Sixty Days and Counting (43 page)

“Is that the way it is down there too? Can you
see
the differences down there?”

“Well, the Ross Ice Shelf being gone is the main thing you can see. There’s still lots of ice on the land. And more all the time because of us, right?”

“Right, is that still going well?”

“Yes it is. There’s some maintenance to be done at the intakes, but by and large the prototypes are all pumping away, and they’re set to add more next season. They’re talking cubic kilometer this and cubic kilometer that—they’ve sure ramped up from gallons and cubic feet per second, did you notice?”

“Yeah sure. They had to—it was getting to be like Italian
lira
.”

“That’s right. Also, if you take away a few zeroes it doesn’t look out of control.”

“That’s true. Maybe that’s why the modelers at this conference were so confident we had some chance of climate stabilization.”

“Maybe so. Maybe they need to come down here and see some of the tabular bergs coming off.”

“Do you think just having that experience would change their calculations though?”

“Well, good question. But I think a lot of calculations are really trying to quantify certain assumptions, don’t you? Like in economics? Not as bad as that, of course, but still.”

“Maybe we can arrange for a conference in McMurdo.”

“Good idea! I mean, NSF would probably hate it, but maybe not. It might be good publicity. Good for the budget.”

“I’ll check with Diane about it.”

“Good. Hey, how’s it going with her?”

“Good. She and Phil seem good for each other.”

“Ah yeah, that’s nice. Phil needed someone.”

“Diane too. So hey, how’s it going with Val again?”

“Ah, well, good, good. Good when I see her. I’ll see her again in about a month.”

“Whoah. So, is she off with…?”

“Yes, I think she’s with X, for part of that time, anyway. She’s with some kind of polar cap sailing village.”

“What did you say?”

“Tents on big sleds, like catamarans. They put up sails when the wind is right and move around.”

“Like iceboats?”

“Yes, like that I guess, but they’re like big rafts, and there’s a little camp’s worth of them, moving around together.”

“Wow, that sounds interesting.”

“Yeah, they’re like Huck Finn on the ice cap.”

“So—but it’s going well when you see her.”

“Oh yeah. Sure. I can’t wait.”

“And the, the other guy?”

“I like X. We get along well. I mean, we’re friends. We don’t talk about Val, that’s understood. But other than that we’re like any other friends. We understand each other. We don’t talk about it, but we understand.”

“Interesting!” Frank said, frowning. “It’s—kind of hard to imagine.”

“I don’t even try. That’s part of how it works.”

“I see.” Though he didn’t.

“You know how it is,” Wade said. “When you’re in love, you take what you can get.”

“Ahhh.”

His plane landed at JFK in the midmorning, and after that Frank had scheduled in a layover of several hours before his commuter pop down to D.C. The plan had puzzled the woman in the White House travel office, but he had only said, “I have some business in New York that day.”

Now he got in a taxi and gave the driver the address of a YMCA in Brooklyn. He sat back in the back seat and watched the infinite city flow by outside the window. It went on and on. Frank felt dumbstruck with jetlag, but as the taxi driver pulled up to the curb, next to yet another block-long five-story building, he was also curiously tense.

The chess tournament was taking place in a gym that had room for only one basketball court and a single riser of stands. Stale old-locker smell. There was a pretty good crowd in the stands.

Frank climbed the metal stairs to the top riser and sat down behind a couple of guys wearing Yankees caps. For some reason he didn’t want to be seen. He only wanted to see—

Down there at one of the tables, Chessman was playing a girl. Frank shuddered with surprise, startled by the sight even though he had been (mostly) expecting it. Clifford Archer, the tournament website had said, under-sixteen level, etc. It had seemed like it had to be him.

And there he was. He looked a bit older and taller, and was wearing a checked shirt with a button-down collar. Frank felt himself grinning; the youth held the same hunched position over this game that he had had at the picnic tables.

Maybe he had moved up here with family, as Deirdre had guessed. Or was doing it on his own somehow, following his chess destiny.

Every game in progress was represented as a schematic on a screen set up at the far end of the room, and after Frank identified Chessman’s game he could follow its progress move by move. In his jetlagged state and his low level of expertise he found it hard to judge how the game was going; they were in an odd configuration, somewhere in the mid-game, Chessman playing black and seeming to be pushed to the edges a bit more than was usual for him, or safe.

Frank studied the game, trying to get what Chessman was up to. It reminded him sharply of the long winter, when he had first met the bros, and built his treehouse. He hadn’t cared then what happened in the games. Now he was rooting for Chessman, but in ignorance. The two players had both lost about the same number and strength of pieces.

Then the girl took one of Chessman’s bishops, but it was a sacrifice (Frank hadn’t seen it) and after that Chessman’s trap was revealed. He had her in a pincer movement of sorts, although she had a lot of pieces in the middle.

The men sitting on the riser just below him were murmuring about this, it seemed. Frank leaned forward and said in a low voice, with a gesture:

“Is that young man doing well?”

They both nodded, without looking back at him. One muttered from the side of his mouth, “He’s very patient.”

The other one nodded. “He plays black even when he’s playing white. He’s like good at waiting. He’s going to win this one, and she’s a junior master.”

And though Frank couldn’t see it, they were right. Chessman made a move, hit his timer and leaned back. The girl scowled and resigned, shook hands with Clifford, smiling crookedly, and went to rejoin her coach for a postmortem.

Chessman stood. No one joined him, and he was not looking around. He walked over to the officials’ table, and some of the people standing there congratulated him. Frank stood, walked down the stairs to the floor of the gym, crossed the court, and approached the officials’ table. He paused when he saw the youth in conversation with someone there, talking chess, it was clear. Chessman was animated, even cheerful. There was a look on his face that Frank had never seen before. Frank stopped in his tracks. He hesitated, watching. Finally he turned and left the gym.

T
HE NEXT DAY FRANK RAN WITH EDGARDO,
and told him about his trip, and then said to him, “You know, I’ve been thinking about what you said about Caroline, and I’ve tried contacting her by getting into her surveillance, and it hasn’t worked, and I’m getting scared. And it occurred to me that maybe your friends might be in some sort of contact with her, if what you said happened to be the case, and if so, that they might be able to tell her that I really, really want to see her. I need to see her, if it’s at all possible. Because otherwise it’s just too…well. I’m scared is the thing.”

“Yes, yes yes yes yes,” Edgardo said, as if pooh-poohing the idea; and then he went silent, as if thinking it over; and then he made no other response at all, but as they made the turn under the Lincoln Memorial, changed the subject to the difficulties that Chase was having with Congress.

The following Wednesday after dinner, Frank went to the mouth of Rock Creek to check the dead drop, and there was a new note.

OUR FIRST SPOT MIDNIGHT LOVE C

In just a couple of hours, if she meant tonight! Thank God he had thought to check! Thank God and thank Edgardo. Frank ran to his VW van, which he had parked in the boathouse parking lot, and drove north on Wisconsin at speed, in a state of high excitement. In Bethesda he took a right and parked in a dark spot near the little park they had first met in. He got out, walked to the bench under the little statue of the girl holding up the hoop. The empty cipher, there in the dark; he waited; and suddenly there she was, standing before him.

They banged together and hugged. “Where have you been?” Frank said roughly, face in her hair. “I’ve been so scared.”

She shook her head for him to be silent, ran a wand over him. “I heard,” she said at last, hugging him again. “I’ve had to be away. But I’ve been in contact with your friend’s friends, and they told me you were concerned.”

“Ah. Good old Edgardo.”

“Yes. But you need to understand, I have to stay clear of any possibility of them finding me. And a lot of the time you’ve been chipped.”

“I’m trying to stay completely clean when I’m not at work. I got rid of my van and got a new one, an old one I mean, and it’s clean too.”

“Did you come here in it?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s go check it out.”

He led her to it, holding her hand. At the van she said, “Ah, cute,” and checked it with her wand and another device from her fanny pack. “It’s all clear.” And then they kissed, and then they were climbing inside the van, kissing their way to the little mattress up in the back.

Once again everything else fell away, and he was lost in the little world they made together, completely inside the wave. There was no sexier space than the little overhead mattress of a VW van. And something about it, some quality—the presence of ordinary sheets and pillows, the fact that she had come out of hiding to reassure him, their complete nakedness, which had never before been true—the comfort and warmth of this little nook—even the fact that Diane was with Phil now and Frank entirely committed, no confusion, mind clear, all there, all one, undamaged and whole—the look in her eye—all these things made it the sweetest time yet. The calmest and deepest and most in love.

Afterward she fell asleep in his arms. For an hour or two he lay there holding her, breathing with her. Then she stirred and roused herself. “Wow, that was nice. I needed that.”

“Me too.”

“I should go,” she said. She rolled over onto him, pushed his numb nose with a finger. “I’m going to be out of touch again. I’ve still got some things I’ve got to do. Your Edgardo’s friends are looking like they will turn out to be a help when the time comes, so look to word from him.”

“Okay, I will.”

“There’ll come a time pretty soon when we should be able to act on this. Meanwhile you have to be patient.”

“Okay, I will.”

She rolled off him, rooted around for her clothes. In the dark he watched her move. She hooked her feet through her underwear and lay on her back and lifted up her butt to pull them up and on, a nifty maneuver that made him ache with lust. He tugged at the underwear as if to pull it back down but she batted his hand away, and continued to dress as if dressing in tents or VW vans or other spaces with low headroom was a skill she had had occasion to hone somewhere. It was sexy. Then they were kissing again, but she was distracted. And then with a final kiss and promise, she was off.

O
NE AFTERNOON AT WORK,
just before she left, Anna Quibler got an e-mail from her Chinese contact, Fengzhen. It was a long one, and she made a quick decision to read it on her laptop on the Metro ride home.

As she read, she wished she had stayed in the office so she could make an instant reply. The letter was from Fengzhen, but he made it clear he was speaking for a group in the Chinese Academy of Sciences that wasn’t able to get word out officially, as their work had been declared sensitive by the government and was now fully classified, not to say eliminated. The group wanted Anna and the NSF to know that the ongoing drought in western China had started what they called an ecological chain reaction at the headwaters of the Yangtze and the Yellow Rivers; the “general systems crash” that Fengzhen had mentioned in his last e-mail was very close to beginning. All the indicator species in the affected areas were extinct, and dead zones were appearing in the upper reaches of several watersheds. Fengzhen mentioned maps, but the e-mail had not had any attachments. He referenced her previous question, and said that as far as the group could tell, clean coal plants, a greatly reduced pesticide load, and a re-engineered waterway system, were three things that must be done immediately. But as he had said before, it was a matter of cumulative impacts, and everything was implicated. The coming spring might not come. His study group, he went on, wanted to go beyond the diagnostic level and make an appeal for help. Could the U.S. National Science Foundation offer any aid, or any suggestions, in this emergency?

“Shit,” Anna said, and shut down her laptop.

In Bethesda, she made sure Nick was okay and then walked on to the grocery store to see if there were any vegetables left from the day’s farmers’ market, thinking furiously. In the grocery store’s parking lot she called Diane Chang’s number at work. No answer. Then her cell-phone number. No answer there either. Maybe she was hanging with the president. Anna left a message: “Diane, this is Anna Quibler. I need to talk to you at your soonest convenience about reports I’m getting from a contact in the Chinese Academy of Sciences concerning environmental problems they’re seeing there. I think we need to make some kind of response to this, so let’s talk about it as soon as we can, thanks, bye.”

She had just gotten home from the grocery store with the fixings for goulash (paprika was good at masking the taste of slightly elderly veggies), and was boiling water and badgering Nick to get to his homework, when Charlie and Joe burst in the door shouting their greetings, and at the same moment the power went out.

“Ah shit!”

“Mom!”

“I mean shoot, of course. Dang it!”

“Karmapa!”

“Heavens to Betsy. I can’t make dinner without power!”

“And I can’t do my homework,” Nick said cheerfully.

“Yes you can.”

“I can’t, the assignment is online!”