get away with it. Because of the solar-max effect we can’t communicate with anyone, which means until I’m in Reykjavik I can’t get the answers I want. Geo-Research isn’t what it’s pretending to be, and Charlie’s the only person I know who can find out who they really are. And just because Igor was a virtual stranger doesn’t mean I won’t find the son of a bitch who murdered him.”
Mercer decided he would also contact Dick Henna. He hated using his friendship with the director of the FBI but since he was looking into a murder this was more than a personal request. If Bryce couldn’t find out what Geo- Research was up to, Henna certainly could.
“What are you now, a cop or something?”
“No. I just don’t hide behind my father while people are dying around me.” The fury in Mercer’s eyes made Marty look away guiltily. It wasn’t Bishop he was particularly angry with. In other circumstances he would agree with him. But this situation had Mercer on edge and anxious. Marty was just a convenient target to vent some of his bottled emotions. “You don’t want to come back, that’s fine. I am.”
“I’m with you,” Ira said, directing a long look at Marty.
He was silent for just a few seconds, but the change in him was profound. Mercer had hit his most vulnerable spot — his fear that he couldn’t live up to his father. The accusation stung. For his entire life, Marty Bishop had argued that he didn’t mind being under his father’s shadow, and he would have shrugged off Mercer’s comment. But for the first time he was prepared to face it and himself. Here was a chance to go beyond what was expected of him, and he wanted to take it. Shoulders squared, he met Mercer’s gaze and nodded.
“Looks like we’re both with you,” Ira remarked. Having shepherded many young recruits onto the path of responsibility, he poured a congratulatory dram from his flask into Marty’s coffee. That Bishop was learning this lesson at fifty and not twenty was fine — many people never learned it at all.
“Thanks.” Before they returned from Iceland, Mercer would tell Marty about everything — Elisebet Rosmunder’s warning, the radioactivity in Jack Delaney’s body, the stowaway on the chopper, and his own misgivings concerning Igor Bulgarin. He wouldn’t blame Marty if he recanted his decision to return to the base.
The front door blew open, and a bundled shape was propelled into the mess hall. It was Anika Klein. She shook snow off her parka and danced from foot to foot to remove her moon boots. After slipping on a pair of sneakers and filling a coffee cup at the urn, she came over to the table. “Looks like I came at a bad time.”
“We’re being kicked out of here,” Marty said.
She glanced at Mercer. “Because of the fire?”
He nodded. “You’re leaving too, along with Erwin and the others with him.”
“What? Why?” Her dark eyes went from sympathy to anger in an instant. “The fire has nothing to do with my work. They can’t make me leave. I paid Geo-Research nearly ten thousand dollars for my part of the expedition. I’m not going anywhere. Whose idea is this?”
“Greta claims it’s by order of the Danish government.”
“Is the radio working again?” she asked quickly.
“Not anymore.”
The communication gear in the corner of the mess had been abandoned. Geo-Research hadn’t posted an operator to listen if the constant static that had assailed them for days would lift. They had even locked the cabinet to prevent unauthorized use of the equipment. As Mercer studied the stack of electronics in the Plexiglas case, it occurred to him that only Geo-Research personnel had been around when any messages had come through. His jaw hardened.
“Ira, where’s the closest Sno-Cat?”
“The one I used to save you is parked between here and the main lab. All the others are out on overnight survey for Werner’s people.”
“Be right back.” Mercer stood and left the mess, donning his parka but not bothering with the cumbersome moon boots. His work boots would do for the thirty-yard walk.
He returned in a few minutes, carrying a pair of heavy bolt cutters from the Sno-Cat, strode right to the radio cabinet, and snipped the lock as though it were tissue paper.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“It just occurred to me that the radio only works when none of us are here. Could be a coincidence or maybe not.” He sat at the operator’s station and flicked on the main power switch. The set was state-of-the-art and came to life instantly.
One of the technicians who’d been on the DC-3 flight came over and grabbed Mercer’s shoulder. “You cannot do this.”
Mercer smiled disarmingly. “Won’t be a minute, I promise.”
“
The radio returned nothing but white noise. Anika came over and said something in German to the irate lab worker. A shouting match quickly developed. Mercer used her distraction to begin scanning frequencies. He had a minute at most, and every time the SCAN function paused at a frequency, static burst from the speakers. The Geo-Research technician saw and heard what Mercer was attempting and reached over to kill the power. He called to one of his own people. Mercer heard his name and that of Greta Schmidt. The other worker threw on his coat and raced for the door.
“I was done,” Mercer said, pushing back from the radio. “You didn’t need to send for your den mother.”
Something about this crop of Germans had bothered him from the time they stepped off the plane, and now he saw what it was. As scientists went, the man standing over him had to be the toughest he’d ever seen. Polar research was a hard field, but this guy looked more like a soldier than a lab rat. He was beardless, and his brown hair wasn’t much longer than a military buzz cut. He had wide shoulders, a deep chest, and a rather dim expression. He scowled down at Mercer as if inviting a physical confrontation. After a moment, the German spat a curse and walked away.
Mercer turned to Anika. “I assume he just insulted my manliness.”
“Yours and a few past generations’ also.”
“In case her walk back here hasn’t cooled her off, I’m going to my room before the Abominable Greta comes storming in.”
“I think we should all call it a night,” Ira agreed.
Their dormitory was on the opposite side of the mess hall from the one the senior Geo-Research people used, so they didn’t run into her. Mercer asked Ira to tell Erwin Puhl about the evacuation and walked down the building’s central hallway to his room. Once he’d decided he needed sleep, his exhaustion nearly overwhelmed him. His stamina had held him together through Anika’s autopsies, the fire, and the escape but he was at his limit.
For whatever reason, Geo-Research didn’t want anyone at their base and they were playing their final hand by forcing the two teams thrust on them to leave Greenland. Mercer was determined to learn why. He harbored the suspicion that this evacuation had nothing to do with the Danes. He wasn’t convinced that his failure to pick up any broadcasts meant the radio was being blocked by atmospherics. It could have been altered somehow to stop others from reaching the outside world. He was impotent until they reached Reykjavik.
There were no locks on the dorm room doors, so he pushed against his and crossed the threshold. He stopped dead. While not exactly torn apart, his quarters had been thoroughly searched. His bed had been stripped and the mattress pushed off its frame. The contents of his luggage lay strewn around the space. The Geiger counter was left on the single plastic chair as if the searcher had studied it before leaving.
Stunned, Mercer knew there was no way this was random. The vandals had been looking for something specific and he was sure they hadn’t found it. From a compartment in his wallet he removed the folded piece of paper he’d recovered from Jack Delaney. It was a map of sorts with accurate lines of longitude and latitude. In the center was a pencil drawing of the crashed C-97 and off to the left was another drawing of what appeared to be Camp Decade as it had been fifty years ago with a number of chimneys and air vents poking from the snow.
On the right side of the map was an X with a drawing of a man’s hook-nosed profile above it. The distance from the mysterious mark to the plane was given as twenty-eight kilometers in a direct magnetic heading of 187 degrees. If the map was done to any sort of scale, Delaney had walked nearly three hundred kilometers from the plane to Camp Decade on the same azimuth, an amazing feat of endurance. The only other item Mercer had that could interest anyone was the bundle of papers forwarded to him by Harry White, which he also carried in the inside cargo pocket of his parka. Because they were written in German, the only thing Mercer had managed to decipher from the pages was their authorship by a man named Otto Schroeder.
