“Screw them both!”
Jan, with his mysterious errand and his ravings about making oil so repugnant no one would want to use it ever again. Mercer, with his patronizing order to leave Alaska for her own safety. This wasn’t the nineteenth century, and she wasn’t some simpering damsel needing to be rescued. They both acted as if they knew what was best, as if her wishes and her opinion meant nothing. Jesus Christ!
For all practical purposes, Jan had raped her last night. The man who wanted her hand in marriage had forced himself on her with little regard for her feelings at all. She could have been an inflatable doll for all he cared, a masturbatory toy. She’d thought she loved him — his mind and feelings were so similar to hers — but now she saw, for the first time, how different he was. She’d known all along about his ego and self-absorption, but now she saw how driven he was by them. Even thinking about him made her uncomfortable, as if some multilegged insect was crawling across her flesh.
And what of Mercer, with his testosterone-charged assault this morning, guns drawn and orders shouted, as if they were storming some highjacked airliner? And his threatening to arrest everyone on his authority? He should have done it; everyone on the Hope was willing to go to jail for their beliefs. This was just another way for him to patronize her. A little slap on the wrist for the trust-fund environmentalist. Be careful, Aggie, she could almost hear his voice. You’re playing with grown-ups now, and we don’t want you to get hurt.
Hey, I’m an adult too, she thought bitterly. I know what I’m doing. A month shy of her thirty-second birthday and he was treating her like a six-year-old. So many men in her life had taken that attitude with her, treated her like some precious object that must be protected at all cost. Her father, especially, had hidden his problems with her mother until it was too late, fearing that a divorce or even a separation would hurt Aggie too much. That was a laugh. Like her mother’s suicide wouldn’t bother her?
And what in the hell did Mercer mean by “I want to be able to say I hate you too, but I can’t”?
To her amazement, Aggie saw her eyes soften in the mirror, the tension in her face easing, and the scowl almost but not quite becoming a smile.
She knew what he meant.
“All right, Dr. Mercer, you’re going to get what you want.” Aggie spoke aloud, steel in her voice. “I’m going to leave. I’m going to leave Jan and Alaska and, most especially, I’m going to leave you. But not before I have my say and put a stop to this silly crush that should have ended years ago.”
When Jan and she had talked about marriage, he had not given her a diamond ring. He’d said that he could not condone the devastation caused by mining and thus would not help the industry by buying into their popularist notion that a diamond signifies a lasting love. The ring he had given her as an engaged-to-be-engaged present was fashioned from antler. It seemed quaint and appropriate for what they both believed. She dug it out of her luggage, its tiny velvet box too elaborate for the simple beige bauble.
“You’re a cheap bastard,” Aggie scoffed and left it on Jan’s desk, the lid open as if the little box was laughing.
She took a shower and dressed, hiding her wet hair under a baseball cap. She packed a few things into a knapsack, ignoring most of the clothing and “essentials” she’d brought with her to Alaska. She’d buy what she needed when she got to San Diego, the home of an old college friend. Aggie just wanted to leave everything behind: Jan, Mercer, PEAL, this whole wasted year of her life. She’d played close to the edge, and it was time to return to normalcy.
Aggie knew the name of Mercer’s hotel from the dinner receipt she’d found in his jacket pocket. She thought about calling him but decided surprise would be much more effective.
Mercer lay against the headboard of his hotel bed, the television bringing him a great college football game between Florida State and Georgia. It was the third quarter, the score only ten to fourteen, both defenses able to thwart numerous well-executed drives just short of field goal range. A beer rested within reach on the nightstand, a thick ring of condensation surrounding the smoky bottle of ale like a medieval moat.
Taking a sip, he flashed a look at his watch and hoped that the rest of the waning afternoon would pass quietly. Since the raid, Mercer hadn’t strayed more than a few feet from his phone, fervently wishing it wouldn’t ring but knowing it would.
He was having that feeling again. Something was very wrong. Jan Voerhoven not being aboard the Hope was just the most obvious sign, but there were others, things he couldn’t explain, even to himself. Mercer ran through the connections again, the little things that made him so certain. This kind of second-guessing was unnecessary and dangerous, but it was also his nature to keep working at a problem, no matter how easy the solution seemed to be.
It started with tons of liquid nitrogen being smuggled into the state. Why? Who would do it and for what purpose? Second, the most radical environmental group in the world is already in Alaska, its leader missing on some mysterious mission that his girlfriend didn’t know about. Then there was Ivan Kerikov, an international terrorist or, more accurately, a terror broker. A man with no loyalty except to himself but with seemingly unlimited resourcefulness. He was in Alaska, too, with a couple of Arabs. What was their role in all of this?
Now what would a former KGB agent, a couple of Arab henchmen, and an environmental group do with liquid nitrogen on the eve of the opening of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge? The presence of even one of these elements was enough to give pause. But there was more.
Aggie’s disclosure about her father, for one thing. She asserted that Max Johnston knew what time she’d been at his house, the exact moment of a devastating attack that only Harry White’s timely interruption had prevented from turning into a massacre. Was Max connected somehow? Wasn’t it one of his tankers that had been late arriving at the Alyeska Terminal to take on her cargo of Prudhoe Bay crude? Was that even significant?
Mercer shifted on the bed to reach for the phone. He wanted to call Dave Saulman in Miami. He wanted the marine lawyer to give him an update on that tanker. It was a long shot, a potential wild-goose chase, but sometimes wild geese lay golden eggs. His hand was only an inch from the phone when there was a loud knock on his door. He got up, and when he opened the door, he took a quick pace backward. Aggie Johnston wore jeans, a sweater, and her olive anorak. A baseball cap covered her head, tendrils of hair as delicate as silk threads falling down past her ears. She carried his leather jacket under one arm. Behind her angry expression, he saw a deeper emotion, a secret place that she didn’t know existed, for surely she’d have tried to hide it from him. She was hurting, he knew, and scared. Mercer’s heart slammed in his chest.
Her voice was brittle. “I need to say a few things to you.”
“Do you really?” He had to force his voice to remain neutral.
Aggie pushed her way into the room, closing the door behind her. “I just want you to know that I’m leaving Alaska and I’m leaving Jan.”
“Why?” There was an intrigued smile on Mercer’s face.
“Why what? Why am I leaving?”
“No, why are you telling me?” Mercer’s smile deepened as he saw the uncomfortable play of emotions on Aggie’s face. It was clear she hadn’t expected that question.
“I just want to,” Aggie replied, flustered. “I’ve had enough. Enough of Jan with his ego and his condescension and you with your overblown hero act.”
“It’s not an act,” Mercer teased.
“Goddamn it, Philip, is everything a joke to you?” Aggie’s use of his first name surprised him as much as it did her. Suddenly the room was an intimate place charged with something palpable.