Blood And Ice Part 21

There was a pair of tall double doors at the top, though one was knocked off its hinges and simply frozen in place. The other one he was able to push, with considerable effort, until it opened enough to let them pa.s.s. A snowdrift had piled up just behind it, and once he had stepped over it, he took Eleanor's hand and helped her inside.

Their footsteps echoed hollowly on the stone floor. Rows of wooden pews faced the front, with moldering hymnals lying on some of the seats. Sinclair picked one of them up, but the few words that were still legible were not in English. Some Scandinavian tongue, if he had to guess. He dropped it on the floor, and Eleanor, instinctively, picked it up and put it back on the pew. The walls and roof, which had several holes of their own, were made of timbers that the relentless elements had polished to a fine flat sheen, every whorl and groove in the wood revealed as plainly as a wine stain on a linen tablecloth. The altar was a simple trestle table, with a rough-hewn cross hung from the rafters behind it. Eleanor, wrapped in the bulky coat, held herself back, her eyes averted, but Sinclair strode boldly up the nave. Stopping in front of the altar, he spread his arms and declared, as if presenting himself to a country squire who had invited him to come for a shooting party, "Well, here I am!"

His voice echoed around the walls, joined only by the wind whistling through the narrow windows where the gla.s.s had long since fallen away.

"Are we welcome here," he called out, tauntingly, "or are we not?"

A sudden gust blew the crest of the snowdrift up the aisle, the white flakes dusting the top of Eleanor's shoes. She quickly stepped into a row of pews.

Sinclair turned around and with his arms still out, said, "Do you see? Not a word of protest."

He knew that Eleanor feared him when he was in this mood- black and challenging and itching for a fight. But ever since the Crimea, this dark side had been brewing in him, as inescapable and ungovernable as a shadow.

"I can't imagine more suitable accommodations," he said. He looked all around, then spotted a door with great black hinges behind the altar. The rectory, he wondered? His black boots ringing on the stony pavement, he walked around the side of the altar- littered, he could see, with ancient rat feces-and pushed it open. Inside, he saw a small room, with one square window covered by a pair of shutters. It was furnished with a few sticks of furniture- a table, a chair, a cot, whose blanket was rolled up in a ball at its foot ... and a cast-iron stove. Dismal as it was, it was as if he had just stumbled into the drawing room at the Longchamps Club, and he could barely wait to show it to Eleanor.

"Come along!" he shouted. "We've got our suite for the night." Eleanor clearly didn't like coming so close to the altar, but she also didn't want to cross Sinclair. She came to the door and peered in; he threw his arm around her shoulders and held her tight. "I'll get the things from the sled, and we'll see what we can make of this, eh?"

Alone, Eleanor stepped to the window, parted the shutters, and looked out-a strong wind was blowing the snow across an icy plain, dotted with several more tombstones, most of them toppled and broken. On the far horizon, a ridge of mountains lay like the jagged spine of a reclining beast. There was nothing in any of it to greet the eye, or lift the spirit, or offer even a scintilla of hope; in short, there was nothing to persuade her that this was anything other than a panorama of d.a.m.nation, lighted forever by a cold dead sun.

The wind rose even higher, whistling in the eaves of the church and rattling the very walls.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT.

December 13, 9:30 p.m.

"JUST HOLD THE BANDAGE," Charlotte ordered. "Just hold it in place!"

Michael pressed it to Danzig's throat-blood was still seeping through-as she cut off the end of the sutures and dropped her scissors into the pan.

"And keep an eye on his blood pressure!"

Michael watched the monitor-the pressure was low, and dropping all the time.

From the moment she had rushed into the kennel, Charlotte's hands had never stopped moving with rapidity and a.s.surance. She had bent over the gasping Danzig, and with her own fingers, closed the gaping hole in his throat. At the infirmary, she had inserted a breathing tube, anesthetized him, st.i.tched the wound, and was now inserting an IV, to give him a transfusion.

"Is he going to make it?" Michael asked, not sure if he really wanted to know the answer.

"I don't know. He's lost a lot of blood-his jugular was severed-and his windpipe's damaged, too." She hung the plasma bag on the rod and, after making sure it was working, readied a syringe. "I told Murphy to call for a.s.sistance. He needs a lot more help than we can give him here."

"What's the shot for? Rabies?" The bandage he held was damp and stained a deep pink.

"Teta.n.u.s," she said, holding it up to the light and tamping on the plunger. "We don't even have rabies vaccine down here. But then, there aren't supposed to be any dogs, either."

She administered the shot, but before she had even withdrawn the needle, there was a mad beeping from the BP and EKG monitors.

"Oh, s.h.i.+t," she said, tossing the used needle into the sink and ripping open a cabinet on the wall behind her. "He's cras.h.i.+ng!"

An ominously steady tone filled the room.

She charged the defibrillator pads-something Michael had seen done on a dozen medical shows on TV-then applied them to the barrel of Danzig's hairy chest. His flannel s.h.i.+rt had been cut away, and the skin was orange from a coat of mercurochrome. One of the pads landed on a tattoo-the head of a husky-and Michael wondered if it was supposed to be Kodiak. Charlotte counted to three, yelled, "Clear!" then pressed the pads down while the sudden charge made the body jump. Danzig's head went back, and his body arched upward.

But the monitors kept up their steady drone.

Again she yelled, "Clear!" While Michael hovered a foot away, she hit Danzig with another charge. The body jerked again ... but the lines on the blue screens stayed flat. Several of the st.i.tches had popped.

Breathing hard, her braids hanging down beside her face, she tried it one more time-there was the faint smell of barbecued meat in the room-but nothing changed. The body flattened out again, and lay perfectly still. Blood seeped slowly from his torn neck and Michael had nothing to sop it up with.

Charlotte mopped her brow with the back of her sleeve, glanced one more time at the monitors, then fell back onto the stool behind her, her shoulders slumped, her face wet with sweat. Michael waited-what were they supposed to do next? Surely this couldn't be it.

"Should I pump his heart?" he said, rising from his own stool and placing his hands above Danzig's chest.

But Charlotte simply shook her head.

"Shouldn't I at least try?" Michael said, pressing down with the heel of his hands, as he had seen done in CPR cla.s.ses. "Should I give him artificial respiration?"

"He's gone, honey."

"Just tell me what I should do!"

"Nothing you can do," she said, looking up at the clock. "If you want to know, he was gone from the second that d.a.m.ned dog got at him."

Without looking behind her, she reached for and found a clipboard on the counter. She lifted the pen on its chain and recorded the time of death.

Danzig's eyes were still open, and Michael closed them.

Charlotte flicked off the machines, then picked Danzig's walrus-tooth necklace up off the floor, where she'd hastily thrown it.

"That was his good-luck charm," Michael said.

"Not good enough," she said, handing it to Michael.

They sat in silence, the corpse lying between them, until Murphy O'Connor put his head in the door.

"Bad news about the chopper," he said, then, taking in what had happened, mumbled, "Oh, sweet Mother of G.o.d."

Charlotte removed the transfusion line. "No rush," she said. "They can come anytime."

Murphy ran his hand back over his salt-and-pepper hair, and stared at the floor. "The storm," he said. "It's gonna get a lot worse before dawn. They said they'd have to wait for it to blow over."

Outside, Michael could hear a raging wind pummeling the walls of the infirmary like a hail of angry fists. He hadn't even noticed it till now.

"Christ almighty," Murphy muttered. He started to turn away, then said to Charlotte, "I'm sure you did everything possible. You're a good medical officer."

Charlotte looked unaffected by the praise.

"I'll send Franklin in, to help with the body." Then he looked at Michael. "Why don't you come down to my office? We need to talk."

Murphy walked away, and Michael wasn't sure what to do. He did not want to leave Charlotte alone-not with the body-at least not until Franklin, or somebody, got there.

"It's okay," she said, as if intuiting his problem. "You work the ER in Chi-town, you get used to dead people. Go."

Michael got up and slipped the walrus-tooth necklace into his pocket. Then he went to the sink, where he scrubbed his hands clean.

Franklin came in and, as Michael went out to the hall, Charlotte called after him, "And thanks, by the way. You make a good nurse."

In Murphy's office, he found Darryl warming his hands around a cardboard cup of coffee-it was clear that Murphy had just told him about Danzig's death-and the chief himself was sitting back, looking utterly depleted, in his desk chair. Michael leaned up against a dented file cabinet and for a minute or so no one said a word. They didn't have to.

"Any ideas?" the chief finally said, and another silence fell.

"If you're referring to Danzig and the dog," Darryl finally ventured, "no. But if you're referring to the missing bodies, then there's one thing that I think is pretty clear."

"What's that?"

"Somebody's gone off his rocker. Maybe it's a case of the Big Eye."

"I've been doing a check," Murphy replied, "and so far everybody's accounted for-even Spook. n.o.body's in a daze-at least any more than usual-and n.o.body's gone off the reservation."

Darryl pondered this, then said, "Okay. Then whoever it is, they hid the bodies somewhere-it's cold enough out there that they'll just freeze solid again-then they hightailed it back to the base."

"And the dogs?"

Darryl had to think about that, but Michael knew that the dogs, unless they were restrained somehow, would have come back on their own.

"Can they survive in a storm like this?" Darryl asked, and Murphy snorted.

"For them, it's a day at the beach. They'll hunker down and sleep right through it. The b.i.t.c.h of it is, any tracks they left are already gone."

But Michael had a hunch where they might have gone. "Stromviken," he said. "That was their routine exercise run."

"Could be," Murphy said, mulling it over, "but if somebody drove them there-even if there was time, which looks pretty d.a.m.n unlikely-how'd he get back to base without them? n.o.body, not even I, could have walked back here alone, much less in this weather. Ain't n.o.body going nowhere in this soup."

"What if he was using a snowmobile?" Michael said. "Could he have towed it along behind the sled?"

Murphy a.s.sumed a quizzical expression. "I guess," he said. "But then he's got the dogs towing the snowmobile, plus the bodies in the ice block-"

"The ice block was very diminished," Darryl interjected. "It would have completely collapsed soon."

Murphy paused, then plowed ahead. "Whatever you say. But then, whoever this is, he's leaving the bodies and the dogs out there somewhere-the whaling station, the rookery, an ice cave that we don't know about-and racing back here on the snowmobile, a snowmobile that n.o.body noticed was missing-"

"And that n.o.body heard either coming or going," Michael threw in.

"Right," Murphy said, wearily rubbing his graying hair again, "that, too. You see how none of this is adding up?"

Michael saw his point, clearly. That was actually the first chance he'd had even to try putting the pieces of the puzzle together, but it was no surprise that Murphy already looked exhausted and utterly stumped.

On Darryl's face, Michael noted a look of just plain anger. His lab had been desecrated and his most prized specimen stolen. "I don't think anyone could have done it alone," he declared. "Getting those bodies out of the tank and into the sled, and in the very limited amount of time between the last time I'd been in the lab and when I found them missing?" He shook his head and said, "It had to be two people, at least, to carry this whole thing off."

"So," Murphy replied, "what are you saying? You got any candidates in mind?"

Darryl sipped the coffee, then said, "Betty and Tina? You sure you've accounted for them?"

"Why on earth would Betty and Tina do this?" Murphy asked.

"I don't know," Darryl said, in exasperation. "But maybe they wanted to do the work themselves. Maybe they thought I took it away from them. Maybe they have some other agenda altogether." He sounded not only as if he was grasping at straws, but as if he knew it himself. He threw up his hands in disgust, then let them flop back onto his lap.

"I'll follow up with them," Murphy said, in an unconvincing tone.

"In the meantime, I want a lock for my lab," Darryl insisted. "I've got my fish to look out for."

"You honestly think somebody's gonna come back for your fish, too?" Murphy replied. "Don't sweat it-I'll find you a lock."

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE.

December 13, 10:30 p.m.

WHILE SINCLAIR WENT BACK and forth fetching provisions from the sled, Eleanor tried to make herself useful in the rectory. She unrolled the woolen blanket at the foot of the cot-it was stiff as a washboard-and found an old broom in the corner with which she tried to sweep some of the rodent leavings from the floor. She opened the grate of the cast-iron furnace and found a petrified rat inside, lying on a bed of splinters and straw. She lifted it out by its tail, tossed it through the window, then battened the shutters tight again. On the table, next to the stump of a candle and a ring of rusty keys, she found a packet of lucifers, and to her own amazement she was able to get one to light. She touched it to the tinder, and after a few seconds she had a small fire glowing in the furnace.

She thought Sinclair would be pleased, but after he had set down some books and bottles from the sled, he looked askance at the blaze. "The smoke from the chimney," he said. "It will give us away."

To whom? she thought. Was there another living soul for miles? Her heart sank at the idea of extinguis.h.i.+ng the tiny, cheerful fire.

"But this storm will dissipate it," he said, thinking aloud. "Go to it, my love."

He went back out again, and Eleanor slumped, suddenly bereft of all her strength, onto the edge of the cot. The exertions of the past few hours had been too much. She felt as if she were about to swoon, and lay back, still bundled in her coat, on top of the coa.r.s.e, striped blanket. The room was swimming around her. She closed her eyes, with her hands clutching the sides of the cot, just as she had done on the awful voyage to Constantinople so many years ago. The s.h.i.+p, a steamer called the Veens, had pitched and rolled in the heavy seas, and after leaving the port of Ma.r.s.eilles, it had lost its engines altogether for a time. Moira had been convinced that they were all about to die, that the s.h.i.+p was sure to break up in the storm and drown them all, and Eleanor had had to console her until the next morning, when the weather abruptly changed and the s.h.i.+p regained its power. Many of the nurses had been seasick or worse, and the sailors had to carry them up onto the stern deck where they could recover themselves in the fresh air and suns.h.i.+ne. Moira had dropped to her knees by the rail and offered up a volley of prayers.

Miss Florence Nightingale, herself a victim of the rough voyage, had pa.s.sed right by them, simply inclining her head in their direction, as she leaned on the arm of her friend, Mrs. Selina Bracebridge. Selina was married and Florence was not (indeed, she was the most famous spinster in the British Isles), but it had been decided by the military board of governors that it would be unseemly for unmarried women to be employed overseas, attending to the wounded soldiers. So with the sole exception of their leader, all thirty-eight of the women in the nursing contingent, regardless of their actual marital status, were given the honorific t.i.tle of "Mrs." They were also given uniforms expressly tailored to render the wearers as unappealing as possible and to obscure their figures completely. The dresses were gray and shapeless and hung like woolen sacks, and the bonnets were silly white contraptions that deliberately complimented no one's features. One of the nurses, in Eleanor's hearing, told Miss Nightingale that she could put up with all the other hards.h.i.+ps of the job, but "there is caps, ma'am, that suits one face, and some that suits another's, and if I'd known, ma'am, about the caps, great as was my desire to come out to nurse at Scutari, I wouldn't have come, ma'am."

They were an unusual bunch, the nurses who had signed on to the mission, and Eleanor was well aware of the suspicion they engendered in many of the people back home. In some quarters of the British public and press, they were lauded as heroines, going off to do grim but honorable work under the most appalling conditions. But in others, they were written off as immodest and opportunistic fortune seekers, young women of working-cla.s.s backgrounds hoping to romantically ensnare a wounded officer at his most susceptible moment. And though fourteen of the nurses had been recruited from public hospitals, as were Eleanor and Moira, Miss Nightingale had also selected six holy sisters from St. John's House, eight from Miss Sellons's Anglican sisterhood, and ten Roman Catholic nuns-five of them from the Norwood Orphanage and five from the Sisters of Mercy at Bermondsey While many of the soldiers were themselves Roman Catholic, the idea that these nuns might be closely tending to wounded men who were not so inclined-men who followed the Protestant faith, for instance-was shocking to many back home. What if, under the guise of nursing, the sisters used this golden opportunity to proselytize in secret for the sinister Church of Rome?

As the Vectis approached the Dardanelles, Eleanor observed Miss Nightingale steady herself at the s.h.i.+p's rail and gaze off at the pa.s.sing land. Her dark hair was neatly done, with a severe part down its center, and her long face, paler than usual, wore an uncommon expression of rapture. Eleanor looked off in the same direction, but all she saw were arid, yellow fields. The ocean breeze picked up some of Nightingale's words, and Eleanor heard her extolling to Mrs. Bracebridge "the fabled plains of Troy, where Achilles fought and Helen wept." She looked transported by the sight. Eleanor knew that Miss Nightingale was from a fine family, and had been educated at the finest schools, and she envied her for it. She herself had gone to London in hopes of improving herself, but the hard and unending work at the Harley Street hospital had left her little time, or money, to pursue such ends.

Sinclair had briefly changed that.

But how would he have reacted, had he known that she was coming over to the theater of war? He would, she felt certain, have warned her not to do so. But the thought that a time might come when he would need her-and she would be thousands of miles away, unable to help-was too much to bear. When the word had gone out that volunteers were needed for the field hospitals, Eleanor had jumped at the chance, and Moira-whose attachment to Captain Rutherford was, perhaps, more practical than ardent-said, "Birds of a feather flock together," and blithely signed an application of her own.

What, she wondered, had become of Moira? Long gone now, of course.

Bustling into the room again, his arms filled with hymnals, Sinclair said, "These should do nicely." He bent down to the furnace, ripped several of the books into pieces, and fed the crumpled pages into the burgeoning fire. Eleanor said nothing though the sacrilegious act added to her discomfort.

When the fire was roaring, he closed the grate and announced that he had collected some other things, too. He went to the door and dragged in a canvas sack that he had left outside; from it, he produced candle stubs, tin plates and cups, bent spoons and knives, a cracked decanter. "Tomorrow, I'll make a more thorough reconnaissance, but for now we have everything we need." He was back in his military mode, scouting his surroundings, gathering provisions, planning strategies. Eleanor was relieved to see it, and hoped the mood held ... for she had learned that something far darker could always, at any moment, supplant it.

Grabbing at the bag of food from the kennel, now propped against the table leg, he said, "Should we warm some up for dinner?" He made it sound as if he was asking if she would care to indulge in a chocolate souffle. "Food," he said, before adding, as he placed one of the black wine bottles on the table, "and drink."

CHAPTER THIRTY.

December 14 THE INFIRMARY AT POINTADeLIE did not actually have a proper morgue, but then it didn't really need one. The whole continent of Antarctica was a cold-storage unit, and Murphy decided to keep Danzig's body in the coldest and most protected spot of all-the glaciology vault built ten feet under the core bin. After the geologist's body had been recovered from the creva.s.se the year before, that was where they'd kept his body, too. Betty and Tina were less than thrilled, but they understood the gravity of the situation and were willing to make the accommodation.

"Just so long as you seal the body up tight," Betty said. "We can't have any risk of contamination to the core samples."