“His second in charge is Greta Schmidt,” Marty Bishop added with a smirk. “A real knockout in a Nordic ice princess sort of way. They’re sitting four tables over, next to the bar.”
Mercer turned. Greta Schmidt was easy to spot. She was bent over the table passing a folder to someone. Her hair was white-blond and fell past her shoulders. He could see just a portion of her face and got the impression that she was indeed beautiful. Koenig was the man seated next to her. He was speaking to another tablemate, rapping on the table with his hand as he made a point. He had a natural aura of leadership that Mercer recognized even at this distance. Above his dark beard, his face was weathered like old leather, though he couldn’t have been much older than forty. His eyes were a cold blue, like polished aquamarine.
“Don’t even think about it,” Bishop said, incorrectly guessing at Mercer’s interest. “I tried to chat her up two days ago. Frigid as an iceberg.”
Mercer suppressed a chuckle. He loved how a man like Marty Bishop immediately assumed a woman was frigid when she rebuffed his advances. The skin around the ring finger on Marty’s left hand was pinched and slightly discolored where until recently a wedding band had covered it. Opening his father’s old military base wasn’t the only conquest on Bishop’s mind.
They talked all through the long breakfast, forging the rapport that would sustain them for the weeks to come. Although there were forty people total, Mercer’s experience was that group dynamics quickly broke down when they were hit by the enormity of their isolation. He wasn’t concerned about himself or Ira Lasko — isolation was nothing new to a submariner. He did have some reservations about Marty. While mental character rarely showed on the outside, he felt that Bishop possessed an underlying weakness. He suspected that Marty’s father had seen it too and that this trip was more about having his middle-aged son find whatever it was he lacked than taking pictures of a long-abandoned Air Force base.
The meal broke up around nine. Everyone was going back to their rooms to pack up for the ship. Mercer wasn’t sure how long he’d be with Elisebet Rosmunder, so he asked Ira Lasko to make sure his bags made it to the Njoerd.
He was standing outside the hotel, checking his bearings on a small map, when a female voice called to him from the door.
“You are part of the Surveyor’s Society?” The voice was German accented and throaty. Without looking, he knew it had to be Greta Schmidt.
“Yes, I am.” Mercer turned and approached her. She was his exact height, and nearly as wide at the shoulders. Her hair was scraped back from her forehead, revealing a widow’s peak above her wide-spaced eyes. She wore too much lipstick, he noted, which made her mouth overly full, as though her lips were swollen. She was not as attractive as that first impression. It was the eyes. They lacked focus and depth, as if there was nothing beyond her facade. “I’m Philip Mercer.”
“I am Greta Schmidt,” she said formally but made no move to shake his hand. “I will not tolerate the way you looked at me at breakfast. You have the same bad manners as your Mr. Bishop.”
Mercer took the accusation like an ill-deserved slap. Like most men, he had been caught staring at women many times. However, unlike Marty Bishop, he never crossed the line between admiring and objectifying. And in this case, he had been doing neither.
“You misunderstood my interest, Miss Schmidt. I had just asked Marty Bishop to point out the leaders of the Geo-Research team. I wanted to assure myself that I wasn’t trusting my life to a couple of incompetents.”
At this, her stare became even harder. Mercer was sure nine times out of ten she was right about what people thought when they saw her and he could understand her anger. What disturbed him was that she enjoyed this anger, seemed to need it. He saw in her expression that she liked that her looks gave her a power to intimidate men.
“And are we,” she asked in a brittle voice, “competent?”
“I don’t judge people at a glance,” Mercer said, throwing her accusation back at her. “But after looking at your ship this morning, I feel safe with Geo-Research.”
Greta Schmidt studied him for a long moment, her expression unreadable, and then she reentered the hotel. Mercer went back to his map. Making an enemy this soon wasn’t what he had in mind, but he’d done nothing to precipitate the confrontation.
The Tjorn, or Pond, was only a couple of blocks behind the Hotel Borg, screened from Mercer’s view by the Town Hall. It was surrounded by buildings on three sides and divided by an automobile bridge about three hundred yards from the cobblestone shore. Ducks and geese filled the air and coated a good portion of the water. They rode the wind-stirred waves like toys. It was obviously a favorite spot for the elderly who fed the birds and for young mothers with their children.
Scanning the crowd, he saw a number of people who could have been Elisebet Rosmunder yet only one paid him any attention. She was a tiny woman, bundled in a long drab coat, a wool hat covering her hair. She sat on a bench near the water’s edge, a flock of birds within an easy toss of her position. Like most locals, she looked Scandinavian, with sharp features and clear, though heavily wrinkled skin. Her eyes were as sharp and blue as Harry White’s. Mercer guessed they were about the same age too.
“Mrs. Rosmunder?” he asked as he walked nearer. There were a few unclaimed bread crumbs at her feet.
“Yes, I am she,” the elderly lady said and indicated that Mercer should sit by her side. “You are the man who phoned me yesterday? Dr. Mercer?”
“Yes, Philip Mercer. Thank you for seeing me.”
“Dr. Mercer, it was I who wanted to see you,” she reminded him in excellent English.
Mercer didn’t recall mentioning his title, but he wasn’t certain. “That’s right. You said you had something you wanted to tell me.”
“That’s correct.” He didn’t get a sense of fear from her like he’d felt during their phone call. Instead, she seemed almost relieved. “I also have something I want to show you as well.”
Mercer waited quietly while she threw a handful of bread into the water. A pair of ducks squabbled to get the food, and Mrs. Rosmunder admonished them in Icelandic.
“Do you work for your government, Dr. Mercer?”
“No, ma’am. As I said on the phone, I’m part of a scientific expedition going to Greenland. I was doing research for the trip when I came across the story of a crashed airplane and how your son was part of the search. Because it happened near where we’re going, I thought I would speak with him about conditions there.”
“Greenland’s east coast is a mystery to most people. There are only a few native settlements, and the Danes heavily subsidize them. Where Stefansson went to look for that plane is an area that even the native Inuits don’t bother with. You are wise to want to talk with someone who has actually been there.”
Mercer said nothing.
“It was the middle of August 1953, I don’t remember the exact date, when my husband received a phone call from the American military at Keflavik Air Force Base. They told him about a plane crash and how they needed guides who knew Greenland to help them in their search. Stefan had just returned from another failed attempt to climb Everest and was in no condition to attempt something that strenuous. However, our son, who was twenty at the time and every bit the Arctic expert as his father, agreed to go. Your government was offering unheard-of wages.
“Stefansson was gone for two weeks. As you probably know from the article you read, they never found the plane and they searched by dogsled, on foot, and by airplane.”
“Did they happen to go to a place called Camp Decade?”