A Cold War

by Alan Russell

  “You were. All the god-awful things that have happened to me happened to you. I wish you’d written more about your anger. I would have listened. Misery loves company. Maybe you didn’t have the time to write any more than you did, or maybe you didn’t see the purpose of it.

  “Every day it’s getting colder. I never imagined this kind of cold. And there’s no getting warm. But I don’t have to tell you that. You survived for years.

  “I think it’s mid-November. If I’m right, I’ve been imprisoned not quite two months. I’m trying to put into practice everything you told me. But deep down there’s this part of me that’s angry with you. I know that’s not fair, especially with all that you did. Most people in prison might carve their name on a wall. Or because they’re angry, they might write ‘fuck you.’ But you wrote a book. How was that even possible? And you managed to do it even under the watchful eyes of our monster jailer. As if all that wasn’t a miracle enough, you even figured a way to smuggle the book to me. So why am I so pissed off?

  “You’re dead, that’s why.

  “The monster won. And if you couldn’t beat him, then how in the hell do you expect me to come out on top? You wrote the survival manual. Why didn’t you survive? You provided me with maps by which to escape. Why didn’t you get away?

  “You wrote me a book of hope, Pollyanna, but since you failed, what hope do I have?”

  Nina was breathing hard. Her hands were balled into fists. A minute passed before her fists unclenched and her breathing became normal.

  “I’m sorry, Sister,” said Nina. “I blamed the messenger. And I know the messenger was only trying to help me.”

  It was time to do her exercises, Nina decided. She needed to be in the best possible shape if she hoped to get away. And besides, her only chance of getting warm was through exercise.

  Nina started kicking the walls of her pen. She used the leverage of the small holding cell to try to inflict damage. One day, she hoped, its walls would come tumbling down. But after a long workout, it became apparent that today wouldn’t be that day.

  Being cooped up wasn’t easy. She’d become used to Baer’s letting her join him on his outings. If he wasn’t hunting or trapping, he was collecting wood or cutting out chunks of ice to make water. The more she went out, the more Nina familiarized herself with the area. After the first couple of trips, she’d been able to identify a number of Elese’s landmarks.

  “Maybe he’s punishing me today,” she said. “He’s commented on how I’m always asking questions, and it seems like he’s always observing me whenever I’m trying to get my bearings. He might have decided to put the brakes on my learning. Or maybe it was something else. Maybe he didn’t want me around because he had his own agenda and didn’t want me seeing or hearing what he was doing. And he did seem very protective of his pack this morning.”

  It was unlikely that Nina would have been aware of Baer’s behavior had not Elese written about it. She pulled away the covers and dug out the caulking tube housing Elese’s words. After turning a few pages, she found the pertinent passage.

  Baer likes to be the magician, knowing the tricks but never revealing them. I wonder, though, if he might have a shortwave radio. Some of his rants refer to events of which I’m not aware and that seem current. And on a few occasions, I’ve seen some kind of electronic device wrapped up in his pack. The best look I had was during the blizzard that drove us to his hunting shack. He left his pack open, and even through Bubble Wrap, I saw the glint of something that could have been a radio or oversize phone. Since that time I have done my best to see what might be in that pack, but he has been careful to keep it hidden.

  “The monster likes his secrets, doesn’t he? You might be right about his having a radio. Last night he was having one of his apocalyptic rants and started talking about a killer strain of Middle East respiratory syndrome spreading like wildfire through the slums of Egypt. It was worse than SARS, he said. How would he have known that?”

  Nina turned a page. Cold War history seemed to have colored Baer’s views of the world. Elese had also written about that.

  For the last two summers, I’ve been imprisoned at an abandoned military base, a relic from the Cold War, west of Fairbanks. The prison certainly suits Baer’s paranoia. He sees the world poised on a precipice, with nuclear destruction just one push of the button away. In the midst of our fallout shelter, he makes his survivalist views seem commonsensical.

  The entire base was bulldozed except for the fallout shelter. The years have not been kind to the bunker. Pipes are gutted, and there is mold and mildew. The thick, concrete walls, meant to be impregnable even to Russian radiation, are crumbling in places. The bunker is where the soldiers would have gone underground in the event of nuclear war. There are signs of old water storage tanks. Baer says the soldiers had enough food and water to last them a full year, along with a special recirculating air system designed to protect them from fallout.

  When I’m in that dark bunker, it feels like the world has come to an end. Summer is when Baer fishes and trades his furs—he’s gone for weeks at a time. I know what it feels like to be entombed. He leaves me with jerky and water, chained to a short, hateful leash. When he returns I’m never sure how I feel. Glad that my death sentence has been lifted. Bitterly disappointed that he is still alive.

  “I know that feeling, Sister,” said Nina. “I know that feeling.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Nina picked at the food Baer had left in a pan and tried not to dwell on her queasiness. Her stomach hadn’t felt right all day. Although she wasn’t sure of the date, even without a calendar, she knew her period was overdue.

  “There are all kinds of reasons why Aunt Flo might be late,” she said.

  All day she’d been carrying on a one-sided conversation with Elese and saw no reason to stop now.

  When she ran cross-country, at least half the girls on the team weren’t menstruating. A lot of that was attributable to low body fat. She’d lost weight here. The change in diet could have thrown her body off-kilter. And that wasn’t even accounting for all the stress.

  Was it any wonder her body was rebelling? She’d been drugged and beaten. And how many times had her air supply been cut off? Almost every day her body had been subjected to physical trauma. That kind of shock had to be playing havoc with her system. I can’t be pregnant, she told herself.

  Don’t let me be pregnant, she prayed.

  Her body hurt, and all day it had felt like she might have the flu, but that didn’t mean she was pregnant. Baer had beaten her the day before and the day before that. She’d resisted him, and he’d hurt her. It wasn’t surprising that she was feeling the way she did.

  “Besides,” she said to Elese, “I’ve had a lot of pregnant women tell me they never felt better. They didn’t feel sick.”

  Of course, Nina’s mother hadn’t been lucky like that. Her mom had said she was sick as a dog during her two pregnancies. She claimed that her morning sickness extended from the moment of conception to the time of delivery—morning, noon, and night. Nina found that difficult to believe, but her mother wasn’t usually prone to exaggeration.

  “I’m having sympathetic symptoms, that’s all,” Nina said. “Earlier today I was reading about you and Denali. That’s probably why I’m thinking about this.”

  But that didn’t explain the food she hadn’t been able to eat. She’d been ravenous during her captivity, but not today.

  The sound of barking dogs startled her. She knew by now that this wasn’t their alarm signal; this was their happy barking. The monster was nearing the cabin.

  Tightness squeezed her chest and throat. She found it hard to breathe.

  Please be tired, she prayed. Please just eat and go to bed.

  She waited for the door to open. He seemed in no hurry. Nina wanted to believe that was a good thing, but what it felt like was a horror movie. Any moment now and the monster would jump out.

  Finally the door opened, and with
it came a cold draft. Nina began shivering. When Baer stepped inside, his eyes immediately locked on hers.

  “I’ve been thinking about this,” he said.

  “No,” said Nina.

  He started toward her cage, disrobing as he walked. He unlocked her cage.

  “No,” Nina said again, balling her hands into fists.

  “You must like it rough.”

  When he pulled the door open, he was already erect. Nina caught his musky scent. His hairy chest was like a pelt and stank of the dried sweat of a day’s exertions. Just as his garments were stripped away, so was any veneer of civilization. It was an animal that reached for her.

  His touch was enough. Nina threw up. There wasn’t much in her stomach, but she relieved herself of all that was there. And then she began dry-retching.

  Nothing else would stop the monster.

  “I’m pregnant,” rasped Nina. “Damn you to hell forever.”

  Baer took a step back from her cage. His tumescence was rapidly deflating.

  “Are you happy?” screamed Nina. “Are you fucking happy?”

  “I am,” said Baer.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  On the third ring Martin answered with, “Yeah?” His voice was decidedly unwelcoming. Since their dispute at the airport, neither man had contacted the other.

  “Since I promised to keep you in the loop on your wife’s case,” said Hamilton, “I thought I’d pass on some news to you.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Guess who returned home to Tanana for Thanksgiving?”

  Martin’s voice thawed a little. “I didn’t know Alaska’s Native people celebrated Thanksgiving.”

  “They do it their own way. They’re probably more likely to serve ptarmigan instead of turkey and salmon pâté in place of yams. And for dessert there’s no pumpkin pie. It’s usually salmonberries with Crisco.”

  “Crisco?”

  “That’s what I’ve been told.”

  “That sounds about as traditional as the Thanksgiving I just had.”

  “What did you eat?”

  “Kung pao chicken. And when I cracked open my cookie, my fortune said, ‘The fortune you seek is in another cookie.’”

  “Really?”

  “I put the fortune in my wallet as proof for the doubters.”

  Hamilton ignored the jibe. “I would have asked for another cookie.”

  “I’ve gotten used to living with uncertainty.”

  “I talked to our guy. His name’s Jack, and he confirmed that he did fly with Tomcat, and that they did have a conversation about this survivalist client of his. In fact, what prompted their talk was that they happened to be flying in the vicinity of where Tomcat always dropped off his mountain man.”

  “Did you get a general location?”

  “I got better than that. I now have what I think is an exact location. Tomcat did a little detour to show Jack, Grizzly’s lake.”

  “What’s its real name?”

  “It’s not on any map as far as I can tell. And Jack didn’t know its name. But after talking with him, I’m pretty sure he was able to pinpoint its location.”

  “I’d like that information as well.”

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  “I’m going to try to find the likeliest route that Tomcat would have flown from Talkeetna to that location, and then I’m going to fly that route.”

  “What kind of pilot are you?”

  “I haven’t crashed yet.”

  Hamilton said, “You’re going to need a spotter.”

  “Are you volunteering?”

  The cop sighed. “I must be crazy.”

  Because all the waterways were already frozen, the two men flew out of the Talkeetna Airport in a single-engine plane with tundra tires. Hamilton was grateful that Talkeetna had an asphalt runway. In the interior of Alaska, you were lucky to get a gravel runway.

  Neither man spoke for the first few minutes they were airborne. Hamilton didn’t want to distract Martin from his piloting, so he pretended to look out at the scenery. It was only when his fingers started hurting that the cop realized he was holding on to his armrest with a death grip.

  Speaking over the engine noise, Martin said, “So, did you tell Major King Kong about Jack’s turning up?”

  Hamilton wasn’t sure if he’d heard correctly. “Major who?”

  “Major King Kong,” said Martin. “He’s a character in my favorite film of all time: Dr. Strangelove.”

  “That’s an oldie.”

  “Nineteen sixty-four.”

  “And remind me: Who was this Major Kong?”

  “He’s the Slim Pickens character who rides the nuke down, screaming, ‘Yahoo.’”

  Hamilton nodded, remembering. Slim Pickens had been riding the ultimate bucking bronco. “Forgive me for being slow, but I’m still not getting who this Major Kong is who I was supposed to have told about Jack’s turning up.”

  “I was giving Donnelly’s aide-de-camp a promotion. He didn’t come across like a sergeant.”

  Sergeant Hamilton wasn’t sure if that was a dig against him or not. “What’s a sergeant supposed to be like?”

  “Less slick, less official.”

  I resemble that remark, thought the cop. “He is working for a politician,” said Hamilton, and then after a few seconds, added, “No, I did not tell Major Kong that I’d heard from Jack.”

  A conspiratorial look passed between them. “Any reason for that omission?” asked Martin.

  The cop shrugged. “Since our meeting I’ve called Sarge—Major—twice. The conversations were hurried. It felt like he was holding a stopwatch and timing our talk.”

  “What did you learn?”

  “They still haven’t been able to determine how that piece of the diamond got from Alaska to New York.”

  “So much for the major’s theory that the case was all but solved.”

  “To his credit, Sarge did follow through with the general at Eielson. I talked to the general’s adjutant, and he confirmed that they’ve been sending out their ‘birds,’ otherwise known as drones. He also made a point of saying AST would be contacted if they came up with anything, and that it would be best if I got my updates through them.”

  “That sounds like what I’ve been hearing for years.”

  The cop looked out the window and was surprised for a moment at how high they were. Their conversation had almost made him forget they were in a plane.

  “Funny you mentioned Dr. Strangelove,” said Hamilton. “That movie was all about the Cold War. From what Tomcat told people, our Grizzly was kind of fixated on the Cold War.”

  “He’s not the only one,” said Martin. He did a bad Sarah Palin imitation: “I can see Russia from here.”

  “Yeah, and I see Paris, I see France.” He didn’t finish the rhyme. “Back in the early sixties, Alaska was ground zero for the Cold War. Everyone was afraid the Russians would come marching over the Bering Strait. That’s why a bunch of DEW stations—Distant Early Warning—were built throughout the Arctic, along with White Alice communication sites all over Alaska.”

  “Alice Who?”

  “More like Alice WACS.”

  “Alice what?”

  “I don’t think we’ll be competition for Abbott and Costello. Alice was an acronym for Alaska Integrated Communications and Electronics.”

  “And what was WACS short for?”

  “White Alice Communications System. That’s why the communication sites were referred to as White Alice. Because of the Arctic snow. I think they’re all abandoned now, but there were a few sites in the interior. One of them is east of Manley.”

  “So, Alice had nothing to do with Alice in Wonderland?”

  “Not a thing, as far as I know,” said Hamilton.

  “Maybe the song ‘White Rabbit’ was inspired by White Alice.”

  “I don’t know that song,” said Hamilton.

  “You’re kidding? It’s a classic. Grace Slick and the J
efferson Airplane sang it in the sixties. I was sure it had to be in your wheelhouse.”

  “How old do you think I am? I spent my college years with Nirvana, not Al Jolson.”

  “You still should know it. A classic is a classic.”

  Martin began singing the song.

  “Even with your singing,” said the cop, “that’s sounding familiar.”

  They flew for a while not saying anything. Finally it was Martin who broke the silence. “Keep your eyes peeled,” he said. “I charted the weather on the day of the flight. The conditions were bad. I know I wouldn’t have gone up in that kind of weather.”

  “A plane crash would explain a lot of things. It would also debunk our conspiracy theory.” Hamilton studied the wilderness beneath them. “This would be a shitty place to crash.”

  He glanced over at Martin. “Not that there’s a good place.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not getting any ideas.”

  Martin’s head moved from right to left, his eyes scanning. “I’ve never been in this part of the state. I still can’t get used to not seeing any sign of civilization. No roads, no towers, no power lines, no houses. No anything.”

  “The nearest road—the only road—is north of here. Only in Alaska would they call a gravel road a highway.”

  “There’s a highway somewhere around here?”

  “Most of it is unpaved. The Elliot Highway is the most westerly road in Alaska. It goes from Fairbanks to Manley, and now they’re working on extending it to Tanana.”

  “Maybe Manley will become a real hub.”

  “Yeah, it will go from one hundred residents to two hundred.” Hamilton paused and then added, “Believe it or not, there was a time when Manley Hot Springs was synonymous with mass murder.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  Hamilton shook his head. “I was just a kid when it happened. I think I was a senior in high school, so that would be back in 1984. This drifter named Michael Silka killed his neighbor in Fairbanks, and then he ended up fleeing to Manley. His idea was that he would be a survivalist, a mountain man, but just a few days after he arrived in Manley, his rampage started. He killed six villagers and tried to escape John Law by traveling along the Tanana River. Alaska State Troopers went after him with helicopters and found him on a tributary to the Tanana. He fired at them—killed at least one cop and wounded one or two others before the bastard was shot down.”