Frozen Solid: A Novel (11 page)

“Pole time,” she said. “Sounds like a beer commercial.” She didn’t touch her watch. He was a never-good-enough man, but he would get no bowing or scraping from her. Might mean butting heads, but she would rather butt than bow any day.

“Sleep well?” Graeter asked.

“Is that a joke?”

“It’ll pass. Or maybe not. Some never adjust.”

“I know altitude. But my mouth feels like I gargled with acid. Do people get sick that quickly here?”

“You’re probably not sick. Yet. It’s frostbite. When you stepped out of the plane, you went from sixty above to about seventy below. Sucked in air. Involuntary, like what happens if you jump into freezing water. It heals in a few days. Usually.”

“Comforting.”

“Have you—”

“Did you find out anything more about the women who died?” she asked.

“I thought we covered this yesterday.”

“We didn’t cover the possibility that some pathogen might have killed them. If that’s the case, it could happen to others.”

“That wasn’t it,” he said, much too casually for her mood just then.

“How could you know that? Just about everybody I’ve talked to so far has been sick with one thing or another.”

“Doc called. He said Lanahan had some kind of operation on her throat. Montalban had surgery, too—a C-section.”

The same things Merritt had said.

Should I tell him?

Merritt could not have been the killer; the one piece of real information Hallie had—thanks to Emily’s video—was that the killer was a man. Graeter—more likely than Merritt, obviously. She would tell him nothing.

He glanced at the watch on his left wrist again. “Let’s go. I have a station to run here.”

He brushed past her and was out the door before she could protest.

A few minutes later, they were walking along the main corridor when Rockie Bacon approached. She wore bunny boots and black insulated Carhartt coveralls over a red plaid shirt. She held a smartphone in one palm and was texting as she walked, oblivious to Hallie and Graeter.

“Good afternoon, Bacon,” Graeter said.

“Good afternoon to you, Mr. Graeter,” she said, no great pleasure in her voice. To Hallie: “We just can’t stop bumping into each other, can we?”

“Are you headed for the early grading?” Graeter asked.

“That’s right.”

“How’s the cold?”

“Can’t seem to shake it.”

“I could get Landis or Richards to handle it this morning.”

“Thanks, but it takes more than that to keep me off my Cat.”

After Bacon walked away, Hallie said, “I thought it was too cold for planes to land now.”

“It is.”

“So why send her out there, sick as she is, to grade the runway?”

“Not runway. Iceway.”

“To grade the iceway.”

“SORs say it gets graded twice a day. So we grade it twice a day.”

They walked on. As Graeter led them to the first level, Hallie asked, “Why are all the stairs yellow?”

“Human factors experts said fewer people would fall down them.”

“Did they do the decorating, too?” She was referring to the irregular polygons in clashing colors—deep blue, fire orange, blood-red, sharp purple—that covered the corridors’ walls and ceilings.

“Sort of. They also claimed that asymmetrical patterning warded off depression. In a place that goes dark for eight months, it’s a serious problem.”

“Reminds me of a badly lit elementary school decorated with paintings by disturbed children. Does it work?”

“Not hardly.”

They moved in their pool of light down dark corridors, past a grimy gym and weight room, offices, storage chambers. Descended stairs at one end of the station, came to an air-lock door with a sign:

“Beaker humor. Merritt can take you in there,” Graeter said.

Minutes later, they stood beneath the station in a rectangular tunnel, eight feet wide and twelve feet high. The floor and walls were smooth, white ice. Icicles and frost formations dangled from the ceiling. Round metal tubes, two feet in diameter, hung from one wall.

“Welcome to the Underground,” Graeter said. “A labyrinth carved out over the years. This main tunnel runs under the length of the station. Other tunnels branch off, and still others branch off them. Imagine a Scrabble board late in the game.”

“What is that smell?”

“Sewage and diesel fuel.”

They walked on. Graeter turned right down one secondary corridor, right again into another, and kept turning into new corridors for several minutes. “Know where you are?”

“Do you mean could I find my way back to the stairs? Maybe.”

“Maybe isn’t good enough at Pole,” Graeter said.

“Why did I know you were going to say that?” Hallie asked.

“That’s what you need to know about the Underground. Let’s go back.”

“What else is down here?” Hallie asked as they walked.

“Bulk food storage. Generators, primary and backups. Fuel reservoirs. NCS holdings more than anything else.”

“NCS?”

“Non–cold sensitive. Everything from old furniture to files.”

They passed a chamber whose entrance was blocked by a sheet of heavy black canvas. The other “rooms” she’d seen were open.

“What’s in there?” she asked.

“That’s the morgue. Lanahan and Montalban are in there, until we get them on a flight out.”

She stopped. “Is that where Emily stayed?”

“Yes.”

He looked at the black sheet, then back at her. Turned and kept going. She lingered for a few moments, feeling tears start to well up, pushed them back down. Rage came, hot and red. Then grief, and then, last of all, horror.

Something touched her shoulder and she started.
“Jesus!”

Graeter. He had come back without her hearing. “I told you about ghosts,” he said.

“
COFFEE, TEA, OR GLENFIDDICH?
”
DON BARNARD ASKED AS WIL
Bowman settled into a red leather chair. They were in Barnard’s office in the BARDA complex, outside Washington, D.C. It was ten
A.M
. on Tuesday.

“Nothing, thanks.”

They sat with a coffee table between them. Barnard brought a mug of coffee with him. “Thanks for making time on short notice.”

“When the director of BARDA calls, I answer. Especially when it has to do with Hallie.”

“It’s good to see you under happier circumstances. The last time was …” Barnard shook his head, unable to find the right word.

“Scary as hell,” Bowman said.

“Amen.”

It was at BARDA, thanks to Don Barnard, that Bowman had first met Hallie Leland, a year earlier. Barnard had assembled a team of scientists to search the world’s deepest cave for a natural antibiotic that might stave off a pandemic. He made no secret of the fact that people could die. When an uncomfortable silence extended—these were scientists, not SEALs—Hallie stalked to the front of the room
and declared that this was the opportunity of a lifetime: millions of lives might be saved. The rest of them might not go down into the cave, but she sure as hell would. Alone, if she had to. Bowman, in his government’s service, would go, of course. The others could choose. In the end, they all went, and Bowman had never forgotten how she’d galvanized that team.

Not many men outsized Don Barnard, but Bowman was one. Six feet four, 230 pounds of hard muscle. A natural mesomorph, big-shouldered and narrow-waisted, clean-shaven, with a straw-colored brush cut. His nose showed the effects of nonverbal conflict resolution, and a thin pink scar divided his right eyebrow into two short dashes. His was a lean face of juts and angles, hardly handsome but surprising enough to attract stray glances and hold them.

Bowman worked for, or was attached to, or emanated from—Barnard had still not found the right word for Bowman’s affiliation—some dark entity hidden invisibly deep in the government’s intelligence labyrinth. Bowman had never volunteered its name, and Barnard had never pressed him for details. He suspected that Bowman had a military special operations background. Hallie had said he held a PhD in some esoteric engineering subspecialty.

“Have you heard from Hallie?” Barnard asked.

“No,” Bowman said. “You?”

Wil smiled rarely and frowned almost never. If Barnard had been pressed to describe the man in a word, it would have been
centered
.

“No.”

“Really? I was sure she would have contacted you.”

“I thought the same thing about you,” Barnard said.

“That’s not like Hallie at all. Do you know if she actually reached the Pole?”

“Not even that. I got an email from her at McMurdo on Sunday, but nothing after.”

“I emailed her earlier this morning but haven’t gotten an answer. Have you tried to call?” Bowman asked.

“A number of times. Apparently the moon is easier to talk to. All communications to the Pole are satellite-dependent. Right now, there
are just two two-hour windows in every twenty-four-hour period. And lots of things can screw those up—storms, solar events, power failures.”

“She told me she would be replacing a scientist who had died unexpectedly. And that she’d known the woman here at one time.”

“That’s right.”

“Who was that woman working for? Durant was her name, I think.”

“National Science Foundation,” Barnard said.

“How long ago did she die?”

“Not exactly sure. Sometime early last week, though.”

“And you don’t know how?”

“Here’s where it gets a bit strange.” Barnard recounted his conversation with Laraine Harris.

“There should be an autopsy and a medical examiner’s report by now,” Bowman said.

“I thought so, too. So I called a man at my own level over there. Director of Antarctic Programs. He didn’t know how she’d died, either. I explained my interest and asked if he could look into it. Very nice fellow. He agreed. I made an appointment to see him tomorrow.”

“He wouldn’t just send a copy of whatever he found?”

Barnard chuckled. “He’s a bureaucrat. The normal response to such a request would be to forget about it for a week or two, then hand it off to some subordinate. Bureaucrats learn never to do anything too quickly, because it will be expected of them next time.”

“So what happens now?”

“It’s like fencing. Can be fun if you understand the rules and weapons. I pointed out that since neither of us knew what happened, it would be better to meet in person. Possible discretion required, et cetera. Slow response is one thing; no response is another.”

“You put him in a corner.”

“I figured if he was blowing smoke about getting the information, he probably wouldn’t have wanted to meet. This gives him a little incentive to really find something.”

“Keep that kind of thing up and I might have to recruit you.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. But my ops days are over.”

Bowman’s expression hardened. “I don’t like this.”

“Me, neither. Less and less, in fact.”

“Hallie’s supposed to fly out of there before the station shuts down for winterover, right?” Bowman asked.

“Yes. After the last flight, it’s totally isolated for eight solid months.”

“So if anything happened and she missed that flight …”

“It would be a long winter. For all of us.”

Bowman stood. “Thanks for bringing me in, Don. I’ll look for that report.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

“Let me know when you get through to her. I’ll keep trying, myself.”

Barnard had been worried not to hear from Hallie but shocked to learn that Bowman hadn’t, either. He knew that the two had grown close over the past year, and he knew, as well, that neither was the kind who did that easily. He had watched the relationship change Hallie, rounding edges, softening points. He wasn’t sure she’d noticed the evolution herself. Barnard loved Hallie, but that did not keep him from seeing her as she was: an excellent scientist and a lovely young woman, but one who had grown up with two older brothers in an Army family. A colleague of Barnard’s had once commented on the “porcupine suit” she sometimes wore.

Barnard stared out a window. Now that he and Bowman had talked, Barnard was feeling the edge of an old dread that rarely visited him these days but slept always in some deep place, ready to wake at the right disturbance. It had come back with him from Vietnam, where night after night he had led soldiers even younger than himself out into the black jungle, knowing with absolute certainty that on this patrol, or the next, or the next, some of them would not come back alive.

“
SIX MORE DEGREES,
”
SAID GRAETER,
“
AND WE WOULDN
’
T BE OUT
here.”

They were standing in front of the station. It was close to one
P.M
. and pitch-dark.

“Why is that?”

“It’s called Condition One. Eighty and colder, no one egresses.” From his parka he took a plastic bag. “Watch this.” From the bag he took a chicken leg. He poked it with a mitten. “Raw, right? Soft?”

She nodded.

He stood for twenty seconds, then rapped the chicken on a metal stair rail. The leg shattered like a lightbulb. “See?”

“I saw. What is this, fourth-grade science?”

“Showing beats telling. Especially with someone like you.”

“Someone like me?”

“I detect a certain disdain for authority.”

“ ‘The wisest have the most authority,’ ” she said, quoting.

“Socrates, right? If he was so wise, why’d he drink the Kool-Aid?”

“Plato said the thing about authority. Didn’t they teach philosophy at Annapolis?”

He squinted at her. “How come a microbiologist knows philosophers?”

“Nothing to do with microbiology. I know about authority from my father. He knew about philosophers.”

“An ivory tower family,” Graeter said. “Should have guessed.”

So he didn’t really look at my file, she thought. In any case, he was wrong about her family. She started to correct him, then let it go. She liked him better wrong.