in the cold storage lab with Igor’s?”
“Yeah, that’ll be fine.”
“I just spoke with Erwin,” Ira continued. “The radios are still out, so there’s no word yet from the Air Force about the body you found in Camp Decade.”
“Another body?” Anika’s eyes bored into Mercer.
“An Air Force pilot lost in the 1950s. He’s still down in the camp where we found him.”
“I’d like to examine him.” Her voice had firmed as she came to grips with the past few minutes, regaining the professional edge she used in the emergency room.
“Camp Decade is sealed until we shore up some of the roof,” Marty said. “We feel it’s too dangerous to go down there.”
In an effort to impress her, Marty was trying to reclaim his control over the group by answering her request. Anika wasn’t fooled. She’d already realized that Philip Mercer was in charge of these men. She addressed him directly. “I would consider it a favor if you would let me examine him as well as the body of Igor Bulgarin.”
“I can let you see Igor, but the base is off-limits for a while.” He doubted her examination would detect that Jack Delaney’s corpse was radioactive, but until he had some answers, no one was getting near him.
When she was disappointed, Anika had the habit of sucking on her lower lip. While not a calculating gesture, it had a certain effect on men.
“Before the Air Force comes,” Mercer relented, “I promise you a chance to check him out.”
“Thank you. May I examine Dr. Bulgarin in a couple of hours? I’d like to get something to eat and then sleep for a while longer.”
Mercer rolled back his glove to look at the Tag Heuer slung around his wrist. “I’ll meet you right here at 2:30.”
Marty Bishop followed after Anika when she started off for the mess hall, leaving Mercer alone with Ira Lasko.
“What do you think, Ira?”
“I think that’s one tough little lady,” he said thoughtfully. “And I also think she’s one scared lady too.”
“I noticed that as well. Any guess why?”
“No idea.”
“This whole thing has been screwy since the word go. I shouldn’t be surprised that our latest addition is a mystery too.”
“Why does she want to examine Igor?” Ira asked. Mercer had no immediate answer. “I wonder if maybe she knows something about his death. Like why he was in Camp Decade when he shouldn’t have been.”
“How would she know that when we don’t?”
This time it was Ira’s turn to remain silent.
Yesterday, this trip had seemed like a great vacation for Mercer and he’d been enjoying himself. But since Igor’s death, that had all vanished and his frustration had mounted. He’d paid little attention to the small inconsistencies since his arrival here, and now they plagued him. He doubted that Anika Klein would shed any light on what was happening. In fact, her demeanor and requests added to his concern. “This trip is one snafu after another,” he muttered.
“Amen. You think the Danes are going to pull us?”
“I hope to God they do.”
GEO-RESEARCH STATION, GREENLAND
At the appointed time, Mercer saw Anika approaching the mess hall from the direction of the dormitories. She was bundled in a red one-piece Gore-Tex snowsuit with a hood pulled tight around her face. With her back to the wind, snow dusted the knapsack over her shoulder. For the past hour he had been sitting with the radio operator trying vainly to get a message out to Reykjavik. Other than static and a burst of conversation that sounded like it came from the
“How are you feeling?” he shouted over the wind.
“Fine. Let’s go.”
Mercer led her to the cold-temperature lab at the far end of the camp, first making sure she was clipped to the guide rope. The blowing snow swallowed their feet with each step, so they appeared like legless torsos gliding through the swirling ice. Once Geo-Research got geared up, the cold lab would house ice cores and snow samples. For now it held just the two bodies.
The building was made of plastic, with a couple of windows on each side. Drifts had grown on the windward flank, piling almost to the eaves, but the structure had been placed in such a way that the entrance was mostly clear of snow. Like all the buildings, there was a wide-bladed shovel clipped near the door, and after a few minutes of digging their path was cleared. Mercer didn’t need to worry about warmth escaping the lab, so he held the door for Anika to enter first.
He snapped on the overhead lights, long banks of fluorescents that provided plenty of light but generated little heat that could damage frozen samples. Under tarps at the far end of the room, two recognizable shapes were laid out on adjacent worktables.
Out of the wind, Mercer and Anika pulled back their hoods and shook snow off themselves. She ignored his gesture to sweep snow off her back in a rush to reach the bodies. The first tarp she drew back covered the pilot’s corpse, and after just a second she replaced the shroud. She already knew what had killed him.
She said nothing as she uncovered Igor, looking first at his ghastly white face before beginning to examine him with single-minded intensity. It was as if Mercer wasn’t there. Starting with his booted feet and moving upward across his still-clothed body, she ran her hands over every part of him. Mercer had no idea what she hoped to accomplish since the body was as stiff as the table beneath it. Because Igor’s mouth was open, she pulled a penlight from her knapsack and explored his teeth and gums, grunting when she saw something of interest.
“What is it?” Mercer asked.
“Russian dentists. These are the worst fillings I’ve ever seen. Igor had to have been in constant pain.”
She removed her thick outer mittens and replaced them with a pair of surgical gloves, probing his mouth with her finger. From deep in his throat she withdrew out a bit of frozen saliva mixed with snow. She studied it for a second before dropping it on the table. Without a proper lab to examine the material, it did her little good to keep it. Next she bent close to look at the deep scrapes on his nose and forehead, grunting again, but this time Mercer kept his silence.
He was fascinated by her. With her eyes narrowed and her brows pulled down in concentration, she looked like a child worrying at a particularly tough school problem. But she was an adult, examining a corpse, and he was captivated by the dichotomy of her appearance and profession. He imagined that she’d been underestimated many times in her life and pitied the people who did it.
Finished with Igor’s face, she ran her hands over his skull, pressing various points with her fingertips. “Can you give me a hand?” she asked without looking up.
“What do you need?” Mercer moved to her side.
“I want to roll him over.”
They did, and because Igor Bulgarin was so heavy and broad, it was like flipping a king-size mattress.
When Mercer retreated again, she combed aside the frozen knots of blood and hair at the base of his skull, tracing the wound with a finger. She scowled and reached into her bag for a magnifying glass. There was a palpable tension in her as she scrutinized the wound under the glass, her face so close to Igor’s head that her breath snaked through his hair like steam. After two minutes, Anika straightened and looked around the room intently.
“What did you find?” Mercer closed the gap between them, infected by whatever had so unsettled her.
She said nothing, moving by him to grab a crowbar left on another of the worktables. She looked at the piece of steel for a moment, feeling its weight, not caring that the metal was freezing her hand. Unsatisfied, she dropped it unceremoniously, and rummaged under the table, where more tools had been left in plastic crates. She came up
