“Sir, I’m not sure that I’ve fully relayed the seriousness of the situation. Perhaps if I—”
“Joe,” he cut me off, “you were chosen for this job because you make the tough choices. You tried to save the sub, and scuttled it when you couldn’t. You outmaneuvered an unfriendly when he seemed to have you trapped. You give a thousand percent. I understand your desire to do everything you can but you are also tired and strained and that means mistakes.”
“But, sir,” I ventured, “I suggest that I start the process, go slow, unroll just a little at a time and—”
The director snapped. “Colonel! Let this one go! We’ll have an answer in five, six days. Understood?”
“I do.”
“You don’t sound enthusiastic, Joe. Try again.”
“Five, six days, we could lose more people.”
The voice grew modulated as he’d won the point. “Joe, I’d be frustrated, too, were I you. But we’ll get this dealt with as soon as possible. I’ve put you in for a medal. Now! What are you doing to try to locate the spy you believe is aboard? That is our immediate concern. Stopping the leak.”
“I’ve asked the captain to review security tapes made during ship drills, sir, in the hangar. Possibly we’ll get a glimpse of whoever tampered with the Arktos. The XO’s doing a locker-to-locker search; cabins, storage areas, labs. The communications officer will go through all laptops on board, see if he can find piggyback programs inside, foreign software.”
“And who’s checking on him?”
“His number two. Also, sir, when you and I are finished here, we’ll shut down the sat lines again. When we get within copter range — DeBlieu says that will be in another hundred and seventy miles if weather holds and ice stays clear — I advise sending in security folks to ask questions. Hold everyone aboard while we do. And, of course, we’ll have to open it up for consultations with the CDC.”
“There won’t be any consultation just now,” he said.
I felt my breath catch. “Excuse me?”
“Joe, until we know who you’ve got on board, passing information along, we simply have to block all calls out. We’re shutting you down. Communication quarantine. We’ll open her up and call if we need you. DeBlieu keeps the radio off on your end. But you’ve got that thumb drive library of yours, that kit of memory sticks, probably hundreds of books’ worth. Plenty of medical information in there. You’ve been building that collection for years.
“In the meantime…” He hesitated and I had a vision of his secretary standing in his doorway mouthing, Your eleven o’clock appointment is here.
He said, “In the meantime, Joe, I have full confidence in all your decisions.”
Yeah, except when I want to open the canister.
He added more softly, “Even the upcoming tough ones.”
What does he mean by that?
“You know, Joe, you more than anyone understand that our country is at a huge disadvantage in the Arctic. We, the Pentagon, we’ve been trying to get four consecutive White Houses to pay attention to this region, but we’ve only got the Wilmington up there breaking ice. If we lose her, we lose the ability to move. We lose access to a whole ocean opening up. The country can’t afford that.”
Is he saying what I think he is? I felt a tickling, an itch on the roof of my mouth, a numb feeling spreading down my esophagus.
“Joe, if that sickness amplifies, if you decide that keeping the ill ones on the ship is risky to others, I’m just saying, you know, to remember the vast stakes.”
I gasped. “You want me to put them off?”
“No, no, of course not. I’m not telling you that. I’m not on site. You are. I’m just saying, Joe, that you’re always good at balancing tough considerations.”
My God! He’s telling me that it is okay if I leave those guys on the ice, if I decide they’ll contaminate the ship! That’s why they’re cutting me off from the CDC. They don’t want a committee involved in the decision. They don’t want anyone extra knowing. Jesus God!
The director said, “Well, I’m sure it won’t come to that. Good luck. I’ll call you every few hours for updates. We’ll open the line when I do.”
“Sir, perhaps, if you’ll excuse a request, perhaps if I spoke directly to whoever—”
“I have full confidence that you’ll do the right thing.”
He was gone. His praise tasted like ashes. Eddie came up to me, took one long look into my face, and said, “What’s wrong, Uno?” The canister lay in my left hand, gripped as if it might jump overboard if I relaxed. My jaw hurt. My neck cords were tight. I held the container up between us. I shook my head.
Eddie jerked as if struck physically. “He said no?”
A wave of tiredness washed over me, then a wave of fury woke me up.
“He said leave it to the experts. He made sense on the surface, but I got the feeling,” I said, reliving the talk, “that he knew about the canister before I mentioned it.”
Eddie, waiting while I thought out loud, went back over the conversation.
“He was surprised, yeah, surprised for sure, but I can’t figure it exactly. He wasn’t surprised in the right way.”
“And what would be the right way?”
I smiled grimly. “That’s the question, isn’t it? Need to know, friend. And you know what? I can think of eight good need-to-know reasons to open the canister.”
Eddie’s breath came out as a long white line.
“Eight dead Marines,” I said. “In Afghanistan.”
“This is a different situation.”
“That’s the point. In Afghanistan there was no choice. Here there is. And I can think of one hundred more reasons right there,” I said, nodding toward the parade of stretchers moving toward cots. “And,” I added, gazing up at the ship’s superstructure, envisioning, inside, men and women in the passageways and bridge, “there are even more reasons up top.”
“You sure, One?”
I laughed. “Sure? Who is ever sure of anything? But I’m opening this. They can’t do anything to me — I’m retiring — so you stay here. If the film starts to disintegrate, I’ll close it up. If I find something, you’ll be the first to know.”
“No, I’ll be the first to know because I’m coming with you.”
“Then officially, you’re coming to talk me out of it, right?”
Eddie grinned. “Don’t do it. Do not do it! I’m urging, pleading, begging you to follow the director’s orders.”
He wiped his nose on his sleeve.
With sharp concern, I said, “You getting sick?”
“Nah. It’s the ventilation system. But,” he said, a frown on his face, “frankly, I don’t like the look of Clinton.”
Captain Maurice DeBlieu broke off from the rescue work and followed us through the hangar, up steel steps, to the warren of labs on the 01 level. This was the first time in my military career that I had disobeyed a direct order.
Director, what do you know that you have not told me?
Our boot steps rang on steel as we reached the hallway housing the labs; some used for analyzing bottom sediment, others for weather analysis or sonar imaging work, and then the bio lab, similar to those I’ve worked in, in Washington, or in tents in Afghanistan. I knew this room. I was comfortable here, if it was possible, under these circumstances, to be comfortable at all.
Up until now this lab had been used by researchers — DeBlieu told me when I first toured the ship — to quantify ocean acidification, examine starved polar bears, or walrus air sacs, which kept males afloat when ice was gone… Or to look at codfish, which were migrating into newly warm waters, DeBlieu had said, or grasshoppers that had fallen from the sky, all new life-forms appearing as the High North warmed.