“What would be the point? I concentrate on today,” he said. “The grand days of my family are over.”
Army Captain Raymond Hess, Amanda Ng’s investigator, found me in the chair a half hour later, said he’d looked all over for me, checked the labs and my Quonset hut. Said, in a tight, irritated voice, as if I’d purposely avoided him, which I had, that he “needed to clear up a few questions.”
Hess was a trim, balding man with almost invisible eyebrows, an oddly high voice, watery light blue eyes, and a West Point ring on one finger, a thin wedding band on another. His collar was starched above the Arctic-weight Army sweater. He’d draped his parka over the back of his chair. He looked an old thirty, and had a lean bullet shape, tapering at the head. By now he’d know that he was supposed to pay extra attention to me. He’d have been told in no uncertain terms that if Colonel Joe Rush and Major Edward Nakamura were involved in a cover-up and he missed it, he could kiss his career good-bye.
A toilet flushed. And flushed. And flushed. I’d “finished” my third glass of vodka. Hess’s nose wrinkled. He smelled urine on me, or maybe the liquor I’d rubbed on my clothes. I was sprawled, legs stretched, head lolling, a sneer on my lips.
“Army security,” I said. “You guys are even worse than the Federal Bureau of Incompetency.”
“Let’s go back to the research center, Colonel. We have a room set up for quiet talk.”
“For interrogations.”
“Discussions.”
“Discuss away,” I said, leaning back, watching the man’s irritation grow as blotches on his too-white face.
“It really would be better at the center, sir.”
“For who? Whom? Is it who or whom? I never know. How are you with grammar, Hess? How’d you do in high school English?”
“Colonel, please don’t make this difficult.”
“Her death is easy so far, Hess?”
I had to give him credit. He remained polite, if stiff and disingenuous. “Sir, we’re on the same team.”
I stood up. I breathed into his face. Up close, his skin seemed to lack pores. There was nothing wrong with his approach. I had to be eliminated as a suspect. Also, like all the troops here, he had to know he was in danger, if the vaccinations didn’t work, and the rabies turned out to be contagious. He’d been parachuted into a strange town and denied full support. In quarantine drills, the security contingent included dozens of personnel. But Barrow lacked logistics for a larger team. The admiral — the old head of my unit — had warned Washington for months that the country was unprepared for an Arctic emergency. The emergency was here. The country was still unprepared.
I snapped, “Hess, you can’t order me.” As if the effort had been too great, I fell back on the chair.
“Colonel Rush, you—”
“Hey, Hess! Did you volunteer for this? I bet you did! How’d they trick you into volunteering? You might get infected, bring the germ home to your wife and kids. That’s why that bitchy colonel only took along three of you, you know. Until they know the vaccine works. You’re expendable. How’s it feel to be the guy they could lose and not care?”
He was red now. I allowed him to escort me into a rear bedroom, the one with the air vent above the right-hand bed. The shaft ran directly to the living room, where I hoped conversation was quieting, as people positioned themselves beneath the vent, straining to hear. Or maybe they’d be behind the bedroom door, government-contract quality, even thinner than the old piece-of-garbage security doors that the FAA approved on pre-9/11 commercial aircraft.
Someone out there, I prayed, was desperate to listen.
Hess was smart. He didn’t start off with rabies. He started with Karen. He told me how sorry he was about her death. He asked about the status of our relationship. He made it seem he cared about her.
Our status is that I’m responsible for her murder.
I said, “We were engaged to be married in two months.”
Had things been “good” between us recently?
We fought and made up and fought some more.
“They were very good,” I said.
Did Karen have enemies in town? Had she said anything about work problems? Had I shared sensitive information with her?
Ah, here we go on rabies. Yes. I shared information.
“No,” I said. “Tell me something, Hess.” We’re all on the same team? “What kind of weapon killed her?”
“I’m sorry, Colonel. I can’t tell you that, sir.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?” I knew he couldn’t.
“Same thing, sir.”
“Leftie or rightie? Man or woman? Give me something.”
“Did you and Dr. Vleska ever discuss your work here, or the investigation into the Harmon deaths?”
“We were threatened if we talked about work. We discussed honeymoon plans. Want to hear them?”
“Yes.”
I’d asked Eddie to watch for anyone hanging around beneath that air vent. I envisioned people jostling and quieting and looking up. I told Hess loudly what I’d really told Karen, and wanted people in the other room to hear. “Everything’s connected. General Homza is wrong when he thinks she was killed by a local. They couldn’t get to me, so they went after her! It’s not about the quarantine! It’s the same people who killed the Harmons!”
I raised my voice until I was shouting.
“GIVE ME ANOTHER DAY WITH THAT DIARY! THERE’S SOMETHING IN THAT DIARY! I KNOW IT! I’M CLOSE, I’M VERY CLOSE!”
Hess’s voice sharpened. “You have the diary?”
“An F-drive copy. Not the original, asshole.”
“Sir, I’ll need you to hand it over. It’s evidence.”
I argued, shouted that I needed the files. He threatened to have me arrested if I did not surrender them. Under martial law, he could do it.
I begged him to let me keep the diary. I said that it was my right to have a copy. When he didn’t back down I grew more belligerent, told him to go fuck himself, shouted, refused, and finally gave in, making sure my voice carried.
“Just how small is your brain, Hess? Is it even there?”
“We’ll go and get it now, Colonel.”
I’d alienated everyone I could think of. If someone here was guilty, I hoped I’d hit on the thing they feared. Hess escorted me from the bedroom, a drunk, shamed, broken presence, except as we passed the group outside I glanced over and winked, as if I’d just pulled a fast one on Hess. I saw my look register. I saw Mikael Grandy frown and look sharply at McDougal. Deborah Lillienthal stared. Dave had been pouring himself a vodka. He looked thoughtful. Eddie watched them all, trying to see a tell.
Outside, the night was dark, and the wind came off the sea and sliced at my face with the sharpness of an ulu, an Eskimo knife used for skinning. I glanced back at the hut and saw a white face, Deborah, in the window. Deborah who’d feared she was infected with rabies. Because you slept with someone. Who?
Soldiers moved between huts. Smoke whirled from stovepipe vents. Someone approached Hess and told him that sleeping arrangements were changing. All the civilians would sleep in two huts, or in town, if they had friends there. Soldiers needed the other huts.
My fists were clenched. My jaw throbbed. I felt blood coursing in my arteries, trying to burst out; a fury that was pure and directed and craved outlet. I was filled with the rage of a man who had, through his pride and maneuverings, killed his future.
In our hut I retrieved one of two F-drive copies I’d made of Kelley’s diary files, and gave it to Hess. He didn’t see me shove the extra one in my pocket. He probably saw the spittle that I made sure hung from a corner of my mouth. Joe Rush, half drunk, in a rage.