Lost City - Cussler Clive - Страница 12

Renaud greeted Skye with the limp, moist handshake that had triggered her revulsion the first time she met him.

"Good morning, my dear Mademoiselle Labelle. Thank you for coming to this damp, dark cave."

"You're welcome, Professor Renaud." She glanced around at the inhospitable surroundings. "This environment must suit you well."

Renaud ignored the veiled suggestion that he had crawled out from under a rock and ran his eyes up and down Skye's well-put-together body as if he could see through her heavy clothing. "Anyplace where you and I are together suits me well."

Skye stifled her gag reflex. "Perhaps you can tell me what was so important that you had to pull me away from my work."

"With pleasure." He reached over to take her by the arm. Skye stepped out of reach and linked her arm through LeBlanc's.

"Lead on," she said.

The glaciologist had been watching the verbal fencing with mirthful-eyes. His mouth widened in a toothy grin and he and Skye walked arm in arm to a steep flight of rough wooden stairs. The stairs led up to a tunnel about twelve feet high and ten feet wide.

Approximately twenty paces from the stairs, the tunnel branched out into a Y. LeBlanc escorted Skye down the right-hand passageway. Water was streaming along a shallow channel that had been cut in the tunnel floor for drainage. A black rubber hose about four inches in diameter ran alongside one wall.

"Water jet," LeBlanc explained. "We collect the drainage water, heat it up and spray it on the ice to melt it. The ice is like putty at the bottom of the glacier. We're constantly melting it, otherwise it would re-form at the rate of two to three feet a day."

"That's very fast," Skye said.

"Very. Sometimes we go as far as fifty meters into the glacier and we have to be alert so the ice doesn't close behind us."

The tunnel ended in an icy slope about ten feet high. They clambered up the slippery rock surface on a ladder and entered an ice cave with space enough to hold more than a dozen people. The walls and

ceiling were bluish white except for areas that were covered with dirt scraped up by the movement of the glacier.

"We're at the bottom of the glacier," LeBlanc said. "There is nothing but ice above our heads for eight hundred feet. This is the dirtiest part of the ice floe. It gets cleaner the more you drill into it. I must leave now to do an errand for Monsieur Renaud."

Skye thanked him and then her attention was drawn to the far wall where a man in a raincoat was spraying the ice with a hot water hose. The melting ice generated clouds of steam, which made the damp air in the room even harder to breathe. The man turned off the jet when he saw he had visitors and came over to shake hands.

"Welcome to our little observatory, Mademoiselle Labelle. Hope the trip from the outside wasn't too arduous. My name is Hank Thurston. I'm Bernie's colleague. This is Craig Rossi, our assistant from Uppsala University," he said, gesturing at a young man in his early twenties, "and that's Derek Rawlins, who's writing about our work for Outside magazine."

As Skye shook hands, Renaud brushed by the others and went over to the wall to examine a vaguely human figure that was locked in the ice.

"As you can see, this gentleman has been frozen for some time," Renaud said. Glancing at Skye, he said, "Not unlike some of the women I have encountered."

No one laughed at the joke. Skye stepped past Renaud and ran her fingers around the perimeter of the dark shape. The limbs were twisted in grotesque positions.

"We found him when we were enlarging the cave," Thurston explained.

"He looks more like a bug on a windshield than a man," Skye said.

"We're lucky he's not just a big greasy smear," Thurston said. "He's in pretty good shape, considering. The ice at the bottom of a glacier, and anything in it, is squeezed like putty by hundreds of tons of pressure."

Skye peered at the vague form. "Are you assuming that he was on top of the glacier at one point?"

"Sure," Thurston said. "With a valley glacier like Le Dormeur or some of the others you'll find in the Alps, a reasonable amount of snowfall moves pretty fast through the ice."

"How long would it take?"

"My guess is that it would take a hundred years, more or less, to get from the top to the bottom of Le Dormeur." It would only work for an object near the head of the glacier high in the mountains, where ice flows vertically as well as horizontally."

"Then it's possible that he was a climber who fell into a crevasse?"

"That's what we thought at first. Then we took a closer look."

Skye put her face closer to the ice. The body was dressed almost entirely in dark leather, from his boots to the snug Snoopy-type cap.

Tufts of fur lining poked out here and there. A gun holster, pistol still in it, hung from a belt.

Her gaze moved up to the face. The features were unclear through the ice, but the skin was burnished to a dark copper color, as if he had lain out in the sun too long. The eyes were covered with a pair of goggles.

"Incredible," she whispered, then stepped back and turned to Renaud. "But what does this have to do with me?"

Renaud smiled and went over to a plastic storage container and reached inside. He grunted as he lifted out a steel helmet. "This was found near the man's head."

Skye took the helmet and studied the intricate design engraved on the metal, pursing her lips in thought. The visor was formed into the face of a man with a large nose and a bushy mustache. The crown was engraved with ornate, interlocking flowers and stems, and mythical creatures revolved like planets around a stylized three-headed eagle. The eagle's mouths were open in a defiant scream and bundles of spears and arrows were clutched in its sharp claws.

"We actually discovered the helmet first," Thurston said. "We shut down the pump immediately and luckily we didn't damage the body."

"A wise decision," Renaud said. "An archaeological site is vulnerable to contamination, very much like a crime scene."

Skye poked her fingers through a rough opening in the right side of the helmet. "This looks like a bullet hole."

Renaud snorted. "Bullet hole! A spear or an arrow would be more appropriate."

"It's not unusual to see proof marks, dents in armor where it was tested against firearms," Skye said. "The hole is unusually clean. This steel is of exceptionally high quality. Look, except for a few scratches and dings it's hardly damaged after being squeezed by the ice. You've called in a forensics expert?" she said.

"He should be here tomorrow," Renaud said. "We don't need a specialist to tell us this fellow is dead. What can you tell us about this helmet?"

"I can't place it," she said, with a shake of her head. "The general shape resembles some I have seen, but the markings are unknown to me. I'd have to look for an armorer's mark and check it against my database. There are many contradictions here." She gazed at the body. "The clothing and the gun look twentieth century. He appears to be an aviator, judging from his uniform and the goggles. Why would he be wearing an old helmet, if that is the case?"

"Very interesting, Mademoiselle Labelle," Renaud said with an impatient sigh, "but I expected you to be more help." He took the helmet from her hands and replaced it in the container after first pulling out a small riveted strongbox. He cradled the battered metal box like a baby. "This was near the body. What we find inside may