Bonereapers (9 page)

She touched her glass to his. “Is it true that toast comes from the Vikings’ custom of drinking ale out of their enemies’ skulls?”

“
Behold the only skull, from which, unlike a living head, whatever flows is never dull
.”

She laughed. “Is that your own?”

“Lord Byron, probably in his cups.”

“You Norsemen are more poetic than I expected. Brander Aagaard sang for me earlier today and the librarian quoted from ‘The Poetic Edda.’”

He took a sip of his beer. “Tell me about your conversation with Aagaard.”

She told him what Aagaard had said about Eftevang and the big scoop Eftevang claimed to have. “Mahler and Ives kept a low profile in the back of the audience during the press conference. Their visit was apparently intended to be sub rosa. Did Eftevang say anything about Mahler or Tillcorp when you interviewed him?”

“No. He said only that he was here to protest American greed and corruption and that he hadn’t hurt anyone.”

“That sounds so tame after his rant about Americans destroying God’s creations. And if he had proof of some terrible crime against humanity, why wouldn’t he go ahead and print it for all the world to see?” She had a brainstorm. “What if it was Eftevang who was greedy and corrupt? What if his words at the press conference were a veiled threat? A message to Mahler or Sheridan that he would blow the gaff if they didn’t pay up.”

“You mean blackmail?”

“Why not? If the rumor is true, they were on the spot. I don’t know if Tillcorp’s financial interests would be jeopardized by news of their shenanigans in Africa, but its reputation would take a hit. And Sheridan wants to keep his cozy relationship with the company on the down low. He can’t afford to have his name appear in the same sentence with cutworms. Not this close to the Iowa caucus.” She chided herself. “I ought to have paid more attention to what everybody on the plane was saying and how they were acting. My department head arranged for me to tag along on this trip to find out if the Svalbard Seed Vault is a safe depository for her heirloom seeds. I thought I could wait until we landed in Longyearbyen to start paying attention. I feel as if I’ve missed something that would make everything come clear.”

“Why do you care about the murder of a man you don’t know in a place where you will spend three days at most?”

“I don’t know. Two years ago, while I was visiting my family in Australia, a man was murdered and until the truth came out, the police suspected all of us. It was horrible. At the time, I thought it was the worst thing that would ever happen to me. Then last summer in Hawaii, I was embroiled in another murder investigation.” She made a wry face. “That probably makes you want to rush back to headquarters and run an Interpol check on me.”

“What makes you think I haven’t done that already?”

She looked for a sign that he was kidding and didn’t see one. Maybe he just deadpanned really well. “Anyway, I hate murder, especially when the murderer seems to be getting away with it.”

He said, “You didn’t mention the possibility that Eftevang could have been sending a subtle message to Mrs. Sheridan. She has a rock-and-roll past and now she has to think about her husband’s political ambitions.”

“I suppose it’s possible, but everything Eftevang said seemed to relate to pesticides and gene modification. Anyway, I like Erika. For some reason, call it intuition, I don’t believe she’s as loose and irresponsible as people say she is. I don’t like Jake Mahler or his company’s business ethics. And if Brander Aagaard is right and Colt Sheridan is using his office to further Tillcorp’s rape of the earth, I don’t like him either.”

“What makes you trust Aagaard? He could have invented that story about Myzandia.”

“I
don’t
trust him. Or the dead man, either. You asked me before if Aagaard seemed to anticipate the laser. Is he a suspect in Eftevang’s murder? Do you think the two of them were in cahoots?”

“He’s what your American cops refer to as ‘a person of interest.’”

She smiled. “What do the Norwegian cops call a person of interest?”

“I call him a
mistenkelig
. And there are too many, all of them, how do you say, pulling rank and pulling strings while pretending to help.”

“Inspector…”

“Thor.”

“Thor.” Torr. No h. Torr as in torch. Torr as in torrid. She took a sip of wine and cautioned herself never to fall for another cop. “Thor, you haven’t asked me for an alibi for the night of Eftevang’s murder. Have you asked the others?”

“They all claim they were asleep in their hotel rooms. Isn’t that what you’d say?”

“Yes.” So Erika hadn’t owned up to going walkabout last night. Was it because she’d met with Eftevang, or seen someone else meet with him? Dinah was torn. Of course she
should
tell Thor what she knew about Erika. She might be an eyewitness. She might be lying to protect someone or she might be lying to keep a guilty liaison quiet. But once again Dinah couldn’t visualize Erika stabbing a man to death and she felt qualmish about ratting her out for a lesser offense.

Thor said, “Until I find a witness who saw somebody near the scene of the crime between the hours of ten o’clock and five a.m., I’ll have to take their word for where they were.”

She said, “Eftevang told Aagaard he had documents that would discredit Tillcorp. Suppose he got his information from WikiLeaks. From what I’ve read, WikiLeaks doesn’t organize the material it collects. They pass their secrets on to journalists to analyze.”

“That’s an interesting possibility.” He appeared to mull the idea. “If Eftevang tried to sell his big scoop to Aagaard, but Aagaard decided the price was too high or he didn’t want to share the byline, he could have killed him and taken whatever documents or other proof that Eftevang had.”

“But why would he freely admit to meeting with Eftevang or mention the existence of the documents in the first place? He could have kept quiet and published his scoop without anyone knowing where the information came from.”

“Sometimes it’s the people who talk the most who have the most to hide.”

She felt her face grow hot. “People like me.”

“Not at all. What you’ve said is very helpful. Of the senators, Whitney Keyes was the most talkative. He suggested that Herr Eftevang celebrated his release from custody with too much of the hard stuff, picked a fight with another drunk, and lost. ‘Tragically,’ the senator added, but not very convincingly.”

She said, “Keyes seems very protective of Sheridan, but I sense bad blood between Keyes and Mahler. What was Mahler’s theory of the murder?”

“He thinks that Eftevang was done in by one of his co-conspirators. He showed me some material Ms. Ives had gathered off the Internet about a cell of agri-terrorists. She gave me a list of their names and suggested I find out whether they were passengers on any of the flights or ships entering Longyearbyen in the last few months. That would keep me busy and out of their hair until their business here is finished.”

“Did you talk to Tipton Teilhard?”

“As briefly as possible. What a
fanatiker
.”

“How old is Tipton?” asked Dinah.

“Twenty-eight by his passport, although he looks and acts much younger. He was mostly concerned about how the murder would play out in the media and the all-important need to deflect the spotlight away from Senator Sheridan. He didn’t exactly come out and criticize Sheridan, but he did say that Sheridan had invited Mahler to Longyearbyen against Senator Keyes’ advice. Tillcorp provokes controversy and controversy is poison to an American politician. Teilhard seems to believe that the only way to win an election is to ‘spin’ the story. Is that the guiding principle of American politics?”

“I hope not,” said Dinah. “But Erika may think it is. Maybe that’s the reason she doesn’t want her husband to run for the presidency. Did she suggest any avenues of inquiry for you?”

“No. But she had the grace to ask if Eftevang had a wife and whether she had been notified.”

Dinah reproached herself for not even thinking of that. “Did he?”

“Not that we’ve been able to find. We’ll continue to inquire.”

Dinah reckoned Thor to be in his mid-thirties. Too young to have listened to Fata Morgana, but she asked anyway. “You wouldn’t by any chance know the names of her former band members, would you?”

“Norge doesn’t have so many megastars that we can’t name them all. Fata had three men and two women. Maks Jorgen, Piers Brokk, Bjorn Durin, Erika Olsen, and Gudlaug Bye.”

So Maks
was
the songwriter. “Was there another woman associated with the group? Inge, perhaps?”

“I don’t think so. Piers Brokk was ill and dropped out for a time. I can’t recall the name of his replacement, but it wasn’t Inge.”

“Inge could be a man’s name?”

“Male or female. Why? Did Mrs. Sheridan say something about an Inge?”

“No. I don’t know where I heard the name.” Dinah didn’t know why she balked at showing Thor the note. She’d intended to tell him everything. But the more she thought about that note, the more it sounded like a scolding friend’s response to Erika’s decision to leave her husband, in no way relevant to the murder investigation. It sounded like what a friend might say to her about ruining Jon’s life. It wasn’t true and she felt reflexively defensive. “Did Valerie Ives warn you that Erika hallucinates things that never happened?”

“Senator Sheridan said that she is ‘high-strung’ and asked me to treat her gently. He said she was recently hospitalized for alcohol abuse and the laser attack and the murder had frightened her and exacerbated her desire for alcohol.”

“It’s exacerbated mine.” Dinah poured herself another glass of wine. “At the risk of being overly talkative, I think Senator Sheridan and his team are trying to muzzle Erika. I don’t know what they’re afraid she’ll say, or has already said, but I get the impression that both she and her husband are having affairs.”

“Maybe she was having an affair with Eftevang,” said Thor.

Dinah wrinkled her nose. “I wouldn’t say that looks make
all
the difference, but …”

He completed her thought. “Fritjoe Eftevang looked like a troll.”

“Let’s just say he didn’t strike me as Erika’s type.” Dinah had no doubt that Thor Ramberg was well aware of his own good looks. She tried not to notice. “Brander Aagaard said that you’re of Sami descent. Tell me something about the Sami history.”

“Sah-me.”

She echoed his pronunciation. “Were they mostly nomads and reindeer herders?”

“Not all. There were a good many farmers and fishermen along the coast. The Russians, the Danes, the Swedes and the Norwegians vied for control of their lands and the Sami ended up paying taxes to all of them simultaneously. The Sami have always been regarded as outsiders. Before the Second World War, Norway invested big money in an effort to wipe out the Sami culture. Then the Germans came and burned down everything they saw that was Sami.”

“Aagaard said that you’re originally from Finland.”

“Wrong. He’s from Oslo. Some down south use the term ‘Finn’ to refer to the Sami.” He finished his beer, fixed his eyes on her, and seemed to ponder. “Some cop shows these days use non-cops as observers and consultants. You’re an observant woman. How would you like to be my eyes and ears, tell me what’s really going on with the American
mistenkeligs
?”

“Are you kidding?”

“Think about it. I’m going to get another beer and order a pizza. Gunnar’s special is pretty good. It’s American style.”

Chapter Twelve

The blizzard had abated overnight and the visit to the Doomsday Vault was back on the agenda. Norris Frye informed Dinah over
frokost
that the agriculture minister would be sending cars to pick everyone up for the grand tour at ten o’clock. Unfortunately, the senator’s gout was such that he couldn’t bear the pressure of a boot on his right foot. “This cold is brutal. Think I’d better stay inside and take care of myself. You go on in my place. Don’t let that blowhard Sheridan bully you and be sure to prepare a thorough report. I’ll…oh, good morning, Colt.”

“Morning, Norris, Ms. Pelerin. Sorry about yesterday, Norris. Tensions got to me.”

“That’s big of you, Colt. And I apologize for my little taunt.”

“Forget it. Are you going on the tour of the vault with us?”

“I’m under the weather today. Just going to put my feet up and try to keep warm. Dinah here will take the tour in my place.”

“Not a problem. Should be an educational experience. Dybdahl’s outfoxed the press so we won’t be harassed.”

Dinah asked him if Erika would be going on the tour.

“I think not. She didn’t sleep well last night. I don’t want her to overdo. Lee will stay with her in case she needs anything.”

Dinah refrained from comment. She had unloaded her concerns to the local lawman and it was up to Erika to say whether she wanted or needed help.

After her muesli and
kaffe
, Dinah went back to her room to read for a while. She sorted through the various fact sheets Norris had given her about the facility.

Construction of the
Svalbard globale frøhvelv cost approximately forty-five million Norwegian kroner, or about nine million U.S. dollars. The purpose of the vault is to preserve samples of native seeds from gene banks around the world in the event of catastrophic loss due to environmental disasters, wars, or nuclear holocaust. The underground cavern is built deep inside a sandstone mountain more than four hundred feet above sea level so that the site will remain dry even if the icecaps melt. The storage rooms are refrigerated to minus 0.4 degrees Farenheit and, even if electricity is lost, the surrounding permafrost will keep the rooms cold. At this low temperature and with limited oxygen, the seeds will not age as they normally would and will remain viable for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.

The information sheets corroborated what Valerie had said: the depositors own the seeds they deposit in the bank. The contract they sign with the Norwegian government doesn’t constitute a legal transfer of rights. But if the ownership issue was cut and dried, Dinah wondered how suspicion arose that the government was facilitating access to corporate breeders. And then she came to a line near the bottom of the last page.

The Norwegian Government makes all policy decisions regarding access in consultation with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), a private entity funded by a number of different foundations and corporations.

It was a long name for any group and a cumbersome string of letters. It was the sort of name that cried out for a pronounceable acronym. CGIAR. C-jar? C-gar? Cigar. That rang a bell. Could CGIAR have been what the senators were talking about at the state dinner and not cigars? And how did that United Nations treaty that Aagaard talked about fit into the framework?

The phone rang.

“Hello.”

“The cars are here. You’d better come down.” Valerie’s tone conveyed an unmistakable disrelish for Dinah’s company.

Dinah rolled her eyes and resolved to make herself as much of a pain in Ms. High-and-Mighty’s derrière as possible. “I’m on my way.” She grabbed Erika’s parka and reported to the lobby.

Herr Dybdahl waited by the door with his hands behind his back. His unpatched eye strafed the room like a sniper’s scope and he rocked back and forth on his toes. The geneticist she’d talked with at the state dinner—Peder Halverson—nattered away in Dybdahl’s ear, but the agriculture minister disdained to look at him and made no reply.

Dinah fiddled with her boot laces and pretended not to eavesdrop on the two men.

“Will your eye see again, Herr Dybdahl?”

Dybdahl grunted.

“Like Odin, eh? Did you receive wisdom in exchange for the eye?”

Dinah congratulated herself for getting the reference. Odin had given an eye to drink from the Well of Urd, which imparted wisdom and understanding.

Dybdahl’s lone blue eye lighted on Halverson with a malevolent gleam. “I have not seen the foundation’s grain tonnage report for the Sub-Saharan region. You are late.”

“I am a geneticist, not a
sekretær
. The report is not my responsibility.”

“Hurry up your
sekret
ær, then. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is after me for my input on the aid budget and the Agency for Development wants the numbers on the tonnage of mineral fertilizers you have shipped.”

“Oh, hi!” Tipton scurried out of the elevator with a heavy briefcase in either hand. He wore a thick, whitish-gray cardigan knitted from an unusually hairy yarn and a look of cosmic urgency. “Where are the senators?”

“They haven’t showed yet,” said Dinah.

“Thank God, I didn’t make them wait.”

Dybdahl’s eye gleamed with undisguised contempt.

Oblivious, Tipton set down the cases and flexed his fingers. “These are the logistics, everyone. We’ll be traveling in separate cars. Colt and Whitney and I will be in the lead car with Herr Dybdahl. The videographer has his own car. He’ll meet us there. Val and Jake will go in the car with Herr Halverson. I understand that Norris has begged off and you’ll be going in his place, Dinah. Val said you could hitch a ride with them.”

“Lucky me.”

As if on cue, Valerie and Jake Mahler emerged from the dining room. They appeared to be having a difference of opinion. Mahler’s characteristic dominance showed in his chesty posture and impatient eyes. Val seemed to be trying to convince him of something. She was talking with her hands and her eyebrows moved up and down like batwings. She led Mahler to the sofa in front of the fireplace and continued to argue.

“Housekeeping keeps shuffling the papers on the desk in Whitney’s room,” said Tipton. “It’s maddening.” He looked at his watch and hurried over to the front desk.

Dybdahl muttered something about Americans under his breath.

Halverson excused himself to go to the men’s room.

Dinah sidled up to Herr Dybdahl. If he blamed his pain and suffering on the Americans, he probably felt a tinge of annoyance with all of them, herself included. She essayed a mollifying smile. “To have to coordinate so many ministries and agencies and foundations must be challenging.”

“
Ja
.”

“You probably had to fly here from Oslo to host us Americans.”

“
Ja.
And it is a holiday week.”

“What happened to your eye is terrible. We owe you a tremendous debt of gratitude.”

“It is my responsibility. I do not shirk.”

“And you manage the seed vault, too?”

“
Ja
, along with the Global Crop Diversity Trust and the Nordic Genetic Resource Center. We will only accept samples that have not previously been deposited. No duplicates.”

She smiled. “Like Noah took on board the minimum number needed to reproduce.”

He defrosted slightly. “Svalbard is sometimes likened to Noah’s ark. But copies of our seeds have to be stored in another gene bank somewhere else.”

“What does CGIAR do?”

“It brings together scientists from all over the world. They engage in research and collaborate to maintain international gene banks.”

“Where do they get the seeds for their research?”

“From the regional and national gene banks.”

“Is a seed bank the same as a gene bank?”

“It’s a type of gene bank. When those banks deposit samples with Svalbard, they must agree to make available samples from their own stocks.”

Dinah did an auditory double-take. “So anyone who wants to experiment with a particular seed can simply request it from his local seed or gene bank?”

“
Ja
. Provided the local bank has deposited a sample with Svalbard. That is what the agreement says.”

“Do the individual farmers and gardeners who entrust their seeds to the regional seed banks know that?”

His gaze turned glacial again. “What the local banks tell the farmers is outside my knowledge.”

Dinah thought, you could drive a John Deere tractor through that loophole. It was tantamount to fraud. It
was
fraud if the depositor expected the DNA of his seeds to remain intact. The farmer gives stocks of his heirloom seeds to the local seed bank for safekeeping. The local seed bank gives a sample copy of those seeds to Svalbard to keep even safer for the next ten millennia. And then the local seed bank turns around and gives anyone who asks free access to whatever it wants.

The senators showed up, Sheridan in a heavy, khaki-colored anorak that filled Dinah with envy, and Herr Dybdahl waved them outside to his waiting car. Having chastised the clerk at the front desk, Tipton gathered up the briefcases and tagged after the senators like a puppy.

Halverson returned and he and Dinah waited for Jake Mahler and Val to wind up their confab. After five minutes or so, they appeared to call a truce. They sat in the foyer and put on their boots. They didn’t speak. When they were ready to go, Mahler gave Halverson the nod and he conducted them toward a large black SUV.

Mahler said, “Sit up front with Peder, Dinah. Val and I haven’t finished our discussion.” He held open the front passenger door for her and the rear door for Valerie.

When they were all inside and buckled up, Halverson cranked the engine and turned on the headlights. They broadcast a brilliant, high-intensity blue light that seemed to compass the entire length and width of the town. The weather had cleared and in the nebulous distance, Dinah could make out the silhouette of a range of low, snow-covered mountains. The outline of a ship was visible at the wharf. She assumed it was frozen in the ice until spring, but she didn’t break the interior ice to ask.

In the back seat, Val lowered her voice to a whisper. She sounded keyed up and angry. Dinah caught a word here and there, something about a note, or maybe a vote.

The SUV barreled past the polar bear warning sign, going too fast for the road conditions. In the refulgent blue lights, roadside mining artifacts littered the landscape. Halverson hit a clump of rock-hard snow and the undercarriage sounded as if it were being ripped apart.

Mahler’s voice jumped. “Is he insane?”

“It was unavoidable!” exclaimed Halverson.

“I wasn’t talking to you. Just drive.” Mahler said something to Valerie in a hoarse whisper, “Don’t buy it” or “deny it.”

Halverson barreled on, his eyes focused on the rear view mirror instead of the road. His driving focused Dinah’s mind on the perils of breaking down this far from town with a geneticist, a lawyer, and a CEO to get the car running again. The SUV bucked and slued, throwing its blue lights hither and thither across the barren hinterland. She gripped the grab handle and comforted herself that at least there were no trees to slam into.

There was more whispering in the back seat and then Valerie said, quite distinctly, “Somebody’s playing us, Jake.”

Dinah almost turned, but a shimmering greenish-turquoise fluorescence distracted her. The column of light soared three hundred feet into the sky. It was too geometrically perfect to be the northern lights.

“It’s the vault,” said Val.

“Damn it, slow down,” growled Mahler.

Halverson slowed and they all inclined their heads for a good view. From their angle of approach, the vault appeared as a triangular wedge protruding out of the side of a mountain. Or the prow of a huge, iced-in ship.

Val said, “The roof and entrance are inlaid with steel mirrors and prisms and a mass of fiber-optic cables to reflect the polar light for miles around. The objective was to make it glow in the moonlight and sparkle in the midnight sun. If asteroids were to wipe out everyone who knows about the vault, it will stand out like a beacon and lure new people to investigate. It was designed by Dyveke Sanne. If it lasts as long as the Norwegians say it will, his name will go down with the Pharaohs who built the pyramids.”

“Looks like Dr. No’s bunker,” said Mahler.