Blood and Ice

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

December 29, 2:45 a.m.

When the cabin lights flickered on and the pilot announced that they should prepare for landing, Michael downed the last of his Scotch and looked out the window.

Even at that hour, Miami was ablaze with long, sparkling grids of light that only stopped at the black shore of the ocean.

The flight attendant took his plastic cup and empty bottle. The guy who'd been sleeping in the aisle seat roused himself, and stowed away the laptop he hadn't worked on for hours. He'd told Michael he was a “resource specialist,” whatever that meant, for some American company building a telecom network in Chile.

Michael hadn't slept a wink-in days. Even now, all he could think of was what lay in the hold of the plane.

The guy on the aisle said, “What are we? Only four hours late?”

Michael nodded. Every extra hour, every delay, had been excruciating.

At least clearing customs in the middle of the night went faster than usual-until Michael mentioned that he had been traveling with human remains and needed to know where to go to claim them.

“I'm sorry for your loss, sir,” the customs agent said. “Make a left on your way out and report to the international cargo desk. They'll be able to help you.”

At the cargo desk, a kid in a blue uniform, who didn't look like he should be up this late, slowly combed over the NSF forms provided by Murphy and the medical documents drawn up by Charlotte, while Michael struggled not to show his impatience. He knew he had to keep cool and do nothing to draw any attention. The kid called over a more senior employee; the laminated tag hanging around the guy's thick neck identified him as Kurt Curtis. After verifying the paperwork himself, and rechecking Michael's passport and ID, he said, “Sorry for your loss, sir.”

Michael wondered how many more times he would have to hear that.

Curtis picked up the phone, punched a button, then muttered a few words with his back to Michael. He grunted “yeah” three times, then turned around and said, “If you'll follow me, I'll escort you to the cargo transfer station.” Pointing at Michael's duffel bag, he said, “Don't forget to take that.”

Outside, the Miami night hit Michael like a hot, wet towel. Get used to it, he told himself. For Eleanor, life in snowy, sleety Tacoma would be an impossibility. Curtis wedged himself into the driver's seat of the cart, while Michael tossed his duffel into the back and sat beside him. It must have rained in the past hour or two-the tarmac was wet, and there were puddles an inch deep here and there. A taxiing jet blew a foul tornado of even hotter air at them, and the roar of its engine was deafening. Curtis took no notice, but steered the cart past a row of terminals and into a vast open hangar where a van marked MIAMI/DADE COUNTY CORONER was parked. A petite woman in black trousers and a white blouse was leaning against the door, smoking a cigarette. She looked up when Michael grabbed his duffel and got out of the cart. Curtis did a wheelie and left.

“You're Michael Wilde?” she said, dropping the cigarette on the concrete floor. “I'm Maria Ramirez. Erik Danzig's wife.”

Michael extended his hand, and very nearly said he was sorry for her loss.

She looked at him closely, with dark eyes, and said, “Long trip, huh?”

He suspected he looked like crap, and she had just confirmed it. “Yes. It was.” He couldn't keep himself from looking around. Where was the body bag? Had it already been delivered, or was it still in transit somewhere?

“If you're looking for the bag, it's already in the van.”

“It is?” His heart nearly leapt out of his chest, and his reaction did not escape Maria's notice.

“So,” she said, crushing the still glowing cigarette butt under one shoe, “before we have to drag in the police, the FBI, the INS, or whoever, maybe you want to tell me something?”

He had been rehearsing for this moment for days, wondering how he was going to tell her his story, but now that it was on him, all he wanted to do was throw open the doors of the van and rescue Eleanor.

“First of all,” she said, “I don't know who's in that bag-I haven't opened it-but I know it's not Erik. He's about a foot taller, and a hundred pounds heavier, than whoever that is.”

“You're right,” Michael said. “It's not Erik.”

Maria looked surprised at his immediate capitulation. “Then where is he?”

Michael lowered his head and said, “You're going to have to bear with me, because what I'm about to tell you is strictly prohibited by the NSF” And then he launched into his story, reminding Maria that she'd said Danzig-Erik-was never happier than he was at the Pole, and how he would have wanted to be buried there. Michael confessed that he had been. “But we would have caught hell for doing it, so I couldn't let you know about it until I could tell you here myself, privately, in person.” Then he reached under his shirt collar and pulled the walrus-tooth necklace over his head. When Maria saw it, her eyes welled with tears. “I know he would have wanted you to have this,” Michael concluded. “He always wore it.”

Clutching the necklace in her hand, she turned and walked a few yards away, her head down, shoulders heaving.

Michael waited, feeling his shirt sticking to his skin and his long hair plastered to the back of his neck. It was all he could do not to break into the van, but there were other people not far off- mechanics and a couple of baggage handlers-and he knew he needed to hold on just a little bit longer.

Maria composed herself and retrieved a clipboard from the dashboard of the van. The necklace was hanging around her neck when she returned.

“Okay, so thank you. Erik got what he would have wanted. I owe you one.” Handing him the clipboard, she said, “Sign at all the places I've put an X”-there were at least a dozen-and when Michael had finished, she tore off a couple of countersigned copies and handed them to him. “Now it's official. Erik came back.”

“Thanks.”

“But that still doesn't tell me who's in the bag.”

Michael knew that this was going to be the really hard part of the sell. Who would believe it?

“A friend of mine,” he said. “Her name's Eleanor.”

“You mean, was Eleanor.”

“No, she's alive.”

Maria stopped and looked at him appraisingly as if trying to decide if she should reconsider everything else he had just been telling her. “Not in that bag, she's not. Not all the way from the South Pole, in cargo holds.”

“She is,” Michael said, taking Maria by the hand and all but dragging her toward the rear of the van. “Please let me go in and get her.”

One of the baggage handlers looked over at them curiously.

“Mother of God,” Maria said, “are you nuts? What the hell happens to you people down there?”

But she didn't stop him when he opened the back doors, climbed inside, and pulled them closed again.

The bag was laid on a metal shelf and held in place by two canvas straps. Michael hastily untied them, whispering, “I'm here, I'm here,” all the while. But there was no sound from inside the bag.

He grabbed the zipper at the top-the one he'd mangled just enough so it wouldn't completely close-yanked it down and pulled the flaps to either side.

Eleanor was lying as still as death, her arms at her sides.

“Eleanor,” he said, touching her face with the tips of his fingers. “Eleanor, please, wake up.”

He put his head close enough to feel her breath on his cheek. Cool breath, not warm. Her skin was cool, too.

“Eleanor,” he said again, and this time he thought he saw her eyelids flutter. “Eleanor, wake up. It's me. Michael.”

A troubled look crossed her face, as if she resented being disturbed.

“Please…” he said, placing his hand on hers. “Please.” Unable to resist any longer, he bent down to kiss her. But then, remembering Darryl's warning, he put his lips to her eyelids-first one, then the other-instead. It wasn't how he would have chosen to awaken his Sleeping Beauty… but it was enough.

Her eyes opened, staring straight up at the roof of the van, then shifted toward Michael. For a second, he was afraid she hadn't recognized him.

“I was so afraid,” she said. “Afraid that if I opened my eyes, I'd be back in the ice.”

“Never again,” he said.

She lifted his hand from hers and cradled it against her cheek.

Maria Ramirez made him swear on all that was holy that he would never tell anyone how this strange woman had illegally entered the United States, and Michael made her swear in turn that she would never divulge the true fate of her husband's remains. Then, driving through the muggy night, Maria dropped them off at a little hotel she knew on Collins Avenue, a block from South Beach.

“When we need to bring in a forensics expert from out of town,” she said, “it's where we put them. Nobody's ever complained.”

Michael took Eleanor up to the room, turned on all the lights, and started filling the tub for her. The moment the bathroom door closed, he thought he heard a low sob from inside. He was torn between knocking and trying to comfort her, or simply letting her emotions run their course. How could anyone have endured all that she had endured-in the past day or two, or in the centuries that preceded them-without breaking down at some point? And what could he say that would be of the slightest help?

Instead, he went back downstairs and convinced the elderly woman at the front desk to open the boutique shop for him so he could buy a sundress-the most demure he could find, a gauzy yellow cotton with short sleeves-and some sandals. The woman, who'd looked at Eleanor like she was dressed in a Halloween costume, understood, and even threw a couple of other items onto the pile. “Bloomers won't work under that,” she said, laconically.

When he got back to the room, he rapped on the bathroom door, then inched it open and dropped the bag of new clothes inside. A cloud of steam billowed out.

“I thought you might like to dress for the climate here,” he said, before pulling the door closed again. “If you're hungry, I can go out and get some food.”

“No,” she said, her voice sounding almost sepulchral, “not right now.”

He went to the window, and pulled back the bright floral curtains. A few lights were still on in neighboring buildings. A street-sweeping truck lumbered past. How could he tell her the rest of what she needed to know? That it was not only ice she had to fear… but human contact. Intimate human contact.

How could he tell her that even though her craving was gone, her contagion was not? That she posed a threat to anyone she might wish to embrace?

How, for that matter, could he tell himself?

Once the rumbling of the street sweeper had faded away, he went back to the bathroom door and wound up spending the next half hour trying to assuage her shocked sensibilities. Eleanor was so appalled at the shortness-and sheerness-of the dress that she would not come out at all until he had sworn-repeatedly-that these were the latest fashions and that everyone dressed that way. “A lot of the time, they wear even less,” he said, wondering what she would make of the first bikini-clad rollerblader they passed. When she finally relented, and stepped, blushing madly, into the room, she took his breath away.

Even that early, Ocean Drive was busy with traffic, and Eleanor shied away from the buses as if they were fire-breathing dragons. The cars, the clamor, the traffic lights, Eleanor clung to his arm as if it were a life preserver. But whatever warmth she had absorbed from the bath was fast receding; her hand, he noted, was cool.

At Point Adelie, she had confessed the thing she most longed for was the hot sun on her face, and he was eager to show her the sunrise over the ocean. They had just stopped at a crosswalk when a vendor pushing a cart of Italian ices pulled up alongside them, almost the only pedestrians out at that hour, and gave them a hopeful glance. He might as well have been selling dynamite, and as Michael instinctively dragged Eleanor away, the vendor looked at him like he was crazy. But Michael knew the rules, and knew, too, that he was never going to be able to let down his guard. He would always have to be vigilant, and until the time came when the rest of the secret had to be divulged to her, he would also have to be secretive. But why burden her-at that rare moment when she might begin to experience happiness again-with something that he could carry alone?

As they crossed the street and then the scrubby dunes, the sky seemed to fade from an inky purple to a rosy glow. Michael led her past the towering palms, swaying in the sea breeze, and down to the surf. As the sun rose on the horizon, they sat down on the white sand and simply watched. Watched as it climbed up into the sky, turning the ocean into a silver mirror, burnishing the clouds with a ruby hue. Eleanor's green eyes glistened in the morning light, and as a gray-and-white osprey swooped low over the water, she followed its path. It was then that he noticed her rueful smile.

“What is it?” he said.

“I was just thinking of something,” she said, her long brown hair, still damp from the bath, blowing loose over her shoulders. “A music hall ditty, from another time.”

“How did it go?” He felt her fingers slip through his; exposed to the morning sun, they were perceptibly warmer. The osprey darted between the rolling waves.

“ And oh won't there be, by the side of the sea,’ “ she liltingly recited, “ ‘coconut palms as tall as St. Paul's, and sand as white as Dover.’ “

Her gaze swept across the bright horizon, the broad white beach, and Michael saw something like joy kindled in her eyes. “And so,” she said, still clutching his hand, “there are.”