Joe Rush 02: Protocol Zero

by James Abel

  We reminisced. Would I stay? Did I remember our fifth-grade teacher Mrs. Wilberforce, and the way she wore glasses around her neck on a red string? Did I remember the time that we climbed into the condemned Brady Textile Mill grounds, got sick-drunk on scotch, almost got caught by the Lee cops? Did I remember diving competitions on summer nights at the old granite quarry in Becket?

  A world without the admiral, Eddie, and terrorists. A world in which microbes gave you a flu, at worst. They didn’t threaten to wipe out a town.

  Late at night, I searched.

  I sat in the second-floor study, computer glow on my face, and followed the progress of the Barrow eco lodge, on Tilda’s Swann’s “Save the North Slope” blog. I took phone calls from Valley Girl, who was working for me off the clock. I think the admiral knew she was doing this, and let it go. He’s that way.

  Eddie called once a week, checking in, giving me space. Galli called once a month. He was waiting for me to get bored, or anxious, or just to miss Washington. He was hoping I would come back. Forget it.

  It was a bad Christmas, very cold for Massachusetts, not so cold for the North Slope. I heard from Calvin, who had tracked me down, and wanted to know how I was doing. He must have told the others. Next I heard from Bruce, the McDougals, Merlin, and Deb Lillienthal. Their e-mails were casual and caring, filling me in on their lives, sometimes shyly mentioning Karen, wondering if I’d be in Barrow next summer season, doing more research.

  Oh, just checking in, Joe.

  On New Year’s Day I phoned Dr. Liz Willoughby, head of the department of sciences at Prezant College, New Jersey, at home. She seemed subdued and said that the FBI had stopped coming around, asking about the Harmons. She said their project had been taken over by an ex-grad student, now an assistant professor. She missed the Harmons, and had not gotten over their loss.

  I let her think that I was still actively involved in the investigation, and asked if the ex-grad student would be going out to the lakes again this coming summer and following up, as Ted Harmon would have done?

  “Not on lake nine. Dr. Untermeyer will be doing the other lakes. But nine is off limits now.”

  “Why is that?”

  “There was trouble getting permission from the new owners, that hotel going up, up there.”

  I leaned forward. “The eco lodge?”

  “Hotel. Eco lodge. Whatever. They were rude, Craig told me. They said no research of any kind will be permitted on the property. They turned down Dr. Untermeyer, even after he offered to stay at the lodge and pay full rate.” She paused protectively. “Dr. Untermeyer’s grant wouldn’t allow that. But he has family money. He would have supplemented the grant with that.”

  I listened, sipping coffee, watching a deer wandering around the side of my screened-in porch. It looked how I felt. Lost.

  She said, “Craig told them he’d be quiet. All he wanted was to row a boat out and use a net to take samples. No machines. No loud noises. He even offered to give lectures to guests for free, about the Arctic.”

  “But they didn’t want lectures, did they?”

  “No.”

  “They were adamant, sounds like.”

  “I’ll say!”

  “Maybe they told him—when he persisted—not to bother asking again, next year. That they would never change their minds.”

  “How did you know?” Dr. Liz Willoughby asked sadly. “Dr. Harmon’s comparative study work required a ten-year spread. That will all be worthless now, at that lake.”

  It was the word worthless that did it. I hung up and looked out at a Berkshire blizzard. Snow drove sideways into the house. The fireplace was lit downstairs. It was toasty in here. January in Massachusetts.

  In my mind, I saw lake number nine, a cabin reduced to cinders, charred bodies in sizzling snow. I’d looked for secret explanations. I’d sought overcomplicated ones. Worthless, Liz Willoughby had said. I heard her in my head again. Worthless.

  You went back to burn evidence, Jens. What would that evidence have been? Equipment? It would be dumb to leave equipment? Files? In a busted-up cabin? No way! Clothes? F drive? Photos?

  What would constitute logical evidence in this case?

  I sat up straight.

  My heart started racing. I probably should have called the admiral at that point. But I didn’t do it. I wanted to do this last step by myself.

  • • •

  WHEN IT COMES TO GOVERNMENT SCIENCE GRANTS, MOST CAN BE FOUND in public records. I accessed the websites of the three principal agencies funding U.S. Arctic research: NOAA, NASA, National Science Foundation. I knew which agencies they were because almost all the researchers last summer had been funded by one of them, at least.

  I cross-referenced grants with the name Dr. Bruce Friday, way back when, before he retired, to see what he’d claimed to study. I read his applications and grant descriptions. I started with the latest one and went back to when he was still a professor, years before he got involved in the polar bear stuff.

  Bruce Friday had used Jens Erik Holte as a pilot.

  There it was.

  I sat back. I felt my blood coursing. My head hurt where I’d hit it in that ice cellar, but maybe this was ghost pain. The moon was up when I made a few calls to Alaska. Dawn was breaking, snow was blowing, and the clubfooted moose was straggling past when I called the airlines and booked a flight.

  • • •

  SAS JETS TO OSLO LEAVE NEWARK AIRPORT AROUND 9 P.M., DAILY, EARLY enough to catch local, connecting flights out of Norway’s capital. From Oslo you must hurry to catch the early connection to their Arctic capital. But Oslo has a small airport. Immigration is efficient and posted signs show you the right way to go. I made my second flight with moments to spare, just as the doors were closing.

  Two hours later I was wide awake when the Airbus pilot announced our landing. I looked down. Tromso lies along what looked like a deep fjord, or harbor. It is situated at the same latitude as Barrow, but thanks to the warm air from the Gulf Stream, that’s where similarities end.

  The city of seventy-five thousand looked like a mix of quaint old and sleek new, all emanating clean; deep blue water, steeply rising snow-covered bluffs on two sides, a neat downtown, a sprawling college campus, and modest, steeply roofed homes rising in tiers from the commercial area by the water, to the residential one in the heights. It was Currier and Ives in the Arctic. It radiated comfort.

  On any given day, in January, the temperature differential between Barrow and Tromso can be as much as one hundred degrees. A check of Google told me that Barrow was suffering fifty below zero temperatures that day. Even the hardy Iñupiats would stay indoors. Venture out and the thickest parka would feel like paper. Sled dogs would huddle in their little homes. Karen, my beautiful Karen, would have bundled up in waffle clothing, explained one more time how the waffle pattern had come from research on Arctic fox skin, gone for a short hike, joked about windchill.

  But in Tromso, same day, it was a balmy thirty degrees, bright and sunny, and featherlike snowflakes fell, as if out of some 1950s Paramount Christmas classic: Santa’s Home. The airport was bright, clean and modern. A new Mercedes taxi took me into town and the chatty driver explained in perfect English that the fare for the ten-minute drive was sixty dollars, since, he said proudly, Norway’s currency was the strongest on Earth, after Switzerland’s. “From our northern oil and gas,” he bragged.

  It had been hard to book a hotel in early January, since that week Tromso hosted its annual State of the Arctic Conference. I’d read on the plane, in the online New York Times, that the meeting attracted heavyweights from around the world, experts in northern geopolitics, oil company reps, military types, scientists, biomed people, explorers, and Eskimos. There would be shippers speculating on profits from new shortcut trade routes. There would be generals at cocktail parties at the university, talking about defense. There w
ould be adventurers seeking publicity, trying to raise money for expeditions.

  Valley Girl had confirmed, after accessing Bruce Friday’s credit card records, that he was here, too.

  The cab dropped me at a boutique-like hotel where I sipped lobby coffee and waited for a room to be cleaned. Departure hour was 3 P.M. I eavesdropped on a trio of French, Italian, and Colorado-based journalists, in the lobby, speaking English, deciding which presentation at the conference they planned to cover this late afternoon.

  Diamond discoveries, or extinction threats?

  I asked directions to the university. The lovely blond concierge said I could walk, but that would take forty-five minutes. Could she call a cab for me? Sure. The journalists, overhearing, asked to split the fare.

  I said I’d rather not. I had not come to make friends.

  The streets were freshly plowed, and piles of snow flanked cobblestone thoroughfares. Schoolchildren wearing cartoon logo backpacks walked by, holding hands. The campus lay on a hill, and there, an hour later, I spotted Bruce Friday in a packed auditorium, as house lights went out, as a screen lowered. Arctic University is the northernmost institute of higher learning in the world.

  On screen I saw: “Tromso! Hot Spot for Cold Biotech.” The speaker was a Norwegian government speaker bragging about Tromso’s “biotechnology cluster.”

  “Our university is a nexus of research in the High North. We have several successful biotech companies headquartered here. Our government offers aid: Innovation Norway and The Research Council of Norway to spur discoveries. And there is no dearth of private investors! Quite the contrary! Norinnova and KapNord Invest support aggressive research here. We are confident that many helpful discoveries from the Arctic will assist future medical and molecular diagnostics. To say it simply”—she grinned—“much profit for all!”

  Bruce Friday sat alone, nodding, midway down the center row. He was recognizable from the mop of chestnut hair, back sloped from bad posture and, glimpsed from the side, the out of style wire-rimmed glasses.

  The audience was a mixed bag of academics and business people, some in suits, others dressed casually. The speaker was trim and fortyish, in a dark blue pantsuit and white shirt. “The infrastructure for commercial science is great,” she said. “Documentation labs, bio-center lab, marine processing facility, all right on this very campus.”

  How could I have missed this?

  Bruce took notes. The audience was riveted. I saw lots of Chinese reps, sitting in tight groups, which is how you knew they were from China, instead of somewhere else. I saw the journalists from my hotel standing in back. Bruce occasionally said something to a woman beside him. The screen presented a roll call of local bio-companies: ArcticZymes, which sought enzyme products from cold-adapted life-forms; Ayanda, pharmaceuticals; Calanus, which harvested zooplankton and might already have come up with a product that worked against type-2 diabetes; Chitinor, which manufactured high-quality biopolymers from cold-water shrimp, for use in cosmetic procedures; OliVita, which supplied dietary supplements, including seal oils.

  It was funny, I thought. Back at home the admiral was a frustrated voice in Washington trying to impress listeners that the Arctic needed attention. Here everyone took it for granted. They planned for it. They seemed ten years ahead of anything I’d heard in Washington, D.C.

  After a while there was a coffee break.

  I fixed on Bruce.

  I stayed out of sight, as he made his way in the crowd to a large hall outside where piles of oily-looking, heavily sugared jelly donuts and strong coffee had been laid out.

  I did not want Bruce to see me yet, not when there were people around. I followed at a distance as he wandered idly down a hall filled with exhibits; models of Arctic rescue craft, Arctic clothing, Arctic drill technology, and cold-resistant equipment, its manufacturers claimed.

  At five, day over, he joined the stream of conference attendees streaming out into the dark, heading toward parked buses. The buses were there to take participants back to hotels. I feared that I would lose him. I could not follow him onto a bus or he’d see me.

  But he walked.

  You always did like your exercise, Bruce. You always were a surprise, looking frail, being so hardy.

  He strolled along narrow streets, peering into souvenir shops, considering quaint restaurants, skirting the brightly lit harbor as coastal ferries went in or out. There were cross-country ski trails in the hills, I’d read. Hiking. Trams taking stargazers up a mountain. Tromso was allegedly one of the best places on Earth to see the magnificent aurora borealis.

  Tourists from the world over came here to marvel at the lights.

  Karen would have loved this, I thought, feeling an ache in my chest, feeling the past.

  His hotel was small, well lit, set a block from the harbor, on a snowy square surrounded by restaurants, a gym, and it had an old church in the center. The hotel featured four stars in the window. Bruce was living well, no longer an impoverished scientist needing handouts, or a polar bear activist seeking grants.

  I walked to the church. It was locked. I stood on the front steps. I waited.

  An hour went by and he came out.

  He dressed the same. He always did. Apparently he was paying more for hotels these days, but style wise, Bruce remained Bruce. He never looked back. He meandered past souvenir shops featuring Arctic sweaters, Sami clothing, reindeer-horn handle knives, Laplander carvings. The night was clear. The mountains were visible across the harbor, and the lights marking the tramline sparkled.

  Bruce Friday entered a glass-fronted restaurant that looked expensive, judging from the décor seen through the plate-glass window. I watched him pause by the maitre d’ station. I saw the man shrug, shake his head, and direct Bruce to a window-side table, for four.

  Five minutes later a G-class white Mercedes SUV pulled up to the restaurant. A suited driver got out and opened the rear door. The shorter man who emerged was middle-aged, wealthily dressed but plain looking. Pudgy, in a dark blue overcoat. Hatless. Expensive gloves. The man walked with a side-to-side gait that gave the impression of an out-of-shape body beneath the sleek outerwear.

  The driver pulled the car to the side, kept the motor on, and waited. I memorized the license plate. And through the restaurant window, I memorized the stranger’s face.

  The man sat talking animatedly with Bruce for forty-five minutes. They drank. They ate. They shook hands and the man left. Bruce lingered over an after-dinner drink. I never knew he liked after-dinner drinks. I was learning all kinds of things about Bruce now that I wished I’d known before.

  Bruce got up and shrugged into his coat, went back outside, scanned the sky, and again started walking

  He was restless, curious, or excited. Or maybe it was too early to go to sleep. He headed away from his hotel, and up the steeply rising side streets that took us both away from the port. He trudged across a small, dark city park and I followed him up a zigzaggy series of narrow streets lined by private homes. Nothing big and grand. Everything modest, low, set into the land.

  Where are you going?

  Sometimes events break in the way in which you want them. Sometimes, after long stretches of difficulty, fate gives a gift. Bruce had his hat shoved low and gloved hands in his pockets. He periodically stopped and peered up at the sky. He seemed to be looking for something. Then I realized what it was. He was searching for the aurora borealis. Bruce the tourist had finished business and, job over for the day, wanted to see the fantastic northern lights.

  Oh, you want the best spot for lights? Well, sir, you must get away from the town lights for a better view!

  The streets rose steeply. He never turned around. There were a few people walking also; either down toward the commercial strip and the cafés, nightclubs, restaurants . . . or back to their lodging. Most walkers looked young. Couples held hands. No one acknowledged me. In Troms
o, I guess, people were accustomed to seeing outsiders. There was a ski-town ambiance. Lots of new people every day.

  Bruce Friday reached an area of thick woods, a park I supposed. He hesitated, then walked into the woods. When I reached that spot I saw that he’d followed a narrow footpath, covered with snow.

  I followed. The snow was deep, but crusty on top, so my boots sank in only slightly. My ankles did not get wet.

  He’s walking through the woods. Ah, he’s walking out of the trees and onto that meadow or frozen lake. No houses here. This is probably the place that the guidebooks identify as a good spot to see the northern lights.

  And suddenly, the aurora borealis appeared.

  It showed at first like movie floodlights shining up from the northwest quadrant. Or perhaps those were automobile headlights pointed up, as if a car climbed a steep hill. No, that wasn’t it because the floodlights turned to magenta lava and then the whole sky seemed iridescent. I saw what looked like lines on an oscilloscope, pulsing, as if heaven was sending silent messages to Earth. If only someone would look. Or listen.

  “Hello, Bruce.”

  He spun. I was six feet from him, but he knew my voice. He froze, a mix of surprise and horror on his face. Bruce in the same old Barrow parka. The same blue scarf and dark stocking hat. But the eyes were not the same, not when it came to expression. They were animal eyes. They were a deer’s eyes, in a headlight.

  He started to run.

  We were alone and the snow was deep and I was pretty healthy now, missing toes but the therapy and training had worked fine. I caught up with him in less than sixty seconds. He went down hard, tried to fight, tried to scream but I hit him in the solar plexus. “Ooooof!” He was strong, but not trained in combat. I probably had enough adrenaline surging through me to power six Marines. I poked his throat where the soft flesh hits the collarbone, not hard, not a kill blow, just a fuck you. He couldn’t breathe. He started gagging. His hands went, involuntarily, to his throat.

  Control yourself, I thought. I had one of those Laplander knives out, pressed to his throat.