That could mean only one thing at this point. He would talk to Lena discreetly and see if she thought he was nuts. If not, maybe they could start to come up with a plan. It seemed like there were still some holes and inconsistencies with his reasoning. He needed constructive feedback to hone the finer points.
“Shit, and I thought the zombies were bad.”
He started rolling back toward the barracks.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Someone had made fresh bread from unthawed dough. It smelled and tasted astonishingly good. Previously frozen chicken was made into chicken salad for sandwiches and onion rings were cooked in hot oil to go with them. Hamlin ate like a linebacker.
“I think it’s the olfactory input. You smell the baking bread and your appetite goes crazy,” he said to Zhabin, a researcher and meteorologist who was sitting across from him at the table.
“It’s so warm and soft,” Zhabin replied, all the while stuffing his face with another bite.
“And that’s just the way you like it, Francis, is that not so?”
Lena once again arrived just in time to make a play on words. She sat beside him, which was perfect. He really wanted to talk to her, but didn’t want to make it obvious to anybody else. He concentrated on the excellent fare in front of him and decided to be patient. She was one of the last people to fill her plate, ergo she would be one of the last to leave the table. That should present him with the opportunity he was looking for. But he had to fire off some sort of retaliatory strike in the meantime.
“Nobody has ever accused me of having good taste.”
She got the insinuation and kicked him under the table. He just kept eating.
In the end, Lena fooled him by only eating half a sandwich. She left the table before they could have a real conversation. Once he had finished and taken the time to inquire about who made the meal (Grebenshchikov) so that he could lavish praise on the effort and result, he cleaned up and wandered down to Lena’s lab.
He tapped once on the door and swung it open. She was looking at him wide-eyed as he stepped in.
“Oh, it’s you.”
“And there it is. That’s the greeting every man hopes for. “
“I am sorry. I made the possible mistake of imposing a quota on myself for what I was going to accomplish today and I am currently running behind schedule. What can I do for you, Francis?”
He thought about swinging the door shut for privacy, but when he turned to look over his shoulder, Zoya was walking in. Now what? He had to say something that wasn’t going to come out as too incoherent.
He made up a question about signal strength when finding larger or multiple samples. She looked at him like she knew that was bogus, but answered seriously regardless. He thanked her, apologized for interrupting, and went back to his own outdoor version of research. Their talk would have to wait.
He had a great afternoon from a results point of view. Four more samples were marked on the GPS. That gave him a total of six to pick up the next day, not including any others that he might locate after that. He briefly pondered what the daily record might be.
For the most part, he continued to think over the situation they were all in. He started to cling tighter to the conclusions from his morning contemplations. No new revelations came to him, but one overriding fear began to take hold and gnaw.
When would it happen?
If it was true, how long did they have until the attack came? Today? Tonight? How could he possibly figure it out? What answer made sense?
“We have the virus on ice and we know it’s virulent. If they knew, they could come anytime to take it.”
He thought about Sokolov and his shortwave radio. They had assumed that he used it to talk to Moscow or someone back in Russia. What if he was talking to the strike team leader? Then they would have all the knowledge they needed for this to happen. There was nothing to say that this might happen soon.
“He must have called them before he died. He would have told them that he wasn’t going to make it. He might have even told them to seek me out as the one with the combination. Maybe. I guess if I hadn’t figured it out, they’d be on their own. But why would he care at that point?”
What a mess. Hamlin decided to ask Lena about alternative theories before he affected her thought pattern by sharing his. Maybe he was wrong about all of this. He sure was hoping so.
A new thought rocked him. They didn’t have any samples on ice. After Sokolov died, they had burned the outer lab to the ground. All the virus related research was there. Or at least had been. That added yet another twist. If a team showed up looking for the virus, it just wouldn’t be here. That would piss them off.
“Son of a bitch.”
After supper, Hamlin decided not to try being too clever about it. He simply told Lena that he wanted a word alone and the two of them retired to Sokolov’s room. That was much more realistic than coming up with some elaborate and bizarre cover story to get her alone.
As was now typical, Francis sat in Sokolov’s comfortable chair. Lena moved a few items and sat on the corner of the huge desk, legs dangling short of reaching the floor.
“So, what do you want, Francis?”
He had rehearsed this part of the conversation while out in the Cat.
“I was wondering if you had come up with any theories about the weapons and why they’re here.”
She sighed.
“Results have been most unsatisfactory. Every time I think I have found a plausible reason, it collapses under my own internal cross-questioning. So far, nothing makes any sense to me. What about you? What ideas came into you head while you were driving around in the bleak Antarctic winter? Or were you thinking about me the whole time?”
That broke the spell a little bit. Hamlin smiled and shook his head.
“You were, weren’t you? You were thinking about me naked, you bad boy.”
“You really are twisted, you know that?”
“I don’t think so,” she said, slipping back easily into her husky voice. “You are a man, so you cannot help yourself. Is that not so?”
“Yeah, that imaginary pornographic video of you is pretty much playing in the background of my mind all the time. I’ve learned to work around it, though. Can you try to focus on the business at hand?”
“Are you sure? This could get interesting quite quickly.”
“I thought of something today. I need you to tell me I’m crazy. I’d love you to convince me that I’m wrong. But before that can happen, you need to listen. But it may involve concentration on your part. Do you think you’re capable of that?”
“Oh, I’m capable. I’m very capable. As a matter of fact, I can multitask nicely. For example, I am quite certain that I could listen to you talk while you were humping me on Sokolov’s desk. Do you think you could speak coherently while doing me like that? Can you formulate thoughts under those conditions, or will you simply lose your mind?”
He figured based on the direction the conversation had turned that she wouldn’t mind, so he put his hand on her knee and patted it gently.
“Just listen to me, okay? Hear me out. What happens after that between two consenting adults is another matter. Let’s just not do anything to mare the finish on this excellent desk.”
She smiled sweetly.
“No promises.”
“Fine. I’m going to start talking. I hope you can find the discipline to listen.”
He talked. It became more of a ramble once he got started. It took some time and he knew he had her attention. He told her all about his theory of the commandos that could swoop down on them at any moment to grab samples of the virus that no longer exist. She lost her desire to be flirty and settled in for a good listen. When he finished she merely sat and stared off into space. He almost wished that she would break out laughing at the ridiculousness of his idea.