in a few hours.” Ira’s expression soured. “It’s my fault. I never should have let them come down here alone. Marty doesn’t have the common sense of a Boy Scout.”
“He said you were fixing one of the Sno-Cats.”
“Greta grabbed me at breakfast. Said they needed help with a clogged fuel injector. Dieter and a guy named Fritz are still working on it. What happened here?”
“Hanging wall let go.” Mercer used a mining term for the roof. Then he swept the flashlight to show where the ceiling had collapsed. “Igor was right underneath it. When the snow came pouring in, it looks like a chunk of ice caught him in the head. He didn’t have a chance.”
“This place has been pretty secure for fifty years. What could have caused it?”
“We did,” Mercer answered.
“Come again?”
“We caused it. The climate down here had been stable until we entered the base. By us moving around and the heat we gave off by working and breathing yesterday, it’s likely that the ice above this area shifted just enough to rip through the roof.”
“So Igor was in the wrong place at the wrong time?”
“Yes.”
“What was he doing down here in the middle of the night?”
“I heard him leave his room, and I think it was more like early morning than late night,” Mercer corrected. “But I didn’t know he was coming down here, nor do I know why.”
“He could have come down anytime he wanted with one of us,” Ira remarked. Like Mercer, he’d seen too much death to be rattled.
“Doesn’t make sense,” Mercer agreed absently, noticing that Igor Bulgarin’s arms were stretched out in front of him as though he’d been walking with his hands touching the ceiling. He wondered if that was an important detail and decided it probably wasn’t.
“The body?”
Mercer looked at Ira, understanding what he was asking. “It’s possible he wanted to check it out, but why would Igor be interested in a dead pilot? And why come down here secretly?”
“Booze?”
“That was my first thought,” Mercer said sadly. He didn’t like to think the worst of Bulgarin. “Maybe he didn’t want anyone to know he’d fallen off the wagon, so he came here to get drunk.” He bent to pat down the body, but couldn’t feel the distinctive shape of a bottle. “Could be he stashed it someplace when he decided to leave.”
“Lot of ground to cover to prove it.”
Mercer flashed the light down the tunnel to make certain Marty hadn’t returned yet. He felt that Ira, with his experience on submarines, could handle what he was about to say, but he wasn’t sure about Marty. He spoke in a low voice. “We’ve got another problem too. It’s not important why, but I brought a Geiger counter with me from Iceland.” He paused, waiting for a reaction.
Ira made a gesture with his hand for Mercer to continue. Mercer was correct about the former Navy man. Nothing got to him. “When we were using the radar sled, I also made a radioactivity map of the facility. None of the radiation I detected was dangerous. It was mostly ambient background noise, but there was an area that spiked a bit. I assumed it was where the old reactor had sat. On another hunch, this morning I compared the radar sled readings to those from the Geiger counter and found that the spike occurred over the room with the pilot’s body, nowhere near the old reactor site.”
That got a reaction. “The body’s hot?”
“Call it warm, yeah.” Mercer nodded. “Just enough to tickle the counter now, but back when he died he would have been glowing like a neon sign.”
Ira knew that radioactive contamination didn’t cause a person to physically glow but he understood what he was saying. He looked at Mercer skeptically. “You’ve got some pretty accurate hunches.”
Mercer shrugged and told him about Elisebet Rosmunder and her son’s search for the downed C-97 and his subsequent death from cancer. “I guess you could call it more of a warning than a hunch,” he concluded.
“If there was something that radioactive on the plane, the government wouldn’t have stopped until it was found,” Ira said after giving the problem a moment of thought. “There was quite a flap when the Air Force lost a couple of nukes from a bomber off the coast of Spain in 1966 and again when an armed B-52 crashed over in Thule in 1968. I remember for that one they hauled off nearly a million cubic feet of ice, snow, and debris. No, the Air Force would have moved heaven and earth to locate that plane and clean up any spill.”
Mercer regarded Lasko for a minute. “You could be right. I don’t know. But the evidence suggests that the C-97 was carrying radioactive material that leaked when the plane crashed, poisoning Jack Delaney and later killing Stefansson Rosmunder.”
“So what do we do?” Ira asked.
“Finish unburying Igor and bring his body to one of the cold laboratories and then try to contact the Air Force again. Maybe the communications are back up.”
“What about Delaney?” Ira turned, hearing someone approaching down the corridor. It was Marty.
“We’ll keep that to ourselves,” Mercer said quickly. “The body’s not hazardous to handle, but until we hear from the military, he should be off limits.”
“Agreed,” Ira said out the corner of his mouth before addressing Bishop. “Bern okay?”
“He took some aspirin and is asleep right now.” Marty Bishop looked ravaged by guilt. His eyes were dull and he spoke as if each word caused him pain. “Mercer, ah, listen, I, ah… It was my idea to bring the generator down here. This whole thing wouldn’t have happened if I had talked to you or Ira first. I nearly got us killed.”
“You’re right,” Mercer said mildly, not letting Marty flinch from his responsibility. “It was a stupid thing to do and you two were lucky. This hallway is probably still full of fumes, so for the next twenty-four hours I want the entire facility off-limits.”
Mercer caught Ira’s eye, making sure he would agree with the lie. The base would be safe in just a few hours.
“That’s a good idea,” Lasko agreed. “That should give us the time we need to notify the Air Force too.”
“Okay,” Marty said. “I think I’m going to lie down for a while myself. I feel like shit.”
“Go on ahead. We’ll take care of Igor.”
Two hours later, Igor Bulgarin’s body had been placed in one of the cold laboratories. Mercer and Ira had also wandered through Camp Decade, looking for evidence that the Russian had gone there for a drinking binge. Other than some old bottles hidden fifty years ago in the enormous garage, they found nothing. Neither man was surprised. There were tens of thousands of square feet of rooms and passages and closets where Igor could have hidden an empty liquor bottle. Giving up, they used a length of chain and a padlock from the Sno-Cat to secure the base’s main doors. No one would be able to enter Camp Decade without them knowing it.
Mercer and Ira met up with Erwin Puhl in the mess hall. The German scientist was still in shock over Igor’s death. He sat in an almost catatonic state, his eyes unfocused and unblinking. He hadn’t even bothered removing his parka or gloves. A cup of coffee in front of him had gone cold. The only words he’d spoken were, “My brother.” It was obvious that he and Igor were a lot closer than anyone thought. He seemed inconsolable.
Greta Schmidt was at the back of the hall, speaking with some of her people. After an appropriate amount of time had passed, she approached the table.
“Dr. Puhl?” Erwin looked up into her blue eyes. The juxtaposition of her vibrant beauty and his desolation was unsettling. “I just learned how long you and Dr. Bulgarin have known each other. It is a terrible thing to lose a friend. I am very sorry for you.”
Erwin said nothing but continued to stare at her. His lower lip quivered. She placed a hand on his shoulder. “As soon as we reestablish communications with the
“St. Petersburg,” Erwin said softly. “He was from St. Petersburg.”
“Yes, of course. How could I have forgotten?” She glanced at Ira and then her gaze settled on Mercer. “Is it safe for your people to be working in Camp Decade?”
“It will be,” Mercer replied. This was the first sign of any tenderness he’d seen from her, and it was surprising. “I’ve closed it for twenty-four hours to let the gas fumes dissipate and to let the avalanche that struck Igor settle. Tomorrow we’ll go back in and shore up the ceiling where glacier movement has weakened it.”
