Polar Shift (NUMA Files 6)

"Sorry to take you away from your budding romance," Austin said.

"Don't be. Petrov failed to tell me that Veronika and Dimitri are married. To each other. Where are we going?"

Austin explained Petrov's plans, and they went out on the dock to wait. The seaplane was fifteen minutes early. It taxied up to the fuel pump at the end of the pier. Austin supervised the handling of his luggage while the plane was being refueled, then he and Zavala boarded the plane. Within minutes, it skimmed across the bay, lifted its nose and climbed at a sharp angle over the jagged peaks of the gray mountains that flanked the bay, then headed north into the unknown.

25

Karla's eyelids fluttered open. She saw only blackness, but senses that had been temporarily put on hold stirred to life. She had a coppery taste of old blood in her mouth. Her back felt as if it were resting on a bed of nails. Then she heard a rustling noise close by. She remembered the yellow-toothed attacker. Still only half conscious, she put her arms up and flailed away in the dark, defending herself against an unseen assailant.

"No!" she called out in fear and defiance.

Her thrashing arms struck soft flesh. A big hand with fingers like steel clamped down over her mouth. A light flashed on. Its beam illuminated a disembodied face floating in the darkness.

She stopped fighting. The long-jawed face had aged dramatically since the last time she had seen it. There were more wrinkles, and a general droopiness to skin that was once as taut as a drumhead. The watchful eyes were framed by crow's-feet, pouches and white brows, but the irises were the same piercing blue she remembered. He removed his hand from her mouth.

She smiled. "Uncle Karl."

The ends of the thin lips curved up slightly. "Technically speaking, I am your godfather. But, yes, it is me. Your uncle Karl. How do you feel?"

"I'll be all right." She forced herself to sit up, even though the effort made her dizzy. As she ran her tongue across her swollen lips, the memory of the attack came flooding back.

"There were four other scientists. They took them away, and then I heard shots."

A pained look came to the pale eyes. "I'm afraid they were all killed."

"Killed. But why?"

"The men who killed them didn't want witnesses."

"Witnesses to what?"

"Your murder. Or abduction. I'm not sure what they had in mind, only that it was no good."

"This doesn't make sense. I just arrived here two days ago. I'm a stranger in this country. I'm simply a bone scientist like the others. What reason would anyone have to murder me?"

Schroeder turned his head slightly as if he were listening for something, then he switched the light off. His mellow voice was cool and soothing in the darkness. "They think your grandfather had a secret of great importance. They think he passed it on to you, and they want to make sure no one else learns about it."

"Grandpa!" Karla almost laughed through her pain. "That's ridiculous. I don't know any secret."

"Nonetheless, they think so, and that's what's important."

"Then the deaths of those scientists are my fault."

"Not at all. The men who pulled the trigger are responsible."

He pressed the flashlight into her palm to restore a measure of control to her damaged psyche. She flashed the light around so that the beam illuminated the black rock ceilings and walls.

"Where are we?" she said.

"In a cave. I carried you here. It was sheer luck that I found a low place to climb out of the gorge and immediately came to a natural wall of stone. It was split in many places, and I thought we could hide in a narrow gap in the rocks. I saw an opening at the end of a narrow fissure. I cut some bushes and put them around the mouth of the cave."

She reached out in the darkness and grabbed onto his big hand. "Thank you, Uncle Karl. You're like some guardian angel."

"I promised your grandfather that I would look after you."

Karla sat in the dark, thinking back to the first time she remembered meeting Schroeder. She was a young girl, living at her grandfather's house after her parents died. He appeared one day, bearing an armful of gifts. He seemed enormously tall and strong, more like a walking tree than a man. Despite the strength that he projected, he seemed almost shy, but her child's eye had detected a kindliness in his manner, and she quickly warmed up to him.

The last time she had seen him was at her grandfather's funeral. He never forgot her birthday, and sent her a card with money in it every year until she graduated from college. She didn't know the details of the bond between Schroeder and her family, but she knew from hearing the story many times that when she was born her grandfather had persuaded her parents to name her after the mysterious uncle.