The Explorer's Code (46 page)

Frost wanted to make sure Gardiner would pull through before he headed up to Oslo. After all, he was personally responsible for the incident. He should never have left Gardiner on his own in the airport. Only those few minutes late, and it had turned into a deadly mistake. Inexcusable.

Frost had immediately called Paul Oakley to come and help him. He knew the ropes at the hospital, even if this kind of toxic poisoning was not his specialty. True to his word, Oakley was there in a half hour. He hurried up the corridor, looking deeply upset.

“Thanks for coming so quickly,” Frost said. “When I called you, I didn’t realize you had met Gardiner. I was just hoping you could help cut through some of the red tape here at the hospital.”

“Yes, I know Gardiner,” said Oakley. “I met him when we were doing the exhumation at Cliffmere. We rode back to London together.”

“I was at Cliffmere also,” said Frost. “Although if you had seen me, I would not have been doing my job properly. I was in the shrubbery.”

“I had no idea all this was so dangerous,” Oakley said. “This attack is . . . well, I’m not sure Gardiner will recover.”

He looked gray with worry and his wire-framed glasses were slightly off-kilter.

“These people are killers. I shouldn’t have let him go to the airport alone. I was late,” Frost confessed.

Oakley’s eyes opened in surprise. He put his hand on Frost’s arm and spoke gently.

“You mustn’t blame yourself. In fact, you probably saved him. How in the
blazes
did you know the coffee was poisoned?”

“I smelled it.”

“You
smelled
it?” Oakley echoed, in disbelief.

Thaddeus Frost smiled a rare smile.

“Yes, I am cursed with an extrasensitive sense of smell. I am practically a human bloodhound.”

“What do you mean?”

Thaddeus nodded. “Mostly it’s a curse. In an airplane, I can smell an overdue diaper change twenty rows back.”

“How extraordinary!”

“Sometimes, for my botanical work, it’s very useful. I can smell natural scents that others don’t pick up.”

“Like your coffee beans,” said Oakley.

“And my orchids. Most people don’t realize they each have a unique scent.”

“That is absolutely
fascinating,
” said Oakley, who was starting to stare at him as if he were a potential subject for study.

“Of course, food is a horrible ordeal,” Frost went on to explain. “I can’t eat much. If the chef uses day-old fish or slightly overripe cheese, it’s awful.”

“I have never heard of anything like it.”

“I smoke to ramp it down, so I can cope. Smoking impairs your sense of smell,” Frost explained.

“Smoking will kill you.”

“I should be so lucky,” said Frost, looking at his watch. “Listen, I hate to do this, but I need to leave right away. I may have already missed the flight with a connection to Longyearbyen.”

“What about Gardiner?”

“Could you stay and monitor him?” Thaddeus asked. “There is a situation up in Svalbard.”

“Cordelia and Sinclair!”
realized Oakley, alarmed. “Of course. Are they all right?”

Thaddeus nodded. “For the moment.”

“
Go!
I will tend to Gardiner.”

Thaddeus Frost clapped Oakley on the arm and walked quickly to the elevator. His mind was already calculating what was necessary. He picked up his phone and dialed his contact in Norway. With this kind of body count, it was going to turn into a mess; he’d be up to his eyeballs in paperwork for months.

“I need an airlift to Longyearbyen today. I am getting in to Oslo too late to make the commercial flight,” Frost instructed. “Be ready to go as soon as I call. We can’t waste a moment. The situation is critical.”

He hung up the phone. It would be only a matter of hours until he reached Longyearbyen. He flagged a taxi in the rainy London street and headed to the airport.

As he sat in the backseat, Frost brooded. He hoped Sinclair had his wits about him. He seemed like a capable guy. Actually, with a little course work, Sinclair could be a top-notch operative. Well, trained or not, he was in the game, and it was getting more dangerous by the minute.

A
nna settled down into seat 6B on SAS flight SK 802 to Oslo. Nobody was following her. The poison must have worked. Evgeny would be pleased. She reviewed her options. Now that Vlad was out of the picture, helping Evgeny had real benefits—full partnership in the deal. When Moscow paid up, she would get 20 percent.

The Americans had Vlad in custody, the stupid fool. He had been picked up outside the house in Ephesus not twelve hours into his surveillance. Who knew what would happen to him.

She should have left him long ago. What a miserable husband. Her mother always told her, never marry for love—only for money. Of course, Evgeny was a difficult man, but at least he knew how to get things done. Sure, he was sexually deviant. But she had seen worse at the government-run school in Russia, like that dorm matron who would come at night to fetch her. Besides, there was no real danger. She knew how to act to make Evgeny think he had dominated her.

She checked her cell phone before turning it off for the flight. No messages. That was strange. Evgeny was supposed to call her. Here it was nearly noon and she still hadn’t heard from him. He should be at the Polar Hotel in Longyearbyen, as they had planned.

Her thoughts were interrupted. The stewardess was leaning over to ask her something.

“Coffee?”

Anna smiled and shook her head.

“No thank you, not right now.”

C
ordelia was wedged in between Charles and Erin in the backseat of the Land Rover; the gunman and the driver were in front. The gun muzzle was resting on the seatback, ready to pivot toward any one of them if necessary.

Erin sat stiffly next to her, not communicating, clearly planning an escape. But Charles reached over and took Cordelia’s hand and gave it a squeeze. His grasp felt warm and reassuring, a source of comfort. They didn’t dare speak.

The vehicle drew to a stop. Cordelia looked out the window. All around was barren mountainside and the glare of the Arctic sun. No sign of life or habitation. A steel door and a large industrial structure jutted out of the side of the mountain. It must be the seed vault.

“Get out,” one of the men ordered.

They climbed out meekly, anxious not to provoke him. The other gunmen got out of their vehicle, and they all congregated near the door. After a brief muttered conversation, three of the men went into the vault. The steel entrance door closed, and a single gunman remained, his weapon leveled at them.

Within seconds, Charles and Erin decided to take advantage of the situation, and started edging toward the gunman. It was clear they were going to try to rush him.

“Get back or I will shoot,” the man barked, swiveling his gun back and forth to cover the two of them. Charles and Erin, without a word, worked in tandem, and spread farther apart. That widened the angle he had to pivot to cover both of them. Cordelia watched as they moved with perfect teamwork, as if they had formulated a plan.

“Don’t move or I’ll shoot,” the man said, but he sounded frightened. Cordelia took a closer look at him. He was young, in his midtwenties. He didn’t
look
like a criminal. He was an American kid—fairly clean-cut, dressed in a rough Carhartt canvas jacket, and chinos tucked into hiking boots.

“Get back!”
he cried in panic.

Just then Cordelia had a flash of inspiration. She should leave another sign for Sinclair, in the hope that he was following them. Now was a perfect moment when the gunman was distracted. As Erin and Charles were closing in on the man, Cordelia stepped a few paces away and knelt down in the dirt, and picked up a sharp stone. She would draw the ichthus wheel Sinclair had shown her—the one carved in the marble in Ephesus. He would recognize it instantly. Scraping away at the dirt, she drew a circle, about a foot in diameter, and divided it into eight equal parts. Then she stood up, dusting her hands off on her slacks.

Erin and Charles were closing in, the gunman looking terrified, his back against the door of the vault. But just then the door slid open and the other men emerged from the vault with weapons drawn.

“Please don’t shoot,” Cordelia said, and stepped away from her symbol in the dirt.

The stolen Volvo was laboring up the mountain to the International Seed Vault. In his mind, Sinclair reviewed the message left in the dirt outside the museum:
S E E
. It
had
to be the seed vault.

As he drove, Sinclair dialed Frost’s number and got his voice mail.

“It’s Sinclair. We have a problem. Erin, Charles, and Cordelia were taken hostage. I think they’re in the seed vault, so I’m headed up there now. Come as quickly as you can.”

T
haddeus Frost sprinted across the tarmac. The Norwegian Air Force jet was ready, its engine screaming. As he approached, a uniformed officer came down the steps to meet him.

“Good evening, sir, we’re at your service.”

Frost didn’t break stride, and launched up the steps, shouting over the din of the engine.

“We have a hostage situation. Three people, maybe four. We believe they are being held in the seed vault. I need you to get me some backup immediately.”

The man’s eyes widened.

“And there are two casualties in Longyearbyen. Norwegians,” Frost continued.

The military officer nodded. “I’ll have the pilot radio the police at Longyearbyen at once.”

T
he industrial thermostat at the International Seed Vault was permanently set to maintain a steady temperature below freezing, somewhere between -10 degrees and -20 degrees Celsius. That was the ideal range to preserve the seed packets. But even if the cooling system failed, the Arctic mountain was a natural refrigerator—the seeds would still be protected by year-round permafrost.

Cordelia, Charles, and Erin sat on the floor, their hands and feet bound with duct tape. They could feel the bone-aching chill through the concrete. High aluminum shelves towered over them, each stacked with hundreds of black file boxes containing the seed packets. Their captors had left them unattended, placed several feet apart and bound up tightly. Although they were immobile, they could converse freely.

“You didn’t find anything in the museum?” Charles asked Cordelia.

“No, there was nothing on the ground floor. Just as we were going upstairs, John told me to leave.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. He saw something; he was very upset,” said Cordelia.

“Who
are
these people?” Erin broke in. “I can’t figure out who they are. Last night the ones who got us were Russians.”

“Judging by their accents, these are clearly Americans,” said Cordelia. “But I don’t know who they are. A group called Citizens for World Survival sent me a death threat when I was on the ship.”

“Why?” asked Erin.

“They want the vault to be neutral. They say that no country has the right to own it.”

“And the Russians?” Charles asked. “What did they want?”

“They wanted the deed,” Erin said. “But they’re out of the picture. They’ve been neutralized.”

Cordelia stared at her. “You
killed
. . . ?”

Charles caught Erin’s eye, frowning; he shook his head slightly. Erin understood his meaning.

Suddenly the door swooshed open and three gunmen came into the room. There was a long moment of silence as they stood at attention, as if waiting for someone to arrive. Then a large man entered.

Cordelia cried out in shock.
It was Bob! And Marlene waddled in after him.

“Howdy-do, Cordelia,” he said.

“What are
you
doing here?” she said angrily.

“Oh, honey, we’re so sorry, but we
had
to do this,” explained Marlene. “We had to stop you from giving the deed to anyone.”

“Why? What business is it of
yours
?”

Bob walked around looking at the seed boxes with interest. He spoke over his shoulder, not bothering to turn around.

“Will you look at all these seeds! Isn’t it funny, all these countries saving them up in neat little boxes.”

Anna got off the plane in Longyearbyen and checked her cell phone again. No message. How odd that Evgeny hadn’t called her. The last time they had spoken was sixteen hours ago.

She walked through the small airport in Longyearbyen and stepped outside. What a desolate place! Thank God there was a van waiting for passengers.

“Polar Hotel,” she told the driver. He took her suitcase and flung it in the back, and returned to the driver’s seat.

“You here for sightseeing?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “Such a beautiful spot. I just couldn’t stay away.”

The driver backed up, did a U-turn, and drove the short distance to the hotel.