“Marty Bishop. Pleasure to meet you.” They shook hands. Bishop’s palm was as smooth as an accountant’s. “Charlie Bryce says you’ve got one hell of a reputation.”
“He exaggerates. It’s good to be part of your team,” Mercer said, intentionally establishing his subordinate status.
Bishop nodded, obviously pleased that Mercer understood who was in charge. “Glad to have you on board.” He pointed to the other man at the table. He was about the same age as Bishop, though had a harder look. “This here’s Ira Lasko, U.S. Navy.”
“Retired,” Lasko added.
Lasko’s handshake was like a bear trap and Mercer suspected that he had never been a pencil pusher. Eater maybe, but not a pusher. His hands had deep scars across all the knuckles and white pads of calluses at the base of each finger. They were the hands of a worker. He was about five foot seven and wiry. The sleeves of his flannel shirt were pushed up, and while his arms were thin, ropes of muscle and sinew pushed outward from beneath his skin. He kept his head completely shaved, though there was a fringe of five o’clock shadow circling just above his ears. His eyes were murky brown under dark brows.
“I understand we’re missing a team member,” Mercer invited as he sat.
“Jim Kneeland,” Marty replied, blowing out a long breath. “He was supposed to get time off from the National Guard but was suddenly called back to duty. Kinda throws us off. I asked my dad to consider postponing the search, but he refused.” He shrugged. “Considering his health, I can’t blame him.”
“Charlie said he’s in a wheelchair.”
“He’s now in a hospital bed at home. Cancer. Doctors don’t give him more than six months.”
“Opening Camp Decade means a lot to him?”
“Actually, he rarely mentioned his time in the Air Force until about a year ago. Suddenly it was all he talked about. When he asked if I was willing to come up here to make a video of the place, I couldn’t say no.”
“This is a hell of a thing you’re doing for him,” Ira said somberly. Mercer nodded.
It seemed as if Marty hadn’t thought about this situation from another’s point of view. He started to smile. “Yeah,” he agreed without conceit. “I guess it is. What the hell? It gets me out of the office for a while, and this might actually turn out to be fun.”
“I was never told — are you part of the Surveyor’s Society?” Mercer asked Lasko.
“No, but I’ve done some work for Charles Bryce before. He recommended me to Marty.”
“What do you do?”
“I used to teach snot-nosed kids how to survive accidents aboard submarines. Now I run the garage at a truck stop. My job here is to make sure all our equipment runs properly. Charlie told us what you do for a living. Why the hell do you live in a cesspool like Washington?”
Mercer laughed. “My first job out of the Colorado School of Mines was for the U.S. Geological Survey. I actually liked living in D.C., so when I went out on my own, I just stayed. All I really need for my work is a computer and easy access to an airport. Have you guys met any of the Geo-Research people coming with us?”
Ira leaned across the table and spoke in a low voice. “They’re headed by a real asshole named Werner Koenig. He’s got a fistful of degrees and a real superior attitude. Bryce told you how the Danish government forced him to bring us along and move his operation to conform to our mission, so you can believe he ain’t too pleased with us.”
“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.”