She and Biddi headed down the central causeway of the warehouse to the door. Just before they passed through, Cass glanced back. The hangar-sized cavern seemed isolated and safe in comparison to the rest of the base. But at sixty below, they would both slowly die of hypothermia and frostbite, no matter how many layers of ECW they put on. Assuming they weren’t murdered in their sleep. As crazy as it sounded, walking overland to a base fifty kilometers away made more sense.
They trudged back down the corridor that connected the arches in silence. The smell of gas began to increase and Cass pressed her scarf closer to her mouth and nose. As they pulled even with the side tunnel to the VMF, Cass asked over her shoulder, “Who set fire to my garage?”
“I wish I knew, dearie,” Biddi said, her voice muffled by her scarf. “It was already like that when I separated myself from the Lifeboat group. No doubt it was the same whacko who dreamt up this nightmare we’re going through, this Observer Hanratty spoke of.”
“Do you have any guesses as to who that is?”
“Personally, I’d nominate Mr. Gerald Keene.”
“It’s not him.”
“Oh? And how can you be so sure?”
“Someone cut his head off and put it in one of the shrines.”
“I see,” Biddi said, pausing briefly to absorb the news. “Only his head?”
“The rest of him was in one of the Jamesway huts.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. How do you know that ? I thought Hanratty had you locked up this whole time.”
Cass hesitated, faced with a strange reluctance to reveal her last secret. But there was little reason to hide anything now. As they walked, Cass explained how she’d discovered the shaft up to the abandoned Jamesway over the summer and made it her sanctuary. Guilt assailed her as she described the little shortwave she’d managed to cobble together.
“You had outside radio contact this whole time ?”
Cass frowned at Biddi’s tone. “I was locked up and sedated, remember? By the time it could’ve helped anyone, I was being kept in a trance.”
“And you didn’t reach your Russian friend just before you got here?” Biddi asked, her voice anxious.
Cass shook her head. “Someone found the radio. It was destroyed.”
“Positive?”
“Yes, Biddi, I’m positive,” Cass snapped. “What’s the matter with you?”
Biddi’s voice was tart. “Pardon me. I thought for a minute there might be a way out of this madhouse aside from walking fifty bloody kilometers in the dark.”
Cass clamped down on her anger. They desperately needed each other if they were going to have even a remote chance to survive the trek to the Russian base. “So, if Keene wasn’t the Observer, who else is there?”
“Well, seeing as how Taylor shot his own boss in cold blood, then ran off, he seems like a good runner-up. Unless you found his head in a niche?”
“I didn’t. But Taylor wasn’t smart enough to do something this sophisticated.”
“You might be right about that. Chief Taylor had a fine body, but never struck me as the sharpest knife in the drawer.”
They continued in silence, the rusk, rusk of their boots and Cass’s own harsh breathing the only sounds for long minutes. At the conduit intersection, Cass moved right, opened the plywood door to the entrance to the old base, then stopped cold.
Biddi tried to look around her, her voice high-pitched. “What? What is it?”
Scattered just inside the door, as though they’d tumbled off a grocery cart, were a random collection of food items—two or three candy bars, a can, some pieces of fruit that were now frozen into icy glass sculptures. One of the pieces of fruit, however, had been smashed underfoot and frozen in place, preserving the front crescent of a large boot print.
Cass moved aside so her friend could see what she’d discovered, then put her own foot beside the print. It was large, even compared to her oversized winter boot. The tread pattern was different, as well, more of the alligator-skin markings of a work boot than the light ridges of a bunny boot.
“Taylor?” Biddi whispered.
“I don’t know,” Cass said in the same low voice, but inside she was thinking something else. Taylor isn’t that big . She squeezed the handle of the ice axe. “Let’s keep going.”
“Are you kidding? That fucking gowk has a gun.”
Cass turned to face her friend. “What choice do we have?”
That ended the conversation, and they continued down the rough-hewn passage, their combined flashlights bobbing and swaying back and forth.
Minutes later, Biddi whispered, “How do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Stay so calm.”
“I’m not calm. I’m terrified.”
“You’d never know it by looking at you,” Biddi persisted. “I wish I could bottle you up and sell you.”
“Why, are crippling neuroses and self-recrimination in this season?”
Biddi snorted. “You’re too hard on yourself, Cassie. You’ve come through this with flying colors.”
“We’re not through it yet.”
“True, but anyone who knew you before could’ve seen it.”
“Knew me before?”