Pandora's curse

THE ICE SHEET ABOVE THE PANDORA CAVERN

The Geo-Research Bell Jetranger 414 flared into a maelstrom of ice and snow that its rotors had just kicked up. The impenetrable fog settled only after the blades began to slow, dusting the two idling Sno-Cats, a dozen men, and a cargo sledge stacked with the recovered Pandora boxes. The smaller box, found in the antechamber at the top of the air vent, was kept separate. The snow around the vent had been trampled flat by the frantic work to recover the golden chests. Nothing remained of the tunnel itself but a stain of dust that had belched from it when it had been dynamited. The men who had completed the work waited for the rotor-stat to come and carry the boxes away.

Klaus Raeder was sitting in the insulated Sno-Cat and hadn’t heard the chopper’s approach until it was nearly upon them. The flash of anger that jolted his body gave way to an eerie calm. There was no need for the chopper here. That meant Rath was about to make his play for the deadly hoard. For the tenth time in the past hour, he glanced into the cargo area behind the ’Cat’s rear seat. The two assault rifles used to sink the fuel drums in the cavern were safely locked into an integrated rack. Raeder stripped off his heavy glove and jammed his right hand into his snowsuit pocket, where he had the loaded automatic pistol he’d taken from his office. He’d had no problem sneaking the weapon out of Germany. Customs paid little attention to corporate jets.

He opened the vehicle’s door and stepped out. There was little wind, but the air was as clear and cold as crystal. Gunther Rath stood a short way off with Greta and the professional driver, Dieter. Before Raeder took two paces, a shadow passed overhead. He looked up. The rotor-stat had come over the crest of the mountains that divided the ice sheet from the sea, its bulk eclipsing the weak sun for a moment. It was an otherworldly sight, more befitting Titans than men. The four engine pods mounted on the side of her great white hull were larger than the Jetranger helicopter sitting insectlike in the snow.

The pitch of its airship’s engines changed as it began to slowly settle toward earth.

Raeder approached Rath. “What is the helicopter doing here?”

“The rotor-stat won’t be able to land out here without a mooring mast. We’ll attach her lifting cables to the cargo and then follow in the chopper as she heads out to sea to drop the boxes.”

“No.” Raeder wouldn’t pretend to go along with this charade. “I’m not going to let the Pandora boxes out of my control until I know they will be dumped. We are getting on the rotor-stat.”

“Klaus, she can’t pick us up without a mooring mast,” Rath said placidly. “We can watch from the chopper.”

The noise of the descending airship increased as she fell below the tops of the mountains, the drone of her power plants echoing off the rock. The downdraft from her rotors began to stir the surface snow.

Rath’s logic was reasonable. It was always reasonable, Klaus reflected. His special-projects director could find excuses for murder and torture and make it sound sensible, as if there was no other way. But there were always other ways — only it had been easier for Raeder to let Rath give in to his brutality. No more. Raeder had just a few minutes left. The boxes would slip from his grasp if the dirigible took off without him. “This is as far as I’m going to let you go, Gunther. Tell the airship pilot to pick us up.”

Raeder’s pistol came out in an easy maneuver, unwavering and deadly.

And then the gun was lying in the snow ten feet away and Klaus Raeder’s arm was numb from fingertips to elbow.

Klaus Raeder looked first at his limp hand and then at the gun and finally at Gunther Rath. Expecting the pistol to paralyze Rath, Raeder had not anticipated the lightning kick that sent the automatic flying. Rath stood implacably, a trace of a smile on his face as if inviting Raeder to dive for the weapon. He was closer by ten feet, but when he peered beyond Greta and Rath, Raeder saw that the workers who’d emptied the Pandora cavern had watched the one-sided confrontation. And each man was armed with either an assault rifle or a pistol. The guns in the back of the Sno-Cat weren’t the only ones Rath had brought to the area. Raeder realized too that he didn’t have the men’s loyalty. They were Rath’s.

“Klaus, I don’t blame you for trying to stop me. I think I would have been disappointed if you hadn’t.” Gunther picked up the fallen pistol and handed it to Greta.

Knowing he had been outmaneuvered, Raeder accepted temporary defeat. “What do you plan to do with them? No one will ever be able to build a bomb with the meteor fragments.”

“They don’t need a chain reaction, Klaus. Hitler’s plan was to load bits of it into V-2 rockets at Peenemunde and launch them at London. They were designed to explode a thousand feet above the ground and spread their radioactive payload over a tremendous area. Since much of London was rubble, the Pandora dust would have lain there undetected with all the other debris, silently poisoning an entire population. It was estimated that just six warheads would have killed every living thing in London within two months.

“It seems, though, that the U-boat used to transport the fragments must have been lost during the mining operation and an accident in the cavern killed everyone else. I assume Der Fuhrer lost interest in the proj ect then.

“However, in today’s world, the Pandora fragments have a certain value as a terrorist weapon. It’s less random than a chemical weapon, easier to maintain than a biologic one and unlike other radiation sources, it is completely untraceable. Just a few grams placed in, say, a busy subway station would consign every person walking by to a lingering death. As it decays, it creates its own shielding and can be removed safely. I can’t think of a better weapon for terrorism, can you?”

“You’re going to sell them?”

Rath looked pleased with himself as he replied, “I had three different bids to choose from. North Korea offered the most money, but I can’t see exiling myself to Pyongyang. Ditto goes for Iraq. I ended up accepting the Libyan offer since it’s close enough to Europe to sneak over occasionally.”

“What about your precious Nazi Party now? Are you abandoning them?”

“Who do you think gets most of the hundred million dollars?”

Thirty minutes later, the cargo pallet laden with the boxes was secured to the airship’s lifting cables. Raeder, Rath, and Greta Schmidt were in the back of the stripped-down Bell helicopter. The workers were already aboard the two Sno-Cats and on their way back to the temporary northern camp, where they would disassemble everything for the return to Camp Decade. Because the weight of the cargo approached her maximum limit, the rotor-stat had to first fly out over the ice sheet to build up aerodynamic lift before turning back for the coast. It took the dirigible twenty minutes to gain the thousand feet of altitude she needed to clear the mountains. Only then did the Jetranger take off with the smallest Pandora box resting between Rath and Raeder. Greta sat next to her lover, the confiscated pistol clutched on her lap.

Klaus Raeder twisted in his window seat to get a glimpse of the rotor-stat trailing the helicopter. The airship was sailing a half mile behind them and yet seemed ready to swallow the chopper. After being airborne for ten minutes, they were still over Greenland’s jagged coast of bays, inlets, and fjords. That was when Raeder saw the research ship Njoerd in a narrow bay two thousand feet below them.

He realized that the cargo would be transferred to the ship but didn’t understand why. He asked Rath.

“For one, we need the rotor-stat to return the Sno-Cats to Camp Decade. Also the airship tends to advertise her presence wherever she is. My plan is for the Njoerd to take the boxes to Tripoli while the rotor-stat returns to Europe for the completion of her test flights.”

A large area of deck behind the Njoerd’s superstructure had been cleared to receive the cargo of golden crates, and workers were preparing to guide the nets into position. The chopper swung wide to leave plenty of room for the ponderous dirigible as it descended toward the ship. Hovering a quarter mile astern and five hundred feet up, the pilot spun so that his passengers could watch the delicate placement of the cargo.

Suddenly, a portion of sea just fifty yards from the research ship came alive, as if the water was being boiled. Like Leviathan rising, a gray torpedo shape emerged from the swelling waves, rising into the air until a quarter of the vessel’s length was exposed. “Mein Gott!” Rath, Raeder, and Schmidt said at once. They recognized the antique U-boat at the same time and knew where it had come from.

Still bobbing on the swells of its own creation, the conning tower hatch crashed open and a figure emerged. Rath ordered the pilot in for a closer look, hoping it was Mercer who had exited the submarine first because some of his guards were already at the rail of the Njoerd armed with assault rifles.

Before Rath could discern the man’s features, winking lights shot from the weapons and the man vanished in