Joe Rush 02: Protocol Zero

by James Abel

  • • •

  JENS ERIK HOLTE, CHOPPER PILOT, WANDERED OVER NEXT. IT WAS LIKE they all waited and took turns with me. When there was an open spot, somebody filled it.

  “Karen promised to take me dogsledding, Joe.”

  “Yeah! Sledding! Those dogs are big!”

  “How do you get them to turn?”

  “Make the right noises, man, and they do it! But they wouldn’t listen to me. Hey, Jens, you flew the Harmons from site to site, right?”

  “They hired me after their first pilot got his leg busted in that car accident. They were good customers. They always paid in advance. Not everyone does that, you know.”

  “You ever think the accidents weren’t accidents?”

  His eyes widened. “You mean, someone tried to stop them?”

  I scratched my head. I squeezed my temples, as if I had a headache. I let him wait. I said, “That diary. Thing is, I’m reading back in Kelley’s diary, the print files. There’s something in it that I read, I can’t figure out what it is, but there’s something she said that’s the answer. I know it! And, wait! You’re Norwegian, right? Ever hear of a city called Tromso?”

  “It’s our Arctic capital,” he said with some pride.

  “Ever been there?”

  “Me? I’m from Oslo. I served in the Air Force in Bodo, but never went to Tromso, no.”

  “Now you’re a citizen here, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You had to take the test? Who’s the first president? What’s the capital of Minnesota? How many states in the U.S.?”

  Jens Erik was down on one knee, the way we’d been told Iñupiats speak with children, the elderly, or, in my case, a grieving drunk. He held a sweating can of Foster’s. His silver hair was brushed back, and his eyes were the blue of ice shining up in a glacier, or rather, if color could look sad, it would look like Jens’s eyes.

  “Jens, what’s the capital of Minnesota, anyway?”

  “Who the hell remembers?”

  “That proves you’re American,” I said. “You can’t answer basic questions about our country.”

  Jens Erik laughed and took a drink. I said, “You must have a brand-new social security number. I bet those numbers are so high now, you immigrants must need a card the size of a movie poster to get all the digits on it, that or the digits are so small you can’t see them anymore. Got your card, Jens? Lemme see it. I wanna see your card!”

  He smiled. “Who are you, an immigration agent?”

  I fumbled for my wallet. “My card, see? Nine digits.”

  “I don’t carry mine around,” said the pilot. “The guy at the agency told us, don’t keep it in your wallet. You might get mugged. Keep your card in a safe place.”

  I said, “Where’s your safe place, Jens?”

  He laughed. “You a thief?” he said.

  • • •

  ALAN MCDOUGAL OFFERED ME THE SPARE BEDROOM IN HIS HUT BUT I SAID I’d already accepted Calvin’s invitation. Deirdre McDougal came over and said nothing but held my hand. I felt badly for pretending with her that I was drunk. Eddie tried to take my glass away, but I loudly told him to buzz off. I finished the water, lumbered to the liquor table, poured in more Tito, and did the bathroom spill-it-out routine again.

  I heard people talking outside the bathroom.

  —He asked my social security number!

  —He was asking about the pipeline!

  —He said there’s clues in Kelley’s diary.

  Eddie went person to person, making excuses for my drunk condition, glancing back at me and shaking his head occasionally, Poor Joe, telling them that I’d been babbling “crazy theories.” I held the blackness at bay but at all times Karen stood offstage. People moved around me like marionettes, or two-dimensional images. I felt crushing grief ready to flood in. I saw a black void stretching into the future.

  You brought her here. You could have stayed out of things. You were even ordered to stay out.

  “Joe? I saw Karen at the high school. She was coughing. I thought she might be getting sick. I’m so sorry.”

  Bruce Friday had brought over a kitchen chair and reversed it and straddled it so his arms lay on top. He was drinking a Coke. He emitted a slightly moldy odor, a guy who lives alone, for years, who uses mothballs instead of a washing machine. His arms looked thin beneath his shirt, skinny impressions, but close up the muscles in his wrists and hands were powerful. Scarred. Corded. I saw white patches on his cheek, discolorations where frostbite had healed over the years.

  The Longhorn hut was decorated more expensively than the government one in which I resided. The furniture was plusher, the paint fresh. The kitchenware was top of the line—restaurant quality, not Army surplus, like ours. The photos on walls, unlike personal momentos in other huts, were corporate: a shot of their gigantic floating Arctic drill rig, the Bowhead, exploring off Greenland; a shot of Dave and Deborah shaking hands with Alaska’s former Democratic senator, on this base; a shot of one of their seismic ships off Arctic Russia, escorted by a Russian icebreaker—Longhorn had drilled there; a shot of Merlin, Deborah, and the secretary of Homeland Security, on the bridge of a U.S. icebreaker, poring over a nautical chart.

  “You talk to Karen?” I asked Bruce.

  Head shake. “I told that Army captain, Hess, that I saw her at the high school. Seems I confirmed what someone else already told him. By the way, Hess is looking for you.”

  “It’s not like I’m hiding, you know.”

  “Karen was with a child at the school. A little kid. I saw the kid take her hand, lead her out to the parking lot.”

  “Boy kid or girl?”

  “Sorry. I saw them from the back.”

  “Parka color? Pink would be a clue.”

  “Dark green, I think. Or maybe it was blue.”

  “Did you see where they went in the parking lot?”

  “I wish I did. I stayed in the building.”

  “Hey, Bruce, I wanted to ask about your polar bears . . .”

  He looked surprised that I’d switched the subject to this, but he gave his usual answer. “They’re not my bears. They’re Earth’s, Joe. The living bounty of all.”

  “I wondered all summer. You want to block off their territory, block development where they live, right?”

  “They’re dying out, Joe. They need protection. They need a federal designation, an off-limits habitat. Where they hunt. Where they breed. Where they raise cubs.”

  “And if their habitat was protected, how much exactly—how many miles of coast—would that include?”

  “All the way across, Joe!”

  “Wouldn’t that stop any new pipeline construction, sea to shore?”

  “I hope so,” Bruce Friday said, rising to leave.

  “By the way, Bruce, you ever find any bears out on the tundra this year, dead from rabies when you autopsy them?”

  Bruce Friday stopped, turned, stared at me.

  “Rabies? No. Foxes get it mostly. In bears it’s possible, but almost unknown.”

  • • •

  “JOIN ME FOR A DRINK, MERLIN. YOU LOOK LIKE YOU NEED IT.”

  “I don’t drink, Joe. You know that.”

  “Scared of a little vodka, Chief? Come on. One sip.”

  “I haven’t had a drink since I was nineteen. I hate the taste.”

  “Merlin, we may have missed something at that cabin.”

  He grew very still. “What?”

  “Well, five of us get out of the chopper, see? Eddie and I go into the cabin right away, see? And your deputies split up and go out by themselves and then come back and tell us they found nothing. But we never checked what they said.” I smiled. I hoped it was a shrewd, suspicious smile.

  Merlin stood up. Color blotched his powerful face.

  “You’re saying a
cop was involved? Covered things up?”

  “You told me that Clay Qaqulik didn’t share his theories with you. You said he worked alone. Why would one of your own people do that? Maybe he didn’t trust you, Merlin. You personally.”

  Merlin’s eyes narrowed, then he sighed. “You’re upset, Joe. I understand.”

  I shrugged. I took a long drink. I drank all my water. I said, more aggressively, “Eddie and I were in the cabin. We couldn’t see outside. Luther took the ATV out on the tundra. What did he do there? You went through Clay’s pockets. I’m upset? You think I give a damn about your sensibilities? It never stops! Poor us! Always victims! Don’t give me that poor-us shit.”

  Merlin’s face loomed very close, so I could see the pores, the gap between two lower teeth, black hairs in his nose, the half-healed scar of a shaving cut on his chin.

  “You are drunk.” I’ll pretend you didn’t say that. “Clay and I grew up together,” he said gently.

  “Yeah, yeah, family, all of us brothers. Merlin, who’s the guy you arrest half the time in killings? The husband. The brother. Why not a cousin? With a bank account in Oahu? Pipeline money. You have one of those accounts, Merlin? Dave here pays you on the side? Is that it?”

  “Stay away from the office,” he said. “I don’t think it is such a good idea for us to work together anymore.”

  Merlin picked up his hat and left.

  • • •

  MIKAEL GRANDY HAD HIS ARM IN A SLING, AND HIS SHIRT BILLOWED OUT due to bulky bandages beneath the fabric, wrapping his rib cage. He approached gingerly. I was surprised he would come near me, surprised to see more grief and guilt than pain on his stupidly handsome face.

  “I fell in love with her. I never met anyone like her before. She was strong, and she was loyal. She loved you. She told me that. She told me because I, uh . . . I confessed how I felt. All she could talk about half the time was you. How you’d buy a little house. How you’d live back east. How she wanted kids one day, but not yet. I’m not going to press charges against you.”

  “Why are you telling me this, Mikael?”

  “I need to tell somebody.”

  “Right. Plus, your film of her death will make your show a big hit, huh? You’ll tell the story of the Marine savage who broke your ribs at conferences. You’ll tell the story when you win your gold statuette next year. You’ll say, I felt sorry for Rush. I couldn’t take that poor Marine to court.”

  He did not reply. I saw truth in his face, a flush, but also something deeper resembling genuine sympathy.

  I asked, “Did your family really own part of the North Slope way back when, Mikael?”

  “We would have been millionaires today.” He winced when he shrugged. “But my grandfather used to tell me, in Brooklyn, millionaires have money, but this does not make them happy people.”

  “What would you be today, if Russia had kept Alaska? Duke Mikael? Count Mikael?”

  He cradled the hurt arm. “Duke.”

  “Where was the land your family would have owned?”

  “I’m not exactly sure. But the communists would have wiped away our claims anyway, even if Russia had kept Alaska.”

  “You never even went looking for the land? I mean, you’re here! You didn’t even want to see it?”

  “What would be the point? I concentrate on today,” he said. “The grand days of my family are over.”

  • • •

  ARMY CAPTAIN RAYMOND HESS, AMANDA NG’S INVESTIGATOR, FOUND ME in the chair a half hour later, said he’d looked all over for me, checked the labs and my Quonset hut. Said, in a tight, irritated voice, as if I’d purposely avoided him, which I had, that he “needed to clear up a few questions.”

  Hess was a trim, balding man with almost invisible eyebrows, an oddly high voice, watery light blue eyes, and a West Point ring on one finger, a thin wedding band on another. His collar was starched above the Arctic-weight Army sweater. He’d draped his parka over the back of his chair. He looked an old thirty, and had a lean bullet shape, tapering at the head. By now he’d know that he was supposed to pay extra attention to me. He’d have been told in no uncertain terms that if Colonel Joe Rush and Major Edward Nakamura were involved in a cover-up and he missed it, he could kiss his career good-bye.

  A toilet flushed. And flushed. And flushed. I’d “finished” my third glass of vodka. Hess’s nose wrinkled. He smelled urine on me, or maybe the liquor I’d rubbed on my clothes. I was sprawled, legs stretched, head lolling, a sneer on my lips.

  “Army security,” I said. “You guys are even worse than the Federal Bureau of Incompetency.”

  “Let’s go back to the research center, Colonel. We have a room set up for quiet talk.”

  “For interrogations.”

  “Discussions.”

  “Discuss away,” I said, leaning back, watching the man’s irritation grow as blotches on his too-white face.

  “It really would be better at the center, sir.”

  “For who? Whom? Is it who or whom? I never know. How are you with grammar, Hess? How’d you do in high school English?”

  “Colonel, please don’t make this difficult.”

  “Her death is easy so far, Hess?”

  I had to give him credit. He remained polite, if stiff and disingenuous. “Sir, we’re on the same team.”

  I stood up. I breathed into his face. Up close, his skin seemed to lack pores. There was nothing wrong with his approach. I had to be eliminated as a suspect. Also, like all the troops here, he had to know he was in danger, if the vaccinations didn’t work, and the rabies turned out to be contagious. He’d been parachuted into a strange town and denied full support. In quarantine drills, the security contingent included dozens of personnel. But Barrow lacked logistics for a larger team. The admiral—the old head of my unit—had warned Washington for months that the country was unprepared for an Arctic emergency. The emergency was here. The country was still unprepared.

  I snapped, “Hess, you can’t order me.” As if the effort had been too great, I fell back on the chair.

  “Colonel Rush, you—”

  “Hey, Hess! Did you volunteer for this? I bet you did! How’d they trick you into volunteering? You might get infected, bring the germ home to your wife and kids. That’s why that bitchy colonel only took along three of you, you know. Until they know the vaccine works. You’re expendable. How’s it feel to be the guy they could lose and not care?”

  He was red now. I allowed him to escort me into a rear bedroom, the one with the air vent above the right-hand bed. The shaft ran directly to the living room, where I hoped conversation was quieting, as people positioned themselves beneath the vent, straining to hear. Or maybe they’d be behind the bedroom door, government-contract quality, even thinner than the old piece-of-garbage security doors that the FAA approved on pre-9/11 commercial aircraft.

  Someone out there, I prayed, was desperate to listen.

  Hess was smart. He didn’t start off with rabies. He started with Karen. He told me how sorry he was about her death. He asked about the status of our relationship. He made it seem he cared about her.

  Our status is that I’m responsible for her murder.

  I said, “We were engaged to be married in two months.”

  Had things been “good” between us recently?

  We fought and made up and fought some more.

  “They were very good,” I said.

  Did Karen have enemies in town? Had she said anything about work problems? Had I shared sensitive information with her?

  Ah, here we go on rabies. Yes. I shared information.

  “No,” I said. “Tell me something, Hess.” We’re all on the same team? “What kind of weapon killed her?”

  “I’m sorry, Colonel. I can’t tell you that, sir.”

  “Can’t? Or won’t?” I knew he couldn’t.

>   “Same thing, sir.”

  “Leftie or rightie? Man or woman? Give me something.”

  “Did you and Dr. Vleska ever discuss your work here, or the investigation into the Harmon deaths?”

  “We were threatened if we talked about work. We discussed honeymoon plans. Want to hear them?”

  “Yes.”

  I’d asked Eddie to watch for anyone hanging around beneath that air vent. I envisioned people jostling and quieting and looking up. I told Hess loudly what I’d really told Karen, and wanted people in the other room to hear. “Everything’s connected. General Homza is wrong when he thinks she was killed by a local. They couldn’t get to me, so they went after her! It’s not about the quarantine! It’s the same people who killed the Harmons!”

  I raised my voice until I was shouting.

  “GIVE ME ANOTHER DAY WITH THAT DIARY! THERE’S SOMETHING IN THAT DIARY! I KNOW IT! I’M CLOSE, I’M VERY CLOSE!”

  Hess’s voice sharpened. “You have the diary?”

  “An F-drive copy. Not the original, asshole.”

  “Sir, I’ll need you to hand it over. It’s evidence.”

  I argued, shouted that I needed the files. He threatened to have me arrested if I did not surrender them. Under martial law, he could do it.

  I begged him to let me keep the diary. I said that it was my right to have a copy. When he didn’t back down I grew more belligerent, told him to go fuck himself, shouted, refused, and finally gave in, making sure my voice carried.

  “Just how small is your brain, Hess? Is it even there?”

  “We’ll go and get it now, Colonel.”

  I’d alienated everyone I could think of. If someone here was guilty, I hoped I’d hit on the thing they feared. Hess escorted me from the bedroom, a drunk, shamed, broken presence, except as we passed the group outside I glanced over and winked, as if I’d just pulled a fast one on Hess. I saw my look register. I saw Mikael Grandy frown and look sharply at McDougal. Deborah Lillienthal stared. Dave had been pouring himself a vodka. He looked thoughtful. Eddie watched them all, trying to see a tell.

  Outside, the night was dark, and the wind came off the sea and sliced at my face with the sharpness of an ulu, an Eskimo knife used for skinning. I glanced back at the hut and saw a white face, Deborah, in the window. Deborah who’d feared she was infected with rabies. Because you slept with someone. Who?