The Explorer's Code (50 page)

Suddenly she heard the sound of feet running in the corridor. They were coming closer. Was it friend or enemy? She stared at the oblong of the doorway, her heart pounding.

A figure appeared. It was John Sinclair! She could scarcely trust her eyes.
He had come!

He was totally disheveled, with blood smeared on his jacket, pants
covered in dirt. He looked taller and more powerful than she remembered.

He didn’t see her at first; his eyes scanned the room frantically. Then he noticed her, sitting next to the shelving on the floor. There was a moment of suspended astonishment as their eyes connected. He exhaled, shutting his eyes for the briefest second, as if in thankful prayer.

The split second flashed by, and he was moving toward her, his face grim. He grabbed her by the arms and hauled her to her feet. This was no tender embrace; he spun her around and began stripping the duct tape from her wrists.

“Sorry, Delia,” he apologized. “I know this hurts, but we have to get out of here.”

He bent down and was working the duct tape off her feet.

“John, there’s a bomb!”

“We know,” said Charles from the doorway.

She looked up and gasped.
He was alive!

He looked ghostly, his face pale and his blond hair almost silver in the light of the vault. Charles, lovely Charles! Her eyes started to tear up.

“I thought he
killed
you,” she said. Her voice broke with emotion. Charles came over and threw an arm around her shoulders, and kissed the top of her head.

“No, he didn’t kill me, Delia,” Charles said quietly. “I’m not leaving you quite yet.”

Anna ran out of the seed vault at full tilt and plowed straight into the arms of a member of the Norwegian police. She wrestled with him, but he grabbed her and held her fast. Several of the young police trainees were standing attentively, with their weapons leveled at her.

Thaddeus Frost stepped forward.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

Frost looked at her face and knew he had seen her before. He had total visual recall; it would come to him in a moment. And then it clicked. His eyes widened in astonishment. He replayed the mental tape from the airport lounge at Heathrow: leopard shirt, cleavage, coffee, rushing out for a late flight. He saw Gardiner drinking poisoned coffee.

“Arrest this woman for attempted murder,” he said coldly.

The red numbers on the bomb read 6:00 minutes. Sinclair, Charles, and Cordelia ran out of vault number 3 and careened down the corridor toward the main door of the seed vault. Cordelia could feel the seconds ticking in her head.

Charles was the fastest, and kept looking back as he ran. She and Sinclair followed close behind, and Sinclair grasped her hand to pull her along. The sound of their footsteps echoed in the empty hallway. The corridor seemed so much longer than when she had first entered.

The gray tunnel stretched before her endlessly, and she couldn’t help envisioning the fire that would blast through it, incinerating them if they didn’t make it out. Suddenly the fresh air from outside started to brush her face, and she could see the glare of the open sky in the doorframe.

Charles was the first to burst out of the tunnel. He came face-to-face with the police and stopped. Sinclair and Cordelia drew up behind. They all looked in surprise. The entire Svalbard law-enforcement team was now assembled at the exterior of the vault.

Thaddeus Frost was standing by the vehicles, talking on the radio. He turned at the sound of their steps and sprinted over quickly, his trench coat flapping around him.

“Get these people out of here!”
he called to the police recruits. They lowered their weapons and began to help Cordelia and Charles over to the vehicles. But Frost put a restraining hand on Sinclair’s arm.

“Is it going to blow?” he asked quietly.

“Five minutes. Less. It’s an incendiary device,” said Sinclair.

“Where is it?” Frost demanded. “We need to defuse it.”

Sinclair stared at him, uncertain what to say. There was no way to describe where to look for it. They both knew Frost couldn’t find it by himself—at least not in time.

“OK, I’ll show you. Let’s go,” Sinclair said without hesitation, turning back toward the entrance again.

“Get back!”
Frost shouted to the others. He waved them all away. “Get out of here!
Now!
”

“Sinclair!”
Charles yelled. It was a howl of outrage. Sinclair turned around and stood before the door of the vault, suspended.

“Sinclair, no!”
Charles shouted, and threw up his hands to the sky as
if to demand why. The possibility of death hung between them, acknowledged but unspoken.

“There’s no other way!”
Sinclair called.

Charles stared at him in disbelief.
“Sinclair, you can’t!”
he howled.

“Charles, please. Take care of her for me,”
Sinclair called.

Charles dropped his hands, defeated. He nodded, once. A commitment made. Cordelia turned back at the sound of their voices. She saw immediately what was happening and started running toward Sinclair. Charles caught hold of her, to stop her from following. She struggled to break free.

“John!”
Her scream was frantic.
“No, please! Don’t!”

“Cordelia, I have to!”

“Please, don’t,”
she cried.
“Please, John.”

“I’ll be back,”
he shouted.
“I promise.”

Sinclair turned and ran back into the International Seed Vault. Frost followed.

For Sinclair, the run back into the vault was entirely different from the exit they had made moments before. He was immensely relieved that Cordelia was safe. But a heavy, oppressive feeling overcame him. Sinclair was conscious of the full weight of the mountain bedrock above. Tons and tons of granite rested on this small tunnel. And as he ran deeper and deeper into the mountain it felt as if the tunnel were narrowing, and he had to bend over to stop the terrible weight from crushing him.

Just moments before, when his sole focus had been on getting Cordelia out, he hadn’t given the tunnel a thought. But now his mind was playing tricks. Now the situation had all the qualities of his most dreaded nightmare. In his mind, he met his old phantoms: the dark snowy night, the overturned car. He kept running in an effort to fight the attack of claustrophobia he knew was imminent. He needed to push the panic out of his mind, but suddenly the blackness and the sweating terror crashed in on him. He slowed his pace and stopped, barely able to breathe.

He and Frost reached the circular desk with the three tunnels arrayed in front of them. His eye was drawn to the corridor on the left, and suddenly it seemed even smaller and darker than he remembered.

He didn’t want to go in there. It looked like death—the terrible fear of
death had haunted him ever since the car accident. It was his grave. He knew it. He knew he would die in that little tunnel in this remote place. He would never see Cordelia again. He knew it more than he had ever known anything in his life.

“What’s wrong,” demanded Frost. “Did you
forget
which way it is?”

Sinclair lifted his hand and pointed to the corridor on the left, leading to vault 3. Frost cast him a curious glance and ran off into the tunnel.

Sinclair stood still. He begged his mind to let go of the fears that kept him a prisoner. He had tried so hard to get free of that horrible night when he was trapped in the car. He had relived the memory with relentless tenacity for years. Surely it was time to let it go. He had to be cured by now.

He took a deep breath, as if preparing to dive underwater. And then he followed the sound of Frost’s footsteps.

Cordelia clung to Charles, tears streaming down her face. She had fought and struggled against him to go after Sinclair, but Charles had held her tightly.

“Charles, he is going to die!!
I have to stop him!
”

Charles kept his arm around her as sobs racked her slim body. Damn Sinclair and his heroics! Despite all odds, they had managed to get out of the vault safely, but Sinclair had to run back in to save the day. Didn’t he know that his life was more precious to Cordelia than any other in the world? How could he do this?

Charles was absolutely furious. If Sinclair got out of there alive, he was going to kill him himself. He released Cordelia tentatively, ready to catch hold of her again.

“Delia, we have to move farther down the mountain. In case . . .” He couldn’t finish.

She nodded passively. She seemed defeated. She offered no resistance as Charles took her hand. He kept an arm around her shoulders to steady her as they went down the steep road. She wound both her arms around him, crying so hard she could barely see.

A line of Norwegian police vehicles passed them going down the mountain. One van stopped next to Charles and Cordelia. There were two uniformed Norwegian officials in the back.

“Get in. You need to evacuate,” the officer said in English. “The vault is going to explode in five minutes.”

Charles winced. He would have given anything to have spared Cordelia that statement. He handed her up to the outstretched hands in the back of the vehicle, and then launched himself after her. The truck careened down the mountain in a cloud of dust, leaving the vault behind.

Sinclair found Thaddeus Frost crouched over the digital device. The red numbers glowed 3:00 minutes. For some reason, Sinclair was surprised they had that much time left. It had felt like an eternity as he had stood in the tunnel and tried to overcome his fear. But it must have been less than a minute.

Now his mind was focused and calm, and every object in the room stood out in crystalline clarity. Frost was working a small screwdriver into the back of the device.

“Do you know what to do?” asked Sinclair.

“Quiet!”
said Frost. Then he looked up at Sinclair as if he had just noticed him.

“Get out of here while you still can!”
Frost said urgently.

“No, I won’t leave you,” Sinclair replied.

Frost gave him a puzzled stare, then looked down again at the device and went on working. Sinclair squatted next to him. He couldn’t let Frost die here alone. That much he owed him.

He had failed so badly. He had bungled almost every step of the way. Erin was dead. His utter incompetence had nearly gotten Cordelia killed also. He had promised to help her, and then he had failed. He didn’t deserve her; he simply didn’t deserve her.

But there was one thing he
could
do. He could stay here with Frost and not abandon him. This moment was still under his control. He needed to see it though—even if it meant death.

A bead of sweat worked down Frost’s forehead and dripped onto the floor. The device read 2:00 minutes.

Sinclair looked around at the vault. Box after box of seeds had been labeled and placed in neat rows along the shelves. Imagine killing for this. Imagine wanting to destroy this so badly that human life was worthless to you. What kind of people were they?

Sinclair settled back and thought about his own imminent death. He had always heard that heroes can’t imagine their own death, and that is why they could rise so easily to the moral heights of sacrificing themselves for a greater good. He wasn’t that way. He imagined his own death every time he had a claustrophobic attack. And now he
knew
he was going to die in the godforsaken vault.

It was funny, having all this time to think about death. Sinclair had often assumed that his final moment on earth would end with what were called “bioscopic fantasies”—scenes of his life flashing before his eyes with vivid and incredible speed. It was a phenomenon reported by many who had been on the verge of death. But now he realized that for him the final moments were going to be calm and utterly under control. And, astonishingly, he could breathe, without any symptoms of claustrophobia. The attack had vanished. Wouldn’t it be ironic if he were cured so late in life—just moments before he died?

Sinclair had one regret—that he had not been able to get the deed for Cordelia. Then, with a random flash, Sinclair remembered the journal tucked under the front seat of the Volvo. Perhaps the deed was folded in the journal. Why not? The book and the deed both belonged to Elliott Stapleton. Why hadn’t he checked? Silly, really. No time now.

The device said 1:00 minute. Sinclair finally allowed himself to think about the fact that he would not see Cordelia again. His heart ached in his chest. The physical pain of loss was so intense he couldn’t bear it. He could feel his spirit dying. It would be a few more seconds of hell. And then he would be gone.

Cordelia and Charles stood on level ground at the base of the mountain. The Norwegian police recruits were positioned in the middle of the road, blocking access to the seed vault. Everyone was looking up at the mountain, waiting. The entrance of the vault stuck out like an iceberg from the rugged bedrock—shining silver in the light. It would be only moments now.

Charles wondered if they would hear the blast. Or would it just be a fireball inside the structure? Would Sinclair feel anything? He hoped not. Charles tightened his arm around Cordelia’s shoulder and vowed to protect her for the rest of his life. He had promised.