White Plague

by James Abel

  And later, when Joe couldn’t sleep, when he relived the scene nightly, when his emotions caught up and passed his logical mind, and when he was losing his wife, he decided fuck orders, and he told her. He’d given the director three years of his life at that point. He wasn’t going to give the director his wife, too.

  But it was too late, she said. “I know you’re a hero, Joe. I know you saved lives. But you’re not who I married. That man would not have been able to make that choice so quickly.”

  “Is that so bad?”

  “No. You saved a thousand lives. But that’s not the issue,” she said, knowing, without rancor, after ten years with him, where the holes in his veneer lay, to get inside. “I’m not leaving because you saved people. I’m leaving because when I look at you, I see dead ones. It’s my fault. Not yours. I’m not strong enough for you.”

  He’d sat numbly, too guilty to protest, their home, their voices, the city of Anchorage outside just a hollow stage pounding with his heartbeat, and with loss.

  “Joe, my father told me something. He said we all find a life to justify what’s inside us. I can’t help thinking, I wish I didn’t, but are you sure you didn’t enjoy the power at some level? I can love a flawed man. I need one. But not a flawed God. If you can’t be perfect, don’t play God.”

  Joe broke from his reverie. Men on the sleds were coughing, growing sicker. They were being carried up the brow, to the ship.

  He thought, in agony, I’ll kill them if I have to, if I really have to. Because letting them die is the same thing. But maybe there will be something good on that film.

  Do we pick a life just to justify urges inside us?

  When did our weapons start depriving us of choice?

  EIGHTEEN

  “Don’t open the canister,” the director ordered.

  The Wilmington pushed back toward Barrow, the storm over, crystal air—aftermath of the cyclone—making the view stunning and unworldly from the aft deck. I was on another planet. I saw four suns: the main one a hazy orb, floating on mist like a New England lake’s, above the white vista. But there were three more suns, too, smaller stars or “sun dogs,” Captain DeBlieu had called them; a diagonal row of accolade satellites whose coronas formed prisms of ruby, emerald, turquoise, cobalt.

  The temperature was a sharp twenty degrees, and fine diamond dust, ice bits, fell as if out of nowhere, like glitter at a party. The ship nudged small floes from its path, the ice suddenly as cooperative as a meek dog. The thick pack that we’d struggled through on the way north had been pushed west by wind and current. We moved faster. We’d eaten a good meal, brought aft from the mess while we worked. We slid through ice passages and between floating sculptures: a hilly ice island, a truncated ice cathedral, a series of ice church pipe organs thrust into the sky, as if to blast out Bach, the whole seascape rolling out beneath one perfect cumulous cloud. I stood alone, unsure whether I’d heard the director properly, hoping I had not.

  “Sir, we need to identify this thing, and fast.”

  His pause when I’d first mentioned the film had been a buzz on the sat line. He’d gone away for several minutes. Then he’d come back.

  “Joe, I know how important the film might be. And how delicate it is. That’s why you need to leave it alone so experts can handle it. People who know how to keep it intact. People at the national archives military section, in Culpepper.” His voice dropped into a soothing range. “We don’t want it crumbing in your hands, man. Look, when you’re in range, we’ll send a copter, get the film back East. Meanwhile, do your best.”

  “My best, sir? For that, I’d like a shot at the film.”

  I stood, phone in hand, eyeing rescue work around me; gauze-masked Coast Guard crew moving men and women on stretchers through the unrolled sliding door into the copter hangar, open to the Arctic air like the enormous maw of a hospital emergency room. Inside, six rows of cots bolted to the deck—three short ones for the sick, three longer ones for the quarantined, off to a side—had transformed the former makeshift basketball court, floating warehouse, dance class area, and Saturday night movie theater into a hospital. Janice Cullen, ship’s medical officer, had assigned each patient, crew member, or Marine to a cot, taken names if possible, or got them from other patients; the whole orderly system working just as smoothly now as it did in the drills the crew endlessly practiced; but I knew what lay beneath it; and it was not what initially seemed like control. It was anarchy and terror.

  Saline and antibiotic bags hung from metal racks above cots. Janice Cullen and Eddie went patient to patient, taking vital signs, asking about symptoms, looking down throats, into noses, and ears, and measuring blood pressure. The pneumonia-like signs looked bacterial. Many chests were filled with fluid. We were prescribing Cipro and Bactrim antibiotics.

  “But the bacterial stuff is secondary, I think,” Eddie had told me. “I think a virus started it, weakened them, and then double pneumonias hit. We’re giving the aerosol antivirals, ribavirin, zanamivir, and xapaxin, which, thanks to our buddy Zhou, we have extra. At least something good came from that. I’ll get a look at blood samples in the labs. They’ve got microscopes back there for their mammal work. Whoever would have figured they’d need the labs for this.”

  The worst should have been over—the sick and burned under care, more doctors on their way to Barrow to meet us, copters readying to pick patients up when we got within range, and American attack subs converging in our direction, in case Captain Zhou Dongfeng remained somewhere nearby.

  The director switched to his no-nonsense voice, the voice of the old Washington insider, the high-powered New York boardroom voice, the friend of important people voice, the I-know-things-that-you-can-trust voice. “Please acknowledge instructions, Joe.”

  “I hear you, sir.”

  “You did a great job and we’re all proud of you. You kept the Montana out of unfriendly hands.”

  Something was off. When we’d reached the part about the canister, all the hearty concern had dissipated. He was my personal Machiavelli and he explained with paternal authority—support that was also denial, “We’ll get that film checked out, chop-chop.”

  “I urge you to reconsider, sir.”

  “Foresight now may save lives later.”

  “Sir, I’m not sure that I’ve fully relayed the seriousness of the situation. Perhaps if I—”

  “Joe,” he cut me off, “you were chosen for this job because you make the tough choices. You tried to save the sub, and scuttled it when you couldn’t. You outmaneuvered an unfriendly when he seemed to have you trapped. You give a thousand percent. I understand your desire to do everything you can but you are also tired and strained and that means mistakes.”

  “But, sir,” I ventured, “I suggest that I start the process, go slow, unroll just a little at a time and—”

  The director snapped. “Colonel! Let this one go! We’ll have an answer in five, six days. Understood?”

  “I do.”

  “You don’t sound enthusiastic, Joe. Try again.”

  “Five, six days, we could lose more people.”

  The voice grew modulated as he’d won the point. “Joe, I’d be frustrated, too, were I you. But we’ll get this dealt with as soon as possible. I’ve put you in for a medal. Now! What are you doing to try to locate the spy you believe is aboard? That is our immediate concern. Stopping the leak.”

  “I’ve asked the captain to review security tapes made during ship drills, sir, in the hangar. Possibly we’ll get a glimpse of whoever tampered with the Arktos. The XO’s doing a locker-to-locker search; cabins, storage areas, labs. The communications officer will go through all laptops on board, see if he can find piggyback programs inside, foreign software.”

  “And who’s checking on him?”

  “His number two. Also, sir, when you and I are finished here, we’ll shut down the sat lines again. When we
get within copter range—DeBlieu says that will be in another hundred and seventy miles if weather holds and ice stays clear—I advise sending in security folks to ask questions. Hold everyone aboard while we do. And, of course, we’ll have to open it up for consultations with the CDC.”

  “There won’t be any consultation just now,” he said.

  I felt my breath catch. “Excuse me?”

  “Joe, until we know who you’ve got on board, passing information along, we simply have to block all calls out. We’re shutting you down. Communication quarantine. We’ll open her up and call if we need you. DeBlieu keeps the radio off on your end. But you’ve got that thumb drive library of yours, that kit of memory sticks, probably hundreds of books’ worth. Plenty of medical information in there. You’ve been building that collection for years.

  “In the meantime . . .” He hesitated and I had a vision of his secretary standing in his doorway mouthing, Your eleven o’clock appointment is here.

  He said, “In the meantime, Joe, I have full confidence in all your decisions.”

  Yeah, except when I want to open the canister.

  He added more softly, “Even the upcoming tough ones.”

  What does he mean by that?

  “You know, Joe, you more than anyone understand that our country is at a huge disadvantage in the Arctic. We, the Pentagon, we’ve been trying to get four consecutive White Houses to pay attention to this region, but we’ve only got the Wilmington up there breaking ice. If we lose her, we lose the ability to move. We lose access to a whole ocean opening up. The country can’t afford that.”

  Is he saying what I think he is? I felt a tickling, an itch on the roof of my mouth, a numb feeling spreading down my esophagus.

  “Joe, if that sickness amplifies, if you decide that keeping the ill ones on the ship is risky to others, I’m just saying, you know, to remember the vast stakes.”

  I gasped. “You want me to put them off?”

  “No, no, of course not. I’m not telling you that. I’m not on site. You are. I’m just saying, Joe, that you’re always good at balancing tough considerations.”

  My God! He’s telling me that it is okay if I leave those guys on the ice, if I decide they’ll contaminate the ship! That’s why they’re cutting me off from the CDC. They don’t want a committee involved in the decision. They don’t want anyone extra knowing. Jesus God!

  The director said, “Well, I’m sure it won’t come to that. Good luck. I’ll call you every few hours for updates. We’ll open the line when I do.”

  “Sir, perhaps, if you’ll excuse a request, perhaps if I spoke directly to whoever—”

  “I have full confidence that you’ll do the right thing.”

  He was gone. His praise tasted like ashes. Eddie came up to me, took one long look into my face, and said, “What’s wrong, Uno?” The canister lay in my left hand, gripped as if it might jump overboard if I relaxed. My jaw hurt. My neck cords were tight. I held the container up between us. I shook my head.

  Eddie jerked as if struck physically. “He said no?”

  A wave of tiredness washed over me, then a wave of fury woke me up.

  “He said leave it to the experts. He made sense on the surface, but I got the feeling,” I said, reliving the talk, “that he knew about the canister before I mentioned it.”

  Eddie, waiting while I thought out loud, went back over the conversation.

  “He was surprised, yeah, surprised for sure, but I can’t figure it exactly. He wasn’t surprised in the right way.”

  “And what would be the right way?”

  I smiled grimly. “That’s the question, isn’t it? Need to know, friend. And you know what? I can think of eight good need-to-know reasons to open the canister.”

  Eddie’s breath came out as a long white line.

  “Eight dead Marines,” I said. “In Afghanistan.”

  “This is a different situation.”

  “That’s the point. In Afghanistan there was no choice. Here there is. And I can think of one hundred more reasons right there,” I said, nodding toward the parade of stretchers moving toward cots. “And,” I added, gazing up at the ship’s superstructure, envisioning, inside, men and women in the passageways and bridge, “there are even more reasons up top.”

  “You sure, One?”

  I laughed. “Sure? Who is ever sure of anything? But I’m opening this. They can’t do anything to me—I’m retiring—so you stay here. If the film starts to disintegrate, I’ll close it up. If I find something, you’ll be the first to know.”

  “No, I’ll be the first to know because I’m coming with you.”

  “Then officially, you’re coming to talk me out of it, right?”

  Eddie grinned. “Don’t do it. Do not do it! I’m urging, pleading, begging you to follow the director’s orders.”

  He wiped his nose on his sleeve.

  With sharp concern, I said, “You getting sick?”

  “Nah. It’s the ventilation system. But,” he said, a frown on his face, “frankly, I don’t like the look of Clinton.”

  Captain Maurice DeBlieu broke off from the rescue work and followed us through the hangar, up steel steps, to the warren of labs on the 01 level. This was the first time in my military career that I had disobeyed a direct order.

  Director, what do you know that you have not told me?

  Our boot steps rang on steel as we reached the hallway housing the labs; some used for analyzing bottom sediment, others for weather analysis or sonar imaging work, and then the bio lab, similar to those I’ve worked in, in Washington, or in tents in Afghanistan. I knew this room. I was comfortable here, if it was possible, under these circumstances, to be comfortable at all.

  Up until now this lab had been used by researchers—DeBlieu told me when I first toured the ship—to quantify ocean acidification, examine starved polar bears, or walrus air sacs, which kept males afloat when ice was gone . . . Or to look at codfish, which were migrating into newly warm waters, DeBlieu had said, or grasshoppers that had fallen from the sky, all new life-forms appearing as the High North warmed.

  But none of these samples might be as important as the one I awaited seeing.

  I had my pick of familiar instruments: tweezers and magnifiers, chemicals and monitors to show images, and there was even a shower decontamination room in case—on a normal day—a chemical accident occurred.

  I lay the canister on a table that had probably been used for slicing open fish bellies. I wore a mask, apron, and rubber gloves, as did Eddie and DeBlieu.

  “Disease-kateers. One for all and all for one,” Eddie said, always the joker, the kind of guy who could lighten the mood in a morgue.

  The canister lay on the blotter like an anesthetized patient. I hesitated. Maybe the director had been right. Maybe opening the thing would damage it. Maybe I’d been wrong in thinking people were hiding things from us. Maybe the film curled in there—if it was even still intact—had absolutely nothing to do with the cause of the hideous suffering going on only yards away from where we stood.

  In the fluorescent light, the dents in the metal stood out. I had a vision of this thing encased in ice, waiting, years going by, snow falling, storms battering the wreck, bears wandering by the two mummified, ice-glazed corpses. The cellulose images in darkness until, one day, the Montana surfaced nearby.

  Eddie said, “Change your mind?”

  “No, Eddie.”

  “What are you waiting for?” said DeBlieu.

  Slowly, holding my breath, I began working free the wedged-on canister lid.

  NINETEEN

  The film crumbled when I touched it.

  The first three feet disintegrated; one second whole, the next—in despair—I looked down on an array of glossy shreds on the blotter.

  I heard the men behind me breathing, and the crackling of aged
cellulose. I tried another strip, gently, heard a noise like wax paper crackling, and another three-inch section broke off. Two inches remained intact. There was no picture on it. It was ghostly white, the image either long gone or, I hoped, this was an unused start to the roll.

  Was I destroying evidence? I tried to unroll a third piece and the tweezers managed to pull out another intact two-inch strip.

  “Attaboy,” said Eddie.

  I smelled DeBlieu behind me, a mix of Old Spice and Irish Spring soap, a whiff of a last meal, barbequed chicken. I held the strip firmly on the blotter. With my free hand, I gingerly slid a hand magnifier over it. The tensor light shone brightly, reflected off the magnifier and into my eyes. The shadows of the men behind me fell on the blotter. I felt the lab rock gently from ship movement as I leaned down again, put my eye to the piece.

  I said, “Got something!”

  Leaping into view was a single frame, showing four soldiers in uniforms standing proudly before the front door of a Quonset hut, the middle man, clearly clown of the group, sticking his hand in his shirt, like Napoleon, and saluting. Long-dead buddies. The hats held at their sides were floppy brimmed, early-twentieth-century U.S. Army. The men wore suspenders and loose breeches stuffed into high boots. They had neat mustaches, long for my taste, and the two men not wearing hats had their short hair parted in the middle.

  “This is turn of the twentieth century. It’s a silent movie,” I breathed. “Older than we figured.”

  What possible relevance could it have to the submarine Montana? I noticed a sign beside the Quonset hut door. I heard myself read the words with horrified reverence. They froze my blood.

  “FORT RILEY, KANSAS, 1918.”

  Eddie whispered, awed, too, “Oh, shit.”

  DeBlieu asked impatiently, “That’s important? What happened at Fort Riley in 1918?”

  Neither of us responded, hoping we were wrong. After several more strips disintegrated, a long one rolled out. Perhaps the more deeply I unrolled the spool, the more protection the film had received, the better shape it was in.