Bonereapers (3 page)

Her room was at the end of the hall on the second floor and the bright interior lifted her spirits. The walls were splashed with colorful murals of Viking ships and crenellated castles and, most importantly, a plush down comforter covered the bed. Before she took off her coat, she bumped the thermostat to high and went to the bathroom and ran a tub of hot water.

While her bath was filling, she scouted out the mini-bar. She wanted something to take the cloying taste of aquavit out of her mouth. There was a selection of beers she’d never heard of, but Russian vodka predominated. She found a can of tomato juice and mixed herself a Bloody Mary, no rocks. Drink in hand, she opened her suitcase and grabbed an insulating silk turtleneck, a pair of wool socks, and a flannel shirt and repaired to the bathroom. She dumped a bottle of gardenia scented bath gel into the water and tested the temperature with a finger. Perfect. She set her drink and her book of Norse myths on a stool beside the tub, stripped off her coat and the numerous but insufficient layers underneath, and climbed into the hot water.

“Ahhh.” She laid back and let the hot water and the vodka seep into her frozen veins. After a few minutes, she began to thaw. Her headache subsided and her thoughts reverted to Herr Dybdahl. As horrible as it was to have one’s eyes burned by a laser, it could have been worse. Someone in the crowd had seen a gun, or imagined he saw one. If the protester had had a gun instead of a laser, Dybdahl might be dead. Senator Sheridan, too. If it had been one of those guns with laser sights, or a semi-automatic blaster with an oversized clip that could fire dozens of shots in a few seconds, the entire assembly might have been murdered, their bodies already loaded onto a plane for shipment south, to a burial place in softer ground.

Dinah shivered and immersed herself to the neck in the steaming water. The last two years of her life had been haunted by murder, first in Australia and last summer in Hawaii. Those events still gave her nightmares and she hoped with all her heart that she would never find herself in the vicinity of another murder.

She took a sip of her Bloody Mary, dried her hands, and reached for her book of Norse mythology. She hadn’t read five pages when the first murder transpired. Literally, the first murder. The Norsemen believed that the earth was created by an act of murder.

In the beginning, there was nothing but black emptiness bounded on one side by a region of fire, Muspelheim, and on the other by a region of ice, Niflheim. At the dawn of time, a few sparks of fire escaped and melted some of the ice, which formed into a primordial, hermaphroditic frost giant named Ymir. The sweat under Ymir’s arms dripped and formed two more giants and one of his legs mated with the other to form a third. Other giants emerged and somewhere down the line a giant cow, Audumla, came along and licked a salty block of ice into the shape of a man, Buri.

Dinah drank another sip of her Bloody Mary. Hermaphroditic frost giants? A primeval cow licking blocks of ice into human form? What a twisted imagination those Vikings had. She read on, transfixed.

Buri, who possessed the reproductive attributes of both male and female, mated with himself and begat Borr. Borr represented a break with Ymir’s brutishness and a genealogical advance toward humanness. He eventually mated with Bestla, a benign frost giant who exemplified the nourishing forces of Nature and out of this union was born the triumvirate of Norse gods—Vili, Vé, and Odin.

But there was still no earth—only fire and ice, with a space of dark, lawless emptiness in between. The gods were constantly at war with Ymir and his marauding gangs of frost giants, as well as giants of other races—fire giants and mountain giants. The gods longed for a pleasant, orderly universe. But unlike the Judeo-Christian God, they couldn’t create something out of nothing. They needed raw materials to work with. They looked around and saw Ymir, whom they hated, and a light bulb went on. They saw in the giant everything that a well-structured world would need and, in short order, they murdered him for his parts. They fashioned the earth out of his skull and ground up his flesh to make dirt. The blood gushing from his wounds became the lakes and the seas. They made his teeth and bones into the rocks and mountains, his thick and curly hair into the trees, and his brains into clouds.

Dinah closed the book and turned on the hot water tap with her toes. Norse mythology was not for the squeamish. Offhand, she couldn’t recall another creation story that was quite so grisly.

Arriving in Norway to shouts of “death gene” was a pretty grisly introduction to the country. The protester’s words were directed at Americans, but what had he meant? Was he talking about seeds? It was common knowledge that Tillcorp had developed seeds that didn’t reproduce after a first planting. They produced a single, sterile crop. If a farmer wanted to grow another crop the next season, he had to purchase another batch of seeds from Tillcorp. Designing the seed to self-destruct was how Tillcorp protected its patent. But if she’d understood what Aagaard was saying, once the seeds were deposited into the Svalbard vault, they fell under the control of the U.N. and corporate breeders could plunder them at will.

She turned off the water and soaked for a while. Should she call Eleanor and brief her? Eleanor hadn’t laid out her concerns with any specificity, but she would definitely want to know if the seeds on deposit with Svalbard could be removed and rendered sterile. At this point, Dinah didn’t know if the protester was a raving wacko or a male Cassandra. Likewise, Brander Aagaard. She decided to wait until the facts were in before raising Eleanor’s blood pressure. In the meantime, she needed a nap. There was plenty of time before the scheduled state dinner, if it hadn’t been canceled, which it probably had. In that case, she would be able to sleep straight through until tomorrow. She crawled out of the tub, dried herself off, and snuggled into her nightshirt.

It’s never what you expect, she thought, and fell into bed, cocooning herself in the soft depths of the down comforter.

Chapter Three

A door slammed so hard that it rattled the wall.

“Jerusalem!” Dinah sat bolt upright in bed.

An argument was raging in the room next door. “For chrissakes, get back in here and be quiet.”

“Let go of me, Colt. You can’t stop me.”

“Grow up and get over it, Erika. You’re obsessing over a phantom.”

“She’s not a phantom. Hannalore…”

Something crashed and the voices died away. Dinah let out a breath. It sounded like a domestic fight rather than a terrorist assault. Had the senator hit Erika or vice versa? Should she call hotel security or the Secret Service guys? Dear God, what idiot had assigned her the room next door to the big cheese and his missus? They should be ensconced in the VIP suite with armed guards stationed outside their door. Maybe the senator was afraid the VIP treatment would tarnish his image as a regular joe and man of the people.

Dinah nipped across the room and pressed her ear against the wall. Nothing. Not a peep. And no sound of anyone rushing to the scene. Surely, she wasn’t the only one who heard the ruckus. In another minute the cavalry would come charging down the hall to find out what was happening. What time was it anyway? She went to the window and peered out between the drapes. It looked like midnight, but her watch showed six p.m.

The quiet began to sound ominous. Just because a man was running for president didn’t mean he didn’t beat his wife. Maybe Erika was afraid of him and that’s why she’d seemed so fidgety and nervous at the press conference. Dinah pictured her lying hurt and bleeding. The least she could do was knock on their door to make sure she didn’t need help. She threw on her Radisson robe. But before she had the sash cinched, someone knocked on her door.

Expecting Erika to stumble in with a split lip or a bloody nose, she flung open the door.

“I hope I didn’t get you out of the shower.” It was Erika, all right, but she showed no ill effects from the slamming and smashing. Her eyes were dry, her demeanor unruffled, and she was dressed in a sexy, body-hugging black-and-white ski outfit that belied her fifty years. She held out a small paper bag. “You came from Hawaii so unprepared for the Norwegian winter. I brought you this silk pullover and a balaclava. I packed a spare and you said you didn’t have one. It’ll keep your nose from freezing off if you go outside.”

“That’s so thoughtful, Erika. Thank you.” Dinah took the bag. “Won’t you come in and chat for a while?”

“Sure. For a few minutes. After being so cramped on the plane, I thought I’d go for a walk to loosen up. Would you like to join me?”

Was there a plea implicit in the invitation?

“Let me think about it for a few minutes. I’m still thawing out from this afternoon.”

Erika came in and sat in an armchair next to the window. Her face, sliced thin by her straight blond hair and foreshortened by bangs to her eyebrows, seemed designed to hide her emotions.

Dinah perched on the edge of the bed. She was happy to provide refuge, but a walk in the frigid polar night, even with a balaclava to keep her nose from freezing off, didn’t appeal. “Do you think it’s safe to go out without a security detail after what happened at the airport?”

“That’s nothing to do with me.” Her tone was emphatic, almost belligerent, as if she were serving notice. She pushed her hair back and rested her hands on her knees. “Anyhow, no one would recognize me in the dark and with my face covered.”

Dinah forbore to point out the obvious, namely that a man had shouted out heated grievances against Americans and, just possibly, tried to blind her husband. His nearest and dearest, however well disguised, should not go wandering about the streets unprotected.

Talking with Erika had been fun and easy on the plane, but now Dinah felt awkward. She was curious about what had caused the row and who this Hannalore might be. But it was none of her business, probably as organic and irrational as any other marital spat. The naming of a third party was reminiscent of the jealous brawls she’d overheard between her mother and her various stepfathers. She changed the subject. “I don’t know how people make it through the winter here in Longyearbyen. I read that the sun sets in late October and doesn’t rise again until mid-February.”

“Yes, but during the summer, the sun shines around the clock.” Erika dropped her eyes and lapsed into silence.

Dinah cast about for another subject. “Will you be visiting your home town while you’re in Norway?”

“No. Notodden is far to the south, south even of Oslo.”

“Do you still have family living there?”

“My parents are dead. My sister might be there still. We lost touch. Notodden is tiny. She probably married and moved away.”

“You don’t know if your sister is married?”

“I haven’t seen her in years. Neither Colt nor I have any family.” Her mouth curved in a wistful smile and the outer corners of her blue eyes crinkled into crow’s-feet. “He used to say that we are each other’s child.”

Dinah knew that the Sheridans had no children, a fact that made the senator an unusual and rather daring candidate for president. His opponents never failed to call attention to his lack of a stake in the next generation. Dinah didn’t like to parse a simple declarative sentence too finely, but “used to say”? It sounded as if Erika were remembering her husband’s affections as something in the distant past.

“You must have friends in Norway. The members of Fata must get together now and then for old times’ sake.”

“The band was at the height of its popularity when I fell in love with Colt and moved to the States. My decision caused a lot of hard feelings and the band broke up. They wouldn’t want me at their reunions.” She rubbed her legs briskly and stood up. “I came to apologize, Dinah. You must have heard us quarreling next door. I hope it didn’t upset you. Colt and I are both exhausted. He’s been campaigning in every little town in Iowa and that man with the laser…the incident unsettled him. Things like that probably happen a lot to the president. If Colt wins, he’ll have to get used to it.”

Dinah noted the singular pronoun. “You don’t want him to run?”

“He’s always wanted to serve his country. But when he left Oxford and went home to Montana to run for the House, he found that his education and experience abroad were a detriment, a sign of snobbery and elitism. He’s spent his entire career trying to live down the happiest time of his life.” She dipped her head and her hair fell forward. “Of course, having a foreign-born wife has always been his main detriment.”

It was a poignant thing to say. Whether she felt that way because that’s how Sheridan felt was unclear. Having grown up in a small town in rural Georgia, Dinah understood how leaving for greener pastures can be construed by some as snooty and highfalutin, a rejection of the home folks’ values. Sheridan’s fancy education in England and his Norwegian rock-star wife might be viewed as pluses in some quarters, but evidently not all. Dinah skated past what was obviously a sore point. “Did you and Colt spend a lot of time together in Oxford?”

“Fata did a concert there and someone invited Colt and some of his friends to a party backstage after the show. Colt and I fell in love at first sight. I went back to Oxford as often as I could between gigs, but I wanted us to be together all the time. He took a leave of absence from his classes to follow the Fata tour to Spain and Portugal. Since then, what I want hasn’t mattered all that much to him.” She laughed, as if to signal she didn’t really mean that.

Dinah didn’t know how to respond. Erika was using her as a sounding board, but if it was marriage counseling she needed, she’d knocked on the wrong door. “Marriage is complicated. Or so I imagine.”

“You are right. In Norway, we have a saying,
å svelge noen kameler
. It means
to swallow some camels. Do you know it?”

“‘Strain out a gnat, but swallow a camel.’ It’s from the Bible. The Pharisees observed the little rituals, but disregarded the big things like justice and mercy.”

“It means something else here. If you swallow some camels, you’ve made concessions. You’ve given up something that you want for the common good.”

“I like that definition,” said Dinah. “But a camel would stick in the throat unless you were sure that what you were giving up was something you could do without.”

“That’s very wise. How can such a ruthless card player be such a sympathetic listener?”

“Just versatile, I guess.”

She dropped her chin again and her hair closed around her face. “You mustn’t take my ramblings to heart. People say a lot of foolish things they don’t mean during the long night.”

Dinah took that as the last word on the Sheridans’ marital discord and if it wasn’t, she wasn’t in a state of mind to hear more. She covered a yawn. “I don’t think I’ll join you on that walk. I’m going to take a nap.”

Erika got up and moved toward the door. “Will you be going to the dinner with the Norwegian ministers?”

“Hasn’t it been canceled?”

“No. Herr Dybdahl’s assistant telephoned and the minister insists that the function go ahead as planned. He has a corneal flash burn, like you get with snow blindness, but his vision won’t be permanently affected. He’s in a lot of pain and won’t attend the dinner, but his assistants and several of the vault’s personnel will be there. None of the other wives plan to go, so Colt has let me off the hook. But Valerie will be there and I’m sure she won’t want to be the only woman.”

It sounded to Dinah like the place she needed to be to pick up scuttlebutt about the vault. “I’ve never been to a state-sponsored dinner. I’ll definitely go.”

“Good. After my walk, I’m going to order supper in the room and try to catch up on my sleep. Tomorrow Colt and Whitney will meet with the managers of the seed vault over breakfast and in the afternoon we’ll tour the seed facility.” She picked up the wool pea jacket Dinah had thrown across the foot of the bed. “Is this flimsy thing the only coat you brought?”

“It looked warm as toast in the shop window. And you have to admit, the buttons are adorable.”

Erika opened the door and smiled back at her. “You should turn down the thermostat, Dinah. Too much warmth will only make it worse when you have to go outside.”