Terminal Freeze (12 page)

In days past, the officers’ mess had been full of noise and bustle, radiating the kind of irrepressible glee more common to a frat party than a remote army base. This morning it felt more like a morgue. People sat in twos and threes, picking listlessly at their breakfasts, barely talking. Furtive, suspicious glances were exchanged, as if the guilty party could be anyone. Standing in the doorway, Marshall realized this was, in fact, true: anybody in the mess might be the culprit.

His eye settled on a far table, where a man sat alone, reading a book. He was light-haired and thin, with a carefully trimmed beard. Logan, the history professor.

Marshall helped himself to a slice of whole wheat bread and a cup of tea, and then-on impulse-took a seat across from Logan. “Good morning,” he said.

Logan put down the book-
Illuminations,
by Walter Benjamin-and glanced across the table. “That remains to be seen.”

“All too true.” Marshall peeled open a small tub of marmalade and spread the contents over his bread.

“I guess it’s worse for them than for us.” Logan nodded toward the next table, where the two photographers, Fortnum and Toussaint, sat woodenly pushing scrambled eggs around their plates with shell-shocked expressions. Much of the documentary crew had been put to work searching the base and its surroundings for the missing cat.

“That’s right. Nobody’s made off with
my
livelihood.” Marshall was careful to keep his tone light. “You?”

Logan stirred his coffee. “Unaffected by the events.”

“I’m relieved to hear it. Professor, right? Of medieval history?”

The stirring slowed. “That’s right.”

“I’m fascinated by the subject. In fact, I’ve been reading a history of the Counter-Reformation.” This was only half true- Marshall ’s nightly reading was, in fact, a book on the Counter-Reformation: but it was with the desperate hope that the incredibly dry exposition would help him find sleep.

Logan raised his eyebrows. He had blue eyes that while at first impression seemed almost drowsy were in fact subtle and penetrating.

“I just finished a chapter on the Council of Trent. Amazing, the impact it had on the Catholic liturgy.”

Logan nodded.

“And since it convened for the fourth time in-1572, right?-there hasn’t been another council as influential.”

The stirring stopped. Logan took a sip of coffee, made a face. “Terrible coffee.”

“You should switch to tea. I did.”

“Maybe I will.” Logan put the cup down. “There were three councils of Trent, not four.”

Marshall didn’t reply.

“And the last was 1563. Not 1572.”

Marshall shook his head. “Guess I was more tired than I realized, getting it wrong like that.”

Logan smiled slightly. “I get the feeling you got it just fine.”

There was a brief, uncomfortable silence. Then Marshall laughed ruefully. “You’re right. I’m sorry. That was really ham-handed of me.”

“Can’t say I blame you. I arrive out of nowhere, with a bizarre job description and no good reason to be here-and immediately all hell breaks loose.”

“Even so, I had no right to play with you like that.” Marshall hesitated. “Not that it’s any excuse, but I just came from this really unpleasant meeting with Conti.”

“The director? He and that pit bull from the network, Wolff, gave me a good going-over yesterday afternoon. I’ve never seen anybody so paranoid.”

“Yeah. And the worst thing is, it’s catching. I caught a good dose just now.” And it was still resonating: some of the things Conti had said about Sully, in particular, were more persuasive than Marshall cared to admit. He glanced at his watch: he had three and a half hours to make up his mind.

He took a bite of his toast. “So why are you here, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Logan pushed his cup away. “Doctor’s orders. The climate, you know.”

Marshall shook his head. “I deserved that.”

Another silence settled over the table, but this time it was neither especially awkward nor uncomfortable. Marshall finished his toast. He found his suspicions of Logan fading. There was no logical reason for it, of course, other than the professor was almost certainly what he claimed to be. Rather, it was something about the man-a degree of straightforwardness-that made him difficult to suspect.

Logan sighed. “Okay, let’s start again. Jeremy Logan.” He reached a friendly hand across the table.

Marshall shook it. “Evan Marshall.”

Logan sat back and spoke quietly. “When it comes to my research, I tend to play my cards pretty close to my vest. I make more progress that way. But I guess there’s no reason not to tell you. In fact, you might even be able to help-so long as you don’t mention it to the others.”

“Deal.”

“Actually, I think you’ll see for yourself the wisdom of keeping mum.”

“Somebody told me you were an enigmalogist. I haven’t heard of that particular, ah, discipline.”

“Nobody else has, either. My wife gave me that title once, in a playful moment.” Logan shrugged. “It helps remind me of her.”

“What does it have to do with medieval history?”

“Very little. But being a history professor is quite useful. It opens doors, discourages questions-most of the time, anyway.” He hesitated. “I solve mysteries. Explain the unexplained: the stranger and more bizarre, the better. Sometimes I do it professionally, for a fee. Other times-like now-I’m on my own nickel.”

Marshall sipped his tea. “Wouldn’t teaching history bring in a more regular paycheck?”

“Money’s not really an issue. Anyway, the jobs I do for others tend to pay extremely well-especially those I’m not allowed to write up in the professional journals.” He stood. “Excuse me, I think I’ll try the tea.”

Marshall waited while Logan fixed himself a cup, returned to the table. He moved with easy, graceful motions more appropriate to an athlete than a professor. “How much do you know about Fear Base?” he asked as he sat down again.

“As much as anybody does, I suppose. An early warning station, designed to guard against a preemptive Russian attack. Decommissioned in the late 1950s when the SAGE system went online.”

“Did you know that, while it was still in active use, it briefly housed a team of scientists?”

Marshall frowned. “No.”

Logan sipped his tea. “Last week I gained access to a newly declassified archive of government documents. I was researching something else-medieval history, as it happens-and was looking for some relevant army records from the Second World War. I found them, all right. But I found something else as well.”

He took another sip. “Specifically, I found a report from a Colonel Rose, written to an army board of inquiry. Rose was the commander of Fear Base at the time. It was a short report-a summary, really. He was scheduled to fly to Washington a few weeks later to make a more detailed report in person.”

“Go on.”

“The report had been misfiled. It was stuffed behind the file I’d been looking for, unread and obviously forgotten for half a century. As I said, it was very brief. But it mentioned the fact that the scientific team attached to Fear Base died very abruptly, over a two-day period in April 1958.”

“The
entire
team?”

Logan made a suppressing motion with his hand. “No, that’s not quite correct. There were eight members of the team. Seven died.”

“And the eighth?” Marshall asked more quietly.

“Rose’s report doesn’t specify what happened to him-or her.”

“What were they doing up here?”

“I don’t know the details. All that Rose said is that they were analyzing an anomaly of some kind.”

“Anomaly?”

“That’s what he called it. And his recommendation was that the research be immediately suspended and no second team sent up to continue it.”

Marshall stared thoughtfully at his empty cup. “Did you learn anything else? The name of the surviving scientist, for example?”

“Nothing. There was no other record, official or unofficial, of any science team at Fear Base. I searched carefully-and believe me, Evan, I’ve had a lot of practice uncovering lost or hidden information. But a couple of things particularly intrigued me.” He leaned in closer. “First, there were
two
copies of the report stuffed in behind that file I mentioned-I can only assume that one was meant for the archive, and the other had been destined for the Pentagon. Second, the tone of Colonel Rose’s report. Even though it was nothing more than a sober government memo, you could almost smell the hysteria. When he made the urgent recommendation that no more scientists be sent up, he really meant it:
urgent.
”

“So what about the detailed report he made in Washington later? That must have been documented.”

“He never made any report. He died ten days later, in a plane crash on the way down to Fort Richardson.”

“That second copy of the report…” Marshall began. Then he stopped. “So the whole thing was just forgotten.”

“The secret died with the scientists. And Colonel Rose.”

“But are you sure? That nobody else knew about it, I mean?”

“If they did, they kept their mouths shut and they’re now long dead. Otherwise, do you really suppose the army would have let you and your team use Fear Base?”

Marshall shook his head. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

Logan smiled faintly. “Now you see what I mean about the wisdom of keeping mum?”

For a moment, Marshall didn’t reply. Then he glanced over at Logan. “So why, exactly, are you here, Jeremy?”

“To do what I do best. Solve the mystery. Find out what happened to those scientists.” He drained his own cup. “You’re right-this tea’s not bad. Care for another cup?”

But Marshall didn’t answer. He was thinking.

The shudder of a slamming door; a shake of the mattress; a rough jostling of his shoulder. Josh Peters stretched, plucked the buds from his ears. As his dream and the pianistic musings of McCoy Tyner both faded into memory, the sounds of reality-and Fear Base-returned: distant clangs, the incessant tapping of the heating pipes, and the impatient voice of his roommate, Blaine.

“Josh. Hey, Josh. Get the hell up.”

Peters snapped off his music player and blinked his eyes open. Blaine ’s red, wind-chapped face swam into focus.

“What?” Peters mumbled.

“What ‘what’? It’s your turn, man. I’ve been out in that shit for an hour.”

Peters struggled to a sitting position, then collapsed again back onto the cot.

“You’d better hurry up. It’s past nine and you wouldn’t want Wolff to catch you still racked out.”

That did it. Peters got up from the bed and rubbed his face vigorously with his hands.

“The whole thing’s crazy,” Blaine said in a petulant voice. “We’ve been searching an entire day already. Nobody’s going to find anything in that storm. Just do what I did: walk in circles, look busy, and try to keep your ass from freezing.”

Peters didn’t reply. He tugged on a shirt and stepped into his shoes. Maybe he could remain half asleep through this, then return to his bunk and pick up where he’d left off: a delightful reverie in which Ashleigh Davis had been rubbing hazelnut-infused massage oil-the edible kind-all over…

“When we get back, the union’s going to hear about this. I mean, I’m supposed to be maintaining the digital library and logging takes, not out searching for the abominable snowman. And another thing. Why are they making
us
look outside? Why can’t we be like Fortnum and Toussaint, searching the lockers?”

“Because we’re PAs. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out.” And Peters shuffled out, shoes untied, leaving the door wide open.

He made his way, in a somnambulistic haze, along the corridors and up an echoing stairwell to the entrance plaza. It was deserted except for the army engineer manning the security station. Peters gave a desultory wave as he shuffled into the weather chamber, opened his locker, and put on his parka. Blaine was right: this was bullshit. To begin with, half of the base was off-limits to them. If
he
had wanted to hide the carcass, he’d make sure to find a way to stow it someplace the others wouldn’t be allowed to search. Or in the quarters of the army guys, maybe-they probably wouldn’t be much inclined to let a bunch of faggoty film types paw over all their gear. But the bottom line was, only an idiot would stow the creature inside the base. Not only were there too many pairs of eyes everywhere, but the place was warm and humid enough to grow orchids. A carcass hidden somewhere-especially a ten-thousand-year-old carcass-would start to stink in a matter of hours. No: anybody with half a brain would have stowed it outside.

Which was precisely where he was headed.

Peters stopped to enter his name and the time into the logbook Wolff had placed in the chamber. Then he walked through the staging area, opened the main doors, and stepped outside. At the first biting blast of wind, the last clinging vestiges of drowsiness were brutally ripped away. Any hopes he’d entertained of getting back to sleep after his one-hour shift had been in vain. He’d heard about the bad weather that had come in, pinned them down, kept planes from either landing or taking off. Hearing about it was one thing-experiencing it firsthand was something else. He staggered back against the outer doors, lowered his head, leaned into the blast. Sharp cold needles stung his cheeks and he retreated farther into the fur lining of his hood. Through the tumbling sheets of ice and snow he could make out the faint silhouettes of the outlying structures. He took a tentative step forward, then another. It was so dim it seemed more like night than day. Gaffer’s rigging and scaffolding swayed like giant Tinkertoy constructions, creaking with protest under the fierce gusts.

Searches in shifts: one hour on, eleven hours off. Six searchers inside, six outside-the latter number reduced to three in the stormy weather. Even so, it was hard to believe there were two other poor saps out here with him, searching uselessly in this shit. This was beyond crazy. What were Wolff and Conti smoking, anyway?

Face away from the wind, he plodded forward a dozen steps to a storage shed, its door rattling fretfully in its frame. He paused a moment, then tacked left to the outbuilding that served as temporary prop fabrication. He peered in through the window: empty, of course. Was it really just two days before that he’d lounged in there, chewing on a piece of chipotle-flavored beef jerky and scoffing at the army types and lame-assed scientists who were stuck in this godforsaken place? Now those same soldiers and scientists were inside, warm and dry-and he was out here freezing.

With a curse he moved forward again, counting the steps-ten, twenty, thirty-until he reached the ice-road trucker’s cab. He huddled behind one of the huge tires, partially sheltered from the wind and snow. He’d been outside less than five minutes and he felt numb already.

Once again he wondered about the two others who were supposed to be out here, searching. He upbraided himself for not checking the logbook when he’d signed in. A little company might make the time pass quicker. He opened his mouth to shout for them, then-feeling the wind immediately snatch the breath from his lungs-thought better of it. Why waste energy when nobody could hear him, anyway?

He shuffled forward again until the heavy chain-link of the perimeter fence abruptly materialized out of the gray soup. He stopped, extending one hand to brush the fence. He’d been warned not to stray far from the base in this weather, and with polar bears roaming the tundra he planned to heed that advice, big-time. He walked another few steps to the corrugated metal walls of the deserted security station, then stepped past it. He’d make one circuit of the base, keeping an arm’s length from the fence. That’s as much as anyone could expect. Then he’d go hide in some outbuilding for the remainder of his hour, try to warm up.

Rounding the security station, he stepped out of the perimeter apron and onto the permafrost. The wind seemed to redouble its fury. He trudged ahead more quickly now, one step, another, and then another…He staggered forward like a blind man, one hand trailing along the fence, his eyes all but closed against the ice pellets. The shriek of the wind filled his head, making his ears ring strangely. Already it seemed like he’d been out here forever. Jesus, this was awful. Blaine was right: he’d file a grievance not only with the union but with the channel as well. He’d do it as soon as he could get online; he wouldn’t even wait until they were back in New York. It didn’t matter if he was just a production assistant: his job description didn’t include anything like this, and all Wolff’s talk of “emergency measures” was nothing but a crock of…

He paused. His hand fell away from the fence, and he looked around, temporarily heedless of the brutal cold and stinging wind.

Why had he stopped? He’d seen nothing. And yet suddenly his senses were on full alert, his heart hammering in his chest. Living well east of Tompkins Square Park had honed his instinct for self-preservation-but he wasn’t in New York City, he was in the middle of frigging nowhere.

He shook his head, moved forward-then stopped again. What was that noise that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, that made the inside of his head feel like it was stuffed with bees? And what was that shape, dark and indistinct, in the tumbling hail of snow ahead of him?

“Who’s there?” he called out, the wind snatching away the words as quickly as he uttered them.

He blinked, peered more closely-and then with a piercing shriek of terror tumbled backward, turned, and, half falling, half staggering, fled in the direction of the security station. Screaming and gibbering in sudden mindless fear, Peters made it two more steps before a devastating blow from behind knocked him to his knees, wheezing, eyes bulging-and then a violent, unimaginable pain abruptly blossomed between his shoulder blades. Yawning darkness claimed him for its own.