“Sounds like you’ve made a friend,” Sergeant Groves said with a laugh before they hung up. “Now don’t blow it.”
Slater straightened up his papers and tried to leave her desk the way he’d found it, then went down the hall to the community center’s gymnasium, where Nika had set up a card table underneath the scoreboard with a bottle of wine, the pot of stew, and a couple of place settings. It was about the least picturesque spot Slater could ever have imagined, which was why he found it puzzling that it felt so cozy and romantic. He instinctively tucked his shirt into his pants to straighten it out and ran a hand over his hair. Maybe he did need to get out more, as Sergeant Groves had often kidded him. “You’re divorced,” Groves had told him the last time they’d had a drink in a D.C. bar. “You’re not dead.”
“You really didn’t have to do this,” Slater said, taking a seat on the folding chair across from Nika.
“Inuit hospitality,” she said, dishing out the stew. “We’d be disgraced if we didn’t do something for a guest who had come so far.”
Slater opened the wine bottle and filled their glasses. He raised his glass in a toast to his host, then found himself tongue-tied. “To … a successful mission,” he said, and Nika smiled. Clinking her glass against his, she said, “To a successful mission.”
“And a terrific meal,” Slater said, trying to recover. “Smells great.” He draped his napkin in his lap. “Thanks so much.”
The conversation went in stops and starts. Slater, who could talk about disease vectors until the cows came home, had never been good at this small talk; his wife Martha had always been the one to carry the day. Between bites of the reindeer stew, he asked Nika about her life and her background, and she was happy to oblige. It even turned out that they had some friends in common on the faculty of Berkeley, where she’d received her master’s in anthropology before coming back to serve the people of Port Orlov.
“I wanted to preserve and record a way of life—the native traditions and customs,” she said, “before they disappeared altogether.”
“It can’t be easy to keep them going in the age of the Internet and the cell phone and the video game.”
“No, it’s not,” she conceded. “But there’s a lot to be said for that ancient culture. It sustained my people through centuries in the harshest climate on earth.”
As they talked, Slater discovered that she had an extensive knowledge of, and even deeper reverence for, the spiritual beliefs and legends of the native Alaskans. It was like receiving a free and fascinating tutorial … and from a teacher, he had to admit, who was a lot better-looking than anyone he remembered from his own school days. She was dressed in just a pair of jeans and a white cable-knit sweater, with her long black hair swept back on both sides of her head and held by an amber barrette, but she might as well have been dressed to the nines. If it weren’t for the scoreboard above the table, which revealed that Port Orlov had lost its last basketball game to a Visiting Team by twelve points, he could have sworn they were in some intimate little bistro in the Lower 48.
He wasn’t even aware of when, or how, she had deftly turned the conversation back to him, but he found himself explaining how he’d been drawn into epidemiology, then about what had happened in Afghanistan to derail his Army career.
“And yet they’ve entrusted you with this very sensitive assignment,” she said, refilling his glass. “They must still have a very high opinion of you.”
“I work cheap,” he said, to deflect the compliment.
But Nika, in her own subtle way, wouldn’t let it go, asking question after question about how the mission was going to proceed, in what steps and over what period of time. Normally, Slater would have been much more circumspect about sharing any of this information, but after she had been so open with him, and considering the fact that she had been so cooperative so far, in everything from sharing her office to letting the chopper remain parked in the middle of the town’s hockey rink, he would have felt churlish for holding back. It was only when she asked what time they would be leaving for the island that he heard a distant alarm bell. What did she mean by “they”?
“The team,” he said, “will be lifting off late Thursday morning.”
“Do I need to bring anything in particular along?” she asked innocently, as she produced two cherry tarts from a hamper beneath the table. “Sorry, I should have brought ice cream to top them off.”
“No, the team has everything it needs,” he emphasized.
“Okay, no problem,” she said, sticking an upright spoon into his tart for him. “I’ve got the best sleeping bag in the world and I’m used to bunking down anywhere.”
“Where are you talking about?” Slater said, ignoring the spoon and tart.