Hunt Beyond the Frozen Fire (3 page)

Gabriel was tired, cranky and stiff by the time he arrived at the Sutton Place brownstone that housed the offices of the Hunt Foundation. His younger brother Michael had left him an urgent message to come over as soon as his plane touched down at JFK, so he’d sent his minimal baggage on to his rooms on the top floor of the Discoverers League building and told the driver to bring him directly here. When Stefan pulled the long black town car away, Gabriel stood for a moment on the steps before going inside. As was frequently the case after a particularly arduous mission, he felt a strange kind of melancholy settle in upon his return to the city of his birth. There was part of him that was glad to be home—but another part was already itching to head off again.

He had no idea how quickly he would get his wish.

Michael was, as usual, in the library, head buried in a leather-bound volume so large it threatened to topple the mahogany bookstand on which he’d precariously balanced it. His sandy hair, or what remained of it, was neatly combed, and when he looked up Gabriel saw from the dark circles under his eyes that he’d been spending too many late hours in this room and too few
asleep in the apartment one floor overhead. Michael looked Gabriel up and down and opened his mouth as if about to speak. Gabriel held up one weary hand.

“Look, I don’t want to hear another I told you so.” Gabriel said. Michael had never liked Fiona. “You were right.”

“Gabriel,” Michael said. “I…”

“All that matters,” Gabriel said, cutting his brother off as he removed his battered bomber jacket and unbuttoned the rumpled khaki work shirt he’d been wearing for nearly forty-eight hours of delayed and endlessly rescheduled travel, “is that the
kindjal
is safe at the Royal Museum where it belongs.” He peeled the shirt off and twisted his stiff shoulders like a boxer warming up for a fight. “But I could sure use a long hot shower. And a cold drink.”

That was when Gabriel noticed that there were two ice-filled glasses sitting on dark marble coasters on the antique cherrywood reading table. One of the glasses had a crescent of red lipstick on the rim.

“Gabriel,” Michael said. “Allow me to introduce Ms. Velda Silver.”

“Hello, Mr. Hunt,” said a warm, silken voice behind him.

Gabriel turned to face a tall, auburn-haired beauty. She sized up his shirtless chest with an arched eyebrow and a look of amusement in her wide-set hazel eyes. She looked to be in her middle twenties, conservatively dressed in a dark suit and simple heels, but the body beneath the drab professional exterior was anything but drab. Strong and athletic yet still distinctly feminine, with a generous, natural bust and graceful, rounded hips. She seemed way too tan and healthy to be a native New Yorker—but then so did Gabriel. She looked, he thought, like the kind of woman who held down an executive position during the week but went white-water rafting or mountain climbing when Saturday came around. Her legs in particular were breathtaking.

Gabriel casually tossed his shirt over the back of a chair as if he routinely greeted guests bare-chested, smiled and extended his hand to her.

“What can I do for you, Ms. Silver?” he asked.

She took Gabriel’s hand with a warm, strong grip. Her nails were short and unpainted. Her gaze, a challenge.

“I have a proposal for you,” she replied. “I’m organizing an important expedition and I’d very much like to have you head it up.”

Gabriel looked over at Michael, whose expression told Gabriel that he had already heard her pitch and thought the woman was off her rocker. Gabriel shrugged.

“Okay, shoot,” he said.

“My father,” she said, “Dr. Lawrence Silver, has been working for seven years at a remote research station near the South Pole, studying the effects of global warming. I’ve visited him there twice, the last time just six months ago. Things seemed to be going fine. Then a few days ago I got word that he disappeared during a routine trip to sample core ice from the site of an unusual formation. He’s been missing for over two weeks.”

Gabriel looked at Michael again and then back at Velda. Even during what passed for summer at the South Pole, two weeks lost without food or shelter was as good as dead.

“I’m very sorry to hear that, Ms. Silver,” Gabriel said. “But I’m no expert in polar search and rescue. If
I’m known for anything, it’s finding lost artifacts, not lost people.”

“I’m well aware of your field of expertise,” Velda said. “That’s why I came to you. Every reasonable rescue effort to save my father has already been made by a highly qualified search and rescue team. Tragically, to no avail.” She paused, pressed her lips into a tight, anxious line. “But there’s more. May I have another drink, please?”

Michael refilled her glass from a crystal decanter of fifteen-year-old single malt scotch and then poured a glass for Gabriel as well.

“Thank you,” she said, taking a sip of the scotch and then sucking a small piece of ice between her even white teeth. “I think my father found something truly extraordinary before he lost contact with the research station. You are one of the few people in the world I believe would be open-minded enough to help me track it down and comprehend it. I have a recording of my father’s last transmission. Would you be willing to listen to it?”

“Sure,” Gabriel said, downing a healthy swallow of his scotch.

Velda took a CD in an unmarked jewel case from her purse and handed it to Michael, who slipped it into the laptop computer sitting on the far side of the reading table.

After a few seconds of silence, broken only by the tapping of Michael’s efficient keystrokes, a harsh cloud of static came out of the computer’s speaker, followed by a male voice, struggling to be heard over the background noise.

“…a deep, vertical fissure…”
The voice faded in and out; only disjointed fragments of sentences came through.
“I am uninjured but unable to…”
A burst of
static drowned out what he was unable to do. “…sud
denly quite warm…”

There was a lengthy pause, nothing but a low soft hiss punctuated by occasional pops and crackles.

“I don’t—” Gabriel started to say.

“Sh,” Velda said. “Listen.” Then to Michael: “Could you please turn up the volume?”

More hissing, only louder now. Gabriel was starting to suspect Michael was right about Velda; the Foundation certainly got its share of crazies, mostly by mail (or these days, e-mail), but once in a while showing up in person. Of course, most of them didn’t look as appealing as this one, but—

As he was about to politely send her on her way, the male voice spoke again, a single distinct sentence rising above the ambient noise.

“I see…trees,”
the incredulous voice said.

Then the recording abruptly ended, leaving the room hushed and its occupants thoughtful and silent.

“Trees?” Gabriel repeated. “There are no trees in Antarctica.”

“Precisely,” Velda said. “I think my father stumbled upon some kind of climatic anomaly. A hidden, subterranean warm spot—perhaps a preserved window into Antarctica’s verdant prehistoric past. Furthermore, in an environment where trees could survive, it might be possible for my father to survive as well, for longer than normal, anyway. Mr. Hunt, I believe that my father could still be alive. I believe that he has discovered something of unprecedented scientific and historical significance, and I want to organize an immediate expedition to trace his path, verify his findings…and hopefully bring him home alive.” Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright. “Are you with me, Mr. Hunt?”

Gabriel had to admit he was intrigued. He emptied his glass and set it down.

“Let me make some calls,” Gabriel said. “I’ll get back to you in two hours with a definite answer.”

Velda nodded and tossed back the rest of her drink.

“Thank you, Mr. Hunt,” she said, setting a simple off-white business card on the table alongside her now empty glass. “I look forward to your response.”

Gabriel couldn’t help watching the graceful sway of her hips and tan, muscular legs as she walked swiftly away.

“What do you make of that?” Gabriel asked his brother, once she was gone.

“Lawrence Silver is seventy-five years old,” Michael said. “He’s a tough specimen—survived one of the camps as a child; Buchenwald, I think—but still, seventy-five is no age to be traipsing around the South Pole. Then this…” Michael shook his head. “The poor man was obviously near death and hallucinating at the time he made that transmission. Modern geothermal imaging and satellite photography have mapped every inch of the Antarctic landscape. No ‘warm spot’ could possibly exist and escape detection.” He pressed the Eject key and Velda Silver’s CD slid out of the computer. He tossed it on a stack of rejected grant proposals. “You would have to be as deluded as she obviously is to take on a pointless and dangerous expedition like this.”

Gabriel nodded, taking his shirt off the back of the chair.

“That’s what I figured you’d say.” Gabriel slid his arms back into the shirtsleeves. “How would you fly into Antarctica anyway? Christchurch to McMurdo, and then inland from there?”

“For heaven’s sake, Gabriel,” Michael said. “Surely you’re not considering—”

Gabriel buttoned his shirt and grabbed his jacket. “Considering it? Of course I’m not considering it,” Gabriel said, and Michael sighed with relief. It was short-lived.

“I’ve decided,” Gabriel said.

The Christchurch pub where Gabriel had arranged to meet the other members of the expedition was—prophetically?—called the Hot Spot and had a jaunty hellfire theme featuring buxom cartoon devil girls and lurid flames on the black walls. The clientele was about a third Kiwi locals and two-thirds Antarctic researchers and McMurdo support staff, either on the way in or on the way out. The ones on the way in were quiet and thoughtful, savoring their last Guinness on tap while working up the nerve to face the killing cold, darkness and isolation of the coming Antarctic winter. The ones on the way out were scruffy, unkempt and pale as the ice they’d just left behind, except for masks of peeling pink sunburn that outlined the shape of now-absent goggles. They were also, without exception, falling-down drunk.

When Gabriel entered, he could see the pub’s inhabitants trying to size him up, attempting to fit him into one of the three categories and failing. He was searching through the curious, occasionally hostile faces, looking for his people, when he overheard the tail end of a loud conversation about a Harley chopper the guy
talking had had extensively customized by some celebrity mechanic with his own TV show and air-shipped over from the States. The proud owner was going on and on about all the special expensive features of his brand-new toy and Gabriel smiled slightly to himself. If Rue Aparecido was anywhere within earshot, there would be no way she’d be able to keep out of that conversation.

Sure enough, just as Gabriel spotted the heavily tattooed Kiwi biker who was boasting loudly about his recent acquisition, he heard Rue’s distinct, husky Brazilian accent cut right through the bar noise and chatter.

“Might as well put a saddle on your ninety-year-old grandma and ride her around,” Rue said. “She’d be faster, handle better and be less likely to die under your ass.”

The biker turned and Gabriel followed his gaze to where Rue stood alone against the bar. She was in her early twenties, whippet-thin and wiry with closecropped dark hair, sharp black-coffee eyes and two hundred pounds of attitude packed into her hundred-pound body. The youngest child of a family of ten, she was the only daughter, an unapologetic tomboy with engine grease under her fingernails and utter disdain for anything she saw as frivolous or girly, such as makeup or high heels. Rue was a crackerjack mechanic in love with all things vehicular. Anything that flew, floated or submerged, she could pilot. Anything with wheels, she could drive. And if it broke down, she could fix it with nothing but elbow-grease and sweet talk.

Gabriel grinned in recognition when he saw her. Rue had a heavy sweatshirt tied by the sleeves around her
waist. Even in the loose-fitting cargo pants she favored, there was no hiding the one part of her otherwise boyish body that was unabashedly feminine: her round, curvy backside. She’d always been self-conscious about it and habitually tied long-sleeved shirts around her waist to cover it up. Gabriel wasn’t fooled. He’d seen that particular feature up close and personal, without all the layers of tomboy camouflage. It was more than a year ago now, but he still felt a kind of melancholy ache under his sternum when he thought about the time they’d spent together. Today was the first time he’d seen Rue since she’d told him, over a crackling phone line, that long-distance relationships were not something she did, not even for him, and gave him a choice: move in or move on. He’d made the only choice he could, and she’d accepted it and moved on too, with no bad feelings and no looking back. It hadn’t been quite so easy for Gabriel. He’d been of two minds about asking her to join this expedition, but she was the only person he knew who had practical Antarctic experience. She’d done a few summers as a mechanic in the Heavy Shop at McMurdo Station and knew people on the ice who would be able to get them inland with minimal bureaucratic interference. It made all the sense in the world to involve her—but that didn’t make seeing her again any easier.

“What the hell do you know about it?” the biker asked Rue, fi xing her with his beery, bloodshot gaze.

“A hell of a lot more than you, apparently,” Rue replied, taking a swig of her Tui Brew 5 and wiping the foam from her upper lip with her knuckles. “I know well enough not to get my bank account cleaned out by a gang of celebrity
babacas
who think it’s perfectly acceptable to bend and force their goofy custom parts
to fit the frame because they were too stupid to factor in the extra eighth of an inch before powder-coating.”

“Oh yeah,” the biker said, flushing a deep, dangerous crimson. “Let’s see your ride, then.”

“I’ve got a beat-up 99 Suzuki Hayabusa that I’m working on back home in Sao Paulo,” she said with a shrug. “She’ll do 300 kilometers per hour without breaking a sweat, but she doesn’t have bat wings or neon, or a football helmet welded to the frame, so I guess I have no idea what makes a real bad-ass ride. On the other hand, I could race your Malibu Barbie Dream Chopper on roller skates and still leave you in the dust.”

“Well why don’t you then?” the biker asked, taking a threatening step toward Rue, big hands clenching. “Right now, if you think you’re so goddamn clever.”

“I’d love to,” she said with a smirk. “But I can’t stand to see a grown man cry.”

“Why, if you were a bloke, I’d…”

“You’d what?” Gabriel asked, stepping swiftly in between Rue and the biker.

“And who the fuck are you?” the biker asked. “Her bodyguard?”

“Nah,” replied Millie Ventrose, rising suddenly out of the crowd like the calm eye of a storm. “That’d be me.”

Maximillian Ventrose, Jr., Millie to his friends, was the second team member Gabriel had come here to meet. Three hundred pounds of solid muscle with twelve-inch fists and a boxer’s profile under his faded Saints cap, he stood six foot seven barefoot and looked like he could wrestle an alligator one handed without spilling his coffee. But there was a profound, Zen-like
calm about him that ran contrary to his thuggish features and massive physique. He’d grown up in Chalmette, Louisiana, just southeast of New Orleans, and his deep, soft voice with its odd, almost Brooklynesque Yat accent possessed a mysterious power to smooth over even the most heated disagreements. Of course, anyone drunk, cranked or foolish enough to resist the calming power of Millie’s warm molasses voice was swiftly made to change his mind about fighting through more direct means. Usually by way of the local emergency room.

“That your chopper out front?” Millie asked.

“Yeah,” the biker replied. “You got something to say about it too?”

“That a Baker right-hand drive six-speed trans you got on there?” Millie asked.

“Hell, yeah,” the biker replied. “Gives her better balance with the fat tires. ’Course it costs twice as much as the standard left-hand drive, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Really?” Millie asked, nodding thoughtfully and stepping to one side, subtly pulling the biker’s focus away from Rue. “Ain’t that somethin’.”

Less than a minute later, Millie had the biker right back on track, jawing about his precious motorcycle as if Rue’s interjection had never happened.

“Gabriel,” Velda called, turning every head in the bar as she walked across the room. Even in her simple tweed skirt and high-necked blouse, it was impossible not to stare. “There you are. I apologize for being late.”

“It’s all right,” Gabriel replied. “I just got here a minute ago myself.” As she reached his side, Velda put her arms around him and kissed his cheek. It had been a
long trip over, and they’d ended it more intimate than they’d begun.

Gabriel cast a sidelong glance over Velda’s shoulder at Rue, thinking perhaps he’d see some hint of jealousy. Rue gave him a bemused smirk as if she knew exactly what he was fishing for and was having none of it.

“Rue, this is Velda Silver. Velda—”

“Rue Aparecido,” Rue said, extending a hand. “Mechanic, pi lot, and if I’m not too far off the mark, your predecessor in the Hunt Foundation’s mile-high club.”

Velda stared at Rue’s hand and only reached out to grasp it after an uncomfortable second or two. She said, icily, “You and Gabriel…?”

“Oh, yeah,” Rue said, either oblivious to the other woman’s tone or deliberately ignoring it. “Like rabbits. For a couple of months. But this was a while ago. Good times, right?” She threw a light jab at Gabriel’s shoulder.

“Excuse me,” Gabriel said. He stepped away to pull Millie out of his conversation with his new biker buddy. One rib-cracking bear hug later, Gabriel led the big man back to meet Velda. As they came up behind her, Gabriel heard Velda asking Rue, in a voice that hadn’t thawed at all, “So, tell me, has he slept with
everyone
on the team?”

“Not Millie,” Rue said, grinning naughtily.

“Oh? And how did she manage to resist his charms?” Velda said.

Rue shrugged, her expression all innocence.

“Velda,” Gabriel said, and she turned to face him, only the faintest of blushes darkening her cheeks at having been overheard. “I’d like to introduce you to Millie
Ventrose.” And as Velda stared, puzzled, at the giant and not at all feminine torso before her: “It’s short for Maximillian.”

“My father’s brother’s called Max,” Millie said, “for Maxwell. So Millie’s what they called me. It kinda stuck.”

“I see,” Velda said. She glanced back over her shoulder at Rue, who grinned away the daggers being sent in her direction. “It is a pleasure to meet you…Millie.”

“Maybe we should get down to business,” Gabriel said.

“Yes,” Velda said. “Let’s.”

Gabriel found them an empty table and scavenged an extra chair from the next table over. He’d already briefed Rue and Millie by phone on the general details of the expedition, but Velda took the next fifteen minutes to fill in all the blanks. When she spoke about the possibilities of what her father might have discovered, her frigid tone finally vanished and her eyes filled with a bright childlike hope and excitement.

“I have made the arrangements for us to fly out to McMurdo in three hours,” Velda said. “All the severeweather clothing and equipment we will need for the expedition will be coming with us on the plane. For now, I suggest that we return to our respective hotels to change and make any other final arrangements, and then meet at the airfield at seven thirty. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Gabriel said. “On one condition.” He looked from Velda to Rue and back again. “The two of you aren’t going to have a problem getting along, are you? I’m serious. When we’re out there on the ice, there can’t be any distractions, any fights, any squabbling, any anything. Understood?”

“You know you can count on me,” Rue said.

“I do know that,” Gabriel said. “Velda…?”

“Let’s not forget,” she said, “it’s my father’s life we’re talking about. I don’t think any of you could possibly be more serious than I am.”

“All right then,” Gabriel said, slapping Millie’s broad shoulder. “Let’s do it.”