Eddie’s favorite expression came into my head, in his sarcastic voice. “SNAFU: Situation normal. All fucked up.”
At least I was still cleared to enter the base. I drove in as a half dozen troop-packed Humvees drove out, filled with somber-looking Rangers. I passed the Quonset huts and the community college building at top speed. I took the curving road to the lab building, Homza’s headquarters. The car slid sideways on an ice patch, almost plowed into a snowbank. The wheels caught at the last second, and the Ford veered right but straightened and made it to the labs.
That was when my encrypted phone started buzzing. But when I glanced at the screen, I saw that it wasn’t Eddie, or the general, but Valley Girl back in Washington.
Not now, I thought.
I burst into the building. To hell with orders to avoid tracking in mud. I stormed up the stairs to the general’s office. There, amid a scene of controlled anarchy, officers manned phones, snapped out orders, drew arrows on a chalkboard, peered out windows toward the airport, but the windows did not provide a close enough view.
I smelled bad coffee and chocolate cake. The snow against the windows sounded hard, abrasive, constant.
Homza stood alone inside his office, on a landline phone. But before I could get to him, his adjutant — a major named Garreau — blocked my way. He was a bulked-up Georgian with long sideburns, thinning reddish hair, and the tense, ready-to-leap attitude of a good guard dog.
“Doctor, not now. He said no one gets in.”
“I need to see him. This relates.”
“Perhaps I can help, Doctor.”
You? You don’t even know I’m supposed to report to him. You’re not even addressing me as “Colonel.” You’re talking to me as if I’m a civilian, an outsider, which was what Homza and I agreed to pretend that I am.
Garreau regarded me with a cold politeness. He repeated, “Can you tell me what this is about?”
I stopped dead. What was it about? A theory? One more unsubstantiated speculation? Guesswork? Hope? I was here for Homza’s permission to visit lake number nine. A body of water so anonymous it lacked a name. It just had a number.
“I’ll wait,” I said.
He frowned, preferring that I leave, and not complicate an emergency. He said, “It might be a while.”
“Yes, I understand. I’ll sit here. I give you my word. It’s important. You’ll tell me when I can go in.”
He nodded and turned to attend to more pressing business. My phone started up again, tinny and insistent. I ignored it, trying to get an idea of what was going on in town by listening to conversation. Sniper shots — from a single shooter, it was believed — had hit two Rangers thirty minutes ago. But no one had heard the shots. It was believed they were silenced, which made sense, as some hunters in town used suppressors, and any good sniper would have known that — especially in such a small place — the sound of firing would have pinpointed his location.
“One critical. One dead,” I heard someone say.
“No one on rooftops, sir.”
“No shell casings found so far, Major.”
“Shooting’s stopped, sir. It’s possible whoever did it got away into that utility tunnel, that fucking Utilador, sir. He may be moving to another spot.”
I heard a lieutenant call the Wilmington, now twelve miles away, asking the icebreaker to dispatch drones to scan the city rooftops. Or a chopper and Coast Guard sniper.
My phone began ringing again.
I might as well answer. Valley Girl sounded back to normal, each sentence — even the mundane ones — ending in a question. She sounded proud today, and the accent was extra irritating. She cracked gum, chewing, between words.
“I did what you asked me to do, Colonel?”
“Get to the point, Sarah.”
But she did things her own way. She repeated what I knew already, confirmed the business arrangement between Prezant College and the university in Norway, confirmed that Professor Ted Harmon’s original grant application said that his research was precisely what he’d claimed it to be. Go to nine lakes. Take samples. Gather up everything indiscriminately. Freeze it and ship it back.
Nothing new about this. Why did you call?
Valley Girl said, “Colonel, I also went back? I took another look at people you asked about? On the base? And I found a funny thing?”
I sat up straighter.
“What funny thing?”
“Well, that Norwegian guy? Jens Erik Holte? The helicopter pilot who works for different people?”
“Don’t make me keep asking!”
“I checked his social security info? It was fine. Birthplace? Jobs? Voting? Credit? Then I went to get a pizza? With mushrooms and peppers? I was in the car and I was thinking? I have this friend I went out with? At Interpol? Like he has my job there? I was waiting for the pie? They always take long if you want extra peppers, like, I don’t get it, it takes the same amount of time to put on regular peppers or extra ones. You put peppers in your hand and sprinkle them on the pie, right?”
“Get to it, damnit!”
“You’ve been so nice to me so I asked my friend to check that pilot. But in Europe, see? Like, I figured, all his records won’t just be here since he came from somewhere else.”
“And?” My heart was slamming in my chest. “What about Jens Erik Holte?”
“Well! That’s the thing, Colonel. Everything is fine with him here, in America? Just perfect.”
“But in Europe?”
“He’s like this retarded guy in an institution? Same age, but like, IQ down the drain! Like, he’s been in hospitals since he was five years old! Same ID. Same name. Same little village birthplace. See? But it’s another person! So who’s on your base, claiming to be him?”
I hung up and tried to get to Homza, who was only twenty feet away, yelling into the phone. Major Garreau blocked me and had his Rangers push me out. I tried to explain. But Homza had played his part perfectly with his men. Garreau “knew” that I was out of the investigation, a suspect. The adjutant was not inclined to listen to anything I had to say.
I ran out of the building and got into my Ford. I took the road back to the Quonset hut area. I left the Expedition running in front of hut thirty, the last one on base, the one in which all my summer friends now resided, and in which Jens — who bunked in town with a girlfriend — often hung out — drinking coffee, making small talk, hearing information, during the day.
The campus looked deserted. He doesn’t know you know.
I made sure that my Beretta was ready, but kept it in my holster, the snap loose. I walked directly into the living room. My throat was raw and I felt my heart beating. Normally the place slept eight but now it held more than twenty. The smell of too many people hit me.
Sleeping bags lined the periphery of the living room, some occupied, some rolled up during the day. Think London, World War Two, the underground tube, the blitz. I smelled eggs frying. I smelled feet. I saw, at the kitchen table, Alan McDougal playing chess with Deirdre. A poker game was in progress between three base roustabouts. I saw CDC Dr. Janette Cruz fiddling with the TV, don’t ask me why, because it got no reception. Bruce Friday came out of a back bedroom in stocking feet, saw me, and froze, fixing on the urgent expression on my face.
Bruce was in jeans and a heavy knit pullover, a time-faded white sweater. He held a stack of eight by ten color photos of polar bears in his hand.
I tried to sound casual but I doubt it worked. “Hey, Jens here?”
“Why?”
“I just got permission to take a chopper out to lake number nine. I want him to fly it.”