Joe Rush 02: Protocol Zero

by James Abel

  He rolled his eyes. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Not to me.”

  “She’s dead,” the boy blurted out. “Of course something was wrong.”

  “Do you have any idea what?”

  He looked bewildered. “What are you asking me for? How would I know?”

  “Did Kelley say anything about tension in the group?”

  Leon Kavik had large hands, and I saw a long, healed scar on the right palm as he held both hands up. There were high school textbooks on the worktable . . . Chemistry Two . . . and I realized that he did homework here.

  He said, “‘Tension’? No, unless her mother was driving a car or someone ate her dad’s ice cream . . . or that HBO guy, the one with the camera, was around. Pushy, Kelley said.”

  “When’s the last time you saw Kelley?”

  “A week ago, when they were in town. We rode to the quarry on my motorcycle. She looked for dinosaur bones. She found part of a mammoth bone, to use as a paperweight.”

  “Did she seem sick to you last week?”

  “The police asked that. No.”

  “Think about it. Coughing? Headache? Sniffles?”

  “I told the police! She wasn’t sick.”

  “Did she say anything about her parents fighting, or them being sick?”

  “She said they were like Moonies, always smiling. Never disagreeing. Borg people, she said. But sick? No.”

  Which means, if he’s right, that the symptoms hadn’t started a week ago. They came on fast.

  “Leon, this is helpful because it helps us pinpoint when any sickness started. Because they all had fever. Did she say anything to you about Clay Qaqulik?”

  “Just that she liked him, I mean, as a person.”

  “Did she mention anything about their water supplies?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. The taste? A shipment being late. Problems with food or water.”

  “Well, they had accidents all summer, but that was equipment breaking.”

  I watched him for signs of guilt; stiff posture, twitchy hands, change in tone. Kelley’s friend had said, “He has a temper.” I didn’t see it yet.

  I asked when he’d met Kelley and he said, “Here, when she came in to look around the center.”

  I asked what they did together.

  “Ride around. It was tough to see her because she was hardly ever in town.”

  I asked whether he’d been bothered by that.

  “What does that have to do with what happened?”

  “I’m just curious.”

  “Well, it was a pain, that was for sure.”

  “Made you angry?”

  “Yeah. Sure. Her parents worked her to death.”

  “By the way,” I lied, “I heard that you helped them with supplies, loading up food and water.”

  He looked surprised. “No. I never did that.”

  “I just asked because someone said they remembered you helping in the warehouse. You were a big help, they said.”

  “Ha! I was never even there. Kelley warned me to stay away when her parents were around. They didn’t want her to see boys. They were tough on her back home, too. No boys.”

  He seemed more hurt than angry, but who could tell? I was fishing. I switched direction. “Leon, what did she tell you about their project?”

  “Not a lot. They collected stuff in lakes. Algae. Fish. Plants.”

  “Did she say why?”

  “She said species are dying out as the North Slope warms. And new ones are popping up. She said her parents concentrated on basic collecting, what’s the word, cataloging. She said they shipped their stuff back to New Jersey—and to a school in Norway.”

  I’d not heard of this. “Norway?”

  “Joint study. To write up everything they found. She wanted to go there. She showed me pictures. She said in Norway there are lots of big Arctic oil and gas projects.”

  “But the Harmons didn’t do anything related to oil?”

  He shrugged miserably, as if an inability to answer was an insult to Kelley. “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re doing fine. Tell me more. She said plants are dying out.”

  “Yeah, my cousin lives down in Teller? He says a lot of their wild berries are dying off as it gets warmer there. I guess that’s the kind of thing that the Harmons were looking at, I mean, in the lakes.”

  I watched him carefully for guilt or anger. A sharp intake of breath. A tell. I saw only pain, but plenty of liars look as innocent as babes.

  I don’t know why we discount young love as puppy love, as if the number of years you’ve spent on Earth qualifies you to experience more sincere emotion, as if age is a requirement for love, as if we cynical adults have cornered the market on wisdom about the one thing that too many of us don’t appreciate until too late.

  “Kelley told me maybe I could get a scholarship to Prezant College. You know, for my work.”

  Leon swept his arm toward the table, and I realized that the artwork was his: the exquisite six-inch-tall walrus-ivory Eskimo woman, sparkly flecks of baleen as eyes; the baleen mask—made of a whale’s mouth filter—a black smooth surface etched with figures of seals; and a small painting that caught my attention most: a lone hunter in a parka, his back to the viewer as he stood on a floating bit of ice, lost at sea, rifle over his shoulder. Sky a claustrophobic gray.

  “He looks lonely,” I said.

  “He’s in trouble because he did not pay attention. He will float off and die because he made one mistake.”

  • • •

  I FOUND KAREN DANCING WITH THE FILMMAKER, AND THE SIGHT, MIKAEL trying to get closer to her as she kept her distance, his arms outstretched as if to embrace her, the quiet pleasure on his face, filled me with rage.

  It’s your own fault, Joe.

  The roller rink was one of Barrow’s big social centers on Friday nights. There were no movie theaters in the city, no bowling alleys, malls, or bars. None of the nexuses of idle leisure marking other towns. There were church meetings and socials. There were potluck dinners at churches. There were high school sports contests or traditional Eskimo dance groups, where Karen had dragged me onto the floor last week for the “everyone invited to join” dance.

  When she saw me she waved me onto the floor, smiling. Mikael Grandy turned and his grin faltered but he gamely retreated toward the folding chairs and four-person tables grouped in a semi-circle facing the raised stage. Grandy did not have his camera. The fucker hadn’t even brought it.

  Karen put her index finger over my mouth, which meant, Not one word about Mikael. She put her head on my chest. Her arms went around me. The tension began to drain away.

  The skating rink was over a half-century old, a vacuum to be filled with weekly performances of the Barrowtones, a half dozen middle-aged amateur rockers: the electric-piano-playing Eskimo Ph.D. geologist from the Iñupiat-owned Arctic Slope Regional Corporation; the guitar-playing Serbian who owned one of the town’s three pizza joints; the long-haired San Francisco–born radio jock; the Arkansas guitarist who played like Stevie Ray Vaughn; and, I saw with surprise, Deputy Luther Oz doing pretty good on the drums.

  We danced—so did five other couples—to oldies, “Devil with a Blue Dress” and “The House of the Rising Sun” and we slow moved to “Georgia on My Mind.” I wiped the deaths away. I felt her small, strong body move with mine, her arms warm against the back of my neck. I’m not a good dancer, I’m too stiff, but she made me melt and manage synchronization. When the third dance was over she took my hand and led me to a table. The asshole was sitting there, nursing a can of Pepsi from a machine out in the hall.

  “Where’s the camera, Mikael?” I asked, feeling Karen stiffen beside me. My voice had been too rough.

  “All work makes a filmmaker lose his edge, Joe.”<
br />
  “You’re a good dancer.”

  “I go to clubs sometimes in Brooklyn,” he said. “Maybe if you and Karen come east, I’ll show you around.”

  “I heard your family once owned a big piece of Alaska.”

  A shrug. “The czar giveth. Then he selleth to America.”

  Karen looked terrific in light brown cords and a cobalt-colored fitted sweater, a gold necklace showing a miniature walrus-ivory snowy owl between her bud breasts. Her hair smelled of coconut shampoo. When she took my hand, Mikael studiously avoided looking in that direction. Eddie Nakamura strode up, glanced down at the filmmaker with displeasure, smiled broadly at Karen, shook his head at me as he sat down, meaning: I can’t find the redhead.

  “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress” began playing. About four dozen people had wandered in off the street, a few were sipping from beer cans, more women present than men. The single women often danced together, the single men were usually at tables, watching the women. The dancers’ ages ranged from the twenties to the sixties. Overheard from the adjacent table, during a pause, Alan McDougal, who ran the base, and diamond hunter Calvin DeRochers, talking about the Harmons.

  Alan said, “Ted was so determined to finish up this year, despite the accidents. The guy never gave up.”

  Calvin said, “We used to sit around for hours poring over the maps of the lakes. Man, ten thousand lakes! Me thinking, Which ones have the diamonds? Him going on about plants and algae . . . Who cares about that goddamn stuff? Huh?”

  The music was free. Someone had fixed up one of those rotating mirror spheres so it threw sparks of bright, multicolored light across the audience and stage. The mood was slow and easy, even when the music was vibrant. The Barrowtones usually played until 2 or 3 A.M.

  “Are you looking for me, Colonel?”

  The sharp, British-accented voice startled me, coming from close behind me. I turned and looked into a stunningly gorgeous woman’s face, framed by a lioness mane of red hair so close that it almost brushed my head. The eyes were deep aqua, the nose classic, and the teeth as white as in a TV commercial. She seemed to throw off heat. The freckles—a light copper color—were so numerous they seemed more like a tan. The lips glistened. Karen’s shampoo smell mixed suddenly with something stronger: musk and alcohol and tobacco.

  “I’m the one looking for you,” corrected Eddie.

  “You’re a major. He’s a colonel. He’s the boss,” she said, staring boldly into my eyes. “Want to dance?”

  “Have a seat. Join us. Let’s talk.”

  “I don’t want to talk. I want to dance.”

  It was not a social invitation. I recognized a calculated preemptive strike. Merlin had told me she was a professional agitator. Mikael stared up at the model-quality face with fascination. Eddie looked wary and Karen surprised. If I stood up, if I danced with her, I knew instinctively this would cripple every future argument with Karen limiting time she spent with Mikael Grandy. I’m not the one who walked off with that woman!

  I needed to ask questions. I stood up. Tilda Swann reached for my hand. No way, I thought, but followed her out onto the floor anyway; an act which, I knew, constituted a strategic loss on the field of domestic tranquility. No sex for you tonight, Joe!

  I tried to ask questions but she had none of it, not at first. She was the kind of dancer who probably got sex-crazed cavemen to kill each other with clubs. She closed her eyes, pretending not to be aware of me, yet her rotating hips managed to stay close, and her arms wove circles in the air . . . the effect one of abandon, and of consciousness of the eyes upon her. She was trying to irritate and she was succeeding. She was so beautiful that most men in the rink stared. A guitar player hit a bad note. Deputy Luther Oz, on the drums, glared with disapproval. He’d heard Merlin warn me in the chopper to keep to the medical end, leave interviews to the cops.

  When the song was almost over, when she knew I’d be walking off in a moment, she leaned close, breath warm in my ear. “Blame it on Greenpeace,” she said.

  “You don’t strike me as a victim, Ms. Swann.”

  “Because I’m good-looking? Your oil rig has an accident? Your whaling ship spills oil? Blame Greenpeace!”

  “Are we going to talk or just rant?”

  “Fire away, mi colonel! Batteries three and six aimed at the Rainbow Warrior!”

  It was like starting a conversation in the middle; no preliminaries. Well, two could do this. She did not seem like someone who would respond to any subtle strategy except to mock it, and she was clearly clever enough to recognize any roundabout approach.

  I said, “Okay, straight out. You were seen tampering with the Harmon’s water.”

  She stopped dancing. Hands on slim hips. Then she smiled. “Good for you! Who exactly saw me?”

  “We have a record of it.”

  Lips curling. “Uh-huh. A camera, you’re saying?”

  “Audio recording,” I said. Her perfume was getting to me.

  “Oh, audio! Someone heard me tamper with water. I wonder! What do you hear when that happens, gurgling? And who is this ‘we’ anyway? The Marines?”

  “The police, Tilda.”

  “I’m a little confused. Which one are you?”

  “I’m helping them out,” I said.

  “Are you sure?” She resumed dancing, rotated her hips like a Brazilian at Ipanema. The top and bottom parts moved in entirely different rhythms. She said, “What are you really doing here anyway? In Barrow?”

  “Dancing.”

  “Touché. Oh, too bad, the music stopped. So tell me, Colonel. Just what did you guys do to them?”

  “Excuse me?”

  From our table where Karen watched, and I could feel her eyes on us, we probably looked like a couple caught up in intimate conversation. Tilda Swann’s eyes sparked with passion, and her fragrance overcame the mélange of sawdust, sweat, and bad electronics that seemed a permanent background in the old rink. The finger that poked me in the chest was slender. The wrist was encircled by a single silvery bracelet. Her rage, unfeigned, blotched her angular cheeks with color.

  “What was it, Colonel? What did you guys do on the tundra when nobody was looking? What was tested? A gas?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Anthrax? Radiation?? Give me a break, jarhead. Two detectives show up at my hotel this afternoon and want to know if I was anywhere near the warehouse that held water for the Harmons? It’s not just me, you know, that you’re accusing. My organization is used to being attacked.”

  “No one accused you. You’ve got the wrong idea.”

  “Really!” The finger poked me again. The floor had cleared but we remained in front of the stage, face-to-face. I grabbed her wrist to stop the poking. She didn’t even look down at her hand. People stared at us. She was fury incarnate, that blown-up passion represented one of the finest acting jobs I’ve ever encountered, or the best ambush.

  She said, softly, “I want you to know that I called Washington. We have people there and in London and every fucking capital in the world. And, Colonel, those people are making inquiries. Why are two Marine officers here, asking about bad water? Why are local detectives in Alaska co-opted into the goddamn U.S. military machine?”

  “How do you know what I’ve been doing?”

  “How do I know? Because when someone starts asking about me, I ask about them, too. That’s how I know!”

  “And how well did you know the Harmons?”

  “Little accident? Little gas leak? Planning on blaming Greenpeace? It won’t work. I’ll find out what you did.”

  • • •

  WE WENT BACK TO THE TABLE, WHERE KAREN PAID MORE ATTENTION TO Mikael than before, like I wasn’t there. Screw you, Joe, for ignoring me. Tilda pulled up a chair between me and Eddie. Karen smiled dazzlingly and asked Mikael to dance. She flashed me a look when she
stood up. Not rage. Just a kind of raw intensity. Karen looking from Tilda to me, sensing more than just antagonism. The whole scene one of crazy feminine misinterpretation. Planet of the women. Planet of miscommunication. Planet of trouble for Joe Rush.

  “I didn’t touch their water, Colonel. I didn’t even know them. But if you’re thinking that somebody tampered with supplies, why not talk to those two perverts from Texas, brother and sister, my ass. Why not grill the pilots and mechanics. No. Gotta be Greenpeace. You know why people always think it’s Greenpeace?”

  “Why?”

  “We’re convenient targets.”

  Eddie said, “I thought it’s because you always claim the credit!”

  Karen was back and she’d had enough. “Joe, let’s go home.”

  • • •

  IF I THOUGHT IT WAS COLD INSIDE, THAT WAS NOTHING COMPARED TO what happened when we stepped outside, and into the small, streetlamp-lit parking lot. We were on another planet. Merlin had been right. In the time between my entrance here and my departure, winter had arrived. The temperature had plunged. The season had crashed down with all the swiftness of an avalanche in the Rockies.

  Everything was the same, but different. The night air was brittle. Our breath had steamed out before but now it shot away in small, white puffs. Even Karen, mad as she was, stopped dead and looked outward . . .

  I had the sense of the horizon contracting, the planet shrinking, the sky losing its third dimension: depth. Altitude sucked down, gravity grown monstrous. Distance seemed eradicated and the scale of the place shrank. There was a drawing-in feeling, a sense of reduced possibility. There was, in the air, a palpable promise of isolation.

  Take care of yourself. Winter is back.

  I shivered as the air knifed through my parka. The stars blinked, as if startled, then cloud cover smothered them up. The moon went from a low orb to a suggestion. Breathing seemed like something we needed to plan. The smell had altered, too, the briny ocean tinge was gone, as was the peaty wet mud and decayed floral essence of autumn tundra. Now an almost sterile frigidity had replaced it.

  And the rhythmic background shoosh of that vast sea across the road—as we rode silently home—went from liquid to something filled with friction. As if shore was trying to extend, reach out, become tectonic.