The Ice Limit Read online

  “I haven’t even heard your name, and, frankly, I don’t want to. Thanks for bringing me the bad news. Now why don’t you get back in your chopper and get the hell out of here.”

  “Forgive me for not introducing myself. I’m Palmer Lloyd.”

  McFarlane began to laugh. “Yeah, and I’m Bill Gates.”

  But the big man wasn’t laughing—just smiling. McFarlane looked closer at his face, really studying it for the first time. “Jesus,” he breathed.

  “You may have heard that I’m building a new museum.”

  McFarlane shook his head. “Was Nestor working for you?”

  “No. But his activities recently came to my attention, and I want to finish what he started.”

  “Look,” said McFarlane, shoving the gun into his waistband. “I’m not interested. Nestor Masangkay and I parted ways a long time ago. But I’m sure you know all about that.”

  Lloyd smiled and held up the thermos. “Shall we talk about it over a toddy?” Without waiting for an answer, he settled himself by the fire—white man style, with his butt in the dust—unscrewed the cap, and poured out a steaming cup. He offered it to McFarlane, who shook his head impatiently.

  “You like hunting meteorites?” Lloyd asked.

  “It has its days.”

  “And you really think you’ll find the Okavango?”

  “Yes. Until you dropped out of the sky.” McFarlane crouched beside him. “I’d love to chitchat with you. But every minute you sit here with that idling chopper, the Bushmen are getting farther away. So I’ll say it again. I’m not interested in a job. Not at your museum, not at any museum.” He hesitated. “Besides, you can’t pay me what I’m going to make on the Okavango.”

  “And just what might that be?” Lloyd asked, sipping the cup himself.

  “A quarter million. At least.”

  Lloyd nodded. “Assuming you find it. Subtract what you owe everyone over the Tornarssuk fiasco, and I imagine you’ll probably break even.”

  McFarlane laughed harshly. “Everyone’s entitled to one mistake. I’ll have enough left over to get me started on the next rock. There’s a lot of meteorites out there. It sure beats a curator’s salary.”

  “I’m not talking about a curatorship.”

  “Then what are you talking about?”

  “I’m sure you could make a pretty good guess. I can’t talk about particulars until I know you’re on board.” He sipped at the toddy. “Do this one for your old partner.”

  “Old ex-partner.”

  Lloyd sighed. “You’re right. I know all about you and Masangkay. It wasn’t entirely your fault, losing the Tornarssuk rock like that. If anyone’s to blame, it’s the bureaucrats at the New York Museum of Natural History.”

  “Why don’t you give up? I’m not interested.”

  “Let me tell you about the compensation. As a signing bonus, I’ll pay off the quarter million you owe, get the creditors off your back. If the project is successful, you’ll get another quarter million. If it isn’t, you’ll have to settle for being debt free. Either way, you can continue at my museum as director of the Planetary Sciences Department—if you wish. I’ll build you a state-of-the-art laboratory. You’ll have a secretary, lab assistants, a six-figure salary—the works.”

  McFarlane began to laugh again. “Beautiful. So how long is this project?”

  “Six months. On the outside.”

  McFarlane stopped laughing. “Half a million for six months’ work?”

  “If we’re successful.”

  “What’s the catch?”

  “No catch.”

  “Why me?”

  “You knew Masangkay: his quirks, his work patterns, his thoughts. There’s a big mystery lingering over what he was doing, and you’re the man who can solve it. And besides, you’re one of the top meteorite hunters in the world. You’ve got an intuitive sense about them. People say you can smell them.”

  “I’m not the only one out there.” The praise irritated McFarlane: it smacked of manipulation.

  In response, Lloyd extended one hand, the knuckle of the ring finger raised. There was a wink of precious metal as he turned it in McFarlane’s direction.

  “Sorry,” McFarlane answered. “I only kiss the ring of the pope.”

  Lloyd chuckled. “Look at the stone,” he said.

  Peering more closely, McFarlane saw that the ring on Lloyd’s finger consisted of a milky gemstone, deep violet, in a heavy platinum setting. He recognized it immediately. “Nice stone. But you could have bought it from me wholesale.”

  “No doubt. After all, you and Masangkay are the ones that got the Atacama tektites out of Chile.”

  “Right. And I’m still a wanted man in those parts as a result.”

  “We will offer you suitable protections.”

  “So it’s Chile, huh? Well, I know what the insides of their jails look like. Sorry.”

  Lloyd didn’t respond immediately. Picking up a stick, he banked the scattered embers, then tossed the stick onto them. The fire crackled up, beating back the darkness. On anybody else, the Tilley hat would look a little silly; somehow, Lloyd managed to pull it off. “If you knew what we were planning, Dr. McFarlane, you’d do it for free. I’m offering you the scientific prize of the century.”

  McFarlane chuckled, shaking his head. “I’m done with science,” he said. “I’ve had enough dusty labs and museum bureaucracies to last me a lifetime.”

  Lloyd sighed and stood up. “Well, it looks like I’ve wasted my time. I guess we’ll have to go with our number two choice.”

  McFarlane paused. “And who would that be?”

  “Hugo Breitling would love to be in on this.”

  “Breitling? He couldn’t find a meteorite if it hit him in the ass.”

  “He found the Thule meteorite,” Lloyd replied, slapping the dust from his pants. He gave McFarlane a sidelong glance. “Which is bigger than anything you’ve found.”

  “But that’s all he found. And that was sheer luck.”

  “Fact is, I’m going to need luck for this project.” Lloyd screwed the top back on the thermos and tossed it into the dust at McFarlane’s feet. “Here, have yourself a party. I’ve got to get going.”

  He began striding toward the helicopter. As McFarlane watched, the engine revved and the heavy rotors picked up speed, beating the air, sending skeins of dust swirling erratically across the ground. It suddenly occurred to him that, if the chopper left, he might never learn how Masangkay died, or what he had been doing. Despite himself, he was intrigued. McFarlane looked around quickly: at the metal detectors, dented and scattered; at the bleak little camp; at the landscape beyond, parched and unpromising.

  At the helicopter’s hatch, Lloyd paused.

  “Make it an even million!” called McFarlane to the man’s broad back.

  Carefully, so as not to upset the hat, Lloyd ducked his head and began stepping into the chopper.

  “Seven fifty, then!”

  There was another pause. And then Palmer Lloyd slowly turned, his face breaking into a broad smile.

  The Hudson River Valley,

  June 3, 10:45 A.M.

  PALMER LLOYD loved many rare and valuable things, but one of the things he loved most was Thomas Cole’s painting Sunny Morning on the Hudson River. As a scholarship student in Boston, he had often gone to the Museum of Fine Arts, walking through the galleries with his eyes downcast so as not to sully his vision before he could stand before that glorious painting.

  Lloyd preferred to own the things he loved, but the Thomas Cole painting was not to be had at any price. Instead, he had purchased the next best thing. On this sunny morning he sat in his upper Hudson Valley office, gazing out a window that framed precisely the view in Cole’s painting. There was a very beautiful line of light penciling the extreme horizon; the fields, seen through the breaking mists, were exquisitely fresh and green. The mountainside in the foreground, limned by the rising sun, sparkled. Not much had changed in the Clove Valley
since Cole had painted this scene in 1827, and Lloyd had made sure, with vast land purchases along his line of sight, that nothing would.

  He swiveled in his chair, gazing across a desk of spaulded maple into a window that looked in the opposite direction. From here, the hillside fell away beneath him, a brilliant mosaic of glass and steel. Hands behind his head, Lloyd surveyed the scene of frantic activity with satisfaction. Work crews swarmed over the landscape, fulfilling a vision—his vision—unparalleled in the world. “A miracle of rare device,” he murmured beneath his breath.

  At the center of the activity, green in the Catskill morning light, was a massive dome: an oversize replica of London’s Crystal Palace, which had been the first structure made entirely of glass. Upon its completion in 1851 it was considered one of the most beautiful buildings ever constructed, but it had been gutted by fire in 1936, and its remains demolished in 1942 for fear it would provide a convenient landmark for Nazi bombers.

  Beyond the overarching dome, Lloyd could see the first blocks being laid of the pyramid of Khefret II, a small Old Kingdom pyramid. He smiled a little ruefully at the memory of his trip to Egypt: his byzantine dealings with government officials, the Keystone Kops uproar about the suitcase full of gold that no one could lift, all the other tedious melodrama. That pyramid had cost him more than he liked, and it wasn’t exactly Cheops, but it was impressive nonetheless.

  Thinking of the pyramid reminded him of the outrage its purchase had caused in the archaeological world, and he glanced up at the newspaper articles and magazine covers framed on a nearby wall. “Where Have All the Artifacts Gone?” read one, accompanied by a grotesque caricature of Lloyd, complete with shifty eyes and slouch hat, slipping a miniature pyramid under his dark cloak. He scanned the other framed headlines. “The Hitler of Collectors?” read one; and then there were all the ones decrying his recent purchase: “Bones of Contention: Paleontologists Outraged by Sale.” And a Newsweek cover: “What Do You Do with Thirty Billion? Answer: Buy the Earth.” The wall was covered with them, the shrill utterances of the naysayers, the self-appointed guardians of cultural morality. Lloyd found it all an endless source of amusement.

  A small chime rang on a flat panel laid into his desk, and the voice of his secretary fluted: “There’s a Mr. Glinn to see you, sir.”

  “Send him in.” Lloyd didn’t bother to suppress the excitement in his voice. He had not met Eli Glinn before, and it had been surprisingly difficult to get him to come in person.

  He closely observed the man as he entered the office, without even a briefcase in his hand, sunburnt face expressionless. Lloyd had found, in his long and fruitful business career, that first impressions, if carefully made, were exceedingly revealing. He took in the close-cropped brown hair, the square jaw, the thin lips. The man looked, at first glance, as inscrutable as the Sphinx. There was nothing distinctive about him, nothing that gave anything away. Even his gray eyes were veiled, cautious, and still. Everything about him looked ordinary: ordinary height, ordinary build, good-looking but not handsome, well-dressed but not dapper. His only unusual feature, Lloyd thought, was the way he moved. His shoes made no sound on the floor, his clothes did not rustle on his person, his limbs moved lightly and easily through the air. He glided through the room like a deer through a forest.

  And, of course, there was nothing ordinary in the man’s résumé.

  “Mr. Glinn,” Lloyd said, walking toward him and taking his hand. “Thank you for coming.”

  Glinn nodded silently, shook the proffered hand with a shake that was neither too long nor too short, neither limp nor bone-crushingly macho. Lloyd felt moderately disconcerted: he was having trouble forming that invaluable first impression. He swept his hand toward the window and the sprawling, half-finished structures beyond. “So. What do you think of my museum?”

  “Large,” Glinn said without smiling.

  Lloyd laughed. “The Getty of natural history museums. Or it will be, soon—with three times the endowment.”

  “Interesting that you decided to locate it here, a hundred miles from the city.”

  “A nice touch of hubris, don’t you think? Actually, I’m doing the New York Museum of Natural History a favor. If we’d built there instead of up here, we’d have put them out of business within a month. But since we’ll have the biggest and the best of everything, they’ll be reduced to serving school field trips.” Lloyd chuckled. “Come on, Sam McFarlane is waiting for us. I’ll give you a tour on the way.”

  “Sam McFarlane?”

  “He’s my meteorite expert. Well, he’s still only about half mine, I’d say, but I’m working on him. The day is young.”

  Lloyd placed a hand on the elbow of Glinn’s well-tailored but anonymous dark suit—the material was better than he expected—and guided him back through the outer office, down a sweeping circular ramp of granite and polished marble, and along a large corridor toward the Crystal Palace. The noise was much louder here, and their footsteps were punctuated by shouts, the steady cadence of nailguns, and the stutter of jackhammers.

  With barely contained enthusiasm, Lloyd pointed out the sights as they walked. “That’s the diamond hall, there,” he said, waving his hand toward a large subterranean space, haloed in violet light. “We discovered there were some old diggings in this hillside, so we tunneled our way in and set up the exhibit within an entirely natural context. It’s the only hall in any major museum devoted exclusively to diamonds. But since we’ve acquired the three largest specimens in the world, it seemed appropriate. You must have heard about how we snapped up the Blue Mandarin from De Beers, just ahead of the Japanese?” He gave a wicked chuckle at the memory.

  “I read the papers,” Glinn said dryly.

  “And that,” said Lloyd, becoming more animated, “will house the Gallery of Extinct Life. Passenger pigeons, a dodo bird from the Galápagos, even a mammoth removed from the Siberian ice, still perfectly frozen. They found crushed buttercups in its mouth—remnants of its last meal.”

  “I read about the mammoth, too,” Glinn said. “Weren’t there several shootings in Siberia in the aftermath of its acquisition?”

  Despite the pointedness of the question, Glinn’s tone was mild, without any trace of censure, and Lloyd didn’t pause in his answer. “You’d be surprised, Mr. Glinn, how quickly countries waive their so-called cultural patrimony when large sums of money become involved. Here, I’ll show you what I mean.” He beckoned his guest forward, through a half-completed archway flanked by two men in hard hats, into a darkened hall that stretched for a hundred yards. He paused to flick on the lights, then turned with a grin.

  Before them stretched a hardened, mudlike surface. Wandering across this surface were two sets of small footprints. It looked as if people had wandered into the hall while the cement on the floor was setting.

  “The Laetoli footprints,” Lloyd said reverently.

  Glinn said nothing.

  “The oldest hominid footprints ever discovered. Think about it: three and a half million years ago our first bipedal ancestors made those footprints, walking across a layer of wet volcanic ash. They’re unique. Nobody knew that Australopithecus afarensis walked upright until these were found. They’re the earliest proof of our humanity, Mr. Glinn.”

  “The Getty Conservation Institute must have been interested to hear of this acquisition,” Glinn said.

  Lloyd looked at his companion more carefully. Glinn was an exceptionally difficult man to read. “I see you’ve done your homework. The Getty wanted to leave them buried in situ. How long do you think that would have lasted, with Tanzania in the state it’s in?” He shook his head. “The Getty paid one million dollars to cover them back up. I paid twenty million to bring them here, where scholars and countless visitors can benefit.”

  Glinn glanced around at the construction. “Speaking of scholars, where are the scientists? I see a lot of blue collars, but very few white coats.”

  Lloyd waved his hand. “I bring them on as I need them.
For the most part, I know what I want to buy. When the time comes, though, I’ll get the best. I’ll stage a raiding party through the country’s curatorial offices that will leave them spinning. It’ll be just like Sherman marching to the sea. The New York Museum won’t know what hit them.”

  More quickly now, Lloyd directed his visitor away from the long hallway and into a warren of corridors that angled deeper into the Palace. At the end of one corridor, they stopped before a door marked CONFERENCE ROOM A. Lounging beside the door was Sam McFarlane, looking every inch the adventurer: lean and rugged, blue eyes faded by the sun. His straw-colored hair had a faint horizontal ridge to it, as if years of wearing heavy-brimmed hats had permanently creased it. Just looking at him, Lloyd could see why the man had never taken to academia. He seemed as out of place among the fluorescent lights and drab-colored labs as would the San Bushmen he had been with just the other day. Lloyd noted, with satisfaction, that McFarlane looked tired. No doubt he had gotten very little sleep over the last two days.

  Reaching into his pocket, Lloyd withdrew a key and opened the door. The space beyond was always a shock to first-time visitors. One-way glass covered three of the room’s walls, looking down on the grand entrance to the museum: a vast octagonal space, currently empty, in the very center of the Palace. Lloyd glanced to see how Glinn would take it. But the man was as inscrutable as ever.

  For months Lloyd had agonized over what object would occupy the soaring octagonal space below—until the auction at Christie’s. The battling dinosaurs, he had thought, would make a perfect centerpiece. You could still read the desperate agony of their final struggle in the contorted bones.

  And then his eyes fell on the table littered with charts, printouts, and aerial photographs. When this happened, Lloyd had forgotten all about the dinosaurs. This would be the pièce de résistance, the crowning glory of the Lloyd Museum. Mounting this in the center of the Crystal Palace would be the proudest moment of his life.

  “May I introduce Dr. Sam McFarlane,” Lloyd said, turning away from the table and looking at Glinn. “The museum’s retaining his services for the duration of this assignment.”