Читать книгу Melting The Ice - Лорет Энн Уайт, Loreth White Anne - Страница 8

“They found a body.”

Hannah looked up from her computer. Al’s face was ashen.

“They think it’s Amy. Up in Grizzly Bowl.” The forty-five-year-old publisher of the White River Gazette dug his hands into his hair, held his head, as if trying to keep reality from seeping in.

Hannah pushed her chair back. She said nothing but moved quickly across the newsroom toward Al. He was shaking, the dial tone still buzzing from the telephone receiver that lay on his desk. She took it, gently replaced it in the cradle and sat next to him.

“Was that the police?” she asked softly.

He nodded. “They’re waiting for the coroner to come in from Vancouver by chopper.”

“God, I’m so sorry, Al.”

He wiped his upper lip with the back of his hand. “Hell, Hannah, I guess I always knew the news would come sometime, but—” he looked away from her, out the floor-to-ceiling windows toward the wild sun-kissed peaks that rose in an amphitheater around British Columbia’s White River Valley “—it still comes as a gut slammer.”

It was last October, almost a year ago, that Amy had vanished, seemingly into thin air. A winter had come and gone. Upwards of two million skiers had carved tracks into Grizzly Bowl on Powder Mountain, where a woman’s cries had been heard by hikers last fall. And once the snows had begun to melt, thousands of sightseers had been ferried via gondola to hike the Grizzly Traverse and look back out over Grizzly Bowl, the glacier and the spectacular Coast Mountain scene below.

How could they have missed her?

Hannah reached forward and took Al’s rough, sun-browned hand in her own. “How’d they find her?”

He cleared his throat. “Wildlife activity. It alerted mountain staff this morning.”

Hannah knew search-and-rescue personnel had told Powder Mountain employees to keep a watch out for any abnormal wildlife activity as snows receded. It was standard procedure in these parts. But nothing had turned up in the spring. Nothing throughout the summer.

And, as long as there’d been no body, no proof that Amy had died, there’d always been hope. Al had hung on to that. All the while he had hoped. And he’d kept paying the rent on Amy’s apartment. “Just in case,” he’d said.

He turned to her, eyes, the same azure as Amy’s, shimmering with emotion. “Sven was the one who found her.”

Hannah’s chest felt tight. Sven Jansen was the mountain guide Amy used to go out with. Things cut so close in a small community like this. As a foreign correspondent Hannah had covered wars and natural disasters, yet there was nothing to compare; this touched her in ways those stories seldom had. When tragedy hit a town as small as White River, it touched everyone. It became personal.

Al dragged both his weather-beaten hands through his thatch of white hair. “God, Hannah, I was supposed to be watching over her.”

“This is beyond your control, Al, we all know that.”

Several phones were ringing. The news of the discovery was out, and media hounds would be baying for information. Amy’s parents were well connected in Canada’s political circles, and the White River Gazette, as Amy’s workplace, was part of this story no matter what.

Hannah placed a hand on Al’s shoulder. “Why don’t you go home. I’ll handle this for now. We can regroup when you’re ready.”

He looked up, angst deepening the age lines that mapped his craggy face, his effort to compose himself visible. “Thanks. I think I will. I need to call my sister.” He reached out and took Hannah’s hand. It was an unusual gesture for Al, a man as independent and robust as the Coast Mountain terrain. She had a sense it was more than her hand he was reaching for. He was reaching for answers.

“I don’t know what I would’ve done without your help this past year, Hannah.”

“It’s okay, Al. I owe you. You’ve always been there for me.”

The phones shrilled, relentless. Al stared at the flashing red message lights. Reality calling. It wasn’t going to go away. “This is one of the biggest news stories to hit this valley. I guess the Gazette should have someone up there on Grizzly.”

“I know. I’ll see to it.” She patted his hand. “Go home, Al.”

He stood, paused.

She knew what he was thinking. That Amy’s death wasn’t an accident. She couldn’t believe it, either. Especially after the suspicious break-in at Amy’s apartment at the same time Amy went missing. “I’ll be there. Don’t worry. We’ll get to the bottom of this. I promise.”

He nodded.

Hannah watched as Amy’s uncle left the office, his usually powerful posture crumpled.

The gondola doors swung slowly shut. Hannah was cocooned in the little cabin as it swung from its moorings and lifted into the air, swaying slightly from side to side.

It was a twenty-five-minute ride to the top and then a short hike up to the traverse.

She always found the gondola soothing, with its quiet mechanical hum. It was meditative, lifting her above the world, separating her. It helped her think. And she needed to think. She needed to compose herself for what she might find on Grizzly Glacier. She wondered what clues Amy’s body might yield after sleeping for so long under the ice.

The late-August sun was balmy, and bits of light white fluff, the seeds of the fireweed, waltzed on warm currents of air around the gondola. Summer snow—that’s what Danny called it. Hannah smiled, thinking of her boy. She was glad she had relented and let him go and stay with her mom for the last two weeks of his summer holidays.

She had never let him go to his gran’s smallholding on Vancouver Island for so long but Daniel had conspired with his granny to twist Hannah’s arm. Hannah had hoped to join them there for the Labor Day weekend, but with this latest development, she didn’t think she would be able to make it. She was pretty much working full-time at the Gazette now, balancing her schedule around Danny’s needs.

She had slipped into this routine after Amy disappeared last year. She had wanted to help Al out. It wasn’t a bad job, and with Danny going into first grade next month, she would have even more time.

The gondola lurched as it passed another lift tower. Hannah could see a black bear and its cub down on the ski run. White River Valley was a sparkling jewel far below, a community built around a string of glacier-fed lakes. From up high the lakes were shimmering beads, with hues from chalky green to crystal-clear sapphire. The town got its name from the river that cascaded down through the gorge separating Powder Mountain from neighboring Moonstone Mountain. The river was milky with glacial silt and the waters gushed frothing and creamy white into frigid Alabaster Lake below.

So beautiful, thought Hannah, yet so harsh. They always made her think of Danny’s father. Beautiful but hard. Cold. Secretive. Rex Logan was like these peaks around her, carved from stone and scarred by time. There was an underlying sense of wildness and danger about him. She should have recognized from the start that he would hurt her.

She hated herself for having fallen for him, for naively believing that he was the one she would spend the rest of her life with.

Never again would she let passion overrule her common sense. Never again would she be so deceived, so lacking in guile.

Never.

She would always stay in control.

Hannah left the gondola station and made her way along the rocky trail that led up to the traverse above Grizzly Bowl, which cradled the glacier and looked like a giant’s scoop out of the mountain. A marmot ducked and scuttled for cover as she approached.

She could see police tape up on the trail above the glacier. It screamed crime scene, except Amy’s death was supposed to have been an accident. The bright-yellow ribbon fluttered in the Alpine breeze against a backdrop of painfully bright blue sky and glacial snow. Behind it a crowd of curious tourists and media gathered on the hiking trail. They were all looking down, watching a group of search-and-rescue personnel and police officers on the glacier below.

Hannah could hear the dull thuck-thuck-thuck of a helicopter somewhere, closing in. From her vantage point below, she aimed her camera lens up at the crowd, focused, clicked.

She was used to having her own Canadian News Agency cameraman on a job, but this was not Africa and her CNA days were over. Balancing a career that could see her in Angola one month and Sierra Leone the next was no life for a child. She had experienced what that kind of lifestyle had done to her father, to her family.

As Hannah clicked, the yellow tape was sucked from its moorings into a brutal whirling frenzy. The chopper was coming in for a landing just off the trail, churning up everything in its path. A red hat went flying. People held their hair, ducked their heads. Gray glacial silt boiled up in a cloud around them.

Hannah kept shooting.

She jogged up the steep trail as the blur of the two lethal rotor blades slowed and came into focus. She recognized the coroner and members of a television crew as they alighted from the mechanical beast. A man in a suit followed. He stood out amongst the windbreakers and fleece. This story was pulling them all in, even the suits. Hannah guessed he was with one of the big U.S. outfits.

She joined the crowd, out of breath. There were other newspaper photographers capturing the scene. She tried to peer down into the glacial bowl but couldn’t really make out what was happening below. The TV crew started filming.

“Hannah, over here.” The Swiss-German accent and granular rasp was unmistakable.

“Hey, Gunter.” She moved over to join the plastic surgeon. He was deeply tanned with a head of thick salt-and-pepper hair and clear hazel eyes. Hannah couldn’t help thinking he carried his years exceptionally well. But then, Dr. Gunter Schmidt was devoted to the pursuit of youth. It was that same promise of eternal youth that attracted the rich and famous to his White River Spa.

“I was on a walk up here on the mountain.” Gunter could not pronounce words with a w. He said them as if they started with a v. But despite his pronunciation oddities and Germanic syntax, his English was good.

“And then I see all this commotion. They say it is Amy.” He was also out of breath. “That is right? They have found her?”

“It looks that way, Gunter.”

“Ach, poor Al. He must be taking it hard, ja?”

“He is. He’s struggling.” Hannah looked away from the scene below, her eyes following the trail she knew so well. From here, it climbed a little farther then leveled out along the ridge toward the ski area boundary. Then it rounded the ridge and led to a series of small, rustic cabins designed for overnight use. A hiker could spend a week doing the full loop. Back-country skiers used the cabins in winter. “I just can’t figure what Amy was doing up here.”

“She was perhaps hiking,” the doctor offered, following her gaze.

“No, Gunter. I don’t buy it. Her clothes were wrong. The weather, the timing, the break-in. Nothing fits.”

The doctor frowned.

Hannah lifted her camera and peered through her lens at the scene below on the glacier. She could make out the form of Sven Jansen. She clicked the shutter as the team started to slowly make their way with a body bag back up the glacier toward the chopper.

Rex Logan’s heart missed a beat.

Anyone watching him in his air-conditioned Toronto office would not have noticed a thing. He never showed his emotion. That came from his British Special Air Services training. That, combined with his medical specialty, was one of the reasons the Bellona Channel found him so valuable.

But the picture on page three of the Toronto Star had upped his pulse rate.

He leaned forward to press the button on his phone. “Hold all my calls, Margaret.”

He loosened his tie and flattened the page out onto his desk. It was Hannah McGuire.

In grainy black-and-white.

He scanned the headlines. A body had been found on Powder Mountain in White River. Hannah had been captured by a news photographer among a crowd on the mountain. She was holding a camera in one hand, looking toward a body bag. Her long hair was blowing across her face. She was trying to hold it back with her other hand.

Rex ran his forefinger slowly over her grainy image. He knew the feel of that hair. Her knew her smell. He knew the sensation of her golden skin. Her image haunted his dreams at night.

He absently fingered the small Ethiopian silver ring on his finger as the hot memories welled up and assaulted him in his cool office. He could almost smell the crushed frangipani blooms, hear the sound of night insects, taste the salt on her skin, see her eyes. Those eyes, leonine, with the color and fire of fine whiskey.

Rex closed his eyes and slowly sucked in air. The memories of Marumba often came like that. They would wash over him before he could send the unbidden images scuttling back into the recesses of his tired brain.

He knew Hannah was in White River. He knew that much from the Canadian News Agency office. Once, just once, when he had a whiskey too many, he’d called the CNA headquarters. It was a lapse of reason. She was the only one who did that to him, skewed his judgment. He’d wanted to know where he could find her. They’d put him through to a photographer who used to work with Hannah on her Africa assignments. He told Rex that Hannah had quit and moved to White River.

Why the hell she had dropped her career as one of the best damn foreign correspondents this country had known was beyond him. She was at the peak of her profession. And now, here she was, in a photo on his desk that had caught her looking out over a body on a mountain in White River.

White River, where the International Toxicology Conference was due to start in one week.

His contacts in Cairo had indicated that several rogue nations were planning to send agents to that conference. The list of participants was already starting to read like a who’s who in the world of biological warfare. Red flags were going up all over the place. Something was going down. And the Bellona Channel board members wanted him there. Only trouble was, Rex didn’t want to go.

He didn’t want to run into Hannah McGuire.

Rex pulled open his desk drawer and fished out a magnifying glass. He hungered to see her more clearly.

Useless. It just made things bigger, blurrier, grainier. He put the magnifying glass back into his drawer and rubbed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets before reading the story.

There was no reference to Hannah. The article noted that the body was presumed to be that of Amy Barnes, a young reporter who’d gone missing last fall.

He looked at the photograph again. Then something new caught his eye and, for a second time, his heart beat faster.

It couldn’t be.

In his preoccupation with Hannah he hadn’t noticed the man standing near her. It had been six years since he’d last seen him. If it wasn’t him, the likeness was incredible.

Rex needed to know more.

This was more than coincidence. Two people on Powder Mountain, both linked to a tumultuous period in his life six years ago. Hannah and this man. The last time he had laid eyes on either of them was in Marumba.

He leaned forward and pushed the phone intercom button to ring his secretary. “Margaret, did you tape the news last night?” She usually recorded the CNA news. It aired at six o’clock, before she returned from work. She liked to watch it when she got home.

“I always tape the CNA, Rex.” Margaret’s voice came back through the intercom. “It comes on again later at night, but way past my bedtime. Even an old-timer like me needs beauty rest.”

“You’re beautiful to me, Margaret. I need that tape.” There would be something on the CNA news, he was sure. The missing girl’s parents were high profile, and the search for Amy Barnes had been one of the biggest search-and-rescue missions mounted in recent years.

Rex took his pizza slice out of the microwave and cracked open an ice-cold cola. He had to do something about his eating habits. Always on the run. He settled in front of his television set, inserted Margaret’s tape, took a bite of pizza and pushed the play button.

It had been a long time since he’d watched Hannah on TV. The last he’d seen of her work was her acclaimed CNA documentary on conflict diamonds in Africa. That was what she’d been working on when she had first caught his eye and held his libido hostage in Penaka, the capital of Marumba.

Rex leaned forward as the camera cut to a TV reporter on Powder Mountain. The reporter was saying there would be an autopsy. Then, as the camera moved to pan the faces in the crowd, it caught the gold of her hair and lingered on the profile of a woman made for television. Hannah McGuire’s lambent image sprang to life, invading his living room.

She stole his attention from the rest of the news report.

Rex slowly swallowed his mouthful of food, fixated with her image. She was in khaki hiking shorts and a green jacket. She was lightly bronzed from a summer of sun, the way she had been in Marumba, her limbs long and strong.

And then she was gone.

Rex quickly rewound the clip, took a swig of his cold drink and focused on the other faces in the crowd.

There was no doubt. It was him in the suit, standing near her on that mountain. Mitchell. The CIA agent Rex blamed for botching the Marumba laboratory raid.

If it hadn’t been for Mitchell’s preemptive strike on the secret biological weapons research lab in Marumba six years ago, they would have in custody the man the world had dubbed the Plague Doctor.

Mitchell had called in the Marumba government troops too early. And he had made too much noise about it. Dr. Ivan Rostov, the Plague Doctor, had been forewarned. He had slithered back into the murk of the underworld, taking his lethal secrets with him.

The question now, thought Rex as he remembered the pizza cooling on his plate, is why U.S. Central Intelligence was interested in the death of this young Canadian reporter. And why Agent Mitchell in particular? His specialty was biological warfare intelligence. Perhaps he was in White River early for the toxicology conference. The CIA always kept tabs on get-togethers like these. Yet, the conference wasn’t due to be held for at least another week.

There was no way Rex could avoid going to White River now. And if he knew the Bellona Channel board of directors, they would want him on a plane yesterday.

He reached for his secure phone and punched in the number of the Bellona Channel board chair, Dr. William J. Killian.

“Killian, it’s Rex Logan.”

“Rex, how the hell are you? I heard you were back in Toronto.”

Rex did not waste time on platitudes. “We have a situation developing, Killian. We need to get the board members together for direction. I have some interesting data from my Cairo trip, and there are some developments in White River. Could be related. Looks like a hot spot.”

“Give me one or two hours Rex. I should have everyone assembled for a secure telecon within that time.”

“Standing by.”

Killian, a reclusive eighty-year-old billionaire and founder of Bio Can Pharmaceutical, knew firsthand the blight of biological weapons. In his youth he had worked for a United Nations special commission to disarm rogue states of their offensive bioweapons programs.

The billionaire was widely regarded as a visionary. He believed biology in the wrong hands could ultimately spell the end of the human race. Killian felt governments around the world had not fully grasped the implications of the biological threat. In his mind not enough time and resources were being thrown at the problem.

He set out to do something about it.

He formed the Bellona Channel. It was a civilian organization and civilian funded, but the Bellona Channel operatives assembled by Killian were all gleaned from the elite ranks of some of the world’s crack government organizations including the Navy SEALS, the CIA, Britain’s Special Air Services and MI-6, Israel’s Mossad and the FBI.

Killian had hand picked Rex from the SAS in Britain and brought him to Canada to head up the indigenous-medicine arm of Bio Can Pharmaceutical. The position served as a cover for his covert work with Bellona.

Rex grabbed the phone at the first ring.

“Rex, we have the full board present, go ahead.”

“Evening, gentlemen.”

The greetings were hearty and intimate, coming in from around the world. For some it was an ungodly early hour. Rex was proud to work for this team. The Bellona board was comprised of some of the brightest minds of this age. They shared Killian’s vision and were bound by loyalty and a common code of ethics.

Once the social niceties were over, Rex outlined the scenario. It was his mention of CIA agent Ken Mitchell’s presence in White River that really piqued the board’s interest.

“The way things unfolded with that lab raid in Marumba, I wouldn’t be surprised to find Ken Mitchell was double dipping,” noted Killian.

“A double agent?” The question came from the Australian director.

“It’s feasible. The question now is, what is he doing in White River? We need to find out and we need you on the job, Rex. You’re the one with the background on this case.” There were murmurs of agreement at Killian’s assessment.

Rex felt a sick little slide in his stomach. There went his hope of sending a replacement to White River. Hannah’s lambent image swam back into his brain. He squeezed it out and channeled his attention back to the teleconference.

“Right. I’ll make arrangements. Any word on the Plague Doc?” Since the botched lab raid, the hunt for Dr. Ivan Rostov, one of the biggest international manhunts in history, had turned up nothing. Not even a lead. The Bellona Channel was just one of the many intelligence agencies after him.

“Nothing so far, Rex. It’s been six years now. For all we know, he could be dead.” Killian cleared his throat. “But he did escape that lab fire with his latest work, the work on ethnic bullets. And that’s what has us worried. Even if Rostov was taken out, his work could still be completed by another rogue scientist and sold to the highest bidder.”

Rex grunted in acknowledgment. Ethnic bullets was the term the Bellona Channel had given to the Plague Doctor’s efforts to genetically modify a range of lethal viruses including smallpox, Marburg, Ebola and bubonic plague. The Plague Doctor had started designing these bugs in his Marumba lab so that they would target only people with a specific genetic makeup, creating scourges that could potentially kill only people with blue eyes, for example, or only people of a particular race. The Human Genome Project had made this possible.

The potential was horrendous.

“We need you in White River immediately, Logan.”

The waters of Howe Sound sparkled in his rearview mirror as the road twisted and climbed up into the thin air of the Coast Mountains.

Margaret had seen to it that Rex had a rental vehicle waiting at the Vancouver airport. He’d asked her to make sure he got something with off-road capability. He was heading into rough country.

The narrow, treacherous road snaked up through forest and raw canyon. The view of the tortured Tantalus range in the distance was breathtaking. Rex felt his spirit wanting to soar as he gained elevation, but as he neared White River, he saw dark clouds up ahead.

They were massing over the distant snow-capped peaks, threatening to unleash their heavy burden.

The road sign ahead indicated the White River turnoff. Rex took the next exit and began the steep climb up through the valley toward White River and Powder Mountain. There were road-block booms at intervals along the road. They were raised up now, but Rex knew that when the winter weather turned foul and the roads deadly, the black and yellow booms would be lowered.

He felt a slight chill on his skin as he gained elevation. The bruised-ochre sky added to his sense of unease as he closed in on the ski town. Thunder rumbled faintly in the hills.

Well, he would just have to do his job and try to stay out of Hannah McGuire’s way for the next week or so.

With a stroke of luck, he might not see her at all.

“Take a seat, Hannah.” Fred LeFevre, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Staff Sergeant, motioned to a gray plastic chair. “Mind if I eat my lunch?”

“No. Go ahead. Thanks for seeing me.” She despised the way the RCMP staff sergeant allowed his eyes to range over her unabashedly. He was doing it now.

She sat. “Did you manage to get one of the guys to look into Amy’s case again?”

He unwrapped his cheeseburger as he spoke. “I did, as a favor to you. But there’s nothing there. You should let it rest.”

Hannah leaned forward. “But, Fred, you have to agree, the timing of the break-in was curious. Al and I went through all her things. The place was ransacked, but nothing is missing. Her CDs are there, her mountain bike, her video equipment, her climbing gear—”

“Hannah, Hannah.” Fred held up his stubby-fingered hands. “The robbery was one in a series last year. There’s no point in rehashing this now that we’ve found her.”

Anger prickled. “I’m not rehashing. It’s just that this whole business feels wrong. Especially now that we have found her. Amy wasn’t dressed for the weather. She had no gear. She left no note. It just raises more questions.”

She didn’t think Fred had even heard her. “We think the reason nothing was taken from her apartment was because the perpetrators were interrupted.” He lifted his cheeseburger with both hands and bit into it. Sauce slopped out the sides and splotched onto the waxed wrapper on his desk. The thick smell of fried onions permeated the air in the small office.

Hannah shook her head. “I just can’t believe it was unrelated to her disappearance. Neither can Al. It was like someone was looking for something.”

“Look, it’s out of my hands now. The coroner has ruled her death accidental.” He spurted ketchup onto his fries. “It’s hard. I know. But you have to let it go. We may never find out exactly what happened. Unless there is evidence of a crime, I’m obliged to close the book at my end.” He chewed as he spoke, squeezing his words around the fast-food mash in his mouth.

“Al still has the lease to her apartment. Maybe you could take one more look?”

Fred took another chomp out of his cheeseburger and followed it with a fistful of fries. He chewed a little before opening his mouth to talk again. “Like I said, there’s no evidence that the B and E is connected to her accident. I just don’t have the resources to—”

“So you’re not going to try and find the people who did this?”

“There were no prints. Nothing to go on.”

She rubbed her hands over her face, scrubbing at the frustration. This was a dead end. He was no help.

Fred stopped chewing. “Hannah…I’m sorry.”

She stood. “It’s okay. Thanks for your time.”

“Look, if you come up with something concrete, anything that will justify opening up the case again, I will.”

“Thanks, Fred. Enjoy your lunch.” She turned and walked out, feeling his eyes on her behind.

There had to be something. She just needed to find it. She’d promised Al she would help get to the bottom of this. Perhaps she might still find some clue in Amy’s apartment. Maybe she and Al had missed something a year ago.

Outside the RCMP detachment, the sky was darkening with the threat of a storm. The light in the village was a dim and unearthly amber under the bruised clouds, and there was a distant grumble of thunder up in the peaks. Branches nodded in grim deference to the mounting wind.

Hannah stood on the stairs and zipped up her jacket, irked at how the weather always affected her moods. The brooding clouds seemed to hold ominous portent. The sudden chill seeped up and into her spine. She felt as if things were closing in on her as she stepped out into the wind.