Pandora's Temple (11 page)

“Nice childhood memory,” Merch quipped.

“Comes to mind because that’s what the deck of the
Venture
reminds me of. Like some giant crushed the hell out of it.”

“Then what did he do with the people, Blainey?” Wareagle asked him.

“Guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

The bulky hazmat suit made it a chore for McCracken to belt himself into the harness even before he felt the stiff Gulf winds pushing up against the chopper, forcing it into a wobble.

“Just got word that storm we’ve been tracking has picked up speed, Mr. McCracken,” Captain Merch reported. “So whatever you boys are gonna do down there, you better do it fast.”

McCracken clipped the harness cable to the winch line and positioned himself at the now open hatch door.

“A microphone’s built into your helmets. You need to stay in touch. Regularly. I can’t stress that enough.”

As if to punctuate Merch’s instruction, McCracken noticed a pair of F-16s overhead, mere specks thousands of feet up but in a circling pattern he knew all too well.

“They’ve got their orders too, sir,” Merch said, noting his gaze. “And if anything happens to you down there, those fighters are gonna splash the whole damn rig.”

“I trust you had a pleasant flight, Mr. Landsdale,” the man named Pierce said, leading Thomas Landsdale toward the entrance to the vast compound that was virtually invisible even from directly above.

It had been built to conform perfectly to the landscape and flora around it. Impressive in all respects, its sprawl was difficult to estimate in terms of square footage, but it was an architectural marvel in any event. Landsdale couldn’t take his eyes off the way stilts formed of woods native to these mountains supported those portions that hung out over a bottomless void, defying gravity and nature.

The helicopter had repeatedly battled the blistering crosswinds that were a fixture this high in the Pyrenees Mountains, before finally lurching to a landing that left one of its pods dangerously close to the edge of the helipad. Landsdale felt the queasiness in his stomach begin to abate almost immediately and couldn’t help but marvel at how even a man as wealthy as Sebastian Roy could have managed such an effort with no accessible roads anywhere nearby. But Landsdale quickly remembered the purpose of his being summoned here and steeled himself again to the task before him.

The main crest of the Pyrenees where Roy had constructed his compound straddled the border between France and Spain in what was actually the tiny country of Andorra. As a naturalist, Landsdale appreciated that the Pyrenees were older than the Alps, their sediments first deposited in coastal basins during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras. The massive and unworn character of the chain came from its abundance of granite, which was particularly resistant to erosion, as well as weak glacial development. And somehow, in a way unknown to any but the most expert eye, Sebastian Roy had managed to erect a structure that looked formed out of that rock itself. One with nature, making for an absurd irony given his penchant for destroying it.

The man named Pierce led Landsdale past a bevy of strategically posted armed guards and into the fortresslike compound. Pierce was a stout, slightly portly man with thinning hair in stark contrast to the tall, lanky, and athletically obsessed Landsdale, whose weight and waist hadn’t changed since high school. A pair of guards armed with assault rifles trailed them at a discreet distance as they climbed a pair of ornate staircases to the top floor where two more guards were posted.

“How much do you know about Mr. Roy, Mr. Landsdale?” Pierce asked him.

“I know I’m not selling him my company, no matter the price.”

“I was speaking of a personal nature.”

“Rumors or truth?”

“Take your pick.”

“I’m only familiar with the rumors. That he went mad, or died, or had himself cytogenetically frozen but his brain is still functional.”

“Rumors.”

“That he hasn’t spoken to the media in decades, that Roy Industries is one of the ten most profitable companies in the world thanks to its energy holdings, and Sebastian Roy himself is one of the five richest men.”

“Truth,” said Pierce.

“And that he’s made his fortune with no regard for the environment. That he’s destroyed millions of acres of forestland the world over, polluted huge portions of the oceans, ravaged the ecosystem, and weakened or eradicated the food chains of thousands of species and subspecies vital to the intrinsic survival of our planet.”

“Absurdities,” noted Pierce, unmoved by Landsdale’s litany of allegations. “What you really need to know is this. Several years ago, there was a fire in a Roy Industries plant reserved for fossil fuel enhancement in Stuttgart, Germany.”

“I think I participated in the protest held outside it,” Landsdale recalled, coming up just short of a grin.

If the lame attempt at humor affected Pierce, he didn’t show it. “The fire was the result of sabotage, terrorism. This is no laughing matter.”

“My apologies,” Landsdale stammered.

“Mr. Roy’s wife, daughter, and son were killed. Mr. Roy was badly burned after rushing back into the blaze to save them. Are you familiar with chronic venous insufficiency, or CVI?”

“A condition that impedes wound healing, I believe.”

“Infection caused it in Mr. Roy’s case. There is treatment, but no cure, treatment Mr. Roy has been forced to make allowances for.”

“I don’t think I understand what—”

“You will,” Pierce said, as they reached the third floor.

Landsdale felt cold as they moved down a hall on the compound’s top floor toward a door that looked more like a bank vault. He wasn’t sure if the sudden chill was the result of the lingering effects of the misty mountain air, his trepidation over his coming audience before Sebastian Roy, or something else entirely. It was the latter Landsdale opted for when they reached the vaultlike door, certain the temperature had dropped appreciably in air totally devoid of humidity.

“This is a hyperbaric chamber,” Pierce explained. “Mr. Roy’s condition requires that he venture beyond it only for the briefest intervals possible to forestall any further spread of infection from his wounds.” With that he reached up to the wall and plucked a surgical gown encased in a plastic sleeve. “If you don’t mind, Mr. Landsdale.”

Landsdale tore open the plastic and pulled the gown over his clothes, tightening the sash in the back before fitting gloves upon his hands and then a surgical mask over his mouth.

Pierce watched, satisfied, then punched in the proper code. Landsdale heard a loud click as the heavy door eased mechanically open. Pierce bid him to enter and Landsdale was struck instantly by the intensity of the chill, like that of a room with the air-conditioning turned up too high.

The chamber wasn’t really a chamber at all, so much as an elegant suite of rooms dominated by a large window overlooking the mountain range beyond, which stretched to the horizon. The room was decorated much like the library of an English manor house, rich in wood and leather, with faux flames burning in an ornamental fireplace, ornamental because Landsdale was certain the fire gave off no heat.

An alcove lay on the far side of the hearth, lit by recessed ceiling-mounted floods. Landsdale found himself drawn by the soft lighting and entered the alcove to find himself surrounded by a magnificent floor-to-ceiling collection of artifacts dominated by jars, urns, and vases that looked, even to his novice eyes, like the products of ancient Greece. Several commanded his eye, especially one brilliantly colored in red and adorned with lavish golden designs.

“Impressive, isn’t it?”

The voice took him aback and Landsdale swung to find Sebastian Roy standing at the entrance to the alcove suspended, it seemed, between darkness and light.

“That’s called the Euphronios krater. Such a krater, or vase or bowl as we’d call it, was used in ancient Greece for mixing wine and water. This one was fashioned by Euphronios himself, a legendary artist of the sixth century
B.C.
who signed the vessel as did the potter who fashioned it.” Roy stepped farther inside the alcove, denying Landsdale a clear look at him in the subtle half-light. “One side depicts Hermes directing Sleep and Death as they transport Sarpedon, a son of Zeus, to Lycia for burial; the other side shows young warriors arming for battle.”

Even in the dim lighting, Landsdale could see Roy smile tightly.

“Is the latter destined to be a metaphor for our meeting today?”

“I wouldn’t be here if I believed that, Mr. Roy.”

“Nor would I have summoned you here, if I wasn’t convinced an accommodation couldn’t be struck.”

“How gratifying,” Landsdale said, even more uncomfortable than he had been before.

Roy came up alongside him in front of the Euphronios krater, a smell of something sharp, antiseptic, and vaguely spoiled wafting through the air now. “You see before you, Mr. Landsdale, the greatest individual collection of Greek artifacts, specifically urns and jars, in the world. Many have been acquired through exhaustive efforts with archaeological brokers normally used to dealing with museums. Others, the bulk in fact, came to me in the wake of a suspicious fire at the Archaeological Museum at Agrigento, Italy, and a flood at a comparable facility outside of Athens.”

Sebastian Roy let that final comment hang in the air between them, his eyes tightening in intensity before relaxing again.

“Do you have a favorite, Mr. Landsdale?”

“All of them, really.”

“Pick one.”

Landsdale pointed to the next artifact to which his eyes were drawn, a deceptively simple jar stitched with strange symbols that seemed woven into the fired clay. Easily the largest by far in Roy’s exquisite collection, the jar stood almost four feet in height. As far as Landsdale could tell in the meager spill of light, the jar’s shape ended where its lid should have been.

“This,” he said.

“Interesting choice. A mystery, a puzzle, dating back to a thousand
B.C.
or even before. The symbols are believed to be a lost language of the early Minoans no one’s ever been able to translate. Did you notice it has no lid, no top to remove? Quite unprecedented, perhaps best explained by the simple fact that the man who forged it made a mistake. Save for that, I’d venture to say it’s one of my collection’s simplest pieces. Is that why you chose it, Mr. Landsdale?”

“I chose it because it caught my eye.”

“Then perhaps you’re attracted by simplicity in general, that which can be easily explained and isn’t too challenging. Look around you. Virtually all the other items in my collection, and others that fill museums and art galleries all over the world, are prized not for their historical importance but for the scene they depict. Ancient Greek craftsmen used urns to depict narratives of gods and goddesses, along with wars and other significant events. Turning an urn or jar to read its story is akin to unrolling a scroll and seeing the narrative unfold. And yet this jar that has caught your eye tells no story at all, a blank slate. Like you perhaps.”

Landsdale looked away from Sebastian Roy, his gaze drawn back to the jar.

“Come, sir,” Roy said, leading the way from the alcove back into the spacious great room.

Once the brighter light struck Roy, Landsdale spotted the gauze wrapping peeking out from the arms of his perfectly tailored, truly exquisite suit. His motions looked labored, pained, Landsdale’s imagination left to concoct what awful unhealed wounds may have lain beneath the tropical wool. Roy’s face was remarkably untouched, his sallow skin tone glowing with a sheen of moisturizer he used to combat the chamber’s oxygen-rich dry air.

“For the reasons Mr. Pierce explained to you,” Roy resumed, “I must keep my time outside this chamber to a bare minimum. So, in large part to compensate, I’ve surrounded myself with treasures that remind me of the beauty in the world I can never see firsthand again. Strange, isn’t it, how much you learn to live without when you are given no choice?”

Landsdale caught that dark glint in Roy’s gaze again, chose to remain silent.

“You should feel honored,” Roy said to him, his tone the same and yet more conciliatory at the same time. “For obvious reasons I have very few guests. But we’ve never met and I felt this was the opportune time.”

“I appreciate the courtesy, but—”

“You say ‘but’ with no knowledge of what I intend to say.”

“My companies are not for sale, Mr. Roy,” Landsdale said, feeling his spine stiffen.

He was shivering slightly from both the temperature in the room and the fact that he’d come to realize that Sebastian Roy looked above all else like a perfectly preserved corpse. His skin was pale, his cheeks sunken. Beyond that, he appeared not to have aged a day since pictures taken of him from before the explosion and fire that had killed his family seven years before, his face the spitting image of the visage that had once graced the covers of
Time
,
Fortune
, and
Money
within a two-month span. To Landsdale’s knowledge, Roy had given only a single interview since then, to an antiquities and architectural magazine of all things, choosing a life apart from humanity in this mountain fortress he’d had constructed at incredible expense.

“Everything’s for sale,” Roy said, smiling so tightly the expression looked more like a sneer, before the smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “And everything has a price.”

“What do you know about my company, Mr. Landsdale?” Roy continued.

“I know all its various subsidiaries champion the very sources of energy I’ve been waging war on all my career. I know you have no problem destroying the environment to fuel, no pun intended, your profit motive.”

Roy clapped his hands dramatically.

“Nice speech. But I notice you left out the fact that the need for energy is growing at an exponential rate in direct contrast to the drain on available supply. You talk a good game, Mr. Landsdale, but I wonder if you’ll still talk that way when the lights won’t turn on and there’s nothing to heat your home with.”