Bonereapers Read Online Free

in a nation lousy with blonds, but this jumped-up Goldilocks seemed to regard her non-Nordic features as per se terroristic.
    “What is your name?”
    “Dinah Pelerin.”
    “Full name.”
    “Dinah Loyce Pelerin.”
    “Will you open your purse, please?”
    Dinah handed over her sporty red Hobo bag, which matched the buttons on her pea jacket, and watched as the woman removed and scrutinized each item. Tissues, chapstick, wallet, iPod, compact, lipstick, hairbrush, toothbrush, pen, notepad, keys, aspirin, peanut butter cheese crackers. She held up the puka shell Eleanor had given Dinah to wish her a safe voyage and examined it minutely.
    “It’s for good luck. Please, if you’ll just contact Senator Norris Frye, at whatever hotel he’s staying, he’ll vouch for me. I’m his technical consultant. Really. I’m here to talk about Hawaiian bananas.”
    The woman instructed her to wait and strode out of the cubicle. She marched past the polar bear’s cage and paused to confer with two male cops, also blond. One of them opened a cell phone. She saw that Brander Aagaard had reached the front of the line. Blowing smoke out the side of his mouth like a diesel truck, he brandished his press credentials to some sort of military cop in a red beret. The cop’s forehead corrugated into angry folds. Dinah didn’t have to hear what Aagaard was saying to know that he was being obnoxious. She massaged her temples, which had begun to throb. What kind of chicanery was going on here? Was Aagaard being a provocateur or did he have evidence that seeds could be checked out of the Svalbard vault for experimentation? That was precisely what Eleanor had sent her to find out.
    If only it weren’t so cold. She kneaded her chilly arms and envisioned herself somewhere far, far away, stretched out in a snug, soft bed piled high with blankets.
    After what seemed like an eternity, the woman returned and informed her that she had been cleared to leave the airport.
    “But where…?”
    “Your senators are staying at the Radisson. One of the military officers will drive you.”
    The Radisson. Dinah almost whimpered with relief. She should have known that a bunch of VIP senators wouldn’t undertake a winter junket to the Arctic unless their creature comforts could be assured. She picked up her purse and stood up. As an afterthought, she asked, “Have you heard whether the agriculture minister is going to be all right?”
    “He is in hospital. We have no report on his condition yet.”
    ***
    The two-mile drive from the airport into Longyearbyen didn’t afford much in the way of sightseeing. It was three o’clock in the afternoon and black as coal, the commodity which had been mined here since the beginning of the twentieth century. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Spitsbergen Island—the largest in the Svalbard archipelago—had been visited primarily by whalers and Russian trappers. But the island was rich in coal and in 1905, an American tycoon named John Munro Longyear bought out the Trondheim-Spitsbergen Coal Company and renamed it The Arctic Coal Company. The town that grew up around the mines became known as Longyearbyen, “ byen ” being the Norwegian word for city. Today, with the addition of the airport, a university, a research institute, tourist facilities, and the Doomsday Vault, Longyearbyen had become the largest town in the Arctic, boasting a population of just over two thousand hardy souls, all of them in excellent health. There were no dead people in Longyearbyen. Because the permafrost prevented bodies from decomposing, no burials were allowed. According to what Dinah had read, dying was for all intents and purposes illegal. Anyone who felt sick enough to die was required to get out of town pronto.
    In front of the merrily lit Radisson Blu Polar Hotel, her driver opened the door for her and walked her across the snowy walkway to the entrance. A sign posted inside the foyer requested her to remove her boots, so