by Tom Clancy
Nimec had learned much of this from his files, and seen more with his own eyes upon touchdown. He had adequate time to hear about the rest from Halloran and two other members of the aircrew as they sat together in a heated visitors’ lounge near the apron, sipped passably decent coffee, and watched the Herc being emptied of freight as it took fuel through the lines.
The stop was lasting longer than he’d expected. Almost two hours after the plane’s arrival at McMurdo it remained parked on the ice, the activity around it ongoing without any hint of a letup, its engines running because the minus-50° Fahrenheit temperature was just eight degrees above the danger threshold at which its hydraulics would begin to fail — the rubber hoses, gaskets, and valve seals getting brittle enough to crack, the JP8 fuel that powered the Allisons becoming too viscous to flow freely despite its special cold-weather formulation.
Draining his paper cup, Nimec glanced at his watch, then at the busy airstrip outside the window to his left. He let out a grumbling sound and stretched his arms.
“You have to get in sync,” Halloran said, eyeballing him from across the cafeteria table.
Nimec shook his head, turned his wrist to display the watch’s face.
“I switched to New Zealand time at Christchurch,” he said.
Halloran looked sideways at his fellow Guardsmen. Then all three laughed.
Nimec bristled. “Didn’t realize I said something funny.”
Halloran fought in vain to stifle a chuckle. “Sorry, no offense intended. I meant you should synchronize the clock in here.” He tapped his forehead. “This place, the sun doesn’t rise or set, but kind of crawls around you in a circle like a snail on a basketball hoop for about six months. Then it hibernates for the winter.”
His explanation, such as it was, only made Nimec grumpier.
“I don’t care if the sun balances on the tip of my nose for half the year,” he said. “Things need to get done.”
“Sure. I’m just saying to remember where you are.”
“So your advice is, what, that we check our schedules on arrival?”
Halloran frowned.
“Listen,” he said, motioning his chin toward the window. “You have any idea how long it takes to plot and cut an ice runway?”
Nimec shook his head, shrugging, uncertain whether he cared at that particular moment. He’d spent the better part of his week hurtling through transoceanic airspace, spent much of the week before getting poked, prodded, and pissing into paper cups in an accelerated barrage of medical examinations. He was annoyed by his own crabbiness. And he missed his sweetheart Corvette.
“At least sixty, seventy hours,” Halloran was saying in answer to his own question. “Think about it. The field groomers get through with all their snow-moving and grading, then a storm plasters the area and they’re back to square one. That happens so often — with a vengeance — nobody even thinks to rag. It’s just business as usual.”
“Your point being…?”
“Exactly what it was when we started this conversation,” Halloran said. “Adjust. Don’t try to impose yourself on this place. Even most governments acknowledge it’s ungovernable.”
Nimec looked at him. This place. Nothing at all out of the ordinary about the phrase. But he somehow found Halloran’s repetition of it interesting… and hadn’t Evers also used it at least once rather than having named the continent?
“Take things as they come,” Nimec said, putting aside the thought. “Does that sound about right?”
Halloran continued to disregard the obvious pique in his tone.
“About.”
“You have a very Zen attitude for a military man,” Nimec said.
Halloran smiled, touched the circular ANG 139th TAS shoulder patch on the blouse of his flight suit. A nose-on view of a Hercules ski transport against a blue background, with the polar ice caps embroidered in white at the top and bottom, it was designed to be symbolic of a compass: the wings of the plane crossing east and west to the edges of the patch, the tail rudder similarly pointing due north, the skis lowered toward the southern cap.
“Very Zen,” Halloran said to the Guardsman beside him, a fellow lieutenant named Mathews. “Maybe we should have that stitched right here above the plane, make it our official motto. How about it?”
Mathews grinned and told him it sounded like a good idea. Then all three members of the aircrew were laughing again.
Nimec sighed, rapped the table with his fingers, listened to the engines of the plane humming outside the lounge.
Something told him he was at the hard rock bottom of what would be a steep and difficult learning curve.
Cold Corners Research Base (21°88’ S, 144°72’ E)
Topped with fuel, the Herc finally got back under way some three hours after alighting at Williams Field. Its departure commenced with a jarring bounce as its wheels dropped to crack the ice that had melted around its skis from the friction of landing, and then had frozen over again to hold the plane steadily in position. After the wheels were retracted, it was a swift, smooth slide over the ski way to takeoff.
Cold Corners was four hundred odd miles south on the coastline, an aerial sprint of just about an hour. Nimec stuck it out in the webbing of the aft compartment, which he found much less disagreeable now that the bulk of its freight and over half its passengers — including the loud Russians and Australian adrenaline junkies — had gone on to their various destinations. The hold space freed up by their departure also gave Nimec a pretty well unrestricted choice of seating, and he grabbed a spot by a porthole that afforded good bird’s-eye views of both McMurdo and Cold Corners.
The contrast between them was striking. Seen from above, MacTown resembled an industrial park, or maybe a mining town that had sprung up without systematic planning over a span of many decades. Nimec guessed there were probably between a hundred and two hundred separate structures — multistory barracks-style units, rows of arched canvas Jamesway huts, smaller blue-skinned metal Quonsets, warehouse buildings, and upwards of a dozen massive, rust-blighted steel fuel-storage tanks strung out on the surrounding hillsides. Tucked among them were a couple of appreciably more modern complexes that Sergeant Barry identified as NSF headquarters and the Crary Science and Engineering Center, but Nimec’s overall impression of the station was one of rambling, indiscriminate sprawl and exceeding ugliness.
Very much on the other hand, Cold Corners looked like the working model for a future space colony… and by no accident. Roger Gordian’s innovative flair and penchant for cost efficiency made him an almost compulsive multitasker. Cold Corners was envisioned as an all-in-one satellite ground station, new space technology center, and human habitability and performance lab for long-term interplanetary settlements, and the heart of the base was configured of six sleek, linked rectangular pods on jack-able stilts that allowed it to be elevated above the rising snow drifts that eventually inundated most Antarctic stations. In his oversight of the installation’s security analysis, Nimec had stayed abreast of its development from conception to construction, and knew the few outlying buildings included a solar-paneled housing for its supplementary electrical generator, a desalinization plant to convert seawater beneath the ice crust into drinkable water, a garage for the vehicles, a trio of side-by-side satcom radomes, and of course the airfield facility that was its lifeline to civilization. The main energy, environmental-control, and waste-disposal systems were in utility corridors — or utilidors — beneath the permanent ice strata.
Minutes after Sergeant Barry announced the Herc was coming up on Cold Corners, Nimec felt its skis deploy with a thump. Then it made a sharp left turn, and the level white spread of the airfield swelled into his window.
On the ground at last, Nimec unbuckled, zipped into his parka, shouldered his bags, and went about exchanging farewells with the airmen.
The wind was staggering as he descended the exit ramp to the field. A downscaled version of Willy, it had a more modest complement of personnel shuttl
es and freight haulers waiting to meet the plane. Also present was a small welcoming committee clad in the ubiquitous cardinal-red survival gear. It seemed colder here than at McMurdo, and the party’s members wore full rubber face masks that rendered them indistinguishable from each other. Nimec saw somebody he guessed was its leader step toward the plane ahead of the rest.
Nimec had taken about two steps toward the shuttle bus when that same person rushed over and swept him into a tight, eager embrace.
“Pete.” A woman’s voice through the mask, muffled but familiar. And close against his face. “God, I’ve missed you something awful.”
Nimec’s surprise dissolved in a flash of happiness. He smiled openly for the first time in hours, ignoring the raw sting of the wind on his lips.
“Same here, Meg,” he said, wrapping his arms around her.
EIGHT
SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS
Gorrie was stopped at a rusty old pump at a little service station south of Newtonmore, working its hose toward the rear of his hatchback, when another driver pulled up on the opposite side of the island, exited his Vectra, and went around to stand alongside him.
“You’ll want to let me piss in your tank before filling it from that pump,” the man said. “Healthier for the engine, guaranteed to be more economical.”
Gorrie waved the fuel nozzle at a paper coffee cup on his trunk.
“No, thanks,” he said. “But you ought to make that bloke in the convenience shop a like offer before he puts up another pot of spew.”
“Really?” The man broke into a grin. “Well, I’ve got news, it’s already done. What else you think you’ve been sipping right there?”
Gorrie grinned back at him.
“How’ve you been, Conall?”
“You mean before or after motoring fifty kilometers through the fog?”
“Och, you’re reminding me of Nan,” Gorrie said. “I’d expect you’d be grateful, consider it a holiday to be rescued from your shoebox office in Dundee.”
Conall snorted. “Got me on that,” he said.
They extended their hands, shook vigorously.
Gorrie opened his gas tank door, unscrewed its cap, inserted the fuel nozzle, and squeezed the handle, feeling in vain for a lock to hold it in the “on” position. It would have been nice if his coffee were drinkable, he thought. Conall hadn’t griped for nothing. The weather was indeed drearily foul, with occasional plops of rain and soft hail coming out of the smoky gray mist.
The pump’s sluggish dial readouts were turning behind a scuffed, grime-smeared glass panel.
“All right,” Gorrie said. “What have you brought to make me happy?”
“And violate enough of the Procurator Fiscal’s rules to get me fired from my job several times over?”
“That too.”
Conall reached into an inside pocket of his leather car coat. He took out a cardboard floppy-disc mailer.
“Here you go,” he said, passing it to Gorrie. “Preliminary lab results on your fallen peach and her husband.”
Gorrie nodded, stuffing the mailer into his own topcoat.
“Appreciate it,” he said. “Don’t suppose you had a chance to give the files a look.”
Conall shook his head.
“Afraid not,” he said. “But I hear the coroner’s ready to confirm the deaths a murder-suicide, issue a report that’ll put the inquiry to a fast and easy rest.”
Gorrie considered that a moment, then shrugged.
“We’ll see, brother-in-law,” he said, and finished gassing up.
* * *
“What about my redhead?” asked Gorrie.
“Aye, that’s where you have yourself a piece of something to match the weather,” said Conall. He took the gas pump and held it out like a pointer. “An interesting case.”
“And?”
“Report is nae finished.”
“Conall — come now. Not a hint?”
His brother-in-law leaned back on the blue fender of his car and shined an idiot grin. Then he began pumping fuel into his Vectra.
“I suppose this will cost me a pint or two around Easter,” offered Gorrie finally.
“I was thinking of those fine cigars ye had at Christmas.”
“That was Fennel had ’em, not me.”
“Fennel and you are close as stones in a castle wall.”
“I’ll send my sergeant after the report.”
“The sergeant you complained had flown off to Paris for a job hunting art thieves? The lass who has not been replaced despite your crying buckets of tears to the superintendent.”
“Not to the superintendent.”
His brother-in-law smiled. “Ten cigars.”
“Two. They’re five pounds apiece.”
“I suppose you’ll find out soon enough through official channels.”
“Three.”
Conall returned the nozzle to the pump. “Truth is, the lab report won’t tell you anything, save the T4 is more than a wee bit high, above 37 ug/dLs. Very high, that. She had a great deal of phenylephrine hydrochloride in her stomach as well. Now, if you cared to get technical—”
“Conall, you’re irritating my nerves,” said Gorrie. “What does it mean?”
“Five cigars?”
“I’ll see what I can do about the cigars, lad. I’ll do my best.”
“She had no thyroid. She was taking artificial thyroid hormone because she’d just had her thyroid taken out. Cancer, I suspect.”
“And?”
“Well, she took too much of it, you understand. The hormone. That’s the T4. You’ll have to fish out the medical records, but the thinking is she forgot what she was doing and took two pills a day instead of one, two or three times. And then she took the cold medicine and it gave her a stroke. Far too much of that too. Small dose together might even have killed her, but here there was no chance. Some people have no sense when they’re medicating themselves.”
“Stroke?”
“Aye. Bad luck. Sort of thing they warn you about at the chemist. It could also be suicide, I guess. But it’d be a very clever way to do it — too clever. Easier to get a gun like the Mackay woman.”
“Getting a gun is not that easy for most of us,” noted Gorrie. They hadn’t been able to trace the weapon, though he’d put DC Andrews back on it three days before.
Conall shrugged. “More than likely it was an accident. Medicine was taken off the market a year or two ago.”
“Matched the type on the floor?”
“I believe that will be the report.”
“Do you ha’e anything else for me, laddie?”
“Not a thing. Arm nick was the sort of thing you would get giving blood. Nice work on the thyroid incision, I’m told. Takes a real artist to sew it up.”
“Her face was puffed up.”
“Aye. The sinuses. She had a cold, remember?”
“Aye.”
“There was a bruise on her chest, probably bumped herself falling.”
“Can you give blood when you have a cold?” Gorrie asked.
“Why not? Five cigars,” added Conall. “And I’d like the disc back when you’re done.”
“Aye,” Gorrie grunted.
An accident then, like council member Ewie Cameron’s accident. A coincidence, random and unconnected. The sort of thing that happened all the time.
A walrus waited for Gorrie in his office, polishing its tusks on a large piece of pastry supplied by one of the girls down the hall. He sat behind Gorrie’s desk, brushing crumbs away with his stubby fins, every so often touching his enormous mustache to see if any had strayed there.
The walrus was the deputy area commander, whose arrival at the Inverness Command Area’s CID section could bode no good at all.
“Sir,” said Gorrie, who had been warned by scurrying comrades before he approached.
“Inspector Gorrie, I’m pleased you could make it this morning,” said the deputy commander, Nab Russell.
“I’ve been nosin
’ around,” answered Gorrie. “What brings you here, Chief?”
“There are rumors, Inspector, that your methods of detection are not proceeding with the snap and polish expected of the Northern Constabulary,” said Russell.
From another man, the words would have been meant to elicit a laugh. But another man was not the deputy commander. In a minute, Gorrie knew, he would begin to cite the Constabulary’s unprecedented detection rate—62 percent, up four percentage points from the year before and, more importantly, four points higher than that of the Central Constabulary. Not that there was competition, mind.
“I believe a review of my methods will pass any muster,” said Gorrie.
“You’re trying to connect a traffic accident involving a respected council member — a legate holder, a man descended from heroes, Frank — an unfortunate accident to a tawdry suicide?”
“At least one was murder,” said Gorrie.
“Cameron slept with the wife?”
“No evidence of that. I didnae even think it has been suggested.”
“Where’s the connection then?”
“It would be premature to connect them, sir. Inquiries are being made.”
“Inquiries, lad! I’m not the bleeding press. What is it you have?”
“The dead men met together the night they were murdered,” said Gorrie. “That’s it.”
The walrus pounced. “One was murdered by his wife. The other died in an accident.”
“Manslaughter, at the least.”
“Pending an investigation — and that is not your case,” Russell reminded him.
“I didna ask to be assigned it, sir.”
“You made hints.”
“I followed strict procedure when I met with the detective sergeant in charge,” said Gorrie sharply.
He had. The hints were made in a pub later on.
“Frank.” The walrus leaned to one side, then slid back in the desk chair. With appropriate adjustment for specifics of geographic locale, the speech that followed could have been given by nearly any police supervisor in the islands of Great Britain since the Romans. Crimes to be solved, yes, but flights of fancy not to be indulged. Connections sought, but fantasies nipped in the bud. Investigation to be pursued, but wild-goose chases to be foreclosed.