Frozen Solid A Novel

47




“ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?” GRAETER ASKED.

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

“Your eyes look a little funny.”

“Bumped my head,” she said.

“That’ll do it.” He was sitting behind his desk, six darts aligned perfectly on its top. She had come up after her talk with the women. He looked even bonier than the first time she’d seen him, his eyes sunk more deeply into their sockets, the circles under them darker. When he leaned forward and put his elbows on the desk, she saw a slight tremor in his hands. He clasped them together.

“I think he’s gone,” Graeter said.

“I don’t understand this,” Hallie said. “I talked to Fida just yesterday. Or maybe the day before. Not sure, exactly. He was tired—exhausted, really—and looked awful, but not a whole lot worse than others I’ve seen down here.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Emily. He was taking her death hard.”

“Anything else?”

“Sure. We talked about their work. This extremophile they found in the cryopeg.”

“Anything else?” She hesitated, and he saw it. He leaned forward. “Look. I know you think I’m a prick. That’s okay. I am, a lot of the time. But you can trust me.”

She returned his gaze.

“Come on. Do I strike you as the devious type?” he asked.

At first, he had come across as a martinet with a big shoulder chip. And maybe devious. That was then. “No. Since we’re speaking seriously for the first time, you strike me as a man being chased by something. I think it’s probably guilt, but that’s just a guess.”

“You heard that from Merritt, right? Did she say why she’s at Pole?”

“She said she was a scientist who’d moved on to administrative work.”

“True, as far as it goes,” Graeter said.

“I’m not following you.”

“Think about it. The Beakers doing research here have a lot to gain—notoriety at the very least, and maybe even some real money if their work gets noticed by Big Pharma or other deep pockets. But not Merritt.”

“She seems to like her work.”

“Merritt had a good job with WHO,” Graeter said.

“The World Health Organization.”

“Right.”

“You said ‘had.’ What happened?”

“Scuttlebutt said she went off the deep end about birth control. Publicly criticized people high in the Bush administration. And the Catholic Church. Even the U.N. That got her fired.”

“Why should that make her untrustworthy?”

“Not that. Her firing was news for a few days. But she could have walked right into a cushy professorship. Instead, here she is, working at Alcatraz on ice for seventy-five grand a year. Something doesn’t add up.” He folded his hands, looked at her. “Goose and gander, Dr. Leland.”

She got it, but hesitated. Had Merritt asked that her comments about Graeter stay strictly confidential? No. Even so, Hallie bridled. But Graeter had been honest with her. Fair was fair.

“Okay. She said you’d been down here too long and were, um, disturbed.”

It was the first time she had seen him laugh. Not much of a laugh, more a gargly snort, but clearly he was amused. “Disturbed. Ha. Was that it?”

“No.”

“Well?”

“She mentioned an accident on a submarine. And what happened after.”

The amusement faded, but, to Hallie’s surprise, it was not replaced by anger. Sadness loosened his clenched features.

“Is it true?” Hallie asked.

“It’s true.”

“The part about the captain and your wife?”

“True. All of it.”

“Did you have any children?”

“No, thank God. Sea duty wasn’t conducive to raising a family.” He looked down at his raw, red hands. What was it he had said? Could still play. Just not allegro anymore. She wondered what other things he could no longer do. Or feel.

“Mr. Graeter, I’m sorry for the boys on your sub. And for you. My father was West Point, sixty-six. He led men in combat in Vietnam and lost a good many. He’s in Arlington now, but they walked with him until the day he died. The hurt never stopped.”

“No. It never does.” He took a deep breath, rubbed his eyes, and looked at her in a way she had not seen before. “A goddamned Army brat. I should have known.”

She thought, My God. How about that? “Beat Navy.”

For a moment he just stared. Then he grinned and said, “Beat Army.”

“Do you know about Vishnu?” she asked.

“Buddhist god of something or other, right?”

“Hindu god of preservation.”

“Whatever. Why?”

“Agnes Merritt said she’d briefed you about what Emily and Fida were doing.”

“She said they found something growing down under the ice and brought samples back to the lab.”

“Nothing else?”

“I asked her if it could blow up or catch on fire or poison anybody. She said no. That was all I needed.”

“She didn’t describe the actual research? Tell you why they were calling it Vishnu?”

“I didn’t need to know that. Not my job. Merritt runs the Beakers and science. I run the station and keep people alive. Paragraph, period, end of story.”

She laughed.

“What’s funny?”

“It’s period, paragraph, end of story.”

“A period goes at the end of a paragraph last time I checked. Right?”

“Yes, but—” She laughed again.

“What’s funny now?”

“The fact that we can be here amid all the crap that’s been happening, arguing about the correct wording of a trite phrase.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means we could be more alike than either of us has cared to admit.”

He looked at her with narrowed eyes. “You may be right.”

“Did you know that NASI is owned by a petroleum corporation called GENERCO?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Do you think GENERCO would have problems with Vishnu?”

He let slip a half-grin, wiped if off. “You mean, because it eats carbon dioxide and pisses fuel?”

She gaped. “You knew? All this time?”

“Christ, Leland, a captain has to know crap like that. And for the record, no, GENERCO would not have a problem with it. Those people aren’t stupid. They put money—very quietly—into solar and hydrogen some time ago. They see what’s coming just like the rest of us.”

“You pass,” she said.

“What?”

She had made a quick calculation. He needed to know about Emily’s death. But Emily was gone, and nothing could change that. It was more important for him to know about what was down in the lab first, because it might be putting a lot more people at risk.

“Never mind. I’ll explain later. Right now, there’s something I have to show you.”

“What’s the yellow stuff?” he asked. The microbial colonies had grown larger, occupying more space now than the red agar.

“I don’t know yet. But it’s growing faster than anything I’ve seen.”

“How did you do this?”

She told him about taking samples in the morgue and starting the cultures here. She expected him to offer some SOR-based reprimand, but he just nodded and said, “Guts and smarts—I like that. You’re just full of surprises.” He peered at her, then back at the dishes. “So it’s unusual for something to grow like this?”

“Normal time for cultures to become visible to the naked eye is twenty-four hours, minimum. I saw them after a few minutes. And it’s more than doubled since then.”

“You don’t know what it is, though.”

“No. But isn’t it reasonable to believe it had something to do with the women’s deaths?”

“Yes. And that means we have to assume it’s dangerous.”

“Absolutely.” She saw him staring at the dishes. “It’s safe here. The cultures are sealed, and the incubator cabinet provides a second level of containment. I isolated the swabs and gloves and the other things I used.”

“Good to know. Can you analyze it, or whatever, to see what we’re dealing with?”

“We, Mr. Graeter?”

He looked surprised for just an instant. “Yes, we. You’re the expert here. I’m strict, Leland, but I’m not stupid. So what do you do?”

“Analysis is mostly performed with scanners and computers now. I doubt either are here. So we’ll rely on biochemical testing.”

“What does that involve?”

“A long series of eliminative, identifying tests—oxidase, indole production, coagulase test, MR-VP test—”

“Okay, enough. The more important question is, how long will it take?”

“Starting from scratch, with what I have here to work with, twenty-four hours minimum. But didn’t you say that Doc was working with blood samples?”

“So he told me.”

“If he’d come up with anything, he would have called you, right?”

“Or risk getting my foot up his ass,” he snapped. “Sorry. Navy talk.”

“Forget it. My father spoke Army. For the tests I’ll run, it could be sooner. Or later.”

“Should we tell everyone?”

“Understand that I come from a facility where all information is closely held. Need-to-know is the first commandment.”

“That BARDA place.”

“Right, that BARDA place. So I can sound a little paranoid. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t.”

“Rationale?”

“I was remembering your comment about destabilizing an already fragile population. All those T3s walking around chatting with themselves. It’s one thing to tell people they’re locked in with a possibly lethal unknown pathogen. Much better if we can say, ‘And we have a countermeasure.’ There’s always a chance that it’s treatable—staph, strep, whatever.”

“Information could get out of here, too. Just imagine—CNN breaking news: ‘Killer Superbug Devastates South Pole, Threatens Planet,’ ” he said.

“Which they would do.”

“In a heartbeat. If it bleeds, it leads. Suppose some people aren’t infected? If we wait, carriers could make healthy ones sick, right?”

“They could do that even if we tell them. Right now, we don’t know who to quarantine.”

“What about Merritt?”

“It’s your call, obviously. But I think she falls into the need-to-know category. She is the chief scientist, after all.”

“Yeah,” Graeter said reluctantly. But he recited, “ ‘In the event discovery is made by any personnel of any condition that might reasonably be construed to constitute a threat to all or part of the station and/or personnel, such discovery shall be communicated to the senior and/or acting senior officials immediately.’ ”

“SORs, right? Memorized?”

“Most of them. Would you explain it to her, though? You speak Beaker.”

“Sure. I’ll set the tests up, then go see her.”

“Do it.” He started out.

She’d made her decision, held up one hand.

“Wait. There are some other things you need to know. I saved the worst for last.”

She told him about Emily’s murder, Blaine’s confession, and Triage.

He reached for one of the bench tops. His other hand clenched into a fist, white-knuckled, new cracks opening, fresh blood seeping. “God damn it to hell,” he said. “If I could find the bastard who did that, I would shoot him myself.”

“Are you sure yours is the only gun here?”

“Reasonably.” Then he shook his head, as though clearing cobwebs after a hard punch. “Let me say this out loud to make sure it’s straight. The man who tortured a woman to death is walking around my station.”

“He might have flown out after he killed her. But I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“He probably killed Fida, too,” she said.

“So he’s still here. Or they are.”

“Yes. It could be a team effort, for all we know,” she said.

“You’re right. Wait a minute. You said you saw that video on Monday?”

“Yes.”

“And now it’s”—he glanced at his watch, shook his head—“two A.M. on Thursday. Why in hell did you wait so long to tell me?”

“Think about it. The killer could have been any man in the station.”

“You thought it might be me?”

“The way you were when I got here?” She shrugged.

“Yeah, okay.” He nodded, rubbed the side of his face. “What changed your mind?”

“You did,” she said.

“Huh. Imagine that.”

“How many men are still here?”

He closed his eyes, remembering. “Thirty-two. Eighteen Beakers, fourteen Draggers.”

“We could question every one of them,” she said, thinking out loud.

“Even at just half an hour per man, that’s seventeen hours. More if you figure in time for breaks, bathroom calls, eating.”

“Did your marshal training include interrogation techniques?”

“We barely got past Handcuffs 101.”

“So neither of us is a trained or experienced interviewer. From what I saw on the video, the killer looked trained and experienced, both.”

“Easy for him to slip past us,” he said.

“Sure.”

“We could try a lineup,” he said. “Put every man in the station through it. See if we recognize anyone.”

“We’d have to figure out some way to do it looking down on them from above,” she pointed out. “The video never showed a straight-on shot. What about McMurdo? Or the New Zealand Police?” she asked.

“SORs say—” He interrupted himself. “For some reason, that sounds ridiculous.”

“Maybe, but it could be important. What do they say?”

“Crime reports go through McMurdo to New Zealand’s national police and our State Department.”

“Not like nine-one-one. So no immediate help.”

“I’ll call as soon as comms are up, of course. But the killer may be loose in the station. Accomplices, too.”

“Infection at every level,” she said.

“What?”

“I was just thinking. A microbe of some kind almost certainly killed the three women. So there’s infection at the microscopic level. And a much bigger infection is killing people at the macro level.”

“Only a microbiologist would see things that way,” he said.

“Maybe. But there is still the question: what do we do?”

“I could make an all-hands announcement or call a meeting,” Graeter said. “Just put it out there for everybody to hear. See what happens.”

“I don’t like that,” she said.

“Why?”

“A lot of them already think there’s a killer supergerm loose. Then they hear that some psycho murderer is running around? Talk about destabilizing.”

“What would you do?” he asked. “If you heard an announcement like that?”

“I’d grab the nearest weapon. It would be very hard to stay rational.”

“So maybe we can’t do anything right away,” he said. “But we should at least tell Merritt.”

“We should, you’re right.”

“Could you, when you talk to her about the other things?”

“I can. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going back to my office and make sure my gun’s in working order.”