Bonereapers (7 page)

Chapter Nine

The police car was empty and the Beached Whale was open for business, but, abruptly, she chickened out and kept walking. She had a hunch that Thor Ramberg would not welcome the inferences of an American busybody. And really, that’s all she had. Inferences and a letter she could open if she were the sort of person who opened other people’s letters. She continued down the street, one hand shielding her eyes from the blowing snow, the other fingering the corner of the letter in her pocket. It wasn’t a business letter. The name on the envelope had been handwritten with sweeping, fluid letters. There was no street address and no postage. It had either been delivered in person or left for her at the hotel’s front desk.

Dinah searched both sides of the street for the library or an Internet café. Her knowledge of African geography was woefully lacking, but she thought that Myzandia was somewhere in the center of the continent. The country made the news every few years, always as a result of some crisis or other—AIDS, civil war, malaria, malnutrition, internal corruption. If Tillcorp had sabotaged the country’s corn crop, some astute blogger would have reported it. It wasn’t plausible that something that egregious had occurred and the only proof that existed belonged to a lone, pudding-faced protester named Fritjoe Eftevang.

An expanse of black appeared in front of her. Adventifjorden. She’d reached the wharf and a triangular sign with a red border and a picture of a polar bear.
Gjelder hele Svalbard
. She didn’t need a translation. If she was prudent about nothing else, she was prudent about bears. She turned around and headed back toward the hotel. As she passed the Beached Whale, two reindeer trotted around the police car on their way out of town. They didn’t look like they’d make the cut to pull Santa’s sleigh. Short legged and big-bodied, they reminded her of oversized corgis with antlers. Some peculiar subspecies, she supposed. They moseyed through the central business district of Longyearbyen as blasé as shoppers at the mall.

The cold penetrated Dinah’s wool pants, her leggings, and the silk long johns under those. Her fingers ached and underneath the balaclava, her nose had gone numb. In the nick of time, she spotted the Longyearbyen Bibliotek and made a beeline for the front door. She hadn’t cleared the threshold when a heavyset man with a Santa Claus beard and a New York Yankees baseball cap approached.

“
Kjære
!”

She pulled off her mask and stood with her back to the door, trying to rub some feeling back into her cheeks and nose.

He seemed startled. There probably weren’t many patrons willing to brave this blizzard to go browsing in his library. “
God dag
.”

It took her a second to catch on that he wasn’t swearing at her, but wishing her a good day.

“
God dag
. I’ve come to use your computer, if you have one.”

“
Ja
, we have three, but the server is down and also the cell phone tower. It’s like the old days.
Black become the sun’s beams, weathers all treacherous, do you still seek to know
?” He smiled and waved her in.

“Is that from a poem?”

“The ‘Poetic Edda,’ circa the thirteenth century, ‘though many of the poems date back much earlier. Back when Odin reigned and mortals endured the cold without complaint.” He cocked his head to one side in a jaunty, Santa-ish way. “It wouldn’t be Norse myths you’re seeking to know, would it? I can show you a number of books.”

“I’d love to see your mythology collection, but actually I’m looking for information about Africa, specifically Myzandia.”

He held out his hands palms up in a gesture of regret. “
Dessverre
, we have no books on Africa other than references in a world atlas and encyclopedia. And those are in Norwegian.”

It was a letdown, but she felt a touch of relief that she wouldn’t have to take off her boots. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”

“
Godt
. Maybe we will have connectivity restored.”

She thanked him and resumed her slog through “weathers all treacherous” back to the Radisson and another cup of something hot. If their cell phones were inoperative, the senators would be foaming at the mouth. They depended on their ability to manage their lives and the lives of their underlings from wherever they happened to be. As she neared the hotel entrance, Herr Dybdahl stomped out the front door. He wore a black eye patch and a disgruntled frown and shouldered past her toward a waiting car. She wiped the snow out of her eyes and watched. He said something gruff to the driver, yanked open the passenger door, and the car took off.

In the entry way, she removed her boots, slid into a pair of clogs, and stopped at the front desk to ask if there were any messages. The weather had already convinced her there would be no tour of the seed vault today, but Senator Frye might have some pesky errand or question for her and, after all, she was his consultant. She halfway wished there would be a message from a certain marriage-minded Hawaiian, a message imploring her to reconsider his proposal and fly home at once. It was the kind of day that invited reconsiderations. But there was no message from anyone.

Shedding her outside clothes as she walked, she took the stairs to the second floor. The same bodyguard lolled in a chair outside Erika’s door. He glanced up from his Lee Child thriller and gave Dinah the evil eye. Apparently, now wasn’t a good time to return the parka or the letter. The housekeeping cart was parked outside her room and the door stood open. The maid who looked like Reese Witherspoon was poised over the bed about to change the sheets.

“Could you come back later?” It came out more brusquely than Dinah intended.

“
Ja, Greit
. Okay.”

“
Tusen
takk
.”

She beat it and Dinah threw her outside clothes on the bed. She unwrapped a package of kaffe and filled the coffee maker with water. Stranded. That’s how she felt. Stranded physically and stranded mentally. There was no place to go, nobody to bandy ideas with, nothing to do but conjure up a mishmash of depressing scenarios and try to keep warm. She steeped a teabag in a cup of hot water and brooded. This endless night was disorienting. The hands on her watch showed high noon and it was still dark. Still snowing. Still cold as a frost giant’s innards. Dinah didn’t dispute the librarian’s assessment of Norse courage and endurance, but she had her doubts that they never complained. This climate would drive the saints to complain.

She took her coffee and her book of mythology and installed herself in the armchair by the window. What kind of a theology had sustained the people who lived in such a harsh and inhospitable environment?

A bleak and fatalistic one, it seemed. The early Norsemen had a keen awareness of the transience of life, but they accepted the inevitability of death and strove to meet it heroically. They didn’t expect their gods to deliver them from danger, or alleviate their hardships, or rectify the unfairness of life. Fate was fixed and implacable. Even the gods were fated to die in a flaming finale known as Ragnarok.

The only thing destined to survive Ragnarok was a gigantic ash tree called Yggdrasill, the roots of which linked the three tiers of the Norse cosmos and its nine worlds. The top tier was the lush and sunny home of the gods and goddesses, the resting place of the souls of fallen warriors, and the site of the Well of Urd from whence flowed the fate of all living things. The bottom tier was Hel, a prisonlike world of bitter cold and unending night, dwelling place of the dead where the wicked suffered a second death. Midgard, the middle tier, was shared by men, giants, dwarfs, dark elves, and a terrifying sea serpent named Jormungand who coiled around Midgard and bit its own tail. The tree nourished and sheltered the creatures that inhabited it, but it was subject to relentless predation. Deer and goats nibbled its leaves, snakes gnawed at its roots, and all day long a squirrel named Ratatosk skittered up and down its trunk relaying insults from a corpse-sucking dragon in Hel to a corpse-eating eagle flapping his wings on the topmost branch.

You’d think that would be enough excitement going on in one tree, but no. Odin, the king of the gods, hanged himself on Yggdrasill in a self-sacrificial death comparable to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. He hung for nine days and nine nights while another man dangled above him. Odin was gouged with a spear, cried out in his anguish, died, and arose from the dead with new knowledge of magic songs and secret runes. Thereafter, the Vikings paid tribute to their “Gallows Lord” by regularly stringing up their enemies and anyone else who got in their way.

The early Norsemen were not a cheerful lot, decided Dinah. She closed the book and wondered what the Well of Urd held for Erika Sheridan. Was she destined to be the First Lady of the United States or a tragic figure in a murder case? Sitting and doing nothing heightened Dinah’s temptation to read that letter. If it had nothing to do with the goings-on in Longyearbyen, it would be a base violation of Erika’s privacy. But why was she cooped up and under guard? What were Colt Sheridan and Jake Mahler afraid of? Was it something she might say? Something she’d seen? Or something she’d done?

Dinah’s eye fell on the phone. Cell phone towers might be down, land lines, too, for all she knew. But a room-to-room call should be doable. She picked up the phone and dialed Erika’s room number. It rang five times. Someone picked up and she heard a click. Disconnected. Hell and damnation.

Well, she had done what she could. The house phones worked. If Erika needed help, she knew what to do. If she didn’t communicate, it must mean that she was cloistered of her own free will. Whether she was or she wasn’t, the problem was beyond Dinah’s power to help and if she didn’t stop agitating about it, she’d go as squirrely as Ratatosk. What she needed was a nice, relaxing lunch. She decided to go downstairs and try to forget about murder and the wheels of destiny for a while.

Without so much as a sideways glance at Erika’s guard, she steamed down the hall, rode the elevator to the lobby, and walked into the Barentz Pub & Spiseri. A pert, blue-eyed hostess promptly showed her to a table, handed her a menu, and moved on.

Dinah surveyed the lunch crowd. Relieved to see that there were no senators or representatives of Tillcorp in the room, she perused the menu. Today’s specials were smoked eel, mutton stew, American beef burger, and seal burger. The anthropologist in her wanted to order the seal burger, but she was hungry and somehow she didn’t think she could choke down a lot of seal. When the waitress arrived to take her order, she inquired what came with the seal burger.

“Coleslaw, beets, and French fried potatoes.”

“The seal burger, then. With all the trimmings. And a Bloody Mary, extra spicy.”

While she was waiting, she studied her placemat, which showed a map of the Svalbard archipelago and Spitsbergen, the chain’s largest island, along with snippets of geographical and historical data. Discovered by Willem Barents in 1596 in his quest for a northern route to the Orient, Svalbard’s only inhabitants at the time were polar bears, Arctic foxes, and reindeer. The Russians began to drop by periodically during the seventeenth century, but the first people to show serious interest in the island were European whalers. The whaling business boomed for over a hundred years with English, French, and Norwegian ships competing for the most kills. The Dutch hold the record. They slaughtered some sixty thousand Greenland right whales, with the other nations racking up another sixty thousand among them, driving the species to the brink of extinction to make lamp oil and soap.

“You look engrossed.”

Dinah looked up. Valerie Ives was staring down at her.

“Just waiting for my lunch, Valerie.”

“I’ll join you. We have a rather ticklish situation to discuss.”

Chapter Ten

Valerie sat down and hooked the straps of her shoulder bag over the chair.

“I’m sure you’ve wondered about Mrs. Sheridan’s, Erika’s…seclusion.”

“Looks more like imprisonment.”

Valerie’s steeply arched eyebrows arched more steeply. “Don’t be ridiculous. As I said, it’s a ticklish situation. Erika is a victim of her own weaknesses. Senator Sheridan is doing everything he can to protect her from herself.”

“What weaknesses?”

Dinah’s Bloody Mary came. She tasted it and sent silent kudos to the Barentz bartender.

Without looking at the menu or the waitress, Valerie ordered a cheese plate and a bottle of Perrier. When the waitress had gone, she said, “From what I understand, you’re only an ad hoc aide to Senator Frye with no other connection to the Democratic party. Is that right?”

“I’m an independent.”

“Someone like yourself probably hasn’t the least interest in politics. We think we can rely on your discretion.”

Dinah turned the “someone like yourself” remark over in her mind. What did this condescending bitch want from her? “What is it you want from me?”

“Inspector Ramberg was here this morning. We’ve agreed to cooperate fully, all of us, although there are certain matters, matters not relevant to his investigation that we would like to keep private. Inspector Ramberg has pledged his discretion. Will you promise not to repeat what I’m about to tell you?”

“I don’t make many promises. If you’re worried, you’d better not tell me.”

“Don’t be coy. Erika says that she’s told you already.”

“She’s told me many things.”

“That being the case, I simply want to put the situation in context. I hope you’ll keep our discussion confidential for her sake.”

A waiter set a bottle of Perrier on the table and poured a glass. Valerie took a sip and stared at Dinah, as if waiting for her to raise her right hand and pledge.

“What specifically don’t you want me to repeat, Valerie?”

“That Erika was a patient at the Nina Byrd Rehab Center in Virginia until a few weeks ago. That she is an alcoholic.”

The alcohol part didn’t surprise Dinah as much as the fact that Erika claimed to have confided in her. She waffled. “Alcoholism isn’t as big a political liability as it once might have been. There are probably worse skeletons in the other candidates’ closets.”

“That may be true,” said Valerie. “But you can be sure they’ll keep the closet doors closed. Erika seems unwilling to do that. The only reason she came along on this trip is because Colt was afraid to leave her at home alone, afraid she’d start drinking again. And when she drinks, she tends to hallucinate things that never happened.”

“What kind of things?” Valerie’s proprietary hand on Sheridan’s arm sprang to Dinah’s mind, but she bit her tongue.

“It’s enough that you are aware she’s unstable and some of her tales are complete rubbish.”

“Which tales in particular?”

Valerie’s mouth tightened and she ticked her red fingernails against the table. “You tell me. You spent a lot of time with her on the flight over. What did she tell you?”

“That’s the second time you’ve asked.”

“Nine hours is a long time to talk about music.”

“We played cards. Crazy Eights is her favorite game. She told me that it’s called Mau-Mau in Germany, Tschausepp in Switzerland, and Pesten in the Netherlands. She likes the version where you have to tell the other player when you have only one card left to play. The only beverages I saw her drink were coffee and water.”

Valerie attempted a more conciliatory approach. “Look, I don’t mean to bug you or to put Erika down. She’s a charming woman and we believe she has a lot to offer, eventually. All I’m trying to tell you is that, as of right now, she is mentally and emotionally fragile. The smallest thing upsets her.”

“She saw somebody assaulted with a laser yesterday and this morning somebody was murdered. Not exactly small things.”

“No, but if she overreacts to these events and starts babbling nonsense, if a mudslinger like Brander Aagaard were to hear some of her crazy talk and exploit her weakness, it could undermine Colt’s candidacy. Colt’s a gifted politician. Young, energetic, articulate. After his first term in the House, he quit and joined the Marines. He saw action in the Persian Gulf and when he returned, he was elected to the Senate in a landslide. He’s at the top of the polls now and we’re betting he can win the Republican nomination and defeat Obama in November. His Achilles heel is his wife. Jake and Whitney and I are doing all we can to make sure she doesn’t wreck his chances.”

“What are you going to do? Keep her locked up for twelve months?”

“Don’t be flippant. Colt thinks she’ll improve once they return to the States. If her problems are portrayed in the right way, they could generate more sympathy for Colt than criticism, although Whitney has advised Colt to check her into a clinic here in Norway for a few weeks to be safe. Visiting family in the old country would be a perfectly fine explanation of why she isn’t with him on the campaign trail.”

Their server returned to the table and offloaded the cheese plate and the seal burger. Dinah peaked under the bun, took a sip of her Bloody Mary, and bit into a French fry. “Is it possible that Erika knew the dead man? That would explain why she was so distressed by the news of his murder.”

“Have you been listening to anything I’ve said? She’s unbalanced.”

Dinah’s temper flared. “Eftevang’s murder seems to have unbalanced everyone. Colt Sheridan, Whitney Keyes, your boss, you. You’ve been scuttling around like a passel of sprayed roaches.”

“What a colorful expression.” She pushed away her cheese plate, took her purse off the chair, and got up to leave. “Inspector Ramberg will be back this afternoon to question you. I trust you won’t be quite so flippant.” She stared at Dinah for several seconds, as if sizing up the aggravation she was dealing with here. She started to say something else, but apparently thought better and fumed out of the restaurant.

Dinah took a large bite of her seal burger and chewed over what had just happened. Valerie’s speech was clearly designed to demolish Erika’s credibility and invalidate whatever it was she might have said. Her “hallucination” must be a doozie for the Sheridan team to be in such a lather about it. Hallucination or fact? What could blow the leading Republican candidate’s campaign out of the water? A drinking problem? A bimbo problem? A tax problem? Would Erika know anything about Tillcorp’s misdeeds in Myzandia? If Sheridan knowingly accepted contributions from a company that had caused a famine and reaped a profit from it, that would cook his goose.

The texture of the seal was unctuous and the taste gamy. Dinah ate about half and chased it down with the dregs of her Bloody Mary. A knot of fear had begun to fill her stomach. Eftevang had known about the cutworms and now he was dead, his body waiting to be shipped south for burial, soon to become food for other worms. If Erika knew about Tillcorp’s cutworm problem, she might also be in danger. And if they thought she had passed that knowledge on to Dinah…

Belatedly, it dawned on her that the letter in Erika’s coat pocket could be a plea for help. Maybe she had scribbled it hurriedly while Lee wasn’t looking and slipped it into her coat pocket before handing it to Dinah. The envelope could contain a clue to the whereabouts of those incriminating documents Eftevang claimed to have.

Dinah made up her mind. She couldn’t care less what fate the Well of Urd held for Colt Sheridan or Jake Mahler or Valerie Ives. She was worried about her own fate and Erika’s and the best way to keep them both safe was to make sure that Thor Ramberg knew everything. She could hardly wait for her interview.