  Thinking furiously, Mercer’s br
ain shifted back to the pilot’s strident call. “. . . titude down to one thousand feet. Dr. Klein says . . . smoke . . . air vents.”

  That did it. His moment of hesitancy evaporated. There was a passenger on board. The pilot had made the choice to fly through a storm, but Anika Klein was different. She was simply along for the ride. Deep down he knew he would have gone even if the pilot had been alone. “Ira, get on the other radio and keep me updated. I’ll be in the Land Cruiser.”

  Mercer was at the door before anyone realized he’d moved. He didn’t bother with the moon boots. His sneakers would have to do. He thrust his arms into a lightweight outer jacket that was the topmost coat on the rack near the exit.

  “Dr. Mercer!” Greta Schmidt shouted, running toward him. “I forbid you to go. We will organize a proper search.”

  “And when you’re done you can follow me,” he snapped, jerking the zipper to his throat. “Ira, you with me?”

  The wiry mechanic had already muscled his way to the short-range set they used to coordinate communications with the Sno-Cats. “Move your ass.”

  “No! You will wait.” Greta grabbed Mercer’s sleeve in a fierce grip that felt like it went all the way to the bone. “This is a wasted gesture. Wait until we know where they land. Going alone is suicide.”

  Mercer had just a second before two more Geo-Research workers joined her. Though he had never struck a woman, he was sorely tempted to break that rule. Why couldn’t she see that the only chance the pilot and Anika Klein had was if someone left now?

  He yanked free and reached the door. The pressure of wind slammed it open when he turned the handle. The wind was a solid force that made him stagger back until he got better traction, hunched his shoulders and bulled his way forward. The blowing snow and gathering dusk swallowed him.

  Despite her fury, Greta made no move to follow. She slammed the door closed again, her body shivering with just that brief contact with the frigid gusts. She stepped over to Ira, her expression one of ill-disguised contempt. “That was the most stupid thing I have ever seen.”

  “No need to tell me,” Ira said with a smirk. “But at least he’s doing something. Get your damned search party ready and follow him.”

  A few minutes later, Mercer came over the radio. “Ira, you there?”

  “Nice and snug,” he drawled. “How about you?”

  “I’m going to need the Jaws of Life just to get my testicles to drop. According to the thermometer in the cab it’s fifteen degrees below zero out here. Any word from the chopper?”

  “They’re still in the air and still heading this way. Pilot said the GPS puts him twenty-one miles due east. How’s your speed?”

  “I’m pushing it now. Doing twenty.”

  “Take it easy out there. I don’t think Greta’s gonna stop for you if you get stuck.”

  “She’ll never see me,” Mercer replied with a grave-yard chuckle. “Visibility’s pure shit. I can’t see more than fifty feet in front of me.”

  “How do you expect to find a crashed helicopter?” Ira asked, alarmed.

  “Tell the pilot to have Dr. Klein fire a flare just before they crash.” He didn’t need to add that neither would likely be in any condition to do it afterward.

  “Roger, good idea,” Ira was shouting into the microphone because Mercer’s transmission kept fading. His radio had much less power than the chopper’s. “I’m telling the comm officer to relay your message now.”

  It took two minutes for the pilot to acknowledge the request. But even if they were able to do it, Ira had doubts that Mercer would see the flare. The helicopter was down to three hundred feet and Mercer was still between five and ten miles away.

  Ira kept his misgivings to himself. “Mercer, the pilot will comply. He estimates he can hold her aloft for another five minutes.” He heard nothing but static. “Mercer, do you copy? Over.”

  There was a small window above the radio sets. It was dark, but with the floodlights on, he could see how the wind raced first in one direction and then another. The captured snow and ice looked like it was caught in a tornado. Ira estimated the gusts at forty miles per hour. He prayed Mercer brought back the pilot so he could kill the stupid son of a bitch for daring to fly in this kind of weather. No resupply mission was worth it.

  “Mercer, do you copy? Over.”

  The comm officer was listening hard to his own earphones, talking with the pilot in easy tones despite the fear they all heard from the speaker.

  “. . . ifty feet . . . iring flare now.” It was a cruel twist of atmospherics that the last seconds of broadcast from the helicopter came in so crisply that it sounded like the pilot was in the room with them. His scream was piercing enough to shatter crystal.

  “Mercer, chopper’s down! Chopper’s down! They fired the flare. Did you see it?” Ira mashed the earphones to his head. “Mercer, are you receiving? Over.”

  Nothing.

  He tried again every thirty seconds for the next half hour. And the results were always the same. Mercer was gone.

  ROTTERDAM, HOLLAND

  A mid the rusting tankers, bulk carriers, and container ships, the Sea Empress gleamed like a new Rolls Royce parked in a junkyard. Her upperworks were snowy white, trimmed with black and gold, with twin raked funnels topped by aerodynamic wings not much smaller than those on a private jet. She was longer than most of the ships around her, and her eight-story superstructure towered above every vessel in the busy port. Designed as a catamaran, her two hulls were nearly a thousand feet in length and each had a ninety-foot beam. The cavernous gap between them was used to lower any number of watercraft, from two-hundred-passenger lighters to glass-bottomed excursion boats to Jet Skis.

  She could comfortably accommodate four thousand passengers as well as her full-time staff of three thousand. Her list of world records for a cruise liner included everything from number of restaurants—thirty-nine—to casino square footage to having a four-hole pitch-and-putt golf course. Her cost too was a world record likely to hold for years—$1.7 billion.

  Despite the ascetic beliefs of many of those who would be sailing on her, few could help but be awed by the sight of her snugged against a concrete pier. The Sea Empress was a high expression of the beauty mankind was capable of creating.

  Because of the tight security surrounding the Universal Convocation, the quay was quiet except for the guards posted all along the length of the ship. Harbor patrol boats buzzed along her starboard side, and overhead military helicopters kept the roving media choppers at a safe distance. So far there hadn’t been a single credible threat against the ship or her passengers, but with so much world attention focused on the greatest religious meeting in history, the authorities were taking no chances. After lengthy interrogations, her crew had been sequestered aboard for the past week, and she was searched daily with bomb-sniffing dogs.

  Getting the ship ready and secure had been a massive operation, and now that the passengers were embarking, those in charge of security had redoubled their vigilance. Each passenger, from the pope down to the lowliest secretary, was escorted through unobtrusive metal detectors calibrated to allow nothing bulkier than religious medals to pass through. The latest generation of chemical-sniffing devices was also used to detect the most minute amount of gunpowder. Even if someone sneaked a ceramic pistol past the metal detectors, traces of gunpowder from the bullets would be picked up on these machines.

  It had been agreed earlier that only the pope’s Swiss Guard would be allowed to carry weapons on the Sea Empress. There had been some difficulty with the thirty Sikhs attending the convocation since their tradition demanded each carry a small knife at all times. The pope had gladly given them permission to maintain the practice.

  Neils Vanderhoff was a guard at a manifest checkpoint assigned to verify each of the lesser-known passengers against a master list, authenticating their identity with a computer database of photographs compiled from six different sources. The pictures dated back at least a year before the Convoca
tion’s announcement to prevent terrorists from using carefully built false legends to slip aboard.

  In front of him now was a tall, middle-aged man wearing a shiny suit that cost more money than Vanderhoff made in three months. His face was deeply tanned and smooth, and he had the whitest teeth the Dutchman had ever seen. He sported a diamond-encrusted Rolex and an elaborate ruby pinky ring. While his hair was thinning and silver at the sides, on top it was as dense and jet black as a sable’s pelt. Neils wondered why the man spent so much on his wardrobe, teeth bleaching, and jewelry yet wore such an obvious toupee.

  Clutching his elbow was a sight Vanderhoff would never forget. The man’s wife might have been pretty once, but her fight against time had been a long, bloody campaign that had left the battlefield in ruins. She wasn’t that much younger than her husband but her face had been so frequently lifted that it was as tight as the head on a snare drum. She looked like a poorly cast wax model of herself. Behind black false lashes, her eyes bulged from one too many tucks. Her makeup was as overvibrant as that applied to a corpse by a color-blind mortician. Above her eyes were thick slashes of blue and yellow, her cheeks were so rouged they looked sunburned, and her collagen-puffed lips had been troweled over with layers of frost white. Her big hair was brass blond and piled six inches high. She had maintained her figure, or possibly had it maintained for her, but still her hips and backside strained against a skirt sized for a woman fifteen pounds lighter. Her breasts were silicone fantasies that threatened to spill over the top of her lamé blouse.

  In her arms was a nervous Pekingese that yapped continuously. The woman made no move to quiet her rodent-size dog.

  She popped a piece of chewing gum as her husband passed over their passports. Tommy Joe and Lorna Farquar from Nashville, Tennessee, USA. As if Neils couldn’t tell they were Americans. He stared at the caricatures slack-jawed.