Pandora's Curse

by Du Brul, Jack

  Mercer was right about her resilience. A helicopter crash last night, a delayed rescue that left her half dead, and now the shock of her team leader’s death and still her mind cut incisively. “We don’t know,” he admitted.

  Ira Lasko had been helping others unload the Sno-Cat during the conversation. They were done except for one item, and he approached the trio. “Begging your pardon, ma’am. Mercer, do you want me to put the pilot’s body in the cold storage lab with Igor’s?”

  “Yeah, that’ll be fine.”

  “I just spoke with Erwin,” Ira continued. “The radios are still out, so there’s no word yet from the Air Force about the body you found in Camp Decade.”

  “Another body?” Anika’s eyes bored into Mercer.

  “An Air Force pilot lost in the 1950s. He’s still down in the camp where we found him.”

  “I’d like to examine him.” Her voice had firmed as she came to grips with the past few minutes, regaining the professional edge she used in the emergency room.

  “Camp Decade is sealed until we shore up some of the roof,” Marty said. “We feel it’s too dangerous to go down there.”

  In an effort to impress her, Marty was trying to reclaim his control over the group by answering her request. Anika wasn’t fooled. She’d already realized that Philip Mercer was in charge of these men. She addressed him directly. “I would consider it a favor if you would let me examine him as well as the body of Igor Bulgarin.”

  “I can let you see Igor, but the base is off-limits for a while.” He doubted her examination would detect that Jack Delaney’s corpse was radioactive, but until he had some answers, no one was getting near him.

  When she was disappointed, Anika had the habit of sucking on her lower lip. While not a calculating gesture, it had a certain effect on men.

  “Before the Air Force comes,” Mercer relented, “I promise you a chance to check him out.”

  “Thank you. May I examine Dr. Bulgarin in a couple of hours? I’d like to get something to eat and then sleep for a while longer.”

  Mercer rolled back his glove to look at the Tag Heuer slung around his wrist. “I’ll meet you right here at 2:30.”

  Marty Bishop followed after Anika when she started off for the mess hall, leaving Mercer alone with Ira Lasko.

  “What do you think, Ira?”

  “I think that’s one tough little lady,” he said thoughtfully. “And I also think she’s one scared lady too.”

  “I noticed that as well. Any guess why?”

  “No idea.”

  “This whole thing has been screwy since the word go. I shouldn’t be surprised that our latest addition is a mystery too.”

  “Why does she want to examine Igor?” Ira asked. Mercer had no immediate answer. “I wonder if maybe she knows something about his death. Like why he was in Camp Decade when he shouldn’t have been.”

  “How would she know that when we don’t?”

  This time it was Ira’s turn to remain silent.

  Yesterday, this trip had seemed like a great vacation for Mercer and he’d been enjoying himself. But since Igor’s death, that had all vanished and his frustration had mounted. He’d paid little attention to the small inconsistencies since his arrival here, and now they plagued him. He doubted that Anika Klein would shed any light on what was happening. In fact, her demeanor and requests added to his concern. “This trip is one snafu after another,” he muttered.

  “Amen. You think the Danes are going to pull us?”

  “I hope to God they do.”

  GEO-RESEARCH STATION,GREENLAND

  At the appointed time, Mercer saw Anika approaching the mess hall from the direction of the dormitories. She was bundled in a red one-piece Gore-Tex snowsuit with a hood pulled tight around her face. With her back to the wind, snow dusted the knapsack over her shoulder. For the past hour he had been sitting with the radio operator trying vainly to get a message out to Reykjavik. Other than static and a burst of conversation that sounded like it came from the Njoerd, they had received nothing. The electronic interference from the sun’s massive coronal ejections ensured the base was completely isolated. When he saw Anika through the steam-clouded window, Mercer thanked the radioman, pulled on his parka, and stepped out into the gale.

  “How are you feeling?” he shouted over the wind.

  “Fine. Let’s go.”

  Mercer led her to the cold-temperature lab at the far end of the camp, first making sure she was clipped to the guide rope. The blowing snow swallowed their feet with each step, so they appeared like legless torsos gliding through the swirling ice. Once Geo-Research got geared up, the cold lab would house ice cores and snow samples. For now it held just the two bodies.

  The building was made of plastic, with a couple of windows on each side. Drifts had grown on the windward flank, piling almost to the eaves, but the structure had been placed in such a way that the entrance was mostly clear of snow. Like all the buildings, there was a wide-bladed shovel clipped near the door, and after a few minutes of digging their path was cleared. Mercer didn’t need to worry about warmth escaping the lab, so he held the door for Anika to enter first.

  He snapped on the overhead lights, long banks of fluorescents that provided plenty of light but generated little heat that could damage frozen samples. Under tarps at the far end of the room, two recognizable shapes were laid out on adjacent worktables.

  Out of the wind, Mercer and Anika pulled back their hoods and shook snow off themselves. She ignored his gesture to sweep snow off her back in a rush to reach the bodies. The first tarp she drew back covered the pilot’s corpse, and after just a second she replaced the shroud. She already knew what had killed him.

  She said nothing as she uncovered Igor, looking first at his ghastly white face before beginning to examine him with single-minded intensity. It was as if Mercer wasn’t there. Starting with his booted feet and moving upward across his still-clothed body, she ran her hands over every part of him. Mercer had no idea what she hoped to accomplish since the body was as stiff as the table beneath it. Because Igor’s mouth was open, she pulled a penlight from her knapsack and explored his teeth and gums, grunting when she saw something of interest.

  “What is it?” Mercer asked.

  “Russian dentists. These are the worst fillings I’ve ever seen. Igor had to have been in constant pain.”

  She removed her thick outer mittens and replaced them with a pair of surgical gloves, probing his mouth with her finger. From deep in his throat she withdrew out a bit of frozen saliva mixed with snow. She studied it for a second before dropping it on the table. Without a proper lab to examine the material, it did her little good to keep it. Next she bent close to look at the deep scrapes on his nose and forehead, grunting again, but this time Mercer kept his silence.

  He was fascinated by her. With her eyes narrowed and her brows pulled down in concentration, she looked like a child worrying at a particularly tough school problem. But she was an adult, examining a corpse, and he was captivated by the dichotomy of her appearance and profession. He imagined that she’d been underestimated many times in her life and pitied the people who did it.

  Finished with Igor’s face, she ran her hands over his skull, pressing various points with her fingertips. “Can you give me a hand?” she asked without looking up.

  “What do you need?” Mercer moved to her side.

  “I want to roll him over.”

  They did, and because Igor Bulgarin was so heavy and broad, it was like flipping a king-size mattress.

  When Mercer retreated again, she combed aside the frozen knots of blood and hair at the base of his skull, tracing the wound with a finger. She scowled and reached into her bag for a magnifying glass. There was a palpable tension in her as she scrutinized the wound under the glass, her face so close to Igor’s head that her breath snaked through his hair like steam. After two minutes, Anika straightened and looked around the room intently.

  “What did you find?” Mercer clos
ed the gap between them, infected by whatever had so unsettled her.

  She said nothing, moving by him to grab a crowbar left on another of the worktables. She looked at the piece of steel for a moment, feeling its weight, not caring that the metal was freezing her hand. Unsatisfied, she dropped it unceremoniously, and rummaged under the table, where more tools had been left in plastic crates. She came up with a twenty-inch-long handle from a portable screw jack. It was only then she remembered Mercer was in the room with her. She looked at him clinically, as if weighing a decision, and nodded when he passed some sort of unspoken test. She couldn’t hide the fear lingering in her eyes, but she spoke in a calm tone.

  “Igor was murdered,” she stated. “He was then dragged from where it happened and left in a place where someone could stage an avalanche to cover the killing.”

  On some intuitive level Mercer wasn’t surprised. Somehow it made sense to him. Though he’d not voiced them, not even to himself, he’d had misgivings about the entertaining Russian. But his professional skepticism wouldn’t allow him to accept her statement without proof. “How do you know?”

  She hefted the jack handle, carrying it to the body. “This is a little thinner than the murder weapon—shorter and lighter too, I would guess—but it’ll give you an idea what happened.” She placed the handle into the long wound at the base of Igor’s skull. “As you can see it fits almost perfectly in the gash, a straight impact line that runs from side to side beneath the occipital bulge. This wound wasn’t the result of ice hitting him. It’s too symmetrical. He was killed by a very strong person swinging such a tool like a baseball bat. The blow would have crushed a portion of the cerebellum and the medulla spinalis, killing him instantly.”

  Mercer peered at the injury. Quelling his uneasiness, he lifted the handle, and then placed it back in the wound as Anika had done. He had to admit that it was indeed a pretty damn good match.

  “If you notice, the scrapes on his face all go in the same direction. Add the fact that he rigored with his hands over his head, and it’s logical to conclude that someone dragged him by his hands, facedown, over a rough surface like a wooden floor. The snow I found jammed down his throat is consistent with this hypothesis.”

  Mercer remembered thinking how strange it was that Igor’s arms had been over his head when they found the body. At the time he’d assumed the cuts on Igor’s face had been from falling ice hitting him. But now? She presented a plausible scenario. As he looked at Anika, his eyes asked his next questions.

  “I don’t know why he was killed, Mr. Mercer. Or who did it.”

  “It’s Dr. Mercer, actually, but everyone just calls me Mercer,” he said automatically.

  Who would have done this? A strong person, she had said. That description fit nearly everyone at the camp. If the timing had been different, he would have considered the stowaway who’d left the tracks around the helicopter, but the crash occurred well after Igor’s death. He was left with the unpleasant option that apart from everything else going wrong, there was a killer in their midst. Now he knew where Anika’s fear had come from. He shared it.

  “You’re getting your wish,” he said after a moment.

  “Wish?”

  “You wanted to examine the corpse we found in Camp Decade. That’s the only thing of even remote interest in the facility. If Igor was killed for a reason, I bet that body’s it.”

  “You said the base wasn’t safe.”

  “You just told me that someone caused the avalanche to cover Igor’s murder. If you’re right, the ceiling in Camp Decade’s still structurally sound.”

  “What if I am wrong?” Suddenly it seemed the thought of going into the underground base wasn’t quite as appealing to her.

  “You should trust your instincts,” Mercer said. “Considering what you’ve just discovered, I’d say they’re right on.”

  Leading Anika once again, he made his way across the base, this time walking into the wind. The flying ice felt like glass shards when it hit his face below his tinted goggles, and no amount of tugging could tighten the hood enough to eliminate all the gaps. It was like being attacked by a swarm of wasps. They reached the long trench carved over the entrance of Camp Decade, and once they were below ground level, the punishing wind would release its hold. They could walk upright again and hold a conversation.

  “Before you left the Njoerd, did you learn how long this wind’s supposed to last?” Mercer climbed into the Sno-Cat to fire the engine and power the winch.

  “All day today and they think there’s only a couple-hour gap tomorrow before an even stronger storm front hits.”

  “Erik the Red was one hell of a salesman,” Mercer joked. Anika looked at him quizzically. “When the old Viking was banished from Iceland in 982 A.D., he sailed west and landed here. He wintered someplace on the east coast. When he returned home, he told people about the beautiful island he had discovered, calling it Greenland to describe its lushness. That probably wasn’t the first marketing lie ever told, but it certainly was one of the most effective. He convinced twenty-five ships’ worth of settlers to follow him back.”

  He jumped down from the ’Cat and reached across the twenty-foot void to grab the dangling bucket they used to get to the bottom of the shaft. Anika stepped in without a moment’s consideration with Mercer right behind her.

  “Not afraid of heights?” he asked as the bucket started its slow descent.

  “I climb mountains for relaxation. I could probably climb down this tube faster than this contraption of yours.”

  Mercer didn’t doubt her. At the bottom, he checked the chains he and Ira had used to secure the doors after removing Igor’s body. It didn’t appear they had been tampered with, so he jammed home the lock’s key and twisted. Once inside, he handed one of the flashlights left there to Anika and kept another for himself. Cutting through the darkness, their powerful beams were like lances.

  The feeling that ghosts were watching him was stronger this time. Memories of Igor Bulgarin flooded Mercer’s mind. He led her toward the officers’ quarters, where Jack Delaney’s body had lain undisturbed for five decades. When they had pulled Igor out, Mercer and Ira had cleared a lot of the snow that had once clogged the passage, but still they had to clamber over heaps of ice. Even in her snowsuit, Anika moved with fluid efficiency, not slipping or misplacing a hand or foot as she climbed. Mercer was having a harder time. He was used to tight spaces like this, made his living in them, but he wasn’t as deft at judging the slick surfaces.

  Once they cleared the final obstacle, they trained their lights at the floor. Anika got on her knees for a better look and spotted what she’d expected. The claret streaks on the floor were blood. Igor Bulgarin’s blood. The faint marks continued down the dark passage.

  “You were right,” Mercer said, not knowing how he felt about that.

  “So were you. Igor was checking the body.”

  They reached the officers’ annex in a moment and passed down the hallway until they came to room number ten. Jack Delaney looked as he had when Mercer first found him. His face was gaunt to the point of starvation, drained of all color except around his mouth, which was a lighter shade, almost gray. His hands were clutched at his chest, skeletal fingers interlaced as if he’d been praying at the final moment of his death. It took no imagination to think of the bitterness he must have felt after surviving for so long only to discover Camp Decade had already been abandoned. The loneliness of his death was in the vacant stare of his long-dead eyes.

  “Does he look like he’s been disturbed?” Anika’s question snapped Mercer from his grim reflections.

  “No.” He checked the floor and found more blood, a few drops scattered near one wall. He could tell by the pattern and their tearlike appearance that they had sprayed from the wound. “Igor died in this room. Either attacked by someone preventing him from examining the body or murdered to cover up someone else’s investigation.”

  “But before he could do anything to the body?”
Anika persisted.

  “Yes, neither person appears to have touched the corpse. Thinking about the timing, Igor would have gotten down here at about 4:30 in the morning. His killer could have been a few minutes behind, seen him in here, bludgeoned him, and immediately started hiding the evidence. Since people get up about six, that only gave the murderer an hour and a half, barely enough time to stage the avalanche and get back to his dorm before anyone noticed.”

  “We’re lucky.” Anika set her knapsack on the desk next to the bed. As with Igor Bulgarin, she began her examination at Delaney’s feet and slowly worked her way up. Mercer stood at her shoulder, following her hands with his flashlight so she could see what she was doing. When she reached his mouth and studied his teeth, she called him closer. “Look at this.”

  Delaney had only a few teeth remaining in his mouth, black stumps so cracked it was doubtful the airman could have used them to chew. His gums looked like raw meat. For a few seconds Anika tried to find traces of dentistry, but there was nothing left. “He’s very thin.”

  “Considering what he’d been through, I’m not surprised.”

  Anika said nothing and took a tape measure from her bag. Delaney was just five feet six inches tall in his boots. Awfully short, Mercer thought, but since he didn’t know what kind of height restrictions the military maintained for its pilots, he didn’t say anything. Next, Anika pulled up Delaney’s sleeves.

  “You shouldn’t move him until the Air Force arrives,” Mercer admonished but not very sternly. He was just as curious as she was.

  He checked his watch. They’d been here for ten minutes. He would give her five more before leaving. He was conscious of the body’s mild radioactivity. He realized that could have explained the tooth loss and the fact that under his woolen hat, Delaney was completely bald—another symptom of acute radiation poisoning.

  “What do you think?” Anika pointed to a rectangular scar on his left forearm.

  “Looks like a burn.”