Pandora's Curse

by Du Brul, Jack

  He cleared his mind of unnecessary speculation and concentrated on the problem at hand. He cocked a questioning eye at Marty. “This is your show. What do you think?”

  “My father shelled out a ton of money for this expedition. He won’t be happy, but since Camp Decade’s gone there’s no real reason to hang out here.”

  “Ira?” Because Ira knew more about what was going on, Mercer was confident how the ex-Navy man would vote.

  Lasko cracked his knuckles before answering. “I say we get back to Reykjavik, have ourselves a decent night’s sleep, and call Mr. Bryce in New York. I think he’ll have us back here in a matter of hours. There’s still a lot we can do. Not all the base was burned.”

  Greta watched the vote but didn’t wait for Mercer to voice his opinion. “This isn’t a democracy. You are being ordered back to Iceland. The plane will be here in the morning. You will be on it when it leaves.”

  She turned to go. Werner paused for a second, looking apologetic. He was about to speak when he closed his mouth and followed her out of the mess hall. The Society’s team was left to themselves at their table. There were a few others scattered around the mess, mostly scientists who’d shown no interest in the argument.

  Mercer went to get a cup of coffee. Ingrid, the cook’s assistant who was sleeping with Marty, motioned him into the kitchen when no one appeared to be looking. Standing with her was Hilda Brandt, the other assistant chef. A heavy woman, she’d learned her craft in the German Army but her skills had improved since then. Both looked anxious. “I heard what just happened,” Ingrid said in her delightful lisping accent. “That witch is also sending away the contract employees: me and Hilda.”

  “You don’t work for Geo-Research?”

  “No, only the head chef is their employee. We work for a commercial catering company.”

  The implication was clear. “After tomorrow the only people left here are actual Geo-Research staff?”

  “Ja.”

  Just what the Danish government wanted to avoid, Mercer thought. “Thanks for the info.”

  He returned to the table, accepting a shot from Ira’s flask to fortify his coffee. He was quiet for a moment, his gaze lost in the black pool swirling in his ceramic cup.

  “You with us, Mercer?” Ira asked.

  “For what it’s worth, I think Ira’s idea has the most merit.” They looked at him, waiting for him to continue. “The fire that leveled Camp Decade and nearly killed Anika and me wasn’t an accident.”

  “You started it on purpose?” Marty cried, nearly coming out of his chair.

  “Quiet down!” Mercer said. “I didn’t start it.”

  “Anika?” Ira asked.

  “She was with me the whole time.” Mercer shook his head. “It was started deliberately by the same person who murdered Igor Bulgarin.”

  Jaws dropped around the table. “Igor was murdered?” Marty finally gasped.

  Mercer explained Anika’s findings, concluding that the fire was most likely set by the murderer to cover his trail. He had probably seen Mercer and Anika headed toward the underground facility, realized that they might be trying to prove the murder, and started a fire that would trap them. “Ira, did you get a chance to check the doors leading into the camp when you were fighting the blaze? I suspect they were chained shut to prevent us from escaping if we somehow managed to reach them.”

  “There was too much smoke coming up the access shaft. We never got down that far before you were found by Erwin.”

  “Damn. That would have been the proof I needed.”

  “Sorry, none of us were looking for evidence.”

  “It was my fault.” Mercer’s voice was thick with self-recrimination. “I forgot to go back after the diesel tank blew up. If they’d been locked, the killer’s had plenty of time to remove the chain.”

  “Why’d you say my idea has the most merit?”

  “Because Ingrid just told me that she and Hilda are being evacuated with us. Geo-Research is going to have this whole place to themselves, a situation they’ve wanted all along. When we land in Iceland, I’m calling Charlie Bryce. He’s got the leverage to get us back out here.”

  “Why bother?” Marty said. “None of this has anything to do with us.”

  “I don’t like leaving unsolved mysteries,” Mercer replied. “And I especially don’t let people trying to kill me get away with it. Because of the solar-max effect we can’t communicate with anyone, which means until I’m in Reykjavik I can’t get the answers I want. Geo-Research isn’t what it’s pretending to be, and Charlie’s the only person I know who can find out who they really are. And just because Igor was a virtual stranger doesn’t mean I won’t find the son of a bitch who murdered him.”

  Mercer decided he would also contact Dick Henna. He hated using his friendship with the director of the FBI but since he was looking into a murder this was more than a personal request. If Bryce couldn’t find out what Geo-Research was up to, Henna certainly could.

  “What are you now, a cop or something?”

  “No. I just don’t hide behind my father while people are dying around me.” The fury in Mercer’s eyes made Marty look away guiltily. It wasn’t Bishop he was particularly angry with. In other circumstances he would agree with him. But this situation had Mercer on edge and anxious. Marty was just a convenient target to vent some of his bottled emotions. “You don’t want to come back, that’s fine. I am.”

  “I’m with you,” Ira said, directing a long look at Marty.

  He was silent for just a few seconds, but the change in him was profound. Mercer had hit his most vulnerable spot—his fear that he couldn’t live up to his father. The accusation stung. For his entire life, Marty Bishop had argued that he didn’t mind being under his father’s shadow, and he would have shrugged off Mercer’s comment. But for the first time he was prepared to face it and himself. Here was a chance to go beyond what was expected of him, and he wanted to take it. Shoulders squared, he met Mercer’s gaze and nodded.

  “Looks like we’re both with you,” Ira remarked. Having shepherded many young recruits onto the path of responsibility, he poured a congratulatory dram from his flask into Marty’s coffee. That Bishop was learning this lesson at fifty and not twenty was fine—many people never learned it at all.

  “Thanks.” Before they returned from Iceland, Mercer would tell Marty about everything—Elisebet Rosmunder’s warning, the radioactivity in Jack Delaney’s body, the stowaway on the chopper, and his own misgivings concerning Igor Bulgarin. He wouldn’t blame Marty if he recanted his decision to return to the base.

  The front door blew open, and a bundled shape was propelled into the mess hall. It was Anika Klein. She shook snow off her parka and danced from foot to foot to remove her moon boots. After slipping on a pair of sneakers and filling a coffee cup at the urn, she came over to the table. “Looks like I came at a bad time.”

  “We’re being kicked out of here,” Marty said.

  She glanced at Mercer. “Because of the fire?”

  He nodded. “You’re leaving too, along with Erwin and the others with him.”

  “What? Why?” Her dark eyes went from sympathy to anger in an instant. “The fire has nothing to do with my work. They can’t make me leave. I paid Geo-Research nearly ten thousand dollars for my part of the expedition. I’m not going anywhere. Whose idea is this?”

  “Greta claims it’s by order of the Danish government.”

  “Is the radio working again?” she asked quickly.

  “Not anymore.”

  The communication gear in the corner of the mess had been abandoned. Geo-Research hadn’t posted an operator to listen if the constant static that had assailed them for days would lift. They had even locked the cabinet to prevent unauthorized use of the equipment. As Mercer studied the stack of electronics in the Plexiglas case, it occurred to him that only Geo-Research personnel had been around when any messages had come through. His jaw hardened.

  “Ira, where’s the cl
osest Sno-Cat?”

  “The one I used to save you is parked between here and the main lab. All the others are out on overnight survey for Werner’s people.”

  “Be right back.” Mercer stood and left the mess, donning his parka but not bothering with the cumbersome moon boots. His work boots would do for the thirty-yard walk.

  He returned in a few minutes, carrying a pair of heavy bolt cutters from the Sno-Cat, strode right to the radio cabinet, and snipped the lock as though it were tissue paper.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “It just occurred to me that the radio only works when none of us are here. Could be a coincidence or maybe not.” He sat at the operator’s station and flicked on the main power switch. The set was state-of-the-art and came to life instantly.

  One of the technicians who’d been on the DC-3 flight came over and grabbed Mercer’s shoulder. “You cannot do this.”

  Mercer smiled disarmingly. “Won’t be a minute, I promise.”

  “Nein. It is not permitted.”

  The radio returned nothing but white noise. Anika came over and said something in German to the irate lab worker. A shouting match quickly developed. Mercer used her distraction to begin scanning frequencies. He had a minute at most, and every time the SCAN function paused at a frequency, static burst from the speakers. The Geo-Research technician saw and heard what Mercer was attempting and reached over to kill the power. He called to one of his own people. Mercer heard his name and that of Greta Schmidt. The other worker threw on his coat and raced for the door.

  “I was done,” Mercer said, pushing back from the radio. “You didn’t need to send for your den mother.”

  Something about this crop of Germans had bothered him from the time they stepped off the plane, and now he saw what it was. As scientists went, the man standing over him had to be the toughest he’d ever seen. Polar research was a hard field, but this guy looked more like a soldier than a lab rat. He was beardless, and his brown hair wasn’t much longer than a military buzz cut. He had wide shoulders, a deep chest, and a rather dim expression. He scowled down at Mercer as if inviting a physical confrontation. After a moment, the German spat a curse and walked away.

  Mercer turned to Anika. “I assume he just insulted my manliness.”

  “Yours and a few past generations’ also.”

  “In case her walk back here hasn’t cooled her off, I’m going to my room before the Abominable Greta comes storming in.”

  “I think we should all call it a night,” Ira agreed.

  Their dormitory was on the opposite side of the mess hall from the one the senior Geo-Research people used, so they didn’t run into her. Mercer asked Ira to tell Erwin Puhl about the evacuation and walked down the building’s central hallway to his room. Once he’d decided he needed sleep, his exhaustion nearly overwhelmed him. His stamina had held him together through Anika’s autopsies, the fire, and the escape but he was at his limit.

  For whatever reason, Geo-Research didn’t want anyone at their base and they were playing their final hand by forcing the two teams thrust on them to leave Greenland. Mercer was determined to learn why. He harbored the suspicion that this evacuation had nothing to do with the Danes. He wasn’t convinced that his failure to pick up any broadcasts meant the radio was being blocked by atmospherics. It could have been altered somehow to stop others from reaching the outside world. He was impotent until they reached Reykjavik.

  There were no locks on the dorm room doors, so he pushed against his and crossed the threshold. He stopped dead. While not exactly torn apart, his quarters had been thoroughly searched. His bed had been stripped and the mattress pushed off its frame. The contents of his luggage lay strewn around the space. The Geiger counter was left on the single plastic chair as if the searcher had studied it before leaving.

  Stunned, Mercer knew there was no way this was random. The vandals had been looking for something specific and he was sure they hadn’t found it. From a compartment in his wallet he removed the folded piece of paper he’d recovered from Jack Delaney. It was a map of sorts with accurate lines of longitude and latitude. In the center was a pencil drawing of the crashed C-97 and off to the left was another drawing of what appeared to be Camp Decade as it had been fifty years ago with a number of chimneys and air vents poking from the snow.

  On the right side of the map was an X with a drawing of a man’s hook-nosed profile above it. The distance from the mysterious mark to the plane was given as twenty-eight kilometers in a direct magnetic heading of 187 degrees. If the map was done to any sort of scale, Delaney had walked nearly three hundred kilometers from the plane to Camp Decade on the same azimuth, an amazing feat of endurance. The only other item Mercer had that could interest anyone was the bundle of papers forwarded to him by Harry White, which he also carried in the inside cargo pocket of his parka. Because they were written in German, the only thing Mercer had managed to decipher from the pages was their authorship by a man named Otto Schroeder.

  His first thought—that someone from Geo-Research had rifled his room—dissolved as soon as it came to him. The undeniable fact was that Anika Klein was the only person who’d shown any interest in the bundle of papers. She was also the only one, other than him, to know about the scrap of paper, even if she hadn’t yet learned it was a map.

  “Ira?” Mercer shouted down the hall.

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you come over here?”

  “What’s up? Did the vodka fairy visit and leave you a present?”

  “Just pop over and bring Erwin.”

  “Coming, dear.” Ira appeared at Mercer’s side and peered into the ruin that was his room. “I like what you’ve done with the place.”

  “Wish I could say I did it myself, but this was someone else’s decorating job.” Mercer turned to Puhl. “How are you doing, Erwin?”

  “Oh, ah, fine,” Puhl mumbled. He looked terrible. What little hair he had was awry, and his glasses hadn’t been cleaned in a while. His breath reeked of stale alcohol. “What happened here?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me,” Mercer said gently, recognizing how fragile the meteorologist appeared. His grief over Igor Bulgarin’s death had deepened. “You’ve been here for most the night. Did you hear or see anyone enter my room?”

  Looking like he was about to lie, Puhl thought better of it. “I’ve been in the bathroom for a while,” he admitted. “I got drunk a while ago and wanted to sober up. I think I used everyone’s hot-water ration.”

  “That’s fine,” Mercer soothed. “You didn’t hear anyone over the sound of the shower?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t remember. I fell asleep for a while.” Erwin looked down miserably, ashamed. “Actually, I passed out.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Mercer smiled, touching the scientist on the arm. “Why don’t you go pack for tomorrow? I’ll give you a hand in a minute.”

  “Poor guy is reeling,” Ira said after Erwin returned to his room. “When I went in to tell him we’re being booted he just sat there staring at his Bible. I never saw him and Igor as being that close.”

  “There’s no proper way to mourn,” Mercer stated.

  “I get the impression you’ve been there a few times yourself.”

  “Yeah.”

  A silence hung for a second.

  “Since it wasn’t the vodka fairy making a delivery, any other suspects?”

  Mercer gave a quick laugh, thankful that Ira had broken the black mood coming over him. “My list includes our arsonist/murderer but I’m betting on the lovely, though enigmatic, Dr. Klein.”

  “What about the stowaway from her chopper?”

  “I don’t believe there was a stowaway after all.”

  “So who left those footprints at the crash site?”

  “I think Anika did when she went to bury something out there. I’m guessing some mail that was actually addressed to me.” Mercer held up the envelope that Harry had sent with the joke name on it. “She mi
ssed this one because I’ve got a friend who fancies himself a comedian.”

  Ira was quiet as he absorbed this. “If you’re right, what does that mean about the rest of her actions here? I mean, if she steals your mail and ransacks your room, lying about Igor being murdered would be a much gentler crime.”

  Mercer looked down the hall to make sure Erwin was still out of earshot. The last thing he needed in his brittle state was to learn the truth about Bulgarin. “I don’t know. Should be an interesting conversation on the plane back to Iceland though.”

  Ira chuckled. “If you think you can talk on a DC-3 it’s obvious you’ve never been on one. Those things are louder than hell, and that’s before you get airborne.”

  Mercer turned serious. “I want to thank you for backing me in the mess hall and for everything else you’ve done so far. You’ve had no reason to trust me and yet you have.”

  Lasko looked abashed. “Don’t sweat it. Twenty years in the Navy trained me to follow an officer’s orders.”

  “But I’ve never been an officer,” Mercer pointed out.

  “Which means,” Ira said, “you actually know what you’re talking about.”

  “Thanks.” Mercer guessed that receiving a compliment from Ira Lasko had the same odds as winning a lottery. “What about you? What was your rank when you got out?”

  “Nothing but a lowly chief,” the submariner dismissed. “Clean up your room. I’ll give Erwin a hand pulling himself back together and find the two other guys from his team who’re getting the heave-ho.” Ira turned to go, then paused at the door. “Mercer?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You have any idea what’s going on here? Honestly?”

  Mercer didn’t need to think about his answer. “No clue.”

  Roaring in from the east, the antique DC-3 Dakota shattered the peace of the morning. The weather had cleared for the first time in days. The sky was nearly cloudless and the wind was a negligible caress. According to the experts, the calm wouldn’t last for more than an hour or so.