Joe Rush 02: Protocol Zero (33 page)

It was funny, I thought. Back at home the admiral was a frustrated voice in Washington trying to impress listeners that the Arctic needed attention. Here everyone took it for granted. They planned for it. They seemed ten years ahead of anything I’d heard in Washington, D.C.

After a while there was a coffee break.

I fixed on Bruce.

I stayed out of sight, as he made his way in the crowd to a large hall outside where piles of oily-looking, heavily sugared jelly donuts and strong coffee had been laid out.

I did not want Bruce to see me yet, not when there were people around. I followed at a distance as he wandered idly down a hall filled with exhibits; models of Arctic rescue craft, Arctic clothing, Arctic drill technology, and cold-resistant equipment, its manufacturers claimed.

At five, day over, he joined the stream of conference attendees streaming out into the dark, heading toward parked buses. The buses were there to take participants back to hotels. I feared that I would lose him. I could not follow him onto a bus or he’d see me.

But he walked.

You always did like your exercise, Bruce. You always were a surprise, looking frail, being so hardy.

He strolled along narrow streets, peering into souvenir shops, considering quaint restaurants, skirting the brightly lit harbor as coastal ferries went in or out. There were cross-country ski trails in the hills, I’d read. Hiking. Trams taking stargazers up a mountain. Tromso was allegedly one of the best places on Earth to see the magnificent aurora borealis.

Tourists from the world over came here to marvel at the lights.

Karen would have loved this,
I thought, feeling an ache in my chest, feeling the past.

His hotel was small, well lit, set a block from the harbor, on a snowy square surrounded by restaurants, a gym, and it had an old church in the center. The hotel featured four stars in the window. Bruce was living well, no longer an impoverished scientist needing handouts, or a polar bear activist seeking grants.

I walked to the church. It was locked. I stood on the front steps. I waited.

An hour went by and he came out.

He dressed the same. He always did. Apparently he was paying more for hotels these days, but style wise, Bruce remained Bruce. He never looked back. He meandered past souvenir shops featuring Arctic sweaters, Sami clothing, reindeer-horn handle knives, Laplander carvings. The night was clear. The mountains were visible across the harbor, and the lights marking the tramline sparkled.

Bruce Friday entered a glass-fronted restaurant that looked expensive, judging from the décor seen through the plate-glass window. I watched him pause by the maitre d’ station. I saw the man shrug, shake his head, and direct Bruce to a window-side table, for four.

Five minutes later a G-class white Mercedes SUV pulled up to the restaurant. A suited driver got out and opened the rear door. The shorter man who emerged was middle-aged, wealthily dressed but plain looking. Pudgy, in a dark blue overcoat. Hatless. Expensive gloves. The man walked with a side-to-side gait that gave the impression of an out-of-shape body beneath the sleek outerwear.

The driver pulled the car to the side, kept the motor on, and waited. I memorized the license plate. And through the restaurant window, I memorized the stranger’s face.

The man sat talking animatedly with Bruce for forty-five minutes. They drank. They ate. They shook hands and the man left. Bruce lingered over an after-dinner drink. I never knew he liked after-dinner drinks. I was learning all kinds of things about Bruce now that I wished I’d known before.

Bruce got up and shrugged into his coat, went back outside, scanned the sky, and again started walking

He was restless, curious, or excited. Or maybe it was too early to go to sleep. He headed away from his hotel, and up the steeply rising side streets that took us both away from the port. He trudged across a small, dark city park and I followed him up a zigzaggy series of narrow streets lined by private homes. Nothing big and grand. Everything modest, low, set into the land.

Where are you going?

Sometimes events break in the way in which you want them. Sometimes, after long stretches of difficulty, fate gives a gift. Bruce had his hat shoved low and gloved hands in his pockets. He periodically stopped and peered up at the sky. He seemed to be looking for something. Then I realized what it was. He was searching for the aurora borealis. Bruce the tourist had finished business and, job over for the day, wanted to see the fantastic northern lights.

Oh, you want the best spot for lights? Well, sir, you must get away from the town lights for a better view!

The streets rose steeply. He never turned around. There were a few people walking also; either down toward the commercial strip and the cafés, nightclubs, restaurants . . . or back to their lodging. Most walkers looked young. Couples held hands. No one acknowledged me. In Tromso, I guess, people were accustomed to seeing outsiders. There was a ski-town ambiance. Lots of new people every day.

Bruce Friday reached an area of thick woods, a park I supposed. He hesitated, then walked into the woods. When I reached that spot I saw that he’d followed a narrow footpath, covered with snow.

I followed. The snow was deep, but crusty on top, so my boots sank in only slightly. My ankles did not get wet.

He’s walking through the woods. Ah, he’s walking out of the trees and onto that meadow or frozen lake. No houses here. This is probably the place that the guidebooks identify as a good spot to see the northern lights.

And suddenly, the aurora borealis appeared.

It showed at first like movie floodlights shining up from the northwest quadrant. Or perhaps those were automobile headlights pointed up, as if a car climbed a steep hill. No, that wasn’t it because the floodlights turned to magenta lava and then the whole sky seemed iridescent. I saw what looked like lines on an oscilloscope, pulsing, as if heaven was sending silent messages to Earth. If only someone would look. Or listen.

“Hello, Bruce.”

He spun. I was six feet from him, but he knew my voice. He froze, a mix of surprise and horror on his face. Bruce in the same old Barrow parka. The same blue scarf and dark stocking hat. But the eyes were not the same, not when it came to expression. They were animal eyes. They were a deer’s eyes, in a headlight.

He started to run.

We were alone and the snow was deep and I was pretty healthy now, missing toes but the therapy and training had worked fine. I caught up with him in less than sixty seconds. He went down hard, tried to fight, tried to scream but I hit him in the solar plexus.
“Ooooof!”
He was strong, but not trained in combat. I probably had enough adrenaline surging through me to power six Marines. I poked his throat where the soft flesh hits the collarbone, not hard, not a kill blow, just a
fuck you
. He couldn’t breathe. He started gagging. His hands went, involuntarily, to his throat.

Control yourself,
I thought. I had one of those Laplander knives out, pressed to his throat.

“Bruce. Bruce? Answers, Bruce. You hear me?
Answers.
I’m taking you in, if you give me answers. If you don’t give answers, I’ll kill you right now.”

“What are you . . . doing here?”

“No, no. Did you hear what I said? I ask, not you.”

“Let me up.”

I hit him twice in the face. I heard bones break. Busted nose, minimum. My hand hurt. I felt the fight go out of him. A terrorized look nested in his eyes.

Bruce said, like a ten-year-old kid, snot running freely, “It isn’t fair.”

Of everything he could have said, this shocked me and I sat back. His breath rose in puffs. He was crying. I smelled the fish he’d eaten for dinner: oregano, curry, the sweet lingering aroma of after-dinner port. I pushed the tip of the knife into him, just enough to draw blood. He moaned. His blood caught the iridescent light.

“All right, all right, stop,” he said.

I started it off. “You were a professor. You came to Barrow for research, years ago. After a while you found something at lake number nine. What did you find?”

The crying grew worse. The tears reflected, in small flashes, emerald and violet light. He blurted out, “I lost my wife over this. I lost my kids. My family. I deserve something. All those years. It isn’t fair!”

I drew back the knife.

“Cancer,” he gasped. “Pancreatic cancer.”

“A
cure
?”

“Yes. A cure, Joe.”

“An organism? In the lake?”

A nod.

I said, seeing it, “But you couldn’t tell anyone while you were a professor, not if you wanted to get the benefits. Your contract gave commercial rights to the school. But if you waited until
after
you retired, made the discovery then, you’d get profit.”

“Is that so wrong? It was my discovery. Mine!”

He was blubbering. He was hoping that someone else would show up to see the lights. It was possible. Someone might show up, especially if this spot had been recommended. But at that moment I didn’t care if someone showed up. If someone showed, I’d kill Bruce. That was a fact.

In fitful, half-choked sentences he finished the story that Liz Willoughby had started. His life was
not fair
because the school should have let him keep profits.
Not fair
because of the Supreme Court ruling denying discoverers profits from finding a natural gene. He’d waited for years, and when the prize was within reach, the court changed the game.
Not fair
because he had to seek help from a company overseas, a man with a shady reputation;
not fair
because after all the years and secrecy, the Harmons had planned to gather samples at the lake, and possibly make the same discovery Bruce had made.

“You killed them, Bruce.”

“Jens did that. I tried to make them stop. I made them have accidents. But Ted kept going. He just would not stop! So Jens was sent. He showed up. It’s not my fault.”

“And Karen?”

“Jens. Jens is crazy. Jens was a killer. I was nowhere near there. I promise.”

“Why did Jens burn down the cabin at the lake?”

“We . . . he and I . . . we went there over the summer. For samples. Our fingerprints. They were there. You were going to go there, taking a forensics team. You would have found them. My prints. And then, you know . . .”

It made sense. I
would
have had that cabin swept. It would have been normal procedure. I said, “And the eco lodge? What about that? The only reason it’s there, is so nobody else can use the lake, right? The whole deal is to bar the lake to research. The deal is phony.”

“The . . . lodge will be . . . real. But, yes, he bought it to block off the lake.”

“Tilda Swann?”

“Not involved. Joe! You can’t synthesize the drug. Not yet. We’re trying.
The only place in the world it comes from is
that lake
. That lake has to be protected.”

Protected?

I felt the energy draining away from me. He babbled that the extract from the lake, in clinical trials on humans, had killed pancreatic cancer in 90 percent of cases. He said it would reduce the death rate by a huge amount. He said it was a miracle, and would save lives, thousands, more,
hundreds of thousands
of lives.

To my question,
Where did the rabies come from?
he answered that it had been designed in Siberian laboratories, during the Cold War. To my question,
Who controlled it now?
he told me the name of the man he’d just met.

“He’s not a good man, Joe. I had no choice but to deal with him, don’t you see? But after I made the deal with him I wrote a letter,” Bruce added slyly. “I wrote down who he was, what we did. I hid copies. He
has
to give me my share. Forty-nine percent! Joe, I . . . can share that money with you.”

“The man you just had dinner with.”

I envisioned the pudgy guy in the restaurant window, across from Bruce.

“Yes.

“Which hotel is he at?”

Bruce shook his head. Suddenly he was my big helper, not a whimpering victim under a knife. “He flew home, Joe. He was never staying here. He has a private jet. He left after dinner and he’s gone by now.

“Joe? Can I get up? I’m cold. I’ll cooperate. I’ll say what you want, unless you . . . want . . . to . . . share. It won’t make up for Karen, I know, I’m sorry. I am. But
we can share, Joe.
”

“Okay, Bruce, we’ll share. Get up.”

I strangled him.

•   •   •

I PRESSED DOWN AND LEANED FORWARD AND LET MY RAGE TAKE ME.
I felt my fingers crunch into his neck. He was kicking. He tried to flail. I felt his breath on my face as it spurted out. I felt his life force departing. He sprayed saliva on my chin.

The last wisps, the final vaporized breath of Dr. Bruce Friday drifted, drifted, rose, and was gone.

After a moment I rose, looked around, and the rest of the world came back to me. I was dizzy with spent adrenaline. I bent down and rifled his clothes, took his wallet, his watch, and opened his fly.

On my lurching way down to town, I threw them all into a sewer opening. As for my tracks, once I was on the well-plowed streets again, they were gone. It was like getting away from bloodhounds by walking into a river. The police would find the body, and see size ten and a half footprints. But there would be no trail of those prints into town.

Back at the hotel, the blond concierge was still on duty. She smiled dazzlingly when I walked in. She asked me if I’d enjoyed my dinner. She informed me that the bus to the conference would depart the hotel at eight the next morning, and before that a delicious smorgasbord breakfast—cheeses, cold cuts, oatmeal, eggs, and fruit—would be offered from 7
A.M.
on, in a dining room down the hall.

If the other man—the one Bruce had dealt with—was gone, I had no choice so I called the admiral. He was home and picked up on the second ring. “Joe?”

I laid it out for him. If the police were going to show up, someone needed to hear, now. Galli listened and sometimes made humming noises, thinking. He said, “You have Bruce Friday? The FBI will want a crack at him.”