“Let me up.”
I hit him twice in the face. I heard bones break. Busted nose, minimum. My hand hurt. I felt the fight go out of him. A terrorized look nested in his eyes.
Bruce said, like a ten-year-old kid, snot running freely, “It isn’t fair.”
Of everything he could have said, this shocked me and I sat back. His breath rose in puffs. He was crying. I smelled the fish he’d eaten for dinner: oregano, curry, the sweet lingering aroma of after-dinner port. I pushed the tip of the knife into him, just enough to draw blood. He moaned. His blood caught the iridescent light.
“All right, all right, stop,” he said.
I started it off. “You were a professor. You came to Barrow for research, years ago. After a while you found something at lake number nine. What did you find?”
The crying grew worse. The tears reflected, in small flashes, emerald and violet light. He blurted out, “I lost my wife over this. I lost my kids. My family. I deserve something. All those years. It isn’t fair!”
I drew back the knife.
“Cancer,” he gasped. “Pancreatic cancer.”
“A cure?”
“Yes. A cure, Joe.”
“An organism? In the lake?”
A nod.
I said, seeing it, “But you couldn’t tell anyone while you were a professor, not if you wanted to get the benefits. Your contract gave commercial rights to the school. But if you waited until after you retired, made the discovery then, you’d get profit.”
“Is that so wrong? It was my discovery. Mine!”
He was blubbering. He was hoping that someone else would show up to see the lights. It was possible. Someone might show up, especially if this spot had been recommended. But at that moment I didn’t care if someone showed up. If someone showed, I’d kill Bruce. That was a fact.
In fitful, half-choked sentences he finished the story that Liz Willoughby had started. His life was not fair because the school should have let him keep profits. Not fair because of the Supreme Court ruling denying discoverers profits from finding a natural gene. He’d waited for years, and when the prize was within reach, the court changed the game. Not fair because he had to seek help from a company overseas, a man with a shady reputation; not fair because after all the years and secrecy, the Harmons had planned to gather samples at the lake, and possibly make the same discovery Bruce had made.
“You killed them, Bruce.”
“Jens did that. I tried to make them stop. I made them have accidents. But Ted kept going. He just would not stop! So Jens was sent. He showed up. It’s not my fault.”
“And Karen?”
“Jens. Jens is crazy. Jens was a killer. I was nowhere near there. I promise.”
“Why did Jens burn down the cabin at the lake?”
“We… he and I… we went there over the summer. For samples. Our fingerprints. They were there. You were going to go there, taking a forensics team. You would have found them. My prints. And then, you know…”
It made sense. I would have had that cabin swept. It would have been normal procedure. I said, “And the eco lodge? What about that? The only reason it’s there, is so nobody else can use the lake, right? The whole deal is to bar the lake to research. The deal is phony.”
“The… lodge will be… real. But, yes, he bought it to block off the lake.”
“Tilda Swann?”
“Not involved. Joe! You can’t synthesize the drug. Not yet. We’re trying. The only place in the world it comes from is that lake. That lake has to be protected.”
Protected?
I felt the energy draining away from me. He babbled that the extract from the lake, in clinical trials on humans, had killed pancreatic cancer in 90 percent of cases. He said it would reduce the death rate by a huge amount. He said it was a miracle, and would save lives, thousands, more, hundreds of thousands of lives.
To my question, Where did the rabies come from? he answered that it had been designed in Siberian laboratories, during the Cold War. To my question, Who controlled it now? he told me the name of the man he’d just met.
“He’s not a good man, Joe. I had no choice but to deal with him, don’t you see? But after I made the deal with him I wrote a letter,” Bruce added slyly. “I wrote down who he was, what we did. I hid copies. He has to give me my share. Forty-nine percent! Joe, I… can share that money with you.”
“The man you just had dinner with.”
I envisioned the pudgy guy in the restaurant window, across from Bruce.
“Yes.
“Which hotel is he at?”
Bruce shook his head. Suddenly he was my big helper, not a whimpering victim under a knife. “He flew home, Joe. He was never staying here. He has a private jet. He left after dinner and he’s gone by now.
“Joe? Can I get up? I’m cold. I’ll cooperate. I’ll say what you want, unless you… want… to… share. It won’t make up for Karen, I know, I’m sorry. I am. But we can share, Joe.”
“Okay, Bruce, we’ll share. Get up.”
I strangled him.
I pressed down and leaned forward and let my rage take me. I felt my fingers crunch into his neck. He was kicking. He tried to flail. I felt his breath on my face as it spurted out. I felt his life force departing. He sprayed saliva on my chin.
The last wisps, the final vaporized breath of Dr. Bruce Friday drifted, drifted, rose, and was gone.
After a moment I rose, looked around, and the rest of the world came back to me. I was dizzy with spent adrenaline. I bent down and rifled his clothes, took his wallet, his watch, and opened his fly.
On my lurching way down to town, I threw them all into a sewer opening. As for my tracks, once I was on the well-plowed streets again, they were gone. It was like getting away from bloodhounds by walking into a river. The police would find the body, and see size ten and a half footprints. But there would be no trail of those prints into town.
Back at the hotel, the blond concierge was still on duty. She smiled dazzlingly when I walked in. She asked me if I’d enjoyed my dinner. She informed me that the bus to the conference would depart the hotel at eight the next morning, and before that a delicious smorgasbord breakfast — cheeses, cold cuts, oatmeal, eggs, and fruit — would be offered from 7 A.M. on, in a dining room down the hall.
If the other man — the one Bruce had dealt with — was gone, I had no choice so I called the admiral. He was home and picked up on the second ring. “Joe?”
I laid it out for him. If the police were going to show up, someone needed to hear, now. Galli listened and sometimes made humming noises, thinking. He said, “You have Bruce Friday? The FBI will want a crack at him.”
“Death-bed confession, sir. He’s gone.”
A pause. He understood what I was saying. “You’re in Norway now?”
“I am.”
“If what you’ve told me is true, if we can connect the lodge and the deaths and him, believe me, something will happen. The president won’t accept it otherwise. I swear to you. I’ve never lied to you. Come home, Joe. First chance.”
I slept soundly, waking only once after hearing footsteps in the hallway. Police, I thought. But no knock sounded at the door.
I caught the first flight out in the morning. At Oslo, at immigration, the man opening my passport was curious as to why, after arriving yesterday, I was leaving so quickly.
“Finished my business early,” I told him.
He wagged a finger at me. All work is no good. “Next time, plan to stay and have some winter fun,” he said.