Frozen Solid: A Novel

by James Tabor

  “Would you like something to drink, Dr. Barnard?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “So. You are the director of BARDA.”

  “Yes.” Pause. “That’s an interesting picture you have,” Barnard said.

  “The one over the credenza?”

  “From Bangladesh?”

  “The capital city, Dhaka. Where I grew up.”

  “Is it always like that? So many people, I mean? I don’t see how traffic moves with them in the streets like that.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “Is that rush hour?”

  Gerrin laughed. “That was ten in the morning of a Sunday. Think of Times Square at a rush hour that never ends. Dhaka is always that way.”

  “What was it like when you were growing up?”

  “It was very bad. Not like now, of course. Now it is simply unimaginable. But bad enough, I can assure you.”

  “Have you been back? Recently, I mean,” Barnard asked.

  “I attended a U.N. conference there not long ago. But I know your time is valuable. We should discuss your reason for coming. Unfortunately, I was not able to obtain a copy of that report.”

  “Why would he lie there?” Barnard asked. Bowman stopped the recording.

  “Either he didn’t try, or he has it and doesn’t want you to know.”

  “But why wouldn’t he?”

  “He’s afraid you’ll find something wrong with it.”

  “Goddamned right. Emily Durant was no drug user,” Barnard snapped.

  “Let’s keep going.” Bowman started the recording again.

  “So you have no idea how she died?” Barnard asked Gerrin.

  “None whatever.”

  “The New Zealanders wouldn’t give you the report?”

  “I did not make the inquiries myself. An assistant …”

  “Look at that,” Barnard said.

  “All lies.”

  “But I can tell her to press on,” Gerrin said.

  “And another,” Barnard said.

  “Might I ask the reason for your interest?” Gerrin continued.

  “Emily Durant worked for me at one time. I was shocked to learn of her death.”

  “Oh yes. I believe you did mention that,” Gerrin said, but he sounded puzzled. “It was unexpected, indeed. Sadly, that happens not infrequently at the South Pole. Utterly inhospitable. Have you been?”

  “Yes, once. You?”

  “Oh no. I’m a warm-weather person.”

  “Did you know Emily?” Barnard asked.

  “Know her? Personally, you mean? I’m afraid not. She was, well, you know—a researcher. But you did, apparently?”

  “Yes,” Barnard said.

  “Why did she make the change from there to here?” Gerrin asked.

  “There’s very little churn at BARDA. Twenty years from now she might have found herself still a GS-13.”

  “Of course. Even scientists like money,” Gerrin said.

  “So you don’t know how she died?”

  “You asked me that a few moments ago.”

  “Did I? Sorry,” Barnard said, and the screen showed the degree of that deception.

  “Not to worry. But no, I have no idea how she died.”

  “Holy shit,” Barnard blurted. “A huge lie.”

  “Shouldn’t there have been an autopsy report by now?” Barnard asked Gerrin.

  Audible sigh. “Everything goes through the New Zealand medical examiner’s office, not famed for speed. Then to their police. Then to State. Then to us. Perhaps.”

  “The only thing slower than one bureaucracy is two,” Barnard said.

  “Well put,” Gerrin laughed. “How does your scientist like it down there? Have you heard from him?”

  Bowman stopped the audio. “What’s he lying about there?”

  “I don’t know,” Barnard said.

  “Can’t be the first question,” Bowman said. “Has to be something in the second.”

  They both stared at the screen. Barnard spoke first: “Him.”

  “What?”

  “He knows the replacement is a woman.”

  “Why would he lie about that?” Bowman asked.

  “He doesn’t want us to know that he knows the replacement is a woman. Goddamn, Wil. What the hell is going on here?”

  Bowman hit Play.

  “Her. Hallie Leland,” Barnard said to Gerrin. “Does the name ring a bell?”

  “No. Not even a tinkle.”

  “One of the biggest lies yet,” Barnard said.

  “Have you heard from her?” Gerrin asked.

  “No. Have you had any word from down there?”

  “Not for several days. NASA preempted a lot of satellite time. And there have been solar disturbances.”

  “So that’s the truth, at least,” Bowman said.

  “Do you know what Emily Durant was working on?” Barnard asked.

  “Specifically? Not off the top of my head.”

  “Look at that. Amazing,” Barnard said.

  “Ha, ha. I love that expression,” Gerrin joked. “ ‘Off the top of my head.’ Where on earth do you suppose it came from?”

  “I’m sure Google could tell you in a flash.” Irritation was audible in Barnard’s voice.

  “I could have one of my people look into the details of Dr. Durant’s research.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Barnard said to Bowman. “He had no intention of doing that.”

  “Could I ask for one other favor?” Barnard said to Gerrin. “When you do learn more about Emily’s death, could you read me in?”

  “The moment I know something, your phone will ring.”

  “Nor that,” Bowman said.

  Several minutes of small talk.

  Sounds of bodies moving.

  “It was nice to meet you, Dr. Barnard,” Gerrin said.

  “Even that was a lie,” Barnard said. “Asshole.”

  Bowman turned off the machine. Neither man spoke for some time. Then Barnard said, “Why would he tell so many lies?”

  “Why would he pretend not to know the replacement was a woman?” Bowman asked. “And deny knowing her name?”

  “He lied when I asked if he knew how Emily died,” Barnard said. “So he must know what happened to her.”

  “What else?” Bowman asked.

  “He lied when I asked if he knew her. So he did know her.”

  “Yes. And he knew the replacement was a woman.”

  “And he knew her name.”

  Barnard had been hungry before. Now he looked at the plate of sandwiches. His appetite had disappeared.

  “Why in hell would he lie about that?” Bowman said.

  Again neither man spoke. Bowman picked up one of the roast beef sandwiches Carol had brought. Thick whole wheat bread, crisp lettuce, slices of tomato and Bermuda onion, Dijon mustard. All the sandwiches were overstuffed with rare, red beef. As Bowman held the one he had taken, blood dripped onto the coffee table. He put the sandwich back and sat there staring at the red drops. He took one of the white cloth napkins Carol had brought and wiped up the blood. His expression changed. He looked up at Barnard.

  “This is not about the science.”

  “What do you mean? They told our director that it was a critically important research project.”

  “It’s not about the research.”

  “What then?”

  “They didn’t care about research. It’s not about the science. It’s about the replacement. This is all about Hallie Leland.”

  37

  LOWRY AND GRENIER HAD SEEN HALLIE TO HER ROOM SHORTLY after two P.M., which left three hours until dinner in the galley. She lay awake for two, dozed briefly, woke again. She swung down from the bunk, booted up the station computer, and checked for email. Nothing.

  A knock. Agnes Merritt.

  “How did you know?” Hallie asked.

  “My business to know. For the record, I gave Graeter hell. He claimed it’s for your own good. Bulldoo, but he’s in co
mmand. Tell me about Fido.”

  Hallie described her meeting with him the previous day. Then: “He told you about Vishnu. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She had thought Merritt might look uncomfortable. Not one bit. More like bemused. “I wasn’t trying to hide anything. Remember I said to talk to Fido about the research? I knew he’d get it right.”

  Reasonable, Hallie thought. “What about Graeter?”

  Merritt shrugged. “He’s with NASI. That’s part of GENERCO. Oil is what they do.”

  “So they might be afraid of something like Vishnu.”

  “Conceivably.”

  “Fida thought Graeter might have killed Emily.”

  Merritt looked skeptical. “Graeter’s bitter and angry. Hates women, for sure. But killing Emily? I don’t know.” Her tone and expression said she could not completely discard the possibility, either.

  “Did anything change after you told him about Vishnu?” Hallie asked.

  “He got friendlier, now that you mention it. That did strike me as odd at the time. Now I’m thinking he might have been trying to divert attention. A smoke screen.” She shook her head. “This is crazy. But telegraphing intentions is the last thing a killer would do.”

  “So you do think he could have killed Emily? Because of Vishnu?” She felt something move down in her belly. Not a pain, exactly. More like pressure. She thought of Diana Montalban. “And might be involved in Fida’s disappearance.”

  “I can’t believe we’re even talking this way.”

  “I’ll take that for a yes.”

  “A maybe.”

  “Can you communicate with NSF?”

  “Not until comms are back up.”

  “Do you have a secure line?”

  “You mean like CIA spook stuff? It’s hard enough getting hamburgers and gasoline at Pole.”

  “Can’t go out because it’s Condition One. Can’t fly. No phone or email. Aren’t people talking about these deaths?”

  “Of course. Graeter’s dog-and-pony show in the galley didn’t help. Might have made things worse. A good many people think he’s covering something up.”

  “I got some very dirty looks in the hall earlier. They must really believe I brought a pathogen in.”

  “Some definitely do. Not sure how many.”

  Hallie’s gut spasmed suddenly, like a fist clenching, then released. She remembered Diana Montalban bleeding to death on the floor of the galley. Another spasm, this one bad enough to make her wince and grunt.

  “What’s wrong?” Merritt asked.

  She needed to keep going. “Just a cramp. So about Graeter …?”

  “Nothing to do until comms are up.”

  “Any idea when flights might start again?”

  “The cutoff is sixty and ten. We’re about twenty degrees away from that now. I hate to even think this, but winterover might have come early this year.”

  “And winterover lasts eight months, right?”

  “Yes.”

  She thought about eight months trapped in the most escape-proof prison on earth with Polies dropping dead, going crazy, boozing and drugging, maybe killing one another, and possibly with some deadly pathogen floating around the hermetically sealed station.

  In for a penny … “Agnes, do you know anything about triage?”

  A frown, then a split second of hesitation, both of which could have been evidence of a struggle to remember some long-forgotten fact. Or of something else. “It’s an emergency medical technique. Sorts out who gets treated when. Or not at all. Why do you ask?”

  “I was just curious. Maynard Blaine mentioned something about triage when we were having coffee.” That, of course, was a lie, but detectives told lies to get at the truth, didn’t they? “He sounded pretty excited about it. Before I could ask him anything, he was paged and had to rush off.”

  “Blaine told you that? When?”

  “Yesterday. He just wandered over and sat down. You know how he is.” She gave a sly wink, and just then something serious happened in her lower regions.

  “I have no idea what he was talking about.” Merritt looked confused, and very displeased.

  “Could it be the name of a research project?”

  “No. I would know if that were the case.”

  The conversation had dead-ended. “It was really nice of you to come all the way down here, Aggie.”

  “Got to watch out for my Beakers.” Merritt glanced at her watch, stood. “Five o’clock. You should be out soon. I’ll probably see you at dinner.”

  Merritt left. Hallie waited a minute to let her clear the corridor. She had given Lowry and Grenier her word, but this qualified as an emergency if anything ever did. She stood, gasped, and sprinted for the women’s room.

  38

  THE ONLY BENEFIT FROM A POLARRHEA ATTACK WAS THE AMPLE time for contemplation it afforded while working itself out. She was still carrying around a secret that, she felt even more sure now, could get her killed. With Fida gone, she was back where she had started, unable to trust anybody, not one person.

  Certainly not Blaine. He had lied to her about Emily, and that was the first strange thing about a visit that had kept getting stranger from that moment on. Why would he do that? Only one reason that Hallie could think of: he had some connection to Emily’s death. Stranger things had happened. She knew about John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy and all the charming psychopaths who seemed like perfect neighbors while they were torturing and butchering and eating their victims. But Maynard Blaine? He struck her more as a clumsy Lothario than a sadistic murderer.

  What about Graeter? Earlier, she would have put him close to the top of a suspect list. But then he had agreed to look through the personnel roster. Still, he might have known that no men at the station had names beginning with “Am.” She hadn’t been able to see the computer screen, so he might have lied about it, too. But she really didn’t think so. She had seen flashes of humanity there. He was hiding from something, which Hallie thought was probably guilt over the sailors’ deaths. And though he despised the philandering ex, he might feel guilty for that as well—a husband who’d left his wife stranded and increasingly desperate.

  What about Brank? A definite possibility. And so many other men that she did not even know. In the end, she found herself asking this question: Who do you trust when you can’t trust anybody? The answer came quickly: Not who. What. And the what was science. You could always trust the science.

  She was about to finish up when the door swung open and two women entered. They settled into adjoining stalls.

  “So what do you think?” one said. Her voice was so rough it could have been a man’s. Pole throat.

  “I think it’s her.” That voice was more normal.

  “Me, too.”

  “Question is what to do about it.”

  “That is the question. But you know what?” man voice asked.

  “What?”

  “There’s a lot of answers to that question in a place like this.”

  “Y’all talkin’ ’bout that new Beaker?” Hallie roughened her own voice, exaggerated the southern accent. Probably not necessary, since she hadn’t spoken with these women before. Better safe than screwed, though.

  “Who’s that? I didn’t know anyone else was here.”

  “No worries—it’s me, Braden. Fuckin’ Polarrhea. Y’all think she’s carryin’ some kinda germ?”

  “Facts is facts. She comes in, women start dying.” Man voice sounded angry and afraid.

  “She’ll be flyin’ out Saturday though, right?”

  “If planes fly. Tell you this: no fucking way I’m winterin’ over with a killer germbag. Not just me, neither. She’ll go out, one way or another.”

  “Who’d you say that is over there?” the other woman asked.

  But Hallie had already finished and slipped through the door. She was still technically under house arrest, or whatever they called it here. She hoped that Graeter had not made any general announcement about her confinem
ent. If he hadn’t, the only people who would know she wasn’t supposed to be wandering around were Graeter, Grenier, Lowry, and Merritt. She would risk running into them. What could they do, anyway, other than put her back in her room? It did not feel good to break her word, but she rationalized that another, much bigger emergency requiring her attention trumped that. Graeter might be in denial, but something very bad was happening in this sealed-off, isolated pressure cooker they called the station.

  Back in her room she pulled on a heavy fleece sweater and a parka. She stuffed a wool cap, gloves, spare dive knife, and headlamp into various pockets. She went down to the lab to gather certain items and moved on, still getting used to walking in a bubble of light. She passed a woman who didn’t even look up, then a man who was texting. He gave her only a quick glance. She could not keep from looking back at them after they passed, and doing the same thing more often as she walked.

  At the air-lock doors to the Underground, she made one last check, saw no other light pods coming behind, and pushed through, sure that she was alone and had made the trip unobserved.

  39

  IN THE UNDERGROUND’S MAIN CORRIDOR, SHE TRIED EDGING ALONG flat against one ice wall, hoping she might avoid triggering the lights, but they came on anyway. Nothing she could do about it, so she moved as quickly as she could to get away from the entrance.

  This would have to be done fast, and not only to avoid detection. She had not wanted to risk going all the way to the ECW room at the station’s other end. Stepping from fifty-four degrees in the station to sixty below in the Underground almost took her breath away, but now she knew enough not to gasp.

  Dive knife in hand, she slipped down the main corridor, praying that she could remember the route Graeter had taken when he’d escorted her around down here. The first right turn was easy, then down a secondary corridor about twenty yards, not worrying about lights now, past one corridor on the left and into the second. A long way along that one, then down a narrower passage, then around the heavy black curtain.

  Once in, she switched on her headlamp and unzipped a body bag. Harriet Lanahan still had on the clothes she’d died in. Blood had frozen into a thick, red carapace on her chest. Her face looked like white wax. There was no frost on her—the humidity was too low for that. Hallie was thankful that someone had closed her eyes.