Pandora's Curse - v4 (31 page)

“How is that possible? The airship is under tight flight guidelines until it receives its certification.”

“Because it’s owned by one of Kohl’s subsidiaries. We can do anything with it we want. It should be here in another couple of hours. There actually is a fog prediction for this area that’ll last for at least a day, so moving a building and the ’Cats is going to be tricky. It should be a good demonstration of the airship’s capabilities. With the Surveyor’s Society out of the way, we have two and a half weeks until their replacements arrive and we have to return everything back here.”

“Damn Danish government,” Dieter said. He was actually a longtime Kohl employee. “If they hadn’t amended our permit, none of this would be necessary. We should have fought them harder when they told us to move our operation to Camp Decade to accommodate the Americans.”

“If we’d argued they might have barred us from Greenland completely.” By his tone it was clear Rath didn’t want to debate the point again. “Pressure against Kohl in Europe is mounting. We have to find the cavern.”

Werner didn’t want to hear how the recent buyers of Geo-Research had perverted his company for their own ends. He had agreed to sell at the overvalued price because Rath and a battery of Kohl lawyers had assured him that Geo-Research would continue to operate as it had in the past. He was told they would do nothing to damage the hard-won reputation he’d built for clear scientific research.

That promise had lasted until this mission, just one year later. Trapped now by a moment of greed, he and Geo-Research were being corrupted by Gunther Rath and his boss, Klaus Raeder, for a mission Werner didn’t fully understand. He had no idea why they were searching for a cavern or what was inside. Nor did he care. He just wanted the operation to be over so they would give him his company back and leave him alone.

“Werner, you don’t look well,” Rath mocked.

“I was just thinking how glad I’ll be when you are gone.”

“It won’t take us long. Once we finish clearing out the cave, our interest in Geo-Research is over. Your company will continue under the Kohl umbrella but in a much less hands-on role.”

“What happens if you don’t find the cavern before the next team of researchers arrives from Japan?”

“For their sake, let’s pray we do.” Rath looked out the window in the direction the DC-3 had vanished. “Go make preparations to move a dorm building and Sno-Cats.”

Bern Hoffmann was stationed in the communications alcove, a pair of sleek headphones covering his ears. He’d just finished rewiring a couple circuit boards and was replacing an access panel at the back of the set. Rath walked over and touched his shoulder to draw his attention. “Have you fixed our solar-max problem?”

“Just about, Gunther.” While he used Rath’s Christian name, there was subordination in Hoffmann’s voice. Like most of the people at the base, he was actually part of Rath’s security force. “There are legitimate atmospheric problems, but nothing like what we led the Surveyor’s Society to believe. We can communicate with the
Njoerd
just fine.”

“And you’re sure the plane’s radios are dead?” While the pilots were outside the aircraft, Rath had watched as the young technician sabotaged the radios.

“I doubt the pilots will realize they’ve been wrecked until they’re halfway to Iceland.”

“Which is as far as they’ll get.”

Anika’s statement extinguished any anger Mercer had been harboring. Even when they were facing the fire in Camp Decade, he hadn’t seen such naked fear. She was like a raw nerve, exposed and pained. By admitting that she had searched his room, he no longer had a reason to doubt her. She hadn’t gotten the name Otto Schroeder from him, which meant she had additional information from another source, information that he needed. He said nothing, studying her with his depthless gray eyes, a patient, nonjudgmental scrutiny that invited her to continue. Emotion continued to play across her face as she struggled to regain her composure. He knew she was deciding how to overcome her natural suspicion and take him in her confidence.

Only the forward half of the DC-3’s open cabin had seats. The rear portion was given over to cargo, which lay under mesh netting secured to eyebolts in the floor. Mercer and Anika were in the rearmost seats. Forward sat Marty and Ingrid, who were talking with their heads almost touching. Ira was a couple rows behind them, looking around nostalgically, obviously transported to another time and place by the utilitarian aircraft. The remainder of the passengers either stared out the square windows or had already settled in to a book.

“Anika, please,” Mercer said as gently as the rattling aircraft would allow. “I think between the two of us we know what’s going on, but alone we know nothing. We have to share if we’re going to figure out who killed Igor and why.” He had already assumed a connection between Bulgarin’s murder and Otto Schroeder’s.

Anika looked into his face, searching for the strength she hoped he possessed because hers was gone. Everything had come full circle too quickly. Hearing Schroeder’s killer outside just now had abolished any desire she had for justice. She wanted to run from all of this, to go to Vienna to be with her
Opa
. He would know what to do.

“I hadn’t heard of Otto Schroeder until I opened the package from Germany,” Mercer continued, his gaze never leaving Anika’s eyes although the plane pitched and vibrated. “I was warned by an e-mail before I left the States that something was being sent. I had no idea what it was. I still don’t. This journal Schroeder sent me is written in German.”

“You haven’t read it?” Anika asked. It was a neutral question, one that gave nothing away.

“I can barely read English,” Mercer joked, but Anika didn’t respond. “All the German words I know are either food related or naughty.”

“What did that man say when you got on the plane?” There was a sudden urgency in her voice. She had a premonition that this wasn’t the time to compare notes. Not yet anyway. There was a more pressing issue. There were now two murderers at the base camp, and she was beginning to see conspiracies behind everything.

“He told me his name is Gunther Rath and wished us a good flight.”

“We don’t have time to go into the whys, wheres, and hows but that man put a bullet in my leg last week and presided over the torture of Otto Schroeder, an old soldier I was interviewing for my grandfather. Just before Schroeder died, he mentioned your name and said you were someone who could help. It can’t be a coincidence that you, me, and Rath are in the same place at the same time. We’ve all been manipulated.”

“Does Rath know Schroeder was going to send me something?”

“No, he’d been driven away by snipers.”

Mercer’s eyes widened. “Remind me to ask you the whole story sometime. Rath probably didn’t recognize you because everyone looks the same under ten layers of clothes. Yet you still think he’s a threat.”

“Don’t you?”

Mercer did, but he didn’t know how immediate a threat. It wasn’t a great leap of deductive reasoning to guess that Rath was working with Igor Bulgarin’s killer. Greta Schmidt? Possibly, but unimportant right now. He put himself in their position and knew the murderers’ first priority would be to eliminate all traces of the crime. The physical evidence, Igor’s body, lay unguarded at the base. And the only two people who had firsthand knowledge of the killing were on the same antique plane. With another convenient fire in the cold laboratory and a plane crash, the killers would be in the clear.

Mercer didn’t forget that Gunther Rath had been on the DC-3 while the pilots were peeing in the snow. And then he remembered Rath mentioning Elisebet Rosmunder. He unstrapped his seat belt and ran for the cockpit. If his sudden hunch was wrong, no harm done, but if he was right…

Taped to the bulkhead was a manila envelope. He tore it away from the wall. Unsealing it with trembling fingers, he tipped out the contents. Photographs. The first was the shot of Mrs. Rosmunder’s son, Stefansson, before his ill-fated trip to Greenland. The second was the one a nurse took shortly before his death. And the third picture, Mercer balled in his fist after just a glance. The bullet hole in the old woman’s forehead was like an obscene third eye.

The rage began someplace deep inside, and he let it come, let it grow until it filled every fiber and nerve. He vibrated with it. For long seconds he allowed it to consume him like an internal fire, waiting for that moment of transmutation when rage became hate. And it came too, sharper than any he’d felt before. Unfocused anger was corrosive, worthless, but the hate was a weapon he could control. The ability to harness it was the gift that had allowed him to face so much ugliness in the past without destroying his soul.

He looked down the length of the cabin, knowing that his responsibility lay here. His revenge for Mrs. Rosmunder’s murder would come once he was sure these people were safe.

The door separating the cockpit from the rest of the plane was open. Out the windscreen, Mercer could see that the black ocean far below them was dotted with icebergs, as murderous a sea as he’d ever seen. The pilots were both young Icelanders dressed in vintage-looking bomber jackets.

“Have you been in touch with anyone on the radio?” Mercer asked, his voice calmer than it had any right to be. If communications had been intentionally blacked out at the camp, he was sure Rath would have interfered with them here too.

“Sir, you should be in your seat,” the copilot said automatically. “This crate wasn’t designed for stability.”

“Just tell me if your radios work.”

Mercer’s urgency prompted the pilot to dial Reykjavik tower. “Papa Sierra 11 to Reykjavik, come in please.” The headphones he wore prevented Mercer from hearing the reply but when the pilot repeated his call he knew there hadn’t been one. The pilot tried a third time before dialing another station and then another and another. His glance at his copilot told Mercer everything he needed to know.

“The radios are dead, aren’t they?”

“Could be the solar-max effect. We’ve been having problems for a while.” The attempted reassurance sounded flat.

“Don’t bet on it,” Mercer replied grimly. “How far are we from Iceland?”

“About two hours with this head wind.”

Mercer doubted they had that much time. “Not an option. What’s the closest airport?”

“Kulusuk is a bit closer, but we’re flying northeast to avoid a storm front we were told about at your research base. In a few minutes Iceland will be closer.”

The trap had been set and they’d flown right into it. There was no storm. It was another fabrication, like the Danish evacuation order.
Okay, Mercer, think. They didn’t have time to damage the engines or contaminate the fuel supply, so how would you crash a cargo plane with perhaps the greatest safety record in history?

The answer was as obvious as it was chilling.

A bomb.

“There’s no storm front,” he said, forcing the terror out of his voice. “Keep on course for Iceland, but be prepared to turn back because we may not have the time.”

Mercer returned to the cabin and prodded Ira, who had slumped against a skeletal frame member as if it were a pillow. “Wake up. We could have a problem.”

“Stewardess forget your drink?”

“I think there’s a bomb on the plane.” Mercer didn’t care that the others heard him. They would know soon enough.

Their search was systematic and quick. After checking under all the seats and behind any removable panels in the cockpit and cabin, they began shifting the stacks of cargo in the rear of the plane. Marty and Anika were helping by this point while everyone else had been ordered to their seats, their frightened stares never leaving the searchers.

Mercer unhooked the netting over the last cargo pallet, a neatly stacked pile of boxes at the very rear of the hold. The cabin’s heaters couldn’t overcome the chilling drafts, and yet he was covered with sweat. It felt like a lead weight had settled in his stomach. He checked each box thoroughly before lifting it from the stack to hand to Ira. Had the bomb been motion activated, the plane would have exploded as soon as it began moving across the ice, so his biggest concern was a booby trap around the device.

Ira and Anika were carefully examining the tape seals on the boxes to see if any had been opened but they hadn’t found anything. Mercer reached the last carton. He nearly missed the filament of wire running from a tiny hole in the cardboard to a bulkhead, where it had been glued to the steel. It was an anti-tampering wire designed to detonate the bomb if the box was moved.

“Got it!” he called, both relieved and sickened.

The tape on the box’s lid had been slit open. Ira held the box steady while Mercer lowered himself until the top of the carton was at eye level. Gingerly he opened one flap, mindful that there could be another trip wire attached to its underside. It appeared clear, so he opened the other side. Anika gave a startled gasp, and he nearly jostled the box.

Rath had made a hollow in one corner of the container by removing a bundle of paper towels. In their place was the bomb. It consisted of six dynamite sticks bundled with tape and a high-tech detonator held in place by wires and more tape. The trip wire attached to the plane disappeared into the side of the activator, so Mercer couldn’t tell how it was pretensioned. Cutting the wire or moving the bomb could conceivably obliterate the plane.

The LED numbers spinning backward in a window at the top of the device read sixty-eight minutes, twelve seconds. Eleven seconds. Ten seconds.

“You can deactivate it, right?” Anika asked hopefully. “You’re a mining engineer. You know all about explosives.”

“Ah, no.” Mercer’s voice caught in his throat, and he had to swallow heavily to clear it. “I don’t know the first thing about bombs. Ira, any suggestions?”

“Land.”

“Marty, go tell the pilot we have a bomb on board and we’ll never make it to Reykjavik. Have him turn back to Greenland.”

“What happens when we return to the Geo-Research camp?” Anika asked. “Rath’s trying to kill us now. What’s to stop him from just doing it later?”