Joe Rush 02: Protocol Zero (20 page)

I tried to envision an enormous ship plunging through white-capped Arctic waves off of Europe, 3
A.M.
, floodlights shining down from A-frame winches, nets hauled from the turgid sea, filled with life.

“They test everything?” I said. “Plants? Fish?”

“Mostly bottom life, but some fish, test it to see if it’s
worth
analyzing. They grind tissue into compounds they mix in with diseases, bacteria, virus. If they find an application, a possible drug,
if the target microbe dies,
they decipher DNA. You see in the tropics
,
researchers have it easier. You’ve got more people there. Folktales or shamans identify cures. When tropical researchers go into a jungle, they find locals, ask questions, track stories, and send samples back to labs.”

“But in the Arctic?”

“Impossible, especially a mile down in the sea. The Norwegians just grid the sea and suck it all up and test.”

“Sounds like a long process.”

I envisioned her nodding, getting into the academics of it. “Laborious, yes. It takes months just to analyze what you pull up on one trip. But they’ve had successes! A herpes drug came out of Tromso last year. They’ve got another compound that shows promise against nerve damage, and a product out now that does a pretty good job against acne. All new! So when they approached us, about sharing our Arctic work, we signed an agreement with them.”

“With the university there? Or a company?”

“It’s connected there. It’s socialist. Better, if you ask me. Look at their health-care system! The best in—”

“Please, Liz, can we stay on point?”

“Sorry. The university and the company work together. Anyway, once the Harmons are finished analyzing samples, we ship ’em to Tromso. That’s what we did last year.”

“Any finds yet?”

“Unfortunately not.”

“Ted Harmon was in a rush to finish up this year, get each site in. Was that because of this deal?”

“No. He’s just diligent. Always has been. Systematic. He hates falling behind.”

I thought about ramifications. “Would the Harmons have gotten a cut of profits if they found something?”

She chuckled. “Well, I would have said yes a few years ago, but if you’ve ever read an academic contract you’d know that his percentage, even then, wouldn’t pay for Kelley to go through one year of college.”

“Low, huh?”

“Microscopic. The trade-off is that a professor gets tenure, security, but you give ninety-nine percent of any discovery to the school.”

“But you just said he wouldn’t even get that now.”

A sigh. “Thank the U.S. Supreme Court, Colonel. Two years ago they ruled that a natural substance can’t be patented. They took the incentive away for medicinal research. Even if Ted and Cathy found something, no, they’d get nothing,
we’d
get nothing. Many schools have stopped their programs now.”

“But not in Norway.”

“Well, over there, it’s a different law,” she said. “If they patented a discovery, it stands.”

“Which is why your school made a deal with a Norwegian school, instead of doing the work yourself. They make the discovery. You share profits
.
”

I heard Dr. Liz Willoughby sigh. “Legally it’s a gray area. Even if you give the Norwegians the stuff, the problem is the natural substance
still
lies in the U.S., banned from patent. The Norwegians have their program going anyway. It costs them nothing to do a few tests. If they find something, maybe
they’ll
pay for a legal challenge.

“Colonel, we do it because we’re scientists. Basic research. If you ask me, if you want to make money up there, stick to oil, minerals, natural gas. Is anyone looking for
those
things where you are?”

•   •   •

VALLEY GIRL ANSWERED ON THE SECOND RING. I KNEW SHE WAS RELAXED
and back to normal because each sentence came out as a question again. She was back to being irritating.

“They let me go?” she said. “Thanks to you?”

I told Valley Girl to double-check everything that Dr. Liz Willoughby had just told me. I asked her to try to dig up any business arrangements between Prezant College and the University of the Arctic, in Norway. I asked her to check both Dr. Harmons’ buying habits, credit rating, debt situation, savings, and to see if they’d stocked away any money to pay for Kelley’s college education.

I asked her also to get hold of Ted Harmon’s grant application and cross-check which exact Arctic lakes—there were ten thousand of them on the North Slope—he was supposed to visit with any other applications for mines, pipelines, or business endeavors planned for the same spots. Who exactly owned the land the Harmons were visiting? The feds? The state? The Iñupiats? The borough?

“I can do this fast? I don’t have any plans tonight? Thanks again for taking care of me,” said Valley Girl.

Yeah, I take care of strangers. I couldn’t protect the person I love,
I thought
.

•   •   •

NO CARS WERE ON THE ROADS EXCEPT A POLICE DEPARTMENT EXPLORER.
No people walking. Shops were closed. Why visit a relative, when there might be sickness waiting? Why go out when you could lock your door and watch my Ford rattle by on the way to the base? Barrow was a ghost town filled with people. Barrow was Edgar Allan Poe’s
The Masque of the Red Death.
The only thing moving were the sled dogs, restlessly, as I passed the yard where Karen and I had hooked them up just a few days ago.

I made a left turn off the coast road and passed the Ilisagvik College sign and entered the Quonset hut area. Dusk was falling and the world looked gray: gray clouds, gray light, gray earth. Lights glowed in huts and off-duty troops were returning from the dining hall. I punched in the four-digit combination to the door of my hut.

The officers who’d moved in while I was out had made themselves comfortable. Two exhausted-looking lieutenants in stocking feet lounged in the living room, staring at the TV, which got no reception, since the sat jamming killed that. I heard snoring from a bedroom. A captain came out of the bathroom, saluted, and said, “Sir!”

“Get out,” I barked. “All of you.”

“Excuse me? The security staff and docs finished up here. They said we could move in, sir.”

His gaze followed mine into the bedroom I’d shared with Karen. Our single beds, pushed together last night, had been moved to opposite walls. A stranger’s knapsack lay on her bed, and thonged slippers sat on the floor beside it. There was a paperback copy of
The Things They Carried
on the crisply made bed. It had been rumpled when I left. The smell was sweat and canvas, leather and testosterone. I saw a man’s wallet on the dresser, and packs of spearmint gum.

“Didn’t you hear me, Captain?”

“But where should we go, sir?”

They’d wiped away all trace of her. They’d eliminated her essence. They’d smoothed out marks that her body would have made on cushions, blankets, a pillow, on a towel she folded in the bathroom.

“I don’t care where you go. Wake the others. Get out!”

“Sir, you’re shaking.”

“I am not shaking.”

“Your hands are shaking.”

They trudged off grudgingly, glancing back, exhausted from their flight here, from the cold, from wondering whether the vaccinations they had been given would protect them. I was authority, but not one of their officers. Maybe I didn’t have the power to kick them out. But they were reluctant to challenge me. Sullen, they left. The wind gasped, receiving them.

I stood in the Quonset hut, wondering if someone, someone outside, or in another hut, had just overheard everything I’d said, or would the jamming kill transmissions? I’d told the general:
Karen and I talked about my theory this morning
. I made sure any exposed computer screen in the hut was covered to mask any remote camera. To create the sound of a tantrum I kicked a chair over. I lifted the small table, and threw it into the couch. Anyone listening would be hearing me screaming, kicking things around. Joe lost it.

They probably can’t be listening anyway, because the jamming is blocking any mikes, if there are any.

Quietly as possible, I started taking the place apart, looking for bugs.

•   •   •

DID YOU EVER SEE THOSE OLD MICROPHONES IN BLACK-AND-WHITE MOVIES
? The ones as big as ice cream cones? That radio singers crooned into? Mikes so big they required a stand? Eddie and I once watched that kind in an old Marine film about listening devices. The audience broke out laughing, trying to envision a spy taping those big fat mothers under a chair. Anyone assigned to units like ours trained in eavesdropping techniques. Strategies. Equipment. Finesse.

So now I unscrewed the backs of kitchenette chairs and peered at the screws. Were they equally shiny? Were they the same size? Was one gone, something else in it’s hole?

Nope.

I stood on a chair and unscrewed lightbulbs, and fixture parts. I figured that in a Quonset hut, if you wanted to place a mike, you’d go for the most-used spaces, living room or kitchen, or the most intimate area, bedroom.

If someone got in when we were out, it could be anywhere. But if someone did it during a party, then the living or bedroom is logical. It will be freestanding or adhesive. No time for screws.

I knew that there were pencil mikes and pen mikes and mikes that looked like fixtures. There were mikes the size of contact lenses. Mikes you stuck under coffee tables, under phones, in curtain rods, under any piece of houseware with a raised bottom. God only knew the latest mikes. The Chinese had them in kitchen equipment. The Koreans wired up cars. The Russians had a false-tooth mike and the Cubans had a false fingernail. That one, when I’d seen it in Washington, had blown me away.

I found a furniture tack that looked shinier than the rest in a row of brass pieces running across the top of the faux leather sitting chair. I took it off and used a hammer on it. It was just a tack. I tore off felt pads beneath a laptop, and tried a scissor on them.

They were just felt.

“One? What are you doing?”

I whirled and held up both hands in a
stop
gesture. I shook my head violently, meaning,
Shut up!
Eddie stood in the doorway, dressed for the field. His expression was a mix of horror, at the news about Karen, and bafflement. But I saw quick understanding appear on his face.

I snapped out, “What do you think I’m doing? Having a drink, that’s what.”

He began to move toward me, in sympathy. I stepped back and shook my head and let him see my rage. I shoved my hands into the air,
Keep away. Don’t touch me.
He halted, getting it, but not liking it. His shoulders slumped. His eyes said,
She was my friend, too.
I let him see what I needed. It was not sympathy just now. I shifted my head to the right, then left, scanning. We communicated by glances.

—You’re looking for bugs, One?

—I think someone’s been listening to us.

—Okay, let’s get to it then.

I understood the effort required on his part not to speak of Karen. As he bent beneath the sink cabinet, where the hut toolbox was stored, I started talking again, just in case someone listened in. “Want a drink, Eddie?”

“I got back as fast as possible.”

“They cut her throat. They cut . . .” My voice really did fail me at that point. “Her throat.”

We took the place apart together, babbling. Me trying to sound broken. It wasn’t hard. Eddie trying to pep me up. Eddie in the bathroom, with a Phillips-head screwdriver, removing, one by one, screws on vanity doors, the knob on the toilet, screws on the overhead light fixture.

“You were right, One. It was rabies.”

“Being right is shit.”

Eddie peering at a screw that looked duller than the rest.

I need to sound useless.

“Eddie, I can’t stop seeing her, lying on the floor.”

Eddie laid the screw down, inside a towel and folded the towel over it and raised a hammer and coughed loudly when he smashed down. He unfolded the towel.

We saw a normal, half-bent screw, with a chipped top.

Together, talking memories, we tipped the couch on its back. We went around front and looked past a sea of dust balls at tacks affixing the fabric in place.

“I wanted to go to Costa Rica for the honeymoon. She wanted Sweden,” I said.

Hmm. I reached out and unpeeled a small brown dot off the false leather. It looked like faux leather, but it was a lighter shade, and had adhesive underneath. It seemed to have no purpose. I said, “So I told her, okay. Sweden.
”
I saw no other similar stick-on dots under the chair. I took the dot to the kitchen table. I tried to cut through it with a scissor. The blade would not penetrate. It did not seem to be encountering fabric. My head was pounding. Eddie pulled out his Leatherman. The serrated blade sawed halfway through.

It was fabric. Thick. But no mike.

I said, sick of chatter, “I want music.” I switched on a disc already in the CD player. Cajun. Her favorite. Loud. I turned it louder.

We continued looking, kept it up, changed places, in case one of us missed something. I tilted over a kitchenette chair which I’d already looked at. A screw fell out. So did fresh wood shavings. I stared at the shavings, retrieved the screw and bounced it up and down in my hand. It looked brand-new. The thread felt prickly. It seemed to emanate purpose. It had been shoved into the hole because the wood there was worn away, stripped of grooves.

Eddie came over and examined the screw with me like a jeweler staring through a loupe. We put our heads together. We whispered over the raging music.

“It’s just a screw, One.”

“Someone got in here and replaced the old one with this.”

“No, it’s just a hole. How could anyone get in?”

“How? It’s a stupid four-digit code on the door. Anyone could have seen one of us punch it in. Or at a dinner. The quarantine started. No one was here. They knew we might look for bugs and they got in fast and took it out.”

Eddie sighed, and said with exaggerated softness, “It’s a screw. A goddamn screw. That’s what screws do. They fall out after a while.”