Pandora's curse m-4

by Jack Du Brul

  On one corner of the bar, Mercer’s mail lay stacked in a pile that was in imminent danger of spilling onto the floor. The deal with Harry was that he could stay at the house whenever Mercer was away as long as he got the mail and took care of phone messages. The deal didn’t include opening the mail, however. Mercer shook his head in mock frustration. One item caught his eye — a long, skinny tube, like those used for shipping posters.

  “The one thing that was for you,” he said, holding it up for Harry to see. “And you didn’t open it.”

  “I thought someone had mailed you a snake.”

  “Actually, it’s your birthday present, only it’s a couple months late.” Mercer made the drinks, set them on the bar for John to dispense, and passed the tube to Harry.

  “What is it?” he asked suspiciously.

  “An anorexic anaconda. Just open the goddamned thing.”

  Not one to stand on ceremony, Harry crushed out his cigar and tore the tube apart like a kid. Inside was a walking stick, a custom-made cane of black walnut capped with an ornate silver grip. Harry White had only one leg; he’d lost the other during his years as a sea captain following World War II. He didn’t have a noticeable limp, but Mercer had seen him wince a few times when he walked and knew it was time for his friend to bow to the inevitable.

  “This ain’t bad,” Harry admitted.

  Mercer took it from him, twisted part of the handle to release a secret catch, and pulled a gleaming thirty-inch sword blade from the cane.

  Harry’s face lit up. “All right!”

  “And the best part,” Mercer said, and twisted the sword near where the tang went into the handle. The blade came free, leaving a nine-inch-long wand with a screw cap set in the top end. Mercer opened it and gave it an appreciative sniff. The cane maker had gotten his final instructions before shipping his creation.

  Harry took the handle, smelled its open end as Mercer had done, and laughed. The cane/sword was also a flask filled with Harry’s version of mother’s milk, Jack Daniel’s.

  Harry’s eyes were bright blue and they were usually filled with mischievous sarcasm. Now they clouded over, unguarded, and showed how much Mercer’s gift meant to him. He looked up. “Thanks, Mercer,” he rasped quietly. “This is something else.”

  “Happy birthday.” Mercer handed over five twenty-dollar bills and took a seat, muttering, “You still have to pay back the hundred.”

  They played poker until midnight, talking mostly about Mercer’s upcoming trip. Mike was the only driver sober enough to get behind the wheel, so he said he’d give Tiny a ride back to his condo after dropping off Pidge. He offered the same service to Harry, but he’d already staked his claim to the couch. Harry lived only a dozen blocks away, yet he slept at Mercer’s at least once a week and never used either of the small guest rooms at the back of the house.

  Orphaned when he was twelve and raised by his grandparents who were now also dead, Mercer had no family, which made his friendships all the more precious. His father had been a mining engineer as well, and he and Mercer’s mother, Siobhan, had died in one of the countless uprisings in central Africa. During his training for the Iraq mission, an Army shrink had told Mercer that his early loss had created in him an acute fear of abandonment and an overdeveloped sense of loyalty and responsibility. Mercer agreed and knew that, despite the more than four decades separating them, he valued Harry more than anything else in his life.

  Mercer usually woke at dawn. However, he slept an hour later the following morning. He showered quickly, threw on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, and went down to get the Washington Post from the stoop. He’d set the timer on the coffeemaker behind the bar last night. The brew was thick as tar, and the steam rising from it was strong enough to scald his eyes. He poured the pot into a carafe and made more coffee for Harry’s less masochistic tastes.

  “Do you mind not making those pounding noises over there?” Harry grumbled as he came awake.

  “That’s not me. It’s your head.”

  Sitting up, Harry looked around the room, his mouth scrunched up as he tasted the aftereffects of a pack of cigarettes, a couple of cigars, and more whiskey than was strictly necessary. He coughed viciously. “Yeah, you might be right.”

  Before getting off the couch, Harry rolled up his pants leg and strapped on the flesh-colored prosthetic limb. He slid his thin arms into the sleeves of an over-laundered blue oxford, buttoning it over the undershirt he’d slept in.

  “I’ve always wondered,” Mercer said, pouring a cup of coffee for his friend and adding several spoons of sugar, “if you slept in your clothes at home.”

  “Only on those nights I pass out.”

  “Every night, huh?”

  “Let’s just say most nights and leave it at that.” Harry went off to use the guest bathroom and Mercer scanned the newspaper.

  A scandal involving Washington’s school board couldn’t hold his interest for more than the headline. Because so much of his work took place overseas, Mercer was more interested in international news. He read about the upcoming Universal Convocation. The article had a photograph of the Sea Empress, the ship the pope was using for his meeting. Although the vessel was the largest cruise liner ever built, she was as sleek as a race yacht, with raked decks and funnels on each of her two hulls. Somewhere he’d read that a lap around the enormous catamaran was half a mile. Harry returned as Mercer was finishing another piece about a German company that had agreed to pay $1.2 billion in reparations to slave laborers they had used in their factories during the war.

  “Hey, last night you never said when you were leaving for Greenland.” Harry sat at the bar near Mercer. He’d taken the time to shave the silver stubble from his lantern jaw.

  “Tomorrow afternoon,” Mercer replied, sliding the crossword puzzle over to him.

  Seated or standing, the two men were the same height, but this news made Harry slump in disappointment. He preferred Mercer’s company more than the use of his house. He took a gulp of coffee and lit a cigarette.

  “I know, the timing kind of sucks,” Mercer added. “This is an opportunity I just couldn’t pass up.”

  “I guess I can’t blame you. Joining the Surveyor’s Society must be a hell of a thing for you.”

  “How many childhood dreams really do come true?” The question was asked seriously.

  “Besides losing your virginity? Not many.” Harry’s wrinkled face broke into a smile. “I’m glad for you, but I don’t envy you. What’s that place like this time of year?”

  “Believe it or not, spring is just starting. July is when the ice packs that surround Greenland break up. We’ll probably be one of the first ships over this year. The weather should be in the low twenties though I think storms can blow up at any time and the temperature can drop below zero in about five minutes.”

  “You’re nuts.”

  Mercer laughed but didn’t argue.

  While Harry worked at the crossword, Mercer grabbed a sheet of paper and a pen from his office and began a list of things he wanted to bring. For a job, he usually knew exactly what items were needed. This was the first time in a while, however, that he would work in such harsh conditions and he wanted to be prepared.

  “Ten down,” Harry White interrupted. “A five-letter word for friend? Middle one’s ‘o.’ ”

  Mercer looked at him pointedly. “Mooch.”

  “Bastard.”

  “Try crony.”

  An hour later, as Harry thumbed through the rest of the Washington Post, Mercer was getting together some of the equipment on his list. Later, he would need to go to a specialized outfitter’s store for the things he’d need, but many of the small items he had lying around the house. Some were elusive though.

  “Harry, have you seen my glacier glasses?”

  Twisting on his bar stool, the octogenarian shot him a withering look and his voice dripped sarcasm. “Don’t you remember? I borrowed them the last time I climbed Mount Everest.”

  “Just fo
r that, I’m going to lock up my liquor when I’m gone and ban you from smoking in here.” Such clean living would probably kill him in a week.

  “Hey, I was kidding.” Harry backpedaled quickly. “There’s no need to get nasty. When you’re done today, you going over to Tiny’s? It’s two-for-one night, which means double-fisted drinking.”

  “No. I want to do some research on the Internet. I’d like to find out more about Project Iceworm and this Camp Decade we’re going to reopen.”

  During his lunch at the Society, Charles Bryce had also told Mercer about an Air Force plane that had crashed a few months before the base closed. The search for the wreckage had been extensive and it should have been easy to spot the plane on the ice, but no trace was ever found. He hoped to find something about that as well, just for curiosity’s sake.

  “Suit yourself,” Harry said, grabbing his new cane for the walk home. “You leaving from Dulles or National?”

  “Dulles. You mind giving me a ride?”

  “That’s why I asked.”

  “Thanks. Come by around noon.”

  Harry left, and a few minutes later Mercer went on his shopping trip. Considering the list of items and the work he had to do tonight, he realized that he shouldn’t have stayed in New York for an extra day. However, anything he forgot here could most likely be purchased in Iceland before they boarded the Njoerd for the run to Ammassalik, Greenland. He also trusted Charlie Bryce about Geo-Research being a first-class outfit. Surely they’d take care of him.

  REYKJAVIK, ICELAND

  Since Mercer was a geologist, this small island in the middle of the Atlantic fascinated him. Formed a mere eighteen million years ago by subsea volcanoes that were still active today, Iceland was living proof of the turbulent nature of our planet. Earthquakes were a daily occurrence, and one of the many volcanoes dotting the country erupted every couple of years. The landscape was littered with incredible geologic features — geothermal vents, ancient craters, and a mountain valley that was the only place where the mid-Atlantic ridge crossed dry land. By contrast, Greenland, its huge neighbor to the west, was once part of Pangea, the supercontinent that formed as the earth cooled. The rock there was upward of 3.5 billion years old and geologically dead.

  That didn’t mean that Mercer was too keen on the place as a tourist. Iceland was rather desolate. Half of the population of a quarter million lived in and around the capital, Reykjavik. If not for the geothermal plants that provided hot water for heat and electricity, the sustainable population would have been only a fraction of that number. Also, its isolation ensured that everything was sickeningly expensive.

  Reykjavik’s international airport sat on an open plain blistered by the radar domes of an adjacent American military base. As Mercer stepped through the revolving exit door of the futuristic terminal, he was hit by a blast of cold wind shrieking off the north Atlantic. The Gulf Stream, the river of warm water that flowed from Florida to Europe, passed along Iceland’s south coast and warmed the island enough to make it habitable, but by no stretch was it comfortable, even in summer. The sky was leaden, with low tumbling clouds that seemed to hang just a few hundred feet off the ground. A distant beam of sunlight made a far-off mountain glow neon green.

  Mercer zipped up his bomber jacket and donned a khaki baseball cap while he waited at the curb with his two large bags. The air smelled fresh, sharp with the scent of the sea, and it only added to the unreality of his position. Eight hours ago Harry had dropped him at Dulles with the promise that he wouldn’t use the Jag, and now he was here. Though he traveled constantly, the thrill of being in a new place never wore off. It was like a flicker of lightness in his chest.

  Mercer had also asked Harry to forward his mail to the satellite office Geo-Research would maintain in Reykjavik to transship mail and supplies to the team in Greenland once a week. While downloading the two hundred e-mail messages from his server, Mercer had come across a cryptic note from a lawyer in Munich about some documents being sent to him on behalf of an unnamed client. Mercer had no idea what it was about and had sent a query back. There hadn’t been a reply by the time he and Harry left for the airport, so Mercer asked his old friend to keep an eye out for it and make sure it reached him.

  Mercer had been waiting for five minutes when a Toyota van pulled up to the building. The burly passenger rolled down his window. “Dr. Mercer, da?” His accent was Russian.

  “I’m Mercer.”

  The Russian threw open the door with a big grin. Even without the bright blue parka he was huge, taller than Mercer by at least a foot and broad across the shoulders and chest. To judge by his florid face, he appeared to be in his early fifties, but he looked like an outdoorsman and might have been younger. “Welcome to Iceland. I am Igor Bulgarin.”

  Mercer’s hand vanished in his grip. “Thank you. Are you part of Geo-Research?”

  “Nyet. They are all Germans. I am from Russian Academy of Science. But I am lone Russian on expedition. All others from my group are from Western Europe.” He spoke in a flood of words as if fearful they would dry up.

  The driver got out of the Toyota. He was Mercer’s age and about the same build. His sour expression seemed to be a permanent feature, and he had slow, watchful eyes. Mercer made the quick assumption that the two were not working together. Bulgarin had the jocularity of an excited puppy, while the blond-haired driver seemed overly taciturn.

  “This is Ernst Neuhaus,” Igor introduced. “He is head of Geo-Research support office here in Iceland.”

  “Oh, how do you do?” Mercer said.

  “Good evening, Dr. Mercer,” Neuhaus replied, briefly shaking hands without first removing his glove. His voice was sharp and lightly accented. “You’re the last of the Society’s people to arrive. In fact, everyone’s here except for one person from Igor’s group.”

  Mercer turned to the Russian. “Is there a problem?”

  “We have medical doctor coming. She is German who studies stress but not part of Geo-Research. She had accident back home and will join us on Greenland.”

  “I thought your group were all meteorologists?”

  “Nyet. Three of them investigate sunspots, I look for meteorite fragments, and Dr. Klein looks at us.”

  “I never asked you, Igor,” Neuhaus interrupted. “Why go to Greenland to look for meteors?”

  “Meteor doesn’t hit ground. Meteorite does,” Igor Bulgarin corrected. “We search on ice for same reason polar bear is white. White bear, white ice — no can see. Black meteorite on white ice, find easy. Meteorite in desert looks like all other rocks. Very hard to find.”

  Mercer decided quickly that he liked the animated Russian. His less than positive reaction to Neuhaus was irrelevant since the German wasn’t going to Greenland. “Are you guys my ride to town?”

  “Da. Others wait at hotel. Very boring. I volunteer to come with Ernst for something to do.”

  Mercer’s luggage was tossed into the cargo section at the rear of the van, and he jumped into the seat behind Neuhaus’s. “I’m surprised Marty Bishop didn’t come to pick me up.”

  “He’s getting drunk,” Igor Bulgarin scoffed. “Last night he learn that friend of his not coming on trip. Last-minute crisis cause him to cancel.”

  “You mean there’s only going to be three of us opening Camp Decade?” Mercer had thought that four was ludicrous but losing Marty’s buddy meant they would be even more shorthanded.

  “Mr. Bishop has already taken care of that,” Neuhaus said. “Geo-Research is sending thirty people to the ice. He’s made arrangements to use some of our workers as needed. Plus, we have enough equipment and provisions to last a couple of months for anything else you may need.”

  “Da, is true,” Igor admitted with a grunt. “Four Sno-Cats with trailers, a Land Cruiser with special tires, and many, many preformed buildings that are supposed to go up like house of cards.”

  “How are we getting all that equipment to Camp Decade?” Mercer asked. “It’s too much for chop
pers.”

  Bulgarin twisted in his seat so he could look at Mercer. Although his smile was missing a tooth, it conveyed his boundless energy. “From dock in Ammassalik, everything is transferred to ice by blimp.”

  Mercer must have made a surprised sound because Ernst Neuhaus elaborated. “It’s a heavy-lift cargo airship that Geo-Research leased for the job. I guess it’s only been flying a few months.”

  “Believe it or not I know something about it,” Mercer said. “It’s got a semirigid body that supports four engine pods with tilt-rotors that can pivot from horizontal like an airplane’s to vertical like a helicopter’s. It’s similar to the system used in the Marines’ V-22 Osprey.”

  “This type of dirigible’s a modification of Frank Piasecki’s ill-fated heli-stat. The owners call it a rotor-stat.” Neuhaus steered the van off the airport grounds and on to Route 41 for the drive to Reykjavik. “It will ferry the vehicles to the ice directly inland of Ammassalik, where you then drive them to the camp. The heavier stores and prefab buildings will be flown to the site. By the time you arrive, an advance team will have one building ready for your use while you erect everything else.”

  “Sounds like this is going to be one hell of a trip.” Mercer had always been fascinated by airships. They represented something special in the world of aviation, an evolutionary branch that was as elegant as it was short-lived. Modern materials and computer-aided design, as well as the use of nonflammable helium, were creating a minor resurgence in these flying behemoths. That flicker of anticipation he’d felt since arriving was burning a little brighter now.

  “Look.” Igor pointed to a road to their right, away from where the ocean was pounding Iceland’s black volcanic coast. “That is way to Blue Lagoon. Geothermal hot spring used as natural spa. Water in huge outdoor pool like lake. Very curative. I went yesterday with a few of the Germans.”