Pandora's Curse - v4 (12 page)

Bishop nodded, obviously pleased that Mercer understood who was in charge. “Glad to have you on board.” He pointed to the other man at the table. He was about the same age as Bishop, though had a harder look. “This here’s Ira Lasko, U.S. Navy.”

“Retired,” Lasko added.

Lasko’s handshake was like a bear trap and Mercer suspected that he had never been a pencil pusher. Eater maybe, but not a pusher. His hands had deep scars across all the knuckles and white pads of calluses at the base of each finger. They were the hands of a worker. He was about five foot seven and wiry. The sleeves of his flannel shirt were pushed up, and while his arms were thin, ropes of muscle and sinew pushed outward from beneath his skin. He kept his head completely shaved, though there was a fringe of five o’clock shadow circling just above his ears. His eyes were murky brown under dark brows.

“I understand we’re missing a team member,” Mercer invited as he sat.

“Jim Kneeland,” Marty replied, blowing out a long breath. “He was supposed to get time off from the National Guard but was suddenly called back to duty. Kinda throws us off. I asked my dad to consider postponing the search, but he refused.” He shrugged. “Considering his health, I can’t blame him.”

“Charlie said he’s in a wheelchair.”

“He’s now in a hospital bed at home. Cancer. Doctors don’t give him more than six months.”

“Opening Camp Decade means a lot to him?”

“Actually, he rarely mentioned his time in the Air Force until about a year ago. Suddenly it was all he talked about. When he asked if I was willing to come up here to make a video of the place, I couldn’t say no.”

“This is a hell of a thing you’re doing for him,” Ira said somberly. Mercer nodded.

It seemed as if Marty hadn’t thought about this situation from another’s point of view. He started to smile. “Yeah,” he agreed without conceit. “I guess it is. What the hell? It gets me out of the office for a while, and this might actually turn out to be fun.”

“I was never told — are you part of the Surveyor’s Society?” Mercer asked Lasko.

“No, but I’ve done some work for Charles Bryce before. He recommended me to Marty.”

“What do you do?”

“I used to teach snot-nosed kids how to survive accidents aboard submarines. Now I run the garage at a truck stop. My job here is to make sure all our equipment runs properly. Charlie told us what you do for a living. Why the hell do you live in a cesspool like Washington?”

Mercer laughed. “My first job out of the Colorado School of Mines was for the U.S. Geological Survey. I actually liked living in D.C., so when I went out on my own, I just stayed. All I really need for my work is a computer and easy access to an airport. Have you guys met any of the Geo-Research people coming with us?”

Ira leaned across the table and spoke in a low voice. “They’re headed by a real asshole named Werner Koenig. He’s got a fistful of degrees and a real superior attitude. Bryce told you how the Danish government forced him to bring us along and move his operation to conform to our mission, so you can believe he ain’t too pleased with us.”

“His second in charge is Greta Schmidt,” Marty Bishop added with a smirk. “A real knockout in a Nordic ice princess sort of way. They’re sitting four tables over, next to the bar.”

Mercer turned. Greta Schmidt was easy to spot. She was bent over the table passing a folder to someone. Her hair was white-blond and fell past her shoulders. He could see just a portion of her face and got the impression that she was indeed beautiful. Koenig was the man seated next to her. He was speaking to another tablemate, rapping on the table with his hand as he made a point. He had a natural aura of leadership that Mercer recognized even at this distance. Above his dark beard, his face was weathered like old leather, though he couldn’t have been much older than forty. His eyes were a cold blue, like polished aquamarine.

“Don’t even think about it,” Bishop said, incorrectly guessing at Mercer’s interest. “I tried to chat her up two days ago. Frigid as an iceberg.”

Mercer suppressed a chuckle. He loved how a man like Marty Bishop immediately assumed a woman was frigid when she rebuffed his advances. The skin around the ring finger on Marty’s left hand was pinched and slightly discolored where until recently a wedding band had covered it. Opening his father’s old military base wasn’t the only conquest on Bishop’s mind.

They talked all through the long breakfast, forging the rapport that would sustain them for the weeks to come. Although there were forty people total, Mercer’s experience was that group dynamics quickly broke down when they were hit by the enormity of their isolation. He wasn’t concerned about himself or Ira Lasko — isolation was nothing new to a submariner. He did have some reservations about Marty. While mental character rarely showed on the outside, he felt that Bishop possessed an underlying weakness. He suspected that Marty’s father had seen it too and that this trip was more about having his middle-aged son find whatever it was he lacked than taking pictures of a long-abandoned Air Force base.

The meal broke up around nine. Everyone was going back to their rooms to pack up for the ship. Mercer wasn’t sure how long he’d be with Elisebet Rosmunder, so he asked Ira Lasko to make sure his bags made it to the
Njoerd
.

He was standing outside the hotel, checking his bearings on a small map, when a female voice called to him from the door.

“You are part of the Surveyor’s Society?” The voice was German accented and throaty. Without looking, he knew it had to be Greta Schmidt.

“Yes, I am.” Mercer turned and approached her. She was his exact height, and nearly as wide at the shoulders. Her hair was scraped back from her forehead, revealing a widow’s peak above her wide-spaced eyes. She wore too much lipstick, he noted, which made her mouth overly full, as though her lips were swollen. She was not as attractive as that first impression. It was the eyes. They lacked focus and depth, as if there was nothing beyond her facade. “I’m Philip Mercer.”

“I am Greta Schmidt,” she said formally but made no move to shake his hand. “I will not tolerate the way you looked at me at breakfast. You have the same bad manners as your Mr. Bishop.”

Mercer took the accusation like an ill-deserved slap. Like most men, he had been caught staring at women many times. However, unlike Marty Bishop, he never crossed the line between admiring and objectifying. And in this case, he had been doing neither.

“You misunderstood my interest, Miss Schmidt. I had just asked Marty Bishop to point out the leaders of the Geo-Research team. I wanted to assure myself that I wasn’t trusting my life to a couple of incompetents.”

At this, her stare became even harder. Mercer was sure nine times out of ten she was right about what people thought when they saw her and he could understand her anger. What disturbed him was that she enjoyed this anger, seemed to need it. He saw in her expression that she liked that her looks gave her a power to intimidate men.

“And are we,” she asked in a brittle voice, “competent?”

“I don’t judge people at a glance,” Mercer said, throwing her accusation back at her. “But after looking at your ship this morning, I feel safe with Geo-Research.”

Greta Schmidt studied him for a long moment, her expression unreadable, and then she reentered the hotel. Mercer went back to his map. Making an enemy this soon wasn’t what he had in mind, but he’d done nothing to precipitate the confrontation.

The Tjorn, or Pond, was only a couple of blocks behind the Hotel Borg, screened from Mercer’s view by the Town Hall. It was surrounded by buildings on three sides and divided by an automobile bridge about three hundred yards from the cobblestone shore. Ducks and geese filled the air and coated a good portion of the water. They rode the wind-stirred waves like toys. It was obviously a favorite spot for the elderly who fed the birds and for young mothers with their children.

Scanning the crowd, he saw a number of people who could have been Elisebet Rosmunder yet only one paid him any attention. She was a tiny woman, bundled in a long drab coat, a wool hat covering her hair. She sat on a bench near the water’s edge, a flock of birds within an easy toss of her position. Like most locals, she looked Scandinavian, with sharp features and clear, though heavily wrinkled skin. Her eyes were as sharp and blue as Harry White’s. Mercer guessed they were about the same age too.

“Mrs. Rosmunder?” he asked as he walked nearer. There were a few unclaimed bread crumbs at her feet.

“Yes, I am she,” the elderly lady said and indicated that Mercer should sit by her side. “You are the man who phoned me yesterday? Dr. Mercer?”

“Yes, Philip Mercer. Thank you for seeing me.”

“Dr. Mercer, it was I who wanted to see you,” she reminded him in excellent English.

Mercer didn’t recall mentioning his title, but he wasn’t certain. “That’s right. You said you had something you wanted to tell me.”

“That’s correct.” He didn’t get a sense of fear from her like he’d felt during their phone call. Instead, she seemed almost relieved. “I also have something I want to show you as well.”

Mercer waited quietly while she threw a handful of bread into the water. A pair of ducks squabbled to get the food, and Mrs. Rosmunder admonished them in Icelandic.

“Do you work for your government, Dr. Mercer?”

“No, ma’am. As I said on the phone, I’m part of a scientific expedition going to Greenland. I was doing research for the trip when I came across the story of a crashed airplane and how your son was part of the search. Because it happened near where we’re going, I thought I would speak with him about conditions there.”

“Greenland’s east coast is a mystery to most people. There are only a few native settlements, and the Danes heavily subsidize them. Where Stefansson went to look for that plane is an area that even the native Inuits don’t bother with. You are wise to want to talk with someone who has actually been there.”

Mercer said nothing.

“It was the middle of August 1953, I don’t remember the exact date, when my husband received a phone call from the American military at Keflavik Air Force Base. They told him about a plane crash and how they needed guides who knew Greenland to help them in their search. Stefan had just returned from another failed attempt to climb Everest and was in no condition to attempt something that strenuous. However, our son, who was twenty at the time and every bit the Arctic expert as his father, agreed to go. Your government was offering unheard-of wages.

“Stefansson was gone for two weeks. As you probably know from the article you read, they never found the plane and they searched by dogsled, on foot, and by airplane.”

“Did they happen to go to a place called Camp Decade?”

She looked at him sharply. “You have heard of it?”

“Part of my mission is to reopen the base,” Mercer said, somehow knowing this news wouldn’t please her.

“You know what the base was supposed to be, yes?”

“It was an experiment to create a town under the ice. To see if such a place could be habitable.”

She shook her head as though he’d given her the wrong answer. “Why would your government want to know if such a thing was possible? Have you ever asked yourself that question?”

Mercer hadn’t, which was unusual. “Do you know why?”

“No. But I want to show you something.” She made no move to show him anything. She sat very still, her mind elsewhere, probably with her dead son. Finally she spoke. “Camp Decade was off-limits to the searchers. They weren’t even supposed to know it was there, though they did fly over it once. Stefansson told me he asked about it and was informed by the military pilot that he hadn’t seen anything.”

“That was the height of the Cold War.” Mercer felt a need to explain his nation’s paranoia. “My government thought that everything should be classified top secret. To look back now, so much of what they did seems comical.”

Mrs. Rosmunder winced. Mercer wasn’t sure what he’d said to cause such a reaction. She reached into her handbag and withdrew a leather wallet. From inside, she pulled out two black-and-white photographs. She handed one to him. It showed a handsome young man in a thick roll-necked sweater, his blond hair falling around his head in heavy rings. He was smiling at the camera with the easy confidence of youth.

“That is Stefansson about two months before he left for Greenland,” Elisebet Rosmunder informed him, taking back the picture and staring at it before handing over the other.

This shot showed a skeletal figure lying on a bed with sheets drawn up to the neck so all Mercer could see was an enormous head. Bony shoulder blades created sharp ridges in the covers. Whatever was wasting the person rendered its face sexless. Its eyes were sunken, and it had hollowed cheeks and just a few stray hairs covering its skull. Dark splotches marred its skin. Mercer was reminded of pictures of Holocaust victims.

Mrs. Rosmunder held out her hand to take the photo back from Mercer. This time she didn’t even glance at it before replacing it in her wallet. Mercer waited quietly for an explanation.

“That was Stefansson six months after returning. He died a couple of days after a nurse took that picture. I never wanted to be reminded what happened to him, but I am grateful that she gave it to me anyway.” Her eyes were filled with tears while her voice had tightened. “Doctors told me it was cancer, a very aggressive cancer that he must have had for quite some time but only showed itself in those final months.”

“You don’t believe what you were told?” Mercer’s voice was as gentle as possible.

“It was certainly cancer,” she replied. “But I never believed that he’d had it before going to look for that plane.”

She spoke with absolute conviction, yet Mercer couldn’t help but think she’d fooled herself into believing that something other than cruel fate had stolen her son from her. Newspapers were full of stories about healthy people dying of cancer without having symptoms until the very end. It was the most feared disease for that and many other reasons.

Elisebet Rosmunder turned so she faced him on the bench, taking his hand into her bird-like fingers. “Dr. Mercer, you don’t have to believe me. I have long ago given up trying to convince people that there is something on Greenland that killed Stefansson. My government never looked into it, your military never looked into it, and I would never allow my husband to go over there and search for himself. I am certain that my son was exposed to some toxin or some radiation, and that is what gave him accelerated cancer. I also believe it has to do with Camp Decade.” She forestalled the question on Mercer’s lips by squeezing his hand. “I have no proof. There is no reason for me to think this. And as far as I know, no Americans stationed there suffered the way Stefansson did. I just wanted you to know the suspicions of an old woman who lost her son in the same area you are now going to. In good conscience I could not let you or your team go without warning you.”