Hot Ice (12 page)

Jason was holding the man’s head in his hands, trying to make him comfortable. “Who sent you?”

Blood-smeared teeth showed in the rictus of a smile. “For me to know, you to find out” was only partially audible.

Jason shook him. “Who?”

There was no reply.

Jason looked down into eyes staring into eternity.

Jason lay on his back, imprisoned by the rails of the bed. He had only a faint, dreamlike memory of being placed on a stretcher and loaded into a helicopter. Arriving was a total blank. But the bed, the room, the smells, and the IV drip in his arm left no doubt he was, in fact, in a hospital.

Woozy from the loss of blood, he thought he might even be hallucinating. The sounds of disembodied voices over the speaker system, the smells of disinfectant, the white-clad figures returned him to Walter Reed Hospital on that otherwise flawless late-summer day in 2001. For six frantic hours he had haunted the hallways, praying Laurin would be in the continuous stream of ambulances ferrying the injured from the smoking hole in the side of the Pentagon. In the next several days, a week, he was never quite certain, he had abandoned the normal functions of sleeping and eating, spending every hour at the entrance to the emergency room. The acceptance of reality came painfully, leaving him only the hope for recovery of the body, a chance to see Laurin one final time. Even that dire possibility faded. He was denied the grim satisfaction of a flower-covered casket, the commitment to the earth. His only solace had been the ring he wore on the gold chain around his neck. Memorial-service preparations and enduring the sympathy of friends failed to cure a void that, he was certain, would last forever no matter how hard he tried to fill it with alcohol and self-pity.

All of that came back to him in the semi-dream of delirium induced by loss of blood and analgesics. His mouth felt like it had been stuffed with cotton.

There was a face swimming above him, one vaguely familiar. The kindly and understanding hospital chaplain who had tried in vain to comfort him as the trickle of those who were injured but survived the blast dried up without Laurin? No it was … He struggled to put a name with the face.

“Can you hear me, Mr. Peters?”

The revelation came as though from on high: Harvor. Harvor the Commissioner of Police. “Loud and clear. Can you get me some water?”

“The doctors have removed the bullet from your shoulder. You are quite fortunate: a few millimeters over and you could be dead.”

Jason had never considered being shot particularly fortuitous. “Lucky me.”

“We have searched for the cell phone and the other items but they were not on the dead man’s body.”

Jason suddenly became aware that, other than the standard open-backed hospital shift, he was wearing nothing. If Harvor or his minions searched his clothes …

“I’d really appreciate some water.”

Harvor reached for a table beside the bed and poured water from a carafe into a paper cup. The sound made Jason run his tongue across dry, cracked lips.

Harvor held the cup in his hand. “Perhaps you have some idea where these things might be?”

Jason’s eyes were fixed on the cup. “Have you searched that rock formation?”

“Thoroughly.”

Jason struggled against the drugs to prop himself up on his elbows. The effort made his head spin and he feared he would black out. “The water …”

“Oh, yes, the water.”

The police commissioner proffered the paper cup. Jason emptied it in two swallows. He had never enjoyed anything more, even the single-malt scotch he favored, but it was like pouring water on desert sand: it seemed to evaporate in his throat.

He handed the cup back. “Another, please.”

Harvor set it down on the bedside table. “I’m not sure how much liquid the doctors want you to have, Mr. Peters. I’ll have to check. But first, we need to talk about the missing phone, that piece of string or whatever it might be, and the scrap of metal. Then there is also the matter of the pistol you were carrying in your bag when you arrived here in Iceland in addition to the one you took from the man who died. Normally, the penalties for possession of such a weapon are quite severe, but in view of the fact you saved my life, I have simply confiscated yours to be returned when you depart Iceland.”

Jason tried not to look at his clothes hanging in an open closet by the door. Why the police had not searched the pockets was a mystery, as was the reason he desperately wanted to keep the missing objects himself, to make them give up whatever answers they might hold, rather than turn them over to the police.

He could also see the small overnight bag he had brought on the plane to Iceland. With any luck at all, once they had found the Glock, they hadn’t rummaged through the bag’s contents. The knife, his specially designed blade, should still be in there. He might be without the Glock, but he was not weaponless.

Harvor was about to say something when a uniformed officer, face flushed with excitement, burst into the room. “Commissioner?”

Harvor replied in a language Jason did not understand, the tone implying annoyance at being interrupted. Jason did catch the name Karloff.

Ignoring the wave of vertigo, Jason sat up. “Something has happened to Karloff?”

Harvor gave him a curt glare. “Something indeed, Mr. Peters. Something that is police business.”

The commissioner followed the uniformed officer out of the room.

In seconds, Jason had the IV out of his arm and was trying, despite a wave of dizziness, to step into his pants. In less than a minute, he was fully dressed. He was gratified to find his pockets still contained the objects Harvor wanted. He bent over to tie his shoes and nearly passed out. The laces would have to remain loose for the moment.

Using the corridor wall for support, he stumbled his way toward the elevator. From the room numbers on the doors, he knew Room 430 would be one floor up. After what seemed eons, the elevator doors hissed open and Jason lurched inside and pushed “4.”

The doors parted, revealing a scene that could have come from an old Keystone Kops silent film: Police uniforms dashed about without apparent purpose. People in white lab coats shouted orders no one seemed to obey. The impression was of a fire drill where no one knew the location of the exits.

Jason grabbed the lapel of one of the white coats. “What happened?”

The woman looked at him as though he might have been the only person in Reykjavík who did not know. “Happened? Happened? The patient in 430 …”

Jason didn’t wait for a full explanation. Filled with dread, he shoved his way toward the room, ignoring a swimming head and legs that felt more like spaghetti than bones. At the door of the room, he slid past a protesting uniform and stopped.

What he saw brought burning bile to his throat. For an instant, he thought whatever he had eaten in the last twelve hours would find its way to the floor. Then he remembered he hadn’t eaten at all. Three of the room’s walls were decorated with an abstract pattern of red splatter now turning a rusty brown. Even the ceiling had spots of blood. Boris was face-up, his upper torso dangling from the bed’s blood-soaked sheets toward the floor like some malignant growth. Beneath his chin, a red-encrusted slash grinned obscenely, its crimson lips still dripping blood.

Judging from the mess, he had continued to struggle even after his throat had been cut.

“Mr. Peters!” Harvor was at Jason’s side. “You should be in bed, under observation, where you can be cared for.”

“Like Boris there?”

“Boris?”

“The man with the slit throat. Last I saw of him, he had a police officer outside his door.”

“The officer assigned seems to be missing,” Harvor replied stiffly.

I’m sure he is.

“You must return to your room!”

And wind up sliced and diced?

Obediently, Jason turned and left. He took the elevator down to his assigned room, where he made sure his shoes were tied, took the sweater from its hanger, and walked out of the hospital without notice. A cab took him to the airport, where the Gulfstream and crew waited.

He entered the small general-aviation passenger area and took out his BlackBerry to call Maria. At first he feared a possible lack of network coverage as Harvor had mentioned, but she answered on the second ring.

“I’m at the airport,” Jason informed her. “I think I got all the information about Boris I’m going to.”

There was a pause. Then, “Can you stay over another couple of days? Pier and I are just getting started on planning the expedition.”

From “Dr. Sevensen” to “Pier” in less than twenty-four hours? Not a good sign.

“Something’s come up. I need to leave.”

“You need to go somewhere else or you need to get out of Iceland?”

Damn, but she knew him too well.

“I promised you to avoid any violence …”

Explaining a bullet wound wasn’t going to be easy.

Her tone was wary. “Well, if you’re keeping your promise … Where is it you are going?”

Jason was caught flatfooted. He literally had no place to go. The villa at Ischia Ponte was definitely out. He was effectively homeless.

“Washington, briefly, and I’m not sure after that.”

“OK. I’ll call or text you in a day or so when I know for sure how much longer I’ll be here.”

How long did it take to plan a trip into a volcano’s crater? he wondered. The thing was probably no more than a single square mile.

He concluded the conversation just as the Gulfstream’s captain approached.

“All fueled up, Mr. Peters, ready to go. But I need a destination to complete the flight plan.”

Washington it was.

It took only a few minutes to complete the aircraft’s flight plan. As the Gulfstream screamed off the runway and turned southwest, Jason comforted himself that Harvor did not yet know he was gone.

He stuck a hand in a pocket, touching the phone. What made it and the accompanying twig and metal shard worth killing for? And by whom?

And what, if anything, had any of it to do with him?

Nothing.

He hoped.

He would have the twig analyzed along with the metal, take a look at what numbers or pictures were on the phone… . He reached for it and withdrew his hand. First he would shut his eyes for a few minutes.

The lack of sleep, the anesthesia and painkillers from the hospital, the loss of blood, all were making him drowsy.

He got up and made his way to the plane’s small but comfortable stateroom. Removing his shoes and gingerly struggling out of his jacket and the sling cradling the arm of his wounded shoulder, he sat on the side of the bed while he pulled down the collar of his shirt. The bandage on his shoulder was as pristine white as it had been in the hospital. No more bleeding. He stretched out, staring at the ceiling only a few feet from his head.

For the first time he could remember, Jason drifted off to sleep aboard an aircraft in flight, dreaming of figures in white carrying knives far larger than surgical scalpels and Laurin speaking with Boris.

The man who called himself Pedro spoke with a Slavic accent. His high cheekbones and blue eyes were not like any Latino whom Francisco had ever seen either. And his nose looked as though the man might have been a professional fighter: Flattened so that it covered a good part of his face. But jobs in Puerto Rico were hard to come by, and asking questions was discouraged, particularly inquiries as to exactly what Pedro and his ever-changing coworkers actually did.

The town house itself was also like none other Francisco had seen in the city. The exterior was normal enough, except for the fact its stucco was a pale blue rather than the muted reds, greens, and yellows favored by the other buildings, only one or two rooms wide, that sat along the curbs of the narrow blue cobblestone streets of Old San Juan sharing common walls.

That was not the only difference. The place had been modified far beyond what Francisco guessed was allowed by the strict rules of the city’s preservation council, a body dedicated to keeping as much of the sixteenth century intact as possible.

During Spain’s construction of the fortifications of San Juan beginning in 1539 and extending over the next two and a half centuries, the eighteen-foot-thick walls of the fortress guarding the harbor—San Felipe del Morro—and a number of storerooms and magazines had been built to facilitate the speedy delivery of provisions, powder, and shot to the fort’s garrison.

The English and Dutch had been a constant threat, mounting campaigns from their Caribbean colonies. Sir Francis Drake attacked in 1595, barely escaping when a cannonball pierced the cabin of his ship. Four years later, the duke of Cumberland succeeded in a land assault and siege against the city, only to retreat six months later when dysentery decimated his forces. In 1625, the Dutch sacked the city but were unable to breach del Morro’s walls.

After the fort fell into disuse at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War, the storage spaces honeycombing the city’s walls were deserted, available to squatters, beggars, or whoever chose to take them over. Soon, respectable facades were added, along with upper stories, and the former usages were forgotten.

Calle Luna 23 was such a house, with some notable additions. Instead of the blank wall at the rear that had been the inner part of the fortifications, a banquet-sized room had been carved out to accommodate a battery of computers and other communication equipment that Francisco did not recognize. He only knew they were connected to the third floor, an area forever locked off from the rest of the house. The shutters of the floor-to-ceiling windows facing the street were steel rather than wood and were never opened, not even in the evening when every house in the old town was wide open in hopes of catching the breeze that would dissipate the damp mustiness of the air-conditioning that made Old San Juan habitable this time of year.

At the moment, Francisco was finishing sweeping the stone floor. His cleaning job was as mysterious as everything else here. First, the floor was littered with cigarette butts. Not the usual filtered Marlboros or Winstons sold at the bodega across the street, but cardboard-tipped, foul-smelling things with black tobacco. Francisco had never seen such a brand elsewhere in Puerto Rico. Where had they come from? Then, his first task each of the three days a week he came to clean was to empty a large wicker basket of shredded paper into the municipal garbage bin down the street. What was so important, so secret, that it needed to be shredded? Finally, there was the third floor. The door from the stairs was always locked and secured by a chain. Apparently no cleaning was required there. What was so valuable that it had to be locked away? And who were the men who came to and went from Number 23? None of them appeared to be Latino; almost all looked Slavic like Pedro. They spoke a rough language Francisco could not understand, even though he had taken several language courses before a slumping economy had forced him to drop out of the university at Ponce on the southern side of the island. They did occasionally speak English, particularly over the cell phones they all carried. But the speech was always oblique, never referring to anything Francisco was aware of. He surmised that the words they said stood for something else, a code.