Frozen Solid A Novel

51




GERRIN PULLED INTO HIS GARAGE, WAITED FOR THE AUTOMATIC door to close, and sat. He turned on the dome light and angled the rearview mirror toward himself so that he could look into his own eyes. It had been a difficult couple of days. First the call from Barnard, later meeting with him. Then the call from Merritt. The videoconference with Kendall and Belleveau. Finally, the sat call back to Merritt. She wasn’t a problem. Merritt was a zealot, driven by resentment that had festered for years. He understood her: damned barren by pure chance, unable to fathom why others should not suffer the same fate, especially if her conscience could be salved by thinking some good thing might result.

So the Pole’s women would fly like sparks to every corner of the world, and Triage would burn like wildfire through the globe’s breeding stock. Or, more properly, like smallpox. There would be the same exponential growth. And there would be pain, but at least it would visit all equally. He took comfort from the fact that Triage had no bias, made no choices, assumed nothing. Only a microbe, it would work just as effectively on the Upper East Side and Rodeo Drive as it would in Lagos and Dhaka and New Delhi.

But did “work” mean sterilize or kill? If he had made the wrong call, millions—tens of millions, a thing barely conceivable—of women might die. He was a man of iron control, but now his mind flooded with red visions. Exsanguinated. Bled to death. Two women died that way, an awful thing to see and worse, no doubt, to suffer. He saw rivers of blood, streets awash in blood, lakes of blood, hosts of women drowning in blood, blood like rain, drenching the earth.

And yet, and yet … What were the options? From the beginning, his scientific, rational, calculating brain had reduced it all to sets of probabilities, clean and simple, rows and columns of data, percentages, projections. Certain global catastrophe later or heroic action now. Heroic in the strictly medical sense: treatment sure to harm but employed as a last resort when no action at all meant sure death. Physicians did it routinely, millions of times every day all over the world. Amputating gangrenous limbs. Excising cancer-riddled eyes, noses, colons, lungs. Killing people slowly with toxic chemicals to keep tumors from killing them quickly.

In the end, he did not really believe that Triage would kill millions of women. Could not believe it. They had planned too carefully, prepared too thoroughly, tested too rigorously. Triage was not designed to kill. Now, a place like Pole, that had been designed by nature to kill if any place on earth had. Surely something down in that otherworldly hell had caused those women’s deaths.

So he had lied. He had lied to Barnard, over and over. He had lied to Kendall and Belleveau when he’d said he agreed with Kendall’s plan. And he had lied when he’d told Merritt that the three Triage leaders had chosen to go forward as planned, when in fact they had agreed to pursue Kendall’s suggested course. He felt remorse over lying to his fellow Triage leaders, but what choice had there been?

In the mudroom, he took off his shoes and left them neatly aligned in one corner, unlocked the inner door, and stepped sock-footed onto the hall’s thick green carpeting. A small thing, but one he had come to expect with pleasure. In the kitchen, he brewed tea and took a cup, thick with sugar, toward his leather recliner in the living room. He said, “Lights.” Said it again, more loudly. Nothing. Five thousand dollars for a voice-activated system, and this. It had worked that morning. He would have to check the security system later. He used the wall switch.

Before he seated himself, someone knocked on the front door, and he answered. Two men. One he had never seen before, very big, with short, straw-colored hair and a remarkable face. “Good evening, Dr. Gerrin,” he said. Another man stepped from behind the first. It was Donald Barnard.

“Hello,” Barnard said.

“We need to talk to you.” Bowman stepped through the doorway and walked straight toward Gerrin, who moved backward step for step, as if retreating from an advancing wall. “You know Dr. Barnard from BARDA,” Bowman said. “I work with another agency.”

“It has been a very long day, I am afraid. This is not a good time.” He glanced at his watch. “But if you call my office tomorrow, you can—”

“Have a seat on the couch.” Bowman had walked, and Gerrin had backed, through the entrance hall and into the living room.

“It won’t take long,” Barnard said, following. He was surprised at how much traffic noise he was hearing. An older house, built even before the nearby Beltway.

Gerrin seemed not to notice. He looked from one to the other and placed his cellphone on the coffee table in front of him.

“Amazing devices,” he said. “Especially the voice activation. Someone is breaking into your house in the middle of the night? One word brings the police with sirens screaming. Very comforting.”

“When it works,” Bowman said.

Gerrin picked up the phone, put it down again. “No reception bars. How strange.”

“Everything disappoints, sooner or later,” Bowman said. Earlier, he had explained to Barnard, “Some signal jamming, highly localized. Easy on, easy off.”

“So,” Gerrin said, “how may I help you gentlemen?” His irritation had passed, and he seemed composed. Barnard thought, If a man like Bowman had just pushed into my home …

“The South Pole,” Barnard said.

“Which we discussed in my office.”

“I have some more questions.”

“Really? I thought we addressed your concerns well enough.”

“We know that you lied to Dr. Barnard,” Bowman said. “We need to know why. And we need truthful answers. Lives may be at stake here.”

Gerrin locked eyes with Bowman, and Barnard had to admire that. “Or what? You’ll spirit me away to some distant land for extreme rendition? Waterboarding and such?”

“We wouldn’t need to spirit you far. Waterboarding is medieval and messy. This is the twenty-first century, Doctor. We’ve come a long way.” Bowman took a smartphone from his pocket, started a video, and handed it to Gerrin. After twenty seconds, the slender man turned pale. When he gave the phone back, his hand shook.

“Emily Durant,” Bowman said. “Why did you ask for Hallie Leland to replace her?”

“The government personnel system computer asked for her, actually. She had the specialized skills needed to finish an important project.” Gerrin looked from one man to the other. “You must have known that already. Why did you come to my home? Really, I mean. What is this about?”

“Dr. Durant’s death may not have been accidental,” Bowman said.

“How would you know? No one has seen the medical examiner’s report.”

“We have. Tell us what you know about her death. The truth.”

Gerrin sighed, set his cup on the table, leaned forward, elbows on knees. His composure had returned, which Barnard found very strange. “All right. I will appreciate your discretion here with what I am about to say. I was told—we are talking back-channel now—that drugs might have been involved.”

“Why did you lie to me about that?” Barnard asked. “You said you didn’t know.”

“Please consider my position. A stranger comes to your office asking for details about the death of a senior scientist in a facility for which you are responsible. There is no official report on this death yet, but you have unconfirmed information that could do huge damage to the dead person’s reputation, as well as to your organization. Not to mention your own career.”

Barnard started to ask another question, but someone knocked on the front door. Gerrin looked at them, eyebrows raised.

“Go ahead,” Bowman said.

Gerrin left them and returned with a young man Barnard recognized at once. “Gentlemen, this is my assistant, Muhammed Kandohur Said. He kindly offered to look at a computer here that has been misbehaving. Muhammed is an exceptional young man. Graduated magna cum laude from MIT two years ago. He is from Karail, in my native country. Have you heard of it?”

“No,” Barnard said.

“Not surprising, really. Few Americans have. Muhammed, this is Dr. Barnard and, ah, his associate.”

The young man, polite and diffident, shook hands with each in turn. To Gerrin he said, “My friend Hasim is dropping me off. We weren’t sure you would be home yet. Shall I tell him to go now? He will pick me up later.” To Bowman and Barnard, sheepishly: “I still do not have a license to drive.”

“Yes, go and do that,” Gerrin said. “Then we will look at the computer. My friends here were just leaving.”

“What did you think?” Bowman asked, when they had driven a few blocks.

“I thought about how much effort it took to keep from wrapping my hands around his neck and squeezing some truth out of the bastard,” Barnard said. He shook his head. “Haven’t wanted to do that for a long time, Wil.”