The First Horseman

by John Case

  As the plane banked closer, the impression of a Christmas idyll receded, and once he was on the ground, Frank saw that Hammerfest was far from perfect. The snow was mottled with soot and grit, and diesel fumes hung in the air. What had seemed a Christmas village at five thousand feet turned out to be a rather ordinary place, more remarkable for its modernity than anything else. Later, he learned that the town had been occupied by the Nazis during the Second World War, the port a staging ground for U-boat forays in the North Atlantic. When the Germans were finally driven away, they’d torched the place, so that today almost nothing remained from the prewar era.

  Except, perhaps, for the desk clerk at the Hotel Aurora, a pallid septuagenarian who insisted on carrying his bags to his room. There, Frank unpacked, and after enjoying a long hot shower, returned to the lobby.

  According to the schedule Annie Adair had given him, the Rex was due back from Kopervik on Saturday at the earliest. That should have given him two free days, but after all that had happened, it seemed like a good idea to check on the ship’s progress. Frank asked the desk clerk where the harbormaster’s office was, and the old man gave him a crisp brochure that had a map on the back.

  ‘It’s just there,’ he said, drawing a line from You Are Here to a street corner near the harbor.

  Outside, it was forty degrees and overcast, with the sun reduced to a dull glow on the horizon. The air was damp, and a raw wind blew from the west, smelling of the sea. Though the Aurora was only ten minutes from the harbor, Frank was chilled to the bone by the time he got there.

  And he was surprised. The harbor was bigger and busier than he’d expected. Surveying the scene, he watched a monster crane swivel and clank as it unloaded containerized cargo from the hold of a Croatian freighter. Warehouses abutted the street that ran along the quay, while purse seiners and trawlers rocked in the suddenly choppy water. Overhead, a flock of gulls cawed and wheeled in the heavy air, while nearby, a woman in foul-weather gear sluiced down the wharf with a high-powered hose, driving a glitter of fish scales into the sea.

  Outside the harbormaster’s building, a sheet of metal, not unlike a placard holding a restaurant menu, rattled in the wind. It displayed a printed sheet listing the day’s arrivals and departures, the names of the vessels, their flags and home ports. He looked idly down it – the Annelise, the Goran Kovasic, the Stella Norske – never expecting to see a listing for the Rex Mundi since this seemed to be a daily schedule. But there it was:

  Amkomft 1250 Skip Klara Hammerfest

  Amkomft 0240 Skip Rex Mundi Murmansk

  He glanced at his watch. It was nearly one-thirty. Unless this was a mistake, the Rex was two days ahead of schedule and would arrive in about an hour and a half. He ducked into the harbormaster’s office to ask if the schedule was correct and, if it was, where the ship would dock.

  He’d expected an old salt with reading glasses and a ruddy complexion, but the harbormaster turned out to be a young man with long black hair tied so tightly into a ponytail that his eyes had an Oriental cast. He sat in front of a battered monitor with his feet on the desk, reading Rolling Stone. Recessed lighting illuminated the blond roots that lay next to his scalp.

  ‘I was looking at the schedule,’ Frank said.

  The kid looked up. ‘Yes?’

  ‘And what it says, it says there’s a ship, the Rex Mundi –’

  The kid glanced at the monitor and nodded. ‘Yeah, she’s an ice-breaker. The pilot’s already aboard.’

  ‘So it’s not a mistake . . .’

  The ponytail swung left to right. ‘She’ll be at C Wharf in an hour. Out my door, right, then down to the end.’

  Frank couldn’t believe it. He could have missed them again. Who the fuck did they think they were? Who? How could they not tell him their schedule had changed again? What if he hadn’t come to Hammerfest? What if he’d stayed in Archangel or Murmansk? What did they think he was? Some schmuck on a junket?

  He’d been scrupulous about keeping people informed. He’d given the foundation his fax and phone numbers, arrival and departure times – everything and anything they could want. And then he’d seen to it that they forwarded the information to the ship, and copied everything to Kicklighter’s office at the NIH. So there was no way they didn’t know where he was, or how to reach him.

  And now they were dissing him, treating him like a cub reporter for News of the World or something. What he oughta do, Frank thought, slamming his way out of the harbormaster’s office, was pack up and go home. Just – forget about it – he needed this like a message from the Dog Planet.

  Though, actually, the mistake was his. He should have kept his mouth shut, but instead he’d talked up the story. Told everyone (and, in particular, the foundation’s director, Fletcher Harrison Coe) how interesting it was. How important. How exciting. And now, thanks to him, the foundation was looking forward to a three-part series with reprints in the Post, the Times, and God knew where else. Even now, Coe was probably taking managing editors to lunch at the Century or Cosmos Club and telling them just how terrific the piece was going to be (and by extension, what a wonderful reporter Frank Daly was). So that, if he should now come back to Washington with nothing in his briefcase but a swizzle stick from Aeroflot and a postcard from the Chernomorskaya, people were going to be disappointed.

  In him.

  And they wouldn’t care, really, whose ‘fault’ it was.

  Which is why it suddenly seemed terribly important for him to be there when the Rex tied up. He needed pictures. If he wasn’t going to get pictures of the disinterment on Edgeoya, then he might at least get some shots of Kicklighter and Adair coming down the gangplank, and the body-transfer cases being off-loaded.

  Returning to his hotel, he took the stairs two at a time to his room on the first floor. Yanking his suitcase out of the closet, he tossed it on the bed, got out the Nikon that he’d bought the month before, and rewound the film inside. He wanted a new roll in place when the ship docked because the pictures he’d taken over the past few weeks were mostly useless – snapshots of Shanghai and the like. The only ones that he knew he’d use were pictures of Shin-Li, holding forth in his office as plumes of cigarette smoke curled around his head.

  When he thought of the pictures he’d missed, he felt sick: the Rex Mundi bashing through the Storfjorden, its deck glazed with ice; Adair standing next to the opened graves, looking beautiful –

  No, that wasn’t right.

  Adair standing next to the opened graves, looking intelligent as the miners’ coffins were winched out of the ground. Also, Kicklighter. Kopervik, Helicopter shots. And who knew what else? Polar bear attacks.

  He’d have to make do with what he could get here. But whatever he got, the one shot he absolutely had to have was the body-transfer cases coming off the boat. They’d probably use a crane, lifting the cases out of the hold on a pallet. Then they’d load the pallet into the back of a Norwegian Army truck and take it to Tromso Air Force Base, where a C-131 would be waiting to fly them to the States. In the absence of pictures from Kopervik, that was the shot he needed.

  But first he’d have to keep his temper. It wouldn’t do any good to go off on Kicklighter, and besides, he’d spent too much money in the past month to indulge what he had to admit was a predilection for cutting off his own nose just to spite his face.

  So he took a deep breath, forced an insane smile, and bounced down the steps to the lobby and into the street. A minute later he passed B Wharf, and then, turning a corner into the wind, he saw it – the Rex Mundi, following a fat tugboat as it glided into the harbor.

  Once again Frank was surprised. Its name might mean ‘King of the World,’ or something like it, but this was the ugliest ship he’d ever seen. Its business end was a bulbous black prow, streaked with rust – the nautical equivalent of a blackjack. Near midships the superstructure looked like a cheap motel that someone had bolted to the deck.

  It came to the dock with its engines growling and deckhands rush
ing this way and that. Frank began snapping pictures, then stopped to watch as the men on deck threw ropes as thick as his arm to workers standing on the dock. It was beautiful, really, the muscular precision of the sailors, the coiled lines unfurling in wobbly spirals –

  ‘Hvor tror du du skal?’

  The voice caught him by surprise, and so did the hand on his arm – which he shook off, jumping backward. ‘Jesus Christ,’ Frank said, ‘you oughta wear a bell or something!’

  There were two of them – young guys in khaki-colored uniforms with red armbands – and they were frowning.

  ‘Er du Engelsk?’

  Frank nodded. ‘Close enough. American.’

  The first guard deferred to the second, who stepped forward and apologized in a way that made it clear he wasn’t sorry. ‘I regret . . . you are not possible to proceed.’

  Frank cocked his head. ‘Really,’ he said. They looked like military policemen: stupid, blond, burly, and buzz-cut. Each of them wore a Glock in a patent-leather holster that made it difficult for Frank to take them seriously. ‘Why not?’ he asked.

  The cop frowned, took a deep breath, then wagged his forefinger like a kindergarten teacher scolding the class. ‘Regret – we are having to close . . .’ The frown grew deeper and his voice trailed away in frustration.

  ‘The dock?’ Frank suggested.

  ‘Yes!’ the guard said. ‘Regret we are having to close the dock for the public. The public is not permitted to pass!’

  Frank shrugged. ‘I’m meeting someone,’ he said, and added, ‘and, anyway, I’m not the public. I’m a journalist.’

  The guards whispered to one another in Norwegian, then the Engelsk-speaking cop turned back to him. ‘You must wait,’ he said, and turning on his heel, walked toward a waiting jeep.

  ‘Daly!’ Frank called. ‘Frank Daly. Tell ’em I’m with Kicklighter. Doctor Kicklighter!’

  Just as he said this, a BMW turned the corner, followed by a large Mercedes. The Beamer had a small American flag, like the kind children wave at parades, flying from its fender, and both cars had tinted windows. Slowly, they rolled toward the dock and stopped, looking very much out of place amid the forklifts, cranes, and service vehicles.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Daly asked when no one got out.

  The cop made a sort of moue and rocked on his heels. His colleague was talking animatedly on a cell phone he’d taken from the jeep. Finally, he tossed the phone into the car and returned.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but C Wharf is out of limits.’

  ‘“Off-limits,”’ Frank corrected.

  ‘Excuse?’

  ‘You mean ‘off-limits.’ You said –’

  The cop shook his head and leaned toward him with a mean grin. ‘Thank you,’ he said, so close that Frank thought about handing him a breath mint.

  ‘Anytime.’ But why get into it? There was no point. The guy was just doing his job. Being a soldier.

  Which, now that Frank thought about it, made him wonder: what’s a soldier doing on the docks, which are public, and what’s it got to do with the Rex? And why was a car from the embassy there?

  ‘Hey, look,’ he said in a conciliatory voice, ‘you told them “Daly,” right? You gave ’em my name?’ He was just talking, more to hold his ground than anything else. If he saw Kicklighter or Adair, they might intervene.

  ‘Yes,’ the cop said. ‘Nobody ever heard of you.’

  ‘Oh.’ They could show up any second now, Frank thought. The ropes had been secured to the dock’s gigantic cleats, and a gangway carried to the side of the ship, where it was now being maneuvered into place. Someone had to come down it.

  Or maybe not. Suddenly, the car doors swung open and half a dozen men stepped out into the blustery afternoon. To Daly’s eye, the action had a choreographed look, as if they’d practiced it – an impression reinforced by the men’s appearance.

  Each of them wore a dark suit and topcoat. Frank didn’t need to look at their feet to know there were wing tips on the wharf: it was a given. And it was as faintly sinister as it was slightly comical. Appearing so suddenly – in broad daylight – you never saw guys in clothes like that, standing in the open air. Not in the boondocks, not in Norway. On Wall Street, yes. On K Street – at lunchtime – maybe. But here? In Hammerfest? Without a funeral? I don’t think so, Daly thought, watching the men climb the gangplank en masse, talking to one another. In a flash they were gone, disappearing into the bowels of the ship.

  ‘Please,’ the cop said. ‘You will be leaving now?’

  Frank nodded, but he didn’t move. ‘Yeah, but . . . what’s going on?’ he asked. ‘Who was that?’

  The cop shook his head, and his partner said something to him in Norwegian. It sounded impatient, and Frank was pretty sure he could translate it: Let’s get this jerk out of here.

  ‘You must leave.’

  ‘Was there an accident?’ The idea hadn’t occurred to him before, and when it did, something surged in his chest. To his alarm, it was the kind of low voltage worry that was all tied up with caring. Had something happened to Adair?

  I don’t need this, Frank thought. I have enough problems.

  And then he saw her – or, rather, he saw a small figure with blond hair, sandwiched between two of the suits, heading down the gangplank. Kicklighter was right behind her, his silver hair and red parka conspicuous among so many Hickey-Freeman suits.

  Annie was talking over her shoulder to a lanky American in a charcoal-gray topcoat and what looked like a pair of Maui Jims. Behind her, Kicklighter stumbled on the steps and was promptly righted by the two men flanking him.

  Maui Jim looked familiar. He had the confident look of a man who was used to crossing police lines. Tall and trim, he had reddish hair, and Frank could swear he’d seen him before – but where?

  They were down the gangplank now, and heading for the cars.

  ‘Annie! Hey!’ When she didn’t seem to hear him, he started to walk after her, but was stopped, cold, by the English-speaking M.P., who stiff-armed him in the chest. ‘Back!’

  ‘Annie – for chrissake!’ This time she looked up, and her eyes widened as she registered his presence. Frank. He saw the name form on her lips as Maui Jim opened the rear door of the Mercedes and, putting one hand on her shoulder and another on the top of her head, pushed her into the car. As if she were a perp.

  Then he made his way around to the other side of the Mercedes. Pulling open the door, he was half into the car when he hesitated and looked directly at Frank. And in that moment Frank recognized him.

  ‘Gleason!’ You fuck – what are you doing here?

  Suddenly, the cars were in reverse, and Frank saw Annie’s face in the rear window just as it rolled past. There was a look on her face that he couldn’t quite read. Alarm. Bewilderment. Some kind of mute appeal.

  And then Frank was left standing there, staring at the departing BMWs as they curved onto the service road and accelerated.

  He couldn’t believe it. He’d flown all the way to hell and back, and now – no one would even talk to him. He’d spent nearly $4,000 on hotels and airfare, and –

  Jesus Christ! There they go! With Gleason!

  As he made his way back to the hotel, camera swinging at his side, he was too angry to notice anything. The cold, the gulls, the sharp light, everything disappeared. And then he was there, standing at the front desk.

  ‘You got a list of the hotels in this town?’

  The desk clerk looked up at him. ‘You don’t like your room?’

  Frank bit his lip. The old man looked genuinely hurt. ‘It’s not that,’ he said. ‘The room’s fine. I’m looking for a friend.’

  The desk clerk’s relief, and the smile that chased it, reminded Frank of an illustration in a children’s book. Gepetto, he thought. I’m talking to Gepetto.

  ‘I think the tourist office will have this,’ the old man said, and gave him directions.

  Once he’d gotten a list of hotels, he spent the next hour and
a half on the telephone. Neither Kicklighter nor Adair was registered at any hotel or guest house in Hammerfest.

  Calling Washington, he tried the National Science Foundation and NIH, but no one at those locations could tell him where Kicklighter was staying. ‘I don’t think he’s in a hotel,’ a colleague said. ‘I think he’s in a tent on Spitsbergen or some such place.’

  Desperate now, he remembered something Adair had said about the icebreaker being chartered to NOAA. Calling Washington for the fifth time that afternoon (who cared about the money? he was already drowning), he badgered his way through the bureaucracy until he found someone who had spoken to an ice physicist named Mark that very afternoon. ‘They’re in a place called the Skandia. Or maybe it’s the Sandia. Something like that.’

  In fact, it was the Skandia, and as Frank rode to the hotel in a taxi, he realized a couple of things. First, Annie was scared. That much, at least, was obvious, just from a look. Second, there was something going down, or they wouldn’t be back already. The dock wouldn’t have been shut down. And Neal Gleason wouldn’t be in Hammerfest, pushing people into the backs of cars.

  Frank had met Gleason three or four times, during a two-year stint that he’d done on the national security beat. Gleason was not a source – had never been a source – would never be a source. On the contrary, the one time Gleason told him something, it had been wrong – a lie, in fact, and one that nearly cost Frank his job. Which made Gleason a prick. And not just any prick, but the kind of prick who is very unlikely to know anything at all about epidemiology.

  What Neal Gleason knew about was terrorism. As Frank recalled, he was some kind of liaison. He had an office in Buzzard’s Point, in one of those funny little buildings with cameras in the eaves. FBI/CIA – something like that. He’d look it up when he got home, but just knowing that Gleason was here made him feel better. Because Gleason didn’t go anywhere that there wasn’t trouble, and trouble was news.

  Once he reached the Skandia, it took him about a minute to locate two of the NOAA guys. They were in the hotel bar, eating gravlax and herring, and drinking beer. He played it more or less straight with them, told them who he was and what he was doing there. Ever affable, he bought a round and spooled out his story, going into some considerable detail about all that he’d been through, only to get ‘stood up, not once, but twice. So what happened out there?’