Climate Killers: Book 3. Bernadette Callahan Detective Series

by Lyle Nicholson

  35

  “What is it? Bernadette asked.

  “The River of Thule. You’ll find it on Sigurdsson’s file. We used to work on it remotely. Me in Iqaluit and him when he was at this lab or on his travels,” Danny said.

  “The River of Thule, okay, I’m typing that into the lab’s data base.” Weppler said. He watched as the file came up. “Oh, my god, this is a freaking video game. Are you trying to get us all killed at once?”

  “No, you don’t understand. I worked on it with Sigurdsson from our ancient Inuit legends. The Thule was our ancestors. They replaced the Dorset people, and then we took over from them. All of our history is in the spoken words, so Sigurdsson and I figured we’d make a game out of it. He put the river in there as he said he’d found it in legend and knew of its existence in the real world.”

  “You want me to show this video game to our Russian submarine commander and hope he doesn’t put a bullet in my head the moment he sees it?” Weppler asked.

  Danny shrugged. “You got anything else?”

  “How does it work?” Russey asked.

  Danny came forward to the computer and punched in a code to initiate the game.

  “You see here, there’s an Inuit warrior with spears and arrows. You have him capture seals. Each seal gives him 50 points. Once you get to 500 the arrows and spears turn to gold, then you’re in the big time.”

  “What happens then?” Russey asked. Her face was flushed as she moved closer to the screen.

  “Well, that’s when all the good stuff happens – you get to meet up with the golden walrus and the shining polar bear. They become your companions to capture the narwhale who will lead you to the sea goddess and the hidden river.” Danny was starting the game as he spoke, his hands moving quickly as his Inuit warrior speared seals.

  “This is disgusting,” Weppler said.

  “Really?” Russey asked, turning to Weppler. “You think this is any more violent than World of Warcraft or King’s Quest?”

  “Ha, I wouldn’t know about that. But you probably would,” Weppler said, his eyes narrowing in accusation at Russey.

  “Yeah, it’s what put me to sleep at night and satisfied me, because it certainly was never our sex.”

  “Okay, okay, we need to take this down a notch.” Bernadette looked at Danny. “Does this video game show exactly where this river goes, or was this just a mythical animation put together to amuse both Sigurdsson and you during the long dark winter?”

  “No, it’s real alright. If you play the game all the way to the end, the river extends underground all the way from here in the Arctic down to Antarctica. I’ve done the game several times and each time it ends there but it goes under North America and through the Pacific.”

  McAllen stared over Bernadette’s shoulder at the screen. “I think our good scientist placed the map into the video game where he thought no one would ever find it.”

  “Your time is up,” the submarine captain shouted.

  They all jumped at the sound of the captain’s voice. It shook them out of their concentration on the video game and back into the reality of their situation.

  “Can you give us a few more minutes?” Weppler asked in a pleading tone.

  “No, you can tell me which one of you wants to die first or I will choose one of you myself.”

  “I think he’s serious about killing one of us,” Maslam said.

  “No shit, Maslam,” Russey said. “You’re the best at deductive reasoning. That’s why you ran this team. Why don’t you offer yourself up as our first candidate?”

  “I’ll do no such thing. As I am the team leader, it’s me who makes the decisions, and, as you Dr. Russey, are the most junior in our group, I suggest that it’s you who is shot first.”

  “Really? That’s what you think? And that wouldn’t be because you’re a misogynist son of a bitch, Maslam?” Russey asked. She crossed her arms and stared him down in an accusing look.

  “Holy mother of god. How about if I shoot both of you—just to keep you quiet?” the captain suggested.

  “You don’t need to shoot anyone,” McAllen said. “We’ve found what you want. You’ll need to come and look at this screen.”

  The captain turned to his men and shouted a command as he approached. “I told my men to shoot all of you if you try to take my gun from me and take me captive.” He placed his gun in his holster and walked among them with a swagger.

  Bernadette and McAllen exchanged looks. That very thing had been on their mind.

  The captain looked down at the screen. “What is this? This is some kind of a cartoon diagram?”

  “No, it’s the way that the scientist Sigurdsson hid the river inside a game,” Bernadette said.

  The captain’s head turned from side to side. “You expect me to believe this? You think I am stupid? I’ll have you all shot.”

  “See, I told you,” Weppler said, wringing his hands.

  A droning noise could be heard. Low and growling at first until it grew in strength. It became a vibration. A glass of water on the table started to shake. The captain looked up at the ceiling. His eyes went wide.

  “That noise got your attention?” Bernadette asked. She moved closer to the captain. “That’s the sound of the Canadian Air force Aurora sub hunter. The one you said was too far away to get here in time.”

  A loud whoosh of jets coming in low shook the lab.

  “And that would be a couple of those F-18 Fighters you claimed were so ineffective that they couldn’t be a threat to you.”

  The captain screamed at his men in Russian. The men raised their weapons.

  One of the men ran towards them. He tore the computer’s hard drive from under the desk and ran towards the door. The captain followed him out with the rest of the men.

  “It looks like our captors are leaving.” Bernadette said.

  “Yeah, but not with that hard drive.” McAllen ran to the satchels of explosives against the wall. He picked up one and motioned for Bernadette to grab the other one.

  “How’s your throwing arm?”

  “Fast pitch baseball champion,” Bernadette said.

  McAllen thrust a satchel into her hands. “Follow me.”

  They ran with the satchels out the door. The Russians were getting into the trucks. McAllen set a two second timer on the explosives and they heaved them at the trucks then took cover inside the building.

  The sailors didn’t see them in the darkness. One sailor heard a thud and asked a question of the man next to him. A loud roar shredded the sailors and ripped the truck in half.

  McAllen and Bernadette peered outside. The flames of the burning gasoline from the trucks tanks lit up the darkness. The smell of bodies and rubber tires wafted towards them, cutting the pure Arctic air like a knife.

  The three scientists came up behind them. Maslam screamed. “I can’t believe you killed all those men.”

  McAllen turned on him. “Really, you want to know why I killed those men? They wanted to kill you minutes ago, and if they’d returned to their submarine the captain could have launched missiles to destroy everyone in this facility.”

  Maslam went quiet as another fuel tank exploded, producing a fireball. They threw up their hands to shield themselves from the blast.

  Explosions came from harbor where the submarine was. Several rockets roared into the sky.

  “Those are from the submarine,” McAllen said. “The Russians are firing rockets at the Canadian Airforce.”

  “What happens if the Russians win?” Russey asked.

  “You mean, if they knock the Canadian fighters and the sub hunter out of the sky?”

  “Yes, exactly,” Russey said as she watched the fighters and sub hunter do evasive maneuvers and fire off countermeasures. The sky was being lit up with a deadly display of fireworks.

  “I’d expect the other Russians would come ashore looking for their captain and his men,” McAllen said.

  Bernadette turned to Danny. “Can you help us
disappear if that happens?”

  “Sure,” Danny said. “But the nearest settlement is over those mountains and hundreds of kilometres away. We can hide out in the dark for a while, but it’s going to be a cold wait.”

  They watched as one fighter was hit by a missile and exploded. They all went silent knowing the pilot had probably been killed. The other fighter descended in a spiral, shooting two missiles in quick succession before gaining altitude. The submarine hunter dropped torpedoes. The splash sounded like a whale hitting the water. A minute later a loud explosion rocked the valley and the sky lit up.

  “I don’t think we have to go anywhere,” Bernadette said. “I think our Canadians just got themselves a submarine.”

  The harbor became illuminated as explosives erupted from the submarine. The conning tower was visible for a second, and then it submerged as more explosions convulsed the hull of the submarine.

  “Time for us to go,” McAllen said.

  “Yeah, I agree,” Bernadette replied.

  “But, what about the hard drive?” Russey asked. “Wasn’t that what you came for?”

  “We wanted to keep it out of the hands of the Russians,” Bernadette said. She turned to Danny, “You said that was a game you’d made with Sigurdsson. You must have copies somewhere?”

  Danny winked. “Are you kidding? We made it into an app. Kids and adults all over the Arctic play the game. You can download it onto your phone as soon as we get back into cell range.”

  “There you have it, McAllen,” Bernadette said. “We need to get out of here. The military will be sending in a team to check this place out, we’d be detained for questioning when they do.”

  “Who exactly are you two people?” Russey asked. She moved closer to Bernadette. “I’ve never seen you at any of our Climate Change Symposiums. What were you doing here at our research station?”

  “That’s way too many questions. We don’t have time for the long or the short versions,” Bernadette told her. She turned to Danny. “Can you fly us out of here now?”

  “I sure can,” Danny said. He turned to the other scientists. “Look, it’s better for everyone if you don’t tell the military that I flew in here with these two.”

  “How do we explain how the Russians were killed?” Weppler asked. “They’ll think we did it.”

  McAllen put his hand on Weppler’s shoulder. “Tell them the sailors had some explosives in their truck and they went off prematurely.”

  Russey laughed. “Hey, Weppler, you’re an expert in premature events. I’m sure you can sell that one.”

  Bernadette looked at the three scientists. “We need you to keep our visit a secret, for now. Hopefully we’ll find Sigurdsson and make some sense of what’s happening in the world right now. Can you help us out?”

  “Sure,” Maslam said. “Scientists are good at keeping secrets as most of the time we aren’t believed anyway.”

  Bernadette and McAllen followed Danny to a truck that was parked beside the lab. They rode in silence the fifteen kilometres back to their plane. When they got there, the plane was where they’d left it.

  There were only flickers of flame coming from the sea below to show where the submarine had been. A small fire burned on one of the mountains where the jet had crashed. As the plane roared into the Arctic night, Bernadette wondered if they’d be able to find an answer to the world’s heat, before the world turned to weapons for its answers.

  36

  Sigurdsson was desperate to hear his wife Samantha’s voice. He wanted to tell his wife everything. How the Russians had made him believe they were using his inventions for good, how he’d failed the planet by working with them, and now, how he was going to save the planet by killing himself and taking his knowledge with him. All this went through Sigurdsson’s mind as he threw back another shot of Jagermeister with a beer chaser. He was sitting in Humpy’s Great Alaskan Ale House on Sixth Avenue in downtown Anchorage Alaska.

  He’d been here for the past four hours staring at a payphone in the corner. It looked forlorn and unused. With each shot of Jagermeister that tasted somewhere between cough medicine and an elixir that would produce a powerful force of reasoning in the mind, that was only one more drink away and never arrived, he came to the conclusion he had to call Samantha.

  What good would it do to kill himself without giving the reasoning, he thought? He was, a scientist after all. All his actions were documented and as this was to be his last and definitive action, he would need a record, a recording, someone like his wife to explain to the world, that although he had erred in his judgment, he’d made things right again.

  He rose up from his chair at the bar and fixed his sight on the pay phone. He calculated it at twenty metres away. He then computed the number of steps it would take to reach the phone with his level of overall drunkenness. The Jagermeister was now having the effect of producing a severe list to his left side or in nautical terms his port side. He muttered hard to starboard and righted himself.

  He made it to the phone and grappled with the handset as if it was a life ring thrown from a ship. He fumbled around in his pockets and found a handful of quarters, which he began to plug away into the top of the phone.

  For a moment he stopped. What number would he dial? He knew of one number in Bermuda where Samantha came ashore off her research ship and the other one was her cell phone that was only in use when on land. He hesitated for a second as the thoughts and the numbers collided and then reappeared in his brain. Then, it dawned on him, he’d dial Samantha’s cell phone. It was the only one he knew right to the end.

  The phone rang. Sigurdsson closed his eyes as he imagined Samantha picking up the phone. Five more rings. His eyes opened and he looked to the ceiling of the phone booth. Someone had written a profanity on the ceiling. Fuck you if you’re looking up here it said.

  He was about to put the phone down when a voice came on, “Hello.”

  “Samantha. Is that you?”

  “Oh my god, Barney. You shouldn’t have called me.”

  “No, I needed to talk to you one last time,” Sigurdsson pleaded into the phone. “Please don’t hang up.”

  “She won’t be hanging up,” a male voice said.

  “Who’s this?” Sigurdsson demanded.

  “You don’t get to ask questions. You get to answer them,” Sokolov said. “I have your wife and your granddaughter here. They are safe, for now. How healthy they stay will be up to you, Professor Sigurdsson.”

  “Don’t you touch them,” Sigurdsson screamed into the phone.

  The patrons of Humpy’s Great Alaskan Ale House looked up in alarm at the screaming drunk.

  “Don’t worry, nothing will happen to them if you agree to come back and finish the job you started. All of your mates are lonely without you on your submarine. You finish your job and we’ll send your wife and your granddaughter off to a nice little vacation spot where you can join them.”

  “But, I know you’re lying. You’ve lied about everything. You fooled me into thinking you were good—you’re evil. I don’t want to work for you.”

  Sokolov fired a gun in the air. “Did you hear that?”

  “What did you do? Where’s my Sam, where’s my granddaughter?”

  Sam got on the phone. “It’s me, Barney. I’m okay, so is Becky. He’s trying to scare you. Don’t listen to him.”

  Sokalov tore the phone from Samantha. “Now, your wife is the one that’s lying. I’ll keep them both alive as long as you help us. We already have your coordinates from tracing your phone call. Stay where you are and we’ll come get you. Agreed?”

  Sigurdsson’s hand covered his face. “I agree. I’ll be here. Just don’t hurt them.”

  37

  Mellissa Akerman smoothed her hair and straightened her dress. With the file tucked under her arm she made her way to Anton De Luca’s office. Her heart was beating fast—way too fast. She took a deep breath to slow it down.

  Olivia Chapman was in Anton’s office. Mellissa found
it hard not to hate her. She was tall and beautiful in a Vogue Magazine way with perfect teeth, blue eyes and flawless skin. Who the hell looks like that?

  Mellissa cleared her throat at the door. Olivia looked up. A frown graced her perfect eyebrows in annoyance. How dare Mellissa intrude on her conversation with Anton? She was a level two analyst, one grade above Mellissa. Office decorum dictated that Mellissa should wait until Olivia had left Anton’s office. Mellissa was in no mood for office politics or decorum. The file under her arm was pure gold. This was the key to get Anton’s attention; this was screw you Olivia Chapman material. She cleared her throat again, louder this time and stood her ground.

  Anton looked up at Mellissa. “Yes, what is it?”

  “The file you asked for, on that special assignment you gave me,” Mellissa said. She drew out the words special and assignment with raised eyebrows and a nod to the folder under her arm.

  “Would you give us few minutes?” Anton asked Olivia.

  She looked defeated. She threw a quick smile and wink with a “sure, no problem,” but the look she gave Mellissa was one of pure disgust as she made her exit.

  Mellissa’s heart beat even faster on entering Anton’s office. “I found everything you were looking for… and more,” she said, drawing out the ‘more,’ and trying not to sound like a breathless debutant from Gone With the Wind.

  “That’s great,” Anton said. He motioned for her to open the file beside him on the front of the desk.

  Mellissa opened the file and pulled out sheets of paper. “I had my two amazing contacts with the FBI Forensics and Homeland Security find all of this for me—plus a bit of digging by myself and I think I’ve found what we’re looking for.”

  “And none of this will lead back to you or this department?” Anton asked.

  “It’s been confined. My girls… uh… my contacts assured me that everything they obtained was through back channels.”

  “You’re amazing, Mellissa.”