And froze.
“This looks exactly the way my father described,” he heard Marty tell Ira Lasko.
Pushing open the door with his shoulder and centering his light on the bed, Mercer turned to the two men. “Does that include this corpse?”
The body of a dark-haired man lay on top of the bed, clothed in a leather jacket. He had been freeze-dried like a mummy.
“My God!”
“Who is it?”
Mercer studied the body for a moment longer, noting the embroidered wings on the fur-trimmed jacket. “Gentlemen, meet Major Jack Delaney, the pilot of a C-97 that crashed three months before Camp Decade was closed.”
HAMBURG, GERMANY
Sweat pouring down his face, Klaus Raeder leapt back as a callused fist brushed past his jaw, missing him by a fraction of an inch. He pivoted, raised one leg, and fired a counterkick that his opponent swept aside gracefully. Continuing with his spin, Raeder let the first leg drop, cocked the other, and landed a bare foot into the midsection of his adversary.
The man doubled over, his breathing so ragged that for a moment Raeder feared he’d caused injury. He dropped his guard, wiping his hands on the baggy pants of his martial arts gi. His opponent saw the momentary lapse and instantly exploded from his position, swinging his arms and feet in a flurry of blows. Raeder was forced to retreat in the face of such an onslaught, blocking shots by pure instinct, for they were coming too fast to actually see. Instinct told him he was nearing the mirrored wall of the dojo. When the next punch came at his face, he captured the fist in his crossed wrists, torqued his body so his adversary was pushed off balance, and rammed his knee upward, lifting his sparring partner from his feet. He had been too close to defeat to care about injuries now.
He executed a perfect throw, tossing the other man’s two-hundred-pound frame with ease. Rolling with the throw, he came up on his knees, grabbed a handful of the supine opponent’s gi, and prepared to punch his teeth through the back of his head.
“Give,” Gunther Rath croaked.
Raeder’s eyes were glazed with bloodlust, his mind empty of everything but absolute victory. He was so close to administering the killer blow that he had to jerk himself away, pounding a palm against the padded carpet to vent a portion of his raw aggression.
Just as quickly as the berserker fury washed over him, it faded. He stood and extended a hand to his special-projects director, a triumphant smile splitting his handsome face. “For a second there, I thought you had me.”
“For a second, I did,” Rath replied. An injury to his throat during his years as a professional judo instructor had left his voice box severely damaged. Each word rasped as if spoken over sandpaper.
His tortured voice, oft-broken nose, and large build combined to make Rath appear menacing, a man others intentionally avoided. People also thought him slow-witted because of his bulk but he had a street cunning that Klaus Raeder had identified early in their relationship.
He had found Rath in East Germany during a particularly difficult corporate takeover. In 1991, Raeder was trying to buy a factory that made industrial hot-water boilers but a nascent union movement would not agree to terms, putting the deal in jeopardy. The delay caused Raeder’s purchase price to spiral to the point where the purchase no longer made economic sense. Yet he would not give up. Never one to let legality interfere with his plans, Raeder went in search of a specific type of problem solver.
A few discreet inquiries led him to Gunther Rath, a former Olympic medal winner in judo working as an enforcer for an underworld leader. When they met the first time, Raeder saw a potential in Rath that went far beyond the petty intimidation he’d been using. The lawless scramble following the demise of communism opened unprecedented opportunities if one had the vision and the will. Raeder had little difficulty imagining the profits to be wrung from East Germany, and he saw that Gunther Rath, with his shadowy contacts, could help provide the means.
Raeder made him an offer. Break the union and he could have a permanent position in Raeder’s company. Rath had never considered his particular skills could be used in the legitimate world, so he jumped at the chance to escape his current situation. It was an opportunity for a new beginning and an escape from the mistakes that had tumbled him from the Olympic podium to the streets. The labor problem came to a quick end, following an arson attack against the labor leader’s house that nearly wiped out his family.
During his years in the East, Klaus Raeder relied on Rath to be his blunt instrument of corporate coercion. However, by the time Klaus Raeder came to the attention of Kohl AG, the two had tempered their tactics since their reputation alone was enough to intimidate. While Reinhardt Wurmbach, Kohl’s legal counsel, questioned Rath’s suitability in such a prestigious firm, Raeder would not have accepted the presidency if Rath weren’t brought in as his special-projects director.
After a few moments of rest, the two squared off again. Gunther Rath had begun teaching Raeder martial arts early in their partnership. Raeder excelled, very quickly becoming his teacher’s equal. In the past few years he’d actually become better than Rath, something he delighted in proving. The two had sparred thousands of times, and yet their workouts had never become stale because each had such drive. It was a contest of ego and desire as much as skill.
Before the first punch was thrown, a buzzing phone interrupted them.
Raeder bowed to Rath and turned away.
The dojo was in the basement of Raeder’s Blankesene district villa, a hundred-year-old home the size of a castle in Hamburg’s best neighborhood. Raeder had purchased the house soon after joining Kohl, renovating the musty wine cellar into a modern gymnasium. The mirrored room was ringed with exercise equipment and benches of free weights.
The phone was on a table near the stairs leading to the ground floor.
“Raeder.”
“Herr Raeder, it’s Ernst Neuhaus.” The head of Geo-Research’s support office in Reykjavik sounded agitated.
“Yes, what is it?” Raeder looked at a wall clock, noting it wasn’t yet six in the morning. It would be five in Iceland and another hour earlier in Greenland.
“Sir, we’ve had communications problems from Greenland. Otherwise you would have been informed last night.”
“What happened?” Raeder’s stomach tightened. Neuhaus was being obsequious, never a good sign.
“The Americans have already opened Camp Decade and they discovered a body that’s been frozen there for many years.”
“Whose?” he snapped, dreading what he was about to hear. The news, if it was what he feared, would instantly nullify his carefully laid plans.
“It appears to be the body of an American Air Force pilot.”
“Thank Christ.” Raeder sagged. Had the corpse been of one of the others, Kohl AG would have been destroyed in hours. Gunther Rath approached his superior when he saw the fleeting look of panic on his face. Raeder waved a hand to indicate that everything was all right. “He was a survivor of the cargo plane crash in 1953?”
“That’s what they think, yes,” Neuhaus answered quickly. “The Americans speculate that he survived out on the ice by living in the plane and eating provisions meant for Thule Air Force Base. Some discussed the possibility that he also ate his crewmates as well.”
“Has anyone done a detailed analysis of the body?” Raeder didn’t honestly believe that anyone could have survived the accident in the Pandora cavern and ten years of isolation, but he had to make certain.
“Not yet,” Neuhaus said. “The corpse is still in Camp Decade. The Americans want to contact their Air Force about how to proceed.”