Joe Rush 02: Protocol Zero (24 page)

“Joe, for God’s sake, let me in. This is awful!”

His hands were in his pockets. I smiled at his war-orphan look and backed up and he entered. He stood in the hallway, shivering. He had no tolerance for cold. Maybe there was something else in a pocket, not just hands. Maybe he’d pull it out.

“Want some coffee?”

“Anything hot will do!”

I walked at his side to the large, cold kitchen. This room had been old when Khrushchev and Nixon held their kitchen debate in a mock-up U.S. home, at the American National Exhibition in Moscow, in 1959. I opened a metal cabinet and extracted a tin of Folgers. I measured out three heaping tablespoons for the Braun and poured in cold water. We sat at the chipped Formica table and smelled coffee brewing. The mug into which I poured Ranjay’s portion read, “Cleveland Indians” and showed a grinning comic-book Native American, with a red-faced leer. Mine read, “Yakutia! Come to Russia’s Arctic Diamond Week!”

“No new cases for three days,” Ranjay said, cradling the mug. “People are getting angrier. Something will blow.”

“It’s spreading slower than we feared.”

“Maybe not spreading at all, Joe. Like Ebola. It broke out. It killed many. It went underground, disappeared.”

“What about the monkeys that Dr. Morgan injected with rabies?”

“Dead in three days.”

I gasped, stunned. “That’s a huge increase in speed.”

“Huge,” he said morosely.

“But this also means,” I said, brightening a little, “that if there are no new cases in town, maybe it’s not airborne. Wait! Morgan and Cruz would have checked that, put sick monkeys with healthy ones, just like Constantine did with the coyotes in Texas. Any spread?”

“Not yet.”

“Good. They also inoculated sick monkeys, to see if the vaccine works. Any of those animals fall ill?”

“So far, no. So far, the vaccine seems to work. So maybe the spread is point source. But, Joe, it’s only a few days since we started. The vaccine may just slow it down, not stop it. Too early. We need more time. But I don’t know how much time is left before the whole town blows up.”

I sat back. It was too early to relax. He was right. There were no good options.

If it just disappears, if the quarantine lifts, we may never find out what happened. If we stay, we’ll have a riot soon. If we leave, Karen’s killer may get away.

Ranjay looked upset. His hands squeezed the mug. He changed subjects. “Joe, they made you a scapegoat. You are the reason we discovered the rabies. I myself pooh-poohed the notion, yet you were diligent. I do not like what they have done to you. It is not fair at all.”

“Thanks, Ranjay.” I was moved. But I also did not trust him. It was nothing personal. I did not trust anyone except Eddie, and Eddie was elsewhere most of the time.

Ranjay said, “I think that often in life, the man who sees things first is the one that others do not want to know, my friend.”

“I wish I saw things better.”

He drank. I drank. He added more sugar. We watched each other over china rims. He had not unzipped his parka yet. At least both of his hands were visible. I could move a lot faster than Ranjay. If Ranjay made a move for his pocket, I’d beat him, I knew.

“Also,” he said at length, more quietly, “I’ve been round the clock at the hospital and did not have an adequate chance to say how sorry I am about Karen.”

“Thank you.”

“Joe. It is funny, in my country, we arrange marriages. I arranged my own marriage, you know. I was in London. I dated English girls. It did not work. You people believe that if you have a feeling, the logical parts will follow, after you marry. We believe that if the logical parts are there to start with, feeling will follow. But in your case, I would say that everything was there all along.”

“Very eloquent, Ranjay.”

“What have you found out?”

“Excuse me?”

Ranjay’s eyes dipped toward his mug, and he lifted it, so I could not see his face. He said, lowering it, “You are a clever person. You would not have made only one copy of her files. You are asking everyone many questions. You are looking at other copies, aren’t you? You’ve not given up.”

I considered, my heartbeat rising. “Yes.”

“Find anything?” His brows were up.

“Like what?”

“Some clue. Some reason why they had the accidents.”

“I think I found a thread,” I lied.

We were interrupted by more knocking. Ranjay rose as I did, casually drifted beside me down the long hall. A bulb was out. The remaining glowing sixty watt, hanging from a loop-wire, seemed ready to expire. There were no windows in the hall. The knocking grew louder. I reached out, punched the code, opened the door.

“Hi, Bruce.”

Now I had two visitors. As we all went back into the kitchen, it struck me that although I’d seen Ranjay’s Honda outside, Bruce’s late-model Subaru Outback was not in sight. It was probably around the side of the house.

“This place is a shithole,” Bruce said, looking around. “An igloo would be better than this.”

“I don’t mind. Want coffee?”

Bruce removed his gloves, rubbing his powerful hands. “Arthritis,” he said. “Coffee, yeah.”

Bruce sat on my left, hat off, jacket on, but inside the polar spa, wearing extra layers made sense. Ranjay regained his seat, on the right. I couldn’t see them both at the same time but I relaxed a little bit. With two people here, one wouldn’t try something, I figured.

Bruce told Ranjay, “I heard there’s no more vaccine coming.”

“We’ve used all supply in the U.S. We’re trying to get more from Mexico.”

“I heard you’ve got frostbite cases.”

“Three Rangers didn’t cover up their faces enough. We warned them. I gave a lecture to them when they got here. They didn’t listen.”

Bruce told a story about his first winter in Barrow, about going out into a garage and picking up an ice ax without gloves on. The next day, his fingers turned blue. The blue crept up his forearms, in his veins. It was poisoning. Frostbite. It had come because he touched metal. Just touching metal had almost killed him. “But antibiotics did the trick,” he said.

Then he asked Ranjay, “How long before Homza—if there are no more cases—before he bags the quarantine?”

“I do not know,” Ranjay said.

Bruce and Ranjay made eye contact. A silent message seemed to pass between them. Ranjay rose abruptly and said he had to go to the bathroom. Bruce said, jokingly, “Don’t let it hang out too long in there, or it’ll freeze, man.”

After Ranjay left, Bruce pulled his chair closer and said, sympathetically, “You’re a quarantine in a quarantine, Joe. I can’t believe Homza kicked you off the base. That they even think you might be responsible.”

“Thanks.”

“What are you going to do when they lift the quarantine,
if
they lift it? I mean, no new cases in three days. It can’t go on forever?”

I answered truthfully. “I haven’t thought about it.” I had no vision of a future, just Karen, these walls, the pistol snug against my back, the laptop.

“You could work with us,” Bruce suggested. “We have bear people in Canada, at Resolute Bay, and in Norway in Svalbard. Helping the planet, Joe. Sounds corny, but it’s not bad work. It gives a feeling of accomplishment. When my divorce went through, I felt a void, and those animals helped fill it. You could do worse than that.”

I heard a shuffling noise behind me and turned, but no one was there.

Bruce leaned closer, drawing my attention back, “It’s not a lot of money. But Karen said you were quitting the military. Maybe it’s too early to bring this up?”

“No. Thanks. I appreciate it.”

“Lots of people get the bug. That Tilda Swann, the Greenpeace woman. I heard she’s staying on to work here.”

I remembered her fired-up expression, her rage, her face in mine. “You mean, she’s quitting Greenpeace?”

“Keeping a hand in, another way. She might give lectures at the eco lodge. You know, Joe, I had a feeling that time in the roller rink that she had a thing for you. You’ve had a loss. A terrible loss. It’s never premature to think about building a new life.”

“What?” I grew hot. “Premature? Karen’s not even dead a week.”

I heard a whispery noise and turned. Ranjay had come into the room, and stood just two feet behind me. I hadn’t heard him enter, hadn’t heard until he was close.

Bruce gazed up at Ranjay. “You make out in there, Doc, without losing man’s best friend to the cold?”

Ranjay approached the table. I heard Bruce’s chair scrape closer.

“You know, Joe, we, Ranjay and I, that is, feel . . .”

Then there came more knocking at the door.

•   •   •

BRUCE AND RANJAY EXCUSED THEMSELVES, MUMBLING HELLO AS LIEUTENANT
Colonel Amanda Ng and Captain Raymond Hess entered. The polar spa was a regular Club Arctic today. I didn’t offer coffee. I didn’t offer anything. I said, “Back to check what I say against what Eddie said?”

Hess said, “Sir, Drs. Morgan and Cruz completed their DNA run on the rabies.”

Ng watched and waited. She wanted to see whether I looked frightened or curious, guilty or alert. Hess watched Ng watch me. It was a watch-athon. I was tired of their relentless insinuations.

“I can wait if you can,” I said.

Amanda Ng sighed. “Colonel, looks like we’re dealing with something that came from a lab.”

•   •   •

HERE’S THE THING ABOUT RABIES. IMAGINE THREE PEOPLE CATCHING IT
, one from a bat bite, one from a dog, one from a raccoon, each case thousands of miles from the others. The first victim is a seamstress in Jakarta, the second a kid in Des Moines. The third is a farmer in Yakuta, Siberia. All three fall ill after a short period of incubation. All show the same general symptoms. All, untreated, die.

So you’d think they all had the same exact thing, but that is not true. Sample their brain tissue, strain out the virus, get it under a good microscope, an electron one, one that really shows the spirals and tracks of DNA, and you discover tiny differences. Extra spikes on Indonesia. Fewer coils in Des Moines. Slight discoloration in Siberia.

Those CDC docs from Atlanta, I knew, had brought along with them a thumb drive library of rabies DNA variations . . . a thousand across the planet, each as identifiable as a fingerprint is to the FBI. Ng was saying that the strain here was different,
new
, probably man-made.

Hess pulled up a chair now. They’d given up the good cop/bad cop routine two days ago. They looked as tired as I felt. I admired their persistence and resented it. I wished they spent more time on other things, but I supposed that, in their shoes, I’d check out Joe Rush, too.

Hess reasoned, “You’re sent up here specifically to look for new strains. And now,
that’s happened
!”

“If it’s lab born, it doesn’t mean it came from us.”

Amanda Ng leaned back. “Who then?”

“I have no idea.”

“Colonel, Major Nakamura has told us a very different story.”

“Cut it out. If you even talked to him at all, he said the same thing I’m saying.”

“
You’ve
been briefed on old military programs.
You
were warned against disclosure. I can guarantee you immunity if you tell us anything relevant, right now.”

“Immunity? From what?”

“From retribution of any sort should you disclose to us a secret program. This comes from the SecDef himself, get it? A personal guarantee. Did you discover a connection, some old program? Were you ordered to bury information?”

“How many times are we going to go over this?”

Ng stared at me. “So you insist that it’s coincidence? You looking for new strains and one occurring?”

“I don’t believe in coincidence.”

“Someone trying to get you blamed, then?”

“I am being blamed. And you,” I said, “don’t know for sure it came from a lab. It could have evolved.”

They rose. They pulled on their parkas. I had a sense of the cold deepening outside, of the heater inside coughing fitfully, ready to expire.

Ng said, “Chew our offer over. Full amnesty. Hess, let’s go.”

•   •   •

I SHOT AWAKE. IT WAS 3 A.M. EDDIE WAS STILL GONE AND I’D HEARD
footsteps. I turned on the lights, breath frosting once I left the bunk area and went room to room.

No one was there. Jesus!

•   •   •

THE NEXT DAY THE SUBMARINE WAS GONE. APPARENTLY THE ICE WAS
freezing up, putting the sub in danger of being crushed. Soon the icebreaker would depart.

I returned to the beach on a walk and saw a sight that amazed me, a large polar bear on his belly, wriggling forward on ice one hundred yards offshore, spread out, hauling himself by claw. An enormous bear can move on ice so thin that a human would plunge through it. It has to do with weight distribution.

Sometimes a thing that seems impossible at first glance stands there right in front of your face,
I thought.
Go back and look at the old stuff on the F drive again.

I went back inside the polar spa and back to the F drive—the written part of the diary—to the first reversal the Harmons had suffered, a car accident.

Dad says no matter how long it takes, we’re not going home until we finish up at all nine sites. Dad says . . .

I went back to May again, reread her entries about her crush on a high school English teacher named Mark Wong, her musings on whether her parents were as boring when they were kids as they were now, read about her pet beagle who was too fat, and how cool Mini Cooper cars looked, how Mom and Dad pulled out maps of the North Slope, and pointed out the lakes they’d be taking her to this summer.

B-o-r-i-n-g.

Mom going on about lake number one, and the oil pipeline proposed to cross it. Lake number four, where, in 1839, Russian fur trappers had planted an Imperial flag. Lake number eight lay inside the National Petroleum Reserve, designated a strategic area during World War One, when the nation feared a cut off of Mideastern oil. Bigger lake number nine, Dad had said, and the surrounding tundra, final site they would visit, might one day house a new eco lodge, where tourists would sleep, eat, and view the Arctic tundra on big, heated, rolling glass-sided carriers.