Cold Plague

by Daniel Kalla

  Noah nodded. “I bet Charron’s ‘accident’ was no accident at all.”

  Duncan leaned forward between the seats again. “It also means that Detective Avars—and Christ knows who else at the old Gendarmerie—is up to her neck in this.”

  “Explains why she didn’t want Interpol involved,” Noah said, fighting off a sudden chill.

  “Also doesn’t leave us much in the way of backup,” Duncan grumbled. “If we end up in a wee pickle like Dr. Charron did, the French Foreign Legion isn’t likely to ride in on their camels to rescue our sorry hides.”

  Consisting of three or four streets, the village of Champsac was even smaller than other towns they had visited in Limousin. Elise found Pierre Anou’s quaint stone house set on a property whose landscaping consisted of a few neglected shrubs poking through the snow.

  Dr. Anou answered the door in a sweater and fleece pants. Tall and skeletal, with a prominent jaw and protuberant forehead, the middle-aged engineer reminded Noah of an old black-and-white Frankenstein-like TV character. In a manner as wooden as his gait, Anou welcomed his guests into a living room piled with books and journals. Noah could barely see the computer on his desk through the stacks of paper and journals surrounding it. Anou cleared some papers off the threadbare cloth-covered chairs to make seats for everyone, but his hospitality ended there.

  Elise began to explain in French that her colleagues’ grasp of the language was limited, but Anou waved a big palm to interrupt. “One does not survive long in glaciology without understanding English.” He viewed them circumspectly. “And you would not have driven through this blizzard unless this was very important.”

  “We heard you are a friend of Georges Manet,” Elise said.

  “A friend?” Anou considered the characterization. “Glaciology is a small field. Georges and I have worked together on numerous drill sites. I respect his work, as I imagine he respects mine. But he is a bit too wild for my taste.”

  “Wild?” Noah repeated.

  “He is brilliant,” Anou said. “But at every site I have worked with him, he has always pushed the limits too far. Always joking and fooling when it is time to be serious.” He shook his head. “Perhaps that is why so often he ends up working alone.”

  Duncan nodded, encouraging Anou. “And the maniac was always trying to drink the glaciers he drilled on, wasn’t he?”

  Anou shook his head and sighed. “He thinks the nectar of the gods is frozen in that ice.”

  A skinny woman with wide eyes and stringy hair appeared at the doorway. She gaped at the visitors for a moment and then turned away. Noah assumed the woman was Anou’s wife or partner, but the glaciologist did not respond to her fleeting appearance.

  “When was the last time you spoke to Georges?” Elise asked.

  Anou thought about it. “Six months ago. Perhaps longer. Late last spring, I think.”

  “How about e-mail?” Elise pressed.

  “No different.” Anou’s expression darkened with suspicion again. “Why does it matter?”

  “Georges is missing.”

  Anou frowned. “Oh? What happened?”

  “They found his camp on Axel Heiberg Island, yesterday, but Georges was gone,” Noah said. “They think he might have become disoriented and wandered out.” Noah decided not to share his suspicion that Georges might have staged the discovery.

  The engineer’s prominent jaw fell and he slumped back in his chair. “Mon Dieu! Disoriented? Wandering outside in the dead of the Arctic winter?”

  “Did you ever work there?” Noah asked.

  Anou’s color was wan now. “I was there two years ago with Georges and a few others from the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris,” he said.

  “Georges brought back several ice samples from the region,” Noah said. “We need to know exactly where the ice came from.”

  Anou nodded distractedly. “Georges documents his samples thoroughly.”

  “So thoroughly that nobody has a fucking clue where they’re from,” Duncan groaned.

  “I do,” the engineer said.

  “You understand his referencing system?” Elise asked.

  “Not his. Mine.” Anou touched a bony finger to his chest. “He ‘borrowed’ it from me.”

  Duncan turned to Noah. “You didn’t happen to record the number in that notebook you drag around everywhere with you?”

  Noah nodded, as he pulled the notebook from his pocket. He found the page and read the passage: “Arctic, échantillon 0411B2307.”

  Anou trudged over to his desk and shuffled through mounds of paper. He chose a page and brought it back to the others. It was a detailed map of the region, which he laid across his lap. Anou’s slender finger came to rest on a spot slightly inland from the body of water. “That sample must come from here. Roughly five hundred meters from where we set up camp two years ago.”

  “Can you mark the spot for us?” Noah asked.

  Anou fished a pen from his pocket and carefully marked an X on the map. “Earlier,” he said, “I was not being entirely honest.”

  Duncan sighed. “You would have been the first one in this bloody province, if you were.”

  “Georges and I used to be good friends,” Anou said.

  Elise cocked her head. “What happened?” she asked.

  Anou looked down at the map on his lap. “I blamed Georges for Vishnov.”

  “Vishnov…You mean that Antarctic lake that Claude Fontaine discovered?”

  “Fontaine didn’t discover Vishnov,” Anou said with indignation. “He merely exploited it. Georges and I contributed as much as Fontaine did. I helped design the well that first sampled the lake. It was quite an engineering feat.”

  “What was Georges’s role?” Noah asked.

  “Originally, he was responsible for mapping the best route through the ice to the lake,” Anou said. “He stayed on to study the core samples we drilled. After all, the Igloo was a glaciologist’s dream.”

  “The igloo?” Elise gasped. “I thought we were discussing the Antarctic.”

  Anou laughed humorlessly. “Someone, perhaps even Georges, nicknamed the research station that, because from the outside it did look like a massive igloo,” he explained. “The whole operation was privately funded. We had the best equipment imaginable. Our resources were unlimited. And the research potential there was endless.”

  “So how did Georges bugger up your frozen nirvana?” Duncan asked.

  “He wouldn’t leave Claude Fontaine alone,” Anou said. “Fontaine raised the money. From the beginning, he made it very clear that it was his project. The man is arrogant and extremely vain. And Georges took every opportunity to needle him. I warned Georges, but he kept pushing the limits. He even heckled the man on film the day we broke through the ice. Fontaine was livid.”

  Duncan rubbed his beard. “I assume Fontaine booted Georges off the project?”

  “All of us researchers, I’m afraid.” Anou absentmindedly folded the corners of the map. “I was halfway through two major studies. Maybe Georges’s childish behavior was not the only reason, but I have no doubt it instigated all our firings.”

  Noah felt the twinges at his temples as a realization began to take shape. “Did Georges ever drink the water from Vishnov?”

  “Of course. He even tried to convince me to.” Anou waved his big palm again. “I wanted no part of that stupidity.”

  Duncan’s gaze shot over to Noah. “Shite, Haldane, you don’t think…”

  Noah’s temples slammed steadily now. “Dr. Anou, do you know if Georges brought any water back home with him from Vishnov?”

  “Barrels of it,” Anou said. “He was very excited about that water. He claimed it had amazing healing properties.”

  “Oh, shite!” Duncan muttered.

  Elise gaped at Noah. He turned back to Anou. “Do you have any idea where Georges would have stored this water?”

  “No.” Anou studied them curiously. “But if you’re looking for a sample of Vishnov’s water, y
ou certainly don’t need to find Georges.”

  “What does that mean?” Noah snapped.

  Anou rose to his feet, passed Noah the map, and then hurried over to the kitchen. He leafed through some drawers until he dug out a magazine. He loped back to them and handed it to Noah. “My wife likes to waste money on this garbage,” he said.

  Though the French name meant nothing to him, Noah recognized it as a fashion magazine from the beautiful couple posing on the front cover. Bewildered as to the relevance, he studied the cover until Anou reached down and flipped it over in his hand.

  Heart hammering in his ears, Noah gawked at the back cover in disbelief. The glossy, full-page, color advertisement showed a sleek stylized bottle half buried in ice with melted water dripping down its side.

  The name on the bottle told him all he needed to know: the Lake.

  49

  Limoges, France. January 21

  Arms bound behind her back, Avril lay across the backseat of the Audi. She could see only light and dark through the scratchy hood smothering her face, and breathing was difficult. She had little concern for her own fate—if anything, death would come as a welcome escape from the past days of living hell—but worry for Frédéric consumed her. So did the crushing guilt. She had an unwanted flashback to the last time she laid eyes on her son, loading his old Citro’n that frost-bitten December morning when he headed back to architectural school. Their good-byes were heartfelt, but the lingering tension over Frédéric’s marital intentions overshadowed his departure. Oh God, will that petty squabble be our last memory of one another?

  As outraged as Avril was by Valmont’s treachery, she was more upset with herself for not having seen through it in time. Looking back, the clues—his secretiveness, his unexplained interest in the missing-woman cases, and the way he disappeared whenever Haldane was around—were as clear as street signs. She had let twenty years of friendship and her own tornado of emotion cloud her judgment. Now she was going to pay. So was Frédéric.

  I have failed him as a mother and as a detective, she thought again. She mumbled a quiet prayer that she would at least have the chance to tell Frédéric how sorry she was.

  Blinded by the hood, Avril listened to the hum of the car’s engine and felt the vehicle drift on the snow. She had no idea who else was in the car with her, because no one had spoken a word after the massive no-neck thug slipped the hood over her head and tied her hands tightly behind her back. Through it all, Valmont had hovered silently off to the side, but he never once met Avril’s accusing eyes.

  After what felt like forty-five minutes, the car crunched to a stop. Avril heard the front door open and felt the cool air rush in. Voices spoke in hushed tones around her in English, but she had difficulty making out the words through her hood. At least five more minutes passed before the door at her feet opened. “Get up, Detective Avars,” a woman said in French spoken with a foreign accent, possibly Dutch.

  Without the use of her bound hands, Avril struggled to rise from the car seat. Someone grabbed her roughly by the upper arm and pulled her up the rest of the way. She was yanked forward and her boots broke through a soft layer of snow. Prodded from behind, she trudged about twenty feet through snow until the path cleared and she felt solid ground below her feet.

  The light brightened as she stepped through a doorway and onto a floor that felt like tile. A few feet further, the same woman said, “We are going downstairs now.”

  Despite the warning, Avril stumbled on the first blind step. She caught her balance just before toppling down the staircase. Counting twelve stairs, she took each one carefully until the ground leveled under her feet again. She walked a few steps more before a hand tightened around her arm, halting her progress.

  A door creaked open. She was shoved forward. Suddenly, the hood flew off her head. Before she could turn around, the door slammed shut behind her in the dingy chilly room. Her eyes took a moment to adjust to the weak light, and she almost banged her head on the shelving. Seeing the low ceiling, she realized she stood in a near-empty cellar.

  A voice spoke up from somewhere. “Maman?”

  Avril’s heart melted. “Frédéric, darling!” She scanned the ground frantically until she spotted her son huddled in the corner of the room, his face puffy and his shirt still covered in blood. A few feet to his left, a disheveled woman looked up at Avril with abject helplessness. Avril was so disoriented that it took her a moment to recognize the woman as Sylvie Manet.

  As Frédéric struggled to his feet, Avril rushed over to her son, overcome by the intensely conflicting sense of relief and doom. She dropped to her knees, oblivious to the pain of them slamming onto the concrete floor. She leaned over to him and kissed his cheek and his swollen-shut eye.

  Frédéric viewed her with a pained smile. “Maman, I am sorry.” His words were slightly distorted by his swollen lip.

  “You’re sorry?” Tears toppled down her cheeks. “Oh, darling, this was all my fault. They used you to get to me.”

  He shook his head, trying to assume responsibility. “I walked right into their trap.”

  “God, you are so much like your father.” Avril sobbed a laugh.

  “Papa would never have gotten himself into this,” Frédéric said. “I don’t even know why I went to meet that Dutch woman. I didn’t trust her from the beginning.”

  “Oh, Freddie, if I hadn’t interfered in your love life…”

  “You were right, Maman. And I knew it all along, too. I was just too proud to admit it. Stéphane and I never had a chance at a real future together.” He swallowed at the unintended irony of the comment. “Still, I should have never gone out with that woman! I knew she was trouble.”

  Avril pressed her cheek against his. “Stop it, Freddie. Don’t you see? If not her, they would have gotten to you some other way. This conspiracy runs so deep.” She paused. “There is nothing they wouldn’t do.”

  “Who are they?” Sylvie spoke up in a faltering voice.

  Avril had forgotten that she and her son were not alone. Pulling her cheek from Frédéric’s, she turned sympathetically to the frightened-looking woman. “I have only scratched the surface,” she said. “But apart from the Dutch woman and her henchman, they include at least a few locals.”

  “Which ones?” Sylvie asked.

  Frédéric looked up at his mother with a pained expression. “Maman, I don’t know how to tell you this, but…Uncle Simon is with them. I saw him once through the door.”

  Avril nodded. “I know, darling.” She turned back to Sylvie. “Aside from Detective Valmont”—she spoke his name through gritted teeth—“a manager from Ferme d’Allaire was involved, but he’s dead now.”

  Sylvie swallowed. “Did they kill him?”

  Avril did not want to frighten them needlessly, so she ignored the question. “I am not sure if people even higher up at the farm were involved,” she said. “They used the Allaire farm to stage the outbreak in cows. To pretend it came from the animals.” She looked intensely at Sylvie. “But it was your brother’s ice, or water, that caused the spread of this disease.”

  “You don’t think Georges was involved in this?” she asked, horrified. “After all, it looks like he…died…in the Arctic. Maybe even from that prion disease.”

  “Maybe,” Avril said evenly.

  Sylvie picked up on her skepticism. “He’s not involved!” she cried. “Our younger brother, Philippe, died of the illness. Georges would never…” Her voice trailed off.

  After Valmont’s betrayal, she was not willing to exclude anyone from suspicion. Especially not Georges Manet. However, it seemed pointlessly cruel to argue with Sylvie, so she simply nodded.

  Frédéric stared at his mother with the same hurt and bewilderment she had seen in his eyes at Antoine’s funeral. “Why are they doing this, Maman? What is so special about this ice or water?”

  She lifted her shoulders and shook her head. “I think someone sees commercial value in that water. Maybe they plan to sell i
t as a kind of curative health drink. Some of the victims, Pauline Lamaire, Giselle Tremblay, and even your brother Philippe”—she glanced at Sylvie—“tried to use it as a remedy for chronic illness.”

  Frédéric snorted and fresh blood appeared at his nostril. “Wouldn’t have much health value if people knew they could die from drinking it,” he said wryly.

  Avril smiled at her son. “Exactly.”

  Sylvie shuffled down the wall closer to the other two. Her face wasn’t beaten like Frédéric’s, but her cheeks were drawn and her eyes rich with fear. “You must have told someone—aside from this Detective Valmont—about what you know? Detective, if you told someone else then surely they will come looking for us.”

  Avril looked down at her knees. “I didn’t,” Avril said softly.

  “How will they find us?” Sylvie asked in a whisper.

  Avril didn’t reply.

  Frédéric leaned his head closer to hers. She smelled his stale breath. The huge welts around his eyes reminded her of his suffering, and guilt and heartache rocked her again.

  “Maman, they can’t afford to free us, can they?”

  Avril scoured her brain for a reassuring answer. “There have already been too many unexplained disappearances,” she said. “They cannot afford to have the investigating detective, her son, and the sister of the man who discovered the infected ice simply disappear without explanation.”

  Frédéric regarded her, unappeased. “They are probably figuring out a credible way for that to happen right now.”

  You’re too smart for your own good, Frédéric, Avril thought. “We don’t know that,” she said, and kissed him on the cheek again.

  Sylvie hung her head, looking as if she might cry at any moment. Frédéric turned to her. “Sorry, Sylvie,” he said gently. He turned back to his mother. “We might have a little time while they decide what to do with us. Maybe we can figure out a way out of here.”

  Avril nodded. “We have to try,” she said.