“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 generaclass="underline" 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.