Pandora's Curse

EAST OF THE GEO-RESEARCH STATION, GREENLAND

Over the anemic throb of the helicopter’s faltering engine Anika Klein could hear her grandfather’s voice in her head. “Go to Greenland, liebchen. There you will be safe.”

She could never remember a time when Opa Jacob had been more wrong.

The chopper lurched again, a sickening plunge that made her restraining harnesses dig into her shoulders. The pilot, a young Dane contracted by Geo-Research, fought to keep the dying craft in the air. The grim set to his jaw and the undisguised fear in his eyes told Anika that he wasn’t likely to win the fight. Around them, the storm that the Njoerd’s meteorologist promised wouldn’t hit for another six hours raged with banshee fury. Anika had been on enough helicopters to know that, even if the engine wasn’t about to let go, they had little chance of reaching the research camp. The snowstorm was too intense. For the hundredth time she cursed herself for flying, cursed the daredevil pilot for thinking he could beat the storm, and cursed Opa Jacob for convincing her she’d be safer in Greenland than at home pursuing Otto Schroeder’s killers.

While she had lost all details of the drive from Schroeder’s house to Ismaning, where her friend had picked her up to bring her home, Anika vividly recalled everything that had come before that. The gunfire. The blood. The pain. And most of all the anger that had grown to a fever pitch.

As a doctor, she had dedicated herself to the preservation of life, and witnessing the torture Schroeder had endured sickened her to the very core. She vowed to see that the man responsible, the man Anika admitted she hadn’t really gotten a good look at, was convicted for his unspeakable crime.

When she had phoned Opa Jacob after a full day of recovery, she had related everything, including the presence of the unknown snipers and the fact that Schroeder died believing he possessed a secret more valuable than gold. She also asked if the name Philip Mercer meant anything to him.

“I’ve never heard of him,” Jacob Eisenstadt had said. “This is someone Schroeder mentioned?”

“Yes. He said a mysterious caller a few weeks ago told him that this American could be of help. Does he do what you do, Opa?”

“Not that I’m aware of but he could be new to the field or work for someone else, like Wiesel’s Peace and Justice Center.”

“Well, Schroeder was convinced he could help. And what about the Pandora Project he mentioned? Does that sound familiar?”

“I’ve not heard of that either,” Eisenstadt confessed. “But I bet it’s the code name for a specific Nazi looting program. Remember that Schroeder was an engineer, not a soldier so it could even be the name given to an attempt to build a secure stash for art and precious metals like they did at the salt mines in Austria.”

The idea was an alluring one. “So what do we do now?” Anika had asked, the scent of treasure added to her desire for justice.

“We,” Jacob thundered, “do nothing. I will continue working and you get out of Germany. You aren’t safe there. You said yourself that the men who killed Schroeder have seen your face and could at this very moment be learning who you are. You should go on your trip to Greenland. You will be safe there, and by the time you get back in a few weeks, I will know enough to go to the police and get you proper protection.”

The following argument lasted nearly an hour with Opa’s partner, Theodor Weitzmann, and Frau Goetz, the housekeeper, joining in on the other phones at the Institute. They were unified in their appeal, which was a first as far as Anika knew. That day Anika had called Geo-Research’s main office and told them that she would not be able to make the rendezvous in Reykjavik due to an accident. She didn’t add that she would spend the days letting the bullet graze in her thigh heal.

After the plane ride to Kulusuk and a chopper to the Njoerd, here she was on another helicopter that was minutes away from crashing. Yet her thoughts weren’t on her situation. She thought only of the guilt Opa Jacob would feel when he learned she died following his recommendation. It very well might kill him.

“There’s a rescue effort under way right now,” the pilot shouted into the headphones. “They want you to fire a flare when we get close to the ground. They’re in an emergency pack under your seat.”

Anika was in the copilot’s seat and had to loosen her shoulder restraints to reach under her chair. She waited until the gyrating craft stabilized for a moment before attempting the maneuver. As her fingers brushed against a plastic case, the chopper bucked suddenly, dropping farther into the raging clouds of snow blowing by them like random tracer fire. Her head hit the control stick, deepening their dive, which forced the pilot to jerk back hard, hitting her once again.

“Schiesse!” she cried, rubbing the knot already forming under her hair. She checked her glove to make sure she wasn’t bleeding.

On her second attempt she brought out the orange box and retightened the straps before she could be thrown bodily out of the seat. The flares were in individual firing tubes that could be activated by pulling a short lanyard at their base. She gripped one firmly, getting ready to open the small window next to her. “Tell me when.”

“No. Not up here. You have to go in the back,” the pilot told her, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at the cargo compartment. “The flare will destroy my night vision.”

From her vantage she could see there was an operable window in the hold’s side door.

“Okay.” She pulled off the headphones since the cord wouldn’t reach; then she unbuckled all her safety belts.

There was no pattern to the helicopter’s erratic flight, so there was nothing she could do as gravity either tossed her toward the roof or crushed her to her seat. As if she was mountain climbing, Anika maintained three contact points at all times, only moving a limb when she was certain the other three had a secure purchase. In this fashion, she crawled over her chair and slid into the only open space in the chopper’s hold, bracing herself by pressing her back to the floor and jamming her feet against a built-in shelf on the forward bulkhead.

“Can you hear me?” Anika screamed, testing whether she would be able to hear the pilot when he gave his order to fire the flare.

“Yes!” His reply sounded as if it came from outside the aircraft. “About five more minutes, tops.”

Okay, AK, this is it.

As long as the engine held together, they had a chance to find a break in the storm and land safely. She kept that hope alive by praying to God, Who had kept her safe in situations like this. She thought of the time when a climbing rope had parted two-thirds up Eiger. She recalled when a white-water raft she’d been paddling had been split open in the middle of Class- 4 rapids, dumping her and three companions into a liquid maelstrom. Then there was the case of food poisoning that had forced an end to a hiking expedition in Peru. Anika had eaten the same native stew as the four others with her, and while they had to be choppered back to Iquitos for medical treatment, she hadn’t felt the slightest ill effect.

She liked to brag about her outdoor skills, but she knew so much of what she had survived was due to luck, an ally she sometimes disdained. Not now. She was terrified and would need whatever last shreds of good fortune she’d managed to preserve.

Reaching up, she slid open the small Plexiglas window. She gasped at the raw blast of air that sucked her breath away as if the chopper had just gone through explosive decompression. Intellectually, she knew if they survived the crash, they wouldn’t last more than a few hours on the ice, but that didn’t impair her desire to see the chopper down safely. She would worry about rescue afterward.

The wind rattled the tub of mail left near the door. In the worst bit of irony about this whole ill-fated trip, she’d noted when the crate was put aboard that the topmost envelope was from New York City and had been posted to none other than Philip Mercer. The odds that the man mentioned by Otto Schroeder was on the same trip as her were too long to be coincidental. The anger that had begun at the isolated farmhouse nearly exploded. Though she immediately knew she’d been set up, she didn’t know if it was by Schroeder, his killers, or the snipers. Or maybe even by Philip Mercer himself.

Until the storm struck the helicopter, she had been quietly brooding about this development, determined to find the truth.

“Get ready!” the pilot yelled from the cockpit.

Anika stuck the end of the flare out the window, stripping off one glove so she could get a better grip on the lanyard. From her position she couldn’t see outside and this was better. Let the crash come as a surprise, she thought. If she didn’t know it was coming, her body wouldn’t tense involuntarily.

“Now!”

She jerked the string and the glowing ball of fire arced into space, its red corona flying away like the spectral trail of a meteor. Ten seconds later the chopper’s skids slammed into the ground. The collision was like a full swing of a sledgehammer against Anika’s spine. Momentum made the craft’s nose pitch forward. Its blades sliced through the granular snow until they hit solid ice and came apart. The engine’s torque continued to spin the unbalanced rotor head with enough power to slam the helicopter over on its side. Anika was thrown into the door, her body pinned by boxes forced loose by the first impact.

The ragged bits of blade left on the main shaft chewed into the ground. Teflon-coated shrapnel exploded off with each contact with the ice. The smaller tail rotor hit the snow, digging in before it too disintegrated in a deadly swarm of fragments. Most flew away harmlessly, but several cut through the chopper’s thin skin, one slicing by close enough for Anika to feel its passage. She screamed.

The engine finally died when it became starved for fuel. The sound of the chopper’s frenzied destruction was replaced by the noise of the storm’s full force. It assaulted Anika’s ears like a hurricane, with hail-size chunks of ice rattling against the fuselage. Battered but unhurt, she began to shift bundles of clothes and boxes of food off of her. It seemed that the more she moved, the more the gear shifted and wedged around her. It was like trying to dig in quicksand. The agony radiating from her back wasn’t helping. Then she remembered she hadn’t heard anything from the pilot.

“Hello!” she called. “Are you okay?”

She got no response and called again and again, raising her voice until she was shrieking and tears were spilling down her cheeks.

“Get a grip on yourself, AK,” she said aloud, wiping her eyes. “He’s gone.”

This time she attacked the pile of equipment with deliberation, thinking through each move before executing it. There was a small amount of light spilling from the cockpit, and she balanced her need for caution with the urgency to get to the radios. When the batteries died, so would her chance of contacting the base camp.

Twenty minutes later, with cargo balanced precariously around her, Anika was almost free when the cockpit lights faded to nothing. Darkness enveloped her. She had to fight to keep panic at bay and was succeeding when a gust of wind slammed into the chopper, upsetting its center of gravity enough to topple the cargo back on top of her.

This time she could not stop the tears. They came in salty waves even as she again began to work, her jaw clamped tight to prevent her teeth from chattering. Without power, the radios were worthless. There was no need to move from where she sat, since there was little chance of a rescue. The moment of pessimism passed and left her infuriated with herself. She would not give up. Life was too precious to squander because of personal weakness.

It took another hour to extricate herself from the helicopter. Anika confirmed that the pilot was indeed dead — killed by the piece of rotor blade that had narrowly missed her — and fired the last flare into the darkness. On her walk around the chopper, she didn’t smell any fuel and assumed the self-sealing fuel bladders had not ruptured. She knew her luck was still holding when she found cans of jellied cooking fuel to keep herself warm.

Propped up in the hold, Anika Klein tucked her head into her arms and prepared to wait out the storm. She had to remain awake so she could light new cans of fuel when they went out, but the struggle became too much after only half an hour. Even as the first can guttered to a weak blue flame, her eyes closed. She jerked herself upright, cursing her weakness, and lit another one.

Her exhaustion was deeper than simple fatigue. She fingered the knot on her head again and decided that she had a mild concussion. Hope of rescue was the only thing keeping her going. It would be so easy to just lie back and let the inevitable overcome her.

“To sleep is to die,” she said aloud, mesmerized by the little tin of fire next to her. “To sleep is to die.”

She kept repeating the mantra, unaware that each utterance was a bit quieter, her voice more slurred and the pauses longer. She fell asleep with only ten minutes of heat remaining. When that second can burned out, the temperature in the chopper crashed to the ambient temperature of the Greenland ice sheet: minus fifteen degrees Fahrenheit — nearly fifty degrees below freezing.

Something woke her an hour later. She found frost coating the front of her parka, and her body had stiffened. She didn’t dare open her eyes to look at her hands. She could feel they were frostbitten, as were her ears, the tip of her nose, and her cheeks. She felt more tired than she could possibly imagine and knew that she was dying. She’d survived the crash and the first few critical hours only to succumb to exposure.

She sniffled once and winced. Her nasal membranes were frozen. Still, she could detect a faint odor, a musky fragrance that was completely out of place with her predicament. It smelled like a man’s aftershave, something subtly masculine and diluted with the scent of the wearer himself. Anika smiled at the smell. It was like a last treat before she died.

“If you don’t mind me saying, Dr. Klein, your smile makes you look like a pixie.”

The voice galvanized her. She opened her eyes and saw a grinning man next to her. He had entered through the shattered cockpit. The noise she had heard must have been him crawling into the hold. She was too emotionally wasted to react to his presence. She merely looked at him in the glow from his flashlight, studying the planes of his face and how his gray eyes were shielded by dark brows. Ice glittered in his hair like gems. He was handsome in every sense of the word.

“Looks like you’ve built quite a nest for yourself in here,” the man said, noting the blankets piled on top of her and the cans of Sterno she’d neglected to keep lit. “If you want to stay, I’ll understand, but I think you’d be more comfortable in the Land Cruiser. The heater’s cranked and the base camp is only about an hour away.”

“Who are you?” Anika managed to ask.

“Philip Mercer at your service. Other than that touch of frostbite on your face, are you all right?”

Anika was thankful that her face was frozen so she could not show her shock. This was the very man she was looking for! Yet she was in no condition to question him. She had no idea who he was or whose side he was on. But if he wanted her dead, he wouldn’t have driven through the storm to rescue her. Meekly she held out a hand. When she tried to say thanks, her lips couldn’t form the word.

A minute later, Mercer had lifted her from the chopper and led her to where the Toyota was idling nearby. He got her buckled into the passenger seat before swinging around to the driver’s side. By the time he stepped into the rugged, cross-country vehicle, Anika was sound asleep, her head cocooned in the hood of her parka.

Without the need to replace a tire that had shredded about two miles from where he’d seen Anika fire the second flare, and with the storm all but over, Mercer made it back to the camp much quicker than the drive out. The whole time he was behind the wheel, he couldn’t get the gratified smile off his face. Anika Klein would not join the list of people he felt he had failed.

The following morning, Mercer roused Ira Lasko at sunup, and the two of them commandeered one of the Sno-Cats to return to the site of the crash. The couple hours of sleep had done nothing to alleviate his exhaustion, so he let the former submariner drive while he dozed in the passenger seat. Ira navigated by driving in Mercer’s tire prints from the night before, which were already being obscured by the constant wind. Because the tracked vehicle was much slower than the Land Cruiser, it took them two hours to reach the downed helicopter.

“We there yet?” Mercer asked, blinking sleep from his eyes when Ira tapped him on the shoulder.

“I told you to pee before we left, young man,” Ira quipped.

“I didn’t have to then.”

The humor vanished from Ira’s voice when they saw the helicopter sitting forlornly on the ice like an overturned insect. “Hard to believe anyone survived that.”

Mercer just grunted and opened the ’Cat’s door. Other than a few bits of debris, the snow around the crash site was a clean white blanket that hid the violence of what had happened. But when he looked closer, Mercer saw footprints that circled the downed helo and then vanished off to the north. For a split second he thought that the pilot hadn’t been killed in the crash and he had abandoned him out here last night.

He knew that couldn’t be true. He had seen the chunk of rotor blade sticking through the man’s neck and the frozen blood that coated his flight suit. The pilot had been dead long before he’d found the chopper. Because the footprints were nearly buried by snow he couldn’t tell where they originated or what size feet had made them. It was possible Anika Klein had made them, but that made as much sense as the dead pilot pulling a Lazarus act. She had been near death herself.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Ira asked when he saw what Mercer was studying.

“I don’t know what I’m thinking,” Mercer admitted. “Did someone beat us out here this morning to check out the crash?”

“I didn’t see any tracks besides yours, but it’s possible. Maybe they left right after you got back.”

“But why?” The pilot’s body was still strapped in his seat, his recovery being the principal reason Mercer and Ira had come out.

“Something on the chopper they didn’t want discovered?” Ira offered.

Lifting his feet to clear the powdery snow accumulated on the ground, Mercer started following the trail of prints. He was back at the crash site in just a few minutes. “They disappear about fifty yards away, blown clean by the wind.”

“What about a stowaway?”

“I was thinking that myself.”

The helo had a rear door that opened at the back of the cargo hold. It was sealed now, but it was possible someone had exited through it following the crash and closed it afterward to hide their presence.

“Given her injuries and the noise generated by the storm, Anika might not have heard anything,” Ira said after examining the door. “But we don’t need to worry about it.”

“Why’s that?”

“You think someone could still be alive out here after twelve hours?”

Mercer considered the question. “Given the right gear, yeah, they could, but they’d be in for one hell of a long walk.”

“You want to go look for him?”

“Not in the slightest,” Mercer growled. “He wanted to get away so badly he’d abandon an injured woman. I say let the son of a bitch keep going. Let’s load up the pilot’s body and anything else we can stuff in the Sno-Cat and get back to the base.”

They were ready forty-five minutes later. The pilot had been wrapped in a plastic tarpaulin, and every square inch of the Sno-Cat’s cargo area was filled with boxes of perishable food, Anika’s luggage, and anything else they felt was needed back at the camp. Despite his earlier vehemence, Mercer steered a zigzag search pattern for the first hour of the drive while Ira scanned the monotonous surroundings through a pair of binoculars. They saw no footprints or track marks left by another Sno-Cat. If it had indeed been a stowaway who had walked from the helicopter, he wasn’t headed toward the research station.

Ira put away the binoculars and reached for the mail bucket, shuffling through the parcels and envelopes looking for anything addressed to him. He sniffed appreciatively at a letter from his wife that still carried traces of perfume she must have sprayed on the paper. “Sorry, nothing for you. Doesn’t appear that anyone loves you.”

“Did you check for names that didn’t sound quite right?” Mercer asked. “Remember my last letter was sent to Max E. Padd.”

“Ah, here we go.” Ira held up a large envelope. “It’s from Arlington, Virginia.”

“That’s me.” Mercer winced when he asked Ira to tell him the name.

“Juan Tzeks Withasheep.”

It took Mercer a second to decipher Harry’s lame joke. Want sex with a sheep.

“You’ve got one warped friend there, Mercer.”

“Tell me about it. Open it up and let’s see what he sent.”

“A confirmation for your new Playgirl magazine subscription, a couple receipts from a strip joint in Washington, another envelope forwarded from Munich, and a police citation for a noise-ordinance violation.”

Mercer wondered what was in the envelope from Germany and was about to ask Ira to open the envelope when he remembered the mysterious e-mail he received before leaving for Iceland. This must be the material the lawyer said he was sending for his unnamed client. He thought it was best if he opened that in private. “When our communications are back up, I think I’ll call the Arlington police to report a squatter has taken over my house. That’ll show the old bastard.”

“Oh, that’s mean.”

“If you knew some of the crap he’s pulled over the years, you’d know he’s getting off light,” Mercer replied.

There was a crowd waiting for them when they got back to base and halted the Sno-Cat near the mess hall. Not everyone was happy to see them. Werner Koenig and Greta Schmidt stood apart from the others, scowling. Leading the group who cheered them on was Marty Bishop and a much recovered Anika Klein.

“Let’s keep those footprints to ourselves,” Mercer said when he killed the engine.

“People find out all the secrets we’re sharing, they’re going to get jealous,” Ira said in a singsong voice.

Mercer threw open his door. “Mail call.”

Greta Schmidt pushed through the crowd to confront Mercer. “That is the second time you have taken a vehicle without authorization,” she snapped.

“Which makes it two times I’ve done your job,” he replied with a mocking smile. He noted that again it was Schmidt, not Koenig, who was the most upset by his foray, and he wondered exactly which one was running the expedition.

“Relax, for Christ’s sake,” Marty boomed. “He saved Dr. Klein’s life last night.”

“I am aware of that, but there are procedures. Discipline must be maintained. I am going to report you all to the Surveyor’s Society with the recommendation that you be airlifted back to Iceland immediately. This is no place for cowboy heroics.” She stormed off.

“Your rescue was ill-advised, but appreciated.” Werner shook Mercer’s hand when Greta was out of sight. “I don’t think I will be able to stop her from ordering your evacuation. I’m sorry.” He followed in her wake.

Marty turned to Mercer. “Don’t sweat it. When we have the radios up again, I’ll square it with my old man.”

“Thanks, Marty,” Mercer said. “But I doubt it’ll make much difference. With the chopper crash coming so close to Igor’s death, I won’t be surprised if Geo-Research has their entire operation shut down by the Danish government.”

Neither man had noticed Anika Klein had moved close to them and overheard what Mercer had just said. “Igor Bulgarin is dead?” she cried.

Mercer turned, stunned that no one had told her and guilty that he’d mentioned it so casually. Even though she was in moon boots, the top of her head was below the level of his chin. Her eyes were wide with shock and he was struck again by how much she looked like a mythical imp. A tough, resilient imp, to be sure.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Klein. I didn’t know you were there,” he stammered. “Yes, Igor died in an accident yesterday morning.”

She just stared at him for a moment, her gaze wary. “I didn’t know.”

“It came as a shock to us all,” Marty said, extending his hand. “I’m Martin Bishop. I head up the Surveyor’s Society contingent here.”

“Anika Klein,” she replied absently, her mind far away from social niceties.

Mercer took her hand when she offered it. “I doubt you remember much from last night. I’m Philip Mercer.”

“I remember,” she answered cautiously. “You came out to get me. Thank you for what you did. That was brave.”

“It was foolish, but you’re welcome.” He studied her for a second. “Looks like it wasn’t frostbite after all.”

Anika touched her cheeks and nose where the color had returned to near normal. “If you’d been any later, it would have been.”

“I’m glad you’re okay.” She didn’t seem like someone meeting her rescuer, Mercer thought. She seemed almost afraid of him.

“What’s that?” Anika pointed to the manila envelope in Mercer’s hand.

“Huh?” The odd question threw him. “Oh, it’s just some junk mail from a friend.”

Unlike the night before, this time Anika couldn’t hide her surprise. She eyed the package for a long moment before dragging her focus back to Mercer’s face. “You probably want to go read it. I’m sorry for delaying you.”

“No, actually I’d like to talk with you. Are you sure you’re all right?”

Anika stiffened. “Yes, I’m fine.” Then her shoulders sagged just a fraction. “That’s not true. I have a vicious headache, and I keep thinking about the pilot. Tell me more about Igor’s death. How did it happen?”

“There was a cave-in inside Camp Decade,” Mercer said. “He was struck by falling ice. We don’t think he suffered.”

Anika immediately grasped the part of the story that had bothered Mercer since the accident. “What was he doing there? He was a meteorite hunter.”

Mercer was right about her resilience. A helicopter crash last night, a delayed rescue that left her half dead, and now the shock of her team leader’s death and still her mind cut incisively. “We don’t know,” he admitted.

Ira Lasko had been helping others unload the Sno-Cat during the conversation. They were done except for one item, and he approached the trio. “Begging your pardon, ma’am. Mercer, do you want me to put the pilot’s body 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.”