Before he suddenly spotted one more, a dozen yards off, even closer to the glacial wall.
Perhaps he had found a treasure trove! Thoughts of fortune certainly crossed his mind—how couldn’t they?—but more than that, it was the scoop! Wait till Gillespie back in Tacoma got a load of this! A photojournalist, on assignment from Eco-Travel Magazine, discovering a sunken chest hundreds of feet below the Antarctic ice cap. From there on in, Michael would be able to write his own ticket.
He stuck the bottle in a mesh bag attached to his harness, and sailed closer to the ice cliff. The seal seemed to hold off, drifting along on his back and looking at him down the length of his own sleek belly.
The closer he got to the glacier, the colder the water suddenly got; it reminded Michael of the impossibly cold katabatic winds that rushed down the sides of glaciers on land and gusted across the polar plains. He shivered in his suit, and glanced at the diving watch clamped to the outside of his wrist. He would have to turn around soon, very soon, and come back later.
The second bottle was wedged beneath a rock, and he decided to leave it where it was. His regulator hissed, and he realized that he had not been breathing normally—the excitement had been getting to him, and he’d not been paying attention. The slanted wall of the massive glacier rose above him like a sheer white cliff—not so different from one that he’d encountered on a tragic day in the Cascades—and fell away forever under his feet. Its walls were gouged and scarred, like a fighter who’d been in the ring far too many times. He ran his hand across it, feeling, even through the thick glove, the rough and ancient power of it, a mountain of ice that could slowly but inexorably demolish anything in its path.
And then his breath did stop—entirely.
Beneath his fingers, he saw…a face.
He shoved himself away, in shock and confusion, a cloud of air bubbles trailing away.
With his arms and legs treading water, he stayed in place. The Weddell seal came back to play, but Michael paid no attention to it.
He could not have seen what he knew he had just seen. He looked around for Darryl, but all he could make out was an orange speck in the far distance, tending to a trap that was being hauled up the line to the safety hole.
He turned back toward the glacier, his heart hammering in his chest—he had to get a grip, or he’d do something stupid and wind up drowning before he ever got to tell anyone about what he’d found—and turned the flashlight on the mottled ice.
From there, he could see very little.
But when he allowed himself to move closer, he saw again something emerging from under the mask of ice…and when he went closer still, he could see it even more plainly.
A frozen face, with a crown of auburn hair, and a chain—an iron chain?—wrapped around its throat. There was a smudge of blue and black under the ice, where her clothes must be, and quite possibly some other form nestled close behind the one he was looking at. But it was all too difficult to discern or separate out in the dim glacial waters.
He brushed the ice gently—reverently now—with his glove, and put his face mask closer to the wall.
In the beam of the flashlight, he looked into the ice, where, like Sleeping Beauty imprisoned in an icy fortress, he saw a young woman’s face, staring out…but not in repose.
Nothing like it.
Her eyes were open, wide open—eyes so green that even here he was stunned by their brilliance—and so was her mouth, in a final scream. A violent shiver racked his body and a warning alarm sounded from his oxygen tank. He drifted back, barely able to accept what was happening, until he was far enough away that the ice clouded over and its terrible treasure was again concealed.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
July 6, 1854, evening
WHEN THE BROUGHAM RUMBLED across Trafalgar Square and into the refined precincts of Pall Mall, where the finest gentleman’s clubs had all come to roost, Sinclair had the coachman stop at the corner of St. James’s, rather than in front of the main entrance to the Longchamps. It was there that the side entrance was located, and it was only through the more humble door that any woman was ever allowed to pass.
The coachman stepped down smartly, unfolded the carriage steps, and helped the ladies to disembark. The gas lamps that lined the street (Pall Mall had been the first such district in London to be so graced, in 1807) were just flickering on against the encroaching dark.
Inside the marble vestibule, a liveried servant—Bentley, if Sinclair recalled his name correctly—awaited, but when he saw Sinclair an uncertain look crossed his face.
“Evening, Bentley,” Sinclair crowed, in his most affable manner. “We’ve had a winning day at Ascot!”
“I’m pleased to hear it, sir,” Bentley replied, casting his eye over the assemblage.
“And what we need now is refreshment.”